The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

by Claire Tomalin

  [18]

  Marriage, Childbirth, Death

  MARRIAGE allowed them to play some of the games respectable couples indulge in. Fuseli was invited to dinner to see how well they got along, and finding other guests as talkative as himself retired early from the table to join Mary in the drawing room and complain of the wretched company. But the complaints were more often between Mary and her own husband. She found him vain, he thought her bitter. In May they had a dispute which, according to Mary, ‘led us both to justify ourselves at the expense of the other’, and she went on to attack him on his pet theory:

  Perfect confidence, and sincerity of action is, I am persuaded, incompatible with the present state of reason. I am sorry for the bitterness of your expressions when you denominated, what I think a just contempt of a false principle of action, savage resentment, and the worst of vices, not because I winced under the lash, but as it led me to infer that the coquettish candour of vanity was a much less generous motive.1

  And when Basil Montagu called on her for breakfast one morning with an invitation to join him and the Wedgwoods for a day in the country, and she had to decline because of a prior engagement with dull Hannah Godwin, she took care to let Godwin know about her sacrifice. A fortnight later he, not so interested in moral advantage, set off with Montagu himself on a longer expedition. It was not the most tactful of gestures; Mary had expressed to him the summer before a rather wistful desire that they might together ‘vagabondize one day in the country before the summer is clear gone. I love the country and like to leave certain associations in my memory, which seem, as it were, the landmarks of affection.’2

  Now she was left alone in London, obviously pregnant, to face friends and household cares while Godwin vagabond as far as the Wedgwood home at Etruria in Staffordshire, writing long and deeply affectionate letters it is true, but delaying his return in a manner that produced panic in Mary. Fanny was sent out with her toy rake to make hay in the fields surrounding the Polygon, but Mary sat indoors hearing in her mind the alarm bells Imlay had first set jangling; she was not able to control them.

  The trouble was trivial enough: Godwin had not only delayed his return, but mentioned to Mary that the cause was his desire to see a ‘shew’ at Coventry fair, of which the chief attraction was a ‘female, representative of lady Godiva… dressed in a close dress, to represent nakedness’. In fact he missed it because Montagu wanted to visit some gardens, but he still lingered, calling or attempting to call on many old friends and acquaintances. Dr Parr's daughter, who had promised him a ‘roasting’ when she heard of his marriage, had just eloped to Gretna Green with a rich and foolish pupil of her father's. On hearing this piece of news, Mary adopted her freezing tone: ‘Could a woman of delicacy seduce and marry a fool?… This ignoble method of rising in the world is the consequence of the present system of female education.’3 Godwin's remarks on Montagu's engagement to Sarah Wedgwood were even more ham-fisted:

  I look upon any of my friends going to be married with something of the same feeling as I should do if they were sentenced for life to hard labour in the Spielburg [a German political prison]. The despot may die, & the new despot grace his accession with a general jail delivery: that is almost the only hope for the unfortunate captive.4

  In due course Godwin returned to his own personal Spielburg and the quarrel over his prolonged absence was patched up, but there were still other problems. He wished Mary to give up all her religious ideas, she was unwilling. ‘How can you blame me for taken [sic] refuge in the idea of God, when I despair of finding sincerity on earth?’5 The need for religion seems to have been brought on by the attentions of a Miss Pinkerton, who was pursuing Godwin and not being fended off with all the vigour required by Mrs Godwin. She wrote him a note on the subject:

