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WILLIAM GODWIN:HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.BYC. KEGAN PAUL.WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.VOL. I.Henry S. King & Co., London1876.The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.PREFACE.
My best thanks are due to Sir Percy
Shelley, the grandson of William
Godwin, for the generous manner in which he has placed at my disposal the
whole of the papers in his possession which relate to his grandfather. These included a
vast quantity of letters and other MSS., some of which had never been opened since they
were laid aside by Godwin’s own hand, many years before his
death. Mrs Shelley began to arrange them for
publication soon after that event, in 1836, but many packets had apparently not been
examined by her. This fact renders it the more necessary that I should state that while
Sir Percy Shelley has sanctioned my work as a whole, he is in no
way whatever answerable for details. I only am responsible for the selections made and
inferences drawn from the papers, as well as for every opinion expressed in the book.
A very few of the letters have been already printed—some of Godwin’s
by Lady Shelley in her “Shelley Memorials,” and some of Coleridge’s by Mr
Garnett in a Magazine article.
In all cases where there appeared to be the smallest doubt in regard to the
publication of documents, I have consulted, where possible, the representatives of the
persons concerned, and have obtained their permission to print the letters.
C. K. P.February 1876.
CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. 1756—1785, 1 CHAPTER II. LITERARY WORK. 1785—1788, 24 CHAPTER III. POLITICAL WRITINGS. 1788—1792, 59 CHAPTER IV. LITERARY LIFE AND FRIENDS. 1793, 77 CHAPTER V. GODWIN’S WORKS AND POLITICS. 1783—1794, 99 CHAPTER VI. FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 1794—1796, 138 CHAPTER VII. THE WOLLSTONECRAFTS. 1759—1791, 160 PAGE CHAPTER VIII. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. 1791—1796, 200 CHAPTER IX. MARRIED LIFE. 1797, 231 CHAPTER X. MARY GODWIN’S DEATH. 1797, 272 CHAPTER XI. A SINGULAR COURTSHIP—FRIENDS. 1798, 292 CHAPTER XII. ST LEON. MRS REVELEY. 1799, 328 CHAPTER XIII. VISIT TO IRELAND—LITERARY SQUABBLES. 1800, 354LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.William Godwin. After a
Portrait by Northcote. Frontispiece.Facsimile of Mary Wollstonecraft’s
Handwriting, p. 200Wisbeach.—Godwin’s
Birthplace, 387
WILLIAM GODWIN:HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.CHAPTER I.EARLY LIFE. 1756—1785.
To those conversant with the literary history of the close of
the last, and the first quarter of the present century, few names are more familiar than
that of William Godwin. The husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the father-in-law of Shelley, the confidential friend of Coleridge and Lamb,
his life was so closely intertwined with the lives of those whose story has been often
written, as to render some record of him valuable, even had the man himself been less
remarkable than he was. But though the present generation has read his works but little,
this age owes more to him than it recognizes; many opinions now clothed in household words
were first formulated by him, and the publication of his “Political Justice,” in 1793, marked a distinct
epoch in the growth of liberal thought. During a large part of his life younger men looked
on him as a kind of prophet-sage, and he exercised a remarkable influence over all with
whom he came in contact.
The mere record of his life, would, if written soon after his death, have
had a deeper interest than it now can have, the interest being in these days rather
antiquarian and literary than personal and social. But to write such a
life was then possible to one alone, to Godwin’s daughter, Mrs
Shelley. She only would have known what to preserve and what to reject from the
mass of papers left by one who never willingly destroyed a written line, and whose life and
opinions had clashed to so great an extent with the susceptibilities of men then living.
But from causes into which there is here no need to enter, Mrs Shelley
was only able in a measure to select those papers which seemed to her fittest for
publication, and to draw up a few valuable notes, explanatory of otherwise forgotten
circumstances. Much as this is to be regretted, it may yet be that a freer handling than is
possible to a daughter was needed for such a life and correspondence as is here presented.
Not however that a veil is lifted from particulars which
Godwin’s daughter would have desired to hide; she wished to
conceal nothing of interest except in cases where some living person might be wounded, or
some dear memory of the dead, and such danger has now almost or wholly ceased.
For the record of Godwin’s
early years we are mainly dependent on an autobiographical fragment, drawn up by him in the
year 1800, when he was forty-four years of age. But interest in the extreme detail in which
the facts of his earlier life are presented in this fragment would at all times have been
restricted to the members of his own family, nor was there anything especially remarkable
in the surroundings of his earlier years. For these reasons but a small portion of his
narrative is reproduced in the following pages.
William Godwin was born March 3rd, 1756, at Wisbeach
in Cambridgeshire, at which place his father was a Dissenting Minister. He sprang on both
sides from respectable middle-class families, that of his father having been established for some generations at Newbury in Berkshire,
that of his mother, whose name was
Hull, had originally held landed property in Durham. Mr
Hull had married and settled in Wisbeach, had been originally in the
Merchant Service, and was at the time of his daughter’s marriage to Mr
Godwin, the owner of vessels engaged in the coasting trade; he also sent an
occasional venture to the Baltic.
The earliest traceable ancestor on the Godwin side was a
great-great-grandfather, William Godwin, of Newbury, described in the Parish Register as
“Mr,” who died, leaving six sons and three daughters. The following are among
the family traditions, recorded by William Godwin:—
“Edward, my great-grandfather,
was the fifth son of William, and was born in the year 1661. He
married, probably in the year 1694, Mary ——, fifteen years younger
than himself, and in the year 1706 was chosen Mayor of the town of which he was a
native. He was educated to the profession of an attorney, and possessed at the time of
his death in 1719 the office of town clerk of the corporation of Newbury.
“Edward,” his eldest son, “was born 10th November 1695. He was
destined to the profession of a dissenting minister, and was placed at a suitable age
under the reverend Mr Samuel Jones, who
conducted an academy for preparing young persons for the profession of the ministry at
Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.”
This Samuel Jones
was a remarkable man. He was the son of the Rev. Malachi Jones, a
“minister of the gospel in Pennsylvania,” who had emigrated to
America early in life. Samuel was sent to Europe, and received his
education in great measure at Leyden, “under the learned
Perizonius,” Professor of History and Greek, who died 1715.
In 1711 we find him, still quite a young man, taking fifteen pupils, who were not, however,
all constant to the nonconformist training of their tutor. Not only Dr Isaac Watts, but Thomas Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, author of the
Analogy, were among his pupils.
From Tewkesbury, while still a schoolboy, Butler “conducted a
correspondence with Dr Samuel Clarke on the subject
of certain propositions in Clarke’s treatise, entitled ‘A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of
God,’ which were afterwards printed as an appendix to that work.”
“A ridiculous mistake,” says Godwin, “has been fallen into by some persons who
have written concerning this Samuel Jones, in
supposing that he married the daughter of Mr John Weaver, one of
the ministers ejected in the reign of Charles II.,
who was born about the year 1632, and whose daughter may be supposed to have been about
sixty at the time of Mr Jones’s marriage.” He did in
fact marry a young woman named Judith Weaver from Radnorshire.
“To go back to my grandfather. He was a
fellow-student of Butler and Secker, and” on the death of Mr Jones in October 1719 “was invited to
undertake the conduct of the seminary in which he had been educated.” This
offer he declined. “On the 12th of April 1721 he married the widow of his late
tutor. He resided at this time in his professional character of a minister at
Hungerford, in the county of Wilts, and in 1723 was called to take charge of a
congregation in Little St. Helens, Bishopsgate Street, London, in which situation he
continued for the rest of his life. My grandfather maintained in his advancing years
the character he had acquired in early life, and was frequently consulted by his
brethren as a reviser of their works. He, in particular, superintended the ‘Family Expositor’ of Dr Philip Doddridge in its passage through the
press.”
Edward Godwin had two sons,
Edward, who having run “a certain career of wildness and
dissipation, became a convert to the tenets and practices of Mr George Whitfield. He was for a short time, for the
thread of his life was soon broken, a distinguished preacher in
the Methodist connection, and an eager publisher of experiences, devout allegories and
hymns.” John, the younger of the two
sons, was born Feb. 21, 1723. He was a pupil of Dr
Doddridge, “for whom he retained during life a more affectionate
veneration than for any other human being,” became a dissenting minister, as
has been said, and the father of William Godwin.
The son’s portrait of the father is amusing and characteristic.
Aiming at the most scrupulous fairness, he succeeds only in giving a very distinct
impression that he had but little love for his father, and no very high opinion of his
mental powers.
“My paternal grandfather, as I have said, was esteemed
a man of learning; my father was certainly not a man
of learning. But he was something better than a merely learned man can ever be; he was a
man of a warm heart and unblemished manners, ardent in his friendships, eager for the
relief of distress whether of mind or of circumstances, and decent and zealous in the
discharge of his professional duties. He had so great a disapprobation for the constitution
and discipline of the Church of England, as rather to approve of his children’s
absenting themselves from all public worship than joining in her offices; yet he lived on
terms of friendship with many of her members and of her clergy. He was scrupulous and
superstitious respecting most of the succours of religion, particularly the observance of
the Lord’s day. My father, at the time I was most capable of noticing his habits, was
extremely nice in his apparel, and delicate in his food. He spent much of his time on
horseback. This habit grew out of a sentiment of duty, when he resided in a village, the
scene of my early reveries and amusements, where his flock lay variously dispersed through
a circle of from twelve to sixteen miles in diameter. He was attached to the intercourses
of society, yet of the most unvaried temperance. He was extremely affectionate, yet at least to me, who was perhaps never his favourite, his rebukes had a
painful tone of ill humour and asperity. He was fond of reading aloud in his family, but
the age of novels and romances, of Tom
Jones and Cleopatra, was
over with him before my memory. I scarcely ever heard him read anything but expositions and
sermons. His study occupied but little of his time. His sermon, for in my memory he only
preached once on a Sunday, was regularly begun to be written in a very swift short-hand
after tea on Saturday evening. I believe he was always free from any desire of intellectual
distinction on a large scale; I know that it was with reluctance that he preached at any
time at Norwich, in London, or any other place where he suspected that his accents might
fall on the ear of criticism. He was regarded by his neighbours as a wise as well as a good
man, and he desired no more. He died at fifty years of age, but it was with considerable
reluctance that he quitted this sublunary scene. The last time I stood by his bedside, two
or three days before he expired, he repeated with an anxious voice a hymn from Dr Watts’ collection, the first stanza of which is
as follows:— ‘When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I’ll bid farewell to every fear And wipe my weeping eyes.’”
The notice of his mother is more favourable, and, as will appear from
letters which are extant, not other than deserved.
“My mother, so
long as her husband lived, was the qualifier and
moderator of his austerities. Some of the villagers were impertinent enough to allege that
she was too gay in her style of decorating her person. She was facetious, and had an
ambition to be thought the teller of a good story, and an adept at hitting off a smart
repartee. She was a most obliging, submissive, and dutiful wife. She was an expert and
active manager in the detail of household affairs. Two persons perhaps never lived against
whom the voice of calumny itself had less to
urge than my father and mother. I speak here of her character during the life of my father.
After his death it became considerably changed. She surrendered herself to the visionary
hopes and tormenting fears of the methodistical sect, and her ordinary economy became
teazingly parsimonious.”
It may be added, and indeed will hereafter be sufficiently evident, that
Mrs Godwin was far from being a highly educated
person.
Of this marriage, “which proved extremely prolific,”
William was the seventh child of thirteen.
Mrs Godwin did not suckle her children, and the
child was “sent from home to be nourished by a hireling.” When he was
again taken home at the age, apparently, of two years, there was added to his family circle
a first cousin of his father, Miss Godwin, afterwards Mrs Sothren, “who out of her decent income, as it
was considered, of £40 a year, paid £16 to my father as a stipend for lodging and
board.” Miss Godwin had a considerable amount of
literary culture, and still more of literary instinct. This, however, was qualified and
checked by a strongly Calvinistic turn of mind, which impressed the child whom she made her
chief favourite and companion, but increased the breach between them, when in after years
he adopted opinions widely different from those in which he had been so carefully nurtured.
To this lady William Godwin owed his first teaching and initiation
into literature. His earliest books were the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and an “Account of the Pious Deaths of Many Godly
Children,” by James Janeway.
“Their premature eminence,” he writes, “suited to my own
age and situation, strongly excited my emulation. I felt as if I
were willing to die with them, if I could with equal success engage the admiration of
my friends and mankind.” But while thus nursed in a very hotbed of forced
piety, he was physically a puny child, and records that the persons about him were much
less solicitous for the health of his body than the health of his soul.
In 1758 Mr Godwin, senior, removed
from Wisbeach to Debenham, “a small market town in the vicinity of Suffolk. But
here his congregation was divided into two factions, Arian and Trinitarian. The
Trinitarians had just before expelled an heretical pastor, and the defeated Arians were
resolved to grant no suspension of arms to his more orthodox successor.” He
therefore went in about 1760 to Guestwick, sixteen miles north of Norwich, “one of
the smallest order of villages in the county of Norfolk,” and here, where it
may be hoped the simple villagers did not know the subtle differences of rival creeds, he
passed the remainder of his life. The emolument of none of his preferments exceeded the
amount of £60 a year.
William Godwin’s school-life was subject to
the same influences which surrounded him at home. His earliest teacher beyond his own
family was the mistress of a dame’s school at Guestwick, and, like all the persons
who had hitherto had any charge of him, she “was much occupied in the concerns of
religion. She was considerably stricken in years, and had seen twenty years of the
preceding century. I recollect her bitter lamentations respecting the innovation in the
Style,” September 1752, “and the alteration of Christmas
Day.” Under her tuition he read through the whole of the Old and New Testaments,
and gained, before he was eight years old, a great familiarity with the phraseology and
manner of the Bible; and this, he himself thought, had a considerable share in the
formation of his character. He was a precocious
child, in whose mind the most characteristic features “were religion and love of
distinction.” Having determined even thus early to be a minister, he
afterwards recorded that he “preached sermons in the kitchen, every Sunday
afternoon, and at other times, mounted in a child’s high chair, indifferent as to
the muster of persons present at these exhibitions, and undisturbed at their coming and
going.” His education at this time was puritanically strict. “One
Sunday, as I walked in the garden, I happened to take the cat in my arms. My father saw
me, and seriously reproved my levity, remarking that on the Lord’s-day he was
ashamed to observe me demeaning myself with such profaneness.”
In March 1764, upon the death of his aged schoolmistress, the boy was sent
with one of his brothers to a school at Hindolveston, or Hilderson, about two miles and a
half from his home. The school consisted of thirty boarders, and seventy day scholars,
among which last were the Godwins. The name of the master was
Akers; he was celebrated as “the best, or second best,
penman in the county of Norfolk, or, for aught he knew, in England.” This
will account for the admirable quality of Godwin’s own handwriting, which remained, even to the end of his long
life, as legible as print, yet with a distinct personal character about it.
“Akers was bred a journeyman tailor, and had never
had more than a quarter of a year’s schooling in his life. The rest was the fruit
of his own industry. He was a moderate mathematician, and had a small smattering of
Latin. Few men ever excelled him in the rapidity and truth of his arithmetical
operations.” Godwin says further: “I was
perhaps the only one of his scholars that ever loved him;” and this is likely
enough from the account given of the master, and of the conduct of his school. All, however, that was taught was well taught, and Godwin
was an eager and ambitious pupil.
At this school was also “a poor lad of the village, whose name
was Steele,” who seemed to Godwin a proper subject on
whom to exercise his old practice of preaching. He talked to Steele
“of sin and damnation, and drew tears from his eyes.” He privily got
possession of the key of the meeting-house, that he might preach to and pray over
Steele from his father’s pulpit. His whole soul was vexed
within him, because he thought that very few of his schoolfellows discovered any tokens of
God’s grace.
In the following year Mrs Sothren
took the boy on a tour to Norwich, Lynn, and Wisbeach; and as at Wisbeach it was the time
of the races, he was then, for the only time in his life, a spectator of that amusement, to
which he “attended with great interest and passion.” At Norwich he saw
the play of Venice Preserved; and it is
a curious instance of the changeableness and inconsistency that there is in the repudiation
of amusements by those who are very strict in their religious views, that he was taken to
the theatre by Mrs Sothren, with the full consent of his parents.
In September 1767 he was sent to Norwich, to become the solitary pupil of
Mr Samuel Newton, minister of the Independent
congregation in that city. Of this man he gives a most unpleasant picture, physically and
intellectually. But this is evidently the impression of his riper manhood, not of his
childhood. For at the time Newton had a great influence over him, and
of a kind scarcely possible but where sympathy exists. It is probable that he only grew to
detest Newton when he grew to detest
Newton’s creed. This was “drawn from the writings
of Sandeman, a celebrated north country apostle,
who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a
scheme for damn-ing ninety-nine in a hundred
of the followers of Calvin.” Of himself at this time he writes as follows,
and there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of his self-introspection:—
“It was scarcely possible for any preceptor to have
a pupil more penetrated with curiosity and a thirst after knowledge than I was when I
came under the roof of this man. All my amusements were sedentary; I had scarcely any
pleasure but in reading; by my own consent, I should sometimes not so much have gone
into the streets for weeks together. It may well be supposed that my vocation to
literature was decisive, when not even the treatment I now received could alter it. Add
to this principle of curiosity a trembling sensibility and an insatiable ambition, a
sentiment that panted with indescribable anxiety for the stimulus of approbation. The
love of approbation and esteem, indeed, that pervaded my mind was a nice and delicate
feeling, that found no gratification in coarse applause, and that proudly enveloped
itself in the consciousness of its worth, when treated with injustice.”
But his new tutor did not think so highly of the abilities which thus
panted for recognition as Mrs Sothren and
Akers had done. After the fashion of those days, Newton speedily proceeded to birch his self-complacent
pupil, prefacing the application of the rod by a long exhortation, full of facetious
metaphor.
“To this discourse,” says Godwin, “I listened at first with astonishment,
and afterwards with incredulity. It had never occurred to me as possible that my
person, which hitherto had been treated by most of my acquaintances, and particularly
by Mrs Sothren and Mr
Akers, who had principally engaged my attention, as something extraordinary
and sacred, could suffer such ignominious violation. The idea had something in it as
abrupt as a fall from heaven to earth. I had regarded this engine as the appropriate
lot of the very refuse of the scholastic train.”
In the spring of the following year, 1768, he had an
attack of the smallpox, having on religious grounds steadily refused to allow himself to be
inoculated; and during his illness he was conscious of entire “detachment” from
life, and willingness to die. After his recovery, he found that his tutor’s son had
much difficulty and bashfulness in praying before others, and he therefore used to take the
lad to his own room, and there pray with him. He remained with Mr Newton three years, and finally left him in 1771. There had been in this
time one short break, during which he went back to Hindolveston, but returned to
Newton at his own request. It is plain, therefore, that his
dislike of his tutor could not have been great, while his own attainments in after-life
speak well for the teaching he had received. Godwin
also had gained much intellectually from having been allowed—or at least not checked in—the
free range of his tutor’s library.
“The books I read here,” he says,
“with the greatest transport were the early volumes of the English translation
of the Ancient History of Rollin. Few bosoms
ever beat with greater ardour than mine did while perusing the story of the grand
struggle of the Greeks for independence against the assaults of the Persian despot; and
this scene awakened a passion in my soul which will never cease but with
life.”
Another extract, and it is one displaying that inordinate vanity which was
traceable through life, amid much that was loveable, will close this period of mere
boyhood.
“When I was about thirteen or fourteen years of age I
went by myself one day at the period of the assizes to the Sessions House. Having gone
early, I had my choice of a seat, and placed myself immediately next the bench. The judge
was Lord Chief-Justice De Grey, afterwards Baron Walsingham. As I stayed some hours, I at one time relieved my posture
by leaning my elbow on the corner of the cushion placed before his lordship. On some
occa-sion, probably when he was going
to address the jury, he laid his hand gently on my elbow and removed it. On this action I
recollect having silently remarked, if his lordship knew what the lad beside him will
perhaps one day become I am not sure that he would have removed my elbow.”
Thus ends the fragment of detailed autobiography. In 1805 Godwin wrote of this MS.,—“I shall probably never
complete it. My feelings on the subject are not what they were. I sat down with the
intention of being nearly as explicit as Rousseau in the composition of his Confessions.” But finding that so
minute a portrait would not be after all the truest which could be written, he hints that
posterity will judge him by his works. There remain, however, many short notes of the years
1772-1795, but scarcely more than a summary of the leading events. Such as they are, these
notes are almost the only authority for that portion of the life. The greater part of his
correspondence with his relatives after he left his father’s house was destroyed by
his mother shortly before her death, and there were but few letters of interest addressed
to him during the period in which he was young and unknown.
Enough has been said to show the school in which the religious opinions of
the growing lad were formed. In politics his father was a moderate whig, but in that
household politics were rarely discussed. Of Mr
Newton his pupil says again—
“Ductility is a leading feature of my mind. I was
his single pupil, and his sentiments speedily became mine. He was rather an intemperate
Wilkite, but first and principally he was a disciple of the supra-Calvinistic opinions
of Robert Sandeman.”
Such was the boy, who made an early start in life, at the age of fifteen, by accepting the post of usher in the school of his old master,
Mr Robert Akers of Hindolveston. He continued in this occupation
during the whole of the year 1772, and probably during the spring of the following year. He
read during this period the whole of Shakspere,
“and planned an epic poem of Brute.” Mr Godwin, senior, died on November 12, 1772, but the
event did not cause his son any profound emotion. The circumstances in which the family
were left were slender, but some small sum seems to have been available for the completion
of William’s education. In April 1773 he came
to London with his mother, intending to enter Homerton Academy, but was rejected when
examined by Mr Stafford and Mr Noah Hill, at the
instance of the former, on suspicion of Sandemanianism. After spending the summer in Kent
with his mother’s relatives, he entered Hoxton College as a student in September, the
authorities being either more tolerant than those at Homerton, or having a less keen scent
for possible heresy. He planned during that summer “two tragedies, one on
the-subject of Iphigenia in Aulis, and the other of
the death of Cæsar, and constructed a harmony of the
evangelists from the gospels themselves, without the assistance of any
commentators.” He procured also from the circulating library at Rochester the
works of Robert Sandeman, that he might compare them
with his previous habits of thinking, and know whereof he was accused.
He remained five years at Hoxton, and in long after days wrote as follows
his recollections of that period:—
“During my academical life, and from this time
forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of
greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed
doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my
inquiries terminated in Calvinism. I was famous in our college for calm and
impassionate discussion; for one whole summer I rose at five and went to bed at
midnight, that I might have sufficient time for theology and metaphysics. I formed
during this period, from reading on all sides, a creed upon materialism and
immaterialism, liberty and necessity, in which no subsequent improvement of my
understanding has been able to produce any variation. I was remarked by my
fellow-collegians for the intrepidity of my opinions and the tranquil fearlessness of
my temper.”
Godwin’s tutor at Hoxton was Dr
Kippis, editor of “Biographia Britannica,” &c., &c., who died in 1795; he was very
sincerely his friend, did much for him when starting afterwards in literary life, and found
him also a fairly lucrative appointment as a private tutor. The then head of the college
was Dr Rees, editor of “Chambers’s and Rees’s Cyclopaedia,”
who died in 1825, and with him Godwin held a very
curious and interesting conversation on the eternity of hell torment, in which the pupil,
one day to become so heretical, was more orthodox than his teacher. In answer to
Godwin’s complacent quotation of the stock texts on the
matter—
“The doctor argued that in these passages an
infinite duration was put merely for one that was unlimited, and that ‘for ages
of ages’ meant only for a very long time. The doctor further maintained that this
ambiguous and obscure style was very wisely kept up in the New Testament, since less
than the absolute belief in eternal suffering would never retain the lower orders of
the community in the path of duty. For himself he was perfectly convinced that such a
punishment was never the meaning of Jesus Christ, but he should
think it censurable in himself to promulgate the true sense of the New Testament on
this point, to the grosser mass of mankind, who if they were acquainted with it would
infallibly launch out into the most enormous crimes.” Godwin could not agree with him in this, and “was persuaded there
was more virtue and less crime in the best ages of Greece and Rome than in any period
of the Christian dispensation, and was therefore satisfied that the doctrine of eternal
punishment in hell was not absolutely required to prevent men from running out into
excesses that would be destructive of the social system.”
Of the general tone of the College, Godwin says—
“The prevailing opinions were those of Arminius and Arius, but I endured the fiery trial, and came out in my twenty-third year
as pure a Sandemanian as I had gone in; this, however, without any intercourse with the
congregation in London distinguished by the name of that leader. A little time before
the period of my entering the Dissenting College at Hoxton, I had adopted principles of
toryism in government, by which I was no less distinguished from my fellow-students
than by my principles of religion. I had, however, no sooner gone out into the world
than my sentiments on both these points began to give way; my toryism did not survive
above a year, and between my twenty-third and my twenty-fifth year my religious creed
insensibly degenerated on the heads of the Trinity, eternal torments, and some
others.”
In 1777 while spending his last summer vacation in his native county,
Godwin preached at Yarmouth every Sunday
morning, and at Lowestoft in the afternoon. In the next year after leaving the College and
recovering from a severe attack of “putrid fever,” he preached, unsuccessfully,
as a candidate at Christchurch in Hampshire, and settled at Ware in Hertfordshire as a
minister. If, however, it be necessary to have a firm faith before teaching others, as
then, for the most part, men would have held, Godwin’s fitness for his post, which however he accepted in all
seriousness and devotion, may be doubted. He writes:—
“In the last year of my academical life I entered
into a curious paper war with my fellow student Mr Richard Evans,
an excellent mathematician, and a man of very clear understanding. The subject, the
being of a God. Our papers were, I believe, seen by no person but ourselves. I took the
negative side, in this instance, as always, with great sincerity, hoping that my friend
might enable me to remove the difficulties I apprehended. I did not fully see my ground
as to this radical question, but I had little doubt that grant the being of a God, both
the truth of Christianity, and the doctrines of Calvinism, followed by infallible
inference.”
No record is preserved of Godwin’s ministry at Ware, nor are any facts now discoverable, but he
was there first brought in contact with Joseph
Fawcet, whose name is interesting to us as being the first of four persons
who at different periods profoundly impressed Godwin, and influenced his mental development. He says:—
“The four principal oral instructors to whom I feel my
mind indebted for improvement were Joseph Fawcet,
Thomas Holcroft, George Dyson, and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.”
Again:—
“In my twenty-third year I became acquainted with
the Rev. Joseph Fawcet, a young man of nearly my
own age, one of whose favourite topics was a declamation against the domestic
affections, a principle which admirably coincided with the dogmas of Jonathan Edwards, whose works I had read a short time
before. Mr Fawcet’s modes of thinking made a great
impression upon me, as he was almost the first man I had ever been acquainted with, who
carried with him the semblance of original genius.”
Fawcet’s very name is now forgotten as well as
his writings, but Godwin was not the only one of his
contemporaries who esteemed him highly. Hazlitt thus
speaks of him:—
“The late Rev. Joseph
Fawcet, author of the ‘Art of War,’ &c. It was he who delivered the Sunday Evening
Lectures at the Old Jewry, which were so popular about twenty years ago. He afterwards
retired to Hedgegrove in Hertfordshire. It was here that I became acquainted with him,
and passed some of the pleasantest days of my life. He was the friend of my early
youth. He was the first person of literary eminence whom I had then known, and the
conversations I then had with him on subjects of taste and philosophy, for his taste
was as refined as his powers of reasoning were profound and subtle, gave me a delight
such as I can never feel again. Of all the persons I have ever known, he was the most
perfectly free from every taint of jealousy or narrowness. Never did a mean or sinister
motive come near his heart. He was one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the French
Revolution, and I believe that the disappointment of the hopes he had cherished of the
freedom and happiness of mankind, preyed upon his mind, and hastened his
death.”—Life
of Holcroft, Vol. 2, note to p. 246.
Leaving Ware in August 1779, Godwin
resided for four months “with great economy,” at a little lodging in
Coleman Street. Here he read reports of the speeches of Burke and Fox, “to whom from
that time he commenced an ardent attachment, which no change of circumstances or lapse
of time was ever able to shake.” In this first residence in London he was
still uncertain about his career—not yet detached from a set of opinions which his previous
training had made so habitual, as to be with difficulty shaken even by his growing
liberalism. The next year he left London again, and resumed his ministerial work. In the
commencement of the next year, he writes in his notes:—
“I went to reside at Stowmarket in Suffolk, in my
profession of a dissenting minister. The only pleasant acquaintance I had here was Mrs Alice
Munnings, and her unfortunate son Leonard, a
captain of the Suffolk Militia, and a lively, well bred and intelligent man. In 1781
there came to reside at Stowmarket Mr Frederic
Norman, deeply read in the French philosophers, and a man of great
reflection and acuteness. In April 1782 I quitted Stowmarket, in consequence of a
dispute with my hearers on a question of Church discipline. My faith in Christianity
had been shaken by the books which Mr Norman put into my hands,
and I was therefore pleased in some respects with the breach which dismissed me. I
resided during the rest of the year at a lodging in Holborn, and by the persuasions of
Fawcet and another friend was prevailed on
to try my pen as an author. I drew up proposals for a periodical series of English
Biography, but having set down first to the Life of Lord
Chatham, I found it grow under my hands to the size of a volume, which I
completed by the end of the year. I spent the first seven months of 1783 at
Beaconsfield, in the way of my original profession.”
It appears however from the records of the “Old Meeting House”
at Beaconsfield, now no longer used as such, that Godwin was only a candidate, and was never formally appointed as minister.
An old man who was still living forty years ago, “remembered,” or thought he
remembered, “that on one Sunday morning there was no service, because the minister
had gone out coursing,” but the tradition is difficult to reconcile with the
earlier training from which Godwin had not wholly emancipated himself,
and with his apparent total indifference to, if not dislike of such pursuits at other
times.
“I found myself,” continue the notes,
“troubled in my mind on the score of the infidel principles I had recently
imbibed, but reading at Beaconsfield the Institutes of Dr
Priestley, Socinianism appeared to relieve so many of the difficulties I
had hitherto sustained from the Calvinistic theology, that my mind rested in that
theory, to which I remained a sincere adherent till the year
1788. On quitting Beaconsfield in August, I formed the plan of a school, for which I
was offered some pecuniary assistance, and I actually hired a furnished house for the
purpose, at Epsom in Surrey, and published a pamphlet in recommendation of my plan: but I never
secured a sufficient number of pupils at one time to induce me to enter upon actual
business. This year I may for the first time be considered as an author by profession.
My ‘Life of Lord
Chatham’ was published in the spring. I wrote a defence of the Rockingham party in their coalition with
Lord North.”
This coalition turned out Lord
Shelburne, who had become Prime Minister on the death of Lord Rockingham, made the Duke of
Portland Prime Minister in the room of Lord Shelburne,
Fox and Lord
North the two Secretaries of State, in February 1783.
“For this Stockdale gave
me five guineas; I published my scheme of
the seminary at Epsom; and I composed a pamphlet entitled the ‘Herald of Literature,’ which was
not published till the following year. Soon after the period in which I quitted
Beaconsfield, I took lodgings near the New Church in the Strand,”—St Mary Le
Strand, consecrated in 1723,—“where I continued during the whole of the following
year. I,” now “lost the pecuniary assistance which had in some
degree smoothed for me the difficulties of the two preceding years, and enabled me to
publish on my own account the ‘Life
of Chatham,’ the friend who assisted me going abroad at this period,
and leaving me forty pounds in his debt. My principal employment was now writing for
the ‘English Review,’ published
by Murray in Fleet Street, at two guineas a
sheet, in which employment it was my utmost hope to gain twenty-four guineas per annum.
