IMLAY’S DESERTION.

1794-1795.

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

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

In a second, she writes:—

And in still another, she exclaims:—

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

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

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

On the 30th of December she wrote:—

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

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

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

She reached London in April, 1795. Her gloomiest forebodings were confirmed. Imlay had provided a furnished house for her, and had considered her comforts. But his manner was changed. He was cold and constrained, and she felt the difference immediately. He was little with her, and business was, as of old, the excuse. According to Godwin, he had formed another connection with a young strolling actress. Life was thus even less bright in London than it had been in Paris. If hell is but the shadow of a soul on fire, she was now plunged into its deepest depths. Its tortures were more than she could endure. For her there were, indeed, worse things waiting at the gate of life than death, and she resolved by suicide to escape from them. This part of her story is very obscure. But it is certain that her suicidal intentions were so nearly carried into effect, that she had written several letters containing her, as she thought, last wishes, and which were to be opened after all was over. There is no exact account of the manner in which she proposed to kill herself, nor of the means by which she was prevented. “I only know,” Godwin says, “that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose at a moment when he was uncertain whether or no it was already executed, and that his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owing to his activity and representations that her life was at this time saved. She determined to continue to exist.”

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

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

After almost a month of inactivity, the one bright spot in it being a visit to Beverly, the home of her childhood, she sailed for Sweden, with Fanny and a maid as her only companions. Her “Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,” with the more personal passages omitted, were published in a volume by themselves shortly after her return to England. Notice of them will find a more appropriate place in another chapter. All that is necessary here is the very portion which was then suppressed, but which Godwin later included with the “Letters to Imlay.” The northern trip had at least this good result. It strengthened her physically. She was so weak when she first arrived in Sweden that the day she landed she fell fainting to the ground as she walked to her carriage. For a while everything fatigued her. The bustle of the people around her seemed “flat, dull, and unprofitable.” The civilities by which she was overwhelmed, and the endeavors of the people she met to amuse her, were fatiguing. Nothing, for a while, could lighten her deadly weight of sorrow. But by degrees, as her letters show, she improved. Pure air, long walks, and rides on horseback, rowing and bathing, and days in the country had their beneficial effect, and she wrote to Imlay on July 4, “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.”

But even a sound body cannot heal a broken heart. Mary could not throw off her troubles in a day. She after a time tried to distract her mind by entering into the amusements she had at first scorned, but it was often in vain. “I have endeavored to fly from myself,” she said in one letter, “and launched into all the dissipation possible here, only to feel keener anguish when alone with my child.” There was a change for the better, however, in her mental state, for though her grief was not completely cured, she at least voluntarily sought to recover her emotional equilibrium. Self-examination showed her where her weakness lay, and she resolved to conquer it. With but too much truth, she told Imlay:—

Despite her endeavors, her spiritual recovery was slow. A cry of agony still rang through her letters. But she had at least one pleasure that helped to soften her cares. This was her love for her child, which, always great, was increased by Imlay’s cruelty. The tenderness which he by his indifference repulsed, she now lavished upon Fanny. She seemed to feel that she ought to make amends for the fact that her child was, to all intents and purposes, fatherless. In the same letter from which the above passage is taken, there is this little outburst of maternal affection:—

It so happened that at one time she was obliged to leave her child with her nurse for about a month. Business called her to TÖnsberg in Norway, and the journey would have been bad for Fanny, who was cutting her teeth. “I felt more at leaving my child than I thought I should,” she wrote to Imlay, “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 forever, of leaving her thus helpless.” Here indeed was a stronger argument against suicide than Christianity or its “aftershine.” This absence stimulated her motherly solicitude and heightened her sense of responsibility. In her appeals to Imlay to settle upon his future course in her regard, she now began to dwell upon their child as the most important reason to keep them together. On the 30th of July she wrote from TÖnsberg:—