  You judge not in your case as in that of another. You give a softer name to folly and immorality when it flatters – yes, I must say it – your vanity, than to mistaken passion when it was extended to another – you termed Miss Hay's conduct insanity when only her own happiness was involved – I cannot forget the strength of your expressions – and you treat with a mildness calculated to foster it, a romantic selfishness, and pamper conceit, which will even lead the object to – I was going to say misery – but I believe her incapable of feeling it. Her want of sensibility with respect to her family first disgusted me – Then to obtrude herself on me, to see affection, and instead of feeling sympathy, to endeavour to undermined [sic] it, certainly resembles the conduct of the fictitious being, to whose dignity she aspires. Yet you, at the very moment, commenced a correspondence with her whom you had previously almost neglected – you brought me a letter without a conclusion – and you changed countenance at the reply – My old wounds bleed afresh – What did not blind confidence, and unsuspecting truth, lead me to – my very soul trembles, sooner than endure the hundredth part of what I have suffered, I could wish my poor Fanny and self asleep at the bottom of the sea.6

  Poor Mary: Godwin endured Miss Pinkerton's visits cheerfully enough during the whole summer, flattered by her attentions. He found Mary often unkind, harsh, given to saying ‘grating things’; and she continually justified herself by saying she was being disappointed in her expectations. During the last month of the pregnancy however they softened towards one another and took to a new form of address, becoming ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’. And in the middle of August Mama was allowed to settle Miss Pinkerton by forbidding her the house, exactly as Fuseli had allowed Sophia to do with Mary.

  A few days later they were both absorbed in something more interesting. Mary wrote three notes to Godwin on 30 August:

  I have no doubt of seeing the animal today; but must wait for Mrs Blenkinsop to guess at the hour – I have sent for her – Pray send me the news paper – I wish I had a novel, or some book of sheer amusement, to excite curiosity, and while away the time – Have you anything of the kind?7

  A few hours later:

  Mrs Blenkinsop tells me that Everything is in a fair way, and that there is no fear of the event being put off till another day – Still, at present, she thinks, I shall not immediately be freed from my load – I am very well – Call before dinner time, unless you receive another message from me –

  And he did receive one more message, her last note, sent at three o'clock:

  Mrs Blenkinsop tells me that I am in the most natural state, and can promise me a safe delivery. But that I must have a little patience.

  And now Mary herself fell silent; from this point the story is told by Godwin. His diary, terse as ever, covers the events of the next twelve days in terms of calls made and received, the arrivals of different doctors, the briefest noting of symptoms and hopes. It is the first, shorthand version of the agony he went over a second time in his Memoirs, dwelling on every detail, plucking at the question, could it have been otherwise, could she have been saved had they acted differently?

  The answer is almost certainly, no. Mary had insisted on being attended only by a midwife, because she thought it indecorous to have a male doctor in attendance – a point over which Godwin disagreed with her. But all London midwives were obliged to receive two years' training under a physician before they could be licensed,8 and the woman who came to Mary, Mrs Blenkinsop, was the midwife in charge of the famous Westminster Lying-In hospital. She certainly did not lack experience. Maternal mortality was dropping fast from year to year, even though obstetrics still ignored the danger of infection and surgical intervention was usually fatal to mother and child.

  Mary's experience with the birth of Fanny had been so good that she planned to present the new baby to Godwin herself immediately after the delivery, and to get up for dinner the next day. She saw herself as a pioneering example to other women: ‘She was so far from being under any apprehension as to the difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashion of ladies in England, who keep to their chamber for one full month after delivery.’9 With hindsight, this is unutterably sad; she was sensible and entirel
y in the right, if only things had been normal.

  She felt the onset of labour at five in the morning of the thirtieth of August, a Wednesday; the day before, she and Godwin had taken a walk together and read Young Werther aloud in the evening. Godwin slept the night at the Polygon, but departed across the road to Evesham Buildings to work as usual, probably about nine o'clock in the morning, with philosophic calm. Mary was up, excited at the beginning of labour, unable to settle to anything, playing with Fanny perhaps and preparing to send her off to friends for the day, deciding now to send for Mrs Blenkinsop, dispatching her little notes to Godwin. Her pains came slowly. At two o'clock she and Mrs Blenkinsop went up to her bedroom on the second floor. There was one woman attendant besides, and Mary's maid; Marguerite had to stay with Fanny.

