Furthermore, another and very great merit of the book is that the ideas expressed in it are full of common sense, and eminently practical. Mary's educational theories, far in advance of her time, are now being to a great extent realized. The number of successful women physicians show how right she was in supposing medicine to be a profession to which they are well suited. The ability which a few women have manifested as school directors and in other minor official positions confirms her belief in the good to be accomplished by giving them a voice in social and political matters. But what is especially to her credit is her moderation. Apostles of a new cause or teachers of a new doctrine are, as a rule, enthusiasts or extremists who lose all sense of the fitness of things. A Diogenes, to express his contempt for human nature, must needs live in a tub. A Fox knows no escape from the shams of society, save flight to the woods and an exchange of linen and cloth covering for a suit of leather. But Mary's enthusiasm did not make her blind; she knew that women were wronged by the existing state of affairs; but she did not for this reason believe that they must be removed to a new sphere of action. She defended their rights, not to unfit them for duties assigned them by natural and social necessities, but that they might fulfil them the better. She eloquently denied their inferiority to men, not that they might claim superiority, but simply that they might show themselves to be the equals of the other sex. Woman was to fight for her liberty that she might in deed and in truth be worthy to have her children and her husband rise up and call her blessed!



CHAPTER VII.

VISIT TO PARIS.

1792-1793.

The "Vindication of the Rights of Women" made Mary still more generally known. Its fame spread far and wide, not only at home but abroad, where it was translated into German and French. Like Paine's "Rights of Man," or Malthus' "Essay on the Theory of Population," it advanced new doctrines which threatened to overturn existing social relations, and it consequently struck men with fear and wonder, and evoked more censure than praise. To-day, after many years' agitation, the question of women's rights still creates contention. The excitement caused by the first word in its favor may, therefore, be easily imagined. If one of the bondsmen helping to drag stones for the pyramids, or one of the many thousand slaves in Athens, had claimed independence, Egyptians or Greeks could not have been more surprised than Englishmen were at a woman's assertion that, mentally, she was man's equal. Some were disgusted with such a bold breaking of conventional chains; a few were startled into admiration. Much of the public amazement was due not only to the principles of the book, but to its warmth and earnestness. As Miss Thackeray says, the English authoresses of those days "kept their readers carefully at pen's length, and seemed for the most part to be so conscious of their surprising achievement in the way of literature, as never to forget for a single minute that they were in print." But here was a woman who wrote eloquently from her heart, who told people boldly what she thought upon subjects of which her sex, as a rule, pretended to know nothing, and who forgot herself in her interest in her work. It was natural that curiosity was felt as to what manner of being she was, and that curiosity changed into surprise when, instead of the virago expected, she was found to be, to use Godwin's words, "lovely in her person, and, in the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners." The fable was in this case reversed. It was the sheep who had appeared in wolf's clothing.

In her own circle of friends and acquaintances she was lionized. Some of her readers were converted into enthusiasts. One of these—a Mr. John Henry Colls—a few years later addressed a poem to her. However, his admiration unfortunately did not teach him justly to appreciate its object, nor to write good poetry, and his verses have been deservedly forgotten. The reputation she had won by her answer to Burke was now firmly established. She was respected as an independent thinker and a bold dealer with social problems. The "Analytical Review" praised her in a long and leading criticism.

"The lesser wits," her critic writes, "will probably affect to make themselves merry at the title and apparent object of this publication; but we have no doubt, if even her contemporaries should fail to do her justice, posterity will compensate the defect; and have no hesitation in declaring that if the bulk of the great truths which this publication contains were reduced to practice, the nation would be better, wiser, and happier than it is upon the wretched, trifling, useless, and absurd system of education which is now prevalent."

But the conservative avoided her and her book as moral plagues. Many people would not even look at what she had written. Satisfied with the old-fashioned way of treating the subjects therein discussed, they would not run the risk of finding out that they were wrong. Their attitude in this respect was much the same as that of Cowper when he refused to read Paine's "Rights of Man." "No man," he said, "shall convince me that I am improperly governed, while I feel the contrary."

Women then, even the cleverest and most liberal, bowed to the decrees of custom with a submission as servile as that of the Hindu to the laws of caste. Like the latter, they were contented with their lot and had no desire to change it. They dreaded the increase of knowledge which would bring with it greater sorrow. Mrs. Barbauld, eloquent in her defence of men's rights, could conceive no higher aim for women than the attainment of sufficient knowledge to make them agreeable companions to their husbands and brothers. Should there be any deviation from the methods of education which insured this end, they would, she feared, become like the Precieuses or Femmes Savantes of Moliere. Mary's vigorous appeal for improvement could, therefore, have no meaning for her. Hannah More, enthusiastic in her denunciations of slavery, but unconscious that her liberty was in the least restricted, did not hesitate to form an opinion of the "Rights of Women" without examining it, thus necessarily missing its true significance. In this she doubtless represented a large majority of her sex. She wrote to Horace Walpole in 1793:—

"I have been much pestered to read the 'Rights of Women,' but am invincibly resolved not to do it. Of all jargon, I hate metaphysical jargon; beside, there is something fantastic and absurd in the very title. How many ways there are of being ridiculous! I am sure I have as much liberty as I can make a good use of, now I am an old maid; and when I was a young one I had, I dare say, more than was good for me. If I were still young, perhaps I should not make this confession; but so many women are fond of government, I suppose, because they are not fit for it. To be unstable and capricious, I really think, is but too characteristic of our sex; and there is, perhaps, no animal so much indebted to subordination for its good behavior as woman. I have soberly and uniformly maintained this doctrine ever since I have been capable of observation, and I used horridly to provoke some of my female friends—maitresses femmes—by it, especially such heroic spirits as poor Mrs. Walsingham."

Men, on the other hand, thought Mary was unsexing herself by her arguments, which seemed to interfere with their rights,—an interference they could not brook. To the Tories the fact that she sympathized with the Reformers was enough to damn her. Walpole, when he answered the letter from which the above extract is taken, wrote with warmth:—

"... It is better to thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Wollstonecrafts. I am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer. I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists of the latter, and borrowed her title from the demon's book which aimed at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the pale of my library. We have had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much already."

Walpole may be accepted as the typical Tory, and to all his party Mary probably appeared as the "philosophizing serpent." She seems always to have incurred his deepest scorn and wrath. He could not speak of her without calling her names. A year or two later, when she had published her book on the French Revolution, writing again to Hannah More, he thus concludes his letter:—

"Adieu, thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. Wollstonecraft, who to this day discharges her ink and gall on Marie Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not yet stanched that Alecto's blazing ferocity."

There was at least one man in London whose opinion was worth having who, it is known, treated the book with indifference, and he, by a strange caprice of fate, was William Godwin. It was at this time, when she was in the fulness of her fame, that Mary first met him. She was dining at Johnson's with Paine and Shovet, and Godwin had come purposely to meet the American philosopher and to hear him talk. But Paine was at best a silent man; and Mary, it seems, monopolized the conversation. Godwin was disappointed, and consequently the impression she made upon him was not pleasing. He afterwards wrote an account of this first meeting, which is interesting because of the closer relationship to which an acquaintance so unpropitiously begun was to lead.

"The interview was not fortunate," he says. "Mary and myself parted mutually displeased with each other. I had not read her 'Rights of Women.' I had barely looked into her answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary men are apt to be, with a few offences against grammar and other minute points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine, in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks, the conversation lay principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her very frequently when I wished to hear Paine.

"We touched on a considerable variety of topics and particularly on the character and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired, in a very blamable degree, the practice of seeing everything on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any degree doubtful. I, on the contrary, had a strong propensity to favorable construction, and, particularly where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated in this way the character of Voltaire and others, who have obtained from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last provoked to tell me that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached much nearer to the received ones than mine. As the conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it. We touched upon all topics without treating forcibly and connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered as justice.

"We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance."

Not until Mary had lived through the tragedy of her life were they destined to become more to each other than mere fellow mortals. There was much to be learned, and much to be forgotten, before the time came for her to give herself into his keeping.

Her family were naturally interested in her book from personal motives; but Eliza and Everina heartily disapproved of it, and their feelings for their eldest sister became, from this period, less and less friendly. However, as Kegan Paul says, their small spite points to envy and jealousy rather than to honest indignation.