On the 7th of August she wrote again in the same strain:—

He seems to have written to her regularly. At times she reproached him for not letting her hear from him, but at others she acknowledged the receipt of three and five letters in one morning. If these had been preserved, hers would not seem as importunate as they do now, for he gave her reason to suppose that he was anxious for a reunion, and wrote in a style which she told him she may have deserved, but which she had not expected from him. She also referred to his admission that her words tortured him; and there was talk of a trip together to Switzerland. But at the same time his proofs of indifference forced her to declare that she and pleasure had shaken hands. “How often,” she breaks out in her agony, “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!’” The only particular in which he remained firm was his unwillingness to give a final decision in what, to her, was the one all-important matter. His vacillating behavior was heartless in the extreme. Her suspense became unbearable, and all her letters contained entreaties for him to relieve it. She was ready, once he said the word, to undertake to support her child and herself. But the fiat must come from him. Had it remained entirely with her she would have returned to him. But this she could not do unless he would receive her as his wife and promise loyalty to her. “I do not understand you,” she wrote on the 6th of September, in answer to one of his letters. “It is necessary for you to write more explicitly, and determine on some mode of conduct. I cannot endure this suspense. Decide. Do you fear to strike another blow? We live together, or eternally apart! I shall not write to you again till I receive an answer to this.”

Finally, after allowing her to suffer three months of acute agony, he summoned up resolution enough to write and tell her he would abide by her decision. Her business in the North had been satisfactorily settled, for which she was, alas! to receive but poor thanks; and the welfare of the child having now become the pivot of her actions, she returned to England. From Dover she sent him a letter informing him that she was prepared once more to make his home hers:—

The result of this letter was that Imlay and Mary tried to retie the broken thread of their domestic relations. The latter went up to London, and they settled together in lodgings. It would have been better for her had she never seen him again. The fire of his love had burnt out. No power could rekindle it. His indifference was hard to bear; but so long as he assured her that he had formed no other attachment, she made no complaint. For Fanny’s sake she endured the new bitterness, and found such poor comfort as she could in being with him. It was but too true that the constancy of her affection was the torment of her life. In spite of everything, she still loved him. Before long, however, she discovered through her servants that he was basely deceiving her. He was keeping up a separate establishment for a new mistress. Mary, following the impulse of the moment, went at once to this house, where she found him. The particulars of their interview are not known; but her wretchedness during the night which followed maddened her. His perfidy hurt her more deeply than his indifference. Her cup of sorrow was filled to overflowing, and for the second time she made up her mind to fly from a world which held nothing but misery for her. It may be concluded that for the time being she was really mad. It will be remembered that troubles of a kindred nature had driven Mrs. Bishop to insanity. All the Wollstonecrafts inherited a peculiarly excitable temperament. Mary, had she not lost all self-control, would have been deterred from suicide, as she had been from thoughts of it in Sweden, by her love for Fanny. But her grief was so great it drowned all memory and reason. The morning after this night of agony she wrote to Imlay:—

Then she left her house to seek refuge in the waters of the river. She went first to Battersea Bridge, but it was too public for her purpose. She could not risk a second frustration of her designs. There was no place in London where she could be unobserved. With the calmness of despair, she hired a boat and rowed to Putney. It was a cold, foggy November day, and by the time she arrived at her destination the night had come, and the rain fell in torrents. An idea occurred to her: if she wet her clothes thoroughly before jumping into the river, their weight would make her sink rapidly. She walked up and down, up and down, the bridge in the driving rain. The fog enveloped the night in a gloom as impenetrable as that of her heart. No one passed to interrupt her preparations. At the end of half an hour, satisfied that her end was accomplished, she leaped from the bridge into the water below. Despite her soaked clothing, she did not sink at once. In her desperation she pressed her skirts around her; then she became unconscious. She was found, however, before it was too late. Vigorous efforts were made to restore life, and she was brought back to consciousness. She had met with the insult she most dreaded, and her disappointment was keen. Her failure only increased her determination to destroy herself. This she told Imlay in a letter written shortly after, dated November, 1795:—

“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 dishonored.

“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; for 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 sacred thing 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!”