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Title: Memoirs and Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

Release Date: April 15, 2022 [eBook #67847]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS AND POSTHUMOUS WORKS
OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN ***


[Illustration: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN]




                                MEMOIRS
                                  AND
                            POSTHUMOUS WORKS
                                   OF
                      MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN,
                                 AUTHOR
                                  OF A
                  VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.
                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.


                                DUBLIN:

                     _Printed by Thomas Burnside_,
                   FOR J. RICE, III, GRAFTON-STREET.

                                 1798.




                                CONTENTS
                               OF VOL. I.


        _Memoirs._

        _Letters._

        _Letter on the present Character of the French Nation._

        _Letter on the Management of Infants._

        _Letters to Mr. Johnson._




                                MEMOIRS.




                                CHAP. I.
                               1759–1775.


It has always appeared to me, that to give to the public some account of
the life of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent on
survivors. It seldom happens that such a person passes through life,
without being the subject of thoughtless calumny, or malignant
misrepresentation. It cannot happen that the public at large should be
on a footing with their intimate acquaintance, and be the observer of
those virtues which discover themselves principally in personal
intercourse. Every benefactor of mankind is more or less influenced by a
liberal passion for fame; and survivors only pay a debt due to these
benefactors, when they assert and establish on their part, the honour
they loved. The justice which is thus done to the illustrious dead,
converts into the fairest source of animation and encouragement to those
who would follow them in the same career. The human species at large is
interested in this justice, as it teaches them to place their respect
and affection, upon those qualities which best deserve to be esteemed
and loved. I cannot easily prevail on myself to doubt, that the more
fully we are presented with the picture and story of such persons as are
the subject of the following narrative, the more generally shall we feel
in ourselves an attachment to their fate, and a sympathy in their
excellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character the
public welfare and improvement are more intimately connected, than the
author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken from
the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity and
ingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquainted
with her, entertains a doubt. The writer of this narrative, when he has
met with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interest
and attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquainted
with the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that
had contributed to form their understandings and character. Impelled by
this sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics of
this sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a few
dates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To the
materials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among the
persons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods of
her life.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759. Her father’s
name was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of the
family of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternal
grandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and is
supposed to have left to his son a property of 10,000l. Three of her
brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward, James,
Charles, Eliza, and Everina. Of these, Edward only was older than
herself; he resides in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or near
Philadelphia in America. Her sisters have for some years been engaged in
the office of governesses in private families, and are both at present
in Ireland.

I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession;
but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as an
amusement than a business, to the occupation of farming. He was of a
very active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequently
changed his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of her
birth. She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, lay
between London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principal
scene of the five first years of her life.

Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some portion of that exquisite
sensibility, soundness of understanding, and decision of character,
which were the leading features of her mind through the whole course of
her life. She experienced in the first period of her existence, but few
of those indulgences and marks of affection, which are principally
calculated to sooth the subjection and sorrows of our early years. She
was not the favourite either of her father or mother. Her father was a
man of quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits of
kindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wife
appears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects. The
mother’s partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system of
government relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour.
She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a different
plan with her younger daughters. When in the Wrongs of Woman, Mary
speaks of “the petty cares which obscured the morning of her heroine’s
life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional
submission to orders, which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to be
unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being
obliged often to sit, in the presence of her parents, for three or four
hours together, without daring to utter a word;” she is, I believe, to
be considered as copying the outline of the first period of her own
existence.

But it was in vain that the blighting winds of unkindness or
indifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary’s
mind. It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a person
little considered in the family, she became in some sort its director
and umpire. The despotism of her education cost her many a heart-ache.
She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a
despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that, when she felt
she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead
of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of
reconciling her to herself. The blows of her father on the contrary,
which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of
humbling her, roused her indignation. Upon such occasions she felt her
superiority, and was apt to betray marks of contempt. The quickness of
her father’s temper, led him sometimes to threaten similar violence
towards his wife. When that was the case, Mary would often throw herself
between the despot and his victim, with the purpose to receive upon her
own person the blows that might be directed against her mother. She has
even laid whole nights upon the landing-place near their chamber-door,
when, mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her father might
break out into paroxysms of violence. The conduct he held towards the
members of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towards
animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when
he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial
reasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have
called, “a very good hater.” In some instance of passion exercised by
her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her
emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conduct
during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of
affection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe.

In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to have
had merit. All her children were vigorous and healthy. This seems very
much to depend upon the management of our infant years. It is affirmed
by some persons of the present day, most profoundly skilled in the
sciences of health and disease, that there is no period of human life so
little subject to mortality as the period of infancy. Yet, from the
mismanagement to which children are exposed, many of the diseases of
childhood are rendered fatal, and more persons die in that, than in any
other period of human life. Mary had projected a work upon this subject,
which she had carefully considered, and well understood. She has indeed
left a specimen of her skill in this respect in her eldest daughter,
three years and a half old, who is a singular example of vigorous
constitution and florid health. Mr. Anthony Carlisle, surgeon, of
Soho-square, whom to name is sufficiently to honour, had promised to
revise her production. This is but one out of numerous projects of
activity and usefulness, which her untimely death has fatally
terminated.

The rustic situation in which Mary had spent her infancy, no doubt
contributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution. She sported in
the open air, and amidst the picturesque and refreshing scenes of
nature, for which she always retained the most exquisite relish. Dolls
and the other amusements usually appropriated to female children, she
held in contempt; and felt a much greater propensity to join in the
active and hardy sports of her brothers, than to confine herself to
those of her own sex.

About the time that Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her father
removed to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farm
near the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of the
Chelmsford road. In Michaelmas, 1765, he once more changed his
residence, and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in
Essex, eight miles from London. In this situation some of their nearest
neighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, successively member of
parliament for several boroughs, and his brother, Mr. Joseph Gascoyne.
Bamber Gascoyne resided but little on this spot; but his brother was
almost a constant inhabitant, and his family in habits of the most
frequent intercourse with the family of Mary. Here Mr. Wollstonecraft
remained for three years. In September 1796, I accompanied my wife on a
visit to this spot. No person reviewed with greater sensibility, the
scenes of her childhood. We found the house uninhabited, and the garden
in a wild and ruinous state. She renewed her acquaintance with the
market-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we found
crowded with barges, and full of activity.

In Michaelmas, 1768, Mr. Wollstonecraft again removed to a farm near
Beverly in Yorkshire. Here the family remained for six years, and
consequently, Mary did not quit this residence, till she had attained
the age of fifteen years and five months. The principal part of her
school education passed during this period: but it was not to any
advantage of infant literature, that she was indebted for her subsequent
eminence; her education in this respect was merely such, as was afforded
by the day-schools of the place, in which she resided. To her
recollections Beverly appeared a very handsome town, surrounded by
genteel families, and with a brilliant assembly. She was surprized, when
she visited it in 1795, upon her voyage to Norway, to find the reality
so very much below the picture in her imagination.

Hitherto Mr. Wollstonecraft had been a farmer; but the restlessness of
his disposition would not suffer him to content himself with the
occupation in which for some years he had been engaged, and the
temptation of a commercial speculation of some sort being held out to
him, he removed to a house in Queen’s-Row, in Hoxton near London, for
the purpose of its execution. Here he remained for a year and a half;
but, being frustrated in his expectations of profit, he, after that
term, gave up the project in which he was engaged, and returned to his
former pursuits. During this residence at Hoxton, the writer of these
memoirs inhabited, as a student, at the dissenting college in that
place. It is perhaps a question of curious speculation to enquire, what
would have been the amount of the difference in the pursuits and
enjoyments of each party, if they had met, and considered each other
with the same distinguishing regard in 1776, as they were afterwards
impressed with in the year 1796. The writer had then completed the
twentieth, and Mary the seventeenth year of her age. Which would have
been predominant; the disadvantages of obscurity, and the pressure of a
family; or the gratifications and improvement that might have flowed
from their intercourse?

One of the acquaintances Mary formed at this time was a Mr. Clare, who
inhabited the next house to that which was tenanted by her father, and
to whom she was probably in some degree indebted for the early
cultivation of her mind. Mr. Clare was a clergyman, and appears to have
been a humourist of a very singular cast. In his person he was deformed
and delicate; and his figure, I am told, bore a resemblance to that of
the celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destitute
of taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence,
the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat too
artificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. He
seldom went out of his drawing-room, and he shewed to a friend of Mary a
pair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Mary
frequently spent days and weeks together, at the house of Mr. Clare.




                               CHAP. II.
                               1775–1783.


But a connection more memorable originated about this time, between Mary
and a person of her own sex, for whom she contracted a friendship so
fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her
mind. The name of this person was Frances Blood; she was two years older
than Mary. Her residence was at that time at Newington Butts, a village
near the southern extremity of the metropolis; and the original
instrument for bringing these two friends acquainted, was Mrs. Clare,
wife of the gentleman already mentioned, who was on a footing of
considerable intimacy with both parties. The acquaintance of Fanny, like
that of Mr. Clare, contributed to ripen the immature talents of Mary.

The situation in which Mary was introduced to her, bore a resemblance to
the first interview of Werter with Charlotte. She was conducted to the
door of a small house, but furnished with peculiar neatness and
propriety. The first object that caught her sight, was a young woman of
a slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employed
in feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, but
considerably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received from
this spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded,
she had taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship.

Fanny was a young woman of extraordinary accomplishments. She sung and
played with taste. She drew with exquisite fidelity and neatness; and by
the employment of this talent, for some time maintained her father,
mother, and family, but ultimately ruined her health by her
extraordinary exertions. She read and wrote with considerable
application; and the same ideas of minute and delicate propriety
followed her in these, as in her other occupations.

Mary, a wild, but animated and aspiring girl of sixteen, contemplated
Fanny, in the first instance, with sentiments of inferiority and
reverence. Though they were much together, yet, the distance of their
habitation being considerable, they supplied the want of more frequent
interviews by an assiduous correspondence. Mary found Fanny’s letters
better spelt and better indited than her own, and felt herself abashed.
She had hitherto paid but a superficial attention to literature. She had
read, to gratify the ardor of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge;
but she had not thought of writing as an art. Her ambition to excel was
now awakened, and she applied herself with passion and earnestness.
Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as related to accuracy
and method, her lessons were given with considerable skill.

It has already been mentioned that in the spring of the year 1776, Mr.
Wollstonecroft quitted his situation at Hoxton, and returned to his
former agricultural pursuits. The situation upon which he now fixed was
in Wales, a circumstance that was felt as a severe blow to Mary’s
darling spirit of friendship. The principal acquaintance of the
Wollstonecrofts in this retirement, was the family of a Mr. Allen, two
of whose daughters are since married to the two elder sons of the
celebrated English potter, Josiah Wedgwood.

Wales however was Mr. Wollstonecroft’s residence for little more than a
year. He returned to the neighbourhood of London; and Mary, whose spirit
of independence was unalterable, had influence enough to determine his
choice in favour of the village of Walworth, that she might be near her
chosen friend. It was probably before this, that she has once or twice
started the idea of quitting her parental roof, and providing for
herself. But she was prevailed upon to resign this idea, and conditions
were stipulated with her, relative to her having an apartment in the
house that should be exclusively her own, and her commanding the other
requisites of study. She did not however think herself fairly treated in
these instances, and either the conditions abovementioned, or some
others, were not observed in the sequel, with the fidelity she expected.
In one case, she had procured an eligible situation, and every thing was
settled respecting her removal to it, when the intreaties and tears of
her mother led her to surrender her own inclinations, and abandon the
engagement.

These however were only temporary delays. Her propensities continued the
same, and the motives by which she was instigated were unabated. In the
year 1778, she being nineteen years of age, a proposal was made to her
of living as a companion with a Mrs. Dawson of Bath, a widow lady, with
one son already adult. Upon enquiry she found that Mrs. Dawson was a
woman of great peculiarity of temper, that she had had a great variety
of companions in succession, and that no one had found it practicable to
continue with her. Mary was not discouraged by this information, and
accepted the situation, with a resolution that she would effect in this
respect, what none of her predecessors had been able to do. In the
sequel she had reason to consider the account she had received as
sufficiently accurate, but she did not relax in her endeavours. By
method, constancy and firmness, she found the means of making her
situation tolerable; and Mrs. Dawson would occasionally confess, that
Mary was the only person that had lived with her in that situation, in
her treatment of whom she felt herself under any restraint.

With Mrs. Dawson she continued to reside for two years, and only left
her, summoned by the melancholy circumstance of her mother’s rapidly
declining health. True to the calls of humanity, Mary felt in this
intelligence an irresistible motive, and eagerly returned to the
paternal roof which she had before resolutely quitted. The residence of
her father at this time, was at Enfield near London. He had, I believe,
given up agriculture from the time of his quitting Wales, it appearing
that he now made it less a source of profit than loss, and being thought
advisable that he should rather live upon the interest of his property
already in possession.

The illness of Mrs. Wollstonecroft was lingering, but hopeless. Mary was
assiduous in her attendance upon her mother. At first, every attention
was received with acknowledgements and gratitude; but, as the attentions
grew habitual, and the health of the mother more and more wretched, they
were rather exacted, than received. Nothing would be taken by the
unfortunate patient, but from the hands of Mary; rest was denied night
or day, and by the time nature was exhausted in the parent, the daughter
was qualified to assume her place, and become in turn herself a patient.
The last words her mother ever uttered were, “A little patience, and all
will be over!” and these words are repeatedly referred to by Mary in the
course of her writings.

Upon the death of Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mary bid a final adieu to the
roof of her father. According to my memorandum, I find her next the
inmate of Fanny at Walham-Green, near the village of Fulham. Upon what
plan they now lived together, I am unable to ascertain; certainly not
that of Mary’s becoming in any degree an additional burthen upon the
industry of her friend. Thus situated, their intimacy ripened; they
approached more nearly to a footing of equality; and their attachment
became more rooted and active.

Mary was ever ready at the call of distress, and, in particular, during
her whole life was eager and active to promote the welfare of every
member of her family. In 1780 she attended the death-bed of her mother;
in 1782 she was summoned by a not less melancholy occasion, to attend
her sister Eliza, married to a Mr. Bishop, who, subsequently to a
dangerous lying-in, remained for some months in a very afflicting
situation. Mary continued with her sister without intermission, to her
perfect recovery.




                               CHAP. III.
                               1783–1785.


Mary was now arrived at the twenty-fourth year of her age. Her project,
five years before, had been personal independence; it was now
usefulness. In the solitude of attendance on her sister’s illness, and
during the subsequent convalescence, she had leisure to ruminate upon
purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek something more
arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and the sensibility
of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitary gratifications.
The derangement of her father’s affairs daily became more and more
glaring; and a small independent provision made for herself and her
sisters appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck. For ten years,
from 1782 to 1792, she may be said to have been, in a great degree, the
victim of a desire to promote the benefit of others. She did not foresee
the severe disappointment with which an exclusive purpose of this sort
is pregnant; she was inexperienced enough to lay a stress upon the
consequent gratitude of those she benefited; and she did not
sufficiently consider that, in proportion as we involve ourselves in the
interests and society of others, we acquire a more exquisite sense of
their defects, and are tormented with their untractableness and folly.

The project upon which she now determined, was no other than that of a
day-school, to be superintended by Fanny Blood, herself, and her two
sisters.

They accordingly opened one in the year 1783, at the village of
Islington; but in the course of a few months removed it to Newington
Green. Here Mary formed some acquaintances who influenced the future
events of her life. The first of these in her own estimation was Dr.
Richard Price, well known for his political and mathematical
calculations, and universally esteemed by those who knew him, for the
simplicity of his manners, and the ardour of his benevolence. The regard
conceived by these two persons for each other, was mutual, and partook
of a spirit of the purest attachment. Mary had been bred in the
principles of the church of England, but her esteem for this venerable
preacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions.
Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and,
as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the
niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached
itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible
delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the
imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a
vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an
animating soul. When she walked amidst the wonders of nature, she was
accustomed to converse with her God. To her mind he was pictured as not
less amiable, generous and kind, than great, wise and exalted. In fact,
she had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion
was almost entirely of her own creation. But she was not on that account
the less attached to it, or the less scrupulous in discharging what she
considered as its duties. She could not recollect the time when she had
believed the doctrine of future punishments. The tenets of her system
were the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion therefore had
always been a gratification, never a terror to her. She expected a
future state; but she would not allow her ideas of that future state to
be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. From this
sketch, it is sufficiently evident, that the pleasure she took in an
occasional attendance upon the sermons of Dr. Price, was not accompanied
with a superstitious adherence to his doctrines. The fact is, that, so
far down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship, for
the most part according to the forms of the church of England. After
that period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time was
wholly discontinued. I believe it may be admitted as a maxim, that no
person of a well furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit
subjection of youth, and is not the zealous partisan of a sect, can
bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons
and prayers.

Another of the friends she acquired at this period, was Mrs. Burgh,
widow of the author of the Political Disquisitions, a woman universally
well spoken of for the warmth and purity of her benevolence. Mary,
whenever she had occasion to allude to her, to the last period of her
life, paid the tribute due to her virtues. The only remaining friend
necessary to be enumerated in this place, is the Rev. John Hewlet, now
master of a Boarding-school at Schecklewel near Hackney, whom I shall
have occasion to mention hereafter.

I have already said that Fanny’s health had been materially injured by
her incessant labours for the maintenance of her family. She had also
suffered a disappointment, which preyed upon her mind. To these
different sources of ill health she became gradually a victim: and at
length discovered all the symptoms of a pulmonary consumption. By the
medical men that attended her, she was advised to try the effects of a
southern climate; and, about the beginning of the year 1785, sailed for
Lisbon.

The first feeling with which Mary had contemplated her friend, was a
sentiment of inferiority and reverence; but that, from the operation of
a ten years’ acquaintance, was considerably changed. Fanny had
originally been far before her in literary attainments; this disparity
no longer existed. In whatever degree Mary might endeavour to free
herself from the delusions of self-esteem, this period of observation
upon her own mind and that of her friend, could not pass, without her
perceiving that there were some essential characteristics of genius,
which she possessed, and in which her friend was deficient. The
principal of these was a firmness of mind, an unconquerable greatness of
soul, by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed to
rise above difficulties and suffering. Whatever Mary undertook, she
perhaps in all instances accomplished; and, to her lofty spirit,
scarcely any thing she desired, appeared hard to perform. Fanny, on the
contrary, was a woman of a timid and irresolute nature, accustomed to
yield to difficulties, and probably priding herself in this morbid
softness of her temper. One instance that I have heard Mary relate of
this sort, was, that, at a certain time, Fanny, dissatisfied with her
domestic situation, expressed an earnest desire to have a home of her
own. Mary, who felt nothing more pressing than to relieve the
inconveniencies of her friend, determined to accomplish this object for
her. It cost her infinite exertions; but at length she was able to
announce to Fanny that a house was prepared, and that she was on the
spot to receive her. The answer which Fanny returned to the letter of
her friend, consisted almost wholly of an enumeration of objections to
the quitting her family, which she had not thought of before, but which
now appeared to her of considerable weight.

The judgment which experience had taught Mary to form of the mind of her
friend, determined her in the advice she gave, at the period to which I
have brought down the story. Fanny was recommended to seek a softer
climate, but she had no funds to defray the expence of such an
undertaking. At this time Mr. Hugh Skeys of Dublin, but then resident in
the kingdom of Portugal, paid his addresses to her. The state of her
health Mary considered such as scarcely to afford the shadow of a hope;
it was not therefore a time at which it was most obvious to think of
marriage. She conceived however that nothing should be omitted, which
might alleviate, if it could not cure; and accordingly urged her speedy
acceptance of the proposal. Fanny accordingly made the voyage to Lisbon;
and the marriage took place on the twenty-fourth of February 1785.

The change of climate and situation was productive of little benefit;
and the life of Fanny was only prolonged by a period of pregnancy, which
soon declared itself. Mary, in the mean time, was impressed with the
idea that her friend would die in this distant country; and, shocked
with the recollection of her separation from the circle of her friends,
determined to pass over to Lisbon to attend her. This resolution was
treated by her acquaintance as in the utmost degree visionary; but she
was not to be diverted from her point. She had not money to defray her
expences: she must quit for a long time the school, the very existence
of which probably depended upon her exertions.

No person was ever better formed for the business of education; if it be
not a sort of absurdity to speak of a person as formed for an inferior
object, who is in possession of talents, in the fullest degree adequate
to something on a more important and comprehensive scale. Mary had a
quickness of temper, not apt to take offence with inadvertencies, but
which led her to imagine that she saw the mind of the person with whom
she had any transaction, and to refer the principle of her approbation
or displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. She
was occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she
strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave
a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed.
Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was
barbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not very
rigid in her censure of error.

But, to whatever the defects of her temper might amount, they were never
exercised upon her inferiors in station or age. She scorned to make use
of an ungenerous advantage, or to wound the defenceless. To her servants
there never was a mistress more considerate or more kind. With children
she was the mirror of patience. Perhaps, in all her extensive experience
upon the subject of education, she never betrayed one symptom of
irascibility. Her heart was the seat of every benevolent feeling; and
accordingly, in all her intercourse with children, it was kindness and
sympathy alone that prompted her conduct. Sympathy, when it mounts to a
certain height, inevitably begets affection in the person to whom it is
exercised; and I have heard her say, that she never was concerned in the
education of one child, who was not personally attached to her, and
earnestly concerned not to incur her displeasure. Another eminent
advantage she possessed in the business of education, was that she was
little troubled with scepticism and uncertainty. She saw, as it were by
intuition, the path which her mind determined to pursue, and had a firm
confidence in her own power to effect what she desired. Yet, with all
this, she had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy. She carefully watched
symptoms as they rose, and the success of her experiments; and governed
herself accordingly. While I thus enumerate her more than maternal
qualities, it is impossible not to feel a pang at the recollection of
her orphan children!

Though her friends earnestly dissuaded her from the journey to Lisbon,
she found among them a willingness to facilitate the execution of her
project, when it was once fixed. Mrs. Burgh in particular, supplied her
with money, which however she always conceived came from Dr. Price. This
loan, I have reason to believe, was faithfully repaid.

It was during her residence at Newington Green, that she was introduced
to the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who was at that time considered as
in some sort the father of English literature. The doctor treated her
with particular kindness and attention, had a long conversation with
her, and desired her to repeat her visit often. This she firmly purposed
to do; but the news of his last illness, and then of his death,
intervened to prevent her making a second visit.

Her residence in Lisbon was not long. She arrived but a short time
before her friend was prematurely delivered, and the event was fatal to
both mother and child. Frances Blood, hitherto the chosen object of
Mary’s attachment, died on the 29th of November, 1785.

It is thus that she speaks of her in her letters from Norway, written
ten years after her decease. “When a warm heart has received strong
impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and
the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly
retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I
have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every
nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear
friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear
her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath.”




                               CHAP. IV.
                               1785–1787.


No doubt the voyage to Lisbon tended considerably to enlarge the
understanding of Mary. She was admitted into the best company the
English factory afforded. She made many profound observations on the
character of the natives, and the baleful effects of superstition. The
obsequies of Fanny, which it was necessary to perform by stealth and in
darkness, tended to invigorate these observations in her mind.

She sailed upon her voyage home about the twentieth of December. On this
occasion a circumstance occurred, that deserves to be recorded. While
they were on their passage, they fell in with a French vessel, in great
distress, and in daily expectation of foundering at sea, at the same
time that it was almost destitute of provisions. The Frenchman hailed
them, and intreated the English captain, in consideration of his
melancholy situation, to take him and his crew on board. The Englishman
represented in reply, that his stock of provisions was by no means
adequate to such an additional number of mouths, and absolutely refused
compliance. Mary, shocked at his apparent insensibility, took up the
cause of the sufferers, and threatened the captain to have him called to
a severe account, when he arrived in England. She finally prevailed, and
had the satisfaction to reflect, that the persons in question possibly
owed their lives to her interposition.

When she arrived in England, she found that her school had suffered
considerably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, to
say that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not only
excelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent of
being attentive and obliging to the parents, without degrading herself.

The period at which I am now arrived is important, as conducting to the
first step of her literary career. Mr. Hewlet had frequently mentioned
literature to Mary as a certain source of pecuniary produce, and had
urged her to make trial of the truth of his judgment. At this time she
was desirous of assisting the father and mother of Fanny in an object
they had in view, the transporting themselves to Ireland; and, as usual,
what she desired in a pecuniary view, she was ready to take on herself
to effect. For this purpose she wrote a duodecimo pamphlet of one
hundred and sixty pages, entitled, Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters. Mr. Hewlet obtained from the bookseller, Mr. Johnson in St.
Paul’s Church Yard, ten guineas for the copy-right of this manuscript,
which she immediately applied to the object for the sake of which the
pamphlet was written.

Every thing urged Mary to put an end to the affair of the school. She
was dissatisfied with the different appearance it presented upon her
return, from the state in which she left it. Experience impressed upon
her a rooted aversion to that sort of cohabitation with her sisters,
which the project of the school imposed. Cohabitation is a point of
delicate experiment, and is, in a majority of instances, pregnant with
ill humour and unhappiness. The activity and ardent spirit of adventure
which characterized Mary, were not felt in an equal degree by her
sisters, so that a disproportionate share of every burthen attendant
upon the situation, fell to her lot. On the other hand, they could
scarcely perhaps be perfectly easy, in observing the superior degree of
deference and courtship, which her merit extorted from almost every one
that knew her. Her kindness for them was not diminished, but she
resolved that the mode of its exertion in future should be different,
tending to their benefit, without intrenching upon her own liberty.

