Mary Wollstonecraft Part 12

"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 a.s.sertion 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, 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 _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, 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 b.a.l.l.s. Even mourning for the dead became the signal for rejoicing; and gay Parisians, their arms tied with c.r.a.pe, 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 ama.s.s 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 a.s.sistance 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 ign.o.ble way of thinking that if they debauch their hearts and prost.i.tute 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 G.o.d'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 cla.s.ses 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 Const.i.tution 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:--

"The melancholy presentiment has for some time hung on my spirits, that we were parted forever; and the letters I received this day, by Mr. ----, convince me that it was not without foundation. You allude to some other letters, which I suppose have miscarried; for most of those I have got were only a few, hasty lines calculated to wound the tenderness that the sight of the superscriptions excited.

"I mean not, however, to complain; yet so many feelings are struggling for utterance, and agitating a heart almost bursting with anguish, that I find it very difficult to write with any degree of coherence.

"You left me indisposed, though you have taken no notice of it; and the most fatiguing journey I ever had contributed to continue it.

However, I recovered my health; but a neglected cold, and continual inquietude during the last two months, have reduced me to a state of weakness I never before experienced. Those who did not know that the canker-worm was at work at the core cautioned me about suckling my child too long. G.o.d preserve this poor child, and render her happier than her mother!

"But I am wandering from my subject; indeed, my head turns giddy, when I think that all the confidence I have had in the affection of others is come to this. I did not expect this blow from you. I have done my duty to you and my child; and if I am not to have any return of affection to reward me, I have the sad consolation of knowing that I deserved a better fate. My soul is weary; I am sick at heart; and but for this little darling I would cease to care about a life which is now stripped of every charm.

"You see how stupid I am, uttering declamation when I meant simply to tell you that I consider your requesting me to come to you as merely dictated by honor. Indeed, I scarcely understand you. You request me to come, and then tell me that you have not given up all thoughts of returning to this place.

"When I determined to live with you, I was only governed by affection. I would share poverty with you, but I turn with affright from the sea of trouble on which you are entering. I have certain principles of action; I know what I look for to found my happiness on. It is not money. With you, I wished for sufficient to procure the comforts of life; as it is, less will do. I can still exert myself to obtain the necessaries of life for my child, and she does not want more at present. I have two or three plans in my head to earn our subsistence; for do not suppose that, neglected by you, I will lie under obligations of a pecuniary kind to you! No; I would sooner submit to menial service. I wanted the support of your affection; that gone, all is over! I did not think, when I complained of ----'s contemptible avidity to acc.u.mulate money, that he would have dragged you into his schemes.

"I cannot write. I enclose a fragment of a letter, written soon after your departure, and another which tenderness made me keep back when it was written. You will see then the sentiments of a calmer, though not a more determined moment. Do not insult me by saying that 'our being together is paramount to every other consideration!' Were it, you would not be running after a bubble, at the expense of my peace of mind.

"Perhaps this is the last letter you will ever receive from me."

Grief sometimes makes men strong. Mary's stimulated her into a determination to break her connection with Imlay, and to live for her child alone. She would remain in Paris and superintend f.a.n.n.y's education.

She had already been able to look out for herself; there was no reason why she should not do it again. Until she settled upon the means of support to be adopted, she would borrow money from her friends. Anything was better than to live at Imlay's expense. As for him, such a course would probably be a relief, and certainly it would do him no harm. "As I never concealed the nature of my connection with you," she wrote him, "your reputation will not suffer." But her plans, for some reason, did not meet with his approval. He was tired of her, and yet he seems to have been ashamed to confess his inconstancy. At one moment he wrote that he was coming to Paris; at the next he bade her meet him in London. But no mention was made of the farm in America. The excitement of commerce proved more alluring than the peace of country life. His s.h.i.+lly-shallying unnerved Mary; positive desertion would have been easier to bear. On February 19 she wrote him:--

"When I first received your letter putting off your return to an indefinite time, I felt so hurt that I knew not what I wrote. I am now calmer, though it was not the kind of wound over which time has the quickest effect; on the contrary, the more I think, the sadder I grow. Society fatigues me inexpressibly; so much so that, finding fault with every one, I have only reason enough to discover that the fault is in myself. My child alone interests me, and but for her I should not take any pains to recover my health."

The child was now the strongest bond of union between them. For her sake she felt the necessity of continuing to live with Imlay as long as possible, though his love was dead. Therefore, when he wrote definitely that he would like her to come to him, since he could not leave his business to go to her, she relinquished her intentions of remaining alone in France with f.a.n.n.y, and set out at once for London. She could hardly have pa.s.sed through Havre without feeling the bitter contrast between her happiness of the year before, and her present hopelessness. "I sit, lost in thought," she wrote to Imlay, "looking at the sea, and tears rush into my eyes when I find that I am cheris.h.i.+ng any fond expectations. I have indeed been so unhappy this winter, I find it as difficult to acquire fresh hopes as to regain tranquillity. Enough of this; be still, foolish heart! But for the little girl, I could almost wish that it should cease to beat, to be no more alive to the anguish of disappointment." The boat upon which she sailed was run aground, and she was thus unexpectedly detained at Havre. During this interval she touched still more closely upon sorrow's crown of sorrow in remembering happier things, by writing to Mr. Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had escaped from his prison in Ireland to France, and giving him certain necessary information about the house she had left, and which he was about to occupy.

