Chapter 3

‘She believed that his love, which was to her sacred, would endure. No one can read her letters without seeing that she was a pure, high-minded, and refined woman, and that she considered herself, in the eyes of God and man, his wife.... But they are the letters of a tender and devotedwife, who feels no doubt of her position.’

In theMemoirof the heroine, whom he thus exhibits to the admiration of our wives, and sisters, and daughters, Mr. Kegan Paul says:—

‘The kindness he’ (i.e.Imlay) ‘showed Mary Wollstonecraft disposed her to look on him favourably;she soon gave him a very sincere affection, and consented to become his wife.I use this word deliberately, although no legal ceremony ever passed between them.’

In these passages Mr. Kegan Paul states much that is the reverse of fact; much also that is disproved by the letters which he so strangely misrepresents.

Containing many passages that are winningly piquant and innocently charming; affording abundant evidence that their writer’s affections were strongly concerned in this wretchedliaison; betraying no few indications of a spirit almost to be styled high-mindedness; yielding superabundant evidence of the writer’s cleverness and brilliancy, these letters are not the letters of a refined woman, or the letters of a woman whoconsiders herself the wife of the man to whom they are addressed. Still less are they the letters of a woman who feels herself secure of her position. Had she been a woman of nice refinement, she could not have written so lightly and copiously as she does of matters that a gentlewoman of refinement tells only to her physician, her nurse, her closest female friends, and shrinks from naming to her husband. Had she been the woman of singular refinement we are asked to believe her, she would have been less communicative to her correspondent about her health. Regard for the feelings of my readers forbids me to speak, even in the most guarded terms, of the more disagreeable details of these too circumstantial communications. In this respect, the letters are just such letters as, in the absence of positive testimony, the author of theRights of Womanmight be imagined to have written to the man, with whom she was living in Free Love. Instead of being the letters of a woman who considers herself a wife, she does not venture, even in her confidential communications to Imlay, to style herself his wife, whilst hinting how strongly she wished to be privileged to do so. Instead of being the letters of a woman ‘feeling herself secure of her position,’ nothing in them is more striking and pathetic than the evidence how painfully aware she was, that she held her admirer by only the slenderest thread.

Mr. Kegan Paul says that she believed Gilbert Imlay’s love would endure. What a strange belief for a woman who thought no man’s love capable of endurance; who wrote in theRights of Womanthat ‘love, from its nature, must be transitory,’ and was ‘perhaps the most evanescent of all passions;’ who had taught in the same book that every woman should anticipate theinevitabledeath of her husband’s love for her! Anyhow, ere the first four of the seventy-seven letters to Imlay had been written, she knew him to have been a fickle lover:—

‘I have found out,’ she wrote from Paris to Imlay at Havre, in September, 1793, in the fourth of the long series of letters, ‘that I have more mind than you, in one respect: because I can, without any violent effort of reason, find food for love in the same object, much longer than you can. The way to my senses is through my heart; but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a short cut to yours.’

Surely, this is good evidence that, from an early date of their acquaintance, she knew he was a fickle worshiper ofwomankind and a libertine. Moreover, what a confession to be made by Mr. Kegan Paul’s bright example of feminine purity and delicacy,—the woman who is said by Mr. Kegan Paul to have come to Paris without having had any affair of the heart! She had learnt in September, 1793, that the way to hersenseswas through herheart, and that she could ‘find food for love in the same object’ longer than her correspondent could. A great deal for a woman to learn between the end of December and the middle of the following September! It must, however, be admitted that Paris, at the end of the last century, was a school where a woman picked up such knowledge fast.

Mr. Kegan Paul is sure that, from the commencement of her association with Imlay in Free Love, Mary Wollstonecraft considered herself as hiswife‘in the eyes of God and man;’ and Mr. Kegan Paul, ‘using this word deliberately,’ styles her thewifeof Gilbert Imlay. Let us look into this matter. At the commencement of this virtuous association, Gilbert and Mary were not living under the same roof; but having separate places of abode, they met secretly by assignation for the enjoyment of their conjugal privileges. One of their places, perhaps their only place, of assignation, was a certain ‘barrier’ of the French capital, near which barrier the act occurred, that resulted in the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate daughter in April, 1794. The pleasure of these meetings at the barrier was referred to by Mary, when, in the twenty-third of the famous series of letters, she wrote on 22nd September, 1794, from Paris to Imlay:—‘Bring me, then, back your barrier-face, or you shall have nothing to say to my barrier-girl.’ On the following day, she wrote in the same vein:—

‘I desired you, in one of my other letters, to bring back to me your barrier-face—or that you should not be loved by my barrier-girl. I know that you will love her more and more, for she is a little affectionate, intelligent creature, with as much vivacity, I should think, as you could wish for.’

When writing thus to her already cold and remiss partner in Free Love, Mary pined to see once again the radiant face of the lover, whose ‘barrier-girl’ was with her at Paris,—a five-months’ infant, delighting in three things, ‘to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music.’