Thus circumstanced, a proposal was made her, such as, regarding only the
situations through which she had lately passed, is usually termed
advantageous. This was, to accept the office of governess to the
daughters of Lord Viscount Kingsborough, eldest son to the Earl of
Kingston of the kingdom of Ireland. The terms held out to her, were such
as she determined to accept, at the same time resolving to retain the
situation only for a short time. Independence was the object after which
she thirsted, and she was fixed to try whether it might not be found in
literary occupation. She was desirous however first to accumulate a
small sum of money, which should enable her to consider at leisure the
different literary engagements that might offer, and provide in some
degree for the eventual deficiency of her earliest attempts.

The situation in the family of Lord Kingsborough, was offered to her
through the medium of the Rev. Mr. Prior, at that time one of the under
masters of Eton school. She spent some time at the house of this
gentleman, immediately after her giving up the school at Newington
Green. Here she had an opportunity of making an accurate observation
upon the manners and conduct of that celebrated seminary, and the ideas
she retained of it were by no means favourable. By all that she saw, she
was confirmed in a very favourite opinion of her’s, in behalf of
day-schools, where, as she expressed it, “children have the opportunity
of conversing with children, without interfering with domestic
affections, the foundation of virtue.”

Though her residence in the family of Lord Kingsborough continued
scarcely more than twelve months, she left behind her, with them and
their connections, a very advantageous impression. The governesses the
young ladies had hitherto had, were only a species of upper servants,
controlled in every thing by the mother; Mary insisted upon the
unbounded exercise of her own discretion. When the young ladies heard of
their governess coming from England, they heard in imagination of a new
enemy, and declared their resolution to guard themselves accordingly.
Mary however speedily succeeded in gaining their confidence, and the
friendship that soon grew up between her and Margaret King, now Countess
Mount Cashel, the eldest daughter, was in an uncommon degree cordial and
affectionate. Mary always spoke of this young lady in terms of the
truest applause, both in relation to the eminence of her intellectual
powers, and the ingenuous amiableness of her disposition. Lady
Kingsborough, from the best motives, had imposed upon her daughters a
variety of prohibitions, both as to the books they should read, and in
many other respects. These prohibitions had their usual effects;
inordinate desire for the things forbidden, and clandestine indulgence.
Mary immediately restored the children to their liberty, and undertook
to govern them by their affections only. The salutary effects of the new
system of education were speedily visible; and Lady Kingsborough soon
felt no other uneasiness than lest the children should love their
governess better than their mother.

Mary made many friends in Ireland, among the persons who visited Lord
Kingsborough’s house, for she always appeared there with the air of an
equal, and not of a dependent. I have heard her mention the ludicrous
distress of a woman of quality, whose name I have forgotten, that, in a
large company, singled out Mary, and entered into a long conversation
with her. After the conversation was over, she enquired whom she had
been talking with, and found, to her utter mortification and dismay,
that it was Miss King’s governess.

One of the persons among her Irish acquaintance, whom Mary was
accustomed to speak of with the highest respect, was Mr. George Ogle,
member of parliament for the county of Wexford. She held his talents in
very high estimation; she was strongly prepossessed in favour of the
goodness of his heart; and she always spoke of him as the most perfect
gentleman she had ever known. She felt the regret of a disappointed
friend, at the part he has lately taken in the politics of Ireland.

Lord Kingsborough’s family passed the summer of the year 1787 at Bristol
Hot-Wells, and had formed the project of proceeding from thence to the
Continent, a tour in which Mary purposed to accompany them. The plan
however was ultimately given up, and Mary in consequence closed her
connection with them, earlier than she otherwise had purposed to do.

At Bristol Hot-Wells she composed the little book which bears the title
of Mary, a Fiction. A considerable part of this story consists, with
certain modifications, of the incidents of her own friendship with
Fanny. All the events that do not relate to that subject are fictitious.

This little work, if Mary had never produced any thing else, would
serve, with persons of true taste and sensibility, to establish the
eminence of her genius. The story is nothing. He that looks into the
book only for incident, will probably lay it down with disgust. But the
feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance
is adorned with that species of imagination, which enlists itself under
the banners of delicacy and sentiment. A work of sentiment, as it is
called, is too often another name for a work of affectation. He that
should imagine that the sentiments of this book are affected, would
indeed be entitled to our profoundest commiseration.




                                CHAP. V.
                               1787–1790.


Being now determined to enter upon her literary plan, Mary came
immediately from Bristol to the metropolis. Her conduct under this
circumstance was such as to do credit both to her own heart, and that of
Mr. Johnson, her publisher, between whom and herself there now commenced
an intimate friendship. She had seen him upon occasion of publishing her
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and she addressed two or three
letters to him during her residence in Ireland. Upon her arrival in
London in August 1787, she went immediately to his house, and frankly
explained to him her purpose, at the same time requesting his assistance
and advice as to its execution. After a short conversation Mr. Johnson
invited her to make his house her home, till she should have suited
herself with a fixed residence. She accordingly resided at this time two
or three weeks under his roof. At the same period she paid a visit or
two of similar duration to some friends, at no great distance from the
metropolis.

At Michaelmas 1787, she entered upon a house in George-street, on the
Surry side of Black Friar’s Bridge, which Mr. Johnson had provided for
her during her excursion into the country. The three years immediately
ensuing, may be said, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, to have
been the most active period of her life. She brought with her to this
habitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press,
and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave of
Fancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I am
told that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits,
and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. A
period of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but it
was possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, that renewed her
sorrows in their original force. Soon after entering upon her new
habitation, she produced a little work, entitled, Original Stories from
Real Life, intended for the use of children. At the commencement of her
literary career, she is said to have conceived a vehement aversion to
the being regarded, by her ordinary acquaintance, in the character of an
author, and to have employed some precautions to prevent its occurrence.

The employment which the bookseller suggested to her, as the easiest and
most certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation.
With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she had
previously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian and
German languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at this
time, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. She
new-modelled and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled,
Young Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book,
called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe,
anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extracts
in verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield’s Speaker, which bears
the title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worth
mentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different name in the
title-page.

About the middle of the year 1788, Mr. Johnson instituted the Analytical
Review, in which Mary took a considerable share. She also translated
Necker on the Importance of Religious opinions; made an abridgement of
Lavater’s Physiognomy, from the French, which has never been published;
and compressed Salzmann’s Elements of Morality, a German production,
into a publication in three volumes duodecimo. The translation of
Salzmann produced a correspondence between Mary and the author; and he
afterwards repaid the obligation to her in kind, by a German translation
of the Rights of Woman. Such were her principal literary occupations,
from the autumn of 1787, to the autumn of 1790.

It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneous
literary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp and
contract, than to enlarge and invigorate the genius. The writer is
accustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose of
the day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretly
conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to
reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the
man never yet existed who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full
vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with
the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced
during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit
themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its
commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally
interspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my own
feelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended to
awaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described.

I have already said that one of the purposes which Mary had conceived, a
few years before, as necessary to give a relish to the otherwise
insipid, or embittered, draught of human life, was usefulness. On this
side, the period of her existence of which I am now treating, is more
brilliant, than in any literary view. She determined to apply as great a
part as possible of the produce of her present employments, to the
assistance of her friends and of the distressed; and, for this purpose,
laid down to herself rules of the most rigid economy. She began with
endeavouring to promote the interest of her sisters. She conceived that
there was no situation in which she could place them, at once so
respectable and agreeable, as that of governesses in private families.
She determined therefore in the first place, to endeavour to qualify
them for such an undertaking. Her younger sister she sent to Paris,
where she remained near two years. The elder she placed in a school near
London, first as a parlour-boarder, and afterwards as a teacher. Her
brother James, who had already been at sea, she first took into her
house, and next sent to Woolwich for instruction, to qualify him for a
respectable situation in the royal navy, where he was shortly after made
a lieutenant. Charles, who was her favourite brother, had been articled
to the eldest, an attorney in the Minories; but, not being satisfied
with his situation, she removed him; and in some time after, having
first placed him with a farmer for instruction, she fitted him out for
America, where his speculations, founded upon the basis she had
provided, are said to have been extremely prosperous. The reason so much
of this parental sort of care fell upon her, was, that her father had by
this time considerably embarrassed his circumstances. His affairs having
grown too complex for himself to disentangle, he had entrusted them to
the management of a near relation; but Mary, not being satisfied with
the conduct of the business, took them into her own hands. The exertions
she made, and the struggles which she entered into however, in this
instance, were ultimately fruitless. To the day of her death her father
was almost wholly supported by funds which she supplied to him. In
addition to her exertions for her own family, she took a young girl of
about seven years of age under her protection and care, the niece of
Mrs. John Hunter, and of the present Mrs. Skeys, for whose mother, then
lately dead, she had entertained a sincere friendship.

The period, from the end of the year 1787 to the end of the year 1790,
though consumed in labours of little eclat, served still further to
establish her in a friendly connection from which she derived many
pleasures. Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, contracted a great personal
regard for her, which resembled in many respects that of a parent. As
she frequented his house, she of course became acquainted with his
guests. Among these may be mentioned as persons possessing her esteem,
Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, the late Mr. George Anderson,
accountant to the board of control, Dr. George Fordyce, and Mr. Fuseli,
the celebrated painter. Between both of the two latter and herself,
there existed sentiments of genuine affection and friendship.




                               CHAP. VI.
                               1790–1792.


Hitherto the literary career of Mary, had for the most part, been
silent; and had been productive of income to herself, without apparently
leading to the wreath of fame. From this time she was destined to
attract the notice of the public, and perhaps no female writer ever
obtained so great a degree of celebrity throughout Europe.

It cannot be doubted that, while, for three years of literary
employment, she “held the noiseless tenor of her way,” her mind was
insensibly advancing towards a vigorous maturity. The uninterrupted
habit of composition gave a freedom and firmness to the expression of
her sentiments. The society she frequented, nourished her understanding,
and enlarged her mind. The French revolution, while it gave a
fundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of the
globe, did not fail to produce a conspicuous effect in the progress of
Mary’s reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered a
vehement concussion. Her respect for establishments was undermined. At
this period occurred a misunderstanding upon public grounds, with one of
her early friends, whose attachment to musty creeds and exploded
absurdities, had been increased, by the operation of those very
circumstances, by which her mind had been rapidly advanced in the race
of independence.

The event, immediately introductory to the rank which from this time she
held in the lists of literature, was the publication of Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book, after having been
long promised to the world, finally made its appearance on the first of
November 1790; and Mary, full of sentiments of liberty, and impressed
with a warm interest in the struggle that was now going on, seized her
pen in the first bursts of indignation, an emotion of which she was
strongly susceptible. She was in the habit of composing with rapidity,
and her answer, which was the first of the numerous ones that appeared,
obtained extraordinary notice. Marked as it is with the vehemence and
impetuousness of its eloquence, it is certainly chargeable with a too
contemptuous and intemperate treatment of the great man against whom its
attack is directed. But this circumstance was not injurious to the
success of the publication. Burke had been warmly loved by the most
liberal and enlightened friends of freedom, and they were proportionably
inflamed and disgusted by the fury of his assault, upon what they deemed
to be its sacred cause.

Short as was the time in which Mary composed her Answer to Burke’s
Reflections, there was one anecdote she told me concerning it, which
seems worth recording in this place. It was sent to the press, as is the
general practice when the early publication of a piece is deemed a
matter of importance, before the composition was finished. When Mary had
arrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporary
fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking. In
this state of mind, she called, one evening, as she was in the practice
of doing, upon her publisher, for the purpose of relieving herself by an
hour or two’s conversation. Here, the habitual ingenuousness of her
nature, led her to describe what had just past in her thoughts. Mr.
Johnson immediately, in a kind and friendly way, intreated her not to
put any constraint upon her inclination, and to give herself no
uneasiness about the sheets already printed, which he would cheerfully
throw a side, if it would contribute to her happiness. Mary had wanted
stimulus. She had not expected to be encouraged, in what she well knew
to be an unreasonable access of idleness. Her friend’s so readily
falling in with her ill humour, and seeming to expect that she would lay
aside her undertaking, piqued her pride. She immediately went home; and
proceeded to the end of her work, with no other interruptions but what
were absolutely indispensible.

It is probable that the applause which attended her Answer to Burke,
elevated the tone of her mind. She had always felt much confidence in
her own powers; but it cannot be doubted, that the actual perception of
a similar feeling respecting us in a multitude of others, must increase
the confidence, and stimulate the adventure of any human being. Mary
accordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of her
most celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be
found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion.
She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the
human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of
time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost
sunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they were
often attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the love
of slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the more
fully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex in the language of
Calista, as

              “In every state of life the slaves of men:”

the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and
a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the
acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from
the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she
entertained of the subject; and such the feelings with which she warmed
her mind.

The work is certainly a very bold and original production. The strength
and firmness with which the author repels the opinions of Rousseau, Dr.
Gregory, and Dr. James Fordyce, respecting the condition of women,
cannot but make a strong impression upon every ingenuous reader. The
public at large formed very different opinions respecting the character
of the performance. Many of the sentiments are undoubtedly of a rather
masculine description. The spirited and decisive way in which the author
explodes the system of gallantry, and the species of homage with which
the sex is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced a
sentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of injustice.
The pretty soft creatures that are so often to be found in the female
sex, and that class of men who believe they could not exist without such
pretty, soft creatures to resort to, were in arms against the author of
so heretical and blasphemous a doctrine. There are also, it must be
confessed, occasional passages of a stern and rugged feature,
incompatible with the true stamina of the writer’s character. But, if
they did not belong to her fixed and permanent character, they belonged
to her character _pro tempore_; and what she thought, she scorned to
qualify.

Yet, along with this rigid, and somewhat amazonian temper, which
characterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark a
luxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, which
would have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of an
Armida and a Dido.

The contradiction, to the public apprehension was equally great, as to
the person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper of
the book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouring
to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted
to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy,
muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when,
instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in
the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners.

The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal
performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When
tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it
can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human
productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and
the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it
will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of
this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary
Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more
substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other
writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the
behalf of oppressed and injured beauty.

The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance,
will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this
inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in
which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks.

It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship
that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of
the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of
the republic of Switzerland, and has spent the principal part of his
life in the island of Great Britain. The eminence of his genius can
scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the
least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his
contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics of
genius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The work
in which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for the
illustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solely
upon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed his
whole life had not sufficiently proved it.

Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson’s oldest friends, and was at this time
in the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one of
whose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasure
she felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto never
been acquainted, with an eminent painter. The being thus introduced
therefore to the society of Mr. Fuseli, was a high gratification to her;
while he found in Mary, a person perhaps more susceptible of the
emotions painting is calculated to excite, than any other with whom he
ever conversed. Painting, and subjects closely connected with painting,
were their almost constant topics of conversation; and they found them
inexhaustible. It cannot be doubted, but that this was a species of
exercise very conducive to the improvement of Mary’s mind.

Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr.
Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some
of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to
literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from
keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that
belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the
favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with
Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton,
Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The
nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean
Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a
favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the
opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau’s conception
of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness
of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at
improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt
and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of
genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of
the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius
are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no
subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat
of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search,
in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary
came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she
went into it.

But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary,
and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli
frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it
was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to
frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned.
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 cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her
principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her
best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an
opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It
was her maxim, “that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not
the senses the imagination.” In other words, that whatever related to
the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a
pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She
regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that
respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue
would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and
the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.—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. As it was,
she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.

In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store-street,
Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
always scrupulously observed, a certain degree of elegance, and those
temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.

It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
relates. He dined with her at a friend’s, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
never before conversed.

The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. 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
characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on
the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable 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 characters 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.

In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she
continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal
inducements to this step, 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 favoured 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 band 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.

It is singular, that during her residence in Store-street, which lasted
more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in
the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed
upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind
her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have
had this destination.




                               CHAP. VII.
                               1792–1795.


The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no
precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in
view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did
not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to
some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke
merely of an absence of six weeks.

It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem
to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of
strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of
receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the
country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had
been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at
the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded
only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own
colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of
Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she
forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her
posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it
is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at
that time pervaded her mind.

Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in
Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a
very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of
a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in
Paris. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardent
commendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the force
of his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. It
is almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquainted
with the majority of the leaders in the French revolution.

But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time,
was that of Mr. Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits were
mercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. With
Mrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate than with her husband.

It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792,
that she entered into that species of connection, for which her heart
secretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate
tranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The person with whom it
was formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy, to attempt to
suppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation of Mary
has reached,) was Mr. Gilbert Imlay, native of the United States of
North America.

The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr.
Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions he
then excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that,
for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentiment
however speedily gave place to one of the greatest kindness.

Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she had determined
upon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy.
But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probably
the intercourse that now originated between her and Mr. Imlay, that
changed her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, a
village three miles from Paris.—Her habitation here was a solitary house
in the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants than herself and the
gardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of a
domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed.
The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before
her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she
could not without the greatest difficulty obtain, when she had any
person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and for
the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French
Revolution[1], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of the
observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written
with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been
commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a
walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavoured
to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders
that had been committed there.

Footnote 1:

  No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been found
  among the papers of the author.

The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, had neither
confidant nor adviser.—She always conceived it to be a gross breach of
delicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, an
affair of the heart. The origin of the connection was about the middle
of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for four
months. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred that
induced her to declare it. The French convention, exasperated at the
conduct of the British government, particularly in the affair of Toulon,
formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article of
which the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till the
period of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr.
Imlay who, at the time their connection was formed, had no property
whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family
embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him
answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. She
however considered their engagement as of the most sacred nature; and
they had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon as
they should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the mode they
desired. The decree however that I have just mentioned, made it
necessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Mary
should take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of their
connection, she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a
certificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native of
that country.

Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under
the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris.

Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding
years, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the most
substantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by
the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few
of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of
childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe
cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the
confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon
womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her
mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her
exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself,
had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had
hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny,
had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and
premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she
was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as
unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father’s fortune. In this
affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral
indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist
almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally,
when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly
imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she
perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind
fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only
served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her.

Some persons may be inclined to observe, that the evils here enumerated,
are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. But
evils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffers
them, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard and
insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointless
and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who,
from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted to
look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall,
immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness,
the same hope, and the same gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we not
unfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite and
delicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture to
encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is
transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is
finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in
this respect a female Werter.

She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to
take refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however be
imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste
for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of
fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and
she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She
was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again
with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its
happiest age.—She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and
sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and
smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with
universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to
day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well
recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost
every one that beheld it.

Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles
she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection,
which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like
her’s was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of
Mr. Imlay’s “tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round her
heart;” and she “indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some
tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported.” This
was “talking a new language to her;” but, “conscious that she was not a
parasite-plant,” she was willing to encourage and foster the
luxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love was
unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life, she gave a loose to all
the sensibilities of her nature.

Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlay
gained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child.

Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon as
formed, by the circumstance of Mr. Imlay’s entering into business, urged
as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being a favourable
crisis in French affairs for commercial speculations. The pursuits in
which he was engaged, led him in the month of September to Havre de
Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend the shipping of
goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other person or
persons. Mary remained in the capital.

The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial.
Domestic affections constituted the object upon which her heart was
fixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay “did not
attach those tender emotions round the idea of home,” which, every time
they recurred, dimmed her eyes with moisture. She had expected his
return from week to week, and from month to month; but a succession of
business still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time the
sanguinary character which the government of France began every day more
decisively to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the first
months of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one day
to enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the Place de Louis Quinze), when
an execution, attended with some peculiar aggravations, had just taken
place, and the blood of the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement.
The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while a
prudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hasten
and hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, the
anguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Verginaud, and the
twenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had ever
experienced.

Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined,
in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her,
though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing cruelties
of Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, rather
than the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated.

From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with great
harmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, was
born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of the
dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from her
memory.

In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port of
London. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, he
endeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take up
her abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence,
the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was removed. Mr.
Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and it
proved the most fatiguing journey she ever made; the carriage, in which
she travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havre
and Paris.

This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had
removed to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have a short
duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. It
proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such
a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them
upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method
in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung
upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by
force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not
suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and
elasticity of her character.

The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one
advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities
that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional
three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very
dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than
dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was
wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is
continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring
hope.

Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?
Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate
itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment,
without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is
capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this
chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit
to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has
fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable
opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly sought for a kindred mind,
in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertook
to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete
separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the
strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion.
Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment
that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the
mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship and
attachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and,
“like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all his
tribe.[2]”

Footnote 2:

  A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particular
  gratification, was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become a
  fugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and
  in whom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging
  to her, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart.




                              CHAP. VIII.
                               1795–1796.


In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to do
so by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her in
the journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements for
her departure. But, notwithstanding these favourable appearances, she
came to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all the
uncertainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestions
of hope.

The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified.
Mr. Imlay had already formed another connection; as it is said, with a
young actress from a strolling company of players. His attentions
therefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had but
little of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetrating
glance. He ascribed it to pressure of business, and some pecuniary
embarrassments which, at that time, occurred to him; it was of little
consequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, though
she strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever.

It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortification
than Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April to
the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for
her. She had come over to England, a country for which she, at this
time, expressed “a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror,” in
search of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogether
escaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatience
which Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When she
saw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable of
forming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after an
interval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of this
sort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on such
occasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in the emotions
of an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedily
blasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay, was cold and embarrassed.
Discussions (“explanations” they were called) followed; cruel
explanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart already
overwhelmed in grief! They had small pretensions indeed to explicitness;
but they sufficiently told, that the case admitted not of remedy.

Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressing
emergency. “Love, dear, delusive!” as she expressed herself to a friend
some time afterwards, “rigorous reason had forced her to resign; and now
her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to be
contented with rational enjoyments.” Thus situated, life became an
intolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she could talk
of purposes of separation and independence. But, now that they were in
the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to revive
their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continually added
fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperate purpose to
die.

This part of the story of Mary is involved in considerable obscurity. I
only know, that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose, at a
moment when he was uncertain whether or no it were 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. Actuated by this purpose,
she took a resolution, worthy both of the strength and affectionateness
of her mind. Mr. Imlay was involved in a question of considerable
difficulty, respecting a mercantile adventure in Norway. It seemed to
require the presence of some very judicious agent, to conduct the
business to its desired termination. Mary determined to make the voyage,
and take the business into her own hands. Such a voyage seemed the most
desireable thing to recruit her health, and, if possible, her spirits,
in the present crisis. It was also gratifying to her feelings, to be
employed in promoting the interest of a man, from whom she had
experienced such severe unkindness, but to whom she ardently desired to
be reconciled. The moment of desperation I have mentioned, occurred in
the close of May, and, in about a week after, she set out upon this new
expedition.

The narrative of this voyage is before the world, and perhaps a book of
travels that so irresistibly seizes on the heart, never, in any other
instance, found its way from the press. The occasional harshness and
ruggedness of character, that diversify her Vindication of the Rights of
Woman, here totally disappear. If ever there was a book calculated to
make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and
dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius
which commands all our admiration. Affliction had tempered her heart to
a softness almost more than human; and the gentleness of her spirit
seems precisely to accord with all the romance of unbounded attachment.

Thus softened and improved, thus fraught with imagination and
sensibility, with all, and more than all, “that youthful poets fancy,
when they love,” she returned to England, and, if he had so pleased, to
the arms of her former lover. Her return was hastened by the ambiguity,
to her apprehension, of Mr. Imlay’s conduct. He had promised to meet her
upon her return from Norway, probably at Hamburgh; and they were then to
pass some time in Switzerland. The style however of his letters to her
during her tour, was not such as to inspire confidence; and she wrote to
him very urgently, to explain himself, relative to the footing upon
which they were hereafter to stand to each other. In his answer, which
reached her at Hamburgh, he treated her questions as “extraordinary and
unnecessary,” and desired her to be at the pains to decide for herself.
Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantly
determined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that she
might thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon her
soul.

It was not long after her arrival in London in the commencement of
October, that she attained the certainty she sought. Mr. Imlay procured
her a lodging. But the neglect she experienced from him after she
entered it, flashed conviction upon her, in spite of his asseverations.
She made further enquiries, and at length was informed by a servant, of
the real state of the case. Under the immediate shock which the painful
certainty gave her, her first impulse was to repair to him at the
ready-furnished house he had provided for his new mistress. What was the
particular nature of their conference I am unable to relate. It is
sufficient to say that the wretchedness of the night which succeeded
this fatal discovery, impressed her with the feeling, that she would
sooner suffer a thousand deaths, than pass another of equal misery.

