The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

by Claire Tomalin

  How shall I answer you? In one point we sympathize; I had rather at this moment talk to you on paper than in any other mode. I should feel ashamed in seeing you.

  You do not know how honest I am. I swear to you that I told you nothing but a strict and literal truth, when I described to you the manner in which you set my imagination on fire on Saturday. For six & thirty hours I could think of nothing else. I longed inexpressibly to have you in my arms. Why did I not come to you? I am a fool. I feared still that I might be deceiving myself as to your feelings, & that I was feeding my mind with groundless presumptions. I determined to suffer the point to arrive at its own denouement. I was not aware that the fervour of my imagination was exhausting itself. Yet this, I believe, is no uncommon case.

  Like any other man, I can speak only of what I know. But this I can boldly affirm, that nothing that I have seen in you could in the slightest degree authorize the opinion, that, in despising the false delicacy, you have lost sight of the true. I see nothing in you but what I respect & adore.

  I know the acuteness of your feelings, & there is perhaps nothing on earth that would give me so pungent a remorse, as to add to your unhappiness.

  Do not hate me. Indeed I do not deserve it. Do not cast me off. Do not become again a solitary walker. Be just to me, & then, though you will discover in me much that is foolish and censurable, yet a woman of your understanding will still regard me with some partiality.

  Upon consideration I find in you one fault, & but one. You have the feelings of nature, & you have the honesty to avow them. In all this you do well. I am sure you do. But do not let them tyrannise over you. Estimate everything at its just value. It is best that we should be friends in every sense of the word; but in the mean time let us be friends.

  Suffer me to see you. Let us leave every thing to its own course. My imagination is not dead, I suppose, though it sleeps. But, be it as it will, I will torment you no more. I will be your friend, the friend of your mind, the admirer of your excellencies. All else I commit to the disposition of futurity, glad, if completely happy; passive & silent in this respect, while I am not so.

  Be happy. Resolve to be happy. You deserve to be so. Every thing that interferes with it, is weakness and wandering; & a woman, like you, can, must, shall, shake it off. Afford, for instance, no food for the morbid madness, & no triumph to the misanthropical gloom, of your afternoon visitor [probably he meant Mary Hays]. Call up, with firmness, the energies, which, I am sure, you so eminently possess.

  Send me word that I may call on you in a day or two. Do you not see, while I exhort you to be a philosopher, how painfully acute are my own feelings? I need soothing, though I cannot ask it from you.9

  To this letter Mary, not surprisingly, responded well. Later, when their relations were in a smoother patch, he began to risk conventional expressions of tenderness – ‘adorable maîtresse’, for example. But there was usually a feeling of tension: Mary put on the emotional pressure, Godwin hoped for the quiet life.

  Like Holcroft in his novels, Godwin could not quite get over the belief that women were either ‘goatish’ or else ‘without one emotion which celestial purity might not approve’;10 either delicate, or wallowing sensualists. He fell easily into contrasting the ‘intercourse of mind’ with ‘sordid and casual gratification’11 and was unable to find a vocabulary in which to express the idea of unashamed sexual enjoyment between equal partners. In the Memoirs he said of Mary: ‘Never was there a woman on the face of the earth more alien to that mire and grossness, in which the sensual part of our species are delighted to wallow.’12 But Mary had the good sense (or the good luck) not to be ashamed of her own nature; she was even curious and delighted to discuss the effects of love. In November she wrote him a note that began:

  If the felicity of last night has had the same effect on your health as on my countenance, you have no cause to lament your failure of resolution: for I have seldom seen so much live fire running about my features as this morning when recollections – very dear, called forth the blush of pleasure, as I adjusted my hair.13

  In St Leon, the novel he wrote in the year following her death, and which contained his idealized portrait of her, there was a passage which described the rapturous nature of his feeling for her, but even here he felt obliged to preface it with a cautionary reference to purity and refinement:

