The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay. Mary Wollstonecraft

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      From a photo by Emery, Walker after the picture by Opie

       (probably painted in April, 1797) in the National Portrait Gallery.

      MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

      This picture passed from Godwin’s hands on his death to his grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. It was afterwards bequeathed to the nation by his widow, Lady Shelley. It was engraved by Heath (Jan. 1, 1798) for Godwin’s memoir of his wife. An engraving of it also appeared in the Lady’s Magazine, from which the frontispiece to this book was made, and a mezzotint by W. T. Annis was published in 1802. Mrs. Merritt also made an etching of the picture for Mr. Paul’s edition of the “Letters to Imlay.”

      To face p. xxvi

      On August 30, Mary’s child was born, not the William so much desired by them both but Mary, who afterwards became Mrs. Shelley. All seemed well with the mother until September 3, when alarming symptoms appeared. The best medical advice was obtained, but after a week’s illness, on Sunday morning, the 10th, at twenty minutes to eight, she sank and died. During her illness, when in great agony, an anodyne was administered, which gave Mary some relief, when she exclaimed, “Oh, Godwin, I am in heaven.” But, as Mr. Kegan Paul says, “even at that moment Godwin declined to be entrapped into the admission that heaven existed,” and his instant reply was: “You mean, my dear, that your physical sensations are somewhat easier.” Mary Godwin, however, did not share her husband’s religious doubts. Her sufferings had been great, but her death was a peaceful one.

      Godwin’s grief was very deep, as the letters that he wrote immediately after her death, and his tribute to her memory in the “Memoirs” testify. Mary Godwin was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard on September 15, in the presence of most of her friends. Godwin lived till 1836, when he was laid beside her. Many years afterwards, at the same graveside, Shelley is said to have plighted his troth to Mary Godwin’s daughter. In 1851, when the Metropolitan and Midland Railways were constructed at St. Pancras, the graveyard was destroyed, but the bodies of Mary and William Godwin were removed by their grandson, Sir Percy Shelley, to Bournemouth, where they now rest with his remains, and those of his mother, Mrs. Shelley.

      In the year following Mary’s death (1798) Godwin edited his wife’s “Posthumous Works,” in four volumes, in which appeared the letters to Imlay, and her incomplete novel “The Wrongs of Woman.” His tribute to Mary Godwin’s memory was also published in 1798, under the title of “Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Godwin’s novel, “St. Leon” came out in 1799; his tragedy “Antonio” was produced only to fail, in 1800, and in 1801, he was wooed and won by Mrs. Clairmont, a widow. The Godwin household was a somewhat mixed one, consisting, as it did, of Fanny Imlay, Mary Godwin, Mrs. Godwin’s two children, Charles and Claire Clairmont, and also of William, the only child born of her marriage with Godwin. In 1812 Shelley began a correspondence with Godwin, which ultimately led to Mary Godwin’s elopement with the poet. Poor Fanny Imlay, or Godwin, as she was called after her mother’s death, died at the age of nineteen by her own hand, in October 1816. Her life had been far from happy in this strange household. She had grown to love Shelley, but his choice had fallen on her half-sister, so she bravely kept her secret to herself. One day she suddenly left home and travelled to Swansea, where she was found lying dead the morning after her arrival, in the inn where she had taken a room, “her long brown hair about her face; a bottle of laudanum upon the table, and a note which ran thus: ‘I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare.’ She had with her the little Genevan watch, a gift of travel from Mary and Shelley: and in her purse were a few shillings.”[1]

      Shelley, afterwards recalling his last interview with Fanny in London, wrote this stanza:

      “Her voice did quiver as we parted;

       Yet knew I not that heart was broken

       From whence it came, and I departed

       Heeding not the words then spoken.

       Misery—O Misery,

       This world is all too wide for thee!”

III

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      The vicissitudes to which Mary Wollstonecraft was so largely a prey during her lifetime seem to have pursued her after death. In her own day recognised as a public character, reviled by most of her contemporaries in terms not less ungentle than Horace Walpole’s epithets, “a hyena in petticoats” or “a philosophising serpent,” posterity has proved hardly more lenient to her. But the vigorous work of this “female patriot” has saved her name from that descent into obscurity which is the reward of many men and women more talented than Mary Wollstonecraft. Reputed chiefly as an unsexed being, who had written “A Vindication of СКАЧАТЬ