The agony of her mind determined her; and that determination gave her a
sort of desperate serenity. She resolved to plunge herself in the
Thames; and, not being satisfied with any spot nearer to London, she
took a boat, and rowed to Putney. Her first thought had led her to
Battersea-bridge, but she found it too public. It was night when she
arrived at Putney, and by that time had begun to rain with great
violence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down the
bridge, till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the
wet, which she did for half an hour without meeting a human being. She
then leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find a
difficulty in sinking, which, she endeavoured to counteract by pressing
her clothes closely round her. After some time she became insensible;
but she always spoke of the pain she underwent as such, that, though she
could afterwards have determined upon almost any other species of
voluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve upon
encountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this is
to be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not owing to
the preternatural action of a desperate spirit.

After having been for a considerable time insensible, she was recovered
by the exertions of those by whom the body was found. She had fought,
with cool and deliberate firmness, to put a period to her existence, and
yet she lived to have every prospect of a long possession of enjoyment
and happiness. It is perhaps not an unfrequent case with suicides, that
we find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose,
that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy.
It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit of
self-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that the
constitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain long
undiminished. This is a serious reflection. Probably no man would
destroy himself from an impatience of present pain, if he felt a moral
certainty that there were years of enjoyment still in reserve for him.
It is perhaps a futile attempt, to think of reasoning with a man in that
state of mind which precedes suicide. Moral reasoning is nothing but the
awakening of certain feelings; and the feeling by which he is actuated,
is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other
feelings, that should have force enough to counter-balance it. But, if
the prospect of future tranquillity and pleasure cannot be expected to
have much weight with a man under an immediate purpose of suicide, it is
so much the more to be wished, that men would impress their minds, in
their sober moments, with a conception, which, being rendered habitual,
seems to promise to act as a successful antidote in a paroxysm of
desperation.

The present situation of Mary, of necessity produced some further
intercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; and
Mrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house in
Finsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his present
was merely a casual, sensual connection; and of course, fostered in her
mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him.
With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly
calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however
it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been
looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind,
which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of
bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to
roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an
extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, as
follows: “If we are ever to live together again, it must be now. We meet
now, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off the
connection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character,
to wait the uncertain issue of that connection. I am determined to come
to a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, and
the woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it important
that you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection of
a father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are now
free. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of any
kind. I will be to you as a person that is dead.”

The proposal she made, extraordinary and injudicious as it was, was at
first accepted; and Mr. Imlay took her accordingly, to look at a house
he was upon the point of hiring, that she might judge whether it was
calculated to please her. Upon second thoughts however he retracted his
concession.

In the following month, Mr. Imlay, and the woman with whom he was at
present connected, went to Paris, where they remained three months. Mary
had, previously to this, fixed herself in a lodging in Finsbury-place,
where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie, for
the sake of whose neighbourhood she had chosen this situation;
“existing,” as she expressed it, “in a living tomb, and her life but an
exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch.”

Thus circumstanced, it was unavoidable for her thoughts to brood upon a
passion, which all that she had suffered had not yet been able to
extinguish. Accordingly, as soon as Mr. Imlay returned to England, she
could not restrain herself, from making another effort, and desiring to
see him once more. “During his absence, affection had led her to make
numberless excuses for his conduct,” and she probably wished to believe
that his present connection was, as he represented it, purely of a
casual nature. To this application, she observes, that “he returned no
other answer, except declaring, with unjustifiable passion, that he
would not see her.”

This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not
the ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in business
with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the
only one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this was,
that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town,
Mary called at Mr. Christie’s one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay was
in the parlour. The room was full of company. Mrs. Christie heard Mary’s
voice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to make
her appearance. Mary however was not to be controlled. She thought, as
she afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with conscious
rectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence of
one by whom she deemed herself injured. Her child was with her. She
entered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now near
two years of age, to the knees of its father. He retired with Mary into
another apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, I
believe, the next day.

In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, he
expressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculated
to sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent from
her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness
constantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared at
this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness
of his carriage, was to her as a sunbeam, awakening the hope of
returning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions;
and even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an
aching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of a
reconciliation.

At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, a
short time before, he had seemed to dispute with her. “It was not,” as
she expresses herself in a letter to a friend, “for the world that she
did so—not in the least—but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot,
or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality.”

The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country,
where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I
believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary
communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her
mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair.

Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of duty
to her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rooted
predilection, was discharged. She determined to rouse herself, and cast
off for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring of
inexhaustible bitterness. Her present residence among the scenes of
nature, was favourable to this purpose. She was at the house of an old
and intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality for
her was strong and sincere. Mrs. Cotton’s nearest neighbour was Sir
William East, baronet; and from the joint effect of the kindness of her
friend, and the hospitable and, distinguishing attentions of this
respectable family, she derived considerable benefit. She had been
amused and interested in her journey to Norway; but with this
difference, that, at that time, her mind perpetually returned with
trembling anxiety to conjectures respecting Mr. Imlay’s future conduct,
whereas now, with a lofty and undaunted spirit, she threw aside every
thought that recurred to him, while she felt herself called upon to make
one more effort for life and happiness.

Once after this, to my knowledge, she saw Mr. Imlay; probably, not long
after her return to town. They met by accident upon the New Road; he
alighted from his horse, and walked with her some time; and the
rencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her any
oppressive emotion.

Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known the
real state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, and
was displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt of
him. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but her
emotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsided
into a dignified sereneness and equanimity.

The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was not
completely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed,
that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind,
suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessness
and debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was the
mental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, with
an interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning of
October, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period she
wrote her letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she prepared
them for the press, and they were published in the close of that year.
In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, in
the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered
to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the period
of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and imperfect a
state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to commit it to
the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of activity, we must
recollect however the entire solitude, in which most of her hours were
at that time consumed.




                               CHAP. IX.
                               1796–1797.


I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of her
history, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I relate with
the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my narrative.
If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that could
impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They could
have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no
circumstance of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason,
could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that
needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the
universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, his
awfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity.

We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particular
effect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind to
the respect I had always entertained for her talents. It was in the
close of that month that I read her Letters from Norway; and the
impression that book produced upon me has been already related.

It was on the fourteenth of April that I first saw her after her
excursion into Berkshire. On that day she called upon me in Somers Town,
she having, since her return, taken a lodging in Cumming-street,
Pentonville, at no great distance from the place of my habitation. From
that time our intimacy increased, by regular, but almost imperceptible
degrees.

The partiality we conceived for each other, was in that mode, which I
have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It
grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been
impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and
who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long established
custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so
severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to
have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in
the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there
was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.

In July 1796 I made an excursion into the county of Norfolk, which
occupied nearly the whole of that month. During this period Mary
removed, from Cumming-street, Pentonville, to Judd place West, which may
be considered as the extremity of Somers Town. In the former situation,
she had occupied a furnished lodging. She had meditated a tour to Italy
or Switzerland, and knew not how soon she should set out with that view.
Now however she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England,
probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her
mind. She had a quantity of furniture locked up at a broker’s ever since
her residence in Store-street, and she now found it adviseable to bring
it into use. This circumstance occasioned her present removal.

The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effect
on the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing of
inclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to the
other the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absence
bestows a refined and aërial delicacy upon affection, which it with
difficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble the
communication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment of this
earthly frame.

When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a more
decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer,
before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips
of either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes and
resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting
into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured,
yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete.

Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a
heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection;
fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy experience,
fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great soul, is never
extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least, had never
nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an object so
consummately worthy.

We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing to
indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and
prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon
the face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to
require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that
which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most
sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment
when it has arrived at its climax.

There were however other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Mary
felt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would be
absurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was not
right to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacy
produced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection,
which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to her
meditations. It was only about six months since she had resolutely
banished every thought of Mr. Imlay; but it was at least eighteen that
he ought to have been banished, and would have been banished, had it not
been for her scrupulous pertinacity in determining to leave no measure
untried to regain him. Add to this, that the laws of etiquette
ordinarily laid down in these cases, are essentially absurd, and that
the sentiments of the heart cannot submit to be directed by the rule and
the square. But Mary had an extreme aversion to be made the topic of
vulgar discussion; and, if there be any weakness in this, the dreadful
trials through which she had recently passed, may well plead in its
excuse. She felt that she had been too much, and too rudely spoken of,
in the former instance; and she could not resolve to do any thing that
should immediately revive that painful topic.

For myself, it is certain that I had for many years regarded marriage
with so well-grounded an apprehension, that, notwithstanding the
partiality for Mary that had taken possession of my soul, I should have
felt it very difficult, at least in the present stage of our
intercourse, to have resolved on such a measure. Thus, partly from
similar, and partly from different motives, we felt alike in this, as we
did perhaps in every other circumstance that related to our intercourse.

I have nothing further that I find it necessary to record, till the
commencement of April 1797. We then judged it proper to declare our
marriage, which had taken place a little before. The principal motive
for complying with this ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary’s being
in a state of pregnancy. She was unwilling, and perhaps with reason, to
incur that exclusion from the society of many valuable and excellent
individuals, which custom awards in cases of this sort. I should have
felt an extreme repugnance to the having caused her such an
inconvenience. And, after the experiment of seven months of as intimate
an intercourse as our respective modes of living would admit, there was
certainly less hazard to either, in the subjecting ourselves to those
consequences which the laws of England annex to the relations of husband
and wife. On the sixth of April we entered into possession of a house,
which had been taken by us in concert.

In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I am
happy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certain
regulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with the
odiousness. Mary had long possessed the advantage of an acquaintance
with many persons of genius, and with others whom the effects of an
intercourse with elegant society, combined with a certain portion of
information and good sense, sufficed to render amusing companions. She
had lately extended the circle of her acquaintance in this respect; and
her mind, trembling between the opposite impressions of past anguish and
renovating tranquilly, found ease in this species of recreation.
Wherever Mary appeared, admiration attended upon her. She had always
displayed talents for conversation; but maturity of understanding, her
travels, her long residence in France, the discipline of affliction, and
the smiling, new-born peace which awaked a corresponding smile in her
animated countenance, inexpressibly increased them. The way in which the
story of Mr. Imlay was treated in these polite circles, was probably the
result of the partiality she excited. These elegant personages were
divided between their cautious adherence to forms, and the desire to
seek their own gratification. Mary made no secret of the nature of her
connection with Mr. Imlay; and in one instance, I well know, she put
herself to the trouble of explaining it to a person totally indifferent
to her, because he never failed to publish every thing he knew, and, she
was sure, would repeat her explanation to his numerous acquaintance. She
was of too proud and generous a spirit to stoop to hypocracy. These
persons however, in spite of all that could be said, persisted in
shutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman.

Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantly professed
to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and
the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a
marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself,
ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our
marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the calendar of
polished society, than ever. But it forced these people to see the
truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefully been told;
and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that the date of our
marriage had nothing to do with this, that question being never once
mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now, retained the
name of Imlay, which had first been assumed from necessity in France;
but its being retained thus long, was purely from the aukwardness that
attends the introduction of a change, and not from an apprehension of
consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitness as to the nature
of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name she bore perfectly
immaterial.

It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in the
language of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon the
whole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained the
most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those
whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects
of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is
immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding strictly considered, and
uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable
society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and,
as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast!
A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as ever
inhabited a human heart! It is fit that such persons should stand by,
that we may have room enough for the dull and insolent dictators, the
gamblers and demireps of polished society!

Two of the persons, the loss of whose acquaintance Mary principally
regretted upon this occasion, were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons.—Their
acquaintance, it is perhaps fair to observe, is to be ranked among her
recent acquisitions. Mrs. Siddons, I am sure, regretted the necessity,
which she conceived to be imposed on her by the peculiarity of her
situation, to conform to the rules I have described. She is endowed with
that rich and generous sensibility, which should best enable its
possessor completely to feel the merits of her deceased friend. She very
truly observes, in a letter now before me, that the Travels in Norway
were read by no one, who was in possession of “more reciprocity of
feeling, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer’s
extraordinary powers.”

Mary felt a transitory pang, when the conviction reached her of so
unexpected a circumstance, that was rather exquisite. But she disdained
to sink under the injustice (as this ultimately was) of the supercilious
and the foolish, and presently shook off the impression of the first
surprize. That once subsided, I well know that the event was thought of,
with no emotions, but those of superiority to the injustice she
sustained; and was not of force enough, to diminish a happiness, which
seemed hourly to become more vigorous and firm.

I think I may venture to say, that no two persons ever found in each
other’s society, a satisfaction more pure and refined. What it was in
itself, can now only be known, in its full extent, to the survivor. But,
I believe, the serenity of her countenance, the increasing sweetness of
her manners, and that consciousness of enjoyment that seemed ambitious
that every one she saw should be happy as well as herself, were matters
of general observation to all her acquaintance. She had always
possessed, in an unparallelled degree, the art of communicating
happiness, and she was now in the constant and unlimited exercise of it.
She seemed to have attained that situation, which her disposition and
character imperiously demanded, but which she had never before attained;
and her understanding and her heart felt the benefit of it.

While we lived as near neighbours only, and before our last removal, her
mind had attained considerable tranquillity, and was visited but seldom
with those emotions of anguish, which had been but too familiar to her.
But the improvement in this respect, which accrued upon our removal and
establishment, was extremely obvious. She was a worshipper of domestic
life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her
daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the
child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature
seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. No
one knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisite
delight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom would
scarcely deign to remark. A little ride into the country with myself and
the child, has sometimes produced a sort of opening of the heart, a
general expression of confidence and affectionate soul, a sort of
infantine, yet dignified endearment, which those who have felt may
understand, but which I should in vain attempt to pourtray.

In addition to our domestic pleasures, I was fortunate enough to
introduce her to some of my acquaintance of both sexes, to whom she
attached herself with all the ardour of approbation and friendship.

Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitory
pleasures. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention, that, influenced
by the ideas I had long entertained upon the subject of cohabitation, I
engaged an apartment, about twenty doors from our house in the Polygon,
Somers Town, which I designed for the purpose of my study and literary
occupations. Trifles however will be interesting to some readers, when
they relate to the last period of the life of such a person as Mary. I
will add therefore, that we were both of us of opinion, that it was
possible for two persons to be too uniformly in each other’s society.
Influenced by that opinion, it was my practice to repair to the
apartment I have mentioned as soon as I rose, and frequently not to make
my appearance in the Polygon, till the hour of dinner. We agreed in
condemning the notion, prevalent in many situations in life, that a man
and his wife cannot visit in mixed society, but in company with each
other; and we rather sought occasions of deviating from, than of
complying with, this rule. By these means, though, for the most part, we
spent the latter half of each day in one another’s society, yet we were
in no danger of satiety. We seemed to combine, in a considerable degree,
the novelty and lively sensation of a visit, with the more delicious and
heart-felt pleasures of domestic life.

Whatever may be thought, in other respects, of the plan we laid down to
ourselves, we probably derived a real advantage from it, as to the
constancy and uninterruptedness of our literary pursuits. Mary had a
variety of projects of this sort, for the exercise of her talents, and
the benefit of society; and, if she had lived, I believe the world would
have had very little reason to complain of any remission of her
industry. One of her projects, which has been already mentioned, was a
series of Letters on the Management of Infants. Though she had been for
some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to the press,
I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed to paper
respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of a series of
books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left in execution
of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works.

But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve
months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I
shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it
as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe
that, impressed as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of
her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect
what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task
it is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her faculties
to grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity,
that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was written
slowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms,
which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced.
She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she had
finished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself more
urgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than to
proceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were to
follow.




                                CHAP. X.


I am now led, by the course of my narrative, to the last fatal scene of
her life. She was taken in labour on Wednesday, the thirtieth of August.
She had been somewhat indisposed on the preceding Friday, the
confluence, I believe, of a sudden alarm. But from that time she was in
perfect health. She was so far from being under any apprehension as to
the difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashion
of ladies in England, who keep their chamber for one full month after
delivery. For herself, she proposed coming down to dinner on the day
immediately following. She had already had some experience on the
subject in the case of Fanny; and I chearfully submitted in every point
to her judgment and her wisdom. She hired no nurse. Influenced by ideas
of decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases of
danger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity of
midwife. She was sensible that the proper business of a midwife, in the
instance of a natural labour, is to sit by and wait for the operations
of nature, which seldom, in these affairs, demand the interposition of
art.

At five o’clock in the morning of the day of delivery, she felt what she
conceived to be some notices of the approaching labour. Mrs. Blenkinsop,
matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, who had seen
Mary several times previous to her delivery, was soon after sent for,
and arrived about nine. During the whole day Mary was perfectly
chearful. Her pains came on slowly; and, in the morning, she wrote
several notes, three addressed to me, who had gone, as usual, to my
apartments, for the purpose of study. About two o’clock in the
afternoon, she went up to her chamber—never more to descend.

The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary had
requested that I would not come into the chamber till all was over, and
signified her intention of then performing the interesting office of
presenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour;
and it was not till after two o’clock on Thursday morning, that I
received the alarming intelligence, that the placenta was not yet
removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave
her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for
Dr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who
arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He
immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he
brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was
removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was
mistaken.

The period from the birth of the child till about eight o’clock the next
morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was
considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting
fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and found
her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, “that she should
have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave
me.”—She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminated
her countenance, “that I should not be like Porson,” alluding to the
circumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only a
few months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, she
declared, “that she had never known what bodily pain was before.”

On Thursday morning Dr. Poignand repeated his visit. Mary had just
before expressed some inclination to see Dr. George Fordyce, a man
probably of more science than any other medical professor in England,
and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutual
friendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he rather
discountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, and
that he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant with
obstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignand
was gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw the
patient about three o’clock on Thursday afternoon. He, however,
perceived no particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day,
quoted, as I am told, Mary’s case, in a mixed company, as a
corroboration of a favourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing
females in the capacity of midwives. Mary, “had had a woman, and was
doing extremely well.”

What had passed, however, in the night between Wednesday and Thursday,
had so far alarmed me, that I did not quit the house, and scarcely the
chamber, during the following day. But my alarms wore off, as time
advanced. Appearances were more favourable, than the exhausted state of
the patient would almost have permitted me to expect. Friday morning,
therefore, I devoted to a business of some urgency, which called me to
different parts of the town, and which, before dinner, I happily
completed. On my return, and during the evening, I received the most
pleasurable sensations from the promising state of the patient. I was
now perfectly satisfied that every thing was safe, and that, if she did
not take cold, or suffer from any external accident, her speedy recovery
was certain.

Saturday was a day less auspicious than Friday, but not absolutely
alarming.

Sunday, the third of September, I now regard as the day, that finally
decided on the fate of the object dearest to my heart that the universe
contained. Encouraged by what I considered as the progress of her
recovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one of
them as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner-time. On my
return I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that she
had had a sort of shivering fit, and had expressed some anxiety at the
length of my absence. My sister and a friend of hers, had been engaged
to dine below stairs, but a message was sent to put them off, and Mary
ordered that the cloth should not be laid, as usual, in the room
immediately under her on the first floor, but in the ground-floor
parlour. I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonably
absent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault.

In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of which
were in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled,
the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued
probably for five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it had
been a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more than
once, in the course of it, at the point of expiring. I now apprehend
these to have been the symptoms of a decided mortification, occasioned
by the part of the placenta that remained in the womb. At the time,
however, I was far from considering it in that light. When I went for
Dr. Poignand, between two and three o’clock on the morning of Thursday,
despair was in my heart. The fact of the adhesion of the placenta was
stated to me; and, ignorant as I was of obstetrical science, I felt as
if the death of Mary was in a manner decided. But hope had re-visited my
bosom; and her chearings were so delightful, that I hugged her
obstinately to my heart. I was only mortified at what appeared to me a
new delay in the recovery I so earnestly longed for. I immediately sent
for Dr. Fordyce, who had been with her in the morning, as well as on the
three preceding days. Dr. Poignand had also called this morning, but
declined paying any further visits, as we had thought proper to call in
Dr. Fordyce.

The progress of the disease was now uninterrupted. On Tuesday I found it
necessary again to call in Dr. Fordyce in the afternoon, who brought
with him Dr. Clarke of New Burlington-street, under the idea that some
operation might be necessary. I have already said, that I pertinaciously
persisted in viewing the fair side of things; and therefore the interval
between Sunday and Tuesday evening, did not pass without some mixture of
chearfulness. On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child’s having the
breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. This
occasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants.
Nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience and affectionateness
of the poor sufferer. I intreated her to recover; I dwelt with trembling
fondness on every favourable circumstance; and, as far it was possible
in so dreadful a situation, she, by her smiles and kind speeches,
rewarded my affection.

Wednesday was to me the day of greatest torture in the melancholy
series. It was now decided that the only chance of supporting her
through what she had to suffer, was by supplying her rather freely with
wine. This task was devolved upon me. I began about four o’clock in the
afternoon. But for me, totally ignorant of the nature of diseases and of
the human frame, thus to play with a life that now seemed all that was
dear to me in the universe, was too dreadful a task. I knew neither what
was too much, nor what was too little. Having begun, I felt compelled,
under every disadvantage, to go on. This lasted for three hours. Towards
the end of that time, I happened foolishly to ask the servant who came
out of the room, “What she thought of her mistress?” she replied, “that,
in her judgment, she was going as fast as possible.” There are moments,
when any creature that lives, has power to drive one into madness. I
seemed to know the absurdity of this reply; but that was of no
consequence—It added to the measure of my distraction. A little after
seven I intreated a friend to go for Mr. Carlisle, and bring him
instantly wherever he was to be found. He had voluntarily called on the
patient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since. He had
seen her that morning, and had been earnest in recommending the wine
diet. That day he dined four miles out of town, on the side of the
metropolis, which was furthest from us. Notwithstanding this, my friend
returned with him after three-quarters of an hour’s absence. No one who
knows my friend, will wonder either at his eagerness or success, when I
name Mr. Basil Montagu. The sight of Mr. Carlisle thus unexpectedly,
gave me a stronger alleviating sensation, than I thought it possible to
experience.

Mr. Carlisle left us no more from Wednesday evening, to the hour of her
death. It was impossible to exceed his kindness and affectionate
attention. It excited in every spectator a sentiment like adoration. His
conduct was uniformly tender and anxious, ever upon the watch, observing
every symptom, and eager to improve every favourable appearance. If
skill or attention could have saved her, Mary would still live. In
addition to Mr. Carlisle’s constant presence, she had Dr. Fordyce and
Dr. Clarke every day. She had for nurses, or rather for friends,
watching every occasion to serve her, Mrs. Fenwick, author of an
excellent novel, entitled Secrecy, another very kind and judicious lady,
and a favourite female servant. I was scarcely ever out of the room.
Four friends, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. Marshal, and Mr.
Dyson, sat up nearly the whole of the last week of her existence in the
house, to be dispatched, on any errand, to any part of the metropolis,
at a moment’s warning.

Mr. Carlisle being in the chamber, I retired to bed for a few hours on
Wednesday night. Towards morning he came into my room with an account
that the patient was surprisingly better. I went instantly into the
chamber. But I now sought to suppress every idea of hope. The greatest
anguish I have any conception of, consists in that crushing of a
new-born hope which I had already two or three times experienced. If
Mary recovered, it was well, and I should see it time enough. But it was
too mighty a thought to bear being trifled with, and turned out and
admitted in this abrupt way.

I had reason to rejoice in the firmness of my gloomy thoughts, when,
about ten o’clock on Thursday evening, Mr. Carlisle told us to prepare
ourselves, for we had reason to expect the fatal event every moment. To
my thinking, she did not appear to be in that state of total exhaustion,
which I supposed to precede death; but it is probable that death does
not always take place by that gradual process I had pictured to myself;
a sudden pang may accelerate his arrival. She did not die on Thursday
night.

Till now it does not appear that she had any serious thoughts of dying;
but on Friday and Saturday, the two last days of her life, she
occasionally spoke as if she expected it. This was, however, only at
intervals; the thought did not seem to dwell upon her mind. Mr. Carlisle
rejoiced in this. He observed, and there is great force in the
suggestion, that there is no more pitiable object, than a sick man, that
knows he is dying. The thought must be expected to destroy his courage,
to co-operate with the disease, and to counteract every favourable
effort of nature.

On these two days her faculties were in too decayed a state, to be able
to follow any train of ideas with force or any accuracy of connection.
Her religion, as I have already shown, was not calculated to be the
torment of a sick bed; and, in fact, during her whole illness, not one
word of a religious cast fell from her lips.

She was affectionate and compliant to the last. I observed on Friday and
Saturday nights, that, whenever her attendants recommended to her to
sleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhaps
for the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, though
the effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual.

She was not tormented by useless contradiction. One night the servant,
from an error in judgment, teazed her with idle expostulations; but she
complained of it grievously, and it was corrected.—“Pray, pray, do not
let her reason with me,” was her expression. Death itself is scarcely so
dreadful to the enfeebled frame, as the monotonous importunity of nurses
everlastingly repeated.

Seeing that every hope was extinct, I was very desirous of obtaining
from her any directions, that she might wish to have followed after her
decease. Accordingly, on Saturday morning, I talked to her for a good
while of the two children. In conformity to Mr. Carlisle’s maxim of not
impressing the idea of death, I was obliged to manage my expressions. I
therefore affected to proceed wholly upon the ground of her having been
very ill, and that it would be some time before she could expect to be
well; wishing her to tell me any thing that she would choose to have
done respecting the children, as they would now be principally under my
care. After having repeated this idea to her in a great variety of
forms, she at length said, with a significant tone of voice, “I know
what you are thinking of,” but added, that she had nothing to
communicate to me upon the subject.