Mary and Gilbert were still living apart and meeting oneanother by assignation, when she wrote to him on some unknown day of August, 1793:—

‘You can scarcely imagine with what pleasure I anticipate the day, when we are to begin almost to live together; and you would smile to hear how many plans of employment I have in my head, now that I am confident my heart has found peace in your bosom.... I will be at the barrier a little after ten o’clock to-morrow.’

By this time they had arranged ‘almost to live together,’ but they had not begun to do so. Mary’s disagreeable communicativeness about her attacks of faintness and the movements of her little ‘twitcher’ leaves no room for question that her child, born at Havre in April, 1794, was not born prematurely. It is therefore a matter of certainty that Mary was on the way to become a mother, before the lovers ceased to have separate places of abode and to meet by assignation. Even by Mr. Kegan Paul it must be admitted that this was a curious way of living for the woman, who already considered herself the wife of Imlay in the eyes of God andman. Anyhow at first Mary did her best to escape the eyes of man.

After living under the same roof with her for some six weeks, Captain Imlay (for the prosecution of affairs of business, and possibly also in pursuit of pleasure) went off to Havre, where he had commercial concerns, and to other places requiring his presence; Mary being left to her own devices for several months in Paris, whence she wrote to her partner in Free Love some of the most interesting of the letters, of which Mr. Kegan Paul speaks so highly. Misrepresenting matters so as to adapt them to his fanciful conception of Mary’s life and character, Mr. Kegan Paul also commits errors without any apparent object for doing so. For instance, he says, ‘Towards the close of 1793 Mary joined Imlay at Havre, and there in the spring of 1794 gave birth to a girl, who received the name of Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her youth;’ saying this in spite of the evidence afforded by the letters he is editing, that Mary remained at Paris well into February, 1794. From Paris she wrote Imlayonepublished letter in September, 1793; one published letter in November, 1793;fourpublished letters in December, 1793;fourpublished letters in January, 1794;fourpublished letters in February, 1794. All these fourteen letters were written by her at Paris; the last of them (penned at themoment of her departure from the capital for Havre) ending with these words:—

‘I am well, and have no apprehension that I shall find the journey too fatiguing, when I follow the lead of my heart. With my face turned to Havre my spirits will not sink; and my mind has always hitherto enabled my body to do whatever I wished—Yours affectionately,Mary.’

In an editorial note Mr. Kegan Paul admits that all these letters were written during Mary’s ‘separation of several months from Imlay;’ and yet in theMemoirhe represents that the separation ended in December, and that she joined Imlay at Havre ‘towards the close of 1793.’ This is the way in which the writers, whosecarehas been commended so enthusiastically by Mr. Froude, deal with their evidences. Doubtless they are accurate enough for Mr. Froude, and quite as accurate as he is himself.

The letter she wrote to Imlay from Paris on 30th December, 1793 (Monday night) contains this remarkable passage, to which the reader should give his best attention:—

‘A melancholy letter from my sister Eliza has also harassed my mind—that from my brother would have given me sincere pleasure; but for.... There is a spirit of independence in his letter, that will please you; and you shall see it, when we are once more over the fire together. I think that you would hail him as a brother, with one of your tender looks, when your heart not only gives a lustre to your eye, but a dance of playfulness, that he would meet with a glow half made up of bashfulness, and a desire to please the ——; where shall I find a word to express the relationship which subsists between us? Shall I ask the little twitcher? But I have dropt half the sentence that was to tell you how much he would be inclined to love the man loved by his sister. I have been fancying myself sitting between you, ever since I began to write, and my heart has leapt at the thought! You see how I chat to you.’

Written in her brightest, tenderest, most womanly vein, this exquisite piece of writing shows not only the affectionateness of Mary’s nature, but also how far she was from considering herself a wife in the eyes of God and man, and how acutely she felt the shame and inconveniences of her position towards Imlay. One would like to see the words omitted from the passage,—probably the words of a declaration that she could not enjoy her younger brother’s letter from the sense of humiliationcoming to her from thinking, how she could nerve herself to tell him of the relation, in which she and Imlay stood to one another. ‘Where,’ she writes with pathos and tact, ‘shall I find a word to express the relationship which subsists between us?’ She wants a word she could give her brother, without fearing it would drive all care for her from his heart. Had she considered herself a wife in the eyes of man, she would not have wanted the word. ‘Shall I ask the little twitcher?’ asks the woman, within four months of her accouchement. Could a woman ask more touchingly and winningly for the lawful marriage, that would make her what she wanted to be in the eyes of the world; would save her child from the ignominy of shameful birth; would give her the name she could utter to her brother, without burning blush and scalding tears? ‘Considered herself a wife in the eyes of God and man!’ Did she so consider herself? Then why this touching prayer to the man whom she dared not call her husband, even in the privacy of a letter, beginning with ‘My Best Love?’