  To judge from my own experience in this situation, I should say, that nature has atoned for all the disasters and miseries she so copiously and incessantly pours upon her sons, by this one gift, the transcendent enjoyment and nameless delights which, wherever the heart is pure and the soul is refined, wait on the attachment of two persons of opposite sexes… Ours was a sober and dignified happiness; and its very sobriety served to give it additional voluptuousness. We had each our separate pursuits, whether for the cultivation of our minds, or the promotion of our mutual interests. Separation gave us a respectability in each other's eyes, while it prepared us to enter with fresh ardour into society and conversation. In company with each other, hours passed over us, and appeared but minutes… To feel that we are loved by one whose love we have deserved, to be employed in the mutual interchange of the marks of this love, habitually to study the happiness of one by whom our happiness is studied in return, this is the most desirable as it is the genuine and unadulterated condition of human nature. I must have someone to sympathise with; I cannot bear to be cut off from all relations; I desire to experience a confidence, a concord, an attachment, that cannot rise between common acquaintance. In every state we long for some fond bosom on which to rest our weary head, some speaking eye with which to exchange the glances of intelligence and affection. Then the soul warms and expands itself; then it shuns the observations of every other beholder; then it melts with feelings that are inexpressible, but that the heart understands without the aid of words; then the eyes swim with rapture; then the frame languishes with enjoyment; then the soul burns with fire; then the two persons thus blest are no longer two; distance vanishes, one thought animates, one mind informs them. Thus love acts; thus it is ripened to perfection; never does man feel himself so much alive, so truly etherial, as when, bursting the bonds of diffidence, uncertainty and reserve, he pours himself entire into the bosom of the woman he adores.14

  It was an expressive account of ecstasy. The actual exchanges of Mary's and Godwin's life were naturally not always at this level. In the many notes that passed between them the tone varied from playful attention and teasing, through a good deal of complaining about their health from both of them, to prim and insensitive reprimands from Godwin and nagging, jealous, sometimes hysterical communications from Mary. It is hard to like the way in which she told Godwin that ‘little marks of attention are incumbent upon you at present’; his response that ‘you spoil little attentions by anticipating them’ was equally chilling. Ten days later she could not resist raising the point again: ‘You tell me that “I spoil little attentions, by anticipation”. Yet to have attention, I find, that it is necessary to demand it. My faults are inveterate – for I did expect you last night - But, never mind it. Your coming would not have been worth anything, if it must be requested.’15

  Quarrels continued to simmer and bubble. Mrs Inchbald was a serious source of trouble: Mary called her Mrs Perfection, and made frequent counter-references to the pleasant times she spent with Opie while Godwin was dancing attendance on her. At other times Mary worried about her own effect on Godwin. She wrote: ‘I was endeavouring to discover last night, in bed, what it is in me, of which you are afraid. I was hurt at perceiving that you were’;16 and Godwin several times expressed his sense of being crushed by her cold and bitter moods. They both knew these sprang partly from her fear that he would treat her as Imlay had done. He could be tactless, vain and wilful in a way that might make any woman feel annoyed or jealous, and it is noticeable in St Leon that he makes his heroine say she could forgive any failing in a husband except infidelity. Yet he too could be jealous, though he covered up the
disreputable emotion better: Mary was asked not to visit Holcroft, on the grounds supposedly that he was Godwin's friend. She did not observe the prohibition entirely.