  Normal labour with a second child was expected to last not much more than eight hours.10 The midwife's job was to make an internal examination when she judged it timely. When she thought the birth was imminent she applied butter to smooth the baby's passage, and attempted to grasp its head and help it along, a hazardous undertaking. The mother was supposed to help by managing her breath during the ‘throws’. She might have a log of wood set across the foot of her bed to brace her feet against. If she fainted, smelling salts were given; in any case she was expected to groan, cry out and hold her breath enough to become quite hoarse. Hot drinks were therefore prepared to ease her throat after the birth; some families laid in large supplies of alcohol for the mother in order to dull her senses during labour too, but this was not recommended by doctors and certainly not practised in the Godwin household. The best medical writers of the day stressed the importance of just such a cheerful, matter-of-fact approach to childbirth as Mary's. Cleanliness was not much thought of, there was no mention of stitching, but a thick, hot linen cloth was prepared to lay soothingly over the newly delivered woman.

  Mary's labour proved slow and, according to what she told Godwin the next day, extremely painful in the later stages. He did not go up to her room during the afternoon, at her request; in fact he dined at the Reveleys' and then went back to Evesham Buildings. The Fenwicks and Marshal ate supper with him; at ten he returned a little anxiously to the Polygon to wait downstairs. At 11.20 he must have heard the baby cry. Probably the maid came down to tell him that, though the baby was fine and sturdy, it was not the little William they had hoped for but a girl, and probably he felt a small pang of disappointment as he prepared himself to go up to see Mary and the new Mary.

  Only now Mrs Blenkinsop sent down a message to say, not yet. Godwin waited and waited. At three in the morning he was told that the placenta had not come away and asked to go for Doctor Poignand, the chief obstetrician at the Westminster Lying-In. Very frightened, Godwin set off on foot through the summer night.

  Once the baby is delivered, the mother is no longer in pain; the delivery of the placenta is a trivial anticlimax. But when it fails to appear there is anxiety amongst the attendants, because a retained placenta means the womb cannot contract into a tight ball and will go on bleeding steadily. If it is not removed, infection becomes likely. Nowadays it is relatively common to have retained pieces of placenta scraped out under anaesthesia, even as late as ten or twelve days after birth. In 1797 a retained placenta, if not dealt with very quickly, meant certain death. Dr Poignand's job therefore was to extract the whole thing as swiftly as he could, by hand and (of course) with no anaesthetics.

  Godwin went up to Mary's candle-lit room with the doctor, saw her bleeding and half-conscious and withdrew in distress. Exhausted from her long and painful labour and weak from loss of blood, she now had to lie on her back with her shoulders held by Mrs Blenkinsop and her maid whilst Dr Poignand ferreted around as best he could, inserting his hand into her womb and feeling for the placenta with his fingertips. Probably she was past understanding exactly what was happening, but perhaps she sensed the dismay when it was found that the placenta was broken up into pieces, making the doctor's job infinitely more difficult. He worked through the dawn. The sun rose at six and he was still toiling at eight, when Mary's condition made him give up, but he was hopeful that he had removed all the pieces, and told Godwin so. Almost certainly he had introduced infection in the process. Mary slept for a while, her first sleep in over twenty-four hours. The baby lay in her cradle.

  Perhaps Godwin now slept too. When he awoke he went straight to Mary and found her transformed; she smiled and joked, saying that although she had been through the worst pain she had ever known, she had no intention of leaving him a widower. She also expressed a wish to be visited by a doctor they both liked, James Fordyce, an amiable and somewhat eccentric man with no special knowledge of obstetrics.