Both were now in good situations. Mary felt free, therefore, to consider her own comforts a little. Besides, she had attained a position which it became her to sustain with dignity. She was now known as Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and was a prominent figure in the literary world. Shortly after the publication of the "Rights of Women" she moved from the modest lodgings on George Street, to larger, finer rooms on Store Street, Bedford Square, and these she furnished comfortably. Necessity was no longer her only standard. She also gave more care to her dress. Her stern apprenticeship was over. She had so successfully trampled upon the thorns in her path that she could pause to enjoy the flowers. To modern readers her new furniture and gowns are welcome signs of the awakening of the springtime in her cold and wintry life. But her sisters resented them, particularly because, while they, needing less, received less from her bounty, Charles, waiting for a good opening in America, was living at her expense. He, with thoughtless ingratitude, sent them semi-satirical accounts of her new mode of living, and thus unconsciously kindled their jealousy into a fierce flame. When the extent of Mary's kindness and self-sacrifice in their regard is remembered, the petty ill-nature of brother and sisters, as expressed in the following letter from Mrs. Bishop to Everina, is unpardonable:—

UPTON CASTLE, July 3, 1792.

... He [Charles] informs me too that Mrs. Wollstonecraft is grown quite handsome; he adds likewise that, being conscious she is on the wrong side of thirty, she now endeavors to set off those charms she once despised, to the best advantage. This, entre nous, for he is delighted with her affection and kindness to him.

So the author of "The Rights of Women" is going to France! I dare say her chief motive is to promote poor Bess's comfort, or thine, my girl, or at least I think she will so reason. Well, in spite of reason, when Mrs. W. reaches the Continent she will be but a woman! I cannot help painting her in the height of all her wishes, at the very summit of happiness, for will not ambition fill every chink of her great soul (for such I really think hers) that is not occupied by love? After having drawn this sketch, you can hardly suppose me so sanguine as to expect my pretty face will be thought of when matters of State are in agitation, yet I know you think such a miracle not impossible. I wish I could think it at all probable, but, alas! it has so much the appearance of castle-building that I think it will soon disappear like the "baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a wrack behind."

And you actually have the vanity to imagine that in the National Assembly, personages like M. and F.[useli] will bestow a thought on two females whom nature meant to "suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

But a few days before Mary had written to Everina to discuss with her a matter relative to Mrs. Bishop's prospects. This letter explains the allusions of the latter to Mary's proposed trip to France, and shows how little reason she had for her ill-natured conclusions:—

LONDON, June 20, 1792.

... I have been considering what you say respecting Eliza's residence in France. For some time past Mr. and Mrs. Fuseli, Mr. Johnson, and myself have talked of a summer excursion to Paris; it is now determined on, and we think of going in about six weeks. I shall be introduced to many people. My book has been translated, and praised in some popular prints, and Mr. Fuseli of course is well known; it is then very probable that I shall hear of some situation for Eliza, and I shall be on the watch. We intend to be absent only six weeks; if then I fix on an eligible situation for her she may avoid the Welsh winter. This journey will not lead me into any extraordinary expense, or I should put it off to a more convenient season, for I am not, as you may suppose, very flush of money, and Charles is wearing out the clothes which were provided for his voyage. Still, I am glad he has acquired a little practical knowledge of farming....

The French trip was, however, put off until the following December; and when the time came for her departure, neither Mr. Johnson nor the Fuselis accompanied her. Since the disaffection of the latter has been construed in a way which reflects upon her character, it is necessary to pause here to consider the nature of the friendship which existed between them. The slightest shadow unfairly cast upon her reputation must be dissipated.

Mary valued Fuseli as one of her dearest friends. He, like her, was an enthusiast. He was a warm partisan of justice and a rebel against established institutions. He would take any steps to see that the rights of the individual were respected. His interference in a case where men in subordinate positions were defrauded by those in authority, but which did not affect him personally, was the cause of his being compelled to leave Zurich, his home, and thus eventually of his coming to England. Besides their unity of thought and feeling, their work often lay in the same direction. Fuseli, as well as Mary, translated for Johnson, and contributed to the "Analytical Review." He was an intimate friend of Lavater, whose work on Physiognomy Mary had translated with the liveliest interest. There was thus a strong bond of sympathy between them, and many ways in which they could help and consult with each other in their literary tasks. Mary was devoid of the coquetry which is so strong with some women that they carry it even into their friendships. She never attempted to conceal her liking for Fuseli. His sex was no drawback. Why should it be? It had not interfered with her warm feelings for George Blood and Mr. Johnson. She was the last person in the world to be deterred from what she thought was right for the sake of appearances.

However, another construction was given to her friendly demonstrations. The story told both by Knowles, the biographer of Fuseli, and by Godwin, is that Mary was in love with the artist; and that the necessity of suppressing, even if she could not destroy, her passion—hopeless since its object was a married man—was the immediate reason of her going to France alone. But they interpret the circumstances very differently. The incidents, as given by Godwin, are in nowise to Mary's discredit, though his account of them was later twisted and distorted by Dr. Beloe in his "Sexagenarian." The latter, however, is so prejudiced a writer that his words have but little value. Godwin, in his Memoirs, after demonstrating the strength of the intimacy between Mary and Fuseli, says:—

"Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this respect was no doubt heightened by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex, but that she scorned to suppose that she could feel a struggle in conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.

"... There is no reason to doubt that if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice.

"... One of her principal inducements to this step, [her visit to France] related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had at first considered it as reasonable and judicious to cultivate what I may be permitted to call a platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan which she had originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she should have found if fortune had favored their more intimate union. She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender charities which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the dearest bond of human society. General conversation and society could not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass of her species, and she repined when she reflected that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and mingle in different scenes."

Knowles, on the other hand, represents her as importunate with her love as a Phaedra, as consumed with passion as a Faustina. He states as a fact that it was for Fuseli's sake that she changed her mode of life and adopted a new elegance in dress and manners. He declares that when the latter made no return to her advances, she pursued him so persistently that on receiving her letters, he thrust them unopened out of sight, so sure was he that they contained nothing but protestations of regard and complaints of neglect; that, finally, she became so ill and miserable and unfitted for work that, despite Fuseli's arguments against such a step, she went boldly to Mrs. Fuseli and asked to be admitted into her house as a member of the family, declaring that she could not live without daily seeing the man she loved; and that, thereupon, Mrs. Fuseli grew righteously wrathful and forbade her ever to cross her threshold again. He furthermore affirms that she considered her love for Fuseli strictly within the bounds of modesty and reason, that she encouraged it without scruple, and that she made every effort to win his heart. These proving futile, he concludes: "No resource was now left for Mrs. Wollstonecraft but to fly from the object which she regarded; her determination was instantly fixed; she wrote a letter to Fuseli, in which she begged pardon 'for having disturbed the quiet tenor of his life,' and on the 8th of December left London for France."

An anonymous writer who in 1803 published a "Defence of the Character of the Late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin," repeats the story, but a little more kindly, declaring that Mary's discovery of an unconsciously nurtured passion for a married man, and her determination to flee temptation, were the cause of her leaving England. That there was during her life-time some idle gossip about her relations to Fuseli is shown in the references to it in Eliza's ill-natured letter. This counts for little, however. It was simply impossible for the woman who had written in defiance of social laws and restrictions, to escape having scandals attached to her name.

Kegan Paul, Mary's able defender of modern times, denies the whole story. He writes in his Prefatory Memoir to her "Letters to Imlay:"—

"... Godwin knew extremely little of his wife's earlier life, nor was this a subject on which he had sought enlightenment from herself. I can only here say that I fail to find any confirmation whatever of this preposterous story, as told in Knowles's 'Life of Fuseli,' or in any other form, while I find much which makes directly against it, the strongest fact being that Mary remained to the end the correspondent and close friend of Mrs. Fuseli."

Her character is the best refutation of Knowles's charges. She was too proud to demean herself to any man. She was too sensitive to slights to risk the repulses he says she accepted. And since always before and after this period she had nothing more at heart than the happiness of others, it is not likely that she would have deliberately tried to step in between Fuseli and his wife, and gain at the latter's expense her own ends. She could not have changed her character in a day. She never played fast and loose with her principles. These were in many ways contrary to the standard of the rest of mankind, but they were also equally opposed to the conduct imputed to her. The testimony of her actions is her acquittal. That she did not for a year produce any work of importance is no argument against her. It was only after three years of uninterrupted industry that she found time to write the "Rights of Women." On account of the urgency of her every-day needs, she had no leisure for work whose financial success was uncertain. Knowles's story is too absurdly out of keeping with her character to be believed for a moment.