  The quarrels of November were smoothed over with some graceful apologies from Mary; she asked for a ‘bill of rights’ to be allowed to tease her lover sometimes without his taking it tragically, and he responded. But in December there was further trouble. Mary, not feeling very well, spent an uncomfortable evening at the theatre and had the mortification of seeing her lover below, installed in comfort with Mrs Inchbald: more storms, more reconciliations. She began to suspect she might be pregnant again and in her terror at what this might mean attacked her lover like a wildcat. He wrote her a pitiful letter of expostulation at the harsh words she threw at him: ‘You wished we had never met; you wished you could cancel all that had passed between us… You wished all the kind things you had ever written me destroyed.’17

  She must indeed have felt appalled at the thought of having a second illegitimate baby by a different father from the first, and the attack on Godwin was probably based on his failure to propose immediate marriage. All through January she remained deeply dejected: ‘Poor Women how they are beset with plagues – within – and without’. She felt ill and resented Godwin's failure to sympathize: ‘It is very tormenting to be thus, neither sick nor well; especially as you scarcely imagine me indisposed’.*

  A few days later she had to endure another petty humiliation. Her landlady was persecuting her: ‘I was glad that you were not with me last night, for the foolish woman of the house laid a trap to plague me. I have, however, I believe put an end to this nonsense.’ Her maid Marguerite knew the state of affairs, and presently Mrs Cotton, her Berkshire friend, came to spend a few days with Mary, inspected both Opie and Godwin, and decided Godwin was the man.

  On 3 February Mary called on another friend, Dr James Fordyce, no doubt hoping to have her pregnancy confirmed or denied. And in the middle of the month Everina arrived to stay on her way from Ireland to the Wedgwoods. Mary found her company wearisome and embarrassing, and tried to involve her in a round of visits; it was impossible to talk about either her relationship with Godwin or her new pregnancy, which was making her feel unwell, with her sister. Basil Montagu came to the rescue and took her out for a day; Godwin, though patently annoyed when Mary became inaccessible, was still sticking resolutely to his independent way of life. On 6 March Everina departed again. Desultory letters about theatre tickets and reviews were exchanged between the lovers. But two undated notes were probably written at this time and refer to the decision they were working towards. Both are from Godwin: ‘I must write, though it will not be long till five. I shall however reserve all I have to say. Non, je ne veux pas être fâché quant au passé.’ The second reads: ‘I will do as you please. Shall I come to consult you; or will you call on me?’18 And so finally he agreed to abandon his principles and marry her. The ceremony took place, with only Godwin's old and comfortable friend Marshall present, on 29 March, at St Pancras, their local church, a short walk across the fields from either of their lodgings.* Mary signed her name quite correctly as Mary Wollstonecraft, spinster. In the Memoirs Godwin states that they had both been unwilling to marry until then, though for different reasons: Mary was tired of being talked about and could not face the thought of more gossip, and Godwin himself was of course famous for his opposition to marriage on theoretical grounds. However these were overcome by the fact of her pregnancy and his developing taste for domestic life. Within a few days of the marriage they moved into a new house, No. 29 the Polygon, facing east towards Evesham Buildings where Godwin took separate rooms in which to work.†

  And now Mary proved herself to be a ‘worshipper of domestic life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments…’19 She was delighted with her status as a married woman and displayed an almost childish enthusiasm. Two days after the wedding she reminded her husband ‘I am to be a partaker of your worldly good – you know!’ and a week later she told him: ‘when I press anything it is always with a true wifish submission to your judgement and inclination’.20 Wifish submission implied husbandly duties however, and within another few days she was asking him to call on Johnson, send over her spectacles, speak to the landlord about the state of the sink and deal with the tradespeople.

  It was difficult for them to announce the marriage to their friends, not just because they feared ridicule or censure but also because both were under financial obligations – Mary to Johnson, Godwin to Wedgwood and possibly others – which made them fear that their benefactors might consider the breeding of a family more than they had bargained for. But everyone seems to have stood up to the shock; Johnson indeed became one of Godwin's most loyal supporters thereafter, largely one imagines on the strength of his love for Mary and protective feelings towards little Fanny.

