Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

by Charlotte Gordon

  Mr Shelley would abrogate our laws—this would put an end to felonies and misdemenours [sic] at a blow; he would abolish the rights of property, of course there could thenceforward be no violation of them, no heartburnings between the poor and the rich, no disputed wills, no litigated inheritances…he would overthrow the constitution, and then we should have no expensive court…no army or navy; he would pull down our churches, level our Establishment, and burn our bibles…marriage he cannot endure, and there would at once be a stop put to the lamented increase of adulterous connections amongst us, whilst repealing the canon of heaven against incest, he would add to the purity and heighten the ardour of those feelings with which brother and sister now regard each other; finally as the basis of the whole scheme, he would have us renounce our belief in our religion.

  Shelley read the article in Delesert’s English Library. Most English expatriates recognized the notorious Shelley, and so, unbeknownst to the poet, he was witnessed by a stranger, who later reported that after Shelley had finished reading, “he straightened up suddenly and burst into a convulsive laughter, closed the book with an hysteric laugh, and hastily left the room, his Ha! Ha’s! ringing down the stairs.”

  Although Shelley made light of the review to his friends, calling it “trash,” he was profoundly demoralized, a feeling compounded by his growing sense of mortality. One October day, he looked in the mirror and discovered a gray hair. He was no longer a young poet, he told himself. His “passion for reforming the world” was slowly ebbing. The world had rejected him. But worse than that, so had his wife.

  CHAPTER 26

  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: RETURN HOME

  [ 1795–1796 ]

  Mary arrived back in Gothenburg in the third week of August, Marguerite handed her three letters from Imlay. Mary’s heart rose. These would be the letters in which at last Imlay confessed his love, in which he finally realized his loss. But each of Gilbert’s letters was worse than the one before. In the first, he announced that he was through vacillating and had decided that he no longer loved Mary and saw her as a burden. In the second, he implored her to see how different they were. In the third, he promised to do his duty by Fanny and said he would try to be kind to Mary, but that was all he could offer. Their affair was over. “Our minds are not congenial,” he said flatly, uttering words that were calculated to wound, since he knew that Mary had wanted to believe that their minds were as united as their hearts.

  Mary hurled back a response by return post. Yes, she said, she and Gilbert were entirely different, because “I have lived in an ideal world, and fostered sentiments that you do not comprehend or you would not treat me thus.” She refused to be “merely an object of compassion” and shrugged off his “protection without his affection.” She could earn her own living. He would never hear from her again, she wrote angrily. By all means, if he thought she was a burden, he should forget about her, and Fanny, too, but he should know how much pain he had caused: she was filled with pity for her fatherless child; her lips shook “from cold,” though a “fire” seemed to burn through her veins. Not once did it occur to her that something else might be wrong. Her focus on Gilbert precluded all other explanations. But in hindsight, it seems likely that being a mother was continuing to take a toll on her spirits. Instead of feeling more joyful when she was reunited with Fanny, she had sunk immediately back into her melancholy. Whether or not this was a continuation of the postpartum darkness of the previous year or was more situational—the result of being abandoned to raise her child by herself—is impossible to ascertain. What is striking is that much as she loved her little girl, it had only been when she and Fanny were separated, when she had been deep in the Scandinavian countryside, able to reflect and to write—to be herself again—that she had reestablished any sense of equanimity.

  On their way home, Mary, Marguerite, and Fanny traveled through Copenhagen, where Mary vented her feelings by painting a bleak picture in her letters; a recent fire had burned the city almost to the ground. The foolishness of the rulers and the selfishness of the rich, Mary declared, had allowed the flames to get out of hand. She condemned the “indolence” of the population, writing, “If the people of property had taken half as much pains to extinguish the fire, as to reserve their valuables and furniture, it would soon have been got under [control].” The individuals she met struck her as inferior and uncultivated. The men were “domestic tyrants,” the women “without accomplishments,” and the children were “spoilt.”

  Though Fanny crowed at the seabirds and Marguerite’s chatter helped pass the time, nothing could take Mary’s mind off Gilbert’s rejection. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had failed in her commission. She told herself that when Gilbert met them in Hamburg, she would try one more time to persuade him to live with her, but when they arrived in Germany she found that, as usual, he had reneged on his promise. He wrote to inform them that he would not be meeting them in Europe. He was through with Mary’s harangues.

  Although Mary had promised herself that she would not write to him again, she did, trying her best to convince him he was wrong. Her headaches returned and she began to dream about death once again: “But for this child, I would lay my head on [the rocks], and never open my eyes again!”

  They arrived back in England in the first week of October. At last Mary would have the opportunity to convince Imlay in person of his many errors. She sent him several notes from Dover, entreating, then demanding his presence, and waited in port for a few days. The alarmed Marguerite watched Mary fall back into despair and did her best to amuse her mistress and her little charge. “Ah,” wrote Mary in yet another letter to Gilbert, she has “a gaeité du coeur worth all of my philosophy.”