The other version of this affair is not so inconceivable. That her affection may in the end have developed into a warmer feeling, and that she would have married Fuseli had he been free, is just possible. Allusions in her first letters to Imlay to a late "hapless love," and to trouble, seem to confirm Godwin's statement. But it is quite as likely that Fuseli, whose heart was, as his biographer admits, very susceptible, felt for her a passion which as a married man he had no right to give, and that she fled to France for his sake rather than for her own. In either of these cases, she would deserve admiration and respect. But the insufficiency of evidence reduces everything except the fact of her friendship for him to mere surmise.

However this may have been, it is certain that Mr. Johnson and the Fuselis decided to remain at home when Mary in December started for Paris.

The excitement in the French capital was then at fever heat. But the outside world hardly comprehended how serious the troubles were. Princes and their adherents trembled at the blow given to royalty in the person of Louis XVI. Liberals rejoiced at the successful revolt against monarchical tyranny. But neither one party nor the other for a moment foresaw what a terrible weapon reform was to become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still continue, it is not strange that those who watched it from afar mistook its real weight.

The terrible night of the 10th of August had come and gone. The September massacres, the details of which had not yet reached England, were over. The Girondists were in the ascendency and had restored order. There were fierce contentions in the National Convention, but, on the whole, its attitude was one to inspire confidence. The English, who saw in the arrest of the king, and in the popular feeling against him, just such a crisis as their nation had passed through once or twice, were not deterred from visiting the country by its unsettled state. The French prejudice against England, it is true, was strong. Lafayette had some time before publicly expressed his belief that she was secretly conspiring against the peace of France. But his imputation had been vigorously denied, and nominally the two governments were friendly. English citizens had no reason to suppose they would not be safe in Paris, and those among them whose opinions brought them en rapport with the French Republicans felt doubly secure. Consequently Mary's departure for that capital, alone and unprotected, did not seem so hazardous then as it does now that the true condition of affairs is better understood.

She knew in Paris a Madame Filiettaz, daughter of the Madame Bregantz at whose school in Putney Eliza and Everina had been teachers, and to her house she went, by invitation. Monsieur and Madame Filiettaz were absent, and she was for some little time its sole occupant save the servants. The object of her visit was twofold. She wished to study French, for though she could read and translate this language fluently, from want of practice she could neither speak nor understand it when it was spoken; and she also desired to watch for herself the development of the cause of freedom. Their love of liberty had made the French, as a nation, peculiarly attractive to her. She had long since openly avowed her sympathy by her indignant reply to Burke's outcry against them. It was now a great satisfaction to be where she could follow day by day the progress of their struggle. She had excellent opportunities not only to see what was on the surface of society, which is all visitors to a strange land can usually do, but to study the actual forces at work in the movement. Thomas Paine was then in Paris. He was a member of the National Convention, and was on terms of intimacy with Condorcet, Brissot, Madame Roland, and other Republican leaders. Mary had known him well in London. She now renewed the acquaintance, and was always welcomed to his house near the Rue de Richelieu. Later, when, worn out by his numerous visitors, he retired to the Faubourg St. Denis, to a hotel where Madame de Pompadour had once lived, and allowed it to be generally believed that he had gone into the country for his health, Mary was one of the few favored friends who knew of his whereabouts. She thus, through him, was brought into close contact with the leading spirits of the day. She also saw much of Helen Maria Williams, the poetess, already notorious for her extreme liberalism, and who had numerous friends and acquaintances among the Revolutionary party in Paris. Mrs. Christie was still another friend of this period. Her husband's business having kept them in France, they had become thoroughly nationalized. At their house many Americans congregated, among others a Captain Gilbert Imlay, of whom more hereafter. In addition to these English friends, Mary had letters of introduction to several prominent French citizens.

She arrived in Paris just before Louis XVI.'s trial. The city was comparatively quiet, but there was in the air an oppression which betokened the coming storm. She felt the people's suspense as if she too had been personally interested. Between her studies and her efforts to obtain the proper clew by which she could in her own mind reduce the present political chaos to order, she found more than enough wherewith to fill her days. As always happened with her, the mental strain reacted upon her physical health, and her old enemies, depression of spirits and headaches, returned to harass her.

She wrote to Everina on the 24th of December:

To-morrow I expect to see Aline [Madame Filiettaz]. During her absence the servants endeavored to render the house, a most excellent one, comfortable to me; but as I wish to acquire the language as fast as I can, I was sorry to be obliged to remain so much alone. I apply so closely to the language, and labor so continually to understand what I hear, that I never go to bed without a headache, and my spirits are fatigued with endeavoring to form a just opinion of public affairs. The day after to-morrow I expect to see the King at the bar, and the consequences that will follow I am almost afraid to anticipate.

I have seen very little of Paris, the streets are so dirty; and I wait till I can make myself understood before I call upon Madame Laurent, etc. Miss Williams has behaved very civilly to me, and I shall visit her frequently because I rather like her, and I meet French company at her house. Her manners are affected, yet the simple goodness of her heart continually breaks through the varnish, so that one would be more inclined, at least I should, to love than admire her. Authorship is a heavy weight for female shoulders, especially in the sunshine of prosperity. Of the French I will not speak till I know more of them. They seem the people of all others for a stranger to come amongst, yet sometimes when I have given a commission, which was eagerly asked for, it has not been executed, and when I ask for an explanation,—I allude to the servant-maid, a quick girl, who, an't please you, has been a teacher in an English boarding-school,—dust is thrown up with a self-sufficient air, and I am obliged to appear to see her meaning clearly, though she puzzles herself, that I may not make her feel her ignorance; but you must have experienced the same thing. I will write to you soon again. Meantime, let me hear from you, and believe me yours sincerely and affectionately,

M. W.

When the dreaded 26th came, there was no one in Paris more excited and interested than Mary. From her window she saw the King as, seemingly forgetting the history he was making for future historians to discuss, he rode by with calm dignity to his trial. Throughout the entire day she waited anxiously, uncertain as to what would be the effects of the morning's proceedings. Then, when evening came, and all continued quiet and the danger was over, she grew nervous and fearful, as she had that other memorable night when she kept her vigil in the little room at Hackney. She was absolutely alone with her thoughts, and it was a relief to write to Mr. Johnson. It gave her a sense of companionship. This "hyena in petticoats," this "philosophizing serpent," was at heart as feminine as Hannah More or any other "excellent woman."

PARIS, Dec. 26, 1792.

I should immediately on the receipt of your letter, my dear friend, have thanked you for your punctuality, for it highly gratified me, had I not wished to wait till I could tell you that this day was not stained with blood. Indeed, the prudent precautions taken by the National Convention to prevent a tumult made me suppose that the dogs of faction would not dare to bark, much less to bite, however true to their scent; and I was not mistaken; for the citizens, who were all called out, are returning home with composed countenances, shouldering their arms. About nine o'clock this morning the King passed by my window, moving silently along, excepting now and then a few strokes on the drum which rendered the stillness more awful, through empty streets, surrounded by the National Guards, who, clustering round the carriage, seemed to deserve their name. The inhabitants flocked to their windows, but the casements were all shut; not a voice was heard, nor did I see anything like an insulting gesture. For the first time since I entered France I bowed to the majesty of the people, and respected the propriety of behavior, so perfectly in unison with my own feelings. I can scarcely tell you why, but an association of ideas made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney-coach, going to meet death where so many of his race have triumphed. My fancy instantly brought Louis XIV. before me, entering the capital with all his pomp, after one of the victories most flattering to his pride, only to see the sunshine of prosperity overshadowed by the sublime gloom of misery. I have been alone ever since; and though my mind is calm, I cannot dismiss the lively images that have filled my imagination all the day. Nay, do not smile, but pity me, for once or twice, lifting my eyes from the paper, I have seen eyes glare through a glass door opposite my chair, and bloody hands shook at me. Not the distant sound of a footstep can I hear. My apartments are remote from those of the servants, the only persons who sleep with me in an immense hotel, one folding-door opening after another. I wish I had even kept the cat with me! I want to see something alive, death in so many frightful shapes has taken hold of my fancy. I am going to bed, and for the first time in my life I cannot put out the candle.