There is another passage in the letters, to be remembered in connexion with the foregoing evidence that, instead of considering herself a wife in the world’s eyes, she could not even consider herself a wife in Imlay’s eyes. ‘Finding,’ she wrote to him from Paris on 1st January, 1794, ‘that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ——s, simply that I was with child: and let them stare! and ——, and ——, nay, all the world may know it for aught I care! Yet I wish to avoid ——’s coarse jokes.’ Had she been a wife in the eyes of society (as Mr. Kegan Paul insists she was), the ladies would not have stared, would have seen no cause to stare, on the announcement of the matter, with which Mary caused them to open their eyes with astonishment. Had she been regarded as a wife by her Parisian friends, she would have had no cause to fear coarse jests about her health. It is clear the woman, who could not venture to style herself ‘his wife’ even to Imlay, had not ventured to style herself his wife to her Parisian friends.

Now-a-days the less scrupulous of our Free Lovers make so free with the queen’s English as to style themselves husband or wife, and declare themselves married people, without having gone through any form of marriage. Speaking deliberately, Mr. Kegan Paul says they have a right to do so, the word wife being in his opinion strictly applicable to a female Free Lover.Speaking deliberately, I say they have no right to apply to a woman, who is not lawfully married, a familiar title assigned by social rule and law of language, as a description of their legal estate, to women who are lawfully married; or, on the other hand, to apply the correlative title to men who are not lawfully married. I say they have no right to change at their will the signification of familiar English words, so as to bring them into accordance with their notions touching the relations of the sexes.

In the dictionaries of the English language ‘husband’ is defined as ‘a man contracted or joined to a woman by marriage;’ ‘wife’ is defined as ‘a woman who is united to a man in the lawful bonds of wedlock;’ and ‘marriage’ is defined as ‘the legal union of a man and woman for life.’ The world accepts these definitions, acts upon them, and will, I trust, continue to act upon them. Speaking deliberately, I say (Mr. Kegan Paul notwithstanding) that persons who use these words for the misdescription of Free Lovers, with an intention to deceive their hearers, are guilty of falsehood. I say this deliberately, though Marian Evans (noble creature though she was, and exemplary in all matters, apart from her miserable association with George Henry Lewes) used to speak and write of him as her ‘husband.’ Possibly Marian Evans did not so misdescribe her relation to George Leweswith an intention to deceive. I have no evidence that she ever so misdescribed herself and Lewes to any person, without having reason to think the person cognizant of the facts of the case. AndI do knowthat to certain gentlewomen, she was honourably communicative on the matter, so that they might not associate with her, under a misapprehension respecting her domestic position. But her conduct cannot affect the obligation of Free Lovers to be truthful. Having the courage of their opinions, they should tell the world openly what they are. They might style themselves ‘bosom-friends,’ or call themselves ‘free husbands and free wives.’ But they have no right to call themselves ‘husbands’ and ‘wives.’ Out of respect for themselves and their principles they should refrain from the ordinary untruthful practice of ‘kept mistresses’ and their keepers.

Ninety years since the woman (who according to Mr. Kegan Paul considered herself a wife in the eyes of God andman) did not presume to style herself Imlay’s wife even to her own sisters. All she could do was to speak of herself truthfully asliving in France under his ‘protection,’ when on 10th March, 1794, she wrote from Havre to her sister Everina, ‘If any of the many letters I have written have come to your hands or Eliza’s, you know I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, &c.;’—words committed to paper, when she was within a few weeks of giving birth to her illegitimate child. To her own sister Mary Wollstonecraft described herself as a woman living under ‘protection.’ Mr. Kegan Paul published the letter in which she thus describes herself; and yet he says she considered herself as wife in the eyes of her fellow-creatures.

It has been already remarked that Mary Wollstonecraft had an unhappy temper. Even by Mr. Kegan Paul it is admitted that his angelical Mary was ‘excitable and hasty-tempered, apt to exaggerate trifles, sensitive to magnify inattention into slights, and slights into studied insults.’ Put into plain terms this is an admission that she was a violent-tempered and bad-tempered woman. She was no woman to live happily with a man, either as wife or Free Lover. Even before their first brief term of cohabitation, she had tried Imlay by her caprice and pettishness. In the letter (of August, 1793), in which she anticipates the delight of ‘beginning almost to live together’ with him, she says:—

‘Cherish me with that dignified tenderness, which I have only found in you; and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling, that has sometimes given you pain. Yes, I will begood, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state which rendered life a burden almost too heavy to be borne.’

Let the reader consider these words. In Letter vi. (a genuine love-letter), dated from Paris to Imlay at Havre, she writes: ‘No; I have thy honest countenance before me—Pop—relaxed by tenderness; a little—little wounded by my whims.’ In Letter xi., of January, 1794, she entreats, ‘with eyes overflowing with tears and in the humblest attitude,’ to be pardoned for worrying her admirer with unreasonable epistles to which he has replied in a ‘kind and rational letter;’—adding, ‘It is time for me to grow more reasonable, a few more of these caprices of sensibility would destroy me.’ In the same month she writes to him:—

‘Yesterday, my love, I could not open your letter for some time; and, though it was not half as severe as I merited, it threw me intosuch a fit of trembling, as seriously alarmed me.... One thing you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me almost a duty to stifle them when I imaginethat I am treated with coldness.’