Mr Murray had been won to this contract by the offer of the
MS. of the ‘Herald of Literature.’ This was
probably the busiest period of my life; in the latter end of 1783 I wrote in ten days a
novel entitled Damon and Delia, for
which Hookham gave me five guineas, and a novel in three weeks called ‘Italian Letters,’ purchased by
Robinson for twenty guineas, and in the
first four months of 1784 a novel called ‘Imogen, a Pastoral Romance,’ for which
Lane gave me ten pounds.
Murray published my ‘Herald of
Literature,’ by which I gained nothing, and Cadell published on the same terms and with the same
effect a small volume of my Sermons. This volume was dedicated to Dr
Watson, Bishop of Llandaff.” Richard
Watson was a friend but opponent of Gibbon, a liberal and enlightened prelate. He died in 1816, aged 79.
“Murray also graciously put into my hands the job of
translating from the French MS. the ‘Memoirs of Simon Lord Lovat,’ which was not published for several
years after. For this job he gave me twenty guineas, but the style of the translation
was refined and improved in every sentence, almost in every line, by Mr and Mrs Murray. Notwithstanding these resources, for the
most part I did not eat my dinner without previously carrying my watch or my books to
the pawnbroker to enable me to eat.”
In the next year, 1785, he was appointed by Robinson the publisher, on the introduction of Dr Kippis, writer of the historical part of the “New Annual Register,” at the stipend of sixty guineas,
“and the contract was sealed by a dinner in trio between Mr
Robertson, Dr Kippis, and myself at the Crown and
Anchor in the Strand.” This tavern was opposite St Clement’s Church, on
a site now occupied by shops.
It was about this time that the prefix of Reverend gradually fell away
from his name, and the links were severed between the old life and the new. For some time
past he had seen but little of his family. The eldest brother was settled as a farmer at
Wood Dalling in Norfolk, with whom, or close to whom Mrs
Godwin senior resided. The conduct of their relations
did not gratify this lady and her eldest son, neither did the family letters afford them
pleasure, and they therefore destroyed nearly all the correspondence which passed in these
years. There are however records of a brother John
who settled in London in “sickness and poverty,” of another, Nathaniel, in scarce better case, who became a sailor and
died at sea, of another, Joseph, who had got into
trouble and disgrace, and of a sister Hannah, who
wrote poetry, but could not spell—few women then could—and who had settled in partnership
with a dressmaker in London. Between her and William
Godwin existed a strong affection which survived their not infrequent
quarrels.
It may well be supposed that so complete a change of life and views on
Godwin’s part had given much pain to the
honest, homely folk at Wood Dalling, and to Mrs
Sothren to whom he was once so dear. The first indication of this is to be
found in a letter from her, in answer to a request for some information in regard to his
family, and with this—for the letters from his mother will find place hereafter—may close
the record of his early life.
Mrs Sothren to William Godwin.
“Norwich, March 7th, 1788.
“Dear Cousin,—I was indeed
much surprised to receive a letter from you, but on opening it found it to be
one of meer curiosity, and what is not in my power to satisfy, as I know not so
far as you, for I never knew my grandfather; he being dead before I was born,
nor have I anything in my possession relating to it. Am very glad your
Sister (for I think that a much more
indearing title than Miss G. but suppose ’tis
polite, as I know your partiality for your Sister used to be great, and hope
she has not done any-thing to
abate it) is to appearance so agreably fixed, sincearly wish them success.
“Wish Joseph may
not hurt you; if report says true he has been very imprudent. There is an old
proverb ‘Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you,’ am
very sorry for the poor woman and dear little children.
Mary is with your mother.
“You seem to keep out of these troubles. Shure you must
want a companion, cannot think how you live. Since I received yours am told you
have commenced Novel writer, own it gives me some concern that you that are so
capable of turning your thoughts to some thing that would have been for the
good of mankind should take that turn.
“Indeed your disposition of maintaining yourself
without troubling your friends is very commendable but it has always been a
profound secret what the productions of your pen were (to me).
“Young Wilkins seems very happy.
Am very sorry for poor Miss Gay; she is a great favourite
of mine, I think her an amiable young lady.—Yours affectionately,
Han. Sothren.
“P.S.—Hope you will not take
it ill what I have wrote, if you can read it. My pens and ink are so bad I
am quite ashamed.”
Mrs Sothren became a widow in 1785 and died in 1796.
CHAPTER II. LITERARY WORK. 1785—1788.
In 1785 Godwin was fairly
started as a literary man in London, and became gradually known as a useful political
writer on the liberal side. He was a constant contributor to the Political Herald, of which
Dr Gilbert Stuart was editor, a publication the
aim of which is sufficiently described by its title, and which expired at the close of the
following year. Some attempts were made to revive it under
Godwin’s own editorship, and Sheridan, as representing Mr
Fox’s party, had repeated interviews with Godwin
on the subject. It was proposed to him that he should receive a regular stipend from the
funds set apart for political purposes by the adherents to the party of Mr
Fox, but this he declined, resolving to limit his pecuniary advantages to
the fair profits of the pamphlet. He was at this time, and indeed long afterwards,
struggling with great pecuniary difficulties, having no fixed income whatever, with the
payment for one pupil sent him by Dr Kippis, as the
only addition to the small and precarious sum obtained by his fugitive writings.
Through Murray he became known to
many literary men, who were accustomed to meet at Murray’s, and
at the house of Mr Robinson the publisher in
Paternoster Row, while through Sheridan he made the
acquaintance of some who were already, or were soon to be known in the world of politics. At
Sheridan’s he met at dinner “Mr Canning, then an Eton schoolboy, just become known
to the public by the paper of the Microcosm, &c., &c. Mr Canning was very
pressing with me for the cultivation of my acquaintance.”
Sheridan and his circle, finding him not venal, soon dropped him,
but not before he had fairly taken his place in the best London literary and scientific
society. Fawcet, the dear and chosen friend of a few
years back, was not in London, but his place was soon supplied by Holcroft. This name is the second among those of the four
men who profoundly influenced the tone of his mind. The acquaintance was made in 1786, but
it was not till the year 1788 that he writes of himself and Holcroft
as “extremely intimate.” The outward facts of
Holcroft’s life are well known, or may be read in his life by Hazlitt. The son of a shoemaker,
he had been himself a stable-boy, shoemaker, and actor, before he became a dramatic author,
and, self-educated as he was, a successful translator of works from French and German. His
home life was far from happy, as will in part appear in these pages. He died in 1809, aged
65. Mrs Shelley writes of him:—
“The name of Holcroft at once gives rise to a crowd of recollections to those who
are conversant with the history of the times, and that particular circle of literary
men of which my father was one. The son of a shoemaker, he rose to eminence through the
energy of his character, and the genius with which nature had endowed him. To think of
Holcroft as his friends remember him, and to call to mind
whence at this day he principally derives his fame as an author, present a singular
contrast. He was a man of stern and irascible character, and from the moment that he
espoused liberal principles, he carried them to excess. He was tried for life as a
traitor on account of his enthusiasm for the objects of the French Revolution. He
believed that truth must prevail by the force of its own powers,
but he advocated what he deemed truth with vehemence. He warmly asserted that death and
disease existed only through the feebleness of man’s mind, that pain also had no
reality. Rectitude and Courage were the gods of his idolatry, but the defect of his
temper rendered him a susceptible friend. His Comedy, ‘The Road to Ruin,’ will always maintain its
position on the English stage, so long as there are actors who can fitly represent its
leading characters. He was a man of great industry, unwearied in his efforts to support
his family. When they first became acquainted neither he nor Mr Godwin had yet imbibed those strong political
feelings which afterwards distinguished them. It required the French Revolution to
kindle that ardent love of Political Justice with which both were afterwards, according
to their diverse dispositions, warmed.”
Godwin had now entirely severed himself from his
former faith, and he thus writes of the change:—
“Till 1782 I believed in the doctrine of Calvin, that is, that the majority of mankind were
objects of divine condemnation, and that their punishment would be everlasting. The
‘Système de la
Nature,’ read about the beginning of that year, changed my opinion and
made me a Deist. I afterwards veered to Socinianism, in which I was confirmed by
‘Priestley’s
Institutes,’ in the beginning of 1783. I remember the having
entertained doubts in 1785, when I corresponded with Dr
Priestley. But I was not a complete unbeliever till 1787.”
By “complete unbeliever,” however, Godwin must be understood to mean an infidel to Creeds
only, and not an infidel to God. That he was at any time a “religious” man may
be doubted, if by that term be meant one who has the emotional nature exercised in regard
to a Being apprehended by faith alone. Reason, far more than the affections, guided his
actions, and while he sought after One who
would satisfy his intellect, he seems to have never felt the need, and therefore never the
power of adoration and self-abasement. That he was not at this time an infidel in the
vulgar sense, is plain from the following note found among his papers, and dated somewhat
after the above extract. It is one of several of the same kind, but seems rather to be the
digest of the whole, and may be taken as his deliberate answer to the same question as
Gretchen put to Faust, “Believest thou in God?”
“God is a being, who is himself the cause of his own
existence.
“His prerogative is to perceive before there was
anything to be perceived. He is the creator of the universe, He operated upon nothing,
and turned it into something.
“He has not impenetrability, yet can act upon matter
which is impenetrable, and moves all things, himself immoveable.
“He produces all things with a word; all his works
are equally easy, and equally instantaneous.
“He is present everywhere, yet has neither parts,
figure, nor divisibility: He is all in all, and all in every part.
“With Him is no variableness, neither before nor
after; he is the eternal Now.
“He exists through all time, fills all space,
possesses all knowledge, yet is perfectly simple and uncompounded; his thought is but
one, His omniscience a single, all-perfect idea.
“He is for ever the same, without change, yet is
perpetually active, beginning, conducting, and ending all the variety of events.
“He desires the happiness of all His creatures, and
is averse to their pain; yet His own felicity is always complete, He neither approves
of their good nor is displeased by their misery.
“I believe in this being, not because I have any
proper or direct knowledge of His existence,
“But, I am at a loss to account for the existence
and arrangement of the visible universe,
“And, being left in the wide sea of conjecture
without clue from analogy or experience,
“I find the conjecture of a God easy, obvious, and
irresistible. I perceive my understanding to be so commensurate to His nature, and His
attributes to be so much like what I know and have observed
“As instantly to convert mystery into reason, and
contradictions into certainty.”
The following note, in a somewhat more pantheistic key, but still far
removed from the no-creed of the “unbeliever,” was apparently written about the
same time:—
“Religion is among the most beautiful and most
natural of all things; that religion which ‘sees God in clouds and hears Him
in the wind,’ which endows every object of sense with a living soul,
which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious, and venerable, and
inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration.
“But accursed and detestable is that religion by
which the fancy is hag-rid, and conscience is excited to torment us with phantoms of
guilt, which endows the priest with his pernicious empire over the mind, which
undermines boldness of opinion and intrepidity in feeling, which aggravates a
thousandfold the inevitable calamity, death, and haunts us with the fiends and
retributory punishments of a future world.”
It is plain that this is not orthodox, and though the letter of Mrs Sothren’s already quoted is the only expression
of dissatisfaction on the part of his family to be found among the papers, there is the
draft of a letter from himself to his mother which
is interesting as conveying an apology for his declension from his mother’s view. It
is not dated, but certainly belongs to this time.
“I am exceedingly sorry that you should suffer
yourself to form so unfavourable an opinion of my sentiments and character as you
express in your last letter. Not that I am anxious so far as relates to myself what opinion may be formed of
me by any human being: I am answerable only to God and conscience. But I am sorry, even
without deserving it, to occasion you with the smallest uneasiness.
“You seem to regret my having quitted the character
of a dissenting minister. To that I can only say, with the utmost frankness, whatever
inference may be drawn from it, that the character quitted me when I was far from
desiring to part with it.
“With respect to my religious sentiments I have the
firmest assurance and tranquillity. I have faithfully endeavoured to improve the
faculties and opportunities God has given me, and I am perfectly easy about the
consequences. No man can be sure that he is not mistaken, but I am sure that if I am
so, the best of beings will forgive my error. If I could ever hope for his approbation,
I have now more reason to hope for it than ever. My views, I think, were always right,
but they are now nobler and more exalted. I am in every respect, so far as I am able to
follow the dictates of my own mind, perfectly indifferent to all personal
gratification. I know of nothing worth the living for but usefulness and the service of
my fellow-creatures. The only object I pursue is to increase, as far as lies in my
power, the quantity of their knowledge and goodness and happiness. And as I desire
everything from God, I hope the situation in which I am now placed is that in which I
am most likely to be useful. Always anxious to resemble the great Creator, can I be
afraid of his displeasure? If he has resolved to punish in another world those who are
most sincerely desirous to act properly and uprightly in this, what must we think of
his goodness or his mercy?”
The same calm temperament which enabled him to dispense with much which is
often thought of the essence of religion, seems to have kept him free also from any feeling
which can be called love. Except the one great passion of his life, and even this was
conducted with extreme outward and apparent phlegm, friendship stood to him in the place of passion, as morality was to him in the room of devotion. All
the jealousies, misunderstandings, wounded feelings and the like, which some men experience
in their love affairs, Godwin suffered in his
relations with his friends. Fancied slights were exaggerated; quarrels, expostulations,
reconciliations followed quickly on each other, as though they were true amantiam iræ. And his relations with women were for
the most part the same as those with men. His friendships were as real with the one sex as
with the other, but they were no more than friendships. Marriage seemed to him a thing to
be arranged, “adjusted,” as Mr Tennyson
says of the loves of vegetables. Hence it was that when settled in London he suggested to
his sister Hannah that she should choose him a wife.
Her choice fell on the lady whom Mrs Sothren calls
“a great favourite of mine,” and thus she recommends her friend:—
Hannah Godwin to William Godwin.
29th June ’84.
“I send” the letter enclosed “to you by way
of introduction to the only lady upon whom I could fix, since you said you
should like your sister to chuse you a wife. This was one of the thousand
things I intended to tell you, that if you had neither fixed upon any lady
yourself, nor sworn to be an old bachelor, I had a friend whom I thought might
in every way meet your approbation, and that I hoped that if you thought proper
to offer your services they might meet with acceptance, could I but be in
London to introduce you. The young lady is in every sense formed to make one of
your disposition really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she
accompanies her musical instrument with judgment. She has an easy politeness in
her manners, neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper and a good
economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As to her internal accomplish-ments, I have reason to speak still
more highly of them, good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without
a disposition to satire, good nature and humility, with about as much religion
as my William likes, struck me with a
wish that she was my William’s wife. I have no
certain knowledge of her fortune, but that I leave for you to learn. I only
know her father has been many years engaged in an employment which brings in
£500 or £600 per ann., and Miss Gay is his only child.
Mr Gay is very much of a gentleman, though one whom
you would say savours too much of Methodism. . . . I have only mentioned you as
my dearest brother, and added that I wished she were acquainted with you, to
which she answered, ‘need I say how much pleasure I should have in an
acquaintance with one who is so high in the esteem of my dear
Godwin.’
“I would not have you mention her to Jack, nor let him know that I have such
friends in town, lest he should impose upon their kindness, for I know their
friendship for me would induce them to behave respectfully to him, at the same
time that I am sure he would be far from agreeable to them.
“What do you say now, my dear William, to my living with you? I certainly
intend coming to live in London, hiring a couple of rooms, which, if agreeable
to you, I should like to be in the same house with you, and taking in millinery
work. . . . But where shall I get a little money to begin with? I shall want
£20, and I have neither money nor credit. O my dear brother, how I please
myself with the thought of living with you; you will read to me sometimes when
I am at work (will you not?) and instruct me, and make me a clever girl.
“I am, with all my failings, Your affectionate Sister, H. Godwin.
Godwin answered this effusion, when some months had
passed, by asking the lady’s age and opinions, and after two more months he called
upon her. What he wrote to his sister may be gathered from her reply to him.
The Same to the Same.
“8th Feb. 1785.
“. . . You have seen Miss Gay. You
are not struck with her, but do not think it impossible for you to like her
well enough to make certain proposals after a time: let me know the results of
your next Interview. I wish to know your sentiments. If you do not approve of
her for a wife, but wish to make her your intimate friend, trust me she is
worth the trouble it may cost you.
Your obliged Friend and Sister, H. Godwin.
Godwin appears to have taken no notice of his
sister’s rapturous exclamations at the prospect of living with or near him, and he
thought no more of the lady of her choice, who accordingly, for the matter was discussed in
full family conclave, becomes “poor Miss Gay” in
subsequent letters, as though Godwin had really behaved ill to her.
Although during this period of his life Godwin had no settled home, and was constantly changing his lodgings, he
yet received a pupil, as has been said, who was apparently a boarder. The lad’s name
was Willis Webb, of whom nothing is now discoverable
save what can be found in the letters which passed between them. He seems to have left a
public school—probably Eton—to become Godwin’s pupil, and to
have gone from him to a large private school at Hitcham, near Eton. Old Hitcham Manor House
was one of those many houses said “to have been visited by Queen Elizabeth.” It was afterwards for a
time the residence of Judge Jeffreys, and about the
year 1700 that of Dr Freind, physician to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and afterwards to Queen Caroline. It then became a school, and the house was
pulled down, though a part still remains as a cottage. The grounds which surrounded it are merged in a larger estate. Thence Willis
Webb was to go to one of the Universities, but “the Captain,”
presumably a step-father, did not exert himself about this final step, and kept the young
man under tuition longer than the latter thought desirable. The letters show that
Godwin was able to inspire genuine enthusiasm in the young, in
spite of his somewhat formal manner of writing to his pupil, and they are the first
instance of the way in which he was considered one to whom the young might resort as to an
oracle. They are interesting also as a picture of school life ninety years ago. He writes
to Godwin from Hitcham House, and, after giving an account of his
school work, continues:—
Willis Webb to William Godwin.
“October 25, 1787.
“To me, who have enjoyed the liberty of a public
school, and experienced the liberality of private tuition, my present situation
is extremely irksome and disagreeable. Confined within a narrow pale, I survey
a beautiful country, which I am forbid to enter, on the penalty of expulsion
from the society. I shudder at the reflexion that for a juvenile indiscretion,
which is overlooked at a public institution, not considered as a fault in
private education—(the merely taking a walk)—one’s character is liable to
be blasted by ignominious dismission.
“When, moreover, I consider that most of my
contemporaries have finished their classical career, that mathematical
knowledge can be acquired elsewhere with as much facility as at my present
abode, that my character is hitherto unimpeachable, and by a timely secession
from a place in which it is hourly exposed to imminent danger, will be secured,
I confess I ardently desire to be admitted at the University, and to leave a
society from which little profit and no pleasure is to be derived.
“Nor am I singular in my opinion that the University
would be the most advisable plan for my future education.
Several men of learning and experience, friends of my father (who, by-the-by,
had he lived, intended to have sent me this autumn to Oxford), concur in
recommending the same measure. I am now in my eighteenth year, an age no longer
puerile. My friends wish me to assume the character of a man; but how is this
practicable whilst they retain me in the shackles of a child?
“Some people are apt to think that these private
seminaries are free from the vices of the age, but give me leave to assure you
they are grossly mistaken. The same vices that flourish at Eton or Westminster
are practised at Hitcham, with this glorious addition that here deceit is
necessary to conceal them; there they gratify their passions without breach of
truth and sincerity.
“Adieu, dear Sir, and believe me,
“Yours sincerely, “W. Webb.
“P.S.—The Captain intends to
send me to Cambridge next summer, because I shall then be more discreet. Q.
Are the passions of a young man of eighteen less strong than those of one
who is seventeen years and six months old?”
Mr Webb at last got to St John’s, Cambridge,
where his gratitude to his former tutor and his priggishness suffered no diminution. He
writes from St John’s College, [Cambridge]:—
The Same to the Same.
“Feb. 24, [1788].
“I am very much pleased with the academical life; in
the University one is at liberty to cultivate whatever branch of learning is
most congenial to one’s disposition. In the University one has the
opportunity of conversation with men of learning and erudition; we are indulged
in every proper liberty, nor have we the mortification of being subjected to
illiberal and fruitless restrictions.
“For my part, I chiefly cultivate the classics; to the
other branch I was never much
inclined, and though I shall endeavour to make myself master of it, yet I am
sure I shall never derive much satisfaction from it. I am surprised that in the
present system of education so much attention should be paid to a science which
can never produce any real advantage in life to one that is destined for a
learned profession.
“I shall conclude, Dear Sir, with my best thanks for
the part you had in this affair, and remain, believe me,
“Yours sincerely, “W. Webb.”
It is not, however, probable that Godwin, considerable as was his success with Willis Webb, had a gift for the drudgery of tuition. To write, converse,
lecture, and in these ways exert a great influence over others, and especially the young,
was a wholly different thing from bearing with the wayward humours, ignorances, and needs
of lads who might not all be as receptive as his first pupil. In the summer of 1788, while
lodging for a while at Guildford, in Surrey, he took as a pupil, gratuitously, his kinsman,
Thomas Cooper, then twelve years of age, who had
just lost his father in the East Indies. In the midst of his own real poverty he was always
ready to assist those in need. Thomas Cooper was a second cousin of
Godwin’s, their mothers being first cousins. Mr
Cooper, the father, had entered the service of the East India Company in
1770 as a ship’s surgeon; he went two voyages, and was afterwards attached to the
army in Bombay. About 1783 he was appointed surgeon to the factory at Bauleah in Bengal,
where he died in October 1787, just as there appeared a fair prospect of providing for his
family. Some investments made immediately before his death turned out ill when there was no
one to look after them, “his effects at Bauleah, and all his papers, books, and
accounts were lost in a great storm which swept over Bengal in
November of that year, while the executor was bringing them from Bauleah for the
greater convenience of arranging and settling his affairs.” Thus it appears
that all means of tracing considerable debts owing to Mr Cooper were
lost, while still further mismanagement in the conduct of the business reduced the family
to indigence. It had been with them that Godwin passed some part of
his Hoxton vacations, and he now repaid this kindness by taking charge of the elder orphan
boy. The younger boy and a girl were adopted by other relatives, and Mrs Cooper took a situation as housekeeper. Mrs Shelley has left an interesting note on the characters
of tutor and pupil, the two parties in this experiment.
“Godwin, who,
from the very nature of his opinions, was led to analyse mind and draw conclusions as
to character, had a sanguine faith in the practicability of improvement, and
entertained rigid opinions on the subject of education. Tom
Cooper was a spirited boy, extremely independent and resolute, proud,
wilful, and indolent. Godwin, conscientious to the last degree in
his treatment of everyone, extended his utmost care to the task of education; but many
things rendered him unfit for it. His severity was confined to words, but these were
pointed and humiliating. His strictness was undeviating; and this was more particularly
the case in early life, when he considered the power of education to be unlimited in
the formation of character, the understanding, and temper. He took great pains with his
kinsman, and devoted attention and care to his instruction. To further his endeavours,
he kept notes of the occurrences that disturbed their mutual kindness, evidently as
appeals to the lad’s own feelings and understanding, endeavouring to awake in him
a desire of reparation when he had done wrong, and also of detailing and remarking on
any defects in his own behaviour. These papers throw light on his own views of
education, and show the conscientious and per-severing nature of his endeavours. At the same
time they display his faults as a teacher. He was too minute in his censures, too grave
and severe in his instruction; at once too far divided from his pupil through want of
sympathy, and too much on a level from the temper he put into his lectures.”
The following notes in reference to Cooper are taken almost at random from Godwin’s diary during the years that the boy remained under his roof.
“Give energy, and mental exertion will always have
attraction enough.
“Not to impute affected ignorance, lequel
n’existe pas. Not to impute dulness, stupidity.
“Suaviter, oh! suaviter, sed fortiter
excita mentem.
“It is of no consequence whether a man of genius
have learned either art or science before twenty-five: all that is necessary, or even
desirable, is that his powers should be unfolded, his emulation roused, and his habits
conducted into a right channel.
“He ought to love study, science, improvement.
“Is not his temper embittered by sternness? i.e., over-exactness in lessons and propensity to play the
censor on trivial occasions?
“Do not impute intentional error, lequel
n’existe pas.
“It is now again probable that our connection will
be permanent”—This was written after a severe illness of Cooper’s, during which it was thought probable that
there were seeds of consumption in him which might necessitate his removal to a warmer
climate.—“Let me, then, again aim at gentleness, kindness, cordiality.
“Chide him for rudeness and impertinence to
Mr Marshal: am heard with great sensibility.
The rudeness was public in the mercer’s shop.
“Take from him the translation of Gil Blas, which I yesterday forbade him to procure.
Geometria lacrimans. Takes a walk, being engaged, to the
Society’s room, Adelphi; comes home too late; does not choose to apologise;
insist.”
Another quarrel with Mr Marshal,
who was at this time residing with Godwin, led to
the following letter of apology, which shews the boy’s disposition better than a
hundred comments:—
Thomas Cooper to James Marshal.
“Sir,—I am convinced that I was wrong in not
immediately desisting from that from which you desired me to desist; I
therefore ask your pardon, and I shall endeavour to make amends for my
misconduct by my future behaviour.
“We have lived, sir, for some time in the same house,
and, I believe, with a certain degree of friendship and good understanding. I
am sorry that that friendship and good understanding have received such a shock
as they have done to-day. I was certainly wrong, as I have already said, in not
complying with your desire; that non-compliance brought on high words, in
course of which you directly called me a liar. You called me so, not by
implication; you said, ‘You are a liar.’
“I am glad that I have escaped doing that which your
words naturally excited me to do.
T. Cooper.”
The same daily—and indeed hourly—squabbling lasted so long as Tom Cooper continued with Godwin, till Cooper was nearly seventeen; and he from
time to time relieved his feelings and refreshed his memory by writing down his
tutor’s “pointed and humiliating words.” Here is one such
memorandum:—
“He called me a foolish wretch in my presence. “He said I had a wicked heart ditto. “He would thrash me ditto. Does he think I would submit quietly? “I am called a Brute in my absence. “I am compared to a Viper ditto.“He went out merely to avoid me ditto.
“I am a Tiger in my absence. “I have a black heart ditto.No justice in it ditto.No proper feelings ditto.
“He has no enmity to my person, yet he hates me. I
suppose he means by that that he does not think me very ugly,” &c.,
&c.
This paper he, in a pet, addressed to Mr
Godwin, and by design or accident put it in his way.
The following rough draft of a letter in reply throws much light on
Godwin’s character, and the wishes in
respect to his ward by which he was guided:—
William Godwin to Thomas Cooper.
“April 19, 1790.
“My dear Boy.—I am more
pleased than displeased with the paper I have just seen. It discovers a degree
of sensibility that may be of the greatest use to you, though I will endeavour
to convince you that it is wrongly applied. I was in hopes that it was written
on purpose for me to see; for I love confidence, and there are some things that
perhaps you could scarcely say to me by word of mouth. I have always
endeavoured to persuade you to confidence, because you have not a friend upon
earth that is more ardently desirous of your welfare than I, and you have not a
friend so capable of advising and guiding you to what is most to your interest
“This confidence would have been of use to you in what
has lately passed; and its continuance would be of use to you in all your
future life. If I had seen this paper before last Tuesday, what passed on that
day would not have happened. But I am closely engaged in observing what passes
through your mind, and I observed a sulkiness and obstinacy growing up in it.
You said to yourself, ‘When I behave ill, I am only reprimanded; and I
do not mind that.’ Thus when I have been endeavouring, in strong
language, to point out your errors, and lead you to amend them, you have been employed with all your might in
counteracting the impression I sought to make.
“There is in this paper a degree of sensibility that
has great merit. The love of independency and dislike of unjust treatment is
the source of a thousand virtues. If while you are necessarily dependent on me
I treat you with heaviness and unkindness, it is natural you should have a
painful feeling of it.
“But harshness and unkindness are relative. The
appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness. In fact, can my
conduct towards you spring from any but an ardent desire to be of service to
you? I am poor, and with considerable labour maintain my little family; yet I
am willing to spend my money upon your wants and pleasures. My time is of the
utmost value to me, yet I bestow a large portion of it upon your improvement.
“Supposing I should be mistaken in any part of my
conduct towards you, can it spring from anything but motives of kindness? I ask
for your confidence, because without it I am persuaded that I cannot do you
half the good I could wish. It is not an idle curiosity. I care nothing about
myself in this business. If I can contribute to make you virtuous and
respectable hereafter, I do not care whether I then possess your friendship, I
am contented you should hate me. I desire no gratitude, and no return of
favours, I only wish to do you good.
W. Godwin.”
The few letters which remain from Mrs
Cooper to her son and to Godwin
during this period are most touching. They present a sad picture of broken health, of
humbled pride, of habits of intemperance resulting in part from her misery, against which
the struggles were scarcely effectual, but there is no good gained by dissecting, as it
were, a broken heart. What is here said may serve to account still further for the
boy’s proud, sensitive nature, and indeed to enhance the extreme kindness and
forbearance of Godwin, though his judgment may
sometimes have been in fault.
At the advice apparently of Holcroft, with the encouragement of Cook the actor, and Godwin’s
full approval, Tom Cooper determined to devote
himself to the stage, but his earlier efforts met with scant success. The following letters
record his impressions of John Kemble and Mrs Siddons, and his endeavours to gain a permanent stage
engagement. They are all the remaining documents respecting him connected with our present
period:—
Thomas Cooper to William Godwin.
“Edinburgh, Thursday, July 27, 1792.
“I arrived here last night at nine, in high health and
spirits, but my spirits were damped when upon my arrival I could get no bed nor
lodging either at Edinburgh or Leith, on account of the races, which will end
on Saturday. I went to Mr Kemble’s
this morning, at eleven, and he told me that at one he would hear me go through
the character of Douglas. At one I went,
but he left word (with his compliments) that he was obliged to go to Leith.
To-morrow morning at twelve I am to rehearse with Mrs Siddons, and on Monday night am to make my first appearance
in the character of Douglas. I am just
returned to the inn from my second visit to Mr Kemble, to
whom I went to know if I might not go to the play to-night. I am going, and
Mrs Siddons plays Jane
Shore. To-morrow the Road to Ruin is acted (not for the first time), to give some rest
to Mrs S., who has acted several nights running. You will
receive this Monday morning, and may expect another on Thursday or Friday, and
so, hoping you will excuse bad writing on account of haste, I remain, yours
everlastingly,
T. Cooper.
“Friday, two o’clock.—’Sdeath,
I’m sped! I have just rehearsed Douglas with the other actors before
Mr Kemble. When I had done he
walked aside with me, and told me he was sorry to say that he could not
trust me with the character. He then made his individual objections. He
said that in two descriptive speeches I had a great
deal too much passion, especially in the last; and that in the scene with
Glenalvon the audience would laugh
at me.