  Holcroft was hurt at not being told the news in advance or supplied with the name of the bride even, but he was delighted at the fact of the marriage and able to supply Mary's identity, which Godwin had withheld: ‘From my very heart and soul I give you joy. I think you the most extraordinary married pair in existence. May your happiness be as pure as I firmly persuade myself it must be.’21

  A light-hearted approach was thought best for one of their friends. Godwin wrote to Mary Hays as follows:

  My fair neighbour desires me to announce to you a piece of news, which is consonant to the regard that both she and I entertain for you, you should rather learn from us than from any other quarter. She bids me remind you of the earnest way in which you pressed me to prevail upon her to change her name, she directs me to add, that it has happened to me, like many other disputants, to be entrapped in my own toils: in short, that we found that there was no way so obvious for her to drop the name of Imlay, as to assume the name of Godwin. Mrs Godwin (who the devil is that?) will be glad to see you at No. 29, Polygon, Somers Town, whenever you are inclined to favour her with a call.22

  This letter was sent on 10 April. On the nineteenth the couple went to the theatre in a party that included Amelia, Maria Reveley, the Fenwicks and Elizabeth Inchbald. But when Mrs Inchbald heard the news from Mary and Godwin she insulted them on the spot. There was a terrific row and another quarrel between husband and wife when they reached Somers Town again. They now had to face laughter and sneers from many of their acquaintances, and Mary was pointedly dropped by most of the theatrical ladies.

  Even Mrs Barbauld commented in a letter on the ‘numberless squibs’ thrown at Mr Godwin:

  ... he winces not a little on receiving the usual congratulations. In order to give the connection as little as possible the appearance of such a vulgar and debasing tie as matrimony, the parties have established separate establishments, and the husband only visits his mistress like a lover, when each is dressed, room in order, &c. And this may possibly last till they have a family, then they will probably join quietly in one menage, like other folks. He says he submitted to the ceremony in compliance with the prejudices of Mrs Imlay. Now as it is plain she had them not, at one time at least, the excuse will barely serve.23

  The most revealing statement of Mary's own feelings at the time, outside her letters to Godwin himself, appeared in a letter she wrote to Amelia Alderson soon after the marriage had been announced to the world. Mary was eager to justify herself. She began with a reference to the row at the theatre, and continued: ‘I still mean to be independent, even to the cultivating sentiments and principles in my children's minds (should I have more) which he disavows.’24 That she knew perfectly well she was going to have another child, and this was the reason for the marriage, did not need to be mentioned; Mary had not become so infected with Godwin's belief in perfect frankness. She went on:

  The wound my unsuspecting heart formerly received is not healed. I
found my evenings solitary, and I wished, while fulfilling the duty of a mother, to have some person with similar pursuits, bound to me by affection; and beside, I earnestly desired to resign a name which seemed to disgrace me. Since I have been unfortunately the object of observation, I have had it in my power, more than once, to marry very advantageously, and of course, should have been courted by those, who at least cannot accuse me of acting an interested party, though I have not, by dazzling their eyes, rendered them blind to my faults.

  It was not a very flattering account of her feeling for Godwin. She went on again:

  I am proud perhaps, conscious of my own purity and integrity, and many circumstances of my life have contributed to excite in my bosom an indignant contempt for the forms of a world I should have bade a long good night to, had I not been a mother.

  Honesty again compels the comment that she had twice attempted to bid the world goodnight in spite of being a mother, but she was carried away by her self-justificatory vision:

  Condemned, then, to toil my hour out, I wish to live as rationally as I can; had fortune or splendour been my aim in life, they have been within my reach, would I have paid the price. Well, enough of the subject, I do not wish to resume it. Good night! God bless you.

  She signed the letter a little awkwardly, since she had been using the form ‘Mary Imlay’ until now, as ‘Mary Wollstonecraft femme Godwin’. Probably her cool account of her motives in marrying represents the truth of one of her moods if not the whole truth. Godwin was clever and famous and sought after; she was fond of him, wanted a companion and bedmate, a father for Fanny; she had become pregnant by him; he was willing; it was enough. It is difficult at the best of times to write an explanation of one's motives in marrying; if they have to be explained they almost inevitably sound inadequate, undignified or dishonest, or all three.