The shivering fits had ceased entirely for the two last days. Mr.
Carlisle observed that her continuance was almost miraculous, and he was
on the watch for favourable appearances, believing it highly improper to
give up all hope, and remarking, that perhaps one in a million, of
persons in her state might possibly recover. I conceive that not one in
a million, unites so good a constitution of body and of mind.

These were the amusements of persons in the very gulph of despair. At
six o’clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle called
me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my
request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the
intelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes before
eight.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Her remains were deposited, on the fifteenth of September, at ten
o’clock in the morning, in the church-yard of the parish church of St.
Pancras, Middlesex. A few of the persons she most esteemed, attended the
ceremony; and a plain monument is now erecting on the spot, by some of
her friends, with the following inscription:

                      MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN,
                               AUTHOR OF
                             A VINDICATION
                        OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.
                       BORN, XXVII APRIL MDCCLIX.
                      DIED, X SEPTEMBER MDCCXCVII.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men to
collect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it. I do
not here allude to the personal pleasures I enjoyed in her conversation:
these increased every day, in proportion as we knew each other better,
and as our mutual confidence increased. They can be measured only by the
treasures of her mind, and the virtues of her heart. But this is a
subject for meditation, not for words. What I purposed alluding to, was
the improvement that I have for ever lost.

We had cultivated our powers (if I may venture to use this sort of
language) in different directions; I, chiefly an attempt at logical and
metaphysical distinction; she, a taste for the picturesque. One of the
leading passions of my mind has been an anxious desire not to be
deceived. This has led me to view the topics of my reflection on all
sides; and to examine and re-examine without end, the questions that
interest me.

But it was not merely (to judge at least from all the reports of my
memory in this respect) the difference of propensities, that made the
difference in our intellectual habits. I have been stimulated as long as
I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual distinction; but, as
long as I can remember, I have been discouraged, when I have endeavoured
to cast the sum of my intellectual value, by finding that I did not
possess, in the degree of some other men, an intuitive perception of
intellectual beauty. I have perhaps a strong and lively sense of the
pleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in assigning
to them their proportionate value, but by dint of persevering
examination, and the change and correction of my first opinions.

What I wanted in this respect, Mary possessed, in a degree superior to
any other person I ever knew. The strength of her mind lay in intuition.
She was often right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation.
Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors were
comparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as I
have already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted one
opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact and the
force of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in the
strict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what a
degree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if this
quality was of use to her in topics that seem the proper province of
reasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to the
intellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort,
there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a
responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my
oscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a true
opinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction produced
in my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. This
species of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in the
relation of earlier and later. What the one perceives instantaneously
(circumstances having produced in it, either a premature attention to
objects of this sort, or a greater boldness of decision) the other
receives only by degrees. What it wants, seems to be nothing more than a
minute attention to first impressions, and a just appreciation of them;
habits that are never so effectually generated, as by the daily
recurrence of a striking example.

This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is now
extinguished for ever!

While I have described the improvement I was in the act of receiving, I
believe I have put down the leading traits of her intellectual
character.


The following Letters may possibly be found to contain the finest
examples of the language of sentiment and passion ever presented to the
world. They bear a striking resemblance to the celebrated Romance of
Werter, though the incidents to which they relate are of a very
different cast. Probably the readers to whom Werter is incapable of
affording pleasure, will receive no delight from the present
publication. The editor apprehends that, in the judgment of those best
qualified to decide upon the comparison, these Letters will be admitted
to have the superiority over the fiction of Goethe. They are the
offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the
passion it essays to describe.

To the series of letters constituting the principal article in these two
volumes, are added various pieces, none of which, it is hoped, will be
found discreditable to the talents of the author. The slight fragment of
Letters on the Management of Infants, may be thought a trifle; but it
seems to have some value, as presenting to us with vividness the
intention of the writer on this important subject. The publication of a
few select Letters to Mr. Johnson, appeared to be at once a just
monument to the sincerity of his friendship, and a valuable and
interesting specimen of the mind of the writer. The Letter on the
Present Character of the French Nation, the Extract of the Cave of
Fancy, a Tale, and the Hints for the Second Part of the Rights of Woman,
may, I believe, safely be left to speak for themselves. The Essay on
Poetry and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature, appeared in the
Monthly Magazine for April last, and is the only piece in this
collection which has previously found its way to the press.




                                LETTERS.


                               LETTER I.

                                                            Two o’Clock.

My dear love, after making my arrangements for our snug dinner to-day, I
have been taken by storm, and obliged to promise to dine, at an early
hour, with the Miss ——s, the only day they intend to pass here. I shall,
however, leave the key in the door, and hope to find you at my fire-side
when I return, about eight o’clock. Will you not wait for poor
Joan?—whom you will find better, and till then think very affectionately
of her.

                                                     Yours, truly,
                                                                 * * * *

I am sitting down to dinner; so do not send an answer.


                               LETTER II.

                                      Past Twelve o’Clock, Monday night,
                                                          [August]

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 that
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 burthen 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[3]—Yours—

Footnote 3:

  The child is in a subsequent letter called the “barrier girl,”
  probably from a supposition that she owed her existence to this
  interview.

                                                                 EDITOR.


                              LETTER III.

                                                      Wednesday Morning.

You have often called me, dear girl, but you would now say good, did you
know how very attentive I have been to the —— ever since I came to
Paris. I am not however going to trouble you with the account, because I
like to see your eyes praise me; and, Milton insinuates, that during
such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart,
when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words.

Yet, I shall not (let me tell you before these people enter, to force me
to huddle away my letter) be content with only a kiss of DUTY—you _must_
be glad to see me—because you are glad—or I will make love to the
_shade_ of Mirabeau, to whom my heart continually turned, whilst I was
talking to Madame ——, forcibly telling me that it will ever have
sufficient warmth to love, whether I will or not, sentiment, though I so
highly respect principle.——

Not that I think Mirabeau utterly devoid of principles—far—and, if I had
not begun to form a new theory respecting men, I should, in the vanity
of my heart, have imagined that I could have made something of his——it
was composed of such materials—Hush! here they come—and love flies away
in the twinkling of an eye, leaving a little brush of his wing on my
pale cheeks.

I hope to see Dr. —— this morning; I am going to Mr. ——’s to meet
him. ——, and some others, are invited to dine with us to-day; and
to-morrow I am to spend the day with ——.

I shall probably not be able to return to —— to-morrow; but it is no
matter, because I must take a carriage, I have so many books, that I
immediately want, to take with me—On Friday then I shall expect you to
dine with me—and, if you come a little before dinner, it is so long
since I have seen you, you will not be scolded by yours affectionately

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER IV[4].

Footnote 4:

  This and the thirteen following letters appear to have been written
  during a separation of several months; the date Paris.

                                             Friday Morning [September.]

A man, whom a letter from Mr. —— previously announced, called here
yesterday for the payment of a draft; and he seemed disappointed at not
finding you at home. I sent him to Mr. —— I have since seen him, and he
tells me that he has settled the business.

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 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 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 awaken the remembrance of old griefs,
will learn to rest on yours, with that dignity your character, not to
talk of my own, demands.

Take care of yourself—and write soon to your own girl (you may add dear,
if you please) who sincerely loves you, and will try to convince you of
it, by becoming happier

                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER V.

                                                           Sunday Night.

I have just received your letter, and feel as if I could not go to bed
tranquilly without saying a few words in reply—merely to tell you, that
my mind is serene, and my heart affectionate.

Ever since you last saw me inclined to faint, I have felt some gentle
twitches, which make me begin to think, that I am nourishing a creature
who will soon be sensible of my care.—This thought 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. Yesterday—do not smile!—finding
that I had hurt myself by lifting precipitately a large log of wood, I
sat down in an agony, till I felt those said twitches again.

Are you very busy?

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

So you may reckon on its being finished soon, though not before you come
home, unless you are detained longer than I now allow myself to believe
you will.—

Be that as it may, write to me, my best love, and bid me be
patient—kindly—and the expressions of kindness will again beguile the
time, as sweetly as they have done to-night.—Tell me also over and over
again, that your happiness (and you deserve to be happy!) is closely
connected with mine, and I will try to dissipate, as they rise, the
fumes of former discontent, that have too often clouded the sunshine,
which you have endeavoured to diffuse through my mind. God bless you!
Take care of yourself, and remember with tenderness your affectionate

                                                                 * * * *

I am going to rest very happy, and you have made me so.—This is the
kindest good night I can utter.


                               LETTER VI.

                                                         Friday Morning.

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.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER VII.

                                           Sunday Morning (December 29.)

You seem to have taken up your abode at H——. 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.

I long to see Mrs. ——; not to hear from you, so do not give yourself
airs, but to get a letter from Mr. ——. And I am half angry with you for
not informing me whether she had brought one with her or not.—On this
score I will cork up some of the kind things that were ready to drop
from my pen, which has never been dipt in gall when addressing you; or,
will only suffer an exclamation—“The creature!” or a kind look, to
escape me, when I pass the flippers—which I could not remove from my
_salle_ door, though they are not the handsomest of their kind.

Be not too anxious to get money!—for nothing worth having is to be
purchased. God bless you.

                                             Yours affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER VIII.

                                             Monday Night (December 30.)

My best love, your letter to-night was particularly grateful to my
heart, depressed by the letters I received by ——, for he brought me
several, and the parcel of books directed to Mr. —— was for me. Mr. ——’s
letter was long and very affectionate; but the account he gives me of
his own affairs, though he obviously makes the best of them, has vexed
me.

A melancholy letter from my sister —— has also harrassed my mind—that
from my brother would have given me sincere pleasure; but for

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

There is a spirit of independence in this letter, that will please you;
and you shall see it, when we are once more over the fire together—I
think that you would hail him as a brother, with one of your tender
looks, when your heart not only gives a lustre to your eye, but a dance
of playfulness, that he would meet with a glow half made up of
bashfulness, and a desire to please the —— where shall I find a word to
express the relationship which subsists between us? Shall I ask the
little twitcher? But I have dropt half the sentence that was to tell you
how much he would be inclined to love the man loved by his sister. I
have been fancying myself sitting between you, ever since I began to
write, and my heart has leaped at the thought! You see how I chat to
you.

I did not receive your letter till I came home; and I did not expect it,
so the post came in much later than usual. It was a cordial to me—and I
wanted one.

Mr. —— tells me that he has written again and again.—Love him a
little!—It would be a kind of separation, if you did not love those I
love.

There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that,
if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how
very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares.

                                             Yours affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER IX.

                                         Tuesday Morning, [December 31.]

Though I have just sent a letter off, yet, as captain —— offers to take
one, I am not willing to let him go without a kind greeting, because
trifles of this sort, without having any effect on my mind, damp my
spirits:—and you, with all your struggles to be manly, have some of this
same sensibility. Do not bid it begone, for I love to see it striving to
master your features; besides, these kind of sympathies are the life of
affection: and why, in cultivating our understandings, should we try to
dry up these springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to
days browned by care!

The books sent to me are such as we may read together; so I shall not
look into them till you return; when you shall read, whilst I mend my
stockings.

                                                     Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER X.

                                            Wednesday Night [January 1.]

As I have been, you tell me, three days without writing, I ought not to
complain of two: yet, as I expected to receive a letter this afternoon,
I am hurt; and why should I, by concealing it, affect the heroism I do
not feel?

I hate commerce. How differently must ——’s 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 labour 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 mighty matter, talk of
it—I will throw your slippers out at the window, and be off—nobody knows
where.

                                                                 * * * *

Finding that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ——,
simply that I was with child: and let them stare!—and ——, nay, all the
world, may know it for aught I care—Yet I wish to avoid ——’s coarse
jokes.

Considering the care and anxiety a woman must have about a child before
it comes into the world, it seems to me, by a natural right, to belong
to her. When men get immersed in the world, they seem to lose all
sensations, excepting those necessary to continue or produce life!—Are
these the privileges of reason? Amongst the feathered race, whilst the
hen keeps the young warm, her mate stays by to cheer her; but it is
sufficient for man to condescend to get a child, in order to claim it.—A
man is a tyrant!

You may now tell me, that, if it were not for me, you would be laughing
away with some honest fellows in L—n. The casual exercise of social
sympathy would not be sufficient for me—I should not think such an
heartless life worth preserving.—It is necessary to be in good-humour
with you, to be pleased with the world.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                                                       Thursday Morning.

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![5]

Footnote 5:

  Some further letters, written during the remainder of the week, in a
  similar strain to the preceding, appear to have been destroyed by the
  person to whom they are addressed.


                               LETTER XI.

                                                           Monday Night.

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 intreat 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—

It is time for me to grow more reasonable, a few more of these caprices
of sensibility would destroy me. I have, in fact, been very much
indisposed for a few days past, and the notion that I was tormenting, or
perhaps killing, a poor little animal, about whom I am grown anxious and
tender, now I feel it alive, made me worse. My bowels have been
dreadfully disordered, and every thing I ate or drank disagreed with my
stomach; still I feel intimations of its existence, though they have
been fainter.

Do you think that the creature goes regularly to sleep? I am ready to
ask as many questions as Voltaire’s Man of Forty Crowns. Ah! do not
continue to be angry with me! You perceive that I am already smiling
through my tears—You have lightened my heart, and my frozen spirits are
melting into playfulness.

Write the moment you receive this. I shall count the minutes. But drop
not an angry word, I cannot now bear it. Yet, if you think I deserve a
scolding (it does not admit of a question, I grant), wait till you come
back—and then, if you are angry one day, I shall be sure of seeing you
the next.

—— —— did not write to you, I suppose, because he talked of going to
H——. Hearing that I was ill, he called very kindly on me, not dreaming
that it was some words that he incautiously let fall, which rendered me
so.

God bless you, my love; do not shut your heart against a return of
tenderness; and, as I now in fancy cling to you, be more than ever my
support. Feel but as affectionate when you read this letter, as I did
writing it, and you will make happy, your

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XII.

                                                      Wednesday Morning.

I will never, if I am not entirely cured of quarrelling, begin to
encourage “quick-coming fancies,” when we are separated. Yesterday, my
love, I could not open your letter for some time; and, though it was not
half as severe as I merited, it threw me into such a fit of trembling,
as seriously alarmed me. I did not, as you may suppose, care for a
little pain on my own account; but all the fears which I have had for a
few days past, returned with fresh force. This morning I am better; will
you not be glad to hear it? You perceive that sorrow has almost made a
child of me, and that I want to be soothed to peace.

One thing you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness
which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear
to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness
would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me
almost a duty to stifle them, when I imagine that I am treated with
coldness.

I am afraid that I have vexed you, my own ——. I know the quickness of
your feelings—and let me, in the sincerity of my heart, assure you,
there is nothing I would not suffer to make you happy. My own happiness
wholly depends on you—and, knowing you, when my reason is not clouded, I
look forward to a rational prospect of as much felicity as the earth
affords—with a little dash of rapture into the bargain, if you will look
at me, when we meet again, as you have sometimes greeted, your humbled,
yet most affectionate

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XIII.

                                                         Thursday Night.

I have been wishing the time away, my kind love, unable to rest till I
knew that my penitential letter had reached your hand, and this
afternoon, when your tender epistle of Tuesday gave such exquisite
pleasure to your poor sick girl, her heart smote her to think that you
were to receive another cold one. Burn it also, my ——; yet do not forget
that even those letters were full of love; and I shall ever recollect,
that you did not wait to be mollified by my penitence, before you took
me again to your heart.

I have been unwell, and would not, now I am recovering, take a journey,
because I have been seriously alarmed and angry with myself, dreading
continually the fatal consequence of my folly. But, should you think it
right to remain at H—, I shall find some opportunity, in the course of a
fortnight, or less perhaps, to come to you, and before then I shall be
strong again.—Yet do not be uneasy! I am really better, and never took
such care of myself, as I have done since you restored my peace of mind.
The girl is come to warm my bed—so I will tenderly say, good night! and
write a line or two in the morning.

                                                                Morning.

I wish you were here to walk with me this fine morning! yet your absence
shall not prevent me. I have stayed at home too much; though, when I was
so dreadfully out of spirits, I was careless of every thing.

I will now sally forth (you will go with me in my heart) and try whether
this fine bracing air will not give the vigour to the poor babe, it had,
before I so inconsiderately gave way to the grief that deranged my
bowels, and gave a turn to my whole system.

                                                         Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XIV.

                                                       Saturday Morning.

The two or three letters, which I have written to you lately, my love,
will serve as an answer to your explanatory one. I cannot but respect
your motives and conduct. I always respected them; and was only hurt, by
what seemed to me a want of confidence, and consequently affection.—I
thought also, that if you were obliged to stay three months at H—, I
might as well have been with you.—Well! well, what signifies what I
brooded over—Let us now be friends!

I shall probably receive a letter from you to-day, sealing my pardon—and
I will be careful not to torment you with my querulous humours, at
least, till I see you again. Act as circumstances direct, and I will not
enquire when they will permit you to return, convinced that you will
hasten to your * * * *, when you have attained (or lost sight of) the
object of your journey.

What a picture have you sketched of our fire-side! Yes, my love, my
fancy was instantly at work, and I found my head on your shoulder,
whilst my eyes were fixed on the little creatures that were clinging to
your knees. I did not absolutely determine that there should be six—if
you have not set your heart on this round number.

I am going to dine with Mrs. ——. I have not been to visit her since the
first day she came to Paris. I wish indeed to be out in the air as much
as I can; for the exercise I have taken these two or three days past,
has been of such service to me, that I hope shortly to tell you, that I
am quite well, I have scarcely slept before last night, and then not
much.—The two Mrs. ——s have been very anxious and tender.

                                                     Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *

I need not desire you to give the colonel a good bottle of wine.


                               LETTER XV.

                                                         Sunday Morning.

I wrote to you yesterday, my ——; but, finding that the colonel is still
detained (for his passport was forgotten at the office yesterday) I am
not willing to let so many days elapse without your hearing from me,
after having talked of illness and apprehensions.

I cannot boast of being quite recovered, yet I am (I must use my
Yorkshire phrase; for, when my heart is warm, pop come the expressions
of childhood into my head) so _lightsome_, that I think it will not _go
badly with me_.—And nothing shall be wanting on my part, I assure you;
for I am urged on, not only by an enlivened affection for you, but by a
new-born tenderness that plays cheerly round my dilating heart.

I was therefore, in defiance of cold and dirt, out in the air the
greater part of yesterday; and, if I get over this evening without a
return of the fever that has tormented me, I shall talk no more of
illness. I have promised the little creature, that its mother, who ought
to cherish it, will not again plague it, and begged it to pardon me;
and, since I could not hug either it or you to my breast, I have to my
heart.—I am afraid to read over this prattle—but it is only for your
eye.

I have been seriously vexed, to find that, whilst you were harrassed by
impediments in your undertakings, I was giving you additional
uneasiness.—If you can make any of your plans answer—it is well, I do
not think a little money inconvenient; but, should they fail, we will
struggle cheerfully together—drawn closer by the pinching blasts of
poverty.

Adieu, my love! Write often to your poor girl, and write long letters;
for I not only like them for being longer, but because more heart steals
into them; and I am happy to catch your heart whenever I can.

                                                     Yours sincerely
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XVI.

                                                        Tuesday Morning.

I seize this opportunity to inform you that I am to set out on Thursday
with Mr. ——, and hope to tell you soon (on your lips) how glad I shall
be to see you. I have just got my passport, so I do not foresee any
impediment to my reaching H——, to bid you good-night next Friday in my
new apartment—where I am to meet you and love, in spite of care, to
smile me to sleep—for I have not caught much rest since we parted.

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
wished 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!

                                                         Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XVII.

                                                      Wednesday Morning.

I only send this as an _avant-coureur_, without jack-boots, to tell you,
that I am again on the wing, and hope to be with you a few hours after
you receive it. I shall find you well, and composed, I am sure; or, more
properly speaking, cheerful.—What is the reason that my spirits are not
as manageable as yours? Yet, now I think of it. I will not allow that
your temper is even, though I have promised myself, in order to obtain
my own forgiveness, that I will not ruffle it for a long, long time—I am
afraid to say never.

Farewell for a moment!—Do not forget that I am driving towards you in
person! My mind, unfettered, has flown to you long since, or rather has
never left you.

I am well, and have no apprehension that I shall find the journey too
fatiguing, when I follow the lead of my heart.—With my face turned to
H—my spirits will not sink—and my mind has always hitherto enabled my
body to do whatever I wished.

                                                 Yours affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XVIII.

                                         H—, 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 very 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.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XIX.

Do not call me stupid, for leaving on the table the little bit of paper
I was to inclose.—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 _gigot_ smoking on the board, to lard your
poor 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
                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER XX.

                                                      Sunday, August 17.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

I have promised —— to go with him to his country-house, where he is now
permitted to dine—and the little darling, to be sure[6]—whom I cannot
help kissing with more fondness, since you left us. I think I shall
enjoy the fine prospect, and that it will rather enliven than satiate my
imagination.

Footnote 6:

  The child spoken of in some preceding letters, had now been born a
  considerable time.

I have called on Mrs. ——. She has the manners of a gentlewoman, with a
dash of the easy French coquetry, which renders her _piquante_. But
_Monsieur_ her husband, whom nature never dreamed of casting in either
the mould of a gentleman or lover, makes but an aukward figure in the
foreground of the picture.

The H——s are very ugly, without doubt—and the house smelt of commerce
from top to toe, so that his abortive attempt to display taste, only
proved it to be one of the things not to be bought with gold. I was in a
room a moment alone, and my attention was attracted by the _pendule_. A
nymph was offering up her vows before a smoking altar, to a fat-bottomed
Cupid (saving your presence), who was kicking his heels in the air. Ah!
kick on, thought I; for the demon of traffic will ever fright away the
loves and graces, that streak with the rosy beams of infant fancy the
_sombre_ day of life—whilst the imagination, not allowing us to see
things as they are, enables us to catch a hasty draught of the running
stream of delight, the thirst for which seems to be given only to
tantalize us.

But I am philosophizing; nay, perhaps you will call me severe, and bid
me let the square-headed money-getters alone. Peace to them! though none
of the social spirits (and there are not a few of different
descriptions, who sport about the various inlets to my heart) gave me a
twitch to restrain my pen.

I have been writing, expecting poor —— to come; for, when I began, I
merely thought of business; and, as this is the idea that most naturally
associates with your image, I wonder I stumbled on any other.

Yet, as common life, in my opinion, is scarcely worth having, even with
a _gigot_ every day, and a pudding added thereunto, I will allow you to
cultivate my judgment, if you will permit me to keep alive the
sentiments in your heart which may be termed romantic, because, the
offspring of the senses and the imagination, they resemble the mother
more than the father[7], when they produce the suffusion I admire. In
spite of icy age, I hope still to see it, if you have not determined
only to eat and drink, and be stupidly useful to the stupid—

                                                         Yours
                                                                 * * * *

Footnote 7:

  She means, “the latter more than the former.”

                                                                 EDITOR.


                              LETTER XXI.

                                                 H—, August 19, Tuesday.

I received both your letters to-day—I had reckoned on hearing from you
yesterday, therefore was disappointed, though I imputed your silence to
the right cause. I intended answering your kind letter immediately, that
you might have felt the pleasure it gave me; but —— came in, and some
other things interrupted me; so that the fine vapour has evaporated—yet,
leaving a sweet scent behind, I have only to tell you, what is
sufficiently obvious, that the earnest desire I have shown to keep my
place, or gain more ground in your heart, is a sure proof how necessary
your affection is to my happiness.—Still I do not think it false
delicacy, or foolish pride, to wish that your attention to my happiness
should arise _as much_ from love, which is always rather a selfish
passion, as reason—that is, I want you to promote my felicity, by
seeking your own—For, whatever pleasure it may give me to discover your
generosity of soul, I would not be dependent for your affection on the
very quality I most admire. No; there are qualities in your heart, which
demand my affection; but, unless the attachment appears to me clearly
mutual, I shall labour only to esteem your character, instead of
cherishing a tenderness for your person.

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long
time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that
all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace,
though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment—This for our
little girl was at first very reasonable—more the effect of reason, a
sense of duty, than feeling—now, she has got into my heart and
imagination, and when I walk out without her, her little figure is ever
dancing before me.

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.

I will not mix any comments on the inclosed (it roused my indignation)
with the effusion of tenderness, with which I assure you, that you are
the friend of my bosom, and the prop of my heart.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXII.

                                                          H—, August 20.

I want to know what steps you have taken respecting ——. Knavery always
rouses my indignation—I should be gratified to hear that the law had
chastised —— severely; but I do not wish you to see him, because the
business does not now admit of peaceful discussion, and I do not exactly
know how you would express your contempt.

Pray ask some questions about Tallien—I am still pleased with the
dignity of his conduct.—The other day, in the cause of humanity, he made
use of a degree of address, which I admire—and mean to point out to you,
as one of the few instances of address which do credit to the abilities
of the man, without taking away from that confidence in his openness of
heart, which is the true basis of both public and private friendship.