“I asked him if he did not think Douglas was very angry; he answered,
Certainly, but that he was angry with good manners, and that he must not
vex Mrs Siddons (she was not
present); and, in short, he thought I was really too young to act a
character of such importance, but that he would see about some other
characters. Then, having parted, he said that if I would come to him next
morning to breakfast, he would see if we could not manage Douglas by reading it
together. Perhaps Mrs Siddons will be there, and I
shall probably please her better, if she gives me a hearing, for I am
certain I rehearsed as well as ever I did to Mr
H. I have an infallible rule to judge by—the recollection of
my own feelings. I should be glad to hear from you, if possible, by return
of post. Direct to me at Mrs M’Lelland’s,
opposite the general entry, Potterrow St., Edinburgh. Nothing less will
answer the purpose, for reasons which I have not room to explain.”
The Same to the Same.
“August, 1792.
“My courage is as great as you could wish, considering
that I stand upon a shaking foundation. Every time Mr Kemble sees me, I perceive, or think I perceive, a kind of
discontent, arising from want of determination in his countenance. I do not
keep company with any of the actors, except in the green room.
“I wish when you have room in any letter that you would
give me some news. I have not heard any of Mr Pavie and
France’s proceedings since I left London. Let me know of mother’s
health, &c., soon. Is A. Dyson gone
to France?
T. Cooper.”
“Monday.—The above was written on Saturday, since
which something of importance has occurred. I went this morning into the
pay-room to receive my money, and having got it, asked Mr Kemble’s advice relative to my
manner of travelling to London, whither we remove in the middle of this
week. ‘Why, really, Mr
Cooper, I think the best thing you can do is to go back
to Lon-don.’ I told him that I believed if he would give me a hearing
in Lothario I could please him. He said
I was not at all fit to play it. Then he began to talk in a hesitating way
about my being of no use on account of my being inexperienced in stage
matters. I said that if that were true in every instance plays would live
as long as, and no longer than actors at present existing should live. In
short, I argued the case a little with him, told him that I had learned the
characters in London. He then said that he had a great respect for
Mr Holcroft, and must endeavour
to bring me forward little by little.
“To-night I am one of Mrs Siddons’s train (dumb as usual) in the Mourning Bride. On
Wednesday I am to be the second witch in Macbeth. Mr Kemble told me that if he had thought
of it in time, I should have played Malcolm, and desired me to learn it. On Thursday I believe
I shall begin my march to Lancaster, arriving there Sunday night. I shall
stay there a week, and then for Sheffield.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newcastle, Aug. 11, 1792.
“I did leave such directions at Edinburgh as answered
the purpose of bringing your letter immediately to hand, which I think it was
most probable I should do, as I had begged you to write by return of post. I
think your observation relative to my being too loud in rehearsal was the true
cause of Mr Kemble’s rejection of
my Douglas: but as you say, that belief is
of little consequence (except, indeed, that it will be a warning to my future
conduct), since I have had no second hearing, and I am afraid shall not have,
for Mrs Siddons, on account of her
health, is unwilling to play any characters that require her greatest exertion.
She has already played Jane Shore,
Desdemona, to-night Mrs Beverley, for the last time but two, one of
the two is to be Zara, of the other I am
ignorant: so that you perceive there is very little chance for me. I have
learned since that it is to be Lady
Macbeth.
“I am, as you say, at a loss for a subject, the
strangeness of which will vanish when you consider that I
am deprived of the characters in which I expected to shine: that I am obliged
to sit down with a black gown over my shoulders as a dumb senator (which I have
done twice in the plays of Shylock and Othello!!) and hear Mr
Kemble hold forth with the most impetuous rant, with sudden,
ill-timed, unmeaning risings and fallings of voice, to astonish the vulgar, and
confound the wise by not articulating a single syllable; and to hear Mr Woods repeat his words in one dull, heavy,
monotonous sound. This circumstance is so remarkable in
Woods, that having repeated a part of Lord Hastings’ speech with tolerable
propriety, and having made a pause introducing a totally different feeling and
passion, and by his pause, and the length of it, rousing every individual to
the highest pitch of eagerness and expectation, he begins to speak, and on the
instant destroys all pleasure by the repetition of the very same sound. I
uttered, at the very first syllable, an involuntary groan (this was at the
first time of my seeing him), and a dirty scene-shifter, cursing him, expressed
his dissatisfaction in a very characteristically awkward manner.
Woods speaks with a remarkably graceful action and
easy deportment. Then to perceive a number of dull fools who scarcely even
pretend to know their right hands from their left, fill up the other
characters, without my being considered worthy to utter a syllable; your
astonishment, I say, must vanish when you consider these things, for it is
natural that a mind reflecting on them should withdraw itself to talk of the
height of steeples, the length of streets, the nature of the soil, &c.,
&c.
“Mr Woods was to
have played Glenalvon, but was obliged to
undertake Douglas, which he had never
played before; in consequence of which a Mr
Sparkes took his Glenalvon.
My reception was such as I could wish: the actors are all very civil, and the
higher are not distant and proud. Mr Bell, and others of
some consequence, give me advice, in general insignificant enough, but
tolerably good of its kind. You need be under no apprehension concerning money,
for I get a guinea every Monday.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newcastle, Aug. 16, 1792.
“The die is cast, and when, having tottered some time,
I thought myself firm, at that instant the fate was reversed, and I fell
headlong without hopes of recovery. I will now explain my meaning, and I am
afraid that the explanation will be more serious than you may expect from this
introduction. I told you in my last of the doubtful manner of talking of
Mr Kemble, and at last of his saying
that he would keep me, and endeavour to bring me forward, on account of his
respect for Mr Holcroft. Irresolute
blockhead! he has again altered his mind. Now he has got the shadow of a reason
for his final determination, to which, although one of the most irresolute, I
believe he will adhere; but observe, although I call it the shadow of a reason,
I do not mean to say that I was without blame. He desired me to study Malcolm against the next time it was acted. But
the next morning I told him that I would undertake it for that time, as I had
two before me: he consented. I went through the part very well, and tolerably
perfectly, till I came within two lines of the end of the play (I speak the
last speech), and there I wanted the word. The noise behind scenes, the play
being nearly over, prevented my hearing the prompter, and in an instant some
people at the back of the gallery, as I guessed, began to hiss, and immediately
everybody else began to clap, which lasted for a minute, and as we were so near
the end it was not advisable to wait the conclusion of the bustle to say the
few words that remained. The trumpets sounded, and the curtain fell. My blame
consisted in want of courage, or recollection, in not skipping to the next line
the very instant they began to hiss, and it was impossible to catch the word.
Mr Kemble made this his handle, declared I was totally
unfit for the profession, and that I had not one single requisite for an actor,
and in fine, he said, ‘As a friend, I advise you to return to London.
I cannot keep you.’ I told him that I would undertake anything,
however low, if I was not qualified for higher, and in proportion to my little
utility would be willing to receive little. I told him I
should be willing to take the salary of Mr Charteris,
junr. (a foolish fellow about my age), and he certainly could
not deny that I should be of equal, if not more utility than him. He could not
deny it, but he did not want a person of that description—that Mr
Ch. was going to leave. I thought I had submitted already too
much for honesty, and therefore would submit no further. I asked if that was
his reason for dismissing him. This question was a home-thrust at his own
equivocation. He said, ‘he had no business to account to me for his
motives.’ I answered ironically, begging his pardon that it was
an improper question. I believe he understood me literally. I have too much
dependence on your sense of justice to think that you will blame me for not
stooping to his pride any further than honesty would justify, and altering my
manner when I perceived his injustice, which I did with moderation, as appears
from his not even understanding my irony (which perhaps you do not, for from
hurry I’m afraid I am not very intelligible). I ought to observe, in
addition, that Mr Charteris goes away by his own choice
with a number of other actors from Mr Kemble’s
company, who are going to stroll as a sharing company. I have been endeavouring
to get admission into it, but have not succeeded, and I suppose shall not. The
most disagreeable part of my most disagreeable situation, is that I am afraid I
must determine on something without waiting for advice. I write, however. If
you can suggest any means by which in London I can earn 10s. 6d. per week, at
the expense even of four or five hours a day. 10s. 6d. is sufficient to live
on. Write . . . I shall presently be left alone here. It is now Thursday. They
play here for the last time on Friday.
T. Cooper.”
Mr James Marshal, to whom was addressed Tom Cooper’s curious letter quoted above, was a
friend who for some time shared Godwin’s
house, and each would seem to have aided the other when in need, struggling against such
difficulties as only those can know whose daily bread depends upon their daily writings. Mrs
Shelley speaks of him with affectionate enthusiasm as follows:—
“There was another man, a fellow student, and an
aspirant to the honours of literature. The booksellers of London in his day knew him
well, and many a contemporary author, fallen on evil days, many a widow and orphan had
cause to remember the benevolent disposition, the strenuous exertions, the kind and
intelligent countenance of James Marshal. His
talents not permitting a higher range, he became a translator and index maker, a
literary jobber. In a thousand ways he was useful to Godwin, who, sensitive, proud, and shy, whose powers of persuasion lay
in the force of his reasoning, often found the more sociable and insinuating manners of
his friend of use in transacting matters of business with editors and publishers. They
often shared their last shilling together, and the success of any of his friend’s
plans was hailed by Marshal as a glorious triumph.
Godwin, whose temper was quick, and, from an earnest sense of
being in the right, somewhat despotic on occasions, assumed a good deal of superiority
and some authority. Marshal sometimes submitted, sometimes
rebelled, but they were always reconciled at last, and the good-humoured friend was
always at hand to assist to the utmost Godwin’s more
intellectual exertions in copying, or in walking from one end of town to the
other.”
He had acted as amanuensis to Godwin at an earlier date, but having got into considerable difficulties,
went to the West Indies to seek his fortune. Not having found it, he soon came back again
to work for, and quarrel with Godwin once more.
Another man of very different stamp was much with Godwin in those years. George
Dyson was a friend of Thomas Cooper.
He was a young man whose abilities promised much, and whose ardour for literature and
desire to do right seemed to give assurance that such promise would
be realised. Unfortunately violent passions and a vehement temper ruined these hopes.
Godwin spared neither remonstrance nor censure to keep him
straight, and though these were sometimes received with remorseful confessions of their
justice, sometimes with bitter resentment, they did not in the end avail. In various
disputes which arose between Cooper and Dyson,
Godwin seems to have taken, on the whole,
Dyson’s part; but in the end the breach between these old
friends became too wide for healing, and Dyson’s name only
appears in these pages to give occasion for the touching lines which
Godwin addressed to him, later indeed than this date, but as the
conclusion of many a fierce paper war.
William Godwin to George Dyson.
“I hope and still strongly incline to believe that I
shall one day see you, complete in talent, and free from every stain of those
vices which I have always suspected, and now vehemently disapprove in you. You
have been one of my prime favourites, and whatever may be the vicissitudes of
your character, the deviousness of your conduct, or the fermentation of your
uncontrollable passions, they will all be watched by me with affectionate
anxiety. You may grieve me, but you cannot inspire me with anger.
“W. Godwin. “Friday Evening.”
With all his faults, however, Dyson
must have been a very remarkable man. He is the third of those of whom Godwin speaks as being “the four oral
instructors” to whom he felt his “mind indebted for
improvement,” thus ranking him with Fawcet, Holcroft, and Coleridge, although he was so much younger than himself,
and standing in so evident need of fatherly
counsel and control.
We have seen already that in these years Godwin had become “extremely intimate” with Holcroft. It would seem to have been a characteristic of
the literary men of those days that the most furious verbal onslaughts on each other
brought no real diminution of friendship. Godwin and his friends were
typical examples of this. The first of the following notes, which commences the
correspondence between Holcroft and himself, is undated, but it would
seem to have been written immediately before the other, and they appear to refer to one and
the same engagement.
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“I will certainly not fail you, God willing, on
Tuesday. Sentimental hypocrisy you know I treat nearly the same as other
hypocrisy, therefore I think you will not blame me for telling you we were
yesterday, as I told you we should be, driven, &c. But I know you—what is who can resist? Had I but the power to remove
difficulties from all of us—oh, there would be rare doings! For heaven’s
sake do not torment yourself; times and seasons have strange variations, and
who knows that the sun will never shine.
T. Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Sir,—I write to inform you that instead of seeing you
at dinner to-morrow I desire never to see you more, being determined never to
have any further intercourse with you of any kind.
T. Holcroft. “Feb. 28, 1785.”
“I shall behave as becomes an honest and
honourable man who remembers not only what is due to others, but himself.
There are indelible irrevocable injuries that
will not endure to be mentioned. Such is the one you have committed on the
man who would have died to serve you.”
The estrangement happily did not last long, but no further letters are
preserved till the summer of 1788, when Godwin was
staying at Guildford, and was glad to receive news from Holcroft in London.
The vacancy for the City of Westminster, the main subject of the following
letters, was occasioned by the appointment of Lord Hood,
the sitting member, to be a Lord of the Admiralty. He, of course, offered himself for
re-election, and was opposed by Lord John Townshend,
in the liberal interest. The poll was kept open from Friday, July 18th, till Monday, August
4th, on which day Lord John Townshend was elected by a majority of
823. The excitement during the election was very great, and the compliments bandied on both
sides unusual, even for the license of the day. That a lawyer was thrown out of the window
of Lord Hood’s committee room into a night-cart, was a specimen
of the amenities of parties. “This,” mildly says the Public Advertiser, which supported
Lord Hood, “is a species of outrage not easily to be
justified in a civilized community. No subjects have a right to take the law into their
own hands.”
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“London, July 24th, 1788.
“Dear Sir,—I am greatly
obliged by your kind attention, but Trenck”—‘The Life of Baron F. von der Trenck,’
translated from the German by T.
Holcroft—“I find, must not go to press yet; there are 250
copies overlooked, so that when you return to town it will be time enough to
marginate—yes, marginate. It needs little philosophy to prove that if no man
had ever made innovations, we should all have been dumb.
“The tide is turned, instead of Townshend. The whole Town, great and small,
old and young, the little vulgar and the great, seem all to be bawling,
‘Hood for ever!’
‘The beast with two horns (blue and orange) appears to have pushed
westward and northward and southward, till behold an he-goat came from the
West.’ Despatches from Cheltenham, Pitt and Treasury runners, canvassing, Military interference,
the potent Magistrate Sir Sampson Wright
collared by Sheridan, Bayonets pointed
at patriot throats, James Parry, Esq.,
become a leader from the breakfasting-houses in company with Lord William Russell, &c. Oh, here is the
devil to pay! A mad world, my masters! Women murdered, Men with their skulls
fractured, sailors with broken arms, Bullies committed, Freedom maintained by
battle-array, soldiers polling by hundreds and sent to the house of correction
by (oh! no, I had forgotten—bailed by their officers, who commanded them to
present, and if occasion were to fire), the Foxites disagreeing and disunited,
Liberty Hall in an Uproar, Pitt and prerogative
triumphant, &c., &c., &c. For I am quite out of breath. Observe,
however, I will not vouch for the truth of a single syllable of all this; but I
will cite you most grave and respectable authorities, viz., Herald and Post. This, however, you may, if so it you shall please, affirm
from me, sir, namely, that scandal (and, I believe, falsehood), pitiful, mean,
mutual scandal, never was more plentifully dispersed; and that electioneering
is a trade so despicably degrading, so eternally incompatible with moral and
mental dignity, that I can scarcely believe a truly great, mind capable of the
dirty drudgery of such vice. I am at least certain no mind is great while thus
employed. It is the periodical reign of the evil nature or Demon. A most paltry
apology, but the best I can make.
“Since writing the above, having the advantage of an
exquisitely dizzy headache, I strolled, in company with this delightful
associate, to the hustings, and thence into Westminster. ‘’Fore
heaven, they are all in a tune.’ I must indeed except three unities, whom in my traverse sailing progress I
encountered between the Garden and the Horse Guards, i.e., a Barber’s boy, a Lamplighter’s Do., and a young
Chimneysweeper, who all had the singularity to wear ‘Townshendfor ever’ pinned in front. No: two of them
were in Hedge Lane. One thing amazes me: the walls abound in squibs and
pasquinades, many of them keen and excellently adapted to the capacity of their
serene worships the worthy Electors of Westminster, all for Lord Hood, and no sign of any such in behalf of
Townshend. This is the very reverse of what might have
been expected. Tis plain the Hoodites have been most remarkably active, and I
suspect the adverse party has been very foolishly lulled to sleep by Mrs
Security. To afford you some small comfort, however, let me tell you an active
Foxite has laid 10 Guineas to five that Townshend is 100
ahead at the poll, and affirms that he shall himself go up to the Hustings
to-morrow (Friday) at the head of 400 voters. In the meantime the state of the
poll yesterday was—
“July 23d.—Hood,2892Townshend,2741——Majority,151
and according to the account I have just received, for I sent
expressly to afford you as much of that information which your aunt Abigail
desires as possible—
“The Lord knows when I wrote so long a letter before,
or when I shall again.—I am, dear sir, very sincerely,
“T.
Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“London, August 4th, 1788.
“As I know, Dear Sir, you interest yourself in the
present desperate (I had almost said despicable) contest, I take it for granted you will be glad to
hear that your favourite, Lord John
Townshend, is elected. I have sent to know the exact state of
the poll, but it was impossible to obtain it with certainty. I hear the balance
is 823 in favour of Lord John. The universal cry of the
Hood party at present is bad votes and
Parliamentary scrutiny. I imagine this scene is soon again to be renewed, i.e., at the General Election. The Hoodites publish such
long lists of bad votes, and exclaim so loudly, that the vulgar opinion is that
the present election will be declared void, which, however, I think improbable.
I imagine you received the strange olio I wrote before in the form of a letter.
Affairs took another turn, I believe the very day after I wrote. The cry of the
mob has uniformly gone with the majority, but this is no newly discovered
principle in man. Though my letter required no answer, I begin to fear lest,
wanting a more accurate direction, you have not received it; pray be so much of
an Irishman as to write an answer to this, whether you receive it or no. I
intend to ride down and pay you a visit, if I can, in the course of next week;
but I do not suppose it will be more than the visit of a day.—I am, dear Sir,
very sincerely yours,
T. Holcroft.” “Mr Godwin, at
Mr ——, Upholsterer, Guildford, Surrey.”
William Godwin to Thomas Holcroft.
“Guildford, August 5th, 1788.
“Dear Sir.—Though I am
flattered by your attention, and must acknowledge that you have touched upon my
hobbyhorse, yet I am sorry that your politeness led you to give yourself a
moment’s trouble for the sake of gratifying the silly impatience of your
humble servant. I owe you a thousand apologies for not having answered your
letter of a fortnight since; but the fact is I wrote to you and another
gentleman, immediately after my arrival, by the same post, and was answered by
said gentleman that I was a man of leisure and could write letters; he was
engaged in active life, and could not. No man is less willing to be guilty of the sin of intrusion than I am: I therefore
took this rebuff in dudgeon, and forswore the writing of any letters but of
mere business for a fortnight. Will you accept this apology? If you do, in
gratitude I will damn you, and say you have more good-nature than wit.
“If you did but properly reflect upon my desolate
situation, banished from human society, and condemned to eat grass with the
beasts, you surely would not tantalize me with the visit of a day. But be it as
it will, for I can adapt to myself the words of Addison with true Addisonian fire, and say— “‘A day, an hour, of intellectual talk Is worth a whole eternity of solitude.’ Only upon this occasion keep the reins in your own hands, and do not
fetter yourself too much with domestic stipulations before you set out.
“Sir, had you remembered the letter of the Chinese
Mandarin, which had no other address than ‘Dr
Boerhaave, Europe,’ you surely would not have insulted me
with the supposition that I must borrow lustre from a petty upholsterer in such
a town as Guildford, and not be seen by own radiance. I would have you to know
that I am as much of a poet as either Dr Boerhaave, or
even Van Swieten, his commentator. Nay,
if you provoke me, I do not know but I shall enter the lists with Mynheer Van Haaren, the Homer of the whole Dutch nation.
“Lord John
Townshend for ever! Huzza!
“Yours sincerely, “W. Godwin.
“Present my compliments to Robinson and Hamilton. Tell the latter (if you see him, and if you like
it) that he has forgotten me.”
The only other letter of special interest relating to this time is the
following from Mrs Godwin senior, to which may also
be added one of somewhat later date, since it fits in more appropriately here, with the
notices of the Coopers
and of Hannah Godwin. Hull Godwin was Mrs Godwin’s eldest son, with
whom she was residing.
Mrs Godwin senior to William Godwin.
“May 29, 1788.
“DearWilliam,—Your
letter to be sure could not fail of being pleasing and acceptable to me, who
delights to hear from my children, espetially when they are going on
comfortably and are likely to be a blessing to their connections and an
ornament to Religion wh is not the least part of w we
are sent into the World for. poor dear Hannah once made it her Chief concern and happiness but now I
fear it is otherwise, God grant It may revive again And yt she may not be as the fig-tree whome the master of the vinyard
came seeking fruit and found none. Is my daily prayer for her and all of you
poor Jack once made a profession two but
him I have no hopes off. I may say the same of Joseph how cuting a Stroke it is to be the means of bringing
Children into the world to be the subjects of the kingdom of Darkness to dwell
with Divils and Damned Spirits from whence as I have heard you mention in your
Prayers there is no redemption. Sometime agoe I lent
Hannah a book of Sermons that was not my own, but not
without the owner’s live Mr Copland, I red them
myself and was Charmed with them, espetially as there was one about declention
having lost their first love which I hoped might have a better effect than all
I could say. please from me to desire her to return the first privat
opportunity yt will be safe directed to Mrs Sothrens, she have miss’d
Mr Burchan who would have brought it safe. You say
Miss Anna Trench is going to be married and I suppose
by what you mention to live the Partnership to her Sister Miss
Frances Trench and your Sister as with Miss
Trench why can’t you call your Sister
Hannah as you call Miss Trenches
Nancy and Fanny and me
Hon’d Mother, as well as Mad’m it would be full as agreeable.
“You say by great luck Joseph has got a comfortable Place I wish it may Prove so and
he deserving of it but If He prospers I shall think it
strange indeed that one could use a Woman as he has, an agreeable Woman his own
Choice and brought him some fortune and also her friends always doing for
her.—and of Jack he is still the
unfortunate man. It is not Scripture Language I do not as I know off read of
luck or fortune then I think it rather the Language of Heathens and that it
should be owned as the smiles or frowns of Providence or in other words God.
“but I don’t want to enter into arguments with
you abt it for perhaps I might not find words or time
to go thro it, therefore if its not agreeable to your notion it will be better
to pass it by and you keep yours and I mine. I had Jackey’s letter but could not find an opportunity to send
the 20s he was out of pocket for Natty when he was hiding from ye Press Gang till now, and this acquaints you that I
have sent ye guinea by the hand of Mr Jon Johnson which is the second on
Natty’s account and the full of what I
promiss’d and I dont thank Jackey for taking him
into good company as he calls it every Evening and two or three Sunday’s
executions. I like your Conduct to him much better Jackey
says you gave him 5s at parting—my kind love to my dear
Hannah.
I remain yr affecate
Mother.
“Cousin
SothrenMrs Hull and Hully are well I hope I am at Norwich and
parted with the 2 last mentioned yesterday.”
The Same to the Same.
“Dalling, Sep. 5, ’92.
“DearWilliam,—I
earnestly pray you may be making progress Heavenward, that is my fear and
question on account of the little apearance of religion in those that are left
as well as those yt are departed this life, my life is
bitter, am obliged to cry out with David Ps. 13 How long
wilt thou forget me O Lord forever, How long wilt thou hide thy face from me. I
may say I pray without ceasing for you, 3 times a Day, besides the sleepless
Hours of the night, and my strength is so feble that I know not how to sustain
myself in the day some times. I know that its God’s work to make the hart suseptable
of divine Impressions. Not ye most Eloquent preachers,
for they are but Earthen Vesels, Paul and Apolos may
water, but without God gives the increase no fruit will spring up. Gods word is
full of premisses to those that seek in sincerity, relying on Christ as the
atoning sacrifice and intercesor, for sure I am that sinners cannot be
justified and accepted by any righteousness of their own. His word declares
that by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified and for that reason
Christ came to make a propitiation to Offended justis that all who believe in
him might be saved. You know its not ment without showing their faith by their
Obedience as far as we in our fallen and depraved state are capable, but its
not said that his affronted and despised patience will last always, a bare
crying for mercy at last is a dangerous experiment. I’m obleged to you
for the respect you profsess for me. If I could see my children walk in ye truth I should be happy, my Happiness is bound up in
theirs. It would sweeten my expiring moments, with Views of meeting those I
have been ye Instrument of bringing into life, in the
happy regions of blesedness where all perplecty will for ever cease. Thank
yo for ye information you
gave me respecting Natty, as to ye name
of ye Ship Capt &c. am sorry he has not a better constitution, for he can
have but few indulgencies in the way of life He is in. the tempers of
seafairing men are generaly like the boisterous Element. I hope there will come
a time when he will fare better, tho I dont think Mr Hurry
have been so kind to him as might be expected considering he had been so many
years in his service, his perseverance is a good sign, for what could be done
with him otherwise I dont know. Am realy sorry John should accept an iniquitous imployment. I think he might
make a living of the two clarks places without the Lottery. I gave him my
advice before I recd yours or knew anything about it,
not to disoblige Mr Finch least he should loose his place,
but would have you use all the influence you have to prevale with him to keep
the two places, and never more to Ingage in the Lottery. I think he might do
exceeding well with his pay and the perquisites. I sincerely wish Mrs
Cooper cou’d meet with an agreabl sittuation, believe they are hard to be met with, believe there is
something in her temper that forbids happiness. It must give Miss
Cooper much uneasiness. Miss Cooper is I
think a very senceable, prudent agreeable Girl. Poor Hannah wrote me of the unlucky accident that
befel her of her being push’d down in the street, and her Cloths being
Spoil’d. It was a great mercy she escaped so well as She did, and was
able to get home. I hope it will be a warning not to be out of an Evining, at
least not to come home alone. Intend writing to her soon, am glad she has got
such an agreeable Girl as Miss Green to bare her company.
I was exceeding hurt that you should have borrow’d 5 guineas of
Mr Venning so long and then say to me when I was in
Town he was so mean as to mention it. What would you have him do, or what would
you have done in such a predicament. However I have paid it, and shall expect
your note for it. You can inquire at Fish Street Hill when its likely
Mr Jacob will be in town for you to meet him, and give
a proper note. These things so often repeated with all the aeconemy I am
mistress of shall not be able to do anything for the young ones.
“I have a few friends that I highly value, Mrs Sothren and Mrs
Foster, and Mrs A. Hill is a comfort and
help to me, but Mrs Sothren is a person you ought to Rever
as your second Mother, who nurtured you in your infancy. I did not expect she
would got this winter over, she is so assmatic, thro divine mercy she is yet
spared, and I hope shall see her in the course of the summer. Mrs
Hill was confined near 6 weeks, has a bad complant of her neck,
otherwise is much as usual. She and Hully desire to be remember’d to you.
“from your Affecate Mother, “A.
Godwin.”
CHAPTER III. POLITICAL WRITINGS. 1788—1792.
The notes already mentioned, which are mainly the authority for
the facts of this portion of Godwin’s life,
are supplemented by a diary begun by him on the 6th of April 1788, and continued to the end
of his life. It was contained in thirty-two small notebooks, all of which have been
preserved. They are ruled and dated most carefully in black and red ink, for those were not
days in which such diaries could be purchased ready to hand, and are marvels of neatness
and method. This record is extremely concise, and contrary to the usual practice of journal
keepers, is even more laconic at the beginning than towards the end. The use made of this
diary was to mention the portion of writing accomplished each day, the books read, the
persons seen, the places visited. In the earlier volumes many days, and even weeks are
sometimes left without an entry, and the most full account extends to but a few words. But
for the last forty years of his life there is no omission of even a single day. It appears
that he was at this time widely extending his circle of acquaintance, and nearly all the
names mentioned are those of men worth knowing.
The following specimens of two weeks may prove of interest:—
“Apr. 6. Su.
“7. M. Called at Webb’s.
“8. Tu. Brand
Hollis called. The
Ton written by La Wallace
acted.
“9. W.
“10. Th. Hasting’s trial resumed.
“11. F. Dined at Leg of Pork. Dr Priestley in London.
“12. Sa.
“May 4. Su. Dine at Holcroft’s. Call on Mr
Close, Tower Hill.
“5. M.
“6. Tu.
“7. W. Hear Sir G.
Elliot. Dine at Holcroft’s.
“8. Th. Tea Holcroft’s. Dinner at Cadel’s, and on Gibbon’s birthday and day of publication. Sheffield, Fullarton,
Reynolds, Gillies, Kippis, Cour
Pleniere.
“9. Fr. Exhibition. Nunducomar 55 to 73. Speak
with O’Brien. Priestley from London.
“10. Sa. Wilson calls.
Correct for him Graham’sLetter to Pitt on Scotch
Reform.”
Much of this diary has now become simply enigmatical, such as the
entries—“Aug. 4. Th. Jour de mauvaise nouvelle. Marshal for Southampton.” “Nov. 22. Sa. Meilleur
nouvelle. Robinson calls,” and much
which touches on the mere opinion of the day proves unhistorical, as “Nov. 7. F.
Dine at Hamilton’s with
Robinson, Archd.,
Holcroft, Nicholson, and Mercier,
Le roi mourant.” The king’s illness was his first temporary seizure, from which he
entirely recovered. But to those who have turned over the pages of the diary, with their
short unimpassioned records of forgotten sorrows and forgotten joys, of keen political
struggles and of eloquent voices hushed, there rises a very vivid picture of the dead past,
far more life-like than they have gained from more elaborate histories.
Godwin, calm as he seemed, was stirred to his depths
by politics. Holcroft knew his friend when he wrote
him the details of the Westminster election, and to eager hearts at the close of the last
century it seemed an easier thing to undo admitted evils than we now find it, who are the
children and grandchildren of those who were roused by the sound of the first French
Revolution. The following is the note on the year 1789:—
“This was the year of the French Revolution. My heart
beat high with great swelling sentiments of Liberty. I had been for nine years in
principles a republican. I had read with great satisfaction the writings of Rousseau, Helvetius, and others, the most popular authors of France. I observed
in them a system more general and simply philosophical than in the majority of English
writers on political subjects; and I could not refrain from conceiving sanguine hopes
of a revolution of which such writings had been the precursors. Yet I was far from
approving all that I saw even in the commencement of the revolution. . . . I never for
a moment ceased to disapprove of mob government and violence, and the impulses which
men collected together in multitudes produce on each other. I desired such political
changes only as should flow purely from the clear light of the understanding, and the
erect and generous feelings of the heart.”
The diary of this year, though written with the same extreme brevity, shows
that he followed with keen interest the course of events in France, as “June 23.
Tu. Difference of Necker and the king: he proposes to resign. Dine at Hollis’s with the Garbets.
24. W. Necker is restored.” “July 11. Sa.
Necker is dismissed.” “15. W. King of
France submits to the National Assembly.” Under “Nov. 5.
W.,” is the following entry:—“Dine with the Revolutionists: see
Price, Kippis, Rees, Towers, Lindsay, Disney, Belsham, Forsaith, Morgans, Listers, S. Rogers, and B. Wits.” “Present Earl
Stanhope, Beaufoy, H. Tooke, and Count
Zenobio. See B. Hollis, Jennings, Lofft, and Robinson. Sup with Fawcet.” “The Revolutionists “were the members of
one among many clubs existing at that day composed of men who sympathised more or less with
the friends of liberty in France. Their President at this time was Charles, Earl
Stanhope. Dr Price had preached—Nov. 4th, 1789—a sermon
before them at the Old Jewry. Meeting House, and their proceedings generally had attracted
considerable attention, which was heightened by the eloquence of Burke, directed against them. The following draft of a
communication from English to French Republicans belongs to this time. It bears no date,
and is evidently only a rough copy in Marshal’s handwriting, but the words are the words of Godwin.