M. W.

These imaginary terrors gave way to real ones soon enough. The execution of Louis was followed by the declaration of war between France and England and the complete demoralization of the French people, especially of the Parisians. The feeling against England grew daily more bitter, and the position of English residents in Paris more precarious. It was next to impossible for them to send letters home, and therefore their danger was not realized by their countrymen on the other side of the Channel. Mrs. Bishop, in the faraway Welsh castle, grew impatient at Mary's silence. Politics was a subject dear to her heart, but one tabooed at Upton. At her first word upon the topic the family, her employers, left the room, and she was consequently obliged to ignore it when she was with them. But when, some months later on, two or three French refugees came to Pembroke, she was quick to go to them, ostensibly for French lessons, but in reality to hear their accounts of the scenes through which they had passed. Forced to live in quiet, remote places, she longed for the excitement only to be had in the large centres of action, and at one time, in her discontent, began to make plans to join her sister in France. While Eliza was thus contemplating a journey to Paris, Mary was wondering how it would be possible either to continue living there or to leave the country. It was equally out of the question to obtain fresh supplies of money from England or a passport to carry her safely back. She had, when she left London, only intended to be absent for a few weeks, and had not even given up her rooms in George Street. But the weeks had lengthened into months, and now her return was an impossibility.

For motives of economy she left the large Filiettaz mansion. At first she thought of making a trip to Switzerland, but this plan had to be abandoned because of the difficulty in procuring a passport. She therefore went to Neuilly, where, her ready money wellnigh exhausted, she lived as simply as she could. Economy was doubly necessary at a time when heavy taxes were sending a hungry multitude into the streets, clamoring for bread. She was now more alone than ever. Her sole attendant was an old man, a gardener. He became her warm friend, succumbing completely to her power of attraction. With the gallantry of his race he could not do enough for Madame. He waited upon her with unremitting attention; he even disputed for the honor of making her bed. He served up at her table, unasked, the grapes from his garden which he absolutely refused to give to her guests. He objected to her English independence; her lonely walks through the woods of Neuilly met with his serious disapproval, and he besought her to allow him the privilege of accompanying her, painting in awful colors the robbers and other dangers with which the place abounded. But Mary persisted in going alone; and when, evening after evening, she returned unharmed, it must have seemed to him as if she bore a charmed life. Such incidents as these show, better than volumes of praise, the true kindliness of her nature which was not influenced by distinctions of rank.

Those who knew her but by name, however, dealt with her in less gentle fashion. Her fame had been carried even into Pembroke; and while she was living her solitary and inoffensive life in Paris, Mrs. Bishop was writing to Everina: "The conversation [at Upton Castle] turns on Murphy, on Irish potatoes, or Tommy Paine, whose effigy they burnt at Pembroke the other day. Nay, they talk of immortalizing Miss Wollstonecraft in like manner, but all end in damning all politics: What good will they do men? and what rights have men that three meals a day will not supply?" After all, perhaps they were wise, these Welshmen. Were not their brethren in France purchasing their rights literally at the price of their three meals a day?

Sometimes, perhaps to please her friend, the gardener, instead of her rambles through the woods, Mary walked towards and even into Paris, and then she saw sights which made Pembroke logic seem true wisdom, and freedom a farce. Once, in so doing, she passed by chance a place of execution, just at the close of one of its too frequent tragic scenes. The blood was still fresh upon the pavement; the crowd of lookers-on not yet dispersed. She heard them as they stood there rehearsing the day's horror, and she chafed against the cruelty and inhumanity of the deed. In a moment—her French so improved that she could make herself understood—she was telling the people near her something of what she thought of their new tyrants. Those were dangerous times for freedom of speech. So far the champions of liberty had proved themselves more inexorable masters than the Bourbons. Some of the bystanders, who, though they dared not speak their minds, sympathized with Mary's indignation, warned her of her danger and hurried her away from the spot. Horror at the ferocity of men's passions, wrath at injustices committed in the name of freedom, and impatience at her own helplessness to right the evils by which she was surrounded, no doubt inspired her, as saddened and sobered she walked back alone to Neuilly.

During all this time she continued her literary work. She proposed to write a series of letters upon the present character of the French nation, and with this end in view she silently studied the people and the course of political action. She was quick and observant, and nothing escaped her notice. She came to Paris prepared to continue a firm partisan of the French Revolution; but she could not be blind to the national defects. She saw the frivolity and sensuality of the people, their hunger for all things sweet, and the unrestrained passions of the greater number of the Republican leaders, which made them love liberty more than law itself. She valued their cause, but she despised the means by which they sought to gain it. Thus, in laboring to grasp the meaning of the movement, not as it appeared to petty factions, but as it was as a whole, she was confronted by the greatest of all mysteries, the relation of good and evil. Again, as when she had analyzed the rights of women, she recognized evil to be a power which eventually works for righteousness, thereby proving the clearness of her mental vision. Only one of these letters, however, was written and published. It is dated Feb. 15, 1793, so that the opinions therein expressed were not hastily formed. As its style is that of a familiar letter, and as it gives a good idea of the thoroughness with which she had applied herself to her task, it may appropriately be quoted here.

"... The whole mode of life here," she writes, "tends indeed to render the people frivolous, and, to borrow their favorite epithet, amiable. Ever on the wing, they are always sipping the sparkling joy on the brim of the cup, leaving satiety in the bottom for those who venture to drink deep. On all sides they trip along, buoyed up by animal spirits, and seemingly so void of care that often, when I am walking on the Boulevards, it occurs to me that they alone understand the full import of the term leisure; and they trifle their time away with such an air of contentment, I know not how to wish them wiser at the expense of gayety. They play before me like motes in a sunbeam, enjoying the passing ray; whilst an English head, searching for more solid happiness, loses in the analysis of pleasure the volatile sweets of the moment. Their chief enjoyment, it is true, rises from vanity; but it is not the vanity that engenders vexation of spirit: on the contrary, it lightens the heavy burden of life, which reason too often weighs, merely to shift from one shoulder to the other....

"I would I could first inform you that out of the chaos of vices and follies, prejudices and virtues, rudely jumbled together, I saw the fair form of Liberty slowly rising, and Virtue, expanding her wings to shelter all her children! I should then hear the account of the barbarities that have rent the bosom of France patiently, and bless the firm hand that lopt off the rotten limbs. But if the aristocracy of birth is levelled with the ground, only to make room for that of riches, I am afraid that the morals of the people will not be much improved by the change, or the government rendered less venial. Still it is not just to dwell on the misery produced by the present struggle without adverting to the standing evils of the old system. I am grieved, sorely grieved, when I think of the blood that has stained the cause of freedom at Paris; but I also hear the same live stream cry aloud from the highways through which the retreating armies passed with famine and death in their rear, and I hide my face with awe before the inscrutable ways of Providence, sweeping in such various directions the besom of destruction over the sons of men.

"Before I came to France, I cherished, you know, an opinion that strong virtues might exist with the polished manners produced by the progress of civilization; and I even anticipated the epoch, when, in the course of improvement, men would labor to become virtuous, without being goaded on by misery. But now the perspective of the golden age, fading before the attentive eye of observation, almost eludes my sight; and, losing thus in part my theory of a more perfect state, start not, my friend, if I bring forward an opinion which, at the first glance, seems to be levelled against the existence of God! I am not become an atheist, I assure you, by residing at Paris; yet I begin to fear that vice or, if you will, evil is the grand mobile of action, and that, when the passions are justly poised, we become harmless, and in the same proportion useless....

"You may think it too soon to form an opinion of the future government, yet it is impossible to avoid hazarding some conjectures, when everything whispers me that names, not principles, are changed, and when I see that the turn of the tide has left the dregs of the old system to corrupt the new. For the same pride of office, the same desire of power, are still visible; with this aggravation, that, fearing to return to obscurity after having but just acquired a relish for distinction, each hero or philosopher, for all are dubbed with these new titles, endeavors to make hay while the sun shines; and every petty municipal officer, become the idol, or rather the tyrant of the day, stalks like a cock on a dunghill."

The letters were discontinued, probably because Mary thought letter-writing too easy and familiar a style in which to treat so weighty a subject. She only gave up the one work, however, to undertake another still more ambitious. At Neuilly she began, and wrote almost all that was ever finished, of her "Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution."