She reached London in April, 1795. Her gloomiest forebodings were confirmed. Imlay had provided a furnished house for her, and had considered her comforts. But his manner was changed. He was cold and constrained, and she felt the difference immediately. He was little with her, and business was, as of old, the excuse. According to G.o.dwin, he had formed another connection with a young strolling actress. Life was thus even less bright in London than it had been in Paris. If h.e.l.l is but the shadow of a soul on fire, she was now plunged into its deepest depths.

Its tortures were more than she could endure. For her there were, indeed, worse things waiting at the gate of life than death, and she resolved by suicide to escape from them. This part of her story is very obscure. But it is certain that her suicidal intentions were so nearly carried into effect, that she had written several letters containing her, as she thought, last wishes, and which were to be opened after all was over.

There is no exact account of the manner in which she proposed to kill herself, nor of the means by which she was prevented. "I only know,"

G.o.dwin says, "that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose at a moment when he was uncertain whether or no it was already executed, and that his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owing to his activity and representations that her life was at this time saved.

She determined to continue to exist."

This event sobered both Imlay and Mary. They saw the danger they were in, and the consequent necessity of forming a definite conclusion as to the nature of their future relations. They must either live together in perfect confidence, or else they must separate. "My friend, my dear friend," she wrote him, "examine yourself well,--I am out of the question; for, alas! I am nothing,--and discover what you wish to do, what will render you most comfortable; or, to be more explicit, whether you desire to live with me, or part forever! When you can ascertain it, tell me frankly, I conjure you! for, believe me, I have very involuntarily interrupted your peace." The determination could not be made in a hurry. In the meantime Mary knew it would be unwise to remain idle, meditating upon her wrongs. Forgetfulness of self in active work appeared the only possible means of living through the period of uncertainty. Imlay had business in Norway and Sweden which demanded the personal superintendence either of himself or of a trustworthy agent. He gave it in charge to Mary, and at the end of May she started upon this mission. That Imlay still looked upon her as his wife, and that his confidence in her was unlimited, is shown by the following doc.u.ment in which he authorizes her to act for him:--

May 19, 1795.

Know all men by these presents that I, Gilbert Imlay, citizen of the United States of America, at present residing in London, do nominate, const.i.tute, and appoint Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife, to take the sole management and direction of all my affairs, and business which I had placed in the hands of Mr. Elias Bachman, negotiant, Gottenburg, or in those of Messrs. Myburg & Co., Copenhagen, desiring that she will manage and direct such concerns in such manner as she may deem most wise and prudent. For which this letter shall be a sufficient power, enabling her to receive all the money or sums of money that may be recovered from Peter Ellison or his connections, whatever may be the issue of the trial now carrying on, instigated by Mr. Elias Bachman, as my agent, for the violation of the trust which I had reposed in his integrity.

Considering the aggravated distresses, the acc.u.mulated losses and damages sustained in consequence of the said Ellison's disobedience of my injunctions, I desire the said Mary Imlay will clearly ascertain the amount of such damages, taking first the advice of persons qualified to judge of the probability of obtaining satisfaction, or the means the said Ellison or his connections, who may be proved to be implicated in his guilt, may have, or power of being able to make rest.i.tution, and then commence a new prosecution for the same accordingly....

Respecting the cargo of goods in the hands of Messrs. Myburg and Co., Mrs. Imlay has only to consult the most experienced persons engaged in the disposition of such articles, and then, placing them at their disposal, act as she may deem right and proper....

Thus confiding in the talent, zeal, and earnestness of my dearly beloved friend and companion, I submit the management of these affairs entirely and implicitly to her discretion.

Remaining most sincerely and affectionately hers truly,

G. IMLAY.

_Witness_, J. SAMUEL.

Unfortunately for Mary, she was detained at Hull, from which town she was to set sail, for about a month. She was thus unable immediately to still the memory of her sorrows. It is touching to see how, now that she could no longer doubt that Imlay was made of common clay, she began to find excuses for him. She represented to herself that it was her misfortune to have met him too late. Had she known him before dissipation had enslaved him, there would have been none of this trouble. She was, furthermore, convinced that his natural refinement was not entirely destroyed, and that if he would but make the effort he could overcome his grosser appet.i.tes. To this effect she wrote him from Hull:--

"I shall always consider it as one of the most serious misfortunes of my life, that I did not meet you before satiety had rendered your senses so fastidious as almost to close up every tender avenue of sentiment and affection that leads to your sympathetic heart.

You have a heart, my friend; yet, hurried away by the impetuosity of inferior feelings, you have sought in vulgar excesses for that gratification which only the heart can bestow.

"The common run of men, I know, with strong health and gross appet.i.tes, must have variety to banish ennui, because the imagination never lends its magic wand to convert appet.i.te into love, cemented by according reason. Ah! my friend, you know not the ineffable delight, the exquisite pleasure, which arises from an unison of affection and desire, when the whole soul and senses are abandoned to a lively imagination, that renders every emotion delicate and rapturous. Yes; these are emotions over which satiety has no power, and the recollection of which even disappointment cannot disenchant; but they do not exist without self-denial. These emotions, more or less strong, appear to me to be the distinctive characteristics of genius, the foundation of taste, and of that exquisite relish for the beauties of nature, of which the common herd of eaters and drinkers and _child-begetters_ certainly have no idea. You will smile at an observation that has just occurred to me: I consider those minds as the most strong and original whose imagination acts as the stimulus to their senses.

"Well! you will ask what is the result of all this reasoning. Why, I cannot help thinking that it is possible for you, having great strength of mind, to return to nature and regain a sanity of const.i.tution and purity of feeling which would open your heart to me. I would fain rest there!