“Gentlemen,—We acknowledge
with the utmost pleasure the communication you have made us of sentiments honourable to
the country of which you are natives, and calculated to advance political society to a
state of enviable felicity. The Revolution Society of London does not pretend to the
authority of being the organ of the national sentiment. We are a body of private
individuals, who can claim little other distinction than what we derive from a love of
freedom, reason, and humanity. With no desire to be regarded as of great political
importance, we do not scruple to do everything in our power for the dissemination of
benevolence, liberality, and truth.
“We join with you, gentlemen, in the most ardent
wishes that that freedom which for several centuries appeared to have fixed her last
retreat in the island of our birth, may, by your example, be diffused over Europe and
the world. So admirable and illustrious an example cannot be lost. The proceedings of
the people of France will secure tranquillity, and all the virtues of patriotism to
themselves, and a dawn of justice and moderation to surrounding nations. The
inhabitants of Great Britain in particular may ex-pect to derive the most essential benefit from the
Revolution of France; and united as we are to you by congeniality of sentiment, by the
cultivation of science and truth, and by the love of that freedom for which our
ancestors bled, we trust it is scarcely possible for any occasion to offer that can
lead two such nations to engage in mutual hostilities.”
Godwin lived much in society during this year, being
a very constant visitor at the house of Miss Helen Maria
Williams, where many literary people congregated almost every night at
tea-time. There are repeated notices of intimacy with Willis
Webb, his old pupil, and of almost daily meetings with Holcroft. On this friend fell the great sorrow of the
death of his son in November 1789.
His son was a lad of sixteen, who had long shown a wild and wandering
disposition, and, young as he was, had several times run away from home. He had, however,
seemed of late more steady, and had been in consequence praised and rewarded by his father.
But the old disposition again showed itself. On Nov. 8 he broke open his father’s
desk, stole from it £40 and a pair of pistols, and set off to join a friend who was sailing
for the West Indies. He was pursued to Gravesend, but there for a time all trace was lost.
A few days after he was found to be at Deal, on board the “Fame,” and on a search being made he concealed himself in the steerage.
He had said that he would shoot whoever came to take him, unless it was his father, in
which case he would shoot himself. This his father considered to be a mere threat. He was
called, but did not answer. A light was procured, but as soon as the lad heard his father
advancing, with the ship’s steward and some of the crew, he suddenly shot himself,
unable to bear the shame of open detection. The shock to Holcroft was very great. For a whole year afterwards
he seldom left his house, and the impression was never wholly effaced from his mind.
The entries in Godwin’s
journal show that he was the friend who accompanied the father first to Gravesend and
afterwards to Deal to seek the fugitive. They are as follows:—
“Nov. 8. Tu. Dine at Holcroft’s—Elopement de son fils.
“9. M. To Gravesend.
“Nov. 15. Su. Dine at Holcroft’s: set out for Deal. Call upon
Crosdil W. Holcroft.
“16. M. Mort de son fils.
“17. Tu. Funerailles: to have drank tea with
Holcroft at Miss Williams’s.
“Nov. 22. Su. Dine at Holcroft’s: Crosdil calls.
“27. F. Dine at Holcroft’s: write a paragraph sur son fils.”
Mrs Shelley has left a short note on this
occurrence:
“The youth was of an unfortunate disposition, and
his conduct was very reprehensible, at the same time it is certain that Holcroft carried further than Godwin a certain unmitigated severity, an exposition
of duty and truth, and of the defalcation from these in the offender, conceived in
language to humiliate and wound, a want of sympathy with the buoyant spirit of youth
when conjoined to heedlessness and, it may be added, dissipation, all of which tended
to set still wider the distance too usually observed between father and child.
Something of this Godwin detected in himself in his conduct
towards Cooper. I mention this circumstance the
more particularly, as it, several years afterwards, caused the breach between
Holcroft and Godwin which was never
healed until the death of the former.”
Under the year 1790 Godwin writes:
“My mind became more and more impregnated with the
principles afterwards developed in my Political
Justice; they were the
almost constant topic of conversation between Holcroft and myself; and he, who in his sceptic and other writings had
displayed the sentiments of a courtier, speedily became no less a republican and a
reformer than myself. In this year I wrote a tragedy on the story of St
Dunstan, being desirous, in writing a tragedy, of developing the great
springs of human passion, and in the choice of a subject of inculcating those
principles on which I apprehend the welfare of the human race to depend.”
The Diary becomes somewhat more full, recording here and there scraps of
conversation. He took the same vivid interest in foreign politics, and he also attended the
debates in the House of Commons. Some fragments which belong to this period show that the
ambition to be himself a Member was not strange to him, and he mentions with pleasure that
Sheridan had once said to him, “You
ought to be in Parliament.” He speaks of another dinner with the
“French Revolutionists,” at which were present “Stanhope, Sheridan, Tooke, O’Brien, B. Hollis, Geddes,
Lindsey, Price, Paradise,” and one of
the party said to him, “We are particularly fortunate in having you among us; it
is having the best cause countenanced by the man by whom we most wished to see it
supported.” There was a dinner with the “Anti-Tests,” among whom
are, as might be expected, some of the people we have seen among the Revolutionists:
“Fox, Beaufoy, Hoghton, Sawbridge, Adair, Watson, Heywood, B. Hollis, Shore, Geddes,
Vaughan, Fell, Stone, Woodfall, Listers.”
There is also the record of a correspondence with the Bishop of Llandaff and the Archbishop of Canterbury in reference to a vacancy in the Natural History
Department of the British Museum, of which correspondence Dr
Watson’s letters remain. It is curious that when applying, without
success, for the vacant post, Godwin still calls
him-self, “The Rev. William
Godwin” in a letter to Lord Robert
Spencer. It would appear, however, that he did so rather with a view of
identifying himself with the person whom Lord Robert had known in
former years, than with any wish of resuming a character which, as he said, had completely
quitted him. He had, as will be remembered, dedicated his sermons to the Bishop
of Llandaff, who had by no means forgotten him. The Bishop’s letter is
curious, as evidence that a liberal Bishop even in those days was somewhat suspect.
The Bishop of Llandaff to William
Godwin.
“Sir,—I would not have
hesitated a moment writing to the Archbishop in your favour, if I had not been of opinion that my
appearing in support of a Dissenter would rather have tended to obstruct than
to promote your wishes. The enclosed is written in such a manner that if you
think it can serve you, it may be sent as from yourself, as a kind of
confirmation that you had used my name with propriety. I sincerely wish you
success, and am your most obedient Servant,
The last entry in the Diary for the year is under date of Dec. 31:
“It was in this year that I read and criticised ‘The Simple Story’ in MS.” This was
probably at the instance of the publisher, for Godwin does not appear to have made Mrs
Inchbald’s personal acquaintance till the autumn of 1792.
Godwin’s autobiographical note for the year
1791 is somewhat longer than usual, and must be given in full, as showing the growth of his
political views, and giving his first conception of his great work, the “Enquiry concerning Political
Justice.”
“On the 29th of April in this year Mr Holcroft and I wrote two anonymous letters, he to
Mr Fox, and I to Mr Sheridan. Mr Fox, in the debate on the bill for
giving a new constitution to Canada, had said that he would not be the man to propose
the abolition of a House of Lords in a country where such a power was already
established; but as little would he be the man to recommend the introduction of such a
power where it was not. This was by no means the only public indication he had shown
how deeply he had drank of the spirit of the French Revolution. The object of the
above-mentioned letters was to excite these two illustrious men to persevere gravely
and inflexibly in the career on which they had entered. I was strongly impressed with
the sentiment that in the then existing circumstances of England and of Europe great
and happy improvements might be achieved under such auspices without anarchy and
confusion. I believed that important changes must arise, and I was inexpressibly
anxious that such changes should be effected under the conduct of the best and most
competent leaders.
“This year was the main crisis of my life. In the
summer of 1791 I gave up my concern in the New
Annual Register, the historical part of which I had written for seven years,
and abdicated, I hope for ever, the task of performing a literary labour, the nature of
which should be dictated by anything but the promptings of my own mind. I suggested to
Robinson the bookseller the idea of
composing a treatise on Political Principles, and he agreed to aid me in executing it
My original conception proceeded on a feeling of the imperfections and errors of
Montesquieu, and a desire of supplying a
less faulty work. In the first fervour of my enthusiasm, I entertained the vain
imagination of “hewing a stone from the rock,” which, by its
inherent energy and weight, should overbear and annihilate all opposition, and place
the principles of politics on an immoveable basis. It was my first determination to
tell all that I apprehended to be truth, and all that seemed to be truth, confident
that from such a proceeding the best results were to be expected.”
The diary shows many and various literary labours besides the composition
of “Political Justice,”
which, when fairly started, was written very slowly: six or seven
pages of MS. are recorded as being the utmost written in a day, but far more often a page,
half a page, or even a paragraph or a sentence written twice, are proofs of the extreme
care which was bestowed on the work. Godwin took
also Italian lessons, and his reading in all branches, from Greek plays and Greek
philosophy to modern belles lettres, was vast. But he was an extremely discursive reader,
and had several books in hand at once, carefully noting how many pages of each were read as
the day’s task. He visited the theatre frequently, and took great interest in all
that related to the stage. Here are a few of the entries for this year:—
“March 16, W. Robinson calls; proposes a ‘Naval History.’
“19, S. Wrote to Robinson; propose £1050, i.e., £525 per
volume.
It is perhaps not surprising to find that the publisher declined to accede
to these terms, or that in consequence there is an entry:—
“Mar. 25, F. Démêlé avec Robinson.
“June 30, Th. Dine with Robinson; propose ‘Political Principles.’
“July 10, M. Close with Robinson.
“Aug. 31, W. Holcroft dines, Fawcet
expected; démêlé faintness.
“Nov. 30, W. Holcroft at tea; un peu de démêlé sur
Davis.”
It would not be fair to suppress these very characteristic notes of hot
temper, and quarrels with his best friends, which also appear only too often in the
letters. It must, however, be said that the vehemence of temper soon exhausted itself, and
did not affect the real regard which Godwin felt for
those with whom he disputed the most. And
during this and the next year, during which the word “démêlé” so often occurs,
we also have notices in this plain-spoken diary of various forms of ill-health, resulting
apparently from Godwin’s very sedentary habits, no symptom being
serious in itself, but all of a kind which are frequently found most trying to the nerves
and temper of the patient.
In the spring of 1791, Thomas
Paine, whose acquaintance Godwin had made
at the house of Mr Brand Hollis, published his
celebrated pamphlet, “The Rights of
Man,” in answer to Burke’s
“Reflections on the French
Revolution.” Godwin and Holcroft had both seen much of this in MS., and the former wrote of it in
terms of great though measured praise. Holcroft—never so
cautious—addressed to Godwin a little twisted note, worth insertion
here as some evidence of the fervour of spirit which animated men in days when such eager
utterances escaped from a press, over which hung the terrors of the pillory, and of
prosecutions for high treason.
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin. [No date.]
“I have got it—If this do not cure my cough it is a
damned perverse mule of a cough—The
pamphlet—From the row—But mum—We don’t sell it—Oh, no—Ears and
Eggs—Verbatim, except the addition of a short preface, which, as you have not
seen, I send you my copy—Not a single castration (Laud be unto God and
J. S. Jordan!) can I discover—Hey
for the New Jerusalem! The millennium! And peace and eternal beatitude be unto
the soul of Thomas Paine.”
The pamphlet had been originally printed for Johnson of St Paul’s Churchyard, who, on seeing it in print, de-clined to publish it. The unexpected refusal caused a month’s
delay. A few copies, however, got into private hands, one of which, bearing
Johnson’s name as publisher, is in the British Museum. Some
of those most anxious for the appearance of the tract urged the excision of certain
passages, and it was commonly believed that it was not issued after all in its original
form. A “Life of Thomas Paine, by Francis
Oldys, A.M. of the University of Pennsylvania”—a Pseudonym for George Chalmers, one of the Clerks of Plantations, the
real author of the book—has the following passage on “The Rights of Man:”—
“The men mid-wives determined to deprive the child
of its virility, rather than so hopeful an infant should be withheld from the world. At
length, on the 13th of March 1791, this mutilated brat was delivered to the public by
Mr J. S. Jordan, at No. 166 Fleet
Street.”
Holcroft, however, was quite right; he and Godwin were members of the Committee, of which Mr Brand Hollis was the leading spirit, to whom had been
entrusted the revisal of the work.
One more entry in the diary of this year calls for attention, for it
records Godwin’s first meeting with Mary Wollstonecraft.
“Nov. 13, Su. Correct. Dyson and Dibdin call; talk of
virtue and disinterest Dine at Johnson’s with
Paine, Shovet, and
Wolstencraft; talk of monarchy, Tooke, Johnson,
Voltaire, pursuits, and religion. Sup at
Holcroft’s.”
The autobiographical note for 1792 is concerned with the preparation of
his work on Political Justice. That he
was engaged on it was already well known to a
not inconsiderable number of persons likely to be interested in the subject, and it appears
that the work received during its preparation the imprimatur of men whose views still carry
weight. Godwin writes:—
“During this year I was in the singular situation of
an author, possessing some degree of fame for a work still unfinished and unseen. I was
introduced on this ground to Mr Mackintosh,
David Williams,”—founder, and
afterwards a pensioner of the Literary Fund, died 1816,—“Joel Barlow,”—afterwards American ambassador to
Napoleon, died at Wilna, Dec. 26, 1812; the
translator of Volney,—“and others, and
with these gentlemen, together with Mr
Nicholson,”—a mathematical teacher, foreign agent for Wedgwood, civil engineer, died 1815,—“and
Mr Holcroft, had occasional meetings, in
which the principles of my work were discussed. Towards the close of the year I became
acquainted with Mr Horne Tooke, to whose
etymological conversation and various talents I am proud to acknowledge myself greatly
indebted, though these came too late to be of any use to me in the concoction of my
work, which was nearly printed off before I had first the pleasure of meeting this
extraordinary and admirable man.”
From the Diary, however, it appears that the foregoing paragraph must be
understood with limitations. Godwin and Horne Tooke had met from time to time at the meetings of
the “Revolutionists,” and had been thus slightly acquainted, though no degree
of intimacy had sprung up, nor had they met in private. The entries also record in
increasing detail the topics of the conversations held day by day with friends, as
“Dyson at tea, talk of ancient
virtue, and respect for other men’s judgment;” “Tea at
Barlow’s with Jardine, Stuart, Wolstencraft, and Holcroft: talk of self-love, sympathy, and
perfectibility, individual and general;” “Sup at Nicholson’s, talk of ideal unity.”
Godwin saw much of his sister Hannah in this year, much of Mrs and Miss Cooper; his
brothers were not unfrequently his guests; but the only entries which are especially
interesting are a few which shew how warmly he and his friends welcomed to England any one
who represented the leaders of the Revolution in France. Thus—
“Sep. 6. Th. Dine at Holcroft’s avec Noel et le cousin de Danton, Merget.
“Oct 14. Su. Dine at Holcroft’s with Crosdil: adv.”—advenæ—“Merget, Danton junr et
Pinard.
“Oct. 21. Su. Dine at Holcroft’s with Major Waller,
Merget and
Recordat; History of Danton.”
On Nov. 25 are the words, “Debating Society silenced,”
which, taken with the political trials so soon to follow, make us wonder how Englishmen
remained quiet while France rebelled.
Since Godwin came to London he had
been living in various lodgings, the greater part of the time having one or two persons to
share his chambers—the boys Willis Webb, and
Cooper, and often his friend Marshal. In the next year he took a house to himself, and
in a district where he could be more free from interruptions. As this year was therefore in
a degree the end of his nomad existence, a note may be inserted from among his papers
giving the various changes of abode.
“Holborn,Apl. 1782. “Newman St.,June 1786. “Beaconsfield,Dec. „ “Berkeley St.,Sep. „ “Porter St.,Aug. 1783. “Norfolk St., Mar. 1787. “Strand,Sep. „ “Guildford, June 1788. “Norfolk St., Dec. 1784. “Marylebone St., Sep. „ “Tavistock Row, Mar. 1785. “Titchfield St., Dec 1790. “Broad St., June „ “39 Devonshire St., 1792.”
Mrs Inchbald, whose more intimate friendship and
correspondence with Godwin began in 1792, was the
well-known authoress of “The Simple
Story.” This was, as we have seen, criticised by
Godwin; and the plot was in a measure altered in deference to his
advice.
Mrs Shelley has left the following note relative to
Mrs Inchbald:—
“She was one of a numerous family, orphaned of their
father, whose mother had to struggle with poverty. She was exceedingly beautiful. The
spirit of adventure natural in youth seems to have developed itself in her with unusual
vigour, but it was joined by a certain saving grace of self-command and self-possession
that bore her through nearly unharmed. She married early an actor, and went also on the
stage. She was left a widow at the age of six-and-twenty, and from that time had to
struggle alone with the world. She continued her career as an actress for some time
under many disadvantages, an impediment in her speech preventing all hope of
excellence, till at length her success as an author enabled her to retire from the
stage.
“Nothing can be more singular and interesting than
the picture of her life as given in her biography. Living in mean lodgings, dressed
with an economy allied to penury, without connections, and alone, her beauty, her
talents, and the charm of her manners gave her entrance into a delightful circle of
society. Apt to fall in love, and desirous to marry, she continued single, because the
men who loved and admired her were too worldly to take an actress and a poor author,
however lovely and charming, for a wife. Her life was thus spent in an interchange of
hardship and amusement, privation and luxury. Her character partook of the same
contrast: fond of pleasure, she was prudent in her conduct; penurious in her personal
expenditure, she was generous to others. Vain of her beauty, we are told that the gown
she wore was not worth a shilling, it was so coarse and shabby. Very susceptible to the
softer feelings, she could yet guard herself against passion; and though she might have
been called a flirt, her character was unim-peached. I have heard
that a rival beauty of her day pettishly complained that when Mrs Inchbald came into a room, and sat in a chair in
the middle of it as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it was vain for any
other woman to attempt to gain attention. Godwin
could not fail to admire her; she became and continued to be a favourite. Her talents,
her beauty, her manners were all delightful to him. He used to describe her as a
piquante mixture between a lady and a milkmaid, and added that Sheridan declared she was the only authoress whose
society pleased him.”
One letter of Mrs Inchbald’s
may here be given, the first apparently written by her to Godwin: it
relates to her tragedy called “The
Massacre,” which was never acted, but may be found in the Appendix to
Boaden’sMemoirs of her Life.
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
“3rd Nov. 1792.
“Sir,—There is so much
tenderness mixed with the justice of your criticism, that, while I submit to
the greatest part of it as unanswerable, I feel anxious to exculpate myself in
those points where I believe it is in my power.
“You accuse me of trusting to newspapers for my
authority. I have no other authority (no more, I believe, has half England) for
any occurrence which I do not see: it is by newspapers
that I am told that the French are at present victorious; and I have no doubt
but you will allow that (in this particular, at least) they speak truth.
“2ndly. There appears an
inconsistency in my having said to you, ‘I have no view to any public
good in this piece,’ and afterwards alluding to its preventing
future massacres: to this I reply that it was your hinting to me that it might
do harm which gave me the first idea that it might do good.
“3rdly. I do not shrink from
Labour, but I shrink from ill-health, low spirits, disappointment, and a long
train of evils which attend on Laborious Literary work. I was ten months,
unceasingly, finishing my novel, notwithstanding the
plan (such as you saw it) was formed, and many pages written. My health
suffered much during this confinement, my spirits suffered more on publication;
for though many gentlemen of the first abilities have said to me things high in
its favour, it never was liked by those people who are the readers and
consumers of novels; and I have frequently obtained more pecuniary advantage by
ten days’ labour in the dramatic way than by the labour of this ten
months.—Your very much obliged humble servant,
E. Inchbald. “Leicester Square, 24th.”
It does not appear that the letters by Godwin and Holcroft to Sheridan and Fox were
printed, but the MS. copy is among the Godwin papers, as from “a well-known literary
character.” The following paragraphs are noteworthy:—
“You would willingly promote the true interests and
happiness of the human race. You would willingly enrol your name with the benefactors
of mankind, or, which is still better, would rejoice in the extension of justice,
though your efforts in promoting that extension should never be acknowledged. Can you
really think that the new constitution of France is the most glorious fabric ever
raised by human integrity since the creation of man, and yet believe that what is good
there would be bad here? Does truth alter its nature by crossing the Straits, and
become falsehood? Are men entitled to perfect equality in France, and is it just to
deprive them of it in England? Did the French do well in extinguishing nobility, and is
it right that we should preserve hereditary honours? Or are these questions so very
trifling in their nature, so uninteresting to the general weal, that it is no matter
which side of them we embrace? If you speak out you must be contented to undergo a
temporary proscription. That proscription you at present suffer, and the period of the
obloquy which the true friend to mankind must endure will be very short. Had you rather
be indebted for your eminence to the caprice of a monarch than to the voice of a whole
nation, accumulating its gratitude on the head of the general
benefactor? Had you rather have the nominal possession of power, with your hands free
for the purposes of corruption, but chained up from the exertion of every virtuous
effort, than have the real possession of power, able to make every act of your
administration a blessing to Britain, to Europe, and to mankind.”
Again:—
“Liberty strips hereditary honours of their
imaginary splendour, shows the noble and the king for what they are—common mortals,
kept in ignorance of what other mortals know, flattered and encouraged in folly and
vice, and deprived of those stimulations which perpetually goad the hero and the
philosopher to the acquisition of excellence. Liberty leaves nothing to be admired but
talents and virtue, the very things which it is the interest of men like you should be
preferred to all the rest. Pursue this subject to its proper extent, and you will find
that—give to a state but liberty enough, and it is impossible that vice should exist in
it”
This sweeping, and somewhat astounding statement, proves the excess of
Godwin’s enthusiasm on the subject of
political liberty. Mrs Shelley writes with respect
to the passage just quoted:—
“It may seem strange that any one should, in the
sincerity of his heart, believe that no vice could co-exist with perfect freedom —but
my father did—it was the very basis of his system, the very keystone of the arch of
justice, by which he desired to knit together the whole human family. It must be
remembered, however, that no man was a more strenuous advocate for the slow operation
of change, no one more entirely impressed with the feeling that opinions should be in
advance of action. Perhaps even to a faulty degree he desired that nothing should be
done but by the majority, while he ardently sought for every means of causing the
majority to espouse the better side.”
CHAPTER IV. LITERARY LIFE AND FRIENDS—1793.
In 1793 Godwin published
“Political Justice,”
and it becomes necessary to examine this important work, as well as the various writings
which preceded it. Any attempt to form an estimate of his literary labours has hitherto
been deliberately set aside, and the next chapter will be devoted to the task. In the
meantime Godwin shall give his own account of his mode of life at this
period:—
“In the beginning of the year 1793 I removed to a small
house in Challon Street, Somers Town, which I possessed entirely to myself, with no other
attendance than the daily resort of a bedmaker for about an hour each day. No man could be
more desirous than I was of adopting a practice conformable to my principles, as far as I
could do so without affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was
anxious not to spend a penny on myself, which I did not imagine calculated to render me a
more capable servant of the public, and as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I
was not inclined to earn it but in small portions. I considered the disbursement of money
for the benefit of others as a very difficult problem, which he who has the possession of
it is bound to solve in the best manner he can, but which affords small encouragement to
any one to acquire it who has it not. The plan, therefore, I resolved on was leisure—a
leisure to be employed in deliberate composition, and in the pursuit of such attainments as
afforded me the most promise to render me useful. For years I scarcely did anything at home
or abroad without the enquiry being uppermost in my mind whether I
could be better employed for general benefit; and I hope much of this temper has survived,
and will attend me to my grave. The frame in which I found myself exalted my spirits, and
rendered me more of a talker than I was before or have been since, and than is agreeable to
my natural character. Certainly I attended now, and at all times, to everything that was
offered in the way of reasoning and argument, with the sincerest desire of embracing the
truth, and that only. The ‘Enquiry
concerning Political Justice’ was published in February. In this year also
I wrote the principal part of the novel of ‘Caleb Williams,’ which may, perhaps, be considered
as affording no inadequate image of the fervour of my spirit; it was the offspring of that
temper of mind in which the composition of my ‘Political
Justice’ left me. In this year I acquired the friendship of many excellent
persons—Thomas Wedgwood, Richard Porson, Joseph
Gerrald, Robert Merry, and Joseph Ritson.”
Of these, Porson’s name needs
no remark; of Gerrald and Wedgwood more hereafter. Merry was a Harrow and Cambridge man, afterwards in the Guards. He wrote
plays and poetry, now forgotten, under the signature “Della
Crusca.” He married Miss
Brunton, a well-known actress, emigrated to America, and died there in 1798.
Ritson was a lawyer, but better known as the
collector of old English songs and ballads. He was a vegetarian, and died in 1803, aged
fifty-one.
Mrs Shelley’s affectionate note on Wedgwood demands insertion:—
“Godwin
cemented this year his acquaintance with a man known to himself and all his literary
contemporaries, as the most generous, the most amiable of men; Thomas Wedgwood of Etruria, in Staffordshire, a name
dear to all who reverence virtue and goodness. His enthusiasm in the cause of
knowledge, his earnest desire to serve his fellows, rank him high among good men. He was afflicted with bad health, which
acted on his nerves, and frequently rendered him low-spirited to a painful degree. At
one time he and Godwin contemplated making a common household
together; their establishment was to be conducted on the most economical plan, as
suited the narrow circumstances of the one, and the generous views of the other, which
led him to limit his personal expenses, that he might have more to spare for
others.”
This scheme, however, fell through, and Godwin continued to live, now alone, as he tells us, in Challon Street,
Somers Town. He furnished only a part of his house, and keeping strictly to his intention
of earning little and spending little, he lived during three successive years on the
several annual sums of £110, £120, and £130.
His habits were exceedingly regular, and remained the same to the end of
his life.
“He rose,” says his daughter,
“between seven and eight, and I read some classic author before breakfast.
From nine till twelve or one he occupied himself with his pen. He found that he could
not exceed this measure of labour with any advantage to his own health, or the work in
hand. While writing ‘Political
Justice,’ there was one paragraph which he wrote eight times over
before he could satisfy himself with the strength and perspicuity of his expressions.
On this occasion a sense of confusion of the brain came over him, and he applied to his
friend Mr Carlisle, afterwards Sir
Anthony Carlisle, the celebrated surgeon, who warned him that he had
exerted his intellectual faculties to their limit. In compliance with his direction,
Mr Godwin reduced his hours of composition
within what many will consider narrow bounds. The rest of the morning was spent in
reading and seeing his friends. When at home he dined at four, but during his bachelor
life he frequently dined out. His dinner at home at this time was simple enough. He had
no regular servant; an old woman came in the morning to clean and arrange his rooms,
and if necessary she prepared a mutton chop, which was put in a Dutch oven.”
The diary shows the same amount of reading as heretofore, chiefly in
English, Latin, and French. It tells of work contemplated as well as accomplished, as, for
instance, under Oct. 20. “Plan a treatise on God,” and he notes also
that he made a proposal to Robinson to write a
history of Rome, “from the building of the city by Romulus to the Battle of Actium,” the demand for which he
considered would be “immense.” There is the same eagerness about foreign and
home politics, but the most exciting events, such as the sentence on and death of Louis XVI., Horne
Tooke’s trial [Jan. 24th], the debate whether Political Justice should or should not be prosecuted
[May 25th], are told in the fewest words.
In reference to this last event Mrs
Shelley says that from
“A government fearful and suspicious in the extreme,
ready to use any measures for pulling down the spirit of innovation which had spread
abroad, every man who publicly announced liberal opinions anticipated prosecution. I
have frequently heard my father say that Political Justice escaped prosecution from the reason that it appeared in a
form too expensive for general acquisition. Pitt
observed, when the question was debated in the Privy Council, that ‘a three
guinea book could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to
spare.’”
In publishing the book at this high price
“Godwin acted
in strict conformity to his principles. He was an advocate for improvements brought in
by the enlightened and sober-minded, but he deprecated abrupt innovations, and appeals
to the passions of the multitude.”
The publisher, however, expected a large sale of the book, and his
expectations were realised. The agreement between author and publisher, “William Godwin, of Challon Street, in the parish of St
Pancras, Middlesex, gentleman, and George
Robinson, of Paternoster Row,
bookseller,” is extant. Seven hundred guineas was paid down by
Robinson for the copyright, and a further sum of three hundred
guineas was covenanted to be paid, and was paid, after the sale of 3000 copies in quarto,
or 4000 in quarto and octavo added together. The work was first brought out “in
two volumes quarto, containing one hundred and twenty sheets, or
thereabouts.”
The only entry at this time which calls for special remark in regard to
the list of friends and acquaintances, is that of the name of Mrs Reveley, which meets us now for the first time, and from the first very
frequently.
“Maria
Reveley,” writes Mrs
Shelley, “was the daughter of an English merchant at
Constantinople, named James. Her education had been wild and
singular, and had early developed the peculiar and deep-seated sensibility which
through life formed her characteristic. Her father had left her in infancy with her
mother in England—he might be said to have deserted them, for they lived in great
penury. She remembered once asking her mother for a farthing to buy a cake, which was
given her with such reluctance, on the score of poverty, that with a passion of tears
she returned it. Mrs James at length took a desperate resolution,
and sailed to Constantinople with her daughter, then eight years old. Mr
James had no inclination to renew his conjugal duties. He had in his
house the wife of one of his skippers as housekeeper, and it was generally believed she
stood to him in a more intimate relation. He was, however, delighted with his little
daughter, and had her stolen from her mother, and secreted in the house of a Turk, till
he had persuaded Mrs James, by the promise of an annuity, to
return to England alone. The little Maria was then taken home, and
brought up with sedulous care. Many accomplishments were taught her, and on one of the
first side-saddles which appeared in the East, she accompanied her father in his rides
in the environs of Constantinople. While yet a mere child she
looked womanly and formed, and entered into the society of European merchants and
diplomatists. Having no proper chaperon, she was left to run wild as she might, and at
a very early age had gone through the romance of life. When she was fifteen her father
left Constantinople and went to Rome. She had shown great talent for painting, and it
was her wish that she should cultivate this art under the tuition of Angelica Kauffman. Her studies were, however,
interrupted by her early marriage. Her beauty attracted the admiration of Mr Reveley, a young English architect travelling for
improvement; they married and came to England.
“Mr
Reveley’s means were small, his father being still alive, and his
marriage imprudent, for Mr James, who acted ill in all the
relations of life, refused to consent to the match, only, as it would seem, as an
excuse for giving his daughter no fortune. From the genial climate, the luxuries, the
gay and refined society which had surrounded her, Mrs
Reveley found herself transported to a situation but little removed from
penury, demanding an economy and self-denial in expenditure of the most painful kind.
She found herself among the middling class of English people—ignorant, narrow-minded,
and bigoted. She felt fallen on evil days, the fairy lights had disappeared from life;
sedulous occupation bestowed on the necessaries of life was varied only by society
which did not possess a ray of intellect, and had but little refinement.