  When it became clear that he was not going to materialize, Mary bought seats on the public coach and they made the long journey to London, where Gilbert had rented them a house, hired servants, and left a message that they should let him know if there was anything else they needed. The next day, he paid them a visit and struggled to make peace, but Mary had too much riding on their relationship to let it end quietly. She felt that if she could not have his love, at least she should have his admission that he was a cad. Then she would be the sole occupier of higher ground.

  Gilbert refused to admit any wrongdoing, however, and retaliated by staying away for the next week or so. This sort of silence was far more difficult for Mary to bear than arguments and angry letters. She felt the darkness of the previous spring settle in. Now, isolated with her baby, in the shameful situation of being an unwed mother, her philosophy in tatters, she tried to marshal her strength. She began unpacking her boxes, directing the new servants, and organizing her household, and turned her attention to regaining her financial independence. She knew that she needed to start writing again, but she could barely limp through her list of domestic duties. She felt scrutinized and judged by the cook, kitchen maid, and housemaid Gilbert had hired. She and Marguerite were used to managing on their own; now they were living in a fishbowl. She was unfailingly kind to her new staff, but she knew they wondered about her domestic arrangement. Why didn’t Mr. Imlay live with his wife? The cook grew suddenly silent whenever Mary entered the room. The maids whispered behind her back. It was clear they were talking about her.

  Finally, after a few days of this, Mary did something she was not proud of; she went downstairs to the kitchen and, as she later said, “forced” a “confession” from the cook. This took some prodding, since the poor woman did not want to lose her job and Gilbert paid her salary. But Mary cajoled, urged, reasoned, and reassured until at last the cook broke down and told Mary that Gilbert was living with another woman, a beautiful young actress. To Mary, this was everything she had feared. Gilbert had repeatedly told her that he needed freedom when it came to women. But this was the first time she had evidence of his infidelity. Mary extracted the woman’s name and address from the frightened cook and rushed out the door to confront Gilbert.

  When she arrived, Gilbert let
her in before she could make a public spectacle. Once inside, Mary did not actually upbraid Gilbert for his new love affair. Instead, she announced that she had several ideas about what should happen next: Gilbert should live with her and keep his mistress in a separate establishment. Or, if that would not work, they should all live together. She hoped these proposals would prove to Gilbert (and to herself) how independent she was, and how honorable—his betrayal hurt her on every level, but she would remain true to her beliefs regarding love and relationships. She could do without him as a lover, but she wanted Fanny to have a father, and she wanted his friendship. Unlike Gilbert, she was willing to make sacrifices. She was deeply disappointed that he was so flawed, but she hoped that her selflessness and her rectitude would inspire him to love her again, or at the very least would remind him of his better self. She begged to know if this was a possibility.

  Gilbert was used to Mary and her ideas, but what must his young mistress have thought? With wild hair, tears streaming down her cheeks, and passionate declarations, Mary must have seemed like a madwoman. She spoke in a rush, with vehemence, trying to persuade Gilbert to include her in his plans. Loyalty to his new love did not mean he had to cast her and Fanny aside. Why should she have to live alone just because of Gilbert’s fickleness and society’s rules? Why should a daughter be deprived of a father because Gilbert had fallen in love with someone else? Fanny should grow up in a home with two parents, even if that home had to include her father’s mistress. Mary and Gilbert could be companions, loving companions, and he could sleep with his new young woman. Here she turned her attention to her rival. Had she thought about what might happen if Gilbert abandoned her, too? Clearly, he was restless. Soon he would want someone new. Did she have any education or a profession she could fall back on besides prostitution?

  At first Gilbert listened, but his mistress, who was in fact far more conventional than either Gilbert or Mary, was having none of it. She refused to live anywhere near this crazy person, she declared, and if Gilbert did not send Mary packing, then she would. Before they could push her out the door, Mary fled home, humiliated and devastated, her face flaming, her head pounding. Back in her room, she paced “in a state of chaos.”

  Although she tried to envision staying alive for Fanny’s sake, Mary could no longer overcome the urge to die. Life was too painful, and Fanny needed a better mother, a real family. It was time to stop fighting; and with this decision she felt suddenly “serene” (just as she had before). She would never have to battle again. Her humiliations were over.

  Philosopher that she was, over the last few years Mary had arrived at what she considered sound ethical underpinnings for suicide, and these underpinnings were what she had used to justify her suicide attempt the preceding spring. Choosing death had become a way to assert her integrity and regain some power in the face of her powerlessness. The Revolution had caused her to regard suicide as an honorable form of protest, courageous and highly moral; although most of the brave individuals she had known had not killed themselves of their own accord but had instead been forced to the guillotine, Mary still understood their deaths as noble—they had not recanted their beliefs, but instead had died the sort of principled death that she would like to emulate. Now, having survived her first attempt only to suffer still further, she had come to see death not only as an avenue to peace, but also as a final bid for independence. At last she would be free of all the restrictions she faced as a woman. At last, she could express the purity of her ideals and her condemnation of Gilbert’s betrayal. She was strengthened in her resolve by an insight that had struck her upon seeing a waterfall in Norway:

  The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery? Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited were pleasurable; and viewing it, my soul rose, with renewed dignity, above its cares—grasping at immortality.…I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.