Do not suppose that I mean to allude to a little reserve of temper in
you, of which I have sometimes complained! You have been used to a
cunning woman, and you almost look for cunning—Nay, in _managing_ my
happiness, you now and then wounded my sensibility, concealing yourself
till honest sympathy, giving you to me without disguise, lets me look
into a heart, which my halfbroken one wishes to creep into, to be
revived and cherished.——You have frankness of heart, but not often
exactly that overflowing (_épanchement de cœur_), which becoming almost
childish, appears a weakness only to the weak.

But I have left poor Tallien. I wanted you to enquire likewise whether,
as a member declared in the convention, Robespierre really maintained a
number of mistresses—Should it prove so, I suspect that they rather
flattered his vanity than his senses.

Here is a chatting, desultory epistle! But do not suppose that I mean to
close it without mentioning the little damsel—who has been almost
springing out of my arm—she certainly looks very like you—but I do not
love her the less for that, whether I am angry or pleased with you.—

                                             Yours affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                            LETTER XXIII[8].

Footnote 8:

  This is the first of a series of letters written during a separation
  of many months, to which no cordial meeting ever succeeded. They were
  sent from Paris, and bear the address of London.

                                                           September 22.

I have just written two letters, that are going by other conveyances,
and which I reckon on your receiving long before this. I therefore
merely write, because I know I should be disappointed at seeing any one
who had left you, if you did not send a letter, were it ever so short,
to tell me why you did not write a longer—and you will want to be told,
over and over again, 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 _féte_, 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—and why not?—for I have always been half in love with him.

Well, this you will say is trifling—shall I talk about alum or soap?
There is nothing picturesque in your present pursuits; my imagination
then rather chuses 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!

Believe me, sage sir, you have not sufficient respect for the
imagination—I could prove to you in a trice that it is the mother of
sentiment, the great distinction of our nature, the only purifier of the
passions—animals have a portion of reason, and equal, if not more
exquisite, senses; but no trace of imagination, or her offspring taste,
appears in any of their actions. The impulse of the senses, passions, if
you will, and the conclusions of reason draw men together; but the
imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven to animate this cold
creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to
rapture, rendering men social by expanding their hearts instead of
leaving them leisure to calculate how many comforts society affords.

If you call these observations romantic, a phrase in this place which
would be tantamount to nonsensical, I shall be apt to retort, that you
are embruted by trade, and the vulgar enjoyments of life—Bring me then
back your barrier face, or you shall have nothing to say to my
barrier-girl; and I shall fly from you to cherish the remembrances that
will be ever dear to me; for I am yours truly

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXIV.

                                                      Evening. Sept. 23.

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 the
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.

Have I any thing more to say to you? No; not for the present—the rest is
all flown away; and, indulging tenderness for you, I cannot now complain
of some people here, who have ruffled my temper for two or three days
past.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                                                                Morning.

Yesterday B—— sent to me for my packet of letters. He called on me
before; and I like him better than I did—that is, I have the same
opinion of his understanding, but I think with you, he has more
tenderness and real delicacy of feeling with respect to women, than are
commonly to be met with. His manner too of speaking of his little girl,
about the age of mine, interested me. I gave him a letter for my sister,
and requested him to see her.

I have been interrupted. Mr. —— I suppose will write about business.
Public affairs I do not descant on, except to tell you that they write
now with great freedom and truth; and this liberty of the press will
overthrow the Jacobins, I plainly perceive.

I hope you take care of your health. I have got a habit of restlessness
at night, which arises, I believe, from activity of mind; for, when I am
alone, that is, not near one to whom I can open my heart, I sink into
reveries and trains of thinking, which agitate and fatigue me.

This is my third letter; when am I to hear from you? I need not tell
you, I suppose, that I am now writing with somebody in the room with me,
and —— is waiting to carry this to Mr. ——’s. I will then kiss the girl
for you, and bid you adieu.

I desired you, in one of my other letters, to bring back to me your
barrier-face—or that you should not be loved by my barrier-girl. I know
that you will love her more and more, for she is a little affectionate,
intelligent creature, with as much vivacity, I think, as you could wish
for.

I was going to tell you of two or three things which displease me here;
but they are not of sufficient consequence to interrupt pleasing
sensations. I have received a letter from Mr. ——. I want you to bring ——
with you. Madame S—— is by me, reading a German translation of your
letters—she desires me to give her love to you, on account of what you
say of the negroes.

                                             Yours most affectionately,
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXV.

                                                        Paris, Sept. 28.

I have written to you three or four letters; but different causes have
prevented my sending them by the persons who promised to take or forward
them. The inclosed is one I wrote to go by B——; yet, finding that he
will not arrive, before I hope, and believe, you will have set out on
your return, I inclose it to you, and shall give it in charge to ——, as
Mr. —— is detained, to whom I also gave a letter.

I cannot help being anxious to hear from you; but I shall not harrass
you with accounts of inquietudes, or of cares that arise from peculiar
circumstances.—I have had so many little plagues here, that I have
almost lamented that I left H——. ——, who is at best a most helpless
creature, is now, on account of her pregnancy, more trouble than use to
me, so that I still continue to be almost a slave to the child.—She
indeed rewards me, for she is a sweet little creature; for, setting
aside a mother’s fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her
little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing
degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B——’s child, a
fine one, she looked like a little sprite.—She is all life and motion,
and her eyes are not the eyes of a fool—I will swear.

I slept at St. Germain’s, in the very room (if you have not forgot) in
which you pressed me very tenderly to your heart.—I did not forget to
fold my darling to mine, with sensations that are almost too sacred to
be alluded to.

Adieu, my love! Take care of yourself, if you wish to be the protector
of your child, and the comfort of her mother.

I have received, for you, letters from ——. I want to hear how that
affair finishes, though I do not know whether I have most contempt for
his folly or knavery.

                                                         Your own
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXVI.

                                                              October 1.

It is a heartless task to write letters, without knowing whether they
will ever reach you.—I have given two to ——, who has been a-going,
a-going, every day, for a week past; and three others, which were
written in a low-spirited strain, a little querulous or so, I have not
been able to forward by the opportunities that were mentioned to me.
_Tant mieux!_ you will say, and I will not say nay; for I should be
sorry that the contents of a letter, when you are so far away, should
damp the pleasure that the sight of it would afford—judging of your
feelings by my own. I just now stumbled on one of the kind letters,
which you wrote during your last absence. You are then a dear
affectionate creature, and I will not plague you. The letter which you
chance to receive, when the absence is so long, ought to bring only
tears of tenderness, without any bitter alloy, into your eyes.

After your return I hope indeed, that you will not be so immersed in
business, as during the last three or four months past—for even money,
taking into the account all the future comforts it is to procure, may be
gained at too dear a rate, if painful impressions are left on the
mind.—These impressions were much more lively, soon after you went away,
than at present—for a thousand tender recollections efface the
melancholy traces they left on my mind—and every emotion is on the same
side as my reason, which always was on yours.—Separated, it would be
almost impious to dwell on real or imaginary imperfections of
character.—I feel that I love you; and, if I cannot be happy with you, I
will seek it no where else.

My little darling grows every day more dear to me—and she often has a
kiss, when we are alone together, which I give her for you, with all my
heart.

I have been interrupted—and must send off my letter. The liberty of the
press will produce a great effect here—the _cry of blood will not be
vain_!—Some more monsters will perish—and the Jacobins are
conquered.—Yet I almost fear the last slap of the tail of the beast.

I have had several trifling teazing inconveniencies here, which I shall
not now trouble you with a detail of.—I am sending —— back; her
pregnancy rendered her useless. The girl I have got has more vivacity,
which is better for the child.

I long to hear from you.—Bring a copy of —— and —— with you.

—— is still here; he is a lost man.—He really loves his wife, and is
anxious about his children; but his indiscriminate hospitality and
social feelings have given him an inveterate habit of drinking, that
destroys his health, as well as renders his person disgusting.—If his
wife had more sense, or delicacy, she might restrain him: as it is,
nothing will save him.

                                     Yours most truly and affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XXVII.

                                                             October 26.

My dear love, I began to wish so earnestly to hear from you, that the
sight of your letters occasioned such pleasurable emotions, I was
obliged to throw them aside till the little girl and I were alone
together; and this said little girl, our darling, is become a most
intelligent little creature, and as gay as a lark, and that in the
morning too, which I do not find quite so convenient. I once told you,
that the sensations before she was born, and when she is sucking, were
pleasant; but they do not deserve to be compared to the emotions I feel,
when she stops to smile upon me, or laughs outright on meeting me
unexpectedly in the street, or after a short absence. She has now the
advantage of having two good nurses, and I am at present able to
discharge my duty to her, without being the slave of it.

I have therefore employed and amused myself since I got rid of ——, and
am making a progress in the language amongst other things. I have also
made some new acquaintance. 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 humour, when he is pleased.” Will you
not then be a good boy, and come back quickly to play with your girls?
but I shall not allow you to love the new-comer best.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

My heart longs for your return, my love, and only looks for, and seeks
happiness with you; yet do not imagine that I childishly wish you to
come back, before you have arranged things in such a manner, that it
will not be necessary for you to leave us soon again, or to make
exertions which injure your constitution.

                                         Yours most truly and tenderly
                                                                 * * * *

P. S. You would oblige me by delivering the inclosed to Mr. ——, and pray
call for an answer.—It is for a person uncomfortably situated.


                             LETTER XXVIII.

                                                           December, 26.

I have been, my love, for some days tormented by fears, that I would not
allow to assume a form—I had been expecting you daily—and I heard that
many vessels had been driven on shore during the late gale.—Well, I now
see your letter, and find that you are safe: I will not regret then that
your exertions have hitherto been so unavailing.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

Be that as it may, return to me when you have arranged the other
matters, which —— has been crowding on you. I want to be sure that you
are safe—and not separated from me by a sea that must be passed. For,
feeling that I am happier than ever I was, do you wonder at my sometimes
dreading that fate has not done persecuting me? Come to me my dearest
friend, father of my child!—All these fond ties glow at my heart at this
moment, and dim my eyes.—With you an independence is desirable; and it
is always within our reach, if affluence escapes us—without you the
world again appears empty to me. But I am recurring to some of the
melancholy thoughts that have flitted across my mind for some days past,
and haunted my dreams.

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 more attached to his mistress than she is to
me. Her eyes follow me every where, 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 you, 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; for I am truly and affectionately

                                                         Yours
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXIX.

                                                            December 28.

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

I do, my love, indeed sincerely sympathize with you in all your
disappointments.—Yet, knowing that you are well, and think of me with
affection, I only lament other disappointments, because I am sorry that
you should thus exert your self in vain, and that you are kept from me.

——, I know, urges you to stay, 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—You will listen to reason, and
it has probably occurred to you, that it will be better, in future, to
pursue some sober plan, which may demand more time, and still enable you
to arrive at the same end. It appears to me absurd to waste life in
preparing to live.

Would it not now be possible to arrange your business in such a manner
as to avoid the inquietudes, of which I have had my share since your
departure? It is not possible to enter into business, as an employment
necessary to keep the faculties awake, and (to sink a little in the
expressions) the pot boiling, without suffering what must ever be
considered as a secondary object, to engross the mind, and drive
sentiment and affection out of the heart?

I am in a hurry to give this letter to the person who has promised to
forward it with ——’s. I wish then to counteract, in some measure, what
he has doubtless recommended most warmly.

Stay, my friend, whilst it is _absolutely_ necessary.—I will give you no
tenderer name, though it glows at my heart, unless you come the moment
the settling the _present_ objects permit. _I do not consent_ to your
taking any other journey—or the little woman and I will be off, the Lord
knows where. But, as I had rather owe every thing to your affection,
and, I may add, to your reason, (for this immoderate desire of wealth,
which makes —— so eager to have you remain, is contrary to your
principles of action), I will not importune you.—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 surprized 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.

My little one begins to shew her teeth, and use her legs.—She wants you
to bear your part in the nursing business, for I am fatigued with
dancing her, and, yet she is not satisfied—she wants you to thank her
mother for taking such care of her, as you only can.

                                                     Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXX.

                                                            December 29.

Though I suppose you have later intelligence, yet, as —— has just
informed me that he has an opportunity of sending immediately to you, I
take advantage of it to inclose you

 —                —                —                —                —

How I hate this crooked business! This intercourse with the world, which
obliges one to see the worst side of human nature! Why cannot you be
content with the object you had first in view, when you entered into
this wearisome labyrinth? I know very well that you have been
imperceptibly drawn on; yet why does one project, successful or
abortive, only give place to two others? Is it not sufficient to avoid
poverty? I am contented to do my part; and, even here, sufficient to
escape from wretchedness is not difficult to obtain. And let me tell
you, I have my project also—and, if you do not soon return, the little
girl and I will take care of ourselves; we will not accept any of your
cold kindness—your distant civilities—no; not we.

This is but half jesting, for I am really tormented by the desire
which —— manifests to have you remain where you are.—Yet why do I talk
to you?—if he can persuade you let him!—for, if you are not happier with
me, and your own wishes do not make you throw aside these eternal
projects, I am above using any arguments, though reason, as well as
affection seems to offer them—if our affection be mutual, they will
occur to you—and you will act accordingly.

Since my arrival here, I have found the German lady, of whom you have
heard me speak. Her first child died in the month; but she has another,
about the age of my ——, a fine little creature. They are still but
contriving to live —— earning their daily bread—yet, though they are but
just above poverty, I envy them. She is a tender affectionate
mother—fatigued even by her attention. However she has an affectionate
husband in her turn, to render her care light, and to share her
pleasure.

I will own to you that, feeling extreme tenderness for my little girl, I
grow sad very often when I am playing with her, that you are not here,
to observe with me how her mind unfolds and her little heart becomes
attached!—These appear to me to be true pleasures—and still you suffer
them to escape you, in search of what we may never enjoy. It is your own
maxim to “live in the present moment.”—_If you do_—stay, for God’s sake;
but tell me truth—if not, tell me when I may expect to see you, and let
me not be always vainly looking for you, till I grow sick at heart.

Adieu! I am a little hurt. I must take my darling to my bosom to comfort
me.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XXXI.

                                                            December 30.

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 chuse 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, they suppose 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 doat 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-humoured 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.

                                                              * * * *[9]

Footnote 9:

  The person to whom the letters are addressed, was about this time at
  Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was
  recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of
  business now accumulated upon him.


                             LETTER XXXII.

                                                              January 9.

I just now received one of your hasty _notes_; for business so entirely
occupies you, that you have not time, or sufficient command of thought,
to write letters. Beware! you seem to be got into a whirl of projects
and schemes, which are drawing you into a gulph, that, if it do not
absorb your happiness, will infallibly destroy mine.

Fatigued during my youth by the most arduous struggles, not only to
obtain independence, but to render myself useful, not merely pleasure,
for which I had the most lively taste, I mean the simple pleasures that
flow from passion and affection, escaped me, but the most melancholy
views of life were impressed by a disappointed heart on my mind. Since I
knew you, I have been endeavouring to go back to my former nature, and
have allowed some time to glide away, winged with the delight which only
spontaneous enjoyment can give. Why have you so soon dissolved the
charm?

I am really unable to bear the continual inquietude which your and ——’s
never-ending plans produce. This you may term want of firmness—but you
are mistaken—I have still sufficient firmness to pursue my principle of
action. The present misery, I cannot find a softer word to do justice to
my feelings, appears to me unnecessary—and therefore I have not firmness
to support it as you may think I ought. I should have been content, and
still wish, to retire with you to a farm—My God! any thing, but these
continual anxieties—any thing but commerce, which debases the mind, and
roots out affection from the heart.

I do not mean to complain of subordinate inconveniences——yet I will
simply observe, that, led to expect you every week, I did not make the
arrangements required by the present circumstances, to procure the
necessaries of life. In order to have them, a servant, for that purpose
only, is indispensible—The want of wood, has made me catch the most
violent cold I ever had; and my head is so disturbed by continual
coughing, that I am unable to write without stopping frequently to
recollect myself.—This however is one of the common evils which must be
borne with——bodily pain does not touch the heart though it fatigues the
spirits.

Still as you talk of your return, even in February, doubtingly, I have
determined, the moment the weather changes, to wean my child. It is too
soon for her to begin to divide sorrow!—And as one has well said,
“despair is a freeman,” we will go and seek our fortune together.

This is not a caprice of the moment—for your absence has given new
weight to some conclusions, that I was very reluctantly forming before
you left me.—I do not chuse to be a secondary object. If your feelings
were in unison with mine, you would not sacrifice so much to visionary
prospects of future advantage.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XXXIII.

                                                                Jan. 15.

I was just going to begin my letter with the tag end of a song, which
would only have told you, what I may as well say simply, that it is
pleasant to forgive those we love. I have received your two letters,
dated the 26th and 28th of December, and my anger died away. You can
scarcely conceive the effect some of your letters have produced on me.
After longing to hear from you during a tedious interval of suspense, I
have seen a superscription written by you. Promising myself pleasure,
and feeling emotion, I have laid it by me, till the person who brought
it, left the room—when, behold! on opening it, I have found only half a
dozen hasty lines, that have damped all the rising affection of my soul.

Well now for business—

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

My animal is well; I have not yet taught her to eat, but nature is doing
the business. I gave her a crust to assist the cutting of her teeth; and
now she has two, she makes good use of them to gnaw a crust, biscuit,
&c. You would laugh to see her; she is just like a little squirrel; she
will guard a crust for two hours; and, after fixing her eye on an object
for some time, dart on it with an aim as sure as a bird of prey—nothing
can equal her life and spirits. I suffer from a cold; but it does not
affect her. Adieu! do not forget to love us—and come soon to tell us
that you do.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XXXIV.

                                                                Jan. 30.

From the purport of your last letters, I should suppose that this will
scarcely reach you; and I have already written so many letters, that you
have either not received, or neglected to acknowledge, I do not find it
pleasant, or rather I have no inclination, to go over the same ground
again. If you have received them, and are still detained by new
projects, it is useless for me to say any more on the subject. I have
done with it for ever; yet I ought to remind you, that your pecuniary
interest suffers by your absence.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

For my part, my head is turned giddy, by only hearing of plans to make
money, and my contemptuous feelings have sometimes burst out. I
therefore was glad that a violent cold gave me a pretext to stay at
home, lest I should have uttered unseasonable truths.

My child is well, and the spring will perhaps restore me to myself.—I
have endured many inconveniences this winter, which should I be ashamed
to mention, if they had been unavoidable. “The secondary pleasures of
life,” you say, “are very necessary to my comfort:” it may be so; but I
have ever considered them as secondary. If therefore you accuse me of
wanting the resolution necessary to bear the _common_[10] evils of life;
I should answer, that I have not fashioned my mind to sustain them,
because I would avoid them, cost what it would.——

Adieu!

                                                                 * * * *

Footnote 10:

  This probably alludes to some expression of the person to whom the
  letters are addressed, in which he treated as common evils, things
  upon which the letter-writer was disposed to bestow a different
  appellation.

                                                                 EDITOR.


                              LETTER XXXV.

                                                             February 9.

The melancholy presentiment has for some time hung on my spirits, that
we were parted for ever; 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 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.
God 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 to 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 accumulate 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 expence of my peace of mind.

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

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XXXVI.

                                                                Feb. 10.

You talk of “permanent views and future comfort”—not for me, for I am
dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the
business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution
destroyed. I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the
continual anxiety I feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the
fever that nightly devours me. It is on her account that I again write
to you, to conjure you, by all that you hold sacred, to leave her here
with the German lady you may have heard me mention! She has a child of
the same age, and they may be brought up together, as I wish her to be
brought up. I shall write more fully on the subject. To facilitate this,
I shall give up my present lodgings, and go into the same house. I can
live much cheaper there, which is now become an object. I have had 3000
livres from ——, and I shall take one more to pay my servant’s wages, &c.
and then I shall endeavour to procure what I want by my own exertions. I
shall entirely give up the acquaintance of the Americans.

—— and I have not been on good terms a long time. Yesterday he very
unmanlily exulted over me, on account of your determination to stay. I
had provoked it is true, by some asperities against commerce, which have
dropped from me, when we have argued about the propriety of your
remaining where you are; and it is no matter, I have drunk too deep of
the bitter cup to care about trifles.

When you first entered into these plans, you bounded your views to the
gaining of a thousand pounds. It was sufficient to have procured a farm
in America, which would have been an independence. You find now that you
did not know yourself, and that a certain situation in life is more
necessary to you than you imagined—more necessary than an uncorrupted
heart—For a year or two you may procure yourself what you call pleasure;
eating, drinking, and women; but in the solitude of declining life, I
shall be remembered with regret—I was going to say with remorse, but
checked my pen.

As I have never concealed the nature of my connection with you,
reputation will not suffer. I shall never have a confident: I am content
with the approbation of my own mind; and, if there be a searcher of
hearts, mine will not be despised. Reading what you have written
relative to the desertion of women, I have often wondered how theory and
practice could be so different, till I recollected, that the sentiments
of passion, and the resolves of reason, are very distinct. As to my
sisters, as you are so continually hurried with business, you need not
write to them—I shall, when my mind is calmer. God bless you! Adieu!

                                                                 * * * *

This has been such a period of barbarity and misery, I ought not to
complain of having my share. I wish one moment that I had never heard of
the cruelties that have been practised here, and the next envy the
mothers who have been killed with their children. Surely I had suffered
enough in life, not to be cursed with a fondness, that burns up the
vital stream I am imparting. You will think me mad: I would I were so,
that I could forget my misery—so that my head or heart would be still.——


                             LETTER XXXVII.

                                                                Feb. 19.

When I first received your letter, putting off your return to an
indefinite time, I felt so hurt, that I know 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.

As it is, I shall wean her, and try if by that step (to which I feel a
repugnance, for it is my only solace) I can get rid of my cough.
Physicians talk much of the danger attending any complaint on the lungs,
after a woman has suckled for some months. They lay a stress also on the
necessity of keeping the mind tranquil—and my God! how has mine been
harrassed! But whilst the caprices of other women are gratified, “the
wind of heaven not suffered to visit them too rudely,” I have not found
a guardian angel, in heaven or on earth, to ward off sorrow or care from
my bosom.

What sacrifices have you not made for a woman you did not respect!—But I
will not go over this ground—I want to tell you that I do not understand
you. You say that you have not given up all thoughts of returning
here—and I know that it will be necessary—nay, is. I cannot explain
myself; but if you have not lost your memory, you will easily divine my
meaning. What! is our life then only to be made up of separations? and
am I only to return to a country, that has not merely lost all charms
for me, but for which I feel a repugnance that almost amounts to horror,
only to be left there a prey to it!

Why is it so necessary that I should return?—brought up here, my girl
would be freer. Indeed, expecting you to join us, I had formed some
plans of usefulness that have now vanished with my hopes of happiness.

In the bitterness of my heart, I could complain with reason, that I am
left here dependant on a man, whose avidity to acquire a fortune has
rendered him callous to every sentiment connected with social or
affectionate emotions. With a brutal insensibility, he cannot help
displaying the pleasure your determination to stay gives him, in spite
of the effect it is visible it has had on me.

Till I can earn money, I shall endeavour to borrow some, for I want to
avoid asking him continually for the sum necessary to maintain me. Do
not mistake me, I have never been refused.—Yet I have gone half a dozen
times to the house to ask for it, and come away without speaking——you
must guess why—Besides, I wish to avoid hearing of the eternal projects
to which you have sacrificed my peace not remembering—but I will be
silent for ever.——


                            LETTER XXXVIII.

                                                                April 7.

Here I am at H——, on the wing towards you, and I write now, only to tell
you that you may expect me in the course of three or four days; for I
shall not attempt to give vent to the different emotions which agitate
my heart—You may term a feeling, which appears to me to be a degree of
delicacy that naturally arises from sensibility, pride—Still I cannot
indulge the very affectionate tenderness which glows in my bosom,
without trembling, till I see by your eyes, that it is mutual.

I sit, lost in thought, looking at the sea—and tears rush into my eyes,
when I find that I am cherishing 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—lie 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.

Sweet little creature! I deprived myself of my only pleasure, when I
weaned her about ten days ago. I am however glad I conquered my
repugnance. It was necessary it should be done soon, and I did not wish
to embitter the renewal of your acquaintance with her, by putting it off
till we met. It was a painful exertion to me, and I thought it best to
throw this inquietude with the rest, into the sack that I would fain
throw over my shoulder. I wished to endure it alone, in short—Yet, after
sending her to sleep in the next room for three or four nights, you
cannot think with what joy I took her back again to sleep in my bosom!

I suppose I shall find you when I arrive, for I do not see any necessity
for you coming to me. Pray inform Mr. ——, that I have his little friend
with me. My wishing to oblige him, made me put myself to some
inconvenience——and delay my departure; which was irksome to me, who have
not quite as much philosophy, I would not for the world say
indifference, as you. God bless you!

                                                         Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XXXIX.

                                    Brighthelmstone, Saturday, April 11.

Here we are, my love, and mean to set out early in the morning; and if I
can find you, I hope to dine with you to-morrow. I shall drive to ——’s
hotel, where —— tells me you have been—and, if you have left it, I hope
you will take care there to receive us.

I have brought with me Mr. ——’s little friend, and a girl whom I like to
take care of our little darling—not on the way, for that fell to my
share. But why do I write about trifles?—or any thing?—Are we not to
meet soon?—What does your heart say!