“She was very young and very beautiful, and
possessed a peculiar charm of character in her deep sensibility, and an ingenuous
modesty that knew no guile: this was added to ardour in the pursuit of knowledge, a
liberal and unquenchable curiosity. Parties ran high in those days. Her husband joined
the liberal side, and entered with enthusiasm into the hopes and expectations of
political freedom, which then filled every heart to bursting. The consequence of these
principles was to lead to his acquaintance with many of their popular advocates, and
among them with Godwin and Holcroft. There was a gentleness, and yet a fervour in
the minds of both Mrs Reveley and Godwin that led to sympathy. He was ready to gratify her desire for knowledge, and she
drank eagerly of the philosophy which he offered. It was pure but warm friendship,
which might have grown into another feeling, had they been differently situated. As it
was, Godwin saw only in her a favourite pupil, a charming friend,
a woman whose conversation and society were fascinating and delightful; but his calm
and philosophic heart was undisturbed by any of those feelings which in natures less
happily tempered would too readily have crept in to disturb and injure.”
A considerable part of the correspondence for this year turns, as might be
expected, on Political Justice. The
letters to and from Newton, Godwin’s old schoolmaster, explain themselves, and
they substantiate also what has been already surmised, that the extreme dislike of the
pupil for the master in later years dated, not from the time of their early intercourse,
but from the misunderstanding which arose when each became conscious of the wide chasm
which separated their opinions. The chasm appeared to widen, the breach in feeling was the
greater, because, though he would not afterwards admit it, Godwin had really been conscious of great intellectual indebtedness to his
old teacher, not unmixed with affection on both sides.
William Godwin to the Rev. Samuel Newton.
“Sir,—I have been informed
that you have delivered it as your judgment of the work I have published on
Political Justice,
that, upon attempting the perusal, you found in it matters so peculiarly
censurable that you could not bear to read any farther.
“I confess I am strongly inclined to believe that there
has been some mistake on the part of my informant, and that the story I have
heard is untrue. If so, you will thank me for giving you an opportunity to
contradict it.
“Having written thus much, I will trouble you with the
reasons that persuade me you never delivered the opinion ascribed to you.
“When I knew you, you were an ardent champion for
political liberty. I cannot easily suppose that you have changed your
sentiments on that head.
“It is impossible that you should not have perceived
that the book in question is intended to promote that glorious cause. Granting
that I have the misfortune to differ from you in your theological creed, I am
well assured that at the period to which I allude, you had the candour and
discernment to do justice to the political writings of people of all
persuasions in religion and philosophy. The indulgence in this respect that you
would grant to all other men, I cannot suppose you would deny to me. The
subject of the book is not religion, but politics: if it be calculated to
produce any effect, it is infinitely more probable that that effect will relate
to its express object, than its incidental allusions; to the politics which I
imagine you will allow to be generally right, than to the theology which you
perhaps suspect to be wrong.
“There is a view which I am strongly inclined to
entertain upon this subject, that I will take the liberty to mention. We have
all of us our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter,
will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty. We cannot any
of us do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have
fellow-labourers. Hence it seems to follow that it is one of our most important
duties to do justice to the good qualities of every man and every book that
falls under observation, that thus we may enlarge the opportunity of others for
discharging those parts of public service which we cannot perform ourselves. It
is unworthy of any real friend to mankind to depreciate any well conceived
endeavour from a too painful feeling of the incidental defects that may
accompany it.
“I make no apology for want of ceremony. We are both of
us, I conceive, enemies to that servility under which the species have so long
laboured.”
Samuel Newton to William Godwin.
“Thorpe next Norwich, Dec. 4th, 1793.
“Dear Sir,—I naturally
contract a friendship, feel an attachment, and interest myself in the welfare
of those who have for any time lived with me, though their sentiments and
habits may be different from mine. Sincerely can I say that I have been very
solicitous for your reputation and welfare; and when I saw your publication
advertised, I told several gentlemen of my acquaintance of different
persuasions, that from what I knew of your abilities and application, I
presumed it was a production that merited attention. When I was lately at my
son’s at Witham, I was determined, as he had procured it for a book-club
there, I believe on my recommendation, to read it attentively through, though
it was in a library at Norwich some time before, to which I belonged, but I had
not time then to investigate its contents. In the perusal I was charmed with
your language, with many of your sentiments, and with your general idea of
political justice and liberty. I said that there were some descriptions,
reasonings, and ideas, that for simplicity, elegance, force, and utility,
seemed to me to surpass all that I had ever read in Tacitus, Polybius,
Montesquieu, Barbeyrac, Grotius, Robertson,
Price, or Priestley.
“But I will ingenuously confess to you (and I have, you
know, a right to think for myself) that there were several things that you
advanced concerning moral obligation, gratitude, any public test of marriage,
Christianity, and one or two more subjects, that very much disgusted me. My
indignation was raised, not so much that you differed from me, but because I
considered it would damn the book, which contained in it so many useful and
interesting sentiments. Towards the close, or about the middle of the second
volume, I found something of this kind, and I did throw by the book, with some
such sentence as you have heard, but it was from an impulse, I can assure you,
arising from the preceding views. Truth I revere, though it condemns my own
conduct.
“I believe Christianity, you may not; but as I am
convinced that it is the most friendly system to the equality and liberty of
mankind that ever was published, I think justice
requires me to resent a person’s suggesting that I am not as strongly
attached to the rights of man as any one who does not believe it.
“In short, Sir, permit me to intimate that when you
publish another edition, I think you can better the arrangement, and make the
general method more perspicuous; and if you should think proper to change your
expressions, and leave out certain sentences on some subjects, which are, as I
conceive, no ways essential to your general system, your performance will be
more extensively perused, and it will wonderfully add, I doubt not, to that
torrent of political light which is pouring in upon an oppressed world.
“Thus much I thought it my duty to suggest to you, but
whether you think it worthy your attention or not, I shall think I am bound by
immutable justice to wish you well, and really to esteem you without giving way
to the least degree of base servility.
“S.
Newton.”
This letter, courteous and moderate as is its tone, does not appear to
have satisfied Godwin. His reply is lost, but the
tenor of it is sufficiently clear from Newton’s second letter:
The Same to the Same.
“Dec. 14th,
1793.
“Since, Sir, you have been so condescending as to
favour me with another epistle, I think it, from our former connection, my duty
(and I annex a real meaning to the term) to reply with all due respect, but
with all simplicity and integrity. I have often said that there might be a
volume collected from your work which would make, in my opinion, one of the
most valuable political systems that I ever perused, and, as far as justice,
equality, and liberty are recommended in it, I heartily wish the motives and
arguments were impressed upon the heart of every human being, particularly on
the rich, the powerful, and the learned. Viewing it altogether, I own it is a
wonderful production; but I must confess that it has such a cast of character
in it from its author, that I am inclined to think I should have known it to have been yours, had not
your name stood in the title page.
“I never affected the reputation of a philosopher, nor
have I ever courted the countenance and recommendations of the reputed
Literate; but I have for a number of years thought for myself, read productions
on all sides of religious and political questions, and been very particular in
my observations on the associations, habits, and character of my species. The
result of my observations has been this:—Two sets of men have appeared to my
view which I wish not to imitate. The one is composed of
those who seek popularity, reputation, and interest by embracing the most
fashionable systems in the religion and policy of the age, and by following the
esteemed great with a sort of implicit confidence and submission. I suspect
these have no genuine sincerity. The other set is composed of those who affect
in everything singularity, who delight in contradiction, whose fort is
objection, whose aristocracy is dictation, and whose pride is that of superior
genius, accuracy, and judgment to all others. These may boast of sincerity, and
treat the bulk of mankind as the swinish multitude who are not capable or
worthy of examining and judging on the subject of religion and policy with
themselves. In this spirit there is something in my view truly despicable; yea,
I smile at a Johnson, or a Hume, when they assume the air of the latter
set of men, and as I conceive resentment and indignation virtues, if properly,
that is proportionably directed against vice and
usurpation, without wishing to injure persons, I think myself justified by
immutable justice, in allowing these sensations to pass in my mind. Yes, I feel
not any remorse for indulging them, though I have as firm a belief as you can
have in the most certain and indissoluble connection between moral causes and
effects. But I use not the word necessarian because I
think the philosophers who have adopted it are guilty of a vulgar error, in
appropriating a word to a sense contrary to its general acceptation.
“That Goliath of critical and moral censure, Johnson, would, perhaps, have thought me a
most seditious and dangerous Sectary for rejecting all establishments of
religion, and for seriously ridiculing every order of
priests constituted by the reigning powers. Hume would have deemed me a servile, implicit, narrow soul, for
believing a religion which was embraced by my parents, though I think I have as
fairly examined it as any man in the island. But I laugh at his conceit, and
pity his prejudices, guessing, from what I know of his life, how his
associations of ideas were formed; for as a philosopher pretending to the most
accurate and deep investigations, he should have accounted for this phenomenon,
how the books containing the Hebrew and Christian systems of religion came to
be published. If they were forgeries, who were their authors, and what their
motives and ends in publishing such singular schemes, so different from all the
fine conceptions and sublime notions of all politicians and philosophers that
ever existed? I can resolve questions of this sort with regard to the Coran, and every other pretended revelation from God,
but I never saw this done with respect to the Bible.
“Our associations of thought, and habits of mind are so
totally different, that it is no wonder we should determine very oppositely one
to the other on many subjects, and therefore you will not be surprised if I
should affirm, as I do with the greatest sincerity: the evidence for the being
of a God from analogy, or arguing from the effect to the cause, and of a future
state from our desires, and from the supposed justice of the divine government,
does not strike my mind so forcibly, nor afford it so much satisfaction as that
which it is impressed with, for the undoubted truth of the Hebrew and Christian
religions. You may think I have not examined as fairly and impartially as you
have done. I must think the same of you. Here your right to judge is the same
as mine. Here is the equality I would maintain. And if you think you have far
superior genius, that is a point I cannot dispute with you. Those of this
character I have found committing as many blunders, and run into as many
extravagant absurdities as any of more moderate abilities. In short, Mr Godwin, my views of mankind, the little
knowledge I have of myself, the account my religion gives me of man, which I
find confirmed by fact, prevent my boasting with an aristocratical air of any
superior talents, lead me
to think I am not so great a man as I once thought myself to be, and compel me
so conscientiously to impress it in your thoughts, that you and I, and all
mankind are more upon an equality with respect to a capacity for the most
certain and useful knowledge in politics, morals, and religion than you are
perhaps in the habit of admitting. As your friend really thought, so he has
discharged his duty, in wishing to convince you of it, thinking this to be the
greatest friendship without servility or prejudice.”
With this letter, as was not unnatural, ended all intercourse between the
Rev. Samuel Newton, and his distinguished but
unorthodox pupil. There appears in this correspondence Godwin’s extreme sensitiveness to criticism, which rendered so much
of his intercourse with his friends subject to those unfortunate démêlés of which his journals speak so often. The following note,
written by Godwin, and the letter from Marshal in reference to the same affair belong to the same year, and
illustrate in an amusing way this extreme touchiness, though it must be admitted that the
friendly critic seems to have pushed his candour to its furthest bounds.
“When I had written nearly three-fourths of the first volume of
Caleb Williams, I was prevailed on,
with much reluctance by the importunity of a very old friend, to entrust him with the
perusal of my manuscript. In three days he returned it to me with a note nearly in these
words:—‘If you have the smallest regard for your own reputation or interest,
you will immediately put the enclosed papers in the fire. I was strongly tempted to
have done this friendly office for you, but that I recollected, I had placed myself
under a promise to return them.’ It is hardly necessary to say that the
receipt of this note was the means of disturbing me. It was three days before I fully
recovered my elasticity and fervent tone of mind required for the prosecution of my
work.”
James Marshal to William Godwin.
“Friday, May 31, ’93.
“I enclose you three guineas; the rest you shall have
very shortly. I take this opportunity of saying a word or two on the affair of
Tuesday. It was not I, but somebody else, who exhibited marks of intoxication,
or more properly of insanity—for upon no principle of sound intellect is it to
be accounted for. I came like a rational being, from motives of the purest
kind, to discharge what I believed to be a duty. But Sir Fretful was in a humour to hear nothing but commendation,
and tyrant Procrustes would admit no duty
in another of which he should himself be the object, and which did not square
precisely with his own ideas. Yet this is a philosopher teaching the firm
discharge of duty to mankind! Whip me such philosophers, whose precepts and
practice are eternally at variance.
“So far from being told twenty times, previous to
reading the MS., that I was
not to give my opinion, I do not remember being once told it; but had it been
so, I do not see that it ought at all to have altered my conduct
“One word respecting the MS. itself, and I have done. The incidents are ill chosen; the
characters unnatural, distorted; the phraseology intended to mark the humorous
ones inappropriate; the style uncouth; everything upon stilts; the whole
uninteresting; written as a man would make a chair or a table that had never
handled a tool. I got through it, but it was as I get over a piece of
ploughed-up ground, with labour and toil. By the way, judging from the work in
question, one might suppose some minds not to be unlike a piece of ground.
Having produced a rich crop, it must lie fallow for a season, that it may gain
sufficient vigour for a new crop. You were speaking for a motto for this
work—the best motto in my opinion would be a Hic
jacet; for depend upon it, the world will suppose you to
be exhausted; or rather what a few only think at present, will become a general
opinion, that the Hercules you have
fathered is not of your begetting.
“Your note to me is written to justify yourself from a
charge of weakness; and it contains an additional confirmation of that
weakness. The meaning of it is that if I cannot have the forbearance to avoid
mentioning a syllable or breathing a censure upon this ‘work of
works,’ I must not approach you till it be finished. Fie, fie! what name
does this deserve?
“Jas.
Marshal.”
It is pleasant to hear of Tom Cooper again, whose relations with Godwin
were now those of a steady and grateful friendship. The letters from him, which conclude
the correspondence for this year, show how Godwin’s stern training had at least
enabled him to keep courage and a stout heart under difficulties. Undeterred by his trip to
the North in Kemble’s company, he had fairly taken up the profession of an actor, and
had joined a company of strollers on their provincial tour.
Thomas Cooper to William Godwin.
“Portsmouth, March 1, ’93.
“Well, here I am! ‘My fortune smiles and gives
me all that I dare ask!’ I called on Mr
Collins this morning. He received me very politely, desired me
to call on him at three o’clock, and he would go over with me to the
theatre. Mrs C. proposed an amendment, that I should dine
with them, and go after dinner. So I did. Mr Collins was
very pleased with my rehearsal. I walked with their son to a lodging which he
knew. When I went out of the room Mrs C. said that she
should expect me back to tea. To tea back I came, having agreed for a
remarkably nice room at 9s. a week; and now I am writing in their apartment,
which is the reason for my writing so laconically.
“Inform my mother, if you can, of what I write. Inform
Mr Marshal that I play for the first
time on Monday the 4th inst. If he have a mind to come
down, I can procure him an order. I can write no more. I am obliged thus to
write. If I did not, I should be unable to write till Monday.
“My next letter shall keep up better appearances.
“Thomas
Cooper.”
The Same to the Same.
“Portsmouth, March 11, ’93.
“I gave my mother all the information you require in
the letter I sent yesterday, and I thought that might save the additional
trouble and expense of postage, for I have a great deal to do. Though I play
seldom, whenever I play I have to study the character; but as necessary
information cannot in London be conveyed half a mile, I will with pleasure
endeavour to do it from seventy miles’ distance. You desired to be
acquainted with some of the gentlemen of the company. Their names are as
follows:—Tyler, Curtis,
Stanewix, Gill,
Kelly, Woolley,
Baker, Davies,
Barrett; Mesdames Tyler,
Maxfield, Kelly,
Davies, Collins,
Balls, and Lings. Mr
Tyler is the chief singer, and has £1, 11s. 6d. salary a week.
He plays, besides, in middling parts, is good-natured and rather formal, and
about thirty-eight years of age. Mr Curtis is a kind of
pompous fool, never seems to attempt anything in acting, stands always in one
position, and as erect as if he had a spit thrust through him. Mr
Gill is—nobody. Mr Stanewix is a young
beginner—he has been but nine months on the stage. I do not well know what to
make of him. His understanding is above mediocrity, but I believe he will never
be a good actor. He plays French parts and fops. Mr
Maxfield is the tragedy hero. It so happened that he did not
till last night play one of his best castes, when he played ‘George Barnwell’ with
some merit; but though this man is their Richard
III., their Essex, &c.,
such is the nature of this company that last night, after playing
‘George Barnwell,’ he went
on as a sailor in ‘Captain
Cook,’ without a word to say, or anything to do.
Kelly is a Jack in all parts—a young man who would
have merit in some caste, if
he did not undertake all. Woolley,
Baker, and Davies are low comedy
men, and all have an equal and middling share of merit. Perhaps
Woolley is the best. Barrett is
the auxiliary to the company in the same manner as Holman
was, but in my mind a very bad actor. He is about forty-seven years of age,
plays genteel comedy, Plune, Kerger, Lord
Townley, &c. He has been a manager somewhere, played
‘Don
Juan’ at the Royalty, and is six foot high. He is a wit, but of
all the dull who profess that character, I never knew a duller. I will give a
specimen. Somebody asked whether Mrs
Inchbald’s play was cast. Another
replied that if he had the direction of it, it would be cast into the fire.
‘Then,’ rejoined Barrett,
‘it would be an outcast.’ He was
complaining one day of a dilemma to which he was reduced. ‘I am in a
damned scrape; I almost think I am a fiddle, I am in such a
scrape,’ running his stick backwards and forwards across his arm by
way of illustration. When Mrs Davies, Mrs
Laing, and Mrs Rivers are mentioned, I have
mentioned all the women who are not non-entities. I have, since I wrote last,
played Worthy and Philip in
‘The
Brothers.’ The salary is only 15s. a week, not to me only, but to
everybody except Tyler and Barrett.
Next week is Passion Week, during which there are no plays, and no pay.
“Thomas Cooper.
“I expect every day to be pressed, and neither
appearance nor friends can save me. Masters of houses have been taken away.
I know a common sailor who sometime ago was a player.”
The Same to the Same.
“Winchester, July 13, ’93.
“You say in your last letter that you are obliged to
adopt my mode of correspondence. I agree with you that your mode would be far
preferable; but from my situation, it is impossible to adopt it.
“Since about June 10th we have travelled from
Portsmouth to Chichester; from thence, after ten days, back to Portsmouth, and
having stayed there four days, have taken our
departure for Winchester, where we have now been about a fortnight, and our
managers think of dissolving the company till we play at Southampton, which
will be at the end of this month. In all our journeys we bear our own expenses,
and they have allowed nothing extra for our continual removings. We are paid
only nightly. In this town our salary is only 4s. a-night. This last week we
have only played once, so that we are going to receive this morning a shilling
a-head; and if we are not dismissed till Southampton, there is no probability
of our playing more than once in that town, which I suppose will be upwards of
a fortnight. From the above circumstances you may conclude that we are all
chop-fallen. It is your maxim that a little wholesome adversity is a very good
thing for a young man to encounter, so that I trust you will give me credit for
a little wisdom: that a few of the dregs of folly are purged away by the
purifying physic of bread and water. You may expect, if we are dismissed, to
see me in London in a few days, towards the latter end of next week. So much
for that subject. Mr Quicke was with us
at Chichester, and the four days at Portsmouth. He is a very pleasant man in
company, and very familiar. We expect Incledon at Southampton, and I believe Holman, but of him I am not certain.
“I received a day or two ago a very strange letter from
my sister about her situation. A kind of despondency runs throughout it. Has
she written to you in the same style lately? I returned a pretty sharp answer
immediately, which I hope will cure her of her disorder, whatever it is. You
have never informed me anything of your affairs—how your book sells, whether
you like your way of living, &c.
“Write to me as soon as convenient; but observe that I
shall perhaps not be here long. I am in perfect health, as I hope this will
find you.
T. Cooper.”
The Same to the Same.
“Winchester, July 19, 1793. “‘It must be so. O guts, ye reason well, Else whence those painful gripes, those inward workings, This craving after something good to eat? * * * * * * * * * * Why shrinks the belly To the back bone, and ’tween leaves no vacuum? ‘Tis this damned nothing that commoves
within. ‘Tis starving’s self that stares us in the face And indicates non-entity to man.’
“I am just come from the theatre, where we dismissed
two from the theatre and one from the pit.
“I shall not come to London after all. We have played
once this week, having got a bespeak from the Marquis
of Buckingham: we are to open at Southampton on Monday week, so
that it would not be worth while to come for so short a space; besides that,
our managers mean to open their doors next week, as the week before.
“There are a few mistakes in your letter. When I say
that my situation renders impracticable a diligent correspondence, I did not
mean that it has that effect at present, for if I did, my actions would belie
my words; but that it had in our frequent movings, and during the benefit time
at Portsmouth. You are to write to me at full, as you need not expect to see
me. In the next paragraph you say, ‘Not a word about your
health,’ but that’s a mistake, for the last words of my letter
are, ‘I am in perfect health, as I hope this will find you;’
but I suppose you had not patience to get through my bad handwriting.
“I’ll now relate a theatrical incident. George Barnwell was played:
you recollect that the uncle comes on, and makes a soliloquy on death. The
uncle had not, or did not choose to have leisure to learn the soliloquy, but
thought, if he carried on a book of the play, that he might read it. He did not
reflect that the stage would be darkened, and when he looked in the book, he
found he could not read. He recollected the first words, ‘O death!’ and repeated them three or four times in
great agitation, calling at the same time for George
Barnwell to come and kill him, but George was laughing so heartily behind the scenes that for some
time he could not relieve his uncle, and his uncle said no more than ‘O
death—do—do’—till his nephew came and stabbed him, and laughed at him in
the agonies of death.
“I have just received information that the Coldstream
is all killed except fifteen, and that the Duke is in the number of the slain.
Among the rest of the information you are to give me, let the sale of your
pamphlet and the title be included—what Mr
Holcroft has lately written—what Mr
Marshall is about. In short, tell me something about everybody.
Do you know anything concerning the Dysons now?
“Remember me to all my acquaintance in London: say
something for me to each, what you shall judge proper, just the same as if I
had written.
T. Cooper.”
The Same to the Same.
“Southampton, Oct. 18, 1793.
“Glory be to Thee, O God, for all the manifold goods
which day after day Thou bestowest upon me! Would you believe it? I have had a
benefit—such a benefit—a kind of Irish one, by which I have lost upwards of six
pounds—at least I remain that much indebted to our managers. How strange, how
despicable are the dispositions of tyrants! The morning after my night, this
Davies came to me to do something
for him in a pantomime which is performed to-night for his benefit. I readily
consented. Things have turned out that I am not of much consequence to him
to-night, and this morning, instead of the smiling, smirking face of yesterday,
he addressed me with a stiff Hibernian frown—‘Mr Cooper, I want some money—I must have
money. I’ll not pay the salaries, sir, till you have paid me. Blood,
sir, why am I to pay money out of my own pocket?’ The absent
politician, too, has attempted to speak to me. ‘Mr
Tyler, have you heard any news to-day? Oh, Mr
Cooper, about your night (a pause). I have not seen the
Star to-day. Sir, walk this way, if you please.’
I was going to follow but Mrs Somebody met him, and he immediately began to
settle the business of the nation. He dared imagine that it was for me to wait
his pleasure. About half-an-hour afterwards he repeated his request, and I told
him I was engaged.
“The usual method of payment in cases of deficiency of
the changes is by stopping 3s. or 4s. per week out of the salary; but on
account of my great deficiency, he says he will stop the whole week’s
salary until it is paid. In case he attempts it, it is my present intention to
leave him immediately, not secretly. No; what I dare do, I dare do openly. If
he pursues other steps, I have arrived at such a happy disregard of my personal
affairs, that it will scarcely give me a moment’s concern.
“You will wonder, perhaps, how I came to fail so much.
There are three or four sufficient reasons. The first is, that the interest of
a man of long standing and unusual acquaintance carries everything before it;
next, that though the other weak interests are supremely blessed with the happy
gifts of fawning servility, yet I have not so much of the spaniel about me; I
cannot take my hat off to the great man’s servant. If I were to lose £50
and fifty benefits, I cannot bow to flatter the man I despise. The third was
that I was between two fires—one manager’s daughter before, the other
manager’s wife after me.
“I now want you or Mrs
Holcroft to inform me whether Mr
H. himself spoke to Mrs Wood relative to an
engagement for me with her husband; or if not, who was it.
“T.
Cooper.”
The Same to the Same.
“Southampton, Nov. 2, ’93.
“If there were an appearance of reserve in my letters,
relative to my present situation, it could be only an appearance; for I have
not, nor have I ever had, the least wish to conceal anything. If I did not
expatiate at large on the subject, it was because I had no desire to excite any
man’s compassion; for I feel no compassion for myself; or in other words,
I am quite indifferent about it, as I have told you
before. I have lived partly upon a little money which I had saved, and partly
upon credit, which has involved me in debt near £2. But I shall considerably
decrease it by means of about a guinea, which I got last night, by joining with
two others who had failed, and buying a bad stock-night of the managers at an
under-price. This, with the loan of a guinea, which you are so kind as to offer
me, will pretty well bring me about, so that I shall probably still remain with
Messrs C. and D., if they promise to allow me a salary after this town, and
will pay the bill for printing the tickets for my benefit. But if he refuses,
my former resolution will remain unbroken. You may depend on seeing me in
London very soon—how soon will in some measure depend on Mr Davies’s acceptance or rejection of
my proposals. If he refuse, I shall not stay to play for his benefit. At all
events, you will see me in less than a fortnight.
“If you can oblige me with this guinea, direct to me
in any small parcel, at Mr Ling’s, 15 Butcher Row,
and send it by Mr Cox’s coach, which sets out every
morning from the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill.
“When I spoke relative to the School for Arrogance to Mr Davies, he said, ‘If Mr Holcroft had really been inclined to
serve me, he certainly could not have refused so small a favour.’
I smiled within myself at the confined ideas of a selfish man.
“I should be glad if you would not make it public that
I am coming to town. ’Tis, I grant, a childish wish, but it would be a
pleasure to surprise my friends. Though childish, it is innocent, and as it
would be a pleasure, I hope it will be a sufficient reason with you to comply
with my request.
T. Cooper.
CHAPTER V. GODWIN’S WORKS AND POLITICS. 1783—1794.
With the publication of “Political Justice” Godwin first became known as an author, and appeared before the world under
his own name, except so far as the “Sketches of History” were an exception.
The six sermons which bear that wholly inappropriate title are on the
characters of Aaron, Hazael and
Jesus—four sermons being devoted to the last. They are fair
specimens of Nonconformist pulpit oratory, and, with the exception of one or two sentences,
are remarkable chiefly for the extreme lucidity of style. Then, as always, it was
impossible to mistake Godwin’s meaning. Simple
and straightforward, his language rose sometimes to a rare eloquence, not because he
desired it, or valued rhetoric for its own sake, but because the words he used were the
fittest to clothe his most intimate convictions, and therefore appealed to the hearts of
other men. An early and a diligent student of French literature, there is something in his
own style of the characteristics of the better French writers, where the thoughts are seen
through rather than in the language, like pebbles in a deep well, and invested with a
beauty beyond their own.
Other points for which the Sermons are noticeable are these. Writing
nominally as a strong Calvinist, and believing himself to uphold the absolute sovereignty
of God, he yet strikes a note which, though he knew it not, was dissonant to all the rest.
“God himself,” he says in Sermon I.,
“God himself has no right to be a tyrant.” Of this passage the English Review, in a very
favourable article, says: “In some instances his vivacity transports him beyond
the bounds of decorum.” It was the enunciation of a principle from which he
was afterwards to draw unexpected conclusions.
Again, writing as an orthodox believer, he no doubt thought that he held
that Jesus Christ was God, and by that fact different from all men,
not to be compared or placed on the same level with them. But at the bottom of his mind was
the feeling that if Jesus were to be loved and venerated, it was not
as God, but for his likeness to, and his oneness with, humanity. And this found expression
in the sentence which ends the Sermon on the Resignation of Aaron.
“May we all of us exemplify the quietness of an
Aaron, and the unresentful mildness of a redeemer, that so we may be united with these
great and illustrious characters for ever hereafter.”
Little can here be said of the three novels which issued in such rapid
succession from Godwin’s brain and pen during
the years 1783-4—“Damon and
Delia,” “The Italian
Letters,” and “Imogen; a
Pastoral Romance,” professing to be a translation from an old Welsh MS.
These appear to have vanished into nothingness as well as forgetfulness, and the most
diligent researches have as yet obtained only slight indications that once they were deemed
interesting. But this need scarcely be regretted. The emotional part of
Godwin’s nature had never as yet been stirred, while he had
gained no such experience of life as was his when he wrote “Caleb Williams.”
It is, however, a real misfortune that much else which Godwin wrote at this date is buried in the pages of
reviews, some of them extinct and hard to
discover, and some, like the older volumes of the Annual
Register, reposing dusty, worm-eaten, and seldom handled, on the more
inaccessible shelves of libraries. The sketch of English History which
Godwin contributed to the Annual Register from 1785 onward is well worthy to stand alone and to
live. It is entitled “The History of Knowledge, Learning, and
Taste in Great Britain,” and the portion contributed by him begins with
the reign of Henry VII. In addition to his invariable
clearness and method in the grouping and presentation of his facts, there is much curious
learning and research displayed, much wide reading, sympathy with art, keen power of
criticism, and a kindly toleration for views the most opposed to his own. It may be
suspected that the apparent research of some of his contemporaries is really
Godwin’s research alone. It is scarcely likely that he,
Charles Lamb, and Coleridge were all reading the Schoolmen at the same time, all picking out
the same absurd questions from Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas! yet there is a most suspicious
resemblance in the selections made by all three, ending with the enquiry whether a million
of angels might not sit upon a needle’s point; and these selections certainly
appeared first in the Annual Register.
The paragraphs in which the Schoolmen and their influence are dismissed
after a fairly full account may serve to show the calm and judicial tone of the writer, and
the work done for the Annual
Register is an adequate specimen of the manner in which he performed
the whole of that class of work, anonymous, underpaid, and almost unnoticed.
“With all the misapplication of their talents, the
school divines and philosophers were many of them great men.
ThomasAquinas in particular had extraordinary
abilities which, if they had been properly directed, might have rendered him very
useful to mankind. Nor is it to be imagined that everything in him is trifling and
ridiculous. There are, it is believed, parts of his works which might even now be read
with pleasure and advantage.
“So far as it is an honour to have produced the
Schoolmen our own country had its full share in that honour. Not to mention Lanfranc and Anselm, Duns Scotus was a Briton,
probably born in Scotland, and William Occam was
an Englishman. Alexander Hales, John Baconthorpe, Thomas
Bradwardine, and a large list of names might be produced, if it were
necessary to rescue them from the oblivion in which they have long
slept.”—New Annual
Register, 1786, p. viii.
Though, however, the “Sketches of History” were the firstfruits of Godwin’s pen, his first published work was the “Life of Lord Chatham.” It was
issued anonymously, probably because it was a first effort, and its author was as yet
uncertain of his own powers, as well as his own opinions; and even up to the date at which
these lines are written, it stands in the British Museum catalogue with a query as to
whether it is really Godwin’s.
The book is rare, but, for those who can lay hands on it thoroughly worth
reading in itself, and also as showing how the commanding figure of the great tory
statesman drew the enthusiastic admiration of one who was so soon to startle his
contemporaries, by asserting in “Political Justice” that all government whatever was an infringement of
the Rights of Man. A few sentences of the concluding chapter may be given.