While she was thus living the quiet life of a student in the midst of excitement, her own affairs, as well as those of France, were hastening to a crisis.



CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE WITH IMLAY.

1793-1794.

While Mary was living at Neuilly, the terrors of the French Revolution growing daily greater, she took a step to which she was prompted by pure motives, but which has left a blot upon her fair fame. The outcry raised by her "Vindication of the Rights of Women" has ceased, since its theories have found so many champions. But that which followed her assertion of her individual rights has never yet been hushed. Kegan Paul speaks the truth when he says, "The name of Mary Wollstonecraft has long been a mark for obloquy and scorn." The least that can be done to clear her memory of stains is to state impartially the facts of her case.

As has been said in the previous chapter, Mary often spent her free hours with Mrs. Christie, and at her house she met Captain Gilbert Imlay. He was one of the many Americans then living in Paris. He was an attractive man personally, and his position and abilities entitled him to respect. He had taken an active part in the American rebellion, having then risen to the rank of captain, and, after the war, had been sent as commissioner to survey still unsettled districts of the western States. On his return from this work he wrote a monograph, called "A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America," which is remarkable for its thoroughness and its clear, condensed style, appropriate to such a treatise. It passed through several editions and increased his reputation. His business in France is not very explicitly explained. His headquarters seem to have been at Havre, while he had certain commercial relations with Norway and Sweden. He was most probably in the timber business, and was, at least at this period, successful. Godwin says that he had no property whatever, but his speculations apparently brought him plenty of ready money.

Foreigners in Paris, especially Americans and English, were naturally drawn together. Mary and Imlay had mutual acquaintances, and they saw much of each other. His republican sentiments alone would have appealed to her. But the better she learned to know him, the more she liked him personally. He, on his side, was equally attracted, and his kindness and consideration for her were greatly in his favor. Their affection in the end developed into a feeling stronger than mere friendship. Its consequence, since both were free, would under ordinary circumstances have been marriage.

But her circumstances just then were extraordinary. Godwin says that she objected to a marriage with Imlay because she did not wish to "involve him in certain family embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her." There were, however, more formidable objections, not of her own making. The English who remained in Paris ran the chance from day to day of being arrested with the priests and aristocrats, and even of being carried to the guillotine. Their only safeguard lay in obscurity. They had above all else to evade the notice of government officers. Mary, if she married Imlay, would be obliged to proclaim herself a British subject, and would thus be risking imprisonment and perhaps death. Besides, it was very doubtful whether a marriage ceremony performed by the French authorities would be recognized in England as valid. Had she been willing to pass through this perilous ordeal she would have gained nothing. Love's labor would indeed have been lost. Marriage was thus out of the question.

To Mary, however, this did not seem an insurmountable obstacle to their union. "Her view had now become," Kegan Paul says, "that mutual affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die." In her "Vindication," she had upheld the sanctity of marriage because she believed that the welfare of society depends upon the order maintained in family relations. But her belief also was that the form the law demands is nothing, the feeling which leads those concerned to desire it, everything. What she had hitherto seen of married life, as at present instituted, was not calculated to make her think highly of it. Her mother and her friend's mother had led the veriest dogs' lives because the law would not permit them to leave brutal and sensual husbands, whom they had ceased to honor or love. Her sister had been driven mad by the ill-treatment of a man to whom she was bound by legal, but not by natural ties. Lady Kingsborough, giving to dogs the love which neither her coarse husband nor her children by him could evoke, was not a brilliant example of conjugal pleasure. Probably in London other cases had come within her notice. Marriage vows, it seemed, were with the majority but the convenient cloak of vice. Women lived with their husbands that they might be more free to entertain their lovers. Men lived with their wives that they might keep establishments elsewhere for their mistresses. Love was the one unimportant element in the marriage compact. The artificial tone of society had disgusted all the more earnest thinkers of the day. The very extreme to which existing evils were carried drove reformers to the other. Rousseau and Helvetius clamored for a relapse into a state of nature without exactly knowing what the realization of their theories would produce. Mary reasoned in the same spirit as they did, and from no desire to uphold the doctrine of free love. Fearless in her practice as in her theories, she did not hesitate in this emergency to act in a way that seemed to her conscience right. She loved Imlay honestly and sincerely. Because she loved him she could not think evil of him, nor suppose for a moment that his passion was not as pure and true as hers. Therefore she consented to live with him as his wife, though no religious nor civil ceremony could sanction their union.

That this, according to the world's standard, was wrong, is a fact beyond dispute. But before the first stones are thrown, the pros as well as the cons must be remembered. If Mary had held the conventional beliefs as to the relations of the sexes, she would be judged by them. Had she thought her connection with Imlay criminal, then she would be condemned by her own conviction. But she did not think so. Moreover, her opinions to the contrary were very decided. When she gave herself to Imlay without waiting for a minister's blessing or a legal permit, she acted in strict adherence to her moral ideals; and this at once places her in a far different rank from that of the Mrs. Robinsons and Mrs. Jordans, with whom men have been too ready to class her. Neither can she be compared to a woman like George Sand, who also believed that love was a more sacred bond of union than the marriage tie, and who acted accordingly. But to George Sand, as masculine by nature as by dress, love was of her life a thing apart, and a change of lovers a matter of secondary importance. To Mary love was literally her whole existence, and fidelity a virtue to be cultivated above all others. Since she in her conduct in this instance stands alone, she can be justly judged by no other standard than her own.

Whether marriage does or does not represent the ideal relation which can exist between a man and woman is without the compass of the present work. But since it is and has been for ages held to be so, the woman who bids defiance to this law must abide by the consequences. Custom has inconsistently pardoned freedom in such matters to men, but never to women. Mary Wollstonecraft might rely upon her friends and acquaintances for recognition of her virtue, but she should have remembered that to the world at large her conduct would appear immoral; that by it she would become a pariah in society, and her work lose much of its efficacy; while she would be giving to her children, if she had any, an inheritance of shame that would cling to them forever.

She may probably have realized this drawback and determined to avoid the evil consequences of her defiance to social usages. For the first few months it seems that she kept her intimacy with Imlay secret, and she may have intended concealing it until such time as she could make it legal in the eyes of the world. Godwin dates its beginning in April, 1793. The only information in this respect is to be had from her published letters to Imlay, the first of which was written in June of the same year, though, it must be added, Kegan Paul queries the date. This and the following note, dated August, prove the secrecy she for a time maintained. The latter seems to have been written after she had determined to live openly with Imlay in Paris, but just before she carried her determination into practice:—

Past Twelve o'clock, Monday night.

I obey an emotion of my heart which made me think of wishing thee, my love, good-night! before I go to rest, with more tenderness than I can to-morrow, when writing a hasty line or two under Colonel ——'s eye. 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. 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 be good, 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.

But good-night! God bless you! Sterne says that is equal to a kiss, yet I would rather give you the kiss into the bargain, glowing with gratitude to Heaven and affection to you. I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm.

I will be at the barrier a little after ten o'clock to-morrow.

Yours, ——

The reason for this step was probably the fact that it was not safe for her to continue in Paris alone and unprotected. The robbers in the woods at Neuilly might be laughed at; but the red-capped citoyens and citoyennes, drunk from the first draught of aristocratic blood, were no old man's dangers. The peril of the English in the city increased with every new development of the struggle; but Americans were looked upon as stanch brother citizens, and a man who had fought for the American Republic was esteemed as the friend and honored guest of the French Republic. As Imlay's wife, Mary's safety would therefore be assured. The murderous greed of the people, to break out in September in the Law of the Suspect, was already felt in August, and at the end of that month she sought protection under Imlay's roof, and shielded herself by his name.

