reading, and shows how entirely in sympathy they were.
From a photo by Emery, Walker after the picture by Opie
(probably painted in April, 1797) in the National Portrait Gallery.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
This picture passed from Godwin’s hands on his death to his grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. It was afterwards bequeathed to the nation by his widow, Lady Shelley. It was engraved by Heath (Jan. 1, 1798) for Godwin’s memoir of his wife. An engraving of it also appeared in the Lady’s Magazine, from which the frontispiece to this book was made, and a mezzotint by W. T. Annis was published in 1802. Mrs. Merritt also made an etching of the picture for Mr. Paul’s edition of the “Letters to Imlay.”
To face p. xxvi
On August 30, Mary’s child was born, not the William so much desired by them both but Mary, who afterwards became Mrs. Shelley. All seemed well with the mother until September 3, when alarming symptoms appeared. The best medical advice was obtained, but after a week’s illness, on Sunday morning, the 10th, at twenty minutes to eight, she sank and died. During her illness, when in great agony, an anodyne was administered, which gave Mary some relief, when she exclaimed, “Oh, Godwin, I am in heaven.” But, as Mr. Kegan Paul says, “even at that moment Godwin declined to be entrapped into the admission that heaven existed,” and his instant reply was: “You mean, my dear, that your physical sensations are somewhat easier.” Mary Godwin, however, did not share her husband’s religious doubts. Her sufferings had been great, but her death was a peaceful one.
Godwin’s grief was very deep, as the letters that he wrote immediately after her death, and his tribute to her memory in the “Memoirs” testify. Mary Godwin was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard on September 15, in the presence of most of her friends. Godwin lived till 1836, when he was laid beside her. Many years afterwards, at the same graveside, Shelley is said to have plighted his troth to Mary Godwin’s daughter. In 1851, when the Metropolitan and Midland Railways were constructed at St. Pancras, the graveyard was destroyed, but the bodies of Mary and William Godwin were removed by their grandson, Sir Percy Shelley, to Bournemouth, where they now rest with his remains, and those of his mother, Mrs. Shelley.
In the year following Mary’s death (1798) Godwin edited his wife’s “Posthumous Works,” in four volumes, in which appeared the letters to Imlay, and her incomplete novel “The Wrongs of Woman.” His tribute to Mary Godwin’s memory was also published in 1798, under the title of “Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Godwin’s novel, “St. Leon” came out in 1799; his tragedy “Antonio” was produced only to fail, in 1800, and in 1801, he was wooed and won by Mrs. Clairmont, a widow. The Godwin household was a somewhat mixed one, consisting, as it did, of Fanny Imlay, Mary Godwin, Mrs. Godwin’s two children, Charles and Claire Clairmont, and also of William, the only child born of her marriage with Godwin. In 1812 Shelley began a correspondence with Godwin, which ultimately led to Mary Godwin’s elopement with the poet. Poor Fanny Imlay, or Godwin, as she was called after her mother’s death, died at the age of nineteen by her own hand, in October 1816. Her life had been far from happy in this strange household. She had grown to love Shelley, but his choice had fallen on her half-sister, so she bravely kept her secret to herself. One day she suddenly left home and travelled to Swansea, where she was found lying dead the morning after her arrival, in the inn where she had taken a room, “her long brown hair about her face; a bottle of laudanum upon the table, and a note which ran thus: ‘I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare.’ She had with her the little Genevan watch, a gift of travel from Mary and Shelley: and in her purse were a few shillings.”[1]
Shelley, afterwards recalling his last interview with Fanny in London, wrote this stanza:
“Her voice did quiver as we parted;
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From whence it came, and I departed
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery—O Misery,
This world is all too wide for thee!”
III
The vicissitudes to which Mary Wollstonecraft was so largely a prey during her lifetime seem to have pursued her after death. In her own day recognised as a public character, reviled by most of her contemporaries in terms not less ungentle than Horace Walpole’s epithets, “a hyena in petticoats” or “a philosophising serpent,” posterity has proved hardly more lenient to her. But the vigorous work of this “female patriot” has saved her name from that descent into obscurity which is the reward of many men and women more talented than Mary Wollstonecraft. Reputed chiefly as an unsexed being, who had written “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” she was not the first woman to hold views on the emancipation of her sex; but her chief crimes were in expressing them for the instruction of the public, and having the courage to live up to her opinions. Whether right or wrong, she paid the penalty of violating custom by discussing forbidden subjects. It is true that she detected many social evils, and suggested some excellent remedies for their amelioration, but the time was not ripe for her book, and she suffered the usual fate of the pioneer. Moreover, her memoir by William Godwin, beautiful as it is in many respects, exercised a distinctly harmful influence in regard to her memory. The very fact that she became the wife of so notorious a man, was sufficient reason to condemn her in the eyes of her countrymen.
For two generations after her death practically no attempt was made to remove the stigma from her name. But at length the late Mr. Kegan Paul, a man of wide and generous sympathies, made a serious effort to obtain something like justice for Mary Wollstonecraft. In his book on William Godwin, published in 1876, the true story of Mary’s life was told for the first time. It was somewhat of a revelation, for it recorded the history of an unhappy but brave and loyal woman, whose faults proceeded from excessive sensibility and from a heart that was over-susceptible. Mary Wollstonecraft was an idealist in a very matter-of-fact age, and her outlook on life, like that of most idealists, was strongly affected by her imagination. She saw people and events in brilliant lights or sombre shadows—it was a power akin to enthusiasm which enabled her to produce some of her best writing, but it also prevented her from seeing the defects of her worst work. Since Mr. Kegan Paul’s memoir, Mary Wollstonecraft has been viewed from an entirely different aspect, and many there are who have come under the spell of her fascinating personality. It is not, however, her message alone that now interests us, but the woman herself, her desires, her aspirations, her struggles, and her love. Pathetic and lonely, she stands out in the faint mists of the past, a woman that will continue to evoke sympathy when her books are no longer read. But it is safe to predict that the pages reprinted in this volume are not destined to share the fate of the rest of her work. Other writers have been unhappy and have known the pains of unrequited love, but Mary Wollstonecraft addressed these letters with a breaking heart to the man whom she adored, the most passionate love letters in our literature. It is true that she was a votary of Rousseau, and that she had probably assimilated from the study of his work not only many of his views, but something of his style; it does not, however, appear that she had any motive in writing these letters other than to plead her cause with Imlay. She was far too sensitive to have intended them for publication, and it was only by a mere chance that they were rescued from oblivion.
December 1907.
PORTRAITS
| Mary Wollstonecraft (Photogravure) |