  Suicide had become more than an escape from suffering; it was a leap into eternal life. Feeling firm in her convictions and holding on to her vision of immortality, she took the night to organize her belongings and her papers. The next morning, October 10, she wrote a final letter to Gilbert, giving him instructions. Fanny should be sent back to France to be raised by Mary’s German friends, and Marguerite should be given Mary’s clothes. Gilbert must not punish the cook for betraying his location; Mary had compelled the poor woman to tell her the truth. After these details, Mary gave way to her feelings. “I would encounter a thousand deaths, rather than a night like the last.…I shall plunge myself into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek.” In death she would find peace, she said, since she had behaved with virtue. He, on the other hand, would suffer torturous regret over how he had treated her. Her ghost would haunt him, reminding him of how far he had fallen: “in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you the victim of your deviation from rectitude.” Forever would he be the criminal. Forever would she be the victim. He had chosen money and worldly pursuits over sentiment and imagination. He had allowed himself to be dominated by selfish concerns, whereas she had been too finely wrought and too sensitive for a world ruled by “self interest.”

  Dressed in her finest clothes, Mary kissed Fanny goodbye and left her with Marguerite. She walked to the Strand in the rain that had just begun to fall and hired a man to row her west to Putney, near where she had lived with Fanny Blood. As they went upriver, the weather worsened, the skies deepened, and by the time they reached their destination, the rain was coming down hard and the landing was deserted. Mary paid the boatman six shillings and climbed out, thanking him, as he remembered later. For the next half hour she walked back and forth along the river, stalling, perhaps, but also waiting for the boat to pull out of sight. By this time it was pouring and she was drenched, but soon she would be in the river and her wet skirts would help her sink.

  She climbed the hill to the Putney Bridge, dropped her halfpenny in the tollbox, and headed across. Her hair dripped down the back of her neck. It was cold. But soon she would find comfort; she had to be patient, just as her mother had said on her deathbed. Halfway across the bridge, she climbed the railing and, without pausing, took the sickening plunge. As she went under, the river whirled her around, and Mary strained to stop breathing. She had not realized how difficult it would be to drown; she had pictured slipping into the embrace of death. But in reality it was hard work. Again and again, she had to force her head under and the “bitterness” of the urge to breathe took her by surprise. Finally she floated downriver, drifting into unconsciousness. She had come to the end of her struggles.

  Or so she thought.

  The Royal Humane Society had recently developed a policy of paying rewards to those who rescued suicides. Although Mary had thought the river was deserted, two canny fishermen were on the lookout for just such a lucrative moment. They hurried after her floating body, catching up with her about two hundred yards downriver, and within a few minutes they had pulled Mary on board, resuscitated her, and dropped her off at the nearest tavern, the Duke’s Head, where, presumably, they collected their reward. The tavern keeper’s wife helped Mary remove her wet dress and wrapped her in warm blankets. Frozen and stunned, Mary was left in a back room, shivering. On the other side of the door, life went on. She could hear the clink of tankards, raucous shouts, and bursts of laughter. A doctor was called, and he pronounced her healthy: her lungs were clear and her heart steady.

  A view of the Putney Bridge, a common place for suicides. (illustration ill.26)

  Mary expressed no gratitude to her rescuers, or to the doctor. She felt “inhumanely brought back to life and misery”; having won the battle against the physical pain of drowning, she had experienced a brief but glorious respite, had at last fe
lt nothing, and now the living were crowded around her barking questions: Who was she? Why had she done this? Whom should they contact to take her home? This was her second attempt to kill herself, she said with what dignity she could still muster. And she had done it because of her husband’s ill treatment.

  She knew that by now Gilbert would have received her suicide note and that before long he would track her down. Sure enough, within a few hours a coach rattled up, but instead of Gilbert, in rushed her old friend Rebecca Christie, the wife of Thomas Christie, who, along with Johnson, had hired Mary to write for the Analytical Review. Mary had spent many hours with the Christies while they were in Paris and had helped sustain Rebecca through Thomas’s public and tempestuous affair with a Frenchwoman. Ultimately, Thomas had come back to Rebecca, and together the Christies had recently returned to London. Fresh from her experience of her husband’s infidelity, Rebecca was sympathetic and took Mary back to the Christies’ house, sending for Marguerite and Fanny.

  At Thomas and Rebecca’s comfortable home, Mary recovered enough to rail against Gilbert. He did not come see her, but he wrote the next day, wondering “how to extricate ourselves out of the wretchedness into which we have been plunged.” Mary wrote back angrily, “You are extricated long since.” When he offered her money, she told him he was only trying to protect his reputation. When he did visit her a few days later, she said it was for the sake of appearances, not to “soothe my distracted mind.” Gradually, Mary was beginning to accept that the man she thought she loved was actually of her own creation, “an imaginary being.” The real Imlay was far weaker; when he was in love with her, Mary’s idealism had inspired him to change, but without her he had reverted to his natural shallow inclinations.