She could not at once judge of the manner in which this expedient would be received. It was impossible to hold any communication with England. For eighteen months after her letter to Mr. Johnson, not a word from her reached her friends at home. As for those in Paris, so intense was the great human tragedy of which they were the witnesses, that they probably forgot to gossip about each other. The crimes and horrors that stared them in the face were so appalling that desire to seek out imaginary ones in their neighbors was lost. As far as can be known from Mary's letters, her connection with Imlay did not take from her the position she had held in the English colony. No door was closed against her; no scandal was spread about her. The truth is, these people must have understood her difficulties as well as she did. They knew the impossibility of a legal ceremony and the importance in her case of an immediate union; and understanding this, they seem to have considered her Imlay's wife. At least the rumors which months afterwards came to her sisters treated her marriage as a certainty. Charles Wollstonecraft, now settled in Philadelphia, wrote on June 16, 1794, to Eliza, a year after Mary and Imlay had begun their joint life: "I heard from Mary six months ago by a gentleman who knew her at Paris, and since that have been informed she is married to Captain Imlay of this country." The same report had found its way to Mr. Johnson, and through him again to Mrs. Bishop. It was hard to doubt its truth, and yet Mrs. Bishop knew as well as, if not better than, any one Mary's views about marriage. She had, happily for herself, reaped the benefit of them. In her surprise she sent Charles's letter to Everina, accompanied by her own reflections upon the startling news. These are a curious testimony to the strength of Mary's objections to matrimony. Eliza's petty envy of her greater sister is still apparent in this letter. It is dated August 15:—

"... If Mary is actually married to Mr. Imlay, it is not impossible but she might settle there [in America] too. Yet Mary cannot be married! It is natural to conclude her protector is her husband. Nay, on reading Charles's letter, I for an instant believed it true. I would, my Everina, we were out of suspense, for all at present is uncertainty and the most cruel suspense; still, Johnson does not repeat things at random, and that the very same tale should have crossed the Atlantic makes me almost believe that the once M. is now Mrs. Imlay, and a mother. Are we ever to see this mother and her babe?"

The only record of Mary's connection with Imlay, which lasted for about two years, are the letters which she wrote to him while he was away from her, his absences being frequent and long. Fortunately, these letters have been preserved. They were published by Godwin almost immediately after her death, and were republished in 1879 by C. Kegan Paul. "They are," says Godwin, "the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe." She was thirty-five when she met Imlay. Her passion for him was strong with the strength of full womanhood, nor had it been weakened by the flirtations in which so many women fritter away whatever deep feeling they may have originally possessed. She was no coquette, as she told him many times. She could not have concealed her love in order to play upon that of the man to whom she gave it. What she felt for him she showed him with no reservation or affectation of feminine delicacy. She despised such false sentiments. The consequence is, that her letters contain the unreserved expression of her feelings. Those written before she had cause to doubt her lover are full of wifely devotion and tenderness; those written from the time she was forced to question his sincerity, through the gradual realization of his faithlessness, until the bitter end, are the most pathetic and heart-rending that have ever been given to the world. They are the cry of a human soul in its death-agony, and are the more tragic because they belong to real life and not to fiction. The sorrows of the Heros, Guineveres, and Francescas of romance are not greater than hers were. Their grief was separation from lovers who still loved them. Hers was the loss of the love of a man for whom her passion had not ceased, and the admission of the unworthiness of him whom she had chosen as worthy above all others. Who will deny that her fate was the more cruel?

She in her letters tells her story better than any one else could do it for her. Therefore, as far as it is possible, it will be repeated here in her own words.

Imlay's love was to Mary what the kiss of the Prince was to the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale. It awakened her heart to happiness, leading her into that new world which is the old. Hitherto the love which had been her portion was that which she had sought

"... in the pity of other's woe, In the gentle relief of another's care."

And yet she had always believed that the pure passion which a man gives to a woman is the greatest good in life. That she was without it had been to her a heavier trial than an unhappy home and overwhelming debts. Now, when she least expected it, it had come to her. While women in Paris were either trembling with fear for what the morrow might bring forth, or else caught in the feverish whirl of rebellion, one at least had found rest. But human happiness can never be quite perfect. Sensitiveness was a family fault with the Wollstonecrafts. It had been developed rather than suppressed in Mary by her circumstances. She was therefore keenly susceptible not only to Imlay's love, but to his failings. Of these he had not a few. He does not seem to have been a refined man. From some remarks in Mary's letters it may be concluded that he had at one time been very dissipated, and that the society of coarse men and women had blunted his finer instincts. His faults were peculiarly calculated to offend her. His passion had to be stimulated. His business called him away often, and his absences were unmistakably necessary to the maintenance of his devotion. The sunshine of her new life was therefore not entirely unclouded. She was by degrees obliged to lower the high pedestal on which she had placed her lover, and to admit to herself that he was not much above the level of ordinary men. This discovery did not lessen her affection, though it made her occasionally melancholy. But she was, on the whole, happy.

In September he was compelled to leave her to go to Havre, where he was detained for several months. Love had cast out all fear from her heart. She was certain that he considered himself in every sense of the word her husband; and therefore during his absence she frankly told him how much she missed him, and in her letters shared her troubles and pleasures with him. She wrote the last thing at night to tell him of her love and her loneliness. She could not take his slippers from their old place by the door. She would not look at a package of books sent to her, but said she would keep them until he could read them to her while she would mend her stockings. She drew pictures of the happy days to come when in the farm, either in America or France, to which they both looked forward as their Ultima Thule, they would spend long evenings by their fireside, perhaps with children about their knees. If Eliza sent her a worrying letter, half the worry was gone when she had confided it to him. If ne'er-do-weel Charles, temporarily prosperous or promising to be so, wrote her one that pleased her, straightway she described the delight with which he would make a friend of Imlay. When the latter had been away but a short time, she found there was to be a new tie between them. As the father of her unborn child he became doubly dear to her, while the consciousness that another life depended upon her made her more careful of her health. "This thought," she told him, "has not only produced an overflowing of tenderness to you, but made me very attentive to calm my mind and take exercise lest I should destroy an object in whom we are to have a mutual interest, you know." As Kegan Paul says, "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."

During the first part of his absence, Imlay appears to have been as devoted as she could have wished him to be. When her letters to him did not come regularly,—as indeed, how could they in those troubled days?—he grew impatient. His impatience Mary greeted as a good sign. In December she wrote:—

I am glad to find that other people can be unreasonable as well as myself, for be it known to thee, that I answered thy first letter the very night it reached me (Sunday), though thou couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day. There is a full, true, and particular account.

Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and, likewise, of a milk-and-water affection, which comes to the same thing, when the temper is governed by a square and compass. There is nothing picturesque in this straight-lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions.

Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but it is not to thy money-getting face, though I cannot be seriously displeased with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character. No; I have thy honest countenance before me,—Pop,—relaxed by tenderness; a little, little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glistening with sympathy. Thy lips then feel softer than soft, and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world. I have not left the hue of love out of the picture—the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye, that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion, directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides. I must pause a moment.

Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus? I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection when absent than present; nay, I think that you must love me, for, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish.

Yours sincerely, MARY.

But there were days during his absence when her melancholy returned with full force. She could not but fear that the time would come when the coarse fibre of his love would work her evil. Just after he left, she wrote,—

"... So much for business! May I venture to talk a little longer about less weighty affairs? How are you? I have been following you all along the road this comfortless weather; for when I am absent from those I love, my imagination is as lively as if my senses had never been gratified by their presence—I was going to say caresses, and why should I not? I have found out 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 shorter cut to yours.

"With ninety-nine men out of a hundred, a very sufficient dash of folly is necessary to render a woman piquante, a soft word for desirable; and, beyond these casual ebullitions of sympathy, few look for enjoyment by fostering a passion in their hearts. One reason, in short, why I wish my whole sex to become wiser, is, that the foolish ones may not, by their pretty folly, rob those whose sensibility keeps down their vanity, of the few roses that afford them some solace in the thorny road of life.

"I do not know how I fell into these reflections, excepting one thought produced it—that these continual separations were necessary to warm your affection. Of late we are always separating. Crack! crack! and away you go! This joke wears the sallow cast of thought; for, though I began to write cheerfully, some melancholy tears have found their way into my eyes, that linger there, whilst a glow of tenderness at my heart whispers that you are one of the best creatures in the world. Pardon then the vagaries of a mind that has been almost 'crazed by care,' as well as 'crossed in hapless love,' and bear with me a little longer. When we are settled in the country together, more duties will open before me; and my heart, which now, trembling into peace, is agitated by every emotion that awakens the remembrance of old griefs, will learn to rest on yours with that dignity your character, not to talk of my own, demands."