The letters abound with similar evidence that, quarrelling from an early date of their association, they went on quarrelling and making it up, till they grew heartily sick of one another, and saw little of one another. At the most, be it observed, the whole period of their association (from their first introduction to one another till their final parting) did not exceed two years and ten months, and at the fullest computation they did not spend more than twelve months of this time in one another’s society. Whilst Mary was at Paris, Imlay was for months together at Havre, or other places, away from her. For the greater part of her stay at Havre, he was at Paris. Soon after her return to Paris, he went off to London. Running from England to France to see her for a short time, he returned by himself to England. Soon after her return to England, she went off with her child and nurse in the summer of 1795, for her trip to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

I am no apologist for Imlay. In a memoir I wrote of Mary Wollstonecraft twenty-eight years since, I called him ‘a pitiful scamp;’ and though I may doubt whether I should have spoken of him quite so disdainfully, I am still disposed to think him a mean-spirited, though clever, creature. The evidence respecting his character and ways of life is far from complete. Hitherto only one side has been told of the story of his relations with Mary Wollstonecraft;herside of the story, dressed and redressed by her friends and admirers. From the insufficient evidence, he appears to have differed morally in no important respect or degree from the ordinary run of the men, who used to be styled men of the world, men of pleasure, and men of gallantry. Whilst it is certain that Mary Wollstonecraft entered the association with no confidence that it would last ‘for ever,’ there is no reason to suppose that he entered it with any desire for its permanence. Whilst it is certain that the faults of her temper were largely accountable for the unhappiness of the association, it is fair to assume there were corresponding faults of temper on his side. If he was not qualified to make any woman happy for long, MaryWollstonecraft was not a woman to live happily with any man for any long time. There can be no question they were an ill-assorted couple; but with any man Mary would have been unhappily matched. It is not wonderful that Imlay had not been associated for many months with the woman, who worried him incessantly with her temper, before he began to think of withdrawing from the association.

In leaving Mary Wollstonecraft, Imlay took a step that, from the commencement of their association, must have been foreseen as a probable contingency by the woman, who regarded love as the most evanescent of the human passions. In leaving her he merely exercised the right of retirement, which had been reserved alike to him and her by the conditions of their lawless contract. Yet his disposition to leave her was no sooner known to the Free Lovers of her English acquaintance, than they began to think very ill of him. On being assured of his purpose to quit her, because he could not live harmoniously with her, they were quick in declaring him a prodigy of conjugal faithlessness. It is not manifest at the first glance why these enthusiastic advocates of the Free Contract were so indignant with him for retiring from the partnership in accordance with the terms on which he had entered it,—i.e.on the understanding that he should be at liberty to get out of it when he pleased, and that Mary should be at liberty to retire from it when she pleased. The advantage claimed by the Free Lovers for their conjugal arrangement over marriage is, that spouses have this liberty of withdrawing from one another on the death of their mutual affection. Why, then, was Imlay so severely blamed for using the liberty especially reserved to him by the contract he formed with Mary,—by the terms that may be fairly called her own terms? The Free Lovers spoke of him as though, instead of entering into a contract of Free Love with a middle-aged (thirty-four years old) woman, who was a Free Lover in principle before she knew him, he had engaged the affections of a young girl, and lured her into lawful wedlock. They stigmatized him as the heartless betrayer of virginal simplicity and innocence. They charged him with monstrous wickedness in retiring from the contract, which by their own rule he was free to withdraw from as soon as he liked.

The fact is the Free Lovers of ninety years since were angry with Imlay for leaving Mary,notbecause he acted in violationof their principles or broke the terms of his contract with Mary, but because his rupture with the woman of letters afforded a strong example of the badness of their conjugal method, and tended to discredit their substitute for lawful marriage. The opponents of Free Love were and are in the habit of insisting that libertines would use its freedom, to desert their conjugal mates for slight causes. Imlay’s secession from Mary countenanced this view of Free Love. The opponents of Free Love opposed it on the ground that, if conjugal partnerships could be withdrawn from at pleasure, they would be entered into lightly and without due preliminary inquiry and forethought. The levity with which Mary entered into a contract of Free Love with Imlay, soon after making his acquaintance, and before she learnt his real character (as her friends insist), countenanced this view. Hence the rage of the Free Lovers against Imlay, who retired from the partnership, whilst Mary wished to retain him in it.