                                                     Your’s truly
                                                                 * * * *

I have weaned my ——, and she is now eating way at the white bread.


                               LETTER XL.

                                                 London, Friday, May 22.

I have just received your affectionate letter and am distressed to think
that I have added to your embarrassments at this troublesome juncture,
when the exertion of all the faculties of your mind appears to be
necessary, to extricate you out of your pecuniary difficulties. I
suppose it was something relative to the circumstance you have
mentioned, which made —— request to see me to-day, to _converse about a
matter of great importance_. Be that as it may, his letter (such is the
state of my spirits) inconceivably alarmed me, and rendered the last
night as distressing as the two former had been.

I have laboured to calm my mind since you left me—Still I find that
tranquillity is not to be obtained by exertion; it is a feeling so
different from the resignation of despair!—I am however no longer angry
with you—nor will I ever utter another complaint—there are arguments
which convince the reason, whilst they carry death to the heart—We have
had too many cruel explanations, that not only cloud every future
prospect; but embitter the remembrances which alone give life to
affection.—Let the subject never be revived!

It seems to me that I have not only lost the hope, but the power of
being happy.——Every emotion is now sharpened by anguish.—My soul has
been shook, and my tone of feelings destroyed.—I have gone out—and
sought for dissapation, if not amusement merely to fatigue still more, I
find, my irritable nerves.—

My friend—my dear friend—examine yourself well—I am out of the question;
for, alass! 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 for ever? When you can once ascertain it, tell
me frankly, I conjure you!—for, believe me, I have very involuntarily
interrupted your peace.

I shall expect you to dinner on Monday, and will endeavour to assume a
cheerful face to greet you—at any rate I will avoid conversations, which
only tend to harrass your feelings, because I am most affectionately
yours.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XLI.

                                                              Wednesday.

I inclose you the letter, which you desired me to forward, and I am
tempted very laconically to wish you a good morning—not because I am
angry, or have nothing to say; but to keep down a wounded spirit.—I
shall make every effort to calm my mind—yet a strong conviction seems to
whirl round in the very centre of my brain, which, like the fiat of
fate, emphatically assures me, that grief has a firm hold of my heart.

God bless you!

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XLII.

                                              —, Wednesday. Two o’Clock.

We arrived here about an hour ago. I am extremely fatigued with the
child, who would not rest quiet with any body but me, during the night
and now we are here in a comfortless, damp room, in a sort of tomb-like
house. This however I shall quickly remedy, for, when I have finished
this letter, (which I must do immediately, because the post goes out
early), I shall sally forth, and enquire about a vessel and an inn.

I will not distress you by talking of the depression of my spirits, or
the struggle I had to keep alive my dying heart.—It is even now too full
to allow me to write with composure.—***, —dear ****,—am I always to be
tossed about thus?—shall I never find an asylum to rest _contented_ in?
How can you love to fly about continually—dropping down, as it were, in
a new world—cold and strange!—every other day? Why do you not attach
those tender emotions round the idea of home, which even now dim my
eyes?—This alone is affection—every thing else is only humanity,
electrified by sympathy.

I will write to you again to-morrow, when I know how long I am to be
detained—and hope to get a letter quickly from you, to cheer yours
sincerely and affectionately

                                                                 * * * *

—— is playing near me in high spirits. She was so pleased with the noise
of the mail-horn, she has been continually imitating it.—Adieu!


                             LETTER XLIII.

                                                               Thursday.

A lady has just sent to offer to take me to —— —. I have then only a
moment to exclaim against the vague manner in which people give
information

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

But why talk of inconveniences, which are in fact trifling, when
compared with the sinking of the heart I have felt! I did not intend to
touch this painful string—God bless you!

                                                     Yours truly,
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XLIV.

                                                         Friday June 12.

I have just received yours, dated the 9th, which I suppose was a
mistake, for it could scarcely have loitered so long on the road. The
general observations which apply to the state of your own mind, appear
to me just, as far as they go; and 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 appetites,
must have variety to banish _ennui_, because the imagination never leads
its magic wand, to convert people into love, cemented by according
reason.—Ah! my friend, you know not the ineffable delight, the exquisite
pleasure, which arises from a 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 characteristic of genius, the foundation of taste, and of
that exquisite relish of 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 constitution, and
purity of feeling—which would open your heart to me.——I would fain rest
there!

Yet, convinced more than ever of the sincerity and tenderness of my
attachment to you, the involuntary hopes, which a determination to live
has revived, are not sufficiently strong to dissipate the cloud, that
despair has spread over futurity. I have looked at the sea, and at my
child, hardly daring to own to myself the secret wish, that it might
become our tomb; and that the heart, still so alive to anguish, might
there be quieted by death. At this moment ten thousand complicated
sentiments press for utterance, weigh on my heart, and obscure my sight.

Are we ever to meet again? and will you endeavour to render that meeting
happier than the last? Will you endeavour to restrain your caprices, in
order to give vigour to affection, and to give play to the checked
sentiments that nature intended should expand your heart? I cannot
indeed, without agony, think of your bosom’s being continually
contaminated; and bitter are the tears which exhaust my eyes, when I
recollect why my child and I are forced to stay from the asylum, in
which, after so many storms, I had hoped to rest, smiling at angry
fate.—These are not common sorrows; nor can you perhaps conceive, how
much active fortitude it requires to labour perpetually to blunt the
shafts of disappointment.

Examine now yourself, and ascertain whether you can live in something
like a settled stile. Let our confidence in future be unbounded;
consider whether you find it necessary to sacrifice me to what you term
“the zest of life;” and, when you have once a clear view of your own
motives, of your own incentive to action, do not deceive me!

The train of thoughts which the writing of this epistle awoke, makes me
so wretched, that I must take a walk to rouse and calm my mind. But
first, let me tell you, that, if you really wish to promote my
happiness, you will endeavour to give me as much as you can of yourself.
You have great mental energy; and your judgment seems to me so just,
that it is only the dupe of your inclination in discussing one subject.

The post does not go out to-day. To-morrow I may write more tranquilly.
I cannot say when the vessel will sail in which I have determined to
depart.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                                                       Saturday Morning.

Your second letter reached me about an hour ago. You were certainly
wrong in supposing that I did not mention you with respect; though,
without my being conscious of it, some sparks of resentment may have
animated the gloom of despair—Yes; with less affection, I should have
been more respectful. However the regard which I have for you, is so
unequivocal to myself, I imagine that it must be sufficiently obvious to
every body else. Besides, the only letter I intended for the public eye
was to ——, and that I destroyed from delicacy before you saw them,
because it was only written (of course warmly in your praise) to prevent
any odium being thrown on you[11].

Footnote 11:

  This passage refers to letters written under a purpose of suicide, and
  not intended to be opened till after the catastrophe.

I am harrassed by your embarrassments, and shall certainly use all my
efforts to make the business terminate to your satisfaction in which I
am engaged.

My friend—my dearest friend—I feel my fate united to yours by the most
sacred principles of my soul, and the yearns of—yes, I will say it—a
true, unsophisticated heart.

                                                     Yours most truly
                                                                 * * * *

If the wind be fair, the captain talks of sailing on Monday; but I am
afraid I shall be detained some days longer. At any rate, continue to
write, (I want this support) till you are sure I am where I cannot
expect a letter; and, if any should arrive after my departure, a
gentleman (not Mr. ——’s friend, I promise you) from whom I have received
great civilities, will send them after me.

Do write by every occasion! I am anxious to hear how your affairs go on;
and, still more, to be convinced that you are not separating yourself
from us. For my little darling is calling papa, and adding her parrot
word—Come, Come! And will you not come, and let us exert ourselves?—I
shall recover all my energy, when I am convinced that my exertions will
draw us more closely together. Once more adieu!


                              LETTER XLV.

                                                       Sunday, June, 14.

I rather expected to hear from you to-day—I wish you would not fail to
write to me for a little time, because I am not quite well—Whether I
have any good sleep or not, I wake in the morning in violent fits of
trembling—and, in spite of all my efforts, the child—every
thing—fatigues me, in which I seek for solace or amusement.

Mr. —— forced on me a letter to a physician of this place; it was
fortunate, for I should otherwise have had some difficulty to obtain the
necessary information. His wife is a pretty woman (I can admire, you
know, a pretty woman, when I am alone) and he an intelligent and rather
interesting man.—They have behaved to me with great hospitality; and
poor —— was never so happy in her life, as amongst their young brood.

They took me in their carriage to —— and I ran over my favourite walks,
with a vivacity that would have astonished you.—The town did not please
me quite so well as formerly—It appeared so diminutive; and, when I
found that many of the inhabitants had lived in the same houses ever
since I left it, I could not help wondering how they could thus have
vegetated, whilst I was running over a world of sorrow, snatching at
pleasure, and throwing off prejudices. The place where I at present am,
is much improved; but it is astonishing what strides aristocracy and
fanaticism have made, since I resided in this country.

The wind does not appear inclined to change, so I am still forced to
linger—When do you think that you shall be able to set out for France? I
do not entirely like the aspect of your affairs, and still less your
connections on the other side of the water. Often do I sigh, when I
think of your entanglements in business, and your extreme
restlessness.—Even now I am almost afraid to ask you whether the
pleasure of being free does not over-balance the pain you felt at
parting with me? Sometimes I indulge the hope that you will feel me
necessary to you—or why should we meet again?—but, the moment after,
despair damps my rising spirits, aggravated by the emotions of
tenderness, which ought to soften the cares of life.——God bless you!

                                     Yours sincerely and affectionately
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XLVI.

                                                                June 15.

I want to know how you have settled with respect to ——. In short, be
very particular in your account of all your affairs—let our confidence,
my dear, be unbounded.—The last time we were separated, was a separation
indeed on your part—Now you have acted more ingenuously, let the most
affectionate interchange of sentiments fill up the aching void of
disappointment. I almost dread that your plans will prove abortive—yet
should the most unlucky turn send you home to us, convinced that a true
friend is a treasure, I should not much mind having to struggle with the
world again. Accuse me not of pride—yet sometimes, when nature has
opened my heart to its author, I have wondered that you did not set a
higher value on my heart.

Receive a kiss from ——, I was going to add, if you will not take one
from me, and believe me yours

                                                     Sincerely,
                                                                 * * * *

The wind still continues in the same quarter.


                             LETTER XLVII.

                                                        Tuesday morning.

The captain has just sent to inform me, that I must be on board in the
course of a few hours.—I wished to have stayed till to-morrow. It would
have been a comfort to me to have received another letter from
you—Should one arrive, it will be sent after me.

My spirits are agitated, I scarcely know why the quitting England seems
to be a fresh parting. Surely you will not forget me. A thousand weak
forebodings assault my soul, and the state of my health renders me
sensible to every thing. It is surprising, that in London, in a
continual conflict of mind, I was still growing better—whilst here,
bowed down by the despotic hand of fate, forced into resignation by
despair, I seem to be fading away—perishing beneath a cruel blight, that
withers up all my faculties.

The child is perfectly well. My hand seems unwilling to add adieu! I
know not why this inexpressible sadness has taken possession of me. It
is not a presentiment of ill. Yet having been so perpetually the sport
of disappointment, having a heart that has been as it were a mark for
misery, I dread to meet wretchedness in some new shape. Well, let it
come—I care not!—what have I to dread, who have so little to hope for!
God bless you—I am most affectionately and sincerely yours.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER XLVIII.

                                                      Wednesday Morning.

I was hurried on board yesterday about three o’clock, the wind having
changed. But before evening it steered round to the old point; and here
we are, in the midst of mists and waters, only taking advantage of the
tide to advance a few miles.

You will scarcely suppose that I left the town with reluctance—yet it
was even so—for I wished to receive another letter from you, and I felt
pain at parting, for ever perhaps, from the amiable family, who had
treated me with so much hospitality and kindness. They will probably
send me your letter, if it arrives this morning; for here we are likely
to remain, I am afraid to think how long.

The vessel is very commodious, and the captain a civil, open-hearted
kind of man. There being no other passengers, I have the cabin to
myself, which is pleasant; and I have brought a few books with me to
beguile weariness; but I seem inclined rather to employ the dead moments
of suspence in writing some effusions, than in reading.

What are you about? How are your affairs going on? It may be a long time
before you answer these questions. My dear friend, my heart sinks within
me!—Why am I forced thus to struggle continually with my affections and
feelings? Ah! why are those affections and feelings the source of so
much misery, when they seem to have been given to vivify my heart, and
extend my usefulness! But I must not dwell on this subject. Will you not
endeavour to cherish all the affection you can for me? What am I
saying?—Rather forget me if you can—if other gratifications are dearer
to you. How is every remembrance of mine embittered by disappointment?
What a world is this! They only seem happy, who never look beyond
sensual or artificial enjoyments. Adieu.

—— begins to play with the cabin boy, and is as gay as a lark. I will
labour to be tranquil; and am in every mood,

                                             Your’s sincerely
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER XLIX.

                                                               Thursday.

Here I am still—and I have just received your letter of Monday by the
pilot who promised to bring it to me, if we were detained, as expected,
by the wind. It is indeed wearisome to be thus tossed about without
going forward. I have a violent head-ache, yet I am obliged to take care
of the child, who is a little tormented by her teeth, because —— is
unable to do any thing, she is rendered so sick by the motion of the
ship, as we ride at anchor.

These are however trifling inconveniences, compared with anguish of
mind—compared with the sinking of a broken heart. To tell you the truth
I never in my life suffered so much from depression of spirits—from
despair. I do not sleep—or, if I close my eyes, it is to have the most
terrifying dreams, in which I often meet you with different casts of
countenance.

I will not, my dear ——, torment you by dwelling on my sufferings—and
will use all my efforts to calm my mind, instead of deadening it—at
present it is most painfully active. I find I am not equal to these
continual struggles—yet your letter this morning has afforded me some
comfort, and I will try to revive hope. One thing let me tell you, when
we meet again—surely we are to meet!—it must be to part no more. I mean
not to have seas between us, it is more than I can support.

The pilot is hurrying me; God bless you.

In spite of the commodiousness of the vessel, every thing here would
disgust my senses, had I nothing else to think of—“When the mind’s free,
the body’s delicate;”—mine has been too much hurt to regard trifles.

                                                 Your’s most truly
                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER L.

                                                               Saturday.

This is the fifth dreary day I have been imprisoned by the wind, with
every outward object to disgust the senses, and unable to banish the
remembrances that sadden my heart.

How am I altered by disappointment!—When going to ——, ten years ago, the
elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness, and the
imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and
sketch futurity in smiling colours. Now I am going towards the North in
search of sunbeams! Will any ever warm this desolated heart? All nature
seems to frown, or rather mourn with me. Every thing is cold—cold as my
expectations! Before I left the shore, tormented, as I now am, by these
North-east _chillers_, I could not help exclaiming—Give me, gracious
Heaven! at least, genial weather, if I am never to meet the genial
affection that still warms this agitated bosom—compelling life to linger
there.

I am now going on shore with the captain, though the weather be rough,
to seek for milk, &c. at a little village, and to take a walk, after
which I hope to sleep—for, confined here, surrounded by disagreeable
smells, I have lost the little appetite I had; and I lie awake, till
thinking almost drives me to the brink of madness—only to the brink, for
I never forget, even in the feverish slumbers I sometimes fall into, the
misery I am labouring to blunt the sense of, by every exertion in my
power.

Poor —— still continues sick, and —— grows weary when the weather will
not allow her to remain on deck.

I hope this will be the last letter I shall write from England to
you—are you not tired of this lingering adieu?

                                                     Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER LI.

                                                         Sunday Morning.

The captain last night, after I had written my letter to you intended to
be left at a little village, offered to go to —— to pass to-day. We had
a troublesome sail, and now I must hurry on board again, for the wind
has changed.

I half expected to find a letter from you here. Had you written one
hap-hazard it would have been kind and considerate—you might have known,
had you thought, that the wind would not permit me to depart. These are
attentions more grateful to the heart than offers of service—But why do
I foolishly continue to look for them?

Adieu! adieu! My friend—your friendship is very cold—you see I am hurt.
God bless you! I may perhaps be some time or other, independent in every
sense of the word—Ah! there is but one sense of it of consequence. I
will break or bend this weak heart—yet even now it is full.

                                                 Yours sincerely
                                                                 * * * *

The child is well; I did not leave her on board.


                              LETTER LII.

                                                      June 27, Saturday.

I arrived in ——. I have now but a moment, before the post goes out, to
inform you we have got here; though not without considerable difficulty,
for we were set ashore in a boat above twenty miles below.

What I suffered in the vessel I will not now descant upon, nor mention
the pleasure I received from the sight of the rocky coast. This morning
however, walking to join the carriage that was to transport us to this
place, I fell, without any previous warning, senseless on the rocks—and
how I escaped with life I can scarcely guess. I was in a stupor for a
quarter of an hour; the suffusion of blood at last restored me to my
senses; the contusion is great, and my brain confused. The child is
well.

Twenty miles ride in the rain, after my accident, has sufficiently
deranged me, and here I could not get a fire to warm me, or any thing
warm to eat; the inns are mere stables, I must nevertheless go to bed.
For God’s sake, let me hear from you immediately my friend! I am not
well, and yet you see I cannot die.

                                                 Yours sincerely
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER LIII.

                                                                June 29.

I wrote to you by the last post, to inform you of my arrival; and I
alluded to the extreme fatigue I endured on ship-board, owing to ——’s
illness, and the roughness of the weather—I likewise mentioned to you my
fall, the effects of which I still feel, though I do not think it will
have any serious consequences.

—— —— will go with me, if I find it necessary to go to ——. The inns are
here so bad, I was forced to accept of an apartment in his house. I am
overwhelmed with civilities on all sides, and fatigued with the
endeavours to amuse me, from which I cannot escape.

My friend—my friend, I am not well—a deadly weight of sorrow lies
heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life;
and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the
hopes that render them bearable. “How flat, dull, and unprofitable,”
appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly
enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my
pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER LIV.

                                                                 July 1.

I labour in vain to calm my mind—my soul has been overwhelmed by sorrow
and disappointment. Every thing fatigues me—this is a life that cannot
last long. It is you who must determine with respect to futurity—and,
when you have, I will act accordingly—I mean, we must either resolve to
live together, or part for ever, I cannot bear these continual
struggles—But I wish you to examine carefully your own heart and mind;
and if you perceive the least chance of being happier without me than
with me, or if your inclination leans capriciously to that side, do not
dissemble; but tell me frankly that you will never see me more. I will
then adopt the plan I mentioned to you—for we must either live together,
or I will be entirely independent.

My heart is so oppressed, I cannot write with precision——You know
however that what I so imperfectly express, are not the crude sentiments
of the moment—You can only contribute to my comfort (it is the
consolation I am in need of) by being with me—and, if the tenderest
friendship is of any value, why will you not look to me for a degree of
satisfaction that heartless affections cannot bestow?

Tell me then, will you determine to meet me at Basle?—I shall, I should
imagine, be at —— before the close of August; and, after you settle your
affairs at Paris, could we not meet there?

                    God bless you!
                                Yours truly
                                            * * * *

Poor —— —— has suffered during the journey with her teeth.


                               LETTER LV.

                                                                 July 3.

There was a gloominess diffused through your last letter, the impression
of which still rests on my mind—though, recollecting how quickly you
throw off the forcible feelings of the moment, I flatter myself it has
long since given place to your usual cheerfulness.

Believe me (and my eyes fill with tears of tenderness as I assure you)
there is nothing I would not endure in the way of privation, rather than
disturb your tranquillity.—If I am fated to be unhappy, I will labour to
hide my sorrows in my bosom; and you shall always find me a faithful,
affectionate friend.

I grow more and more attached to my little girl—and I cherish this
affection without fear, because it must be a long time before it can
become bitterness of soul.—She is an interesting creature. On
ship-board, how often as I gazed at the sea, have I longed to bury my
troubled bosom in the less troubled deep; asserting with Brutus, “that
the virtue I had followed too far, was merely an empty name!” and
nothing but the sight of her—her playful smiles, which seemed to cling
and twine round my heart—could have stopped me.

What peculiar misery has fallen to my share! To act up to my principles,
I have laid the strictest restraint on my very thoughts—yes; not to
sully the delicacy of my feelings, I have reined in my imagination; and
started with affright from every sensation, (I allude to ——) that
stealing with balmy sweetness into my soul, led me to scent from afar
the fragrance of reviving nature.

My friend, I have dearly paid for one conviction.—Love in some minds, is
an affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception (or
taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, &c.
alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were,
impalpable—they must be felt, they cannot be described.

Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care
than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind—Aiming
at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my
soul—almost rooted out what renders it estimable—Yes, I have damped the
enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a
fuel that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common
enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me
stupid—soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch
of disappointment.

I am now endeavouring to recover myself—and such is the elasticity of my
constitution, and the purity of the atmosphere here, that health
unsought for, begins to reanimate my countenance.

I have the sincerest esteem and affection for you—but the desire of
regaining peace, (do you understand me?) has made me forget the respect
due to my own emotions—sacred emotions, that are the sure harbingers of
the delights I was formed to enjoy—and shall enjoy, for nothing can
extinguish the heavenly spark.

Still, when we meet again, I will not torment you, I promise you. I
blush when I recollect my former conduct—and will not in future confound
myself with the beings whom I feel to be my inferiors. I will listen to
delicacy, or pride.


                              LETTER LVI.

                                                                 July 4.

I hope to hear from you by to-morrow’s mail. My dearest friend! I cannot
tear my affections from you—and, though every remembrance stings me to
the soul, I think of you, till I make allowance for the very defects of
character, that have given such a cruel stab to my peace.

Still however I am more alive than you have seen me for a long, long
time. I have a degree of vivacity, even in my grief, which is preferable
to the benumbing stupour that, for the last year, has frozen up all my
faculties.—Perhaps this change is more owing to returning health, than
to the vigour of my reason—for, in spite of sadness (and surely I have
had my share,) the purity of this air, and the being continually out in
it, for I sleep in the country every night, has made an alteration in my
appearance that really surprises me.—The rosy fingers of health already
streak my cheeks—and I have seen a _physical_ life in my eyes, after I
have been climbing the rocks, that resembled the fond, credulous hopes
of youth.

With what a cruel sigh have I recollected that I had forgotten to hope!
Reason, or rather experience, does not thus cruelly damp poor ——’s
pleasures; she plays all day in the garden with ——’s children, and makes
friends for herself.

Do not tell me, that you are happier without us—Will you not come to us
in Switzerland? Ah! why do not you love us with much more sentiment?—why
are you a creature of such sympathy that the warmth of your feelings, or
rather quickness of your senses, hardens your heart? It is my
misfortune, that my imagination is perpetually shading your defects, and
lending you charms, whilst the grossness of your senses makes you (call
me not vain) overlook graces in me, that only dignity of mind, and the
sensibility of an expanded heart can give.—God bless you! Adieu.


                              LETTER LVII.

                                                                 July 7.

I could not help feeling extremely mortified last post, at not receiving
a letter from you. My being at —— was but a chance, and you might have
hazarded it; and would a year ago.

I shall not however complain—There are misfortunes so great, as to
silence the usual expressions of sorrow——Believe me, there is such a
thing as a broken heart! There are characters whose very energy prays
upon them; and who, ever inclined to cherish by reflection some passion,
cannot rest satisfied with the common comforts of life. I have
endeavoured to fly from myself, and launched into all the dissipation
possible here, only to feel keener anguish, when alone with my child.

Still, could any thing please me—had not disappointment cut me off from
life, this romantic country, these fine evenings, would interest me.—My
God! can any thing? and am I ever to feel alive to painful
sensations?—But it cannot—it shall not last long.

The post is again arrived; I have sent to seek for letters, only to be
wounded to the soul by a negative. My brain seems on fire. I must go
into the air.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER LVIII.

                                                                July 14.

I am now on my journey to ——. I felt more at leaving my child, than I
thought I should—and, whilst at night I imagined every instant that I
heard the half-formed sounds of her voice—I asked myself how I could
think of parting with her for ever, of leaving her thus helpless?

Poor lamb! It may run very well in a tale, that “God will temper the
winds to the shorn lamb;” but how can I expect that she will be
shielded, when my naked bosom has had to brave continually the pitiless
storm? Yes; I could add, with poor Lear—What is the war of elements to
the pangs of disappointed affection, and the horror arising from a
discovery of a breach of confidence, that snaps every social tie!

All is not right somewhere. When you first knew me, I was not thus lost.
I could still confide, for I opened my heart to you—of this only comfort
you have deprived me, whilst my happiness, you tell me, was your first
object. Strange want of judgment!

I will not complain; but, from the soundness of your understanding, I am
convinced, if you give yourself leave to reflect, you will also feel,
that your conduct to me, so far from being generous, has not been just.
I mean not to allude to factitious principles of morality; but to the
simple basis of all rectitude. However I did not intend to argue—Your
not writing is cruel, and my reason is perhaps disturbed by constant
wretchedness.

Poor —— would fain have accompanied me, out of tenderness; for my
fainting, or rather convulsion, when I landed, and my sudden changes of
countenance since, have alarmed her so much, that she is perpetually
afraid of some accident—But it would have injured the child this warm
season, as she is cutting her teeth.

I hear not of your having written to me at ——. Very well! Act as you
please, there is nothing I fear or care for! When I see whether I can,
or cannot obtain the money I am come here about, I will not trouble you
with letters to which you do not reply.