The business at Havre apparently could not be easily settled. The date of Imlay's return became more and more uncertain, and Mary grew restless at his prolonged stay. This she let him know soon enough. She was not a silent heroine willing to let concealment prey on her spirits. It was as impossible for her to smile at grief as it was to remain unconscious of her lover's shortcomings. Her first complaints, however, are half playful, half serious. They were inspired by her desire to see him more than by any misgiving as to the cause of his detention. On the 29th of December she wrote:

"You seem to have taken up your abode at Havre. Pray, sir! when do you think of coming home? or, to write very considerately, when will business permit you? I shall expect (as the country people say in England) that you will make a power of money to indemnify me for your absence....

"Well! but, my love, to the old story,—am I to see you this week, or this month? I do not know what you are about, for as you did not tell me, I would not ask Mr. ——, who is generally pretty communicative."

But the playfulness quickly disappeared. Mary was ill, and her illness aggravated her normal sensitiveness, while the terrible death-drama of the Revolution was calculated to deepen rather than to relieve her gloom. A day or two later she broke out vehemently:—

"... I hate commerce. How differently must ——'s head and heart be organized from mine! You will tell me that exertions are necessary. I am weary of them! The face of things public and private vexes me. The 'peace' and clemency which seemed to be dawning a few days ago, disappear again. 'I am fallen,' as Milton said, 'on evil days,' for I really believe that Europe will be in a state of convulsion during half a century at least. Life is but a labor of patience; it is always rolling a great stone up a hill; for before a person can find a resting-place, imagining it is lodged, down it comes again, and all the work is to be done over anew!

"Should I attempt to write any more, I could not change the strain. My head aches and my heart is heavy. The world appears an 'unweeded garden' where things 'rank and vile' flourish best.

"If you do not return soon,—or, which is no such weighty matter, talk of it,—I will throw my slippers out at window, and be off, nobody knows where."

The next morning she added in a postscript:—

"I was very low-spirited last night, ready to quarrel with your cheerful temper, which makes absence easy to you. And why should I mince the matter? I was offended at your not even mentioning it. I do not want to be loved like a goddess, but I wish to be necessary to you. God bless you!"

Imlay's answers to these letters were kind and reassuring, and contained ample explanation of his apparent coldness. He probably, to give him the benefit of the doubt, was at this time truthful in pleading business as an excuse for his long absence. His reasons, at all events, not only satisfied Mary but made her ashamed of what seemed to her a want of faith in him. She was as humble in her penitence as if she had been grievously at fault. One Monday night she wrote:—

"I have just received your kind and rational letter, and would fain hide my face, glowing with shame for my folly. I would hide it in your bosom, if you would again open it to me, and nestle closely till you bade my fluttering heart be still, by saying that you forgave me. With eyes overflowing with tears, and in the humblest attitude, I entreat you. Do not turn from me, for indeed I love you fondly, and have been very wretched since the night I was so cruelly hurt by thinking that you had no confidence in me."

As it continued impossible for Imlay to leave Havre, it was arranged that Mary should join him there. She could not go at once on account of her health. While she had been so unhappy, she had neglected to take that care of herself which her condition necessitated, and she was suffering the consequences. Once her mind was at rest, she made what amends she could by exercise in the bracing winter air, in defiance of dirt and intense cold, and by social relaxation, at least such as could be had while the guillotine was executing daily tasks to the tune of Ca ira, and women were madly turning in the mazes of the Carmagnole. Though she could not boast of being quite recovered, she was soon able to report to Imlay, "I am so lightsome, that I think it will not go badly with me." Her health sufficiently restored, and an escort—the excited condition of the country making one more than usually indispensable—having been found, she began her welcome journey. It was doubly welcome. One could breathe more freely away from Paris, the seat of the Reign of Terror, where the Revolution, as Vergniaud said, was, Saturn-like, devouring its own children; and for Mary the journey had likewise the positive pleasure of giving her her heart's desire. Before Imlay's warm assurances of his love, her uneasiness melted away as quickly as the snow at the first breath of spring. How completely, is shown in this extract from a letter in which she prepared him for her coming:—

"You have by your tenderness and worth twisted yourself more artfully round my heart than I supposed possible. Let me indulge the thought that I have thrown out some tendrils to cling to the elm by which I wish to be supported. This is talking a new language for me! But, knowing that I am not a parasite-plant, I am willing to receive the proofs of affection that every pulse replies to when I think of being once more in the same house with you. God bless you!"

She arrived in Havre in the February of 1794. About a fortnight later Imlay left for Paris, but many proofs of his affection had greeted her, and during these few days he had completely calmed her fears. Judging from the letters she sent him during this absence, he must have been as lover-like as in the first happy days of their union. One was written the very day after his departure:—

HAVRE, Thursday morning, March 12.

We are such creatures of habit, my love, that, though I cannot say I was sorry, childishly so, for your going, when I knew that you were to stay such a short time, and I had a plan of employment, yet I could not sleep. I turned to your side of the bed, and tried to make the most of the comfort of the pillow, which you used to tell me I was churlish about; but all would not do. I took, nevertheless, my walk before breakfast, though the weather was not inviting; and here I am, wishing you a finer day, and seeing you peep over my shoulder, as I write, with one of your kindest looks, when your eyes glisten and a suffusion creeps over your relaxing features.

But I do not mean to dally with you this morning. So God bless you! Take care of yourself, and sometimes fold to your heart your affectionate

MARY.

The second note was written shortly before his return, and was a mere postscript to a letter on business. Had she covered reams of paper with her protestations, she could not have expressed her tender devotion more strongly than in these few lines:—

Do not call me stupid for leaving on the table the little bit of paper I was to enclose. This comes of being in love at the fag-end of a letter of business. You know you say they will not chime together. I had got you by the fire-side with the gigot smoking on the board, to lard your bare ribs, and behold, I closed my letter without taking the paper up, that was directly under my eyes! What had I got in them to render me so blind? I give you leave to answer the question, if you will not scold; for I am

Yours most affectionately, MARY.

Imlay's absence was brief, nor did he again leave Mary until the following August. In April their child, a daughter, was born, whom Mary called Fanny in memory of her first and dearest friend. Despite her past imprudences, she was so well that she remained in bed but a day. Eight days later she was out again. Though she felt no ill effects at the time, her rashness had probably something to do with her illness when her second child was born. These months at Havre were a pleasant oasis in the dreary desert of her existence. To no parched, sun-weary traveller have the cooling waters of the well and the shade of the palm-tree been more refreshing and invigorating than domestic pleasures were to Mary. Years before she had told Mr. Johnson they were among her most highly cherished joys, nor did they prove less desirable when realized than they had in anticipation. She seems to have had a house of her own in Havre, and to have seen a little of the Havrais, whom she found "ugly without doubt," and their houses smelling too much of commerce. They were, in a word, bourgeois. But her husband and child were all the society she wanted. With them any wilderness would have been a paradise. Her affection increased with time, and Imlay, though discovered not to be a demigod, grew ever dearer to her. Her love for her child, which she confessed was at first the effect of a sense of duty, developed soon into a deep and tender feeling. With Imlay's wants to attend to, the little Fanny, at one time ill with small-pox, to nurse, and her book on the Revolution to write, the weeks and months passed quickly and happily. In August Imlay was summoned to Paris, and at once the sky of her paradise was overcast. She wrote to him,—

"You too have somehow clung round my heart. I found I could not eat my dinner in the great room, and when I took up the large knife to carve for myself, tears rushed into my eyes. Do not, however, suppose that I am melancholy, for, when you are from me, I not only wonder how I can find fault with you, but how I can doubt your affection."



CHAPTER IX.

IMLAY'S DESERTION.

1794-1795.

Unfortunately, as a rule, the traveller on life's journey has but as short a time to stay in the pleasant green resting-places, as the wanderer through the desert. In September Mary followed Imlay to Paris. But the gates of her Eden were forever barred. Before the end of the month he had bidden her farewell and had gone to London. Against the fascination of money-making, her charms had little chance. His estrangement dates from this separation. When Mary met him again, he had forgotten love and honor, and had virtually deserted her. While her affection became stronger, his weakened until finally it perished altogether.

Her confidence in him, however, was confirmed by the months spent at Havre, and she little dreamed his departure was the prelude to their final parting. For a time she was lighter-hearted than she had ever before been while he was away. The memory of her late happiness reassured her. Her little girl was an unceasing source of joy, and she never tired of writing to Imlay about her. Her maternal tenderness overflows in her letters:—

"... You will want to be told over and over again," she said in one of them, not doubting his interest to be as great as her, "that our little Hercules is quite recovered.