Though it seems to have revived some months later, and after its temporary extinction to have regained all its original passionateness, it is not to be imagined that Mary Wollstonecraft’s love of Gilbert Imlay continued to burn steadily after the death of his affection for her. All the more instructive and pathetic are the efforts she made, for her child’s sake, and her own honour’s sake, to hold him to herself, for months after his first manifestation of a desire to be quit of her. Striving to make herself useful to him, in the hope that a care for his selfish interests would retain him in the partnership from which he wished to retreat, she took an interest in his commercial concerns, and went on the voyage to Denmark and Norway, not more for the sake of her own health, than for the advantage of his affairs in those countries. This she did (as Mr. Kegan Paul says) after ‘Imlay’s affection had ceased, and his desertion’ (retirement would be a better word) ‘had practically begun.’ Striving to be useful to him, she tried to please him, even feigned still to love him, though strong affection for him had perished from her heart. To qualify her to do business for him in the foreign lands for which she was bound, Imlay gave her a power-of-attorney, in which he styled her ‘Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife,’—‘a document,’ says Mr. Kegan Paul, ‘which in many cases and countries would be considered as constituting marriage:’ as though it gave the poor woman a colour ofmatronly honour in history, and were somehow or other a proof that she had, from the commencement of the Free Love contract, ‘considered herself his wife in the eyes of God and man.’ No doubt the document would have been proof of marriage in Scotland to this century, and in other countries previous to the Council of Trent. But Imlay and Mary were not living in Scotland. Nor were they living in times prior to the Council of Trent. The power-of-attorney was signed by Imlay when he had made up his mind never to make her his wife; and she took it abroad with her, when she knew he had ceased to love her and hadnotmade her his wife. For those who peruse them, by the light of the hints given in these and previous pages, there is pathetic instruction in the letters Mary sent her no-longer-loving ‘protector’ from abroad. They are the letters of a woman alternately hoping against hope to revive in Imlay’s breast his old love of her, and despairing to hold him much longer as a friend or even as an acquaintance. From pity, kindness or self-interest (possibly from all three) he wrote to her sometimes in the language of a lover,—letters animating her with hopes, to be dashed by the next post. Returning to England (not in late autumn, as Mr. Kegan Paul asserts, but) on 4th October, 1795, she soon found the vanity of all her hopes and efforts to retain him. By this time Imlay had formed another attachment, had entered into another contract of Free Love,—a fact all the more galling to Mary, because he called his new passion a sacred passion, and justified it with the familiar arguments of the Free Lovers. Resolute to exercise his Free-Love right to retire from the association that had become distasteful to him, he was set on fulfilling the moral engagements of the new partnership in mutual tenderness. His language and tone on these matters were the more exasperating to Mary, because of their conformity to the doctrines of her own philosophic school. In justice to him it must be admitted, even by Mary’s partisans, that he showed no wish to shirk the pecuniary sacrifices, expected from a man of honour, when he transfers his affections from an old to a new mistress. Offering her, pressing upon her, money for her necessities, he undertook to make proper settlements on Mary and her child. With proper spirit she rejected indignantly these offers for herself, though she consented to his proposal to make a settlement on their child. But the bond he gave forthis purpose was of no advantage to the child, as neither the principal nor interest of the promised sum was paid; probably because the man of divers financial speculations fell into poverty.

There are passages in the concluding Letters to Imlay fit to be given in evidence that, as the hour of their final separation drew nearer, Mary’s love for him revived and regained all its former force; and it is conceivable that, under the influence of jealousy of the object of Imlay’s new attachment, Mary loved him again in a wild, tempestuous way, as all hope of recovering him to herself and her child died in her breast. Certainly she acted like a woman driven to distraction by the anguish of despised and disappointed love. On the other hand, she did nothing more than many a violent woman has done under the goadings and torture of wounded vanity and injured pride. In her rage and misery, Gilbert Imlay’s whilom mate in Free-Love went one cold and dismal winter’s day to the river’s side near Putney Bridge. On coming to the scene, where she intended to escape from life, she either walked into the river and stood in it, or walked on the Bridge in the pouring rain, until the skirts of her clothing were saturated and heavily charged with water. This having been done, so that a few minutes later her garments should operate as a dead weight in drawing her beneath the tide’s surface, and, at the same time, deprive her limbs of the power to struggle against the cold current, she climbed the parapet of the Bridge,[1]and threw herself into the deep stream. This deliberate attempt at self-murder was, however, unsuccessful, Mary being picked up and saved by the watermen of a passing boat.

Self-murder being a form of wickedness denied by the moral and social proprieties to all persons in their minds, not belongingto the lower orders, and being, therefore, a departure from righteousness that would disqualify Mary for her place of honour in the annals of a respectable county family, it has been decreed by Mary Wollstonecraft’s admirers that she was out of her right mind, to the extent of not knowing what she was doing when she thus attempted to kill herself. Is it not written in Mr. Kegan Paul’s book that Mary’s attempt to drown herself was made when she was ‘driven to despair and was for a time quite out of her mind?’ In connexion with this verdict, it is well to remember that, some time before going down to Putney, Mary wrote a very powerfully worded letter to Imlay, saying therein, ‘I go to find comfort, and my only fear is, that my poor body will be insulted by an endeavour to recall my hated existence. But I shall plunge into the Thames, where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek.’ After writing this quite lucid and well-worded letter, Mary went down to Putney; and, after providing in the most deliberate manner for the achievement of her purpose, she climbed over the side of the Bridge and threw herself into the deep water. When she did all this she was so completely out of her mind, that she should not be deemed accountable for her actions, and cognizant of what she was doing. This is Mr. Kegan Paul’s view of the matter.