  Dr Poignand returned before noon, and said he saw no need to call in another doctor. Nevertheless Godwin did call in Fordyce, who examined Mary and pronounced that all was well. Godwin scarcely left her side on Thursday; she seemed to improve steadily and they both allowed themselves to feel cheerful. The passage in St Leon in which he describes the birth of a child is obviously based on these shared moments in which they examined their tiny daughter happily together. Were it not for the pathos, there would be something wonderfully funny about this hymn to family life from the pen of the man who had so recently advocated communal child-rearing, inspired by love for a woman who had spoken so fiercely against indissoluble bonds:

  Never shall I forget the interview between us immediately subsequent to her first parturition, the effusion with which we met each other after all danger seemed to have subsided, the kindness which animated us, increased as it was by the ideas of peril and suffering, the sacred sensation with which the mother presented her infant to her husband, or the complacency with which we read in each other's eyes a common sentiment of melting tenderness and inviolable attachment!

  This, she seemed to say, is the joint result of our common affection. It partakes equally of both, and is the shrine in which our sympathies and our life have been poured together, by presents and tokens; we record and stamp our attachment in this precious creature, a creature of that species which is more admirable than anything else the world has to boast, a creature susceptible of pleasure and pain, of affection and love, of sentiment and fancy, of wisdom and virtue. This creature will daily stand in need of an aid we shall delight to afford; will require our meditations and exertions to forward its improvement, and confirm its merits and its worth. We shall each blend our exertions for that purpose, and our union confirmed by this common object of our labour and affection, will every day become more sacred and indissoluble.11

  To outward appearance things continued to go well, so much so that on Friday morning Godwin returned to his usual routine and went out for the day. Mary lay and dozed, played with her baby, began to suckle her, chatted to her attendants. Fanny must by now have been brought up to see her and inspect her little sister with three-year-old gravity. She did not like her mother to stay in bed, but was reassured by the sight of her, and was used to being looked after by Marguerite. In the evening, after Godwin's return, Johnson also called and there was a generally cheerful and congratulatory atmosphere.

  On Saturday Maria Reveley offered to have Fanny to stay for a few days and came to collect her; Fanny said good-bye to her mother for the last time. All day Mary heard the door knocker going busily. Basil Montagu arrived, then Godwin's bachelor friends Tuthil and George Dyson; Anthony Carlisle, an excellent doctor and member of Godwin's and Holcroft's circle, paid a social call. He went up to Mary's room to talk to her. Fordyce had been telling his colleagues how well she had done in her labour with only a midwife in attendance, and Carlisle was interested in any evidence of the influence of mental attitudes over bodily states. Whether he was impressed or alarmed by what he now saw is not on record. Godwin meanwhile had decided to go out for a long walk with Montagu; they went as far as Kensington, several hours away on foot, and during their absence Mary began to feel ill and asked anxiously for her husband. He did not get back till dinner time and
was met by apprehensive faces. Mary had suffered a fit of shivering so bad that the bed frame shook. The shivering was unreadable, untreatable and therefore mysteriously frightening; we know now that it pointed to the onset of septicaemia.

  Godwin, feeling guilty at his long absence, sent a message telling Hannah and her friend, who had been invited to dinner, not to come; and Mary, in her feverish state, asked for dinner not to be laid in the room below hers as usual, where she could hear the voices and bustle, but on the ground floor. In the evening she had another fit of shivering. Godwin was with her this time: ‘every muscle of her body trembled, the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued probably five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it had been a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more than once, in the course of it, at the point of expiring.’12 Clearly she herself persisted in the idea that she might hold off death by an effort of will, much as Holcroft believed possible; perhaps this is what Thomas Cooper had in mind when he spoke later of her distressing reluctance to quit the world. Carlisle was also of the opinion that her will could either cooperate with the disease or combat it, and that it was better for her not to believe she was dying.

  There is something peculiarly horrible about this third death of Mary's, buzzed about by doctors and well-meaning intellectuals, painful, long drawn out and lacking in peace or dignity. Twice she had willed herself to die and been brought back to life: friends had awoken her from a drugged sleep and roused her to look at her child; watermen had fished her out of the river and delivered her back through one sort of agony to another. Now a dozen pairs of hands tried to pluck her back from death to be with her two children and her husband, but could do nothing to save her.