                              LETTER LIX.

                                                                July 18.

I am here in ——, separated from my child, and here I must remain a month
at least, or I might as well never have come.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

I have begun —— which will, I hope, discharge all my obligations of a
pecuniary kind. I am lowered in my own eyes, on account of my not having
done it sooner.

I shall make no further comments on your silence. God bless you!

                                                                 * * * *


                               LETTER LX.

                                                                July 30.

I have just received two of your letters, dated the 26th and 30th of
June; and you must have received several from me, informing you of my
detention, and how much I was hurt by your silence.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

Write to me then, my friend, and write explicitly. I have suffered, God
knows, since I left you. Ah! you have never felt this kind of sickness
of heart! My mind however is at present painfully active, and the
sympathy I feel almost rises to agony. But this is not a subject of
complaint, it has afforded me pleasure, and reflected pleasure is all I
have to hope for—if a spark of hope be yet alive in my forlorn bosom.

I will try to write with a degree of composure. I wish for us to live
together, because I want you to acquire an habitual tenderness for my
poor girl. I cannot bear to think of leaving her alone in the world, or
that she should only be protected by your sense of duty. Next to
preserving her, my most earnest wish is not to disturb your peace. I
have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life. There are wounds
that can never be healed, but they may be allowed to fester in silence
without wincing.

When we meet again, you shall be convinced that I have more resolution
than you give me credit for. I will not torment you. If I am destined
always to be disappointed and unhappy, I will conceal the anguish I
cannot dissipate; and the tightened cord of life or reason will at last
snap, and set me free.

Yes; I shall be happy—This heart is worthy of the bliss its feelings
anticipate—and I cannot even persuade myself, wretched as they have made
me, that my principles and sentiments are not founded in nature and
truth. But to have done with these subjects.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

I have been seriously employed in this way since I came to ——; yet I
never was so much in the air. I walk, I ride on horseback—row, bathe,
and even sleep in the fields; my health is consequently improved. The
child, —— informs me, is well. I long to be with her.

Write to me immediately—were I only to think of myself, I could wish you
to return to me, poor, with the simplicity of character, part of which
you seem lately to have lost, that first attached to you

                                               Yours most affectionately
                                                       * * * *  * * * *

I have been subscribing other letters—so I mechanically did the same to
yours.


                              LETTER LXI.

                                                                 Aug. 5.

Employment and exercise have been of great service to me; and I have
entirely recovered the strength and activity I lost during the time of
my nursing. I have seldom been in better health; and my mind, though
trembling to the touch of anguish, is calmer—yet still the same. I have,
it is true, enjoyed some tranquillity, and more happiness here, than for
a long—long time past. (I say happiness, for I can give no other
appellation to the exquisite delight this wild country and fine summer
have afforded me.) Still, on examining my heart, I find that it is so
constituted, I cannot live without some particular affection.—I am
afraid not without a passion, and I feel the want of it more in society,
than in solitude——

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

Writing to you, whenever an affectionate epithet occurs, my eyes fill
with tears, and my trembling hand stops—you may then depend on my
resolution, when with you. If I am doomed to be unhappy, I will confine
my anguish in my own bosom—tenderness, rather than passion, has made me
sometimes overlook delicacy, the same tenderness will in future restrain
me.

God bless you!


                              LETTER LXII.

                                                                 Aug. 7.

Air, exercise, and bathing, have restored me to health, braced my
muscles, and covered my ribs, even whilst I have recovered my former
activity.—I cannot tell you that my mind is calm, though I have snatched
some moments of exquisite delight, wandering through the woods, and
resting on the rocks.

This state of suspense, my friend, is intolerable; we must determine on
something—and soon; we must meet shortly, or part for ever. I am
sensible that I acted foolishly—but I was wretched, when we were
together—Expecting too much, I let the pleasure I might have caught,
slip from me. I cannot live with you, I ought not, if you form another
attachment. But I promise you, mine shall not be intruded on you. Little
reason have I to expect a shadow of happiness, after the cruel
disappointments that have rent my heart; but that of my child seems to
depend on our being together. Still I do not wish you to sacrifice a
chance of enjoyment for an uncertain good. I feel a conviction, that I
can provide for her, and it shall be my object—if we are indeed to part
to meet no more. Her affection must not be divided. She must be a
comfort to me, if I am to have no other, and only know me as her
support. I feel that I cannot endure the anguish of corresponding with
you, if we are only to correspond. No; if you seek for happiness
elsewhere, my letters shall not interrupt your repose. I will be dead to
you. I cannot express to you what pain it gives me to write about an
eternal separation. You must determine, examine yourself—But, for God’s
sake! spare me the anxiety of uncertainty! I may sink under the trial;
but I will not complain.

Adieu! If I had anything more to say to you, it is all flown, and
absorbed by the most tormenting apprehensions; yet I scarcely know what
new form of misery I have to dread.

I ought to beg your pardon for having sometimes written peevishly; but
you will impute it to affection, if you understand any thing of the
heart of

                                                     Yours truly
                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER LXIII.

                                                                 Aug. 9.

Five of your letters have been sent after me from ——. One, dated the
14th of July, was written in a style which I may have merited, but did
not expect from you. However this is not a time to reply to it, except
to assure you that you shall not be tormented with any more complaints.
I am disgusted with myself for having so long importuned you with my
affection.——

My child is very well. We shall soon meet, to part no more, I hope—I
mean, I and my girl. I shall wait with some degree of anxiety till I am
informed how your affairs terminate.

                                                     Yours sincerely
                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER LXIV.

                                                                Aug. 26.

I arrived here last night, and with the most exquisite delight, once
more pressed my babe to my heart. We shall part no more. You perhaps
cannot conceive the pleasure it gave me, to see her run about, and play
alone. Her increasing intelligence attaches me more and more to her. I
have promised her that I will fulfil my duty to her; and nothing in
future shall make me forget it. I will also exert myself to obtain an
independence for her; but I will not be too anxious on this head.

I have already told you, that I have recovered my health. Vigour, and
even vivacity of mind, have returned with a renovated constitution. As
for peace, we will not talk of it. I was not made, perhaps, to enjoy the
calm contentment so termed.——

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

You tell me that my letters torture you; I will not describe the effect
yours have on me. I received three this morning, the last dated the 7th
of this month. I mean not to give vent to the emotions they produced.
Certainly you are right; our minds are not congenial. I have lived in an
ideal world, and fostered sentiments that you do not comprehend—or you
would not treat me thus. I am not, I will not be, merely an object of
compassion, a clog, however light, to teize you. Forget that I exist: I
will never remind you. Something emphatical whispers me to put an end to
these struggles. Be free, I will not torment, when I cannot please. I
can take care of my child; you need not continually tell me that our
fortune is inseparable, _that you will try to cherish tenderness for
me._ Do no violence to yourself! When we are separated, our interest,
since you give so much weight to pecuniary considerations, will be
entirely divided. I want not protection without affection; and support I
need not, whilst my faculties are undisturbed. I had a dislike to living
in England; but painful feelings must give way to superior
considerations. I may not be able to acquire the sum necessary to
maintain my child and self elsewhere. It is too late to go to
Switzerland. I shall not remain at ——, living expensively. But be not
alarmed! I shall not force myself on you any more.

Adieu! I am agitated, my whole frame is convulsed, my lips tremble, as
if shook by cold, though fire seems to be circulating in my veins.

God bless you.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER LXV.

                                                            September 6.

I received just now your letter of the 20th. I had written you a letter
last night, into which imperceptibly slipt some of my bitterness of
soul. I will copy the part relative to business. I am not sufficiently
vain to imagine that I can, for more than a moment, cloud your enjoyment
of life—to prevent even that, you had better never hear from me—and
repose on the idea that I am happy.

Gracious God! It is impossible for me to stifle something like
resentment, when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I
have suffered this last year, is not to be forgotten! I have not that
happy substitute for wisdom, insensibility—and the lively sympathies
which bind me to my fellow-creatures, are all of a painful kind.—They
are the agonies of a broken heart—pleasure and I have shaken hands.

I see here nothing but heaps of ruins, and only converse with people
immersed in trade and sensuality.

I am weary of travelling—yet seem to have no home—no resting place to
look to.—I am strangely cast off.—How often, passing through the rocks,
I have thought, “But for this child I would lay my head on one of them,
and never open my eyes again!” With a heart feelingly alive to all the
affections of my nature—I have never met with one, softer than the stone
that I would fain take for my last pillow. I once thought I had, but it
was all a delusion. I meet with families continually, who are bound
together by affection or principle—and, when I am conscious that I have
fulfilled the duties of my station, almost to a forgetfulness of myself,
I am ready to demand, in a murmuring tone, of Heaven, “Why am I thus
abandoned?”

You say now

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

I do not understand you. It is necessary for you to write more
explicitly——and determine on some mode of conduct.—I cannot endure this
suspence—Decide—Do you fear to strike another blow? We live together, or
eternally part!—I shall not write to you again, till I receive an answer
to this. I must compose my tortured soul, before I write on indifferent
subjects.

 —                —                —                —                —
 —                —                —                —                —

I do not know whether I write intelligibly, for my head is
disturbed.—But this you ought to pardon—for it is with difficulty
frequently that I make out what you mean to say—You write I suppose, at
Mr. ——’s after dinner, when your head is not the clearest—and as for
your heart, if you have one, I see nothing like the dictates of
affection, unless a glimpse when you mention the child.——Adieu!


                              LETTER LXVI.

                                                           September 25.

I have just finished a letter, to be given in charge to captain ——. In
that I complained of your silence, and expressed my surprise that three
mails should have arrived without bringing a line for me. Since I closed
it, I hear of another, and still no letter.—I am labouring to write
calmly—this silence is a refinement on cruelty. Had captain —— remained
a few days longer, I would have returned with him to England. What have
I to do here? I have repeatedly written to you fully. Do you do the
same—and quickly. Do not leave me in suspense. I have not deserved this
of you. I cannot write my mind is so distressed. Adieu!


                             LETTER LXVII.

                                                           September 27.

When you receive this, I shall either have landed, or be hovering on the
British coast—your letter of the 18th decided me.

By what criterion of principle or affection, you term my questions
extraordinary and unnecessary, I cannot determine.—You desire me to
decide—I had decided. You must have had long ago two letters of mine,
from ——, to the same purport, to consider.—In these, God knows! there
was but too much affection, and the agonies of a distracted mind were
but too faithfully pourtrayed!—What more then had I to say?—The negative
was to come from you.—You had perpetually recurred to your promise of
meeting me in the autumn—Was it extraordinary that I should demand a
yes, or no?—Your letter is written with extreme harshness, coldness I am
accustomed to; in it I find not a trace of the tenderness of humanity,
much less of friendship.—I only see a desire to heave a load off your
shoulders.

I am above disputing about words.—It matters not in what terms you
decide.

The tremendous power who formed this heart, must have foreseen that, in
a world in which self-interest, in various shapes, is the principal
mobile, I had little chance of escaping misery.—To the fiat of fate I
submit.—I am content to be wretched; but I will not be contemptible.—Of
me you have no cause to complain, but for having had too much regard for
you—for having expected a degree of permanent happiness, when you only
sought for a momentary gratification.

I am strangely deficient in sagacity.—Uniting myself to you, your
tenderness seemed to make me amends for all my former misfortunes.—On
this tenderness and affection with what confidence did I rest!—but I
leaned on a spear, that has pierced me to the heart.—You have thrown off
a faithful friend, to pursue the caprices of the moment.—We certainly
are differently organized; for even now, when conviction has been
stamped on my soul by sorrow, I can scarcely believe it possible. It
depends at present on you, whether you will see me or not.—I shall take
no step, till I see or hear from you.

Preparing myself for the worst—I have determined, if your next letter be
like the last, to write to Mr. —— to procure me an obscure lodging, and
not to inform any body of my arrival.—There I will endeavour in a few
months to obtain the sum necessary to take me to France—from you I will
not receive any more.—I am not yet sufficiently humbled to depend on
your beneficence.

Some people, whom my unhappiness has interested, though they know not
the extent of it, will assist me to attain the object I have in view,
the independence of my child. Should a peace take place, ready money
will go a great way in France—and I will borrow a sum, which my industry
_shall_ enable me to pay at my leisure, to purchase a small estate for
my girl.—The assistance I shall find necessary to complete her
education, I can get at an easy rate at Paris—I can introduce her to
such society as she will like—and thus securing for her all the chance
for happiness, which depends on me, I shall die in peace, persuaded that
the felicity which has hitherto cheated my expectation, will not always
elude my grasp. No poor tempest-tossed mariner ever more earnestly
longed to arrive at his port.

                                                                 * * * *

I shall not come up in the vessel all the way, because I have no place
to go to. Captain —— will inform you where I am. It is needless to add,
that I am not in a state of mind to bear suspense—and that I wish to see
you, though it be the last time.


                             LETTER LXVIII.

                                                       Sunday, October 4

I wrote to you by the packet, to inform you, that your letter of the
18th of last month, had determined me to set out with captain ——; but,
as we sailed very quick, I take it for granted, that you have not yet
received it.

You say, I must decide for myself. I had decided, that it was most for
the interest of my little girl, and for my own comfort, little as I
expect, for us to live together; and I even thought that you would be
glad, some years hence, when the tumult of business was over, to repose
in the society of an affectionate friend, and mark the progress of our
interesting child, whilst endeavouring to be of use in the circle you at
last resolved to rest in; for you cannot run about for ever.

From the tenour of your last letter however, I am led to imagine, that
you have formed some new attachment. If it be so, let me earnestly
request you to see me once more, and immediately. This is the only proof
I require of the friendship you profess for me. I will then decide,
since you boggle about a mere form.

I am labouring to write with calmness, but the extreme anguish I feel,
at landing without having any friend to receive me, and even to be
conscious that the friend whom I most wish to see, will feel a
disagreeable sensation at being informed of my arrival, does not come
under the description of common misery. Every emotion yields to an
overwhelming flood of sorrow—and the playfulness of my child distresses
me. On her account, I wished to remain a few days here, comfortless as
is my situation. Besides, I did not wish to surprise you. You have told
me, that you would make any sacrifice to promote my happiness—and, even
in your last unkind letter, you talk of the ties which bind you to me
and my child.—Tell me, that you wish it, and I will cut this Gordian
knot.

I now most earnestly intreat you to write to me, without fail, by the
return of the post. Direct your letter to be left at the post-office,
and tell me whether you will come to me here, or where you will meet me.
I can receive your letter on Wednesday morning.

Do not keep me in suspence.—I expect nothing from you, or any human
being: my die is cast!—I have fortitude enough to determine to do my
duty; yet I cannot raise my depressed spirits, or calm my trembling
heart.—That Being who moulded it thus, knows that I am unable to tear up
by the roots the propensity to affection which has been the torment of
my life—but life will have an end!

Should you come here (a few months ago I could not have doubted it) you
will find me at —— If you prefer meeting me on the road, tell me where.

                                                    Yours affectionately
                                                                * * * *


                              LETTER LXIX.

I write you now on my knees; imploring you to send my child and the maid
with ——, to Paris, to be consigned to the care of Madame ——, rue ——,
section de ——. Should they be removed, —— can give their direction.

Let the maid have all my clothes without distinction.

Pray pay the cook her wages, and do not mention the confession which I
forced from her—a little sooner or later is of no consequence. Nothing
but my extreme stupidity could have rendered me blind so long. Yet,
whilst you assured me that you had no attachment, I thought we might
still have lived together.

I shall make no comments on your conduct; or any appeal to the world.
Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon shall I be at peace. When
you receive this, my burning head will be cold.

I would encounter a thousand deaths, rather than a night like the last.
Your treatment has thrown my mind into a state of chaos; yet I am
serene. I go to find comfort, and my only fear is, that my poor body
will be insulted by an endeavour to recal my hated existence. But I
shall plunge into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being
snatched from the death I seek.

God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me
endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to
your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall
appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude.

                                                                 * * * *


                              LETTER LXX.

                                                         Sunday Morning.

I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I
was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination
is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a
frantic attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this
respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed
reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured.

You say, “that you know not how to extricate ourselves out of the
wretchedness into which we have been plunged.” You are extricated long
since.—But I forbear to comment.——If I am condemned to live longer, it
is a living death.

It appears to me, that you lay much more stress on delicacy, than on
principle; but I am unable to discover what sentiment of delicacy would
have been violated, by your visiting a wretched friend—if indeed you
have any friendship for me.—But since your new attachment is the only
thing sacred in your eyes, I am silent—Be happy! My complaints shall
never more damp your enjoyment—perhaps I am mistaken in supposing that
even my death could, for more than a moment.—This is what you call
magnanimity.—It is happy for yourself, that you possess this quality in
the highest degree.

Your continually asserting, that you will do all in your power to
contribute to my comfort (when you only allude to pecuniary assistance),
appears to me a flagrant breach of delicacy.—I want not such vulgar
comfort, nor will I accept it. I never wanted but your heart.—That gone,
you have nothing more to give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not
shrink from life.—Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any
direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which
I have not merited—and as rather done out of tenderness for your own
reputation, than for me. Do not mistake me; I do not think that you
value money (therefore I will not accept what you do not care for)
though I do much less, because certain privations are not painful to me.
When I am dead, respect for yourself will make you take care of the
child.

I write with difficulty—probably I shall never write to you
again.—Adieu!

God bless you!


                              LETTER LXXI.

                                                         Monday Morning.

I am compelled at last to say that you treat me ungenerously. I agree
with you, that

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

But let the obliquity now fall on me.—I fear neither poverty nor infamy.
I am unequal to the task of writing—and explanations are not necessary.

 —                —                —                —                —

 —                —                —                —                —

My child may have to blush for her mother’s want of prudence—and may
lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions;
but she shall not despise me for meanness. You are now perfectly free.—

God bless you.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER LXXII.

                                                         Saturday Night.

I have been hurt by indirect enquiries, which appear to me not to be
dictated by any tenderness to me. You ask “If I am well or
tranquil?”—They who think me so, must want a heart to estimate my
feelings by.—I chuse then to be the organ of my own sentiments.

I must tell you, that I am very much mortified by your continually
offering me pecuniary assistance—and, considering your going to the new
house, as an open avowal that you abandon me, let me tell you that I
will sooner perish than receive any thing from you—and I say this at the
moment when I am disappointed in my first attempt to obtain a temporary
supply. But this even pleases me; an accumulation of disappointments and
misfortunes seem to suit the habit of my mind.—

Have but a little patience and I will remove myself where it will not be
necessary for you to talk—of course, not to think of me. But let me see,
written by yourself—for I will not receive it through any other
medium—that the affair is finished. It is an insult to me to suppose,
that I can be reconciled, or recover my spirits; but, if you hear
nothing of me, it will be the same thing to you.


Even your seeing me has been to oblige other people, and not to sooth my
distracted mind.


                             LETTER LXXIII.

                                                     Thursday Afternoon.

Mr. —— having forgot to desire you to send the things of mine which were
left at the house, I have to request you to let —— bring them to ——.

I shall go this evening to the lodging; so you need not be restrained
from coming here to transact your business,—And, whatever I may think,
and feel—you need not fear that I shall publicly complain—No! If I have
any criterion to judge of wright and wrong, I have been most
ungenerously treated: but, wishing now only to hide myself, I shall be
silent as the grave in which I long to forget myself. I shall protect
and provide for my child. I only mean by this to say, that you having
nothing to fear from my desperation.

                                                               Farewell.


                             LETTER LXXIV.

                                                    London, November 27.

The letter, without an address, which you put up with the letters you
returned, did not meet my eyes till just now. I had thrown the letters
aside—I did not wish to look over a register of sorrow.

My not having seen it, will account for my having written to you with
anger—under the impression your departure, without even a line left for
me, made on me, even after your late conduct, which could not lead me to
expect much attention to my sufferings.

In fact, “the decided conduct, which appeared to me so unfeeling,” has
almost overturned my reason; my mind is injured—I scarcely know where I
am, or what I do. The grief I cannot conquer (for some cruel
recollections never quit me, banishing almost every other) I labour to
conceal in total solitude. My life therefore is but an exercise of
fortitude, continually on the stretch—and hope never gleams in this
tomb, where I am buried alive.

But I meant to reason with you, and not to complain.—You tell me, “that
I shall judge more cooly of your mode of acting, some time hence.” But
is it not possible that _passion_ clouds your reason, as much as it does
mine?—and ought you not to doubt, whether those principles are so
“exalted,” as you term them, which only lead to your own gratification?
In other words, whether it be just to have no principle of action, but
that of following your inclination, trampling on the affection you have
fostered and the expectations you have excited?

My affection for you is rooted in my heart. I know you are not what you
now seem—nor will you always act or feel as you now do, though I may
never be comforted by the change. Even at Paris, my image will haunt
you.—You will see my pale face—and sometimes the tears of anguish will
drop on your heart, which you have forced from mine.

I cannot write. I thought I could quickly have refuted all your
_ingenious_ arguments; but my head is confused.—Right or wrong, I am
miserable!

It seems to me, that my conduct has always been governed by the
strictest principles of justice and truth.—Yet, how wretched have social
feelings, and delicacy of sentiment rendered me!—I have loved with my
whole soul, only to discover that I had no chance of a return—and that
existence is a burthen without it.

I do not perfectly understand you.—If, by the offer of your friendship,
you still only mean pecuniary support—I must again reject it.—Trifling
are the ills of poverty in the scale of misfortune.—God bless you!

                                                                 * * * *

I have been treated ungenerously—if I understand what is generosity.—You
seem to me only to have been anxious to shake me off—regardless whether
you dashed me to atoms by the fall. In truth I have been rudely handled.
_Do you judge coolly_, and I trust you will not continue to call those
capricious feelings “the most refined,” which would undermine not only
the most sacred principles, but the affections which unite mankind.——You
would render mothers unnatural—and there would be no such thing as a
father!—If your theory of morals is the most “exalted,” it is certainly
the most easy.—It does not require much magnanimity, to determine to
please ourselves for the moment, let others suffer what they will!

Excuse me for again tormenting you, my heart thirsts for justice from
you—and whilst I recollect that you approved Miss ——’s conduct. I am
convinced you will not always justify your own.

Beware of the deceptions of passion! It will not always banish from your
mind, that you have acted ignobly—and condescended to subterfuge to
gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.—Do truth and principle
require such sacrifices?


                              LETTER LXXV.

                                                     London, December 8.

Having just been informed that —— is to return immediately to Paris, I
would not miss a sure opportunity of writing, because I am not certain
that my last, by Dover, has reached you.

Resentment, and even anger, are momentary emotions with me—and I wished
to tell you so, that if you ever think of me, it may not be in the light
of an enemy.

That I have not been used _well_ I must ever feel; perhaps, not always
with the keen anguish I do at present—for I began even now to write
calmly, and I cannot restrain my tears.

I am stunned!—Your late conduct still appears to me a frightful dream.
Ah! ask yourself if you have not condescended to employ a little
address, I could almost say cunning, unworthy of you?—Principles are
sacred things—and we never play with truth, with impunity.

The expectation (I have too fondly nourished it) of regaining your
affection, every day grows fainter and fainter.—Indeed it seems to me,
when I am more sad than usual, that I shall never see you more.—Yet you
will not always forget me. You will feel something like remorse, for
having lived only for yourself—and sacrificed my peace to inferior
gratifications. In a comfortless old age, you will remember that you had
one disinterested friend, whose heart you wounded to the quick. The hour
of recollection will come—and you will not be satisfied to act the part
of a boy, till you fall into that of a dotard. I know that your mind,
your heart, and your principles of action, are all superior to your
present conduct. You do, you must, respect me—and you will be sorry to
forfeit my esteem.

You know best whether I am still preserving the remembrance of an
imaginary being. I once thought that I knew you thoroughly—but now I am
obliged to leave some doubts that involuntarily press on me, to be
cleared up by time.

You may render me unhappy; but cannot make me contemptible in my own
eyes. I shall still be able to support my child, though I am
disappointed in some other plans of usefulness, which I once believed
would have afforded you equal pleasure.

Whilst I was with you, I restrained my natural generosity, because I
thought your property in jeopardy. When I went to ——, I requested you,
_if you could conveniently_, not to forget my father, sisters, and some
other people, whom I was interested about.—Money was lavished away, yet
not only my requests were neglected, but some trifling debts were not
discharged, that now come on me. Was this friendship—or generosity? Will
you not grant you have forgotten yourself? Still I have an affection for
you.—God bless you.

                                                                 * * * *


                             LETTER LXXVI.

As the parting from you for ever is the most serious event of my life, I
will once expostulate with you, and call not the language of truth and
feeling ingenuity!

I know the soundness of your understanding—and know that it is
impossible for you always to confound the caprices of every wayward
inclination with the manly dictates of principle.

You tell me “that I torment you.”—Why do I?——Because you cannot estrange
your heart entirely from me—and you feel that justice is on my side. You
urge, “that your conduct was unequivocal.”—It was not.—When your
coolness has hurt me, with what tenderness have you endeavoured to
remove the impression!—and even before I returned to England, you took
great pains to convince me that all my uneasiness was occasioned by the
effect of a worn-out constitution—and you concluded your letter with
these words, “Business alone has kept me from you.—Come to my port, and
I will still fly down to my two dear girls with a heart all their own.”