It is impossible to trace precisely the course of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life in the last three months of 1795 and the first month of 1796 (from the stormy, hysterical, changeful epistles, that conclude the series of publishedLettersto Imlay, and other letters of the same period, which I have examined for the illustration of her story); but in December she was still writing to him with a faint, flickering hope of recalling him to her side. On some day of December, subsequent to the 8th of that month, she wrote to him in these words:—

‘Imlay, believe me, it is not romance, you have acknowledged to me feelings of this kind. You could restore me to life and hope, and the satisfaction you would feel would amply repay you. In tearing myself from you, it is my own heart I pierce; and the time will come, when you will lament that you have thrown away a heart that, even in the moment of passion, you cannot despise. I would owe everything to your generosity, but, for God’s sake, keep me no longer in suspense! Let me see you once more.’

This letter is followed by another, written in the samemonth, ending with ‘I part with you in peace.’ But the final parting was still later. Even so late as 26th January, 1796, she is writing to Mr. A. Hamilton Rowan in terms which indicate a faint, lingering hope that even yet Imlay would at some time of the future, change and return to her. ‘Mr. Imlay,’ she says, ‘would be glad to supply all my pecuniary wants; but unless he returns to himself, I would perish first;’—words showing that, even so late as the last week of January, 1796, she could think of what she would do if Imlay should return to himself,i.e.to her.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter by William Godwin, the daughter who lived to be Mrs. Shelley and mother of the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, was born on 30th August, 1797, just five calendar months after the marriage (celebrated at old St. Pancras Church, on 29th March, 1797), that united the author ofThe Rights of Womanand the author ofPolitical Justicein lawful wedlock, when they had already been living several months together in Free Love. The date of the commencement of their association in Free Love is unknown; but whilst it must have been as far back as December, 1796, there is reason for thinking the free-contract was entered into some weeks earlier. It follows, therefore, that the woman who leapt from Putney Bridge in the winter of 1795-6, and had not absolutely despaired, on 26th January, 1796, of seeing her Free Lover Imlay return to himself and her, in something much less than a year, probably in so short a time as nine months, possibly in a much shorter time than nine months, was living in Free Love with her old friend William Godwin,—who was in his forty-first year when he thus took Mary Wollstonecraft Imlay,ætat.thirty-seven, under his protection.

An extant note shows that Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft, or, at least, accepted an invitation to meet her, at the residence of their common friend, Miss Hayes, in January, 1796; and there is reason to believe that the appointment agreed to by this note of acceptance was the first occasion on which Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft since her return from Norway. That their acquaintance was of much older standing, and had been much more fruitful of intercourse, than Mr. Kegan Paul represents, and Mrs. Shelley imagined, is certain. That Godwin now renewed his acquaintance with her under circumstances, disposing him to think far more favourably of her than he hadheretofore done, is also certain. On meeting her again in 1796, the philosopher, who had made her a Free Lover, recognized a martyr to his anti-matrimonial doctrines in the woman, whom he had some four years earlier regarded as too talkative and eager for admiration. Bound, by his principles, to approve the terms of her association with Imlay, he could not withhold his sympathy from a woman who had suffered so severely from her devotion to Free Love doctrine. Approaching her as a fair disciple, who had suffered for the truth’s sake, and for the cause of which he was the chief living representative and vindicator, he desired to show his respect for her, and to comfort her. ‘I found a wounded heart; as that heart cast itself upon me, it was my ambition to heal it,’ he wrote to her soon after their lawful marriage, in reference to the renewal of their acquaintance. They are notable words: indicating, as they do, who made the first advances to the state of mutual regard, that resulted in their marriage. He found in her what he was prepared to find—a wounded heart. The owner of the wounded heart cast herself on the philosopher, who desired to soothe its sorrow.

Recalling their course from friendship to love, Godwin wrote after her death:—

‘The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil spreader or the prey, in this affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.... There was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love.’

Though in the privacy of the domestic circle a husband may sometimes jocularly charge his wife with having made the first advances to the offer, or even the offer itself, that resulted in their marriage, no man of common self-respect, or with the slightest care for his wife’s reputation, could seriously assure the public, she so far ‘overstept the delicacy which is so severely imposed’ on her sex, as to have pursued him anddragged him into marriage, or even to have given him any kind of intimation that she required an offer of marriage from him. The more remarkable, therefore, is it, that in words, written with a view to publication, whilst expressly guarding his former wife from the imputation of any such indelicacy, Godwin states so positively that the first advances from their friendship to love were not made by him alone; that his suit for affection in no degree preceded hers; that in the progress to warmer feeling they moved together step by step. This historic statement, made for the world’s consideration, must be read in conjunction with the serious statement put on paper for her eye alone:—‘I found a wounded heart. As that heart cast itself upon me, it was my ambition to heal it.’ Here is the statement of the whole case. Godwin’s expressions of sympathy caused the ever-impetuous, and often too demonstrative woman to throw herself on his sympathy; his ambition to heal her wounded heart was preceded by her display of feeling. Few readers of the two statements will question that, notwithstanding what Godwin says to the contrary, the first advances were made with unmistakable significance by the lady.

