Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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 the 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 greater 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[A], 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.
[A] 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
confident 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
connexion, 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