“Like the first king of the Jews, he walks, elevated
by the head above his compatriots, who seem as they were born his subjects. Men of
genius and attraction, a Carteret, a Townshend, and I had almost said, a Mansfield, however pleasing in a limited view, appear evidently in this comparison
to shrink into narrower dimensions, and walk a humbler circle. All that deserves to
arrest the attention in taking a general survey of the age in which he lived is
comprised in the history of Chatham.
“No character ever bore the more undisputed stamp of
originality. Unresembled and himself, he was not born to accommodate to the genius of
his age. While all around him were depressed by the uniformity of fashion, or the
contagion of venality, he stood aloof. He consulted no judgment but his own, and he
acted from the unstained dictates of a comprehensive soul. He loved fame too much, but
it was the weakness of a noble mind. He loved power too much, but it was power of a
generous strain. And he had passions that had nothing selfish in their texture. No
spirit ever burned with a purer flame of patriotism.” Life of Chatham, pp. 287, 288.
These writings were, however, one and all, provisional and preparatory.
They were soon forgotten; the fate, with the rarest exceptions, of all anonymous writing.
But the publication of “Political
Justice” marked an epoch in English thought. It was coincident with the
rise of a school of philosophic radicals, and in large measure placed in clear words the
views of that school, on many, though perhaps not all, of the subjects treated. There were,
however, very few who carried out logical conclusions so consistently and unshrinkingly as
Godwin. He alone formulated, among his political
judgments, the extreme severity of social principles, the denial of all play to feeling and
affection, which Fawcet and Holcroft had more loosely held as matters for informal
discussion.
By the words “Political Justice,” the author meant
“the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a
community,” Vol. I. p. 19, and the book was therefore an enquiry into the
principles of society, of govern-ment, and of morals. The first
volume deals with principles only; the second with the mode in which those principles would
exhibit themselves in politics and in society.
Twelve years before he wrote his preface, that is, when living under the
influence of Mr Frederic Norman at Stowmarket,
Godwin “became satisfied that monarchy
was a species of government unavoidably corrupt,” Vol. I. p. viii. The ideas
suggested by the French Revolution induced him to desire a government of the simplest
construction, and he gradually became aware that “government, by its very nature,
counteracts the improvement of original mind,” Vol. I. p. x. Believing in the
perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original
propensity to evil, he considered that “our virtues and our vices may be traced to
the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be
divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the
world,” Vol. I. p. 18. Education, literature, and political justice “are
three principal causes by which the human mind is advanced towards a state of
perfection,” Vol. I. p. 19; hence what is really required is that the truth
should be placed before men, and free discussion allowed; they would then, in the widest
sense of the words, “know the truth, and the truth would make them
free.” Hence all control of man by man is more or less intolerable, and the day
will come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, will also be doing what is
in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason.
But all was to be done by calm discussion, and matured change resulting from discussion.
Hence, while Godwin thoroughly approved of the philosophic schemes of
the precursors of the Revolution, he was as far removed as Burke himself from agreeing with the way in which they were
carried into practical life, and he strongly disapproved of the mode in which some English
politicians of his own school from time to time endeavoured to hasten the course of events.
He says, in a note to his first chapter, that the foregoing “arguments are for the
most part an abstract, the direct ones from Locke on the ‘Human
Understanding,’ those which relate to experience from Hartley’s ‘Observations on Man,’ and those
respecting education from the ‘Emile’ of J. J.
Rousseau.” In these views he never wavered, and his life was
thoroughly consistent. He never allowed himself to be converted to the expediency of giving
and taking in politics, or to see that principles can be applied to facts only by losing a
portion of their gloss and of their truth. He never could have been a worker on the active
stage of life. But he was none the less a motive power behind the workers, and “Political Justice” may take its
place with the “Speech for
Unlicensed Printing,” the “Essay on Education,” and “Emile,” among the unseen levers which have moved the changes
of the times.
The first edition of the book—to which all references are made—so well
deserves reading for its own sake, even at this date, that. no exhaustive extracts need
here be given: it is enough to describe the scope of the book. But some points in which the
writer touched on matters still under discussion, and full of interest for us, may yet
detain us awhile. In the chapter on the Perfectibility of Man, entitled “Human Inventions capable of perpetual improvement,” Godwin found himself face to face with the problem of the
origin of language. It would be difficult even now to put forward the interjectional, and
probably sound theory on this subject more clearly and excellently than is here done:—
“Its beginning was probably from those involuntary
cries which infants, for example, are found to utter in the earliest stages of their
existence, and which, previously to the idea of exciting pity or procuring assistance,
spontaneously arise from the operation of pain upon our animal frame. These cries, when
actually uttered, become a subject of perception to him by whom they are uttered, and
being observed to be constantly associated with certain preliminary impressions, and to
excite the idea of those impressions in the hearer, may afterwards be repeated from
reflection, and the desire of relief. Eager desire to communicate any information to
another will also prompt us to utter some simple sound for the purpose of exciting
attention. This sound will probably frequently recur to organs unpractised to variety,
and will at length stand as it were by convention for the information intended to be
conveyed. But the distance is extreme from those simple modes of communication which we
possess in common with some of the inferior animals, to all the analysis and
abstraction which languages require.”—Vol. I., p. 45.
Again, when discussing the effect that climate and other physical
influences have on the character of man, Godwin
recognised in the frankest way the animal nature which can thus be affected, even while he
combats the view that man is unable to triumph over those physical environments.
“‘Breed, for example, appears to be of
unquestionable importance to the character and qualifications of horses and dogs. Why
should we not suppose this or certain other brute and occult causes to be equally
efficacious in the case of men? How comes it that the races of animals perhaps never
degenerate if carefully cultivated, at the same time that we have no security against
the wisest philosopher’s begetting a dunce?’
“I answer that the existence of physical causes
cannot be controverted. In the case of man, their efficacy is swallowed up in the
superior importance of reflection and science. In animals, on the contrary, they are
left almost alone. If a race of negroes were taken, and maintained each man from his
infancy, except so far as was necessary for
the propagation of the species, in solitude; or even if they were excluded from an
acquaintance with the improvements and imaginations of their ancestors, though
permitted the society of each other, the operation of breed might perhaps be rendered
as conspicuous among them as in the different classes of horses and dogs. But the ideas
they would otherwise receive from their parents and civilized or half civilized
neighbours would be innumerable, and if the precautions above mentioned were
unobserved, all parallel between the two cases would cease.”—Vol. I., pp. 58,
59.
It was, of course, impossible that the writer of the above should, in the
then state of science, be aware how large a part exterior causes play in influencing the
breeds of man, nor the vast time in which such causes may have been at work; but the fact
that the above sentences could not be written now, by no means detracts from their value
then.
So logical and uncompromising a thinker as Godwin, so plain spoken and unequivocal a writer, could not go far in the
discussion of abstract questions without coming into collision with received opinions. The
chapter on justice is interesting, as showing how largely he was still under the influence
of Fawcet, and Fawcet’s
teacher, Jonathan Edwards. He says:—
“Justice is a rule of conduct originating in the
connection of one percipient being with another. A comprehensive maxim which has been
laid down upon the subject is ‘that we should love our neighbour as
ourselves.’ But this maxim, though possessing considerable merit as a popular
principle, is not modelled with the strictness of philosophical accuracy.
“In a loose and general view I and my neighbour are
both of us men, and of consequence entitled to equal attention; but in reality it is
probable that one of us is a being of more worth and importance than the other. A man
is of more worth than a beast, hecause, being possessed of higher faculties, he is
capable of a more refined and generous happiness. In the same
manner the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray was
of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us who would hesitate to
pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be
preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred.
“Supposing I had been myself the chambermaid, I
ought to have chosen to die rather than that Fenelon should have died. The life of Fenelon was
really preferable to that of the chambermaid. But understanding is the faculty that
perceives the truth of this and similar propositions, and justice is the principle that
regulates my conduct accordingly. It would have been just in the chambermaid to have
preferred the Archbishop to herself. To have done otherwise would have been a breach of
justice.
* * * *
“Supposing the chambermaid to have been my wife, my
mother, or my benefactor, this would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life
of Fenelon would still be more valuable than
that of the chambermaid, and justice, pure unadulterated justice, would still have
preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life
of Fenelon at the expense of the other. What magic is there in the
pronoun ‘my’ to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth? My wife or my
mother may be a fool or a prostitute, malicious, lying, or dishonest. If they be, of
what consequence is it that they are mine?
“‘But my mother endured for me the pains of
childbearing, and nourished me in the helplessness of infancy.’ When she
first subjected herself to the necessity of these cares, she was probably influenced by
no particular motives of benevolence to her future offspring. Every voluntary benefit,
however, entitles the bestower to some kindness and retribution. But why so? Because a
voluntary benefit is an evidence of benevolent intention, that is of virtue. It is the
disposition of the mind, not the external action that entitles to respect But the merit
of this disposition is equal whether the benefit was conferred upon me or upon another.
I and another man cannot both be right in preferring our own indi-vidual benefactor, for no man can be at the
same time both better and worse than his neighbour. My benefactor ought to be esteemed,
not because he bestowed a benefit on me, but because he bestowed it upon a human being.
His desert will be in exact proportion to the degree in which that human being was
worthy of the distinction conferred . . . . Gratitude therefore . . . is no part either
of justice or virtue. By gratitude I understand a sentiment which would lead me to
prefer one man to another from some other consideration than that of his superior
usefulness or worth; that is which would make something true to me (for example this
preferableness), which cannot be true to another man, and is not true in
itself”—Vol. I., p. 84.
Much more, however, was to come which ran still more counter to the
feelings of society. The propriety of allowing or not allowing play to the affections might
seem to most persons a purely abstract question. But no abstract speculation was advanced
when in a day in which the penal code was still extremely severe Godwin argued gravely against all punishments, not only
that of death. He considered that the only true end of punishment is correction—a
proposition which may well be disputed—and that the only proper way of conveying to any
understanding a truth of which it is ignorant, or enforcing a truth imperfectly held, is by
an appeal to reason. And as no two men were ever guilty of the same crime, positive law was
an evil in that it levels all characters and tramples on all distinctions.
Yet, however faulty might the law be, however vicious the state of
society, however tyrannical the government enforcing the one and upholding the other, no
conceivable state of things would justify any violent change, plot or conspiracy, still
less tyrannicide or the execution of the malefactor to the State, for
“If the attempt prove abortive it renders the tyrant
ten times more bloody, ferocious, and cruel than before. If it succeed and the tyranny
be restored, it produces the same effect on his successors. In the climate of despotism
some solitary virtues may spring up but in the midst of plots and conspiracies there is
neither truth nor confidence, nor love nor humanity.”—Vol. I., p. 228.
In all this Godwin was in fact
ignoring what every statesman must face, and what history as yet has ever proved true, that
to carry any principle into practical life some part of the principle must of necessity be
lost, that there is no progress whatever without attendant circumstances which fall hard on
some of the community. Godwin approved the French Revolution so long
as he had to consider only the problems presented to him by Rousseau, and the reforms urged by Turgot; he shrank not only from the violence of the Terror, but even from
the political associations which sought to mature possible changes before they were openly
suggested, and from such healthy popular risings as the destruction of the Bastille.
Before passing from the strictly theoretical portion of the work, whence
the foregoing extracts have been taken, Godwin
paused in order to consider those general principles of the human mind, which were most
intimately connected with his subject. None of these principles seemed of greater moment
than that which affirms that all actions are necessary. The chapters on the doctrine of
necessity are among the most interesting and lucid in the whole book, nor is the interest
diminished by his admission that the substance of a large part of his arguments may be
found in Hume’s “Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,”
and in Jonathan Edwards’s “Enquiry into the Freedom of the
Will.” The arguments on either side of the controversy must in any age be much
the same in all the writers of that age, and their
immediate intellectual descendants, but the clearness and precision of the words in which
they are clothed is Godwin’s own.
When these principles, as laid down in the first five books, were to be
applied to existing society, Godwin came most
decidedly into collision with all opinion which was considered respectable, orderly, and
religious. Not only did he assail all government, even that then considered by the liberal
party as full of promise—the government by National Assemblies; not only did he assail
religious establishments and tests, but property itself, and marriage, were not to him
sacred things, apart and unassailable. His observations on property include some suggestive
hints on his whole scheme of political justice, if, indeed, the word “scheme”
can apply in any sense to his theory of life in a community.
“The subject of property is the key-stone that
completes the fabric of political justice. According as our ideas respecting it are
crude or correct, they will enlighten us as to the consequences of a simple form of
society without government, and remove the prejudices that attach us to complexity.
There is nothing that more powerfully tends to distort our judgment and opinions than
erroneous notions concerning the goods of fortune. Finally, the period that shall put
an end to the system of coercion and punishment is intimately connected with the
circumstance of property being placed upon an equitable basis.
* * * * * * *
“To whom does any article of property, suppose a
loaf of bread, justly belong? To him who most wants it, or to whom the possession of it
will be most beneficial. Here are six men, famished with hunger, and the loaf is,
absolutely considered, capable of satisfying the cravings of them all. Who is it that
has a reasonable claim to benefit by the qualities with which this loaf is endowed?
They are all brothers, perhaps, and the law of primogeniture bestows it exclusively on the eldest. But does justice confirm this award?
The laws of different countries dispose of property in a thousand different ways; but
there can be but one way which is most conformable to reason.
“The doctrine of the injustice of accumulated
property has been the foundation of all religious morality. The object of this morality
has been to excite men by individual virtue to repair this injustice . . .
“But while religion inculcated on mankind the
impartial nature of justice, its teachers have been too apt to treat the practice of
justice, not as a debt, which it ought to be considered, but as an affair of
spontaneous generosity and bounty. They have called on the rich to be clement and
merciful to the poor. The consequence of this has been that the rich, when they
bestowed the most slender pittance of their enormous wealth in acts of charity, as they
were called, took merit to themselves for what they gave, instead of considering
themselves as delinquents for what they withheld.
“Religion is in reality, in all its parts, an
accommodation to the prejudices and weaknesses of mankind. Its authors communicated to
the world as much truth as they calculated that the world would be willing to receive.
But it is time that we should lay aside the instruction intended only for children in
understanding, and contemplate the nature and principles of things. If religion had
spoken out, and told us it was just that all men should receive the supply of their
wants, we should presently have been led to suspect that a gratuitous distribution to
be made by the rich was a very indirect and ineffectual way of arriving at this object
The experience of all ages has taught us, that this system is productive only of a very
precarious supply. The principal object which it seems to propose, is to place this
supply in the disposal of a few, enabling them to make a show of generosity with what
is not truly their own, and to purchase the gratitude of the poor by the payment of a
debt. It is a system of clemency and charity, instead of a system of justice. It fills
the rich with unreasonable pride by the spurious denominations with which it decorates their acts, and the poor with servility by
leading them to regard the slender comforts they obtain, not as their incontrovertible
due, but as the good pleasure and the grace of their opulent
neighbours.”—Vol. II., pp. 788-798.
There is one institution which is in the minds of most men—or at least
most men would have it supposed to be so—yet more sacred than that of property, namely,
marriage. It is generally assumed that whoever would strike a blow at this relation can
only do so in a spirit of lawless lust. Such, however, was evidently not the case with
Godwin. He was a man to whom passion was
unknown, who could discuss the relation of the sexes quite apart from any special
application. And this very fact made his opinions more important than they would otherwise
have been. To marriage he at this time objected altogether, and his objections are
extremely curious, when, and in so far as, they go beyond those superficial ones easily
made, and as easily refuted. These are such as that the inclinations of two human beings do
not coincide through any length of time, that thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex do
not know their own minds, and are reduced to make the best of an inevitable mistake. But
the real objections felt by Godwin are those which are bound up with
the whole idea of his book. Thus—
“Marriage is law, and the worst of all laws.
Whatever our understandings may tell us of the person from whose connection we should
derive the greatest improvement, of the worth of one woman, and the demerits of
another, we are obliged to consider what is law, and not what is justice.
“Add to this that marriage is an affair of property,
and the worst of all properties. So long as two human beings are forbidden by positive
institution to follow the dictates of their own mind, prejudice is alive and vigorous.
. . .
“The abolition of marriage will be attended with no
evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and
depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws
which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them. . . . . The
intercourse of the sexes will fall under the same system as any other species of
friendship. . . . I shall assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose
accomplishments shall strike me in the most powerful manner. ‘But it may
happen that other men will feel for her the same preference that I do.’
This will create no difficulty. We may all enjoy her conversation, and we shall all be
wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse a very trivial object.”—Vol.
II., pp. 849-851.
But perhaps the most striking instance of Godwin’s thorough consistency is to be found in the fact that he does
not shrink from applying his doctrine to the case even of the young. It will of course
follow that if in an ideal community the child, however wise, cannot know his own father,
education will be the business, not of the family, but of the state. But
“The task of instruction under such a form of
society as that we are contemplating will be greatly simplified and altered from what
it is at present. It will then be thought no more legitimate to make boys slaves than
to make men so. The business will not then be to bring forward so many adepts in the
egg-shell that the vanity of parents may be flattered in hearing their praises. No man
will then think of vexing with premature learning the feeble and inexperienced, for
fear that when they come to years of discretion they should refuse to be learned. Mind
will be suffered to expand itself in proportion as occasion and impression shall excite
it, and not be tortured and enervated by being cast in a particular mould. No creature
in human form will be expected to learn anything but because he desires it, and has
some conception of its utility and value; and every man, in proportion to his capacity,
will be ready to furnish such general hints and comprehensive views as will suffice for
the guidance and encouragement of him who studies from a principle of
desire.”—Vol. II., pp. 853, 854.
Portions of this treatise, and only portions, found ready acceptance in
those minds which were prepared to receive them. Perhaps no one received the whole teaching
of the book. Every strong reformer, religious or political, states general principles which
must be accommodated to the existing state of things, only those are accepted in which he
gives a voice to opinions which are “in the air,” while the originality and
independence of thought gain for him the hearing which would not be his did he merely put forward thoughts which were struggling for expression.
The book gave cohesion and voice to philosophic Radicalism; it was the manifesto of a
school without which the milder and more creedless liberalism of the present day had not
been. Godwin himself in after days modified his
communistic views, but his strong feeling for individualism, his hate of all restrictions
on liberty, his trust in man, his faith in the power of reason remained; it was a manifesto
which enunciated principles modifying action even when not wholly ruling it. Perhaps none
but the founder of any system ever believes that it can be maintained in its entirety, and
among such founders few have been so consistent and uncompromising as
Godwin.
But while his friends and admirers allowed to slip that which they could
not accept, it was far other with his political opponents. He who was to the one party all
but an inspired teacher, though the source of the inspiration would have been hard to
define, was to the other party a revolutionary Atheist, who went in daily danger of a
prosecution for treason. He had the affection of a small and growing band of friends, but
he was a mark for the scorn of all who were, or desired to be
considered, orthodox and respectable.
In a separate note-book headed “Supplement to
Journal,” Godwin has recorded
conversations of various friends, partly in regard to his book. Under date of 1793, March
23, he writes:—
“Dr Priestley
says my book contains a vast extent of ability—Monarchy and Aristocracy, to be sure,
were never so painted before—he agrees with me respecting gratitude and contracts
absolutely considered, but thinks the principles too refined for practice—he felt
uncommon approbation of my investigation of the first principles of government, which
were never so well explained before—he admits fully my first principle of the
omnipotence of instruction and that all vice is error—he admits all my principles, but
cannot follow them into all my conclusions with me respecting self-love—he thinks mind
will never so far get the better of matter as I suppose; he is of opinion that the book
contains a great quantity of original thinking, and will be uncommonly useful.
“Horne Tooke
tells me that my book is a bad book, and will do a great deal of harm—Holcroft and Jardine had previously informed me, the first, that he said the book
was written with very good intentions, but to be sure nothing could be so foolish; the
second, that Holcroft and I had our heads full of plays and
novels, and then thought ourselves philosophers.”
“Caleb
Williams,” the first of Godwin’s
novels which was destined to survive, was published in May 1794. Very many years
afterwards, he wrote a short notice of his intention in this book:—
“I believed myself fortunate in the selection I had
made of the ground-plot of that work. An atrocious crime committed by a man previously
of the most exemplary habits, the annoyance he suffers from the immeasurable and
ever-wakeful curiosity of a raw youth who is placed about his person, the state of
doubt in which the reader
might for a time be as to the truth of these charges and the consequences growing out
of these causes, seemed to me to afford scope for a narrative of no common
interest.” Advertisement to “St Leon” ed. of 1831.
He was not disappointed; the novel had very great success, and was
dramatized by Colman under the name of “The Iron Chest.” In spite of the
amazing impossibilities of the story and its unrelieved gloom; in spite of the want of
almost any character to admire—since Mr Clare, by whom
Godwin probably intended to represent his friend
Fawcet, dies early in the tale; though there is
no real heroine and scarcely mention of love, the story has survived and has probably been
read by very many persons who, but for it, have never heard of Godwin.
It is a very powerful book, and the character of Falkland the murderer is unique in literature.
In the year 1794 Godwin found it
his duty to fling himself to a greater extent than he had hitherto done into the stream of
active politics. He came out of his study to stand by prisoners arraigned of a crime of
which the terrors then were real—High Treason. His own note best sums up the circumstances—
“The year 1794 was memorable for the trial of twelve
persons, under one indictment upon a charge of high treason. Some of these persons were
my particular friends; more than half of them were known to me. This trial is certainly
one of the most memorable epochs in the history of English liberty. The accusation,
combined with the evidence adduced to support it, is not to be exceeded in vagueness
and incoherence by anything in the annals of tyranny. It was an attempt to take away
the lives of men by a constructive treason, and out of many facts, no one of which was
capital, to compose a capital crime. The name of the man in
whose mind the scheme of this trial was engendered was Pitt. Mr Horne Tooke was
apprehended on the 12th of May. The novel of “Caleb Williams” was then ready for
publication, and appeared about a fortnight after. In the following month I paid a
visit to Mr Merry at Bracon Ash, near Norwich,
and to my friends and relatives in Norfolk, whom I had not visited for twelve years. In
October I went into Warwickshire on a visit to Dr
Parr, who had earnestly sought the acquaintance and intimacy of the
author of “Political
Justice.” My position on these occasions was a singular one: there was not
a person almost in town or village who had any acquaintance with modern publications
that had not heard of the “Enquiry concerning Political
Justice,” or that was not acquainted in a great or small degree with
the contents of that work. I was nowhere a stranger. The doctrines of that work (though
if any book ever contained the dictates of an independent mind, mine might pretend to
do so) coincided in a great degree with the sentiments then prevailing in English
society, and I was everywhere received with curiosity and kindness. If temporary fame
ever was an object worthy to be coveted by the human mind, I certainly obtained it in a
degree that has seldom been exceeded. I was happy to feel that this circumstance did
not in the slightest degree interrupt the sobriety of my mind.
“On the 6th of October, the day after that on which
I left London for Warwickshire, the grand jury found a bill of indictment against the
twelve persons who had been accused before them. Among the names in the indictment were
included not only the persons known to me who were already in confinement, but also
that of my friend Holcroft, and others who were
at large. Holcroft immediately surrendered himself, and was
committed to Newgate: he wrote me word of his situation, and requested my presence. I
left Dr Parr on Monday the 13th, and reached town
on that evening. Having fully revolved the subject, and examined the doctrines of the
Lord Chief Justice’s charge to the
grand jury, I locked myself up on Friday and Saturday, and wrote my strictures on that composition, which appeared at
full length in the Morning
Chronicle of Monday, and were transcribed from thence into other papers. During the progress of
these trials I was present at least some part of every day. Hardy’s trial lasted eight, and Horne
Tooke’s six days. Among the many atrocities witnessed on that
occasion, perhaps the most flagitious was the speech of the Attorney-General, now
Lord Eldon, at the close of the trial of that
extraordinary man. In his peroration he burst into tears, and entreated the jury to
vindicate by their verdict his character and fame; he urged them by the consideration
of his family to co-operate with him in leaving such a name behind to his children as
they should not look upon as their disgrace. It was in the close of this year that I
first met with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, my
acquaintance with whom was ripened in the year 1800 into a high degree of affectionate
intimacy.”
The Diary does no more than confirm the above, adding some touches of
detail. Thus it is recorded, that during his stay with Dr
Parr he went to church, and had an altercation with Mrs Parr about the Lord’s Supper, or, in his own
curious mixture of Latin and French, “altercation de Madame de cœnâ
dom.” He was very regular in attendance at the “Philomaths,” a
society which met every Tuesday and discussed abstract questions, such as, taken at random,
“Fame,” “Tribunes,” “Marriage,” “Incest,”
“a God.” His interest in the political trials was most keen and unselfish,
though he must have felt the force of the “tua res agitur paries quum
proximus ardet.”
The real charge against the prisoners, when divested of amplifications and
technicalities, was that they had endeavoured to change the form of Government established,
by publishing, or causing to be published, divers books or pamphlets, and by belonging to
political societies having the same object.
Mrs Shelley has left, as was natural in the daughter
of such a father and the wife of such a husband, very full notes in
reference to the political trials, which may be quoted at length, for they clearly
represent not only her own mind, but the impression left on her by the conversation of her
father in his later years. Though the circumstances of which she speaks occurred before her
birth, she yet had a knowledge of them at second-hand in a way impossible to those of us
who can only read them in the dry pages of annual registers and biographical dictionaries.
The trials of Palmer, Muir, and others in Scotland for treason, or, as it was
then called in Scotland, “leasing making,” took place in the autumn of the year
1793.
“In these years,” she writes,
“the collision between Government and the advocates for reform, or something
more, was at its height. While one set of men saw an opening for their endeavours for
political freedom, another became panic-struck, believing that the horrors of the
French Revolution were about to overflow into this island. There were many whose zeal
transported them with a wish to excite the multitude to use their numerical strength to
force Government to adopt liberal measures; nor can we wonder that Ministers considered
it right to put down such appeals, rendered trebly dangerous by the state of excitement
into which the country was thrown.
“As the ministers of those days were in no degree
favourable to the extension of the liberty of the subject, they became exasperated by the
attempts of the reformers, and yet were not sorry to see them come to such a head as would
admit of their taking vindictive measures. They resolved not to be sparing in their
punishments, and to use the whole force of the law against such as should become their
victims. Their first operations were entered on in Scotland, where the laws against
sedition were severer than here, and juries more entirely under the direction of the court.
Messrs Palmer, Skirving, and Muir were apprehended
for various seditious practices. They were found guilty, and sentenced to be transported
for seven and fourteen years. This sentence
was put into execution soon after, and by its atrocity, and the horror excited by the idea
that men of good education were to be subjected to the treatment of felons excited
universal compassion. Their case was brought forward in Parliament, but without effect, and
called forth also the following indignant letter from Mr
Godwin to the Morning Chronicle:—
“‘To the Editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ “‘MUIR AND PALMER.
“‘Sir,—The situation in which Messieurs Muir and Palmer are at this moment placed is sufficiently known within a
certain circle, but is by no means sufficiently adverted to by the public at
large. Give me leave, through the channel of your paper, to call their
attention to it.
“‘All the consolations of civilized society are
pertinaciously refused to them. Property, whether originally their own or the
gift of their friends, is to be rendered useless. Supplies of clothing, it
seems, have been graciously received on board the vessels; but stores of every
kind and books have constantly been denied admission. The principle which has
been laid down again and again by the officers of Government is—they are felons
like the rest,
“‘This, sir, is a species of punishment scarcely
precedented in the annals of mankind. Tiberius, and his modern antitype, Joseph the Second, are mere novices in the arts of cruelty
compared with our blessed administration. Joseph took
judges from the bench, men accustomed to reflection, to deference and elegant
gratification, and made them scavengers in the streets of Vienna. Mr Pitt probably took the hint from this
example. But he has refined upon his model, inasmuch as he has sent the victims
of his atrocious despotism out of the country. If I must suffer under the
barbarian hand of power, at least let me suffer in the face of day. Let me have
this satisfaction, that my countrymen may look on and observe my disgrace. Let
them learn a great lesson from my suffering. It is for them to decide whether
it shall be a lesson of aversion to my guilt, or abhorrence against my
punisher. On that condition, I will stand on their
pillories, and sweep their streets with satisfaction and content. But to shut
me up in dungeons and darkness, or to transport me to the other side of the
globe, that they may wreak their vengeance on me unobserved, is base,
coward-like, and infamous.
“‘Perhaps, Mr Editor, I may be told that, in
holding up these proceedings to the indignation of my countrymen, I am guilty
of sedition. You know, sir, that there is not in the Island of Great Britain a
more strenuous advocate for peaceableness and forbearance than I am. But I will
not be the partaker of their secrets of State. What they dare to perpetrate, I
dare to tell. Do they not every day assure us that the great use of punishment
is example, to deter others from incurring the like offence? And yet they
delight to inflict severities upon these men in a corner, which they tremble to
have exposed in the eyes of the world. I join issue with administration on this
point: I, too, would have the punishment of Messieurs Muir and Palmer serve for an example. Sir, there are examples to imitate
and examples to avoid.
“‘Mr Dundas
told Mr Sheridan, when that gentleman
applied to him officially upon this subject a few months ago, that he saw no great hardship in a man’s being sent to
Botany Bay. Observe that in this sentence, as now appears, is meant to
be included an exclusion from all the means of intellectual pleasure and
improvement, a reduction of men of taste and letters to the condition of
galley-slaves. I can readily believe that to a man so obdurate in feeling and
unhumanised in manners as Mr Dundas, a privation of the
sources of intellectual pleasure may appear no hardship. Let me appeal, then,
to Mr Burke. Who knows so well as he
what is due to elegance of education, delicacy of manners, and refinement in
literature? Who has declaimed so powerfully against those systems, by which all
classes of society are confounded together, and all that is venerable for
antiquity, lovely in cultivation, and elevated by imagination and genius, is
overwhelmed by the iron hand of a barbarous usurpation? Never was the principle
of taking lessons from an enemy so extensively adopted as at present. We
declaim against the French, and we imitate them in their most horrible
atrocities. Administration is desirous of conducting themselves with respect to
Messieurs Muir and Palmer as the Germans have acted towards
M. de la Fayette, who, we are told,
in consequence of the rigours he has endured, is reduced to the state of an
idiot.
“‘And who are the men that are destined to this
treatment, that are to be considered as felons like the
rest? I hear the moderate and respectable friends of Government
perpetually confessing that they are men of excellent
character and irreproachable manners. What is it by which they have
incurred this punishment? I learn from the same quarter that it is by an ill-directed zeal for what they thought a good
cause. I agree to that statement; I think they did wrong. Let us
suppose that for that wrong, that well-meant but improper zeal, they ought to
be punished. In what manner punished? Not, sir, as if they
were felons. A mild and temperate punishment might, for aught I know,
have operated upon others to induce them to act with more becoming
deliberation. But a punishment that exceeds all measure and mocks at all
justice, that listens, to no sentiment but revenge, and plays the volunteer in
insolence and cruelty—a punishment the purpose of which is to inflict on such
men slavery, degradation of soul, a lingering decay and final imbecility—can do
nothing but exasperate men’s minds, and wind up their nerves to decisive
action.
“‘You will perceive, sir, that in this letter I
have entered into no comment upon the justice of the sentence of the Court of
Session, and that the baseness of which I complain belongs exclusively to the
Secretary of State for the Home Department and the rest of the Cabinet
junto.’