Passing in this manner from Imlay to Godwin, in less than a year from her final separation from the former, Mary Wollstonecraft was living with the latter in Free Love at his house in The Polygon, Somers Town, in the last month of 1796. So living with him, was she (to use Mr. Kegan Paul’s words) a wife in the eyes of God and man? She certainly was not so in the eyes of man. She and Godwin had lived in this manner for weeks, for months, before any clear announcement of the nature of their intimacy was made to their most intimate friends. People who had theentréeof the little house in Somers Town, gossiped together,—asking one another what it meant. Had Godwin, in his compassion for Mary’s forlorn condition, merely brought her to his house as a guest for a long visit, or as a housekeeper, or in a closer and more affectionate relation? What the various gossips said, and how they said it, may be left to the reader’s imagination. In February, 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft, living as the somehow or other mistress of Godwin’s house in The Polygon, entertained her sister Everina for some time; but so far was she from considering herself a wife in the eyes of man, she did not venture to reveal the nature of her position in the house even to her own sister. Throughout her visit in ‘ThePolygon,’ Everina was kept in the dark, and she went off to her place of governess in the Wedgwood family, at Etruria, without having learnt that her sister and Godwin were living in Free Love. In the following month (March, 1797), Southey, whilst in London, saw Mary Wollstonecraft, and on the 13th of that month wrote of her to Cottle:—

‘Of all the lions orliteratiI have seen here, Mary Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best; the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display,—an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis,theyare the most meaning I ever saw.’

Speaking of the Free Love association as marriage, Mr. Kegan Paul says that its existence was ‘understood’ in Godwin’s circle at the date of Southey’s letter to Cottle. Doubtless Godwin’s circle ‘understood’ what was going on in his house; but the understanding was in no way due to Godwin’s communicativeness. The understanding was the result of vigilant observation, surmise, inference, conjecture, gossip, tattle. The association was a sly, furtive, secret, deceptive business till the legal but secret marriage in old St. Pancras Church on 29th March, 1797, and for some days afterwards. How uncertain the ‘understanding’ was, how far some of Godwin’s closest friends felt that after all they might be mistaken in the ‘understanding,’ appears from the fact, that, in his reply to the letter in which Godwin briefly announced his recent marriage in St. Pancras Church without mentioning the lady’s name, so intimate a friend as Holcroft wrote, ‘I cannot be mistaken concerning the woman you have married. It is Mrs. W. Your secrecy a little pains me.’

How did the marriage, into which Godwin sneaked in this fashion, turn out? Was it, during its short course, a happy marriage? Was its tenour such as to justify an opinion that it would, on the whole, have been a happy union, had Mary’s life been prolonged for another ten or twenty years? Mr. Kegan Paul answers these questions confidently in the affirmative. Gushing over Mary’s untimeous end, he speaks of Godwin’s life as blighted by her death. It is therefore needful to state clearly, that brief though it was, the marriage was by no means a happy union, and that it was fruitful of incidents which atleast make it certain that Godwin would have found Mary Wollstonecraft a very difficult woman to live with, had her days been so prolonged. This stands out clearly on the record.

No sooner had Mary Wollstonecraft carried the point, for which she may be assumed to have played steadily from the moment of her discovery that she was likely to have another child; no sooner had she induced Godwin, at a great sacrifice of his doctrine against matrimony, to take her to old St. Pancras Church, than she gave the reins to her unhappy temper, and began to worry him precisely as she had in former time worried Imlay. No more than three weeks had passed since that marriage, when she spoke to Godwin (certainly no inconsiderate and unkindly man; certainly a husband who had given proof of his wish to render her a happy woman) in such a strain, that he retired in acute distress from his house in The Polygon to his quite needful retreat in Evesham Buildings (or Place; it is described in both ways). From the study, with which he had fortunately provided himself, he wrote his wife a brief and pathetic note,—averring that he had studied her happiness in everything; imploring her to act so that he should not be wholly disappointed in her; and reminding her that he had not undertaken to heal her wounded heart until she had cast herself upon him.

Admitting that during their brief married life Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft had several lively quarrels; and admitting that they arose from her ‘extreme sensitiveness and eager quickness of temper,’ Mr. Kegan Paul requires us to consider the outbreaks of her passionate querulousness as nothing more serious than ‘slight clouds,’ How differently the biographer speaks of the second Mrs. Godwin’s similar exhibitions of ill-temper! Slight clouds! What a pretty phrase for an ugly fact. Anyhow they were clouds no less significant than slight. It must have been a dismally significant cloud that caused Godwin to write her such a letter!