"Besides looking at me, there are three other things which delight her: to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music. Yesterday at the fete she enjoyed the two latter; but, to honor J. J. Rousseau, I intend to give her a sash, the first she has ever had round her...."

In a second, she writes:—

"I have been playing and laughing with the little girl so long, that I cannot take up my pen to address you without emotion. Pressing her to my bosom, she looked so like you (entre nous, your best looks, for I do not admire your commercial face), every nerve seemed to vibrate to her touch, and I began to think that there was something in the assertion of man and wife being one, for you seemed to pervade my whole frame, quickening the beat of my heart, and lending me the sympathetic tears you excited."

And in still another, she exclaims:—

"My little darling is indeed a sweet child; and I am sorry that you are not here to see her little mind unfold itself. You talk of 'dalliance,' but certainly no lover was ever more attached to his mistress than she is to me. Her eyes follow me everywhere, and by affection I have the most despotic power over her. She is all vivacity or softness. Yes; I love her more than I thought I should. When I have been hurt at your stay, I have embraced her as my only comfort; when pleased with her, for looking and laughing like you; nay, I cannot, I find, long be angry with you, whilst I am kissing her for resembling you. But there would be no end to these details. Fold us both to your heart."

As the devout go on pilgrimage to places once sanctified by the presence of a departed saint, so she visited alone the haunts of the early days of their love, living over again the incidents which had made them sacred. "My imagination," she told him, "... chooses to ramble back to the barrier with you, or to see you coming to meet me and my basket of grapes. With what pleasure do I recollect your looks and words, when I have been sitting on the window, regarding the waving corn." She begged him to bring back his "barrier face," as she thus fondly recalled their interviews at the barrier. She told him of a night passed at Saint Germains in the very room which had once been theirs, and, glowing with these recollections, she warned him, that if he should return changed in aught, she would fly from him to cherish remembrances which must be ever dear to her. Occasionally a little humorous pleasantry interrupted the more tender outpourings in her letters. Just as, according to Jean Paul, a man can only afford to ridicule his religion when his faith is firm, so it was only when her confidence in Imlay was most secure that she could speak lightly of her love. To the reader of her life, who can see the snake lurking in the grass, her mirth is more tragical than her grief. On the 26th of October, Imlay having now been absent for over a month, she writes:—

"I have almost charmed a judge of the tribunal, R., who, though I should not have thought it possible, has humanity, if not beaucoup d'esprit. But, let me tell you, if you do not make haste back, I shall be half in love with the author of the Marseillaise, who is a handsome man, a little too broad-faced or so, and plays sweetly on the violin.

"What do you say to this threat?—why, entre nous, I like to give way to a sprightly vein when writing to you. 'The devil,' you know, is proverbially said to 'be in a good humor when he is pleased.'"

Many of her old friends in the capital had been numbered among the children devoured by the insatiable monster. A few, however, were still left, and she seems to have made new ones and to have again gone into Parisian society. The condition of affairs was more conducive to social pleasures than it had been the year before. Robespierre was dead. There were others besides Mary who feared "the last flap of the tail of the beast;" but, as a rule, the people, now the reaction had come, were over-confident, and the season was one of merry-making. There were fetes and balls. Even mourning for the dead became the signal for rejoicing; and gay Parisians, their arms tied with crape, danced to the memory of the victims of the late national delirium. The Reign of Terror was over, but so was Mary's happiness. Public order was partly restored, but her own short-lived peace was rudely interrupted. Imlay in London became more absorbed in his immediate affairs, a fact which he could not conceal in his letters; and Mary realized that compared to business she was of little or no importance to him. She expostulated earnestly with him on the folly of allowing money cares and ambitions to preoccupy him. She sincerely sympathized with him in his disappointments, but she could not understand his willingness to sacrifice sentiment and affection to sordid cares. "It appears to me absurd," she told him, "to waste life in preparing to live." Not one of the least of her trials was that she was at this time often forced to see a man who was Imlay's friend or partner in Paris, and who seems to have aided and abetted him in his speculations. He tormented her with accounts of new enterprises, and she complained very bitterly of him. "——, I know, urges you to stay," she wrote in one of her first letters of expostulation, "and is continually branching out into new projects because he has the idle desire to amass a large fortune, rather, an immense one, merely to have the credit of having made it. But we who are governed by other motives ought not to be led on by him; when we meet we will discuss this subject." For a little while she tried to believe that her doubts had no substantial basis, but were the result of her solitude. In the same letter she said:—

"... I will only tell you that I long to see you, and, being at peace with you, I shall be hurt, rather than made angry, by delays. Having suffered so much in life, do not be surprised if I sometimes, when left to myself, grow gloomy and suppose that it was all a dream, and that my happiness is not to last. I say happiness, because remembrance retrenches all the dark shades of the picture."

But by degrees the dark shades increased until they had completely blotted out the light made by the past. Imlay's letters were fewer and shorter, more taken up with business, and less concerned with her. Ought she to endure his indifference, or ought she to separate from him forever? was the question which now tortured her. She had tasted the higher pleasures, and the present pain was intense in proportion. Her letters became mournful as dirges.

On the 30th of December she wrote:—

"Should you receive three or four of the letters at once which I have written lately, do not think of Sir John Brute, for I do not mean to wife you, I only take advantage of every occasion, that one out of three of my epistles may reach your hands, and inform you that I am not of ——'s opinion, who talks till he makes me angry of the necessity of your staying two or three months longer. I do not like this life of continual inquietude, and, entre nous, I am determined to try to earn some money here myself, in order to convince you that, if you choose to run about the world to get a fortune, it is for yourself; for the little girl and I will live without your assistance unless you are with us. I may be termed proud; be it so, but I will never abandon certain principles of action.

"The common run of men have such an ignoble way of thinking that if they debauch their hearts and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, the wife, slave rather, whom they maintain has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan whenever he deigns to return with open arms, though his have been polluted by half an hundred promiscuous amours during his absence.

"I consider fidelity and constancy as two distinct things, yet the former is necessary to give life to the other; and such a degree of respect do I think due to myself, that if only probity, which is a good thing in its place, brings you back, never return! for if a wandering of the heart or even a caprice of the imagination detains you, there is an end of all my hopes of happiness. I could not forgive it if I would.

"I have gotten into a melancholy mood, you perceive. You know my opinion of men in general; you know that I think them systematic tyrants, and that it is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a man with sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern desire. When I am thus sad, I lament that my little darling, fondly as I dote on her, is a girl. I am sorry to have a tie to a world that for me is ever sown with thorns.

"You will call this an ill-humored letter, when, in fact, it is the strongest proof of affection I can give to dread to lose you. —— has taken such pains to convince me that you must and ought to stay, that it has inconceivably depressed my spirits. You have always known my opinion. I have ever declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long separated. If certain things are more necessary to you than me,—search for them. Say but one word, and you shall never hear of me more. If not, for God's sake let us struggle with poverty—with any evil but these continual inquietudes of business, which I have been told were to last but a few months, though every day the end appears more distant! This is the first letter in this strain that I have determined to forward to you; the rest lie by because I was unwilling to give you pain, and I should not now write if I did not think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes which demand, as I am told, your presence."

Once, but only once, the light shone again. On the 15th of January she received a kind letter from Imlay, and her anger died away. "It is pleasant to forgive those we love," she said to him simply. But it was followed by his usual hasty business notes or by complete silence, and henceforward she knew hope only by name. Her old habit of seeing everything from the dark side returned. She could not find one redeeming point in his conduct. Despair seized her soul. Her own misery was set against a dark background, for she looked beneath the surface of current events. She heard not the music of the ball-room, but that of the battle-field. She saw not the dances of the heedless, but the tears of the motherless and the orphaned. The luxury of the upper classes might deceive some men, but it could not deafen her to the complaints of the poor, who were only waiting their chance to proclaim to the new Constitution that they wanted not fine speeches, but bread. Other discomforts contributed their share to her burden. A severe cold had settled upon her lungs, and she imagined she was in a galloping consumption. Her lodgings were not very convenient, but she had put up with them, waiting day by day for Imlay's return. Weary of her life as Job was of his, she, like him, spoke out in the bitterness of her soul. Her letters from this time on are written from the very valley of the shadow of death. On February 9 she wrote:—