“But on March 10th, 1794, occurred another trial in
which Mr Godwin was far more deeply interested,
that of Joseph Gerrald for sedition.
Gerrald was a West Indian, and a man of property. He had been
a pupil of Dr Parr, who regarded him with warm
and affectionate interest. Every one who knew him loved him, but his character was
unguarded, ardent, and even dissipated. His property became involved, and his health
was injured by his irregularities and extravagance; and yet, in
spite of his conduct, his friends were enthusiastically attached to him on account of
his brilliant talents, and his nice sense of honour, and an unconquerable ardour in the
pursuit of objects which seemed to him the noblest in the world. He had emigrated to
America early in life, and had practised as an advocate in the courts of Pennsylvania.
Returning to England a confirmed republican, he entered into societies founded for the
spread of his favourite doctrines. He was arrested with several others who had met in
what they called a Convention of Delegates at Edinburgh, on a charge of sedition, and
brought for trial before the High Court of Justiciary.
“The high spirit and generous sense of honour of
this unfortunate man are shown by the fact that his friends offered him every means of
easy escape, of which he refused to avail himself. He was at large, and on bail in
London, when intelligence came of the trial and conviction of several of his
associates. Dr Parr, and others of his friends,
implored him to fly, promising to indemnify his bail. He indignantly refused, resolving
that his lot should be the same as that of his partners in a cause, which he looked
upon as sacred, and considered it as a base desertion to refuse to share their
fate.
“Such noble feelings, which mirrored the devotion and
honour of his favourite heroes of Greece and Rome, excited the deepest interest in
Godwin; he always spoke of Gerrald with affectionate admiration, and his feelings
were strongly excited by the peril his friend incurred. During the January of 1794, while
the trial was expected, there is frequent mention in the journal of seeing
Gerrald; he conversed with him on his trial, the conduct he ought
to hold in regard to it, and the defence he ought to make. To render his advice more
impressive, he wrote to him. The tone of his letter is calculated to encourage and animate.
Godwin, who knew the human heart so well, was aware that nothing
so inspires courage and magnanimity as a belief in the sufferer that he is regarded with
respect by his fellow-men. In his letter, therefore, he casts into the shade the sad and
fearful evils attendant on con-viction,
and endeavours to bring forward only such ideas as would animate
Gerrald to self-complacency and fortitude.
“Gerrald’s defence was eloquent and good, but the judge did not
hesitate to interrupt it to tell him it was seditious, adding the singular assertion
that, taking his, Gerrald’s, account of the matter to be
just, supposing that he acted from principle, and that his motives were pure, he became
a more dangerous member of society than if his conduct had been really criminal,
springing from criminal motives. Thus urged, the jury found him guilty, and the court
showed no mercy; he was sentenced to be transported for fifteen years, which, in his
precarious state of health, was considered, as it proved to be, equivalent to a
sentence of death. When Gerrald, in his defence, professed himself
ready to sacrifice his life for the cause he espoused, he was well aware that he made
no empty boast, and that his life would indeed expire under the severities to which he
was exposed.
“In April Gerrald was removed to London, and committed to Newgate, where
Godwin and his other friends were allowed to
visit him. It is said that he refused the offer of a pardon made him by the Secretary
of State, because coupled with conditions which he felt it impossible to accept. In May
1795 he was suddenly taken from his prison, and placed on board the hulks, and soon
afterwards sailed. He survived his arrival in New South Wales only five months. A few
hours before he died he said to the friends around him, ‘I die in the best of
causes, and, as you witness, without repining.’”
This extract is a fitting introduction to the very noble letter addressed
by Godwin to Gerrald, of which Mrs Shelley
speaks. Its lofty tone takes us back alike to the dangers and the enthusiasm of the time.
William Godwin to Joseph Gerrald.
“Jan. 23, 1794.
“I cannot recollect the situation in which you are in a
few days to be placed without emotions of respect, and I had almost said of
envy. For myself I will never adopt any conduct for the express purpose of
being put upon my trial, but if I be ever so put, I will consider that day as a
day of triumph.
“Your trial, if you so please, may be a day such as
England, and I believe the world, never saw. It may be the means of converting
thousands, and, progressively, millions, to the cause of reason and public
justice. You have a great stake, you place your fortune, your youth, your
liberty, and your talents on a single throw. If you must suffer, do not, I
conjure you, suffer without making use of this opportunity of telling a tale
upon which the happiness of nations depends. Spare none of the resources of
your powerful mind. Is this a day of reserve, a day to be slurred over in
neglect—the day that constitutes the very crisis of your fate?
“Never forget that juries are men, and that men are
made of penetrable stuff: probe all the recesses of their souls. Do not spend
your strength in vain defiance and empty vaunting. Let every syllable you utter
be fraught with persuasion. What an event would it be for England and mankind
if you could gain an acquittal! Is not such an event worth striving for? It is
in man, I am sure it is, to effect that event Gerrald, you are that man. Fertile in genius, strong in moral
feeling, prepared with every accomplishment that literature and reflection can
give. Stand up to the situation—be wholly yourself. ‘I
know,’ I would say to this jury, ‘that you are packed, you
are picked and culled from all the land by the persons who have at present
the direction of public affairs, as men upon whom they can depend; but I do
not fear the event; I do not believe you will be slaves. I do not believe
that you will be inaccessible to considerations irresistible in argument,
and which speak to all the genuine feelings of the human heart. I have been
told that there are men upon whom truth, truth fully and adequately stated,
will make no impression. It is a vile and groundless calumny upon the
character of the human mind. This is my theory, and I now come before you for the practice.’
“If you should fail of a verdict—but why should I
suppose it?—this manner of
stating your defence is best calculated to persuade the whole audience, and the
whole world, for the same reason that it is best calculated to persuade a jury.
“It is the nature of the human mind to be great in
proportion as it is acted upon by great incitements. Remember this. Now is your
day. Never, perhaps never, in the revolution of human affairs, will your mind
be the same illustrious and irresistible mind as it will be on this day.
“You stand on as clear ground as man can stand on. You
are brought there for meeting in convention to deliberate on grievances. Do not
fritter away your defence by anxiety about little things; do not perplex the
jury by dividing their attention. Depend upon it, that if you can establish to
their full conviction the one great point—the lawfulness of your meeting—you
will obtain a verdict.
“That point is fully contained in the Bill of Rights,
is the fundamental article of that constitution which Englishmen have been
taught to admire. Appeal (for so upon your principles you can) to an authority
paramount to the English constitution, to all written Law and parchment
constitutions; the Law of universal Reason, authorising men to consult. Ireland
was always the least emancipated part of the British Empire. In Ireland they
thought proper to pass a tyrannical law taking away this inalienable privilege.
But in Britain they do worse; ministers are said to have it in contemplation to
pass a similar law here, and in the meantime ‘you, the jury, are
called upon to act as if the law were already in existence. Was ever so
atrocious a breach of equity and reason? They pride themselves in having
drawn us, and a great part of the Scottish nation, into the snare, and
overwhelmed us with a destruction which no prudence could foresee, and no
innocence avert.’
“The next point I would earnestly recommend to your
attention is to show that you and the reformers are the true friends of the
country, that you are actuated by pure philanthropy and benevolence, and have
no selfish motives, that your projects lead to general happiness, and are the
only means of averting the scene of confusion which is
impending over us. ‘Our whole effort is directed to the preventing
mischief, and the sparing every drop of blood. The longer the confederates
of foreign despots among us go on in their present impious career, the more
you will want us. We place ourselves in the breach to snatch your wives and
children from destruction. Will the present overbearing and exasperating
conduct of government lead to tranquillity and harmony? Will new wars and
new taxes, the incessant persecution, ruin, and punishment of every man
that dares to oppose them heal the dissensions of mankind? No! Nothing can
save us but moderation, prudence and timely reform. Men must be permitted
to confer together upon their common interests, unprovoked by insult,
counteracting treachery, and arbitrary decrees. It is for this antidote to
the madness of men in power that we have, made every sacrifice, and are
ready to sacrifice our lives. If you punish us, you punish us because we
have watched for your good.’
“Above all, let me entreat you to abstain from harsh
epithets and bitter invective. Show that you are not terrible but kind, and
anxious for the good of all. Truth will lose nothing by this. Truth can never
gain by passion, violence, and resentment It is never so strong as in the firm,
fixed mind, that yields to the emotions neither of rage nor fear. It is by calm
and recollected boldness that we can shake the pillars of the vault of heaven.
How great will you appear if you show that all the injustice with which you are
treated cannot move you: that you are too great to be wounded by their arrows;
that you still hold the steadfast course that becomes the friend of man, and
that while you expose their rottenness you harbour no revenge. The public want
men of this unaltered spirit, whom no persecution can embitter. The jury, the
world will feel your value, if you show yourself such a man: let no human
ferment mix in the sacred work.
“Farewell; my whole soul goes with you. You represent
us all.
W. Godwin.”
Mrs Shelley’s note on the English State Trials
is also fortunately extant, and is here mainly reproduced. After mentioning that on learning that the grand jury had
found a true bill against the twelve men, among whom were Holcroft, Horne Tooke, and several
other of his personal friends, Godwin immediately
started for London, and sent in a formal application to be allowed to visit the prisoners,
Mrs Shelley continues:—
“Godwin well
understood, that had these trials been followed by a verdict of ‘guilty,’
he would have subsequently shared their fate as their friend and intimate associate.
Neither the difference of his own opinion from those of his friends, in some points
considerable, nor his own personal risk, could prevent a man so enthusiastic and
intrepid as my father, from exerting all his powers in their cause.
“That ministers should have accused of high treason
men whose crime could not by any perversion be interpreted beyond sedition, might
excite his indignation, but not surprise, but that Grand Jury should have given their
sanction to the proceeding seemed extraordinary and overwhelming. These sentiments were
increased by the charge of Chief-Justice Eyre.
Godwin, on returning to London, lost no time
in writing an answer to the charge. On this occasion, speed being a main ingredient of
success, he wrote by dictation, his old and tried friend Marshal being his amanuensis. As he warmed in his subject, he paced the
room with quick, eager steps, pouring out his arguments with an animation and fervour
which sat well on features and manner usually too quiet and undemonstrative. He looked
on this crisis as one of awful moment to all Englishmen. The law of high treason,
accurately defined by the statute, and ably commented on by the best lawyers, was to be
stretched and bent for the destruction of these men. Because they had entered upon a
line of conduct which, if carried to its utmost extent by the worst of men, might be
supposed in the result as tending to overthrow the monarchy, they whose motives were
pure, and who abhorred blood, were to be condemned as traitors. Nay more. Their
ostensible object was confessedly legal, and it was behind this avowed and innocent intention that hidden and treasonable acts were to be
discovered and punished.
“They had met in convention for the sake of
furthering a plan to obtain annual parliaments. This was their apparent crime; it
remained to discover the guilt of high treason behind so innocuous an outside.
Chief-Justice Eyre explained the law of
treason according to the statute 25 Edward III., which is the law
of England. He set forth what an overt act was, and that it was necessary to prove by
two witnesses the committing of an act, which had in its intent and effect the
compassing and imagining the death of the king. He allowed that meeting in convention
for the sake of obtaining annual parliaments was not treasonable, but he averred that a
secret and evil design was in the present instance most probably concealed by this
pretext He said that if the convention had for its intention the enforcing annual
parliaments of its own authority, that was an act of treason. He further observed that
whether the project of convention, having for its object the collecting together a
power which should overawe the legislative body and extort a parliamentary reform,
would, if acted upon, amount to high treason, and to the specific treason of compassing
and imagining the death of the king was a more doubtful question, and he added,
‘If charges of high treason are offered to be maintained on this ground
only, perhaps it may be fitting that, in respect of the extraordinary nature, and
dangerous extent, and very criminal complexion of such a conspiracy, that case,
which I state to you as a new and doubtful case, should be put into a judicial
course of inquiry, that it may receive a solemn adjudicature whether it will or
will not amount to high treason, in order to which the bills must be found to be
true bills.’
“In short, after sketching and rendering as vague as
possible the narrow and defined limits of the law of treason, the judge set up a new
case, not acknowledged as treason by the law of the land, but of which, when the
criminals were found guilty, the judges, against whom it is a principle of our
constitution to guard the accused, were to decide upon, and determine whether they were
or were not to be hanged, thus erecting the mere executive into legislative, and giving an awful stretch of power,
which would have placed every disaffected Englishman in the hands of government to be
dealt with as it chose, and the mercy to which it was inclined was manifested in the
present trials.
“Godwin’s keen and logical mind easily detected the flaws in
Sir James Eyre’s reasoning, and his
eloquence set them forth clearly and forcibly. He repeated and praised the first
exposition of the Law of Treason by the Judge. ‘In all this preamble of the
Chief Justice,’ he says, ‘there is something extremely humane
and considerate. I trace in it the language of a constitutional lawyer, a sound
logician, and a temperate, discreet, and honest man. I see rising to my view, a
Judge resting upon the law as it is, and determinedly setting his face against new,
unprecedented, and temporizing constructions. I see a Judge that scorns to bend his
neck to the yoke of any party or any administration, who expounds the unalterable
principles of justice, and is prepared to try by them, and them only, the persons
that are brought before him. I see him taking to himself, and holding out to the
jury, the manly consolation that they are to make no new law, and force no new
interpretation, that they are to consult only the statutes of the realm, and the
decisions of those writers who have been the luminaries of England. Meanwhile, what
shall be said by our contemporaries, and by our posterity, if this picture be
reversed, if these promises were made only to render our disappointment more
bitter, if these high professions merely served as an introduction to an
unparalleled mass of arbitrary constructions, of new-fangled treasons, and
doctrines equally inconsistent with history and themselves.’ He then
proceeds to argue that the thing to be proved was not whether the accused were guilty
of a moral crime, but of a crime against law. ‘Let it be granted,’
he says, ‘that the crime is, in the eye of reason and discretion, the most
enormous that it can enter into the heart of man to conceive, still I have a right
to ask, is it a crime against law? Show me the statute that describes it; refer me
to the precedent by which it is defined, quote me the adjudged case in which a
matter of such unparalleled magnitude is settled.’
“Mr Godwin
then proceeds to analyse the various modes in which the Chief Justice supposes it
possible that these men, associated for the purpose of obtaining Parliamentary Reform,
were guilty of High Treason. ‘One mode,’ he says, ‘is by
such an association, not in its own nature, as he says, simply unlawful too easily
degenerating, and becoming unlawful in the highest degree.’ It is
difficult to comment upon this article with the gravity that may seem due to a
magistrate delivering his opinion from a bench of justice. An association for
Parliamentary Reform may degenerate, and become unlawful in the highest degree, even to
the enormous extent of the crime of High Treason. Who knows not that? Was it necessary
that Chief Justice Eyre should come in 1794,
solemnly to announce to us so irresistible a proposition? An association for
Parliamentary Reform may desert its object, and become guilty of High Treason. True; so
may a card club, a bench of justice, or even a Cabinet Council. Does Chief
Justice Eyre mean to intimate that there is something in the purpose of
a Parliamentary Reform, so unhallowed, ambiguous, and unjust, as to render its
well-wishers objects of suspicion rather than their brethren and fellow subjects? What
can be more wanton, cruel, and inhuman than thus to single out the purpose of
Parliamentary Reform, as if it were of all others most especially connected with
degeneracy and treason.
“‘But what is principally worthy of
attention is the easy and artful manner in which the idea of treason is
introduced.’ After commenting with extreme severity on the insinuation of
intention, of which there was not a particle of truth, he continues: ‘But the
authors of the present prosecution probably hope that the mere names of Jacobin and
Republican will answer their purposes, and that a jury of Englishmen will be found
who will send every man to the gallows without examination to whom these
appellations shall once have been attributed.’
“Mr Godwin
then comments on the Chief Justice’s observations on a convention, a word brought
into disrepute by its adoption in France, but by no means foreign to English History.
Because of the present use of the name, the Judge declared that it ‘deservedly became an object of
jealousy to the law.’ ‘Can anything,’ exclaims
Godwin, ‘be more atrocious than the undertaking to
measure the guilt of an individual and the interpretation of a plain and permanent
law by the transitory example that may happen to exist before our eyes in a
neighbouring country.’
“After much more on this and on other heads,
Mr Godwin comes to the last point of the
charge—that in which he bids the Grand Jury find a true bill, if they should discover
on the part of the accused a design to overawe King and Parliament, so that afterwards
it might be subjected to a judicial course of enquiry. ‘The Chief
Justice,’ he says, ‘quits in this instance the character of criminal
judge and civil magistrate, and assumes that of a natural philosopher, or
experimental anatomist. He is willing to dissect the persons that shall be brought
before him, the better to ascertain the truth or falsehood of his preconceived
conjectures. The plain English of his recommendation is this. Let these men be put
on their trial for their lives, let them and their friends be exposed to all the
anxieties incident to so uncertain and fearful a condition; let them be exposed to
ignominy, to obloquy, to the partialities, as it may happen, of a prejudiced Judge,
and the perverseness of an ignorant jury; we shall then know how we ought to
conceive of similar cases. By trampling on their peace,
throwing away their lives, or sporting with their innocence, we shall obtain a
basis on which to proceed, and a precedent to guide our judgment in future
instances.’
“The effect of this appeal, of which the passages
quoted may give a sufficient notion, when it became widely spread through the papers,
was memorable. Hitherto men had heard that the King’s Ministers had discovered a
treasonable conspiracy, and had arrested the traitors. They believed this. No project
was believed too wild or wicked for those who had imbibed the infection of the French
Revolution, nor could any believe that the highest and most solemn council of the State
would have proceeded against twelve subjects of the realm but on clear and undoubted
grounds. The charge of the Chief Justice did not dissipate the illusion. It is true
that all he said was wrapped in ‘May-be,’ and the
Grand Jury was told that they were to discover secret, treasonable designs; but still
Mr Pitt was a man of high character and vast
talents—men leant on him with confidence, and readily saw gigantic dangers in the
shadowy images of treason that were evoked. They could not believe that for the sake of
an experiment, for the purpose of overawing the country, and extending his power beyond
the limits of the constitution, he would put in slight account the lives and liberties
of twelve men, his fellow subjects, whom he knew that there was no law to condemn, whom
he only hoped to destroy through the influence of the panic which the proceedings in
France had engendered in this country. But these remarks dissipated the mist that
clouded men’s understandings; they who before believed that the accused were
undoubtedly guilty of treason began to perceive that a design to reform Parliament was
not treasonable, and that however wrong-headed, and even reprehensible it might be to
associate for such a purpose, this was no cause why men, otherwise innocent, should,
themselves and their families, be subjected to the frightful pains and penalties of
treason.
“Impartial men now looked forward to the event of
these trials with very different expectations, both as to the nature of the charges to
be brought, and the result. The friends of the accused, now that they dared hope for a
fair trial, confided in an acquittal. The event shewed how reasonable and just were
Godwin’s reasonings; how strained,
tyrannical, and barbarous the proceedings of ministers.
“Hardy, a
shoemaker by trade, was the man first selected by the Attorney-General to be placed at
the Bar. The trial lasted eight days; the evidence brought was complicated and vast,
but vague and inconclusive. He was acquitted. The trials of Horne Tooke and Thelwal
followed; but the whole force of Government had been directed against
Hardy, and when these also were acquitted, the public accusers
felt their task ended. They allowed verdicts of acquittal to be recorded in favour of
their other prisoners.
“Godwin, as
he says, attended the trials every day, though he knew himself to be a marked man, had his friends
been found guilty. He was present when the Attorney-General announced that he gave up
his intention of proceeding against Holcroft,
who, on being liberated, left the dock, and, crossing the court, took his seat beside
Godwin. Sir Thomas
Lawrence, struck by the happy combination and contrast exhibited in the
attitude and expression of the two friends, made a spirited sketch of them in
profile.
“The feeling of triumph among the friends of liberty
was universal. Even now there lingered on the English shores Gerrald, Muir,
Palmer, and Skirving, who, victims of Scottish law, were sentenced to be
transported to Botany Bay. Their fate filled their friends with grief and indignation;
but worse had been since attempted, and it was a matter of virtuous triumph to find
that the attempt failed, that our country was restored to the protection of its laws,
and a boundary placed to the encroachments of arbitrary power. Godwin never forgot the delightful sensations he then
experienced; it was his honest boast, and most grateful recollection, that he had
contributed to the glorious result, by his letter to Chief-Justice Eyre.”
The panic which was felt by some, who, belonging to the liberal party,
feared they might be compromised by their accused friends, is reflected in a letter from
Mrs Reveley, whom Holcroft had proposed to call as a witness, to what special point in his
defence does not appear.
“I was very much surprised last night, to hear your
statements of Mr Holcroft’s
determination concerning me, as it differed materially from what had been
represented to me before; hitherto I have had no opportunity of conversing with
you on the subject, and it is necessary that I should inform you of the exact
state of my mind. Should it appear that Mr
Holcroft’s life is at all in
danger, and that my evidence would tend in the least to avert that misfortune,
far from repining, I profess myself, without hesitation, ready calmly to
encounter every odium, every public or private resentment—in a word, ruin—to
save him.
“But if, on the other hand, he means to sacrifice me,
with scarcely a possibility of advantage to himself, and the evidence I am able
to give should have nothing singular and particular, or out of the power of any
other person to produce; from what could such conduct arise, but wanton cruelty
or insanity?
“If this should be his determination, I declare to you,
as I did last night, that I will not expose myself to the evils which this
puerile conceit is thus preparing for me.
“What could be more tyrannical than Mr Holcroft’s assertion, that whatever
might be my dislike, he would force me to do my duty? As if he were to be the
judge of it. The Despots say no more! His treatment of Mr Reveley excites in me the most unpleasant
feelings; I believe I shall ever think of it with detestation.
“I feel a doubt that, from many circumstances which
have lately occurred, you should imagine that any change has taken place in my
opinion of you. Be assured that the high esteem and veneration which your
virtues and genius entitle you to, have not suffered the smallest diminution in
the sentiments of
“Maria
Reveley.”
When Hardy’s trial was over,
Godwin received a letter from the friend from
whose house he had hurried to help his friends.
Dr Parr to William Godwin.
“Nov. 10, 1794.
“Your anxiety, dear Mr
Godwin, during Hardy’s trial could not be more intense than mine, your
joy at the close of it was not more rapturous, your approbation of the jury is
not more warm, and your indignation against the judge seems to be less fierce.
Is it possible, my friend, that any baseness can be more foul, any injustice
more pernicious, any treason
more atrocious, than the deliberate, technical, systematic perversion of law?
My bosom glowed with honest rage when I saw the snares that were laid for
men’s lives in that odious address to the Grand Jury; but I doubt whether
the dagger of an assassin, reeking with blood, would have given a more violent
shock to my feelings than the close of Eyre’s speech at the Old Bailey. I can make great
allowances for the projects of statesmen, the errors and prejudices of princes,
and even the outrages of conquerors; but when I see the ministers of public
justice thirsting with canine fury for the blood of a fellow-creature, my soul
is all on fire . . . I very strongly disapproved of the Convention; I would
oppose the doctrine of universal suffrage; I look with a watchful, and perhaps
with an unfriendly, eye upon all political associations; I wish to see the
people enlightened, but not inflamed; I would resist with my pen, and perhaps
with my sword, any attempts to subvert the constitution of this country, but I
am filled with agony when laws, intended for our protection, arc stretched and
distorted for our destruction . . . I am glad the charge was published, because
it has been answered; and as I think the answer luminous in style, powerful in
matter, and solid in principle, I am extremely desirous of knowing who is the
author. He is entitled to my praise as a critic, and my thanks as an
Englishman. I shall not be satisfied till Mr
Fox takes up, in Parliament, the subject of constructive
treason; and I trust that, by perseverance, he will be no less successful than
we have already seen him in vindicating the rights of juries. He is a sound and
sober statesman, a real lover of his country, and a friend to the collective
interests of social man . . . Remember me kindly to Mr Holcroft. Come again to see me at my parsonage, when the
weather is finer, the days longer, the roads cleaner, and the aspect of public
affairs less gloomy.—Believe me, dear sir, with great respect, your well-wisher
and obedient servant,
T. Parr.”
CHAPTER VI. FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 1794—1796.
In all the storm and stress of politics, when his male friends
were almost all more or less in trouble, when Mrs
Reveley was putting herself into the semi-hysterical state in which we have
seen her, the friendship of Mrs Inchbald, who was no
politician but only a very clever and very charming woman, was a great comfort to Godwin. Their correspondence was frequent, as also were
their meetings; all Mrs Inchbald’s letters are worth reading,
but only a few can be given. Godwin sent the proofs of “Caleb Williams” to her, and her
opinion of it must have pleased him as much as Marshal’s criticism displeased him. The early tales from his pen had
been forgotten, and he appeared before the world as a new novelist.
The letters which follow were written while the story was still in reading,
and she wrote in far too hot haste to dream of dating her letters, and usually to sign
them.
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
(No date.)
“God bless you!
“That was the sentence I exclaimed when I had read
about half a page.
“Nobody is so pleased when they find anything new as I
am. I found your style different from what I have ever yet met. You come
to the point (the story) at once, another excellence. I have now read as far as
page 32 (I was then interrupted by a visitor) and do not retract my first
sentence. I have to add to your praise that of a most minute, and yet most
concise method of delineating human sensations.
“I could not resist writing this, because my heart was
burthened with the desire of saying what I think, and what I hope for.
“My curiosity is greatly increased by what I have read,
but if you disappoint me you shall never hear the last of it, and instead of
‘God Bless,’ I will vociferate, God ——m you.”
The Same to the Same.
“Monday evening.
“Sir,—Your first volume is
far inferior to the two last. Your second is sublimely horrible—captivatingly
frightful.
“Your third is all a great genius can do to delight a
great genius, and I never felt myself so conscious of, or so proud of giving
proofs of a good understanding, as in pronouncing this to be a capital work.
“It is my opinion that fine ladies, milliners,
mantua-makers, and boarding-school girls will love to tremble over it, and that
men of taste and judgment will admire the superior talents, the incessant
energy of mind you have evinced.
“In these two last volumes, there does not appear to me
(apt as I am to be tired with reading novels) one tedious line, still there are
lines I wish erased. I shudder lest for the sake of a few sentences, (and these
particularly marked for the reader’s attention by the purport of your
preface) a certain set of people should hastily condemn the whole work as of
immoral tendency, and rob it of a popularity which no other failing it has
could I think endanger.
“This would be a great pity, especially as these
sentences are trivial compared to those which have not so glaring a tendency,
and yet to the eye of discernment are even more forcible on your side of the
question. . . . . But if I find fault it is because I
have no patience that anything so near perfection should not be
perfection.”
She could take as well as give criticism in a thoroughly good-humoured
manner. She had sent Godwin a MS., which was
probably afterwards destroyed. It is, however, no doubt that to which a letter from
Mr Hardinge, quoted in Boaden’s “Life of Mrs Inchbald,” alludes, under the
title, “A Satire on the Times,” and about which
Boaden remarks that Hardinge’s remark
is unintelligible. “Oh! that I may be for ever called stupid by the person who
wrote ‘A Satire on the Times,’ by setting a ship
on fire and burning every soul in the book except a Lord of the Bedchamber, by whom she
meant the k——.”—Memoirs of
Inchbald, Vol. I., p. 328.
The Same to the Same.
“I am infinitely obliged to you for all you have said,
which amounts very nearly to all I thought.
“But indeed I am too idle, and too weary of the old
rule of poetical justice to treat my people, to whom I have given birth, as
they deserve, or rather I feel a longing to treat them according to their
deserts, and to get rid of them all by a premature death, by which I hope to
surprise my ignorant reader, and to tell my informed one that I am so wise as
to have as great a contempt for my own efforts as he can have.
“And now I will discover to you a total want of aim, of execution, and every
particle of genius belonging to a writer, in a character in this work, which
from the extreme want of resemblance to the original, you have not even
reproached me with the fault of not drawing accurately.
“I really and soberly meant (and was in hopes every
reader would be struck with the portrait) Lord
Rinforth to represent his Most Gracious Majesty, George the 3rd.
“I said at the commencement all Lords of Bedchambers
were mirrors of the
Grand Personage on whom they attended, but having Newgate before my eyes, I
dressed him in some virtues, and (notwithstanding his avarice) you did not know
him.
“The book is now gone to Mr
Hardinge. Mr Holcroft is
to have it as soon as his play is over, and though I now despair of any one
finding out my meaning, yet say nothing about the matter to Mr
Holcroft, but let my want of talent be undoubted, by his opinion
conforming to yours.
“And there, (said I to myself as I folded up the
volumes) how pleased Mr Godwin will be
at my making the King so avaricious, and there, (said I to myself) how pleased
the King will be at my making him so very good at the conclusion, and when he
finds that by throwing away his money he can save his drowning people he will
instantly throw it all away for flannel shirts for his
soldiers, and generously pardon me all I have said on equality in the book, merely for giving him a good character.
“But alas, Mr
Godwin did not know him in that character, and very likely he
would not know himself.”
Some extracts from a letter to a young
man, whose name is not preserved, may be interesting, for they represent
Godwin in yet another light, and show at once
his versatility, and his unceasing desire to help others in all their various needs. There
is no date, but it belongs to this time, and seems to have been written to an Oxford man
who was in some trouble of mind.
William Godwin to ——.
(No date.)
“. . . I am glad that my writings have in any degree
contributed to your pleasure in moments of dejection and gloom. I should be
much more glad if I could point out to you a remedy for your disease. Dr Darwin, you say, assures you it is a
disease of the mind. There is perhaps some deception in that way of
distributing the disorders of the human species. The mind and the animal frame are so closely connected, that scarcely
anything can unfavourably affect the one without deranging the other. I think
it not improbable that your unhappiness may be connected with some vice of
organization, as far as I can annex a distinct meaning to that term. But in
these subtle diseases, take insanity for an example, it seems as if the
remedies might sometimes be found in material, sometimes in mental
applications. I see no good reason to doubt, that a certain discipline of the
mind may have a powerful tendency to restore sanity to the intellect, and
consequent vigour to the animal frame. I know a young man, subject in a
considerable degree to the same evil under which you labour, and of a strong
understanding, who has in some measure found out the remedy for himself, and
has considerably added to his happiness by watching resolutely the operations
of his own mind.
“The first thing you have to guard against, as the most
pernicious error into which you can fall, is the feeling yourself flattered by
your own misery as something honourable and delicate. Do not from this, or
other motives, cherish and indulge painful sensations. Resolutely expel them,
if possible, from your mind. Determine vehemently and hardily to be as happy as
you can. . . . Break abruptly the thread of painful ideas. Set your face as
much as possible against a spirit of timidity and procrastination. Endeavour to
be always active, always employed. Walk, read, write, and converse. Seek
variety in this respect. Whatever you engage in, engage in firmly, and give no
quarter to the inroads of irresolution and listlessness. . . . Do not indulge
in visions, and phantoms of the imagination, or place your happiness in
something you may perhaps never obtain, but endeavour to make it out of the
materials within your reach. Adopt some course of improvement, and impress
yourself with some ardour of usefulness, which will never wholly elude the
grasp of him who seeks it with ingenuousness and simplicity. . . .