With these assurances, is it extraordinary that I should believe what I
wished? I might—and did think that you had a struggle with old
propensities; but I still thought that I and virtue should at last
prevail. I still thought that you had a magnanimity of character, which
would enable you to conquer yourself.

—— ——, believe me, it is not romance, you have acknowledged to me
feelings of this kind. You could restore me to life and hope, and the
satisfaction you would feel, would amply repay you.

In tearing myself from you, it is my own heart I pierce—and the time
will come, when you will lament that you have thrown away a heart, that,
even in the moment of passion, you cannot despise.—I would owe every
thing to your generosity—but, for God’s sake, keep me no longer in
suspense!—Let me see you once more!——


                             LETTER LXXVII.

You must do as you please with respect to the child. I could wish that
it might be done soon, that my name may be no more mentioned to you. It
is now finished. Convinced that you have neither regard nor friendship,
I disdain to utter a reproach, though I have had reason to think, that
the “forbearance” talked of, has not been very delicate. It is however
of no consequence. I am glad you are satisfied with your own conduct.

I now solemnly assure you, that this is an eternal farewel. Yet I flinch
not from the duties which tie me to life.

That there is “sophistry” on one side or other, is certain; but now it
matters not on which. On my part it has not been a question of words.
Yet your understanding or mine must be strangely warped, for what you
term “delicacy,” appears to me to be exactly the contrary. I have no
criterion for morality, and have thought in vain, if the sensations
which lead you to follow an ancle or step, be the sacred foundation of
principle and affection. Mine has been of a very different nature, or it
would not have stood the brunt of your sarcasms.

The sentiment in me is still sacred. If there be any part of me that
will survive the sense of my misfortunes, it is the purity of my
affections. The impetuosity of your senses, may have led you to term
mere animal desire, the source of principle; and it may give zest to
some years to come. Whether you will always think so, I shall never
know.

It is strange that, in spite of all you do, something like conviction
forces me to believe, that you are not what you appear to be.

I part with you in peace.




                                 LETTER
                                 ON THE
                           PRESENT CHARACTER
                                 OF THE
                             FRENCH NATION.

  INTRODUCTORY TO A SERIES OF LETTERS ON THE PRESENT CHARACTER OF THE
    FRENCH NATION.


                                               Paris, February 15, 1793.

 MY DEAR FRIEND,

It is necessary perhaps for an observer of mankind, to guard as
carefully the remembrance of the first impression made by a nation, as
by a countenance; because we imperceptibly lose sight of the national
character, when we become more intimate with individuals. It is not then
useless or presumptuous to note, that, when I first entered Paris, the
striking contrast of riches and poverty, elegance and slovenliness,
urbanity and deceit, every where caught my eye, and saddened my soul;
and these impressions are still the foundation of my remarks on the
manners, which flatter the senses, more than they interest the heart,
and yet excite more interest than esteem.

The whole mode of life here tends indeed to render the people frivolous,
and, to borrow their favourite 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 expence of their gaiety. 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.

Investigating the modification of the passion, as I would analyze the
elements that give a form to dead matter, I shall attempt to trace to
their source the causes which have combined to render this nation the
most polished, in a physical sense, and probably the most superficial in
the world; and I mean to follow the windings of the various streams that
disembogue into a terrific gulf, in which all the dignity of our nature
is absorbed. For every thing has conspired to make the French the most
sensual people in the world; and what can render the heart so hard, or
so effectually stifle every moral emotion, as the refinements of
sensuality?

The frequent repetition of the word French, appears invidious; let me
then make a previous observation, which I beg you not to lose sight of,
when I speak rather harshly of a land flowing with milk and honey.
Remember that it is not the morals of a particular people that I would
decry; for are we not all of the same stock? But I wish calmly to
consider the stage of civilization in which I find the French, and,
giving a sketch of their character, and unfolding the circumstances
which have produced its identity, I shall endeavour to throw some light
on the history of man, and on the present important subjects of
discussion.

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 bosom 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 labour 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 aginst 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 poized, we become harmless, and in the same
proportion useless.

The wants of reason are very few; and, were we to consider
dispassionately the real value of most things, we should probably rest
satisfied with the simple gratification of our physical necessities, and
be content with negative goodness: for it is frequently, only that
wanton, the imagination, with her artful coquetry, who lures us forward,
and makes us run over a rough road, pushing aside every obstacle merely
to catch a disappointment.

The desire also of being useful to others, is continually damped by
experience; and, if the exertions of humanity were not in some measure
their own reward, who would endure misery, or struggle with care, to
make some people ungrateful, and others idle?

You will call these melancholy effusions, and guess that, fatigued by
the vivacity, which has all the bustling folly of childhood, without the
innocence which renders ignorance charming, I am too severe in my
strictures. It may be so; and I am aware that the good effects of the
revolution will be last felt at Paris; where surely the soul of Epicurus
has only been at work to root out the simple emotions of the heart,
which, being natural, are always moral. Rendered cold and artificial by
the selfish enjoyments of the senses, which the government fostered, is
it surprising that simplicity of manners, and singleness of heart,
rarely appear, to recreate me with the wild odour of nature, so passing
sweet?

Seeing how deep the fibres of mischief have shot, I sometimes ask, with
a doubting accent, Whether a nation can go back to the purity of manners
which has hitherto been maintained unsullied only by the keen air of
poverty, when, emasculated by pleasure, the luxuries of prosperity are
become the wants of nature? I cannot yet give up the hope, that a fairer
day is dawning on Europe, though I must hesitatingly observe, that
little is to be expected from the narrow principle of commerce which
seems every where to be shoving aside _the point of honour_ of the
_noblesse_. I can look beyond the evils of the moment, and do not expect
muddied water to become clear before it has had time to stand; yet, even
for the moment, it is the most terrific of all sights, to see men
vicious without warmth—to see the order that should be the
superscription of virtue, cultivated to give security to crimes which
only thoughtlessness could palliate. Disorder is, in fact, the very
essence of vice, though with the wild wishes of a corrupt fancy humane
emotions often kindly mix to soften their atrocity. Thus humanity,
generosity, and even self-denial, sometimes render a character grand,
and even useful, when hurried away by lawless passions; but what can
equal the turpitude of a cold calculator who lives for himself alone,
and considering his fellow-creatures merely as machines of pleasure,
never forgets that honesty is the best policy? Keeping ever within the
pale of the law, he crushes his thousands with impunity; but it is with
that degree of management, which makes him, to borrow a significant
vulgarism, a villain _in grain_. The very excess of his depravation
preserves him, whilst the more respectable beast of prey, who prowls
about like the lion, and roars to announce his approach, falls into a
snare.

You may think it too soon to form an opinion of the future government,
yet it is impossible to avoid hazarding some conjectures, when every
thing 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,
endeavours 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.

I shall now conclude this desultory letter; which however will enable
you to foresee that I shall treat more of morals than manners.

                                                                Yours ——




                                 LETTER
                                 ON THE
                         MANAGEMENT OF INFANTS.


I ought to appologize for not having written to you on the subject you
mentioned; but, to tell you the truth, it grew upon me: and, instead of
an answer, I have begun a series of letters on the management of
children in their infancy. Replying then to your question, I have the
public in my thoughts, and shall endeavour to shew what modes appear to
me necessary, to render the infancy of children more healthy and happy.
I have long thought, that the cause which renders children as hard to
rear as the most fragile plant, is our deviation from simplicity. I know
that some able physicians have recommended the method I have pursued,
and I mean to point out the good effects I have observed in practice. I
am aware that many matrons will exclaim against me and dwell on the
number of children they have brought up, as their mothers did before
them without troubling themselves with new-fangled notions; yet, though,
in my uncle Toby’s words, they should attempt to silence me, by “wishing
I had seen their large” families, I must suppose, while a third part of
the human species, according to the most accurate calculation, die
during their infancy, just at the threshold of life, that there is some
errors in the modes adopted by mothers and nurses, which counteracts
their own endeavours. I may be mistaken in some particulars; for general
rules, founded on the soundest reason, demand individual modification;
but, if I can persuade any of the rising generation to exercise their
reason on this head, I am content. My advice will probably be found most
useful to mothers in the middle class; and it is from that the lower
imperceptibly gains improvement. Custom, produced by reason in one, may
safely be the effect of imitation in the other.

 —                —                —                —                —




                                LETTERS
                                   TO
                              MR. JOHNSON,
                 BOOKSELLER, IN ST. PAUL’S CHURCH-YARD.


                               LETTER I.

                                               Dublin, April 14, [1787.]

 DEAR SIR,

I am still an invalid—and begin to believe that I ought never to expect
to enjoy health. My mind preys on my body—and, when I endeavour to be
useful, I grow too much interested for my own peace. Confined almost
entirely to the society of children, I am anxiously solicitous for their
future welfare, and mortified beyond measure, when counteracted in my
endeavours to improve them.—I feel all the mother’s fears for the swarm
of little ones which surround me, and observe disorders, without having
power to apply the proper remedies. How can I be reconciled to life,
when it is always a painful warfare, and when I am deprived of all the
pleasures I relish?—I allude to rational conversations, and domestic
affections. Here, alone, a poor solitary individual in a strange land,
tied to one spot, and subject to the caprice of another, can I be
contented? I am desirous to convince you that I have _some_ cause for
sorrow—and am not without reason detached from life. I shall hope to
hear that you are well, and am yours sincerely,

                                                         WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                               LETTER II.

                                              Henly, Thursday, Sept. 13.

 MY DEAR SIR,

Since I saw you, I have, literally speaking, _enjoyed_ solitude. My
sister could not accompany me in my rambles; I therefore wandered alone
by the side of the Thames, and in the neighbouring beautiful fields and
pleasure-grounds: the prospects were of such a placid kind, I _caught_
tranquillity while I surveyed them—my mind was _still_, though active.
Were I to give you an account how I have spent my time, you would smile.
I found an old French bible here, and amused myself with comparing it
with our English translation—then I would listen to the falling leaves,
or observe the various tints the autumn gave to them. At other times,
the singing of a robin, or the noise of a water-mill, engaged my
attention—for I was, at the same time perhaps discussing some knotty
point, or straying from this _tiny_ world to new systems. After these
excursions, I returned to the family meals, to’d the children stories
(they think me _vastly_ agreeable) and my sister was amused.—Well, will
you allow me to call this way of passing my days pleasant?

I was just going to mend my pen; but I believe it will enable me to say
all I have to add to this epistle. Have you yet heard of an habitation
for me? I often think of my new plan of life; and, lest my sister should
try to prevail on me to alter it, I have avoided mentioning it to her. I
am determined!—Your sex generally laugh at female determinations; but
let me tell you, I never yet resolved to do any thing of consequence,
that I did not adhere resolutely to it, till I had accomplished my
purpose, improbable as it might have appeared to a more timid mind. In
the course of near nine-and-twenty years, I have gathered some
experience, and felt many _severe_ disappointments—and what is the
amount? I long for a little peace and _independence_! Every obligation
we receive from our fellow-creatures is a new shackle, takes from our
native freedom, and debases the mind, makes us mere earthworms—I am not
fond of grovelling!

                                                   I am, sir, yours, &c.
                                               MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                              LETTER III.

                                            Market Harborough, Sept. 20.

 MY DEAR SIR,

You left me with three opulent tradesmen; their conversation was not
calculated to beguile the way, when the sable curtain concealed the
beauties of nature. I listened to the tricks of trade—and shrunk away
without wishing to grow rich; even the novelty of the subjects did not
render them pleasing; fond as I am of tracing the passions in all their
different forms—I was not surprised by any glimpse of the sublime or
beautiful—though one of them imagined I should be a useful partner in a
good _firm_. I was very much fatigued, and have scarcely recovered
myself. I do not expect to enjoy the same tranquil pleasures Henley
afforded: I meet with new objects to employ my mind; but many painful
emotions are complicated with the reflections they give rise to.

I do not intend to enter on the _old_ topic, yet hope to hear from
you—and am yours, &c.

                                                    MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                               LETTER IV.

                                                           Friday Night.

 MY DEAR SIR,

Though your remarks are generally judicious—I cannot _now_ concur with
you, I mean with respect to the preface[12], and have not altered it. I
hate the usual smooth way of exhibiting proud humility. A general rule
_only_ extends to the majority—and, believe me, the few judicious who
may peruse my book, will not feel themselves hurt—and the weak are too
vain to mind what is said in a book intended for children.

Footnote 12:

  To Original Stories.

I return you the Italian MS.—but do not hastily imagine that I am
indolent. I would not spare any labour to do my duty—and after the most
laborious day, that single thought would solace me more than any
pleasures the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the MS.
well. If it was not a MS., I should not be so easily intimidated; but
the hand, and errors in orthography, or abbreviations, are a
stumbling-block at the first setting out.—I cannot bear to do any thing
I cannot do well—and I should loose time in the vain attempt.

I had, the other day, the satisfaction of again receiving a letter from
my poor, dear Margaret[13]. With all the mother’s fondness I could
transcribe a part of it. She says, every day her affection to me, and
dependence on heaven increase, &c.—I miss her innocent caresses—and
sometimes indulge a pleasing hope, that she may be allowed to cheer my
childless age—if I am to live to be old. At any rate, I may hear of the
virtues I may not contemplate—and my reason may permit me to love a
female. I now allude to ——. I have received another letter from her, and
her childish complaints vex me—indeed they do.—As usual, good-night.

                                                                   MARY.

If parents attended to their children, I would not have written the
stories; for, what are books, compared to conversations which affection
inforces!—

Footnote 13:

  Countess Mount Cashel.


                               LETTER V.

 MY DEAR SIR,

Remember you are to settle _my account_, as I want to know how much I am
in your debt—but do not suppose that I feel any uneasiness on that
score. The generality of people in trade would not be much obliged to me
for a like civility, _but you were a man_ before you were a
bookseller—so I am your sincere friend,

                                                                   MARY.


                               LETTER VI.

                                                         Friday Morning.

I am sick with vexation, and wish I could knock my foolish head against
the wall, that bodily pain might make me feel less anguish from
self-reproach! To say the truth, I was never more displeased with
myself, and I will tell you the cause. You may recollect that I did not
mention to you the circumstance of —— having a fortune left to him; nor
did a hint of it dropt from me when I conversed with my sister; because
I knew he had a sufficient motive for concealing it. Last Sunday, when
his character was aspersed, as I thought, unjustly, in the heat of
vindication I informed ****** that he was now independent; but, at the
same time, desired him not to repeat my information to B——; yet, last
Tuesday, he told him all, and the boy at B——’s gave Mrs. —— an account
of it. As Mr. —— knew he had only made a confident of me (I blush to
think of it!) he guessed the channel of intelligence, and this morning
came (not to reproach me, I wish he had!) but to point out the injury I
have done him. Let what will be the consequence, I will reimburse him,
if I deny myself the necessaries of life—and even then my folly will
sting me. Perhaps you can scarcely conceive the misery I at this moment
endure—that I, whose power of doing good is so limited, should do harm,
galls my very soul. **** may laugh at these qualms—but, supposing Mr. ——
to be unworthy, I am not the less to blame.—Surely it is hell to despise
one’s self! I did not want this additional vexation—at this time I have
many that hang heavily on my spirits. I shall not call on you this
month, nor stir out. My stomach has been so suddenly and violently
affected, I am unable to lean over the desk.

                                                    MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                              LETTER VII.

As I am become a reviewer, I think it right in the way of business, to
consider the subject. You have alarmed the editor of the Critical, as
the advertisement prefixed to the Appendix plainly shews. The Critical
appears to be a timid, mean production, and its success is a reflection
on the taste and judgment of the public; but, as a body, who ever gave
it credit for much? The voice of the people is only the voice of truth,
when some man of abilities has had time to get fast hold of the GREAT
NOSE of the monster. Of course, local fame is generally a clamour, and
dies away. The Appendix to the Monthly afforded me more amusement,
though every article almost wants energy and a _cant_ of virtue and
liberality is strewed over it; always tame, and eager to pay court to
established fame. The account of Necker is one unvaried tone of
admiration. Surely men were born only to provide for the sustenance of
the body by enfeebling the mind!

                                                                   MARY.


                              LETTER VIII.

You made me very low-spirited last night, by your manner of talking.—You
are my only friend—the only person I am _intimate_ with.—I never had a
father, or a brother—you have been both to me, ever since I knew you—yet
I have sometimes been very petulant.—I have been thinking of those
instances of ill humour and quickness, and they appeared like crimes.

                                                       Yours sincerely
                                                                   MARY.


                               LETTER IX.

                                                         Saturday Night.

I am a mere animal, and instinctive emotions too often silence the
suggestions of reason. Your note—I can scarcely tell why, hurt me—and
produced a kind of winterly smile, which diffuses a beam of despondent
tranquillity over the features. I have been very ill—Heaven knows it was
more than fancy. After some sleepless, wearisome nights, towards the
morning I have grown delirious.—Last Thursday, in particular, I imagined
—— was thrown into great distress by his folly; and I, unable to assist
him, was in an agony. My nerves were in such a painful state of
irritation—I suffered more than I can express. Society was necessary—and
might have diverted me till I gained more strength; but I blushed when I
recollect how often I had teazed you with childish complaints, and the
reveries of a disordered imagination. I even _imagined_ that I intruded
on you, because you never called on me—though you perceived that I was
not well.—I have nourished a sickly kind of delicacy, which gives me
many unnecessary pangs. I acknowledge that life is but a jest—and often
a frightful dream—yet catch myself every day searching for something
serious—and feel real misery from the disappointment. I am a strange
compound of weakness and resolution. However, if I must suffer, I will
endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my
mind—my wayward heart creates its own misery—Why I am made thus I cannot
tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I
must be content to weep and dance like a child—long for a toy, and be
tired of it as soon as I get it.

We must each of us wear a fool’s cap; but mine, alas! has
lost its bells, and grown so heavy, I find it intolerably
troublesome.——Goodnight! I have been pursuing a number of strange
thoughts since I began to write, and have actually both wept and laughed
immoderately—Surely I am a fool—

                                                                 MARY W.


                               LETTER X.

                                                         Monday Morning.

I really want a German grammar, as I intend to attempt to learn that
language——and I will tell you the reason why.—While I live, I am
persuaded, I must exert my understanding to procure an independence, and
render myself useful. To make the task easier, I ought to store my mind
with knowledge—The feed-time is passing away. I see the necessity of
labouring now—and of that necessity I do not complain; on the contrary,
I am thankful that I have more than common incentives to pursue
knowledge, and draw my pleasures from the employments that are within my
reach. You perceive this is not a gloomy day—I feel at this moment
particularly grateful to you—without your humane and _delicate_
assistance, how many obstacles should I not have had to encounter—too
often should I have been out of patience with my fellow-creatures, whom
I wish to love!—Allow me to love you, my dear sir, and call friend a
being I respect.—Adieu!

                                                                 MARY W.


                               LETTER XI.

I thought you _very_ unkind, nay, very unfeeling, last night. My cares
and vexations, I will say what I allow myself to think—do me honour, as
they arise from disinterestedness and _unbending_ principles; nor can
that mode of conduct be a reflection on my understanding, which enables
me to bear misery, rather than selfishly live for myself alone. I am not
the only character deserving of respect, that has had to struggle with
various sorrows—while inferior minds have enjoyed local fame and present
comfort.—Dr. Johnson’s cares almost drove him mad—but I suppose, you
would quietly have told him, he was a fool for not being calm, and that
wise men striving against the stream, can yet be in good humour. I have
done with insensible human wisdom,—“indifference cold in wisdom’s
guise,”—and turn to the source of perfection—who perhaps never
disregarded an almost broken heart, especially when a respect, a
practical respect, for virtue, sharpened the wounds of adversity. I am
ill—I stayed in bed this morning till eleven o’clock, only thinking of
getting money to extricate myself out of some of my difficulties—the
struggle is now over. I will condescend to try to obtain some in a
disagreeable way.

Mr. —— called on me just now—pray did you know his motive for
calling[14]?—I think him impertinently officious.—He had left the house
before it occured to me in the strong light it does now, or I should
have told him so.—My poverty makes me proud—I will not be insulted by a
superficial puppy—His intimacy with Miss —— gave him a privilege, which
he should not have assumed with me—a proposal might be made to his
cousin, a milliner’s girl, which should not have been mentioned to me.
Pray tell him that I am offended—and do not wish to see him again——When
I meet him at your house, I shall leave the room, since I cannot pull
him by the nose. I can force my spirit to leave my body—but it shall
never bend to support that body—God of heaven, save thy child from this
living death!—I scarcely know what I write. My hand trembles—I am very
sick—sick at heart.—

                                                                   MARY.

Footnote 14:

  This alludes to a foolish proposal of marriage for mercenary
  considerations, which the gentleman here mentioned thought proper to
  recommend to her. The two letters which immediately follow, are
  addressed to the gentleman himself.


                              LETTER XII.

                                                        Tuesday Evening.

 SIR,

When you left me this morning, and I reflected a moment—your _officious_
message, which at first appeared to me a joke—looked so very like an
insult—I cannot forget it—To prevent then the necessity of forcing a
smile—when I chance to meet you—I take the earliest opportunity of
informing you of my sentiments.

                                                    MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                              LETTER XIII.

                                                   Wednesday, 3 o’clock.

 SIR,

It is inexpressibly disagreeable to me to be obliged to enter again on a
subject, that has already raised a tumult of _indignant_ emotions in my
bosom, which I was labouring to suppress when I received your letter. I
shall now _condescend_ to answer your epistle; but let me first tell
you, that, in my _unprotected_ situation, I make a point of never
forgiving a _deliberate insult_—and in that light I consider your late
officious conduct. It is not according to my nature to mince matters—I
will then tell you in plain terms, what I think. I have ever considered
you in the light of a _civil_ acquaintance—on the word friend I lay a
peculiar emphasis—and, as a mere acquaintance, you were rude and
_cruel_, to step forward to insult a woman, whose conduct and
misfortunes demand respect. If my friend, Mr. Johnson, had made the
proposal—I should have been severely hurt—have thought him unkind and
unfeeling, but not _impertinent_. The privilege of intimacy you had no
claim to, and should have referred the man to myself—if you had not
sufficient discernment to quash it at once. I am, sir, poor and
destitute. Yet I have a spirit that will never bend, or take indirect
methods, to obtain the consequence I despise; nay, if to support life it
was necessary to act contrary to my principles, the struggle would soon
be over. I can bear any thing but my own contempt.

In a few words, what I call an insult, is the bare supposition that I
could for a moment think of _prostituting_ my person for a maintenance;
for in that point of view does such a marriage appear to me, who
consider right and wrong in the abstract, and never by words and local
opinions shield myself from the reproaches of my own heart and
understanding.

It is needless to say more—Only you must excuse me when I add, that I
wish never to see, but as a perfect stranger, a person who could so
grossly mistake my character. An apology is not necessary—if you were
inclined to make one—nor any further expostulations. I again repeat, I
cannot overlook an affront; few indeed have sufficient delicacy to
respect poverty, even where it gives lustre to a character——and I tell
you sir, I am poor, yet can live without your benevolent exertions.

                                                    MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.


                              LETTER XIV.

I send you _all_ the books I had to review except Dr. J——’s Sermons,
which I have begun. If you wish me to look over any more trash this
month, you must send it directly. I have been so low-spirited since I
saw you—I was quite glad, last night, to feel myself affected by some
passages in Dr. J——’s sermon on the death of his wife—I seemed
(suddenly) to _find_ my _soul_ again. It has been for some time I cannot
tell where. Send me the Speaker, and _Mary_, I want one, and I shall
soon want for some paper—you may as well send it at the same time, for I
am trying to brace my nerves that I may be industrious. I am afraid
reason is not a good bracer—for I have been reasoning a long time with
my untoward spirits, and yet my hand trembles. I could finish a period
very _prettily_ now, by saying that it ought to be steady when I add
that I am yours sincerely,

                                                                   MARY.

If you do not like the manner in which I reviewed Dr. J—’s s—— on his
wife, be it known unto you—I _will_ not do it any other way—I felt some
pleasure in paying a just tribute of respect to the memory of a man—who,
spite of all his faults, I have an affection for—I say _have_, for I
believe he is somewhere—_where_ my soul has been gadding perhaps;—but
_you_ do not live on conjectures.


                               LETTER XV.

My dear sir, I send you a chapter which I am pleased with, now I see it
in one point of view—and, as I have made free with the author, I hope
you will not have often to say—what does this mean?

You forgot you were to make out my account, I am, of course, over head
and ears in debt; but I have not that kind of pride, which makes some
dislike to be obliged to those they respect. On the contrary, when I
involuntarily lament that I have not a father or brother, I thankfully
recollect that I have received unexpected kindness from you and a few
others. So reason allows, what nature impels me to—for I cannot live
without loving my fellow creatures—nor can I love them, without
discovering some virtue.

                                                                   MARY.


                              LETTER XVI.

                                               Paris, December 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 any thing 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 behaviour 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.


                                 FINIS.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. P. 133, the first character in “_are” failed to print. Added “c” to
      make it “care” in the phrase “should we try to dry up these
      springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to days
      browned by _c_are!”
 2. P. 147, changed “sold to your heart” to “fold to your heart”.
 3. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 4. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

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