Let the reader consider the particulars of one of this angelical Mary’s exhibitions of ill-temper; an affair mentioned lightly by Mr. Kegan Paul as a ‘little outburst.’ In the June of 1797, Godwin (a man with a right to a short summer’s holiday, if ever a hard-working man had a right to one) went for a driving tour of just two weeks and three days in the company of his particular friend Mr. Basil Montagu.Hiring a horse and gig, they drove through parts of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Warwickshire, into Staffordshire, visiting Beaconsfield, Oxford, Birmingham, and Stafford, in the earlier days of the excursion; and in the closing days of the brief vacation taking peeps at Derby, Coventry, and Cambridge. Let it be borne in mind that the tour was made in times long before the country was covered with telegraph wires, and when country towns had not three or four postal departures and deliveries a-day. Also, be it remembered, that Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft had mated on the understanding, that they should not have too much of one another’s company, or pester one another with incessant attentiveness. It had been arranged that Godwin, an early riser, should go from his bed in The Polygon to his study in Evesham Buildings at an early hour, and in the ordinary way of his life should not after leaving bed see Mary before their four-o’clock dinner. It had been arranged between them that each should be free to go into society without the other, going by themselves to different parties, going apart on the same evenings to different theatres, or to different parts of the same theatre. Settled even to minute particulars had it been that they should show their superiority to ordinary husbands and wives, by doing what they liked, and exacting no petty services from one another. Free in their love they would be free in their lives.

Driving out of London for this tour on Saturday, 3rd June, Godwin returned to London on Tuesday, 20th June, having in the interval written his wife six long letters. He wrote to his wife on the 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 15th, and 17th of June. The letters were no brief and hasty notes; they were long letters of bright, cheery chat, and affectionate gossip; letters showing he thought much of her during his absence from her, and wished to make her by means of his pen the sharer of his enjoyments. All these long letters came to Mary’s hands; and she knew he was not a rapid writer, capable of dashing off a long epistle in twenty minutes. There had been no hour or day fixed upon precisely for his return, though the tour had been spoken of beforehand as a fortnight’s ‘outing.’ Time having been lost by unforeseen accidents andcontretemps, as time is apt to be lost in such trips, Godwin (the husband who, by special agreement, was to retain as much as possible of his bachelor freedom after marriage) stayed out three days longer than his wife expected. He did not returnto The Polygon on Saturday night; Mary fretted all Sunday. He did not return on Sunday night; Mary went to bed to fret and fume over his cruel neglect of her. Rising on Monday with a clouded brow, she spent the day musing over her wrongs, and resolving on measures to preserve herself from such inhuman treatment in the future. On Monday night (whilst the cup of Godwin’s iniquity was only two-thirds full) she wrote her husband a piece of her mind in a letter to catch his eye and conscience either on his arrival at his own door, or at his last resting-place on his homeward way. To see the angelic Mary in one of her tantrums, readers should refer to Mr. Kegan Paul’s book, and peruse this letter, dated ‘June 19th, Monday, almost 12 o’clock.’ Though absence had, for a while, quickened her affection for him, coldness and neglect had diminished it. The letters he had sent her might serve to remind him where he had been, but they were no mementos of love for her to value. If tenderness for her had animated him on his departure from town, it had evaporated during his trip. Though she had requested him to let her know beforehand the time of his return, he had tormented her by keeping her in suspense. Godwin having written to her copiously about the people he had seen in his brief tour, it seemed well to the amiable Mary to charge him with being influenced by ‘the homage of vulgar minds.’ In waiting to see a show at Coventry, instead of hastening back to Somers Town, he had offered her an affront. What had happened on the way that it took him from Saturday to Sunday night to make the journey from Coventry to Cambridge? And now he was still away, though it was near midnight. What want of consideration for her feelings! ‘Unless,’ wrote the angry woman, ‘you suppose me to be a stick or stone, you must have forgot to think as well as to feel, since you have been on the wing.’

This ‘little outburst’ did not, we are assured by Mr. Kegan Paul, affect the cordial affection of the husband and wife. One would like to hear Godwin on that point. What a letter for him to receive from the woman he had so recently married! What a selfish, exacting, unendurable virago! Yet the Shelleyan zealots commend her for her womanly goodness and sweetness; insisting that she appeared on earth to ‘gild humanity with a ray,’ &c., and that Godwin’s life was darkened and lowered to its last hour by her death.

Before we pass on to pay our respects to the second Mrs. Godwin, it is well to notice what is said of the marriage of the first Mrs. Godwin by her daughter (Mrs. Shelley), whose statements respecting her mother and husband are too generally accepted as authoritative in the Shelleyan coteries. In Mrs. Shelley’s fanciful account of her mother’s virtues, which are declared ‘to gild humanity with a ray, &c.,’ it is thus written:—

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