W. Godwin.”
The remaining letters of value during this year are those from Tom Cooper, which follow. They relate, as will be seen, to different periods of the year, but
equally to his professional engagements, and are best presented consecutively. The most
truculent game preserver may, at this distance of time, feel tenderly towards the poor
stroller, who would not have dined at all but for his venial poaching.
Thomas Cooper to William Godwin.
“Chichester, January 12, 1794.
“On inquiring into the causes that guide our actions, I
am greatly puzzled to discover the reason why I have not written before to
London. Can it be indolence? I have been in other respects very industrious. It
cannot be indifference or inattention, for a day has never passed over without
my thinking on the subject. Whatever was the cause, such is the fact, which
cannot be removed by an inquiry, however long. I will therefore dismiss it at
once, and proceed to my purpose.
“I left Hyde Park Corner at five o’clock on the
Sunday. I left you at two. I proceeded some twenty or thirty miles when I was
overtaken by the Southampton mail. I got a four shilling cast on the outside,
and arrived at Southampton, gloriously wet, at ten o’clock on Monday
night. I set off to Cowes the next morning at seven by the mail packet, which
was opposed both by wind and tide, and could make no way. The mail was obliged
to shift to an open boat, and as I could row, I got into the boat, leaving the
rest of the passengers on board. I now pulled against wind and tide for upwards
of twelve miles, without one minute’s rest, and I do not recollect ever
to have undergone so great fatigue before. I arrived at Newport, however, by 3
p.m. on Tuesday, according to my promise, when,
contrary to my expectation, I had nothing to do in the evening’s
entertainment. I have since been on a salary of 10s. a week, and we have had
one idle week between Newport and this place, where we have been three weeks,
and are likely to continue four more. Hence we go immediately to Portsmouth. .
. . I have pursued the plan Mr Holcroft
mentioned as much as possible, consistently with almost continual moving, but that will for about a month receive a considerable
check. On account of some of the company taking benefits here, and the
manager’s great impatience to open the Portsmouth Theatre, the company is
obliged to divide. I am ordered to Portsmouth, and have a great deal of study
on my hands. Mr Collins, in addition to other things, told
me yesterday to study George Barnwell and
Irwin. Of a morning, since I have been
here, from about seven to nine, I have amused myself by shooting, and have in
utter defiance of the laws of the constitution under which I exist, dined twice
or thrice on partridges.
“I beg you will make a point of showing this to my
mother immediately, as I have not written to her since I left town. My love to
her and Betty and Miss
Godwin. Is Nat at
Spithead?
“Thomas
Cooper”
“Stockport, October 21, 1794.
“Whether the God of Wisdom presided in my brain at the
time I made the resolution of joining these strolling players at Stockport I
know not. Whether you may think the step wise (which is not the same quaere,
however paradoxical my supposing a difference may appear to you), I am equally
ignorant. But well I know that it is now a fortnight since we closed at
Liverpool, and that in the interim I have travelled fifty miles, bag and
baggage, across the country, and that by this means my stock of cash is so
reduced, that without a supply before to-morrow at twelve o’clock, I
shall be obliged to dine with a certain duke with whom I have kept company
before to-day (but heartily despising everything, and titles among the rest,
that put me in mind of usurpation and inequality), whose company I would very
willingly renounce for the time to come. Nevertheless I stand prepared to
encounter any tricks or mischief Fortune may be inclined to put upon me,
continually repeating the first lines of that ode of Horace, beginning, ‘Justum et tenacem
propositi virum.’
“By means of reduction in my pocket, having now taken
the step of coming here, it is impracticable to recall it, and here I must
remain. But in eight or ten weeks, unless I should meet with any great success, I shall
again think of coming to London. Though, indeed, if Mr Holcroft’s trial comes on, and a consequence which I
tremble to think of should take place, I shall be in London on the instant.
“Thus, then, I am. We open to-morrow. I do not play
till Saturday, when I make my appearance in Barnwell. I have no doubt of my success,
for what trifling degree of merit I may have, will derive additional lustre
from the extreme dullness of the set of devils I have got among. We are to play
in a theatre, to be sure, that is, in a place built for that purpose only, but
we shall come under the Vagrant Act. But the sweets of superiority!
‘Oh, ’tis better to reign in hell, than serve in
heaven!’
“I will thank you for a letter, containing as much
circumstance as you can contrive. How do yours’ and Mr Holcroft’s novels sell? How is
Mr H.’s family governed in his absence. Tell me
any occurrences relative to Mr H.’s imprisonment, if
any there is, not mentioned in the papers. Is George Dyson yet out of his swaddling clothes? that is, does he
yet live entirely as his own master, or is he still at home with papa and
mamma? How does Jack go on? Remember to
give my love to my mother, Miss Godwin,
&c. Likewise let the Holcroft family know I have not
forgotten them. And though last, not least, mention me, ‘after what
flourish your nature will,’ to Mrs
Reveley—I believe—but it is, however, the lady who supped with
you at Mr Holcroft’s the last night I was in town.
She is a painter. Tell her I would come to London, all the way barefoot, to see
her perform the office of hangman to Mr P., which I
recollect she said she should have no objection to.
“Thomas
Cooper.”
“Stockport, Oct. 28, 1794.
“All the devils in hell seem to conspire against me.
When success seemed placed within my reach, and I had nothing left to do but to
nod my head and become a hero, some damned untoward accident prevents it. Barnwell could not be played,
as I informed you it would. But last night, to forward the manager’s
business, I undertook to play Holdam, in Columbus, at a short notice, and to give up an appearance part. The
consequence of which was, that the manager, relying upon a continued
obligingness in doing his dirty work, this morning gave me a list of parts, and
grinning, told me I promised very well, but that I must do all the parts there
specified. There were, to be sure, a great many good parts, and most of them
respectable; but he told me that in my turn I must also deliver messages. I
told him that the parts expressed in his list would satisfy me very well
indeed; but that as to the delivering of messages, I would not do it in heaven.
“If it were a respectable company, I would gladly
accept the good parts he gave me, though a few messages were thrown in with
them, because it was really a good line; but in that situation I hardly think
it would be right to stay, even if I did nothing else but the good parts. They
are such a wretched set of mummers. Perhaps you will say that I can do my
business properly, though they did not. I say no. They seldom speak a word of
the author. The business is a jest, and likewise the man who attempts to treat
it seriously.
“I shall leave this place before you can possibly
return an answer. I am now 170 miles from town. I shall start from hence with
5s. in my pocket. I shall see you shortly. I will black shoes at the corner of
Goodge Street for 1s. a-day sooner than be anything but the leader among a set
of wretches I despise.
“Io Triumphe, “Thos.
Cooper.”
The note for the year 1795 records that Godwin’s literary work during the course of it consisted mainly in
the revision of his two lately published works. He continues:—
“In the beginning of this year I accepted the offer of a
certain degree of acquaintance with a man, in doing which I thought myself right, but in
which I did not escape censure. The man was John
King, a notorious Jew money-lender, who was married to the Countess Dowager of
Lanesborough. My motive was simple—the study to which I had devoted myself
was man, to analyse his nature as a moralist, and to delineate his passions as an
historian, or a recorder of fictitious adventures; and I believed that I should learn from
this man and his visitors some lessons which I was not likely to acquire in any other
quarter. My system prompted me to express my thoughts of him as freely, though without the
same scurrility and ill-temper, as Apemantus at the
table of Lord Timon. An incident worthy to be mentioned
occurred to me on the 21st of May in this year. I dined on that day with Mr Horne Tooke and a pretty numerous company at the house
of a friend. The great philologist had frequently rallied me in a good-humoured way upon
the visionary nature of my politics—his own were of a different cast. It was a favourite
notion with him that no happier or more excellent Government had ever existed than that of
the English nation in the reigns of George the First and
George the Second. From disparaging my philosophy,
he passed by a very natural transition to the setting light, either really or in pretence,
by the abilities for which I had some credit. He often questioned me with affected
earnestness as to the truth of the report that I was the author of the ‘Cursory Sketches on Chief Justice Eyre’s
Charge to the Grand Jury,’ of which pamphlet he always declared the
highest admiration, and to which he repeatedly professed that he held himself indebted for
his life. The question was revived at the dinner I have mentioned. I answered carelessly to
his enquiry that I believed I was the author of that pamphlet. He insisted on a reply in
precise terms to his question, and I complied. He then requested that I would give him my
hand. To do this I was obliged to rise from my chair and go to the end of the table where
he sat. I had no sooner done this than he suddenly conveyed my hand to his lips, vowing
that he could do no less by the hand that had given existence to that production. The
suddenness of the action filled me with confusion; yet I must confess that when I looked
back upon it, this homage thus expressed was more gratifying to me than all the applause I
had received from any other quarter.
Another detached note contains fragments of a conversation at Horne Tooke’s during another dinner party about the
same time; it has some small value as bearing on the controversy about the authorship of
“Junius’ Letters.”
“Wimbledon.—For several
years after the commencement of the present reign (except the ‘Daily Advertizer’) there were but two newspapers,
the ‘Gazetteer’ and the
‘Public Advertizer:’
afterwards started up the ‘Ledger,’ expressly ministerial.
“Horne Tooke
knows who was the author of ‘Junius’
Letters.’ He wrote a few years before letters under the signature of
‘Lucius,’ collected in two volumes, and intended a
series under the signature of ‘Brutus;’ he designed
the coincidence of the three for a clue to his secret. He sunk
‘Junius’ at last—by law arguments, a science in
which he was uninformed, and city politics, which he did not understand; he is still
living. Tooke speaks of his style with the highest
commendation.
“H. T., born
1737; goes abroad with Elwes, heir to Sir Harvey Elwes (whose estate afterwards descended to
Megget, alias Miser
Elwes, 1763); staid abroad four years.
“Burke came
to England before Tooke went abroad; he had
previously a pension of £200 for writing a speech ‘for singlespeech Hamilton.
“Tooke was to
have for his services with Elwes £300 a-year for
life, or a provision in the Church to the amount of £900; his
(Tooke’s) father was a tradesman in the city.
“Tooke
brought home his ward from the South of France in a fit of insanity, the young man at
the bottom of the chaise, and Tooke on the seat armed with
pistols. The young man was not allowed knife or fork.”
The diaries add little worth recording. They show an ever increasing
number of acquaintances, among whom the most noticeable are Lord
Lauderdale, who was afterwards Plenipotentiary to France in 1806, and died
in 1839; Mrs Siddons, and Basil
Montagu. This gentleman was for many years a warm friend and devoted admirer
of Godwin. He was Q.C., Commissioner of Bankruptcy,
and author of “A Digest of the Bankruptcy
Laws.” He died in 1851, aged 81. Opie the
painter, R.A., buried in St Paul’s 1807, also became an acquaintance
of Godwin first in this year. With Amelia
Alderson, who became Mrs Opie, he had
formed a fast friendship during his visit to Norwich in 1793, and many letters had already
passed between them. He paid another and a more extended visit to Dr Parr at Hatton, near Warwick, in the summer of this
year. Though Mrs Shelley records that he had become
disgusted with the excesses of the French Revolution, it must not be supposed that he had
in any degree wavered in his allegiance to its principles, or shrunk from such of its acts
as sprung from deliberation. Thus we find an entry: “June 9th, The Young Capet
dies,” showing that he acquiesced at least in the deposition of Louis XVI., and the degradation of his family from all royal
titles.
Holcroft had gone to Exeter during Godwin’s absence from London, and from Broadclyst,
near Exeter, he addressed the following letter to his friend:—
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Clist, July
22d, 1795.
“Had I not forgotten the place of Dr Parr’s residence, you would have
received the ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah’
from me. You would have heard how I fell from a slip ladder, and broke it
fairly in two; how, with difficulty, I kept what your friend at Hatton calls
soul and body together; how I endeavoured to overcome the extreme pain, but at
last was obliged, partly by entreaty and partly by
precaution to send for a village surgeon; how he took a full basin of blood
from me; how, half an hour after his departure, the spasms with which I had
before been seized assaulted me with two-fold, or, for aught I know, with
ten-fold malignity; how I was obliged to send to Exeter for another Dr in
search of ease; how he affirmed my ribs were broken; how I believe they were
not, but am not quite certain; how he made me swallow potions which proved to
be opiates, and which indeed relieved me in part from spasm, but consigned me
over to drowsy stupidity, which to me appeared a more intolerable evil; how I
was roused from this lethargic struggle after existence by a severe fit of the
gout; how I lay with my joints burning and my muscles cramped and twisted,
during which I had full leisure for the display of my system ‘of
resistance to pain;’ how I persuaded myself, in spite of my tormentors,
that my system was true; how it induced me to laugh and joke, and exercise my
little wits on all that came within my sphere of action; how some believed I
was in pain, and some believed I was not; and how difficult I found it to
define to myself what pain is. In short, like my predecessor Grumio, I would have told you a very tragical
tale, had not my ignorance of your local existence prevented me.
“The gout has not yet left me, though I carry it about
in a very clandestine kind of a manner; and till it has disappeared, I am
advised not to bathe again; being further advised that bathing would be very
good for me. Hence you will perceive I have not escaped that Tyrant
Necessity—(if you can tell me when I shall, pray send me the intelligence by
express, I will venture the expense)—and that the Necessity of which I am now
the slave is uncertainty.
“I have had occasion to talk of you, or rather of your
essence, your ‘Political
Justice,’ and your ‘Caleb.’ If you suppose I understand
you, I need not tell you in what terms I spoke. I sometimes doubt whether it be
right, i.e., necessary, to declare sentiments of
personal affection; yet I still seem more strongly to doubt whether it be right
totally to omit such declarations; for impossible as it is that men should
perceive utility, or if you will virtue, and not love it, yet the temporary uncertainties
to which the clearest minds appear to be subject, may render declarations
concerning our feelings necessary. To what accidents you or I shall hereafter
be liable is more than either of us can positively
determine; but it seems to me our minds have proceeded too far for there to be
any probability that our sentiments respecting each
other should suffer any great change. Still, if it be pleasure to remind each
other that we deserve and possess something more than mutual esteem, I see no
good motive for abstaining from the enjoyment of this pleasure.
“I hope you have renewed your visits in Newman Street.
As this letter will perhaps be a more circumstantial narrative of my late
disaster than any they have yet received, be kind enough to communicate the
contents at home.
“Mr Cooper,
partly in consequence of my desire, and partly, as I suppose, from the
decisions of his own judgment, remains near me some time to pursue his studies.
I wish, perhaps more than a wise man ought, to be at home. Whether this
impulse, or the hope of re-establishing my health shall prevail, must be left
to future circumstances: my return, however, cannot be very distant.
“T.
Holcroft.”
“How came I to omit saying that you have a few warm
admirers here, and that the report of your second edition has committed
homicide upon the first? In my opinion, should the publishing be delayed,
both will be injured.”
Holcroft’s faith that death and disease
existed only through the feebleness of man’s mind, must have been rudely shaken,
unless we accept the dictum of Jean Paul, that no
man really believes his creed till he can afford to laugh at it.
The only other letters of special interest preserved during his year are
two from Cooper. He had not yet made the figure on the stage which he and his friends alike hoped that he
would do: life was sustained with difficulty on ten shillings a week and a chance
partridge. Hence he accepted a clerk’s situation in an office, and appears to have
been under a regular agreement. He was ill-treated, or thought himself so, and discharged
himself by running away. No trouble, however, was taken by Mr Dorset,
his employer, to recover the young man, who probably had not been the most docile of
clerks, and he then went to study his chosen profession with Holcroft. How he supported himself, or if Godwin again helped him, does not appear. With these few words the letters
speak for themselves.
Thomas Cooper to William Godwin.
“January 20, 1795.
“The die is, I believe, now finally cast, and if it be,
the result is insignificance, nonentity, death to the hopes my ambition has
oftentimes formed, and on which my mind has continually brooded with
enthusiasm. The little portion of mind I (perhaps) have hitherto retained has
now yielded. It receives its fetters, not indeed without murmuring, but the
curses it pours forth and the tortures it endures are equally unavailing. The
love of fame, which you consider a bad motive for praiseworthy conduct, has
been with me the only spur to intellectual exertion. Perhaps it is for want of
the better motive for action that my mind has now given up the contest, and
that I consent to become totally an everyday man. Your last words to me on
Sunday night were, ‘And thou become a mere vegetable.’ The
damned idea has harassed me ever since. . . . . But why do I complain? Have I
not given my consent to become a slave? Have I not even sought for the means of
becoming so? What right then have I to assume the phraseology or to pretend to
the feelings of a man? They are the last faint struggles of an expiring mind,
and to you therefore I address them, as being the first cause of producing that mind. . . . . I feel half
inclined to go and quarrel with Mr
Holcroft. I do not know, and have not inquired, why I feel that
inclination (I state facts: of causes I am ignorant), though at the same time I
have the utmost veneration and love for him. . . . . The purport of my present
letter is to tell you that I am under treaty with Mr
Dorset (fiends!) to become a clerk in his house, and by this
means I intend to advance towards riches. . . . . . .
“Thomas
Cooper.”
The Same to the Same.
“Exeter, July 25, 1795.
“I am at a loss to discover wherein consists the
singularity of requesting a letter from one I have been in the habit of
considering my most immediate and intimate friend. That you should think it
singular, I do not wonder, as you presently take care to inform me that in so
considering I labour under a mistake . . . You say that I shall probably be
sorry for having asked you to write, when I have read a certain portion of your
letter. This would be the case, perhaps, if anything any man could say to me
would make me sorry. But I am not easily moved to contrition or repentance,
either by falsehood or truth; and it does not in the least operate in that way.
When truth is presented to me, I hope I shall grow better under the perception
of it. When falsehood blows her foul breath upon me, it passes by like the idle
wind I regard not. Since, therefore, I am invulnerable, I rejoice rather than
repent that I requested a letter, as the reception of it has, in some measure,
let me into the state of your feelings.
“You say that my pretence of a
ten days’ ramble appears to be a cloak for a visit
to Bath. What criminality there is in a visit to Bath that should require a
cloak, I cannot perceive; but take my word for it, whatever desperate villany I
may engage in shall not be under a cloak; and when, as you express it, I sink
into vice, it shall not be into its sourness; it shall be into the dashing
whirlpool that openly destroys everything around it. Therefore, whenever vice
becomes my object, notorious shall be the fact.
. . . . . . . “Thomas
Cooper.”
Godwin writes, of 1796:—
“In the preceding year the Earl of Lauderdale had requested the favour of my acquaintance, and now
I was almost a regular attendant at his most select parties. The persons I met at them
were Mr Fox, General
Fitzpatrick, Lord Derby, Sir Philip Francis, Mr
Adam, Mr Tierney, Mr Courtenay, Mr Dudley
North, Mr William Smith,
Mr Robert Adair, &c., &c. In my
little deserted mansion I received, on the 22d of April, a party of twelve persons, the
most of whom good-humouredly invited themselves to dine with me, and for whom I ordered
provisions from a neighbouring coffee-house. Among this party were Dr Parr and his two daughters, Mr and Mrs
Mackintosh, Mr Holcroft,
Mrs Wollstonecraft, and Mrs Inchbald. I was also introduced about this time by
Merry, the poet, to a most accomplished and
delightful woman, the celebrated Mrs Robinson.
In the course of this summer I paid a second visit to Norfolk, in the company of
Merry, and had the happiness, by my interference and
importunity with my friends, to relieve this admirable man from a debt of £200, for
which he was arrested while I was under his roof, and would otherwise have been thrown
into jail.”
To this the Diary adds but little. It records, in scarce intelligible
private notes, the increasing intimacy with Mary
Wollstonecraft, of which more hereafter; and there is some evidence that
Godwin during this year might, even at his
mature age, have said in reference to her as Proteus
said of Julia— “Thou hast metamorphos’d me, Made me neglect my studies, lose my time;” for the record of work is slender, and there is less evidence of interest in public
questions.
Two letters, however, claim insertion. King, the Jew bill-broker already named, was concerned in a trial arising
out of his not altogether creditable
business. He wrote to Godwin, requesting him to
appear as his friend and supporter, and to use his influence with “some
nobleman” to do the same. This letter is worded somewhat vaguely; and it does not
appear whether he wanted evidence to character given in his favour, or merely the moral
support in the eyes of the public which would have been afforded by such appearance of
distinguished men in court by his side. The following very characteristic letter is an
answer to this application:—
William Godwin to John King.
“Jan. 24, 1796.
“I am extremely surprised at the note I have just
received from you, and hasten to oppose the false statement it contains. From
the first moment I was acquainted with you, it was a contest between me and
several of my friends, and partly in my own mind, whether or no I ought to be
acquainted with a man, of whom, to say the least, the world entertained a very
ill opinion, respecting the justice of which I could be no competent judge.
Upon what grounds, do you think, I decided that contest? I said, ‘It
would be absurd for me to attempt to associate only with immaculate
persons; nor do I believe that the right way to attempt to correct the
errors of the vicious, is that all honest men should desert
them.’ As to the frequency of my visits, I appeal to your own memory
whether I ever sought that frequency. Did you imagine that your dinners were to
be a bribe, seducing me to depart from the integrity of my judgment? That would
be a character meaner than that of the poorest pensioner of the vilest court
that ever existed.
“You seem to insinuate that I ought to appear in court
as your friend and supporter. I have always avoided connecting myself with any
set of men, even though Charles Fox should
be at their head. I will stand or fall by my own character, and my own
principles. Are you ignorant that, if I were to show myself as your supporter,
it would be considered as a declaration, not merely that
I thought you injured by Alex. Champion,
Esq., of Winchester Street, but that I approved of the general spirit of your
transaction with Philips, and other similar transactions?
If I were asked in open court whether, upon the whole, I believed that your
money transactions were immaculate, or that they had in some instances been
very exceptionable, what do you think would be my answer?
“You call upon me for an act of friendship, and the
act you demand would be scarcely of any imaginable use to you. At the same time
you show very little friendship in the demand. Why should my character be
involved with yours, which however as you may conceive undeservedly labours
under a very extensive odium? Why should I bring obloquy upon all my future,
and all my past labours? No sir, I will retain my little portion of usefulness
undiminished. Whatever may be my share of good opinion with the world, it shall
be injured by no man’s vices but my own. Should I not be both fool and
knave if I did otherwise?
“You oblige me to treat you unceremoniously. But I
must venture that rather than be misunderstood. Otherwise I certainly would
have refused to give you pain, especially at the present moment. If there were
anything I could do for your service that I could be brought to think
reasonable, I would most cheerfully do it. I wish you all imaginable happiness,
but I cannot sacrifice my independence and my judgment. Upon this footing, and
this explanation being given, I am willing that our acquaintance should either
cease or continue, as best suits your inclinations. It is perhaps impossible
that one human being should have a repeated good humoured intercourse with
another, without increasing in kindness towards him. But, remember, I can dine
at a man’s table, without being prepared to be the partisan of his
measures and proceedings.
“What a strange dilemma do you create for your
acquaintance! If I had ceased to visit you, you would have censured me, as
unnecessarily squeamish and fastidious. I have continued to visit you, and you
conclude that I ought to be ready to proceed all lengths with you.
“W.
Godwin.”
The intimacy was continued. King’s reply has in it something of bluster, mixed with a great
desire not to quarrel with Godwin, and ends thus;
J. King to William Godwin.
“24 Piccadilly, Janry. 26th, 1796.
“. . . I am ashamed of the illiberally about dining
with me. Do I expect every man to be my partizan who dines with me, or desist
my invitations when he differs from me in opinion? I say I understand you now,
but I still like you, and perhaps you will hereafter like me better when you
know me more, and the impracticability of your own theory. Merry and Este dine with me to-morrow when I expect you will join them.
John King.”
It appears from the diary that the invitation was accepted.
Godwin’s fearlessness to offend his own
friends and supporters, if duty called him to oppose them in any degree, appears in a
nobler manner in a letter to Erskine in reference to
his defence of political prisoners, in which he thought Erskine
compromised principle for the sake of results, and there are many other letters of
criticism to Fawcet and others showing the same
fearlessness, but these have not in them otherwise anything to call for special remark. The
same may be said of a correspondence which began to be frequent between himself and
Miss Alderson.
Godwin’s replies to the lady’s letters are not extant,
and hers do not at this period show any great literary power. They are lively and pleasant,
and show Miss Alderson as she was in days which afterwards seemed to
her frivolous, and in which she was unconverted. An extract from one may here be
transcribed, as it gives the last glimpse of an old friend.
Miss Alderson to William Godwin.
“Norwich, 5th of Febry., 1796.
“. . . I called on your old friend Mrs Southern about a month ago, and asked her
opinion of ‘Caleb
Williams:’ now, pray let not thy noble courage be cast down
when I inform you that both Mrs S. and her daughter think
you talk too favourably of wicked men, and that ‘Italian Letters’ (your first novel),
are vastly prettier than ‘Caleb
Williams.’ Console yourself, my good friend, by reflecting on the
fable of the old man and his ass.”
Mrs Sothren had become more tolerant since in 1788
the fact that Godwin had turned novel-writer had
given the good lady “serious concern.”
There is some reason to suppose that Godwin had at one moment seriously thought of asking Amelia Alderson to be his wife, and that not long before
his intimacy with Mary Wollstonecraft, but whether
the lady or her father declined the alliance, or whether no offer was actually made, it is
plain that the feeling between the two was at no time warmer than a sincere friendship. Nor
was there a shade of pique or jealousy to come between Miss Alderson
and Mary Wollstonecraft. They were no sooner acquainted, in the spring
of this year, than they became fast friends, and in one of the letters still preserved from
Miss Alderson to Mrs Imlay (Mary
Wollstonecraft) is this curious sentence, that whatever Miss
Alderson had seen before for the first time had always disappointed her,
“except Mrs Imlay and the Cumberland Lakes.”
She was one of the persons who always looked with interest on the intimacy between
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and rejoiced
when their marriage was declared.
The relation in which this remarkable woman stood to Imlay and to Godwin, and the light in which the very exceptional nature of the case may
present itself to us, will be presently considered. No doubt, however, not only she, but
Mrs Inchbald and others, may be in some degree
compromised by the association with one who has been mentioned in
Godwin’s notes—Mrs
Robinson. This lady, whose maiden name was Darby, had
married very young, and her marriage had proved unhappy. She went on the stage, and while
acting Perdita in the Winter’s Tale, had the ill fortune to attract the
notice of the Prince of Wales, whose mistress she
became. This connection was short, but was not the only one she formed. At this time she
was living on a pension from the Prince, and was received in a certain society, chiefly
literary and theatrical.
There is a radical difference between the life of one who honestly
believed, on moral grounds, that marriage as usually understood is a mistake, and that true
marriage can dispense with outward forms, and is an union of the heart and mind, and one
who necessarily and avowedly was only the object and ministress of a fleeting passion of
the basest sort. Yet even republicans were then dazzled by the name of a prince, and the
shame of a royal amour was felt less then than perhaps it now would be. The day had gone
by, if indeed it ever had been, save in the imagination of a song writer, when such a
connection would be repudiated with the scorn expressed in the fine old ballad of
“Mary Ambree,” nor had that day dawned, if now it
has, in which to be the mistress of a prince is held to be the lowest and most fatal
degradation, because in that case alone must the mistress abandon all hope of ever being
made “an honest woman” by him who has wronged her.
With this halo of false stage light around her, Mrs Robinson appears to have been a very agreeable
woman, and her society was eagerly cultivated.
The record of the year may close with the following letter:
Mrs Godwin sen. to William Godwin.
[No date, but Mrs Sothren died Dec. 12, 1796.
The top of the page is wanting.]
“Mrs Sothren
pass’d out of this life in a serene Slumber. She had been down stairs the
day before; eat some minc’d turkey, and, with taking hold of ye maids
arm, walked about the room. Departed abt. 4 o’clock Thursday morng., 22
inst. Mr Sothren sent a messinger yt same morning to
acquaint me of the Awful event; your brother Hully attended ye funeral on Lord’s Day morng.; a Hears
and mourng Coach; Mr and Mrs Sothren, Mr and Mrs
Hatton, H. G. and Miss
Jane, in ye coach; barers 5s. a piece. She said she thought she
would be too heavy to be carried on men’s sholders: your brother slept at
the Widow Nutter’s, a very nice woman: the deare
Creature was a pattern of strict piety, Humility, patience, doing good to all
as far as she had ability and opportunity; tho’ not rich in this
world’s goods, was rich in the promises, disclaiming all merit of her
own, owning she had nothing but what she had recieved. Others have a loss, a
great one, but myself the greatest; to die is her gain, as St Paul saith of himself. It now remains that we
keep her steps in mind, that we may meet her, with all our pious friends, in
the realms of Joy and Peace. She has desired yo sh’d have her watch, yr
Sister can give yo further particulars. She did not mean to make a will, as her
Estate was not at her Disposal after her death. I sent you a Hare 13 Instant,
did yo receive it, was it good and of any use; sh’d you like anything
else better. If you have a few spare minutes, sh’d like to receive a
letter fr you, and to be informed if there is any alteration for the better in
Josh. respecting his family. I hear
a poor account of his aunt Barber, yt is, that she is a
kept Miss to Mr H. Hall. I shall inclose this in a goose
for my daughter Joseph, directed to Son John.—I am, with sincear affection, yours,
“A.
Godwin.”
CHAPTER VII. THE WOLLSTONECRAFTS. 1759—1791.
Godwin’s increasing
intimacy with Mary Wollstonecraft has been already
noticed. She had not made any great impression on him at their earliest meetings, nor, when
he first knew her, had she ceased to consider herself as virtually the wife of Imlay, whose name she bore. The treatment she had received
from this person, however, was such that when the connection was finally dissolved, the
bitterness of parting was already past, and the affectionate friendship existing between
herself and Godwin passed easily into a warmer feeling. There were,
however, many reasons on both sides which rendered the idea of marriage distasteful.
Mrs Shelley has left a note in regard to her
father which must be given at length.
“He was very averse to marriage. Poverty was a
strong argument against it. When he concocted a code of morals in ‘Political Justice,’ he warmly
opposed a system which exacted a promise to be kept to the end of life, in spite of
every alteration of circumstance and of feeling. Objections to marriage are usually
supposed to infer an approval, and even practice, of illicit intercourse. This was far
from being the case with Godwin. He was in a
supreme degree a conscientious man, utterly opposed to anything like vice or
libertinism, nor did his sense of duty permit him to indulge in any deviation from the
laws of society, which, though he might regard as unjust, could not, he felt, be
infringed without deception and injury to any woman who should act in opposition to them. The loss of usefulness to both parties, which the very
stigma brings, the natural ties of children, entailing duties which necessitate the
duration of any connection, and which, if tampered with, must end in misery, all these
motives were imperative in preventing him from acting on theories, which yet he did not
like to act against.
“Among his acquaintance were several women, to
whose society he was exceedingly partial, and who were all distinguished for personal
attraction and talents. Among them may be mentioned the celebrated Mary Robinson, whom to the end of his life he
considered as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but though he admired her so
greatly, their acquaintance scarcely attained intimate friendship. It was otherwise
with Mrs Inchbald; he saw her frequently, he
delighted in her manners, her conversation, her loveliness; yet he was not in love,
and, above all, never thought of marrying her. He was intimate with Miss
Alderson, afterwards Mrs Opie, but
their friendship is purely such as is formed every day in society. He admired her
beauty and sprightliness. She liked his conversation and respected his talents.
“There was yet another favourite. She was married,
and this circumstance was a barrier to every sentiment except friendship, but he
certainly experienced for her more of tenderness and preference than for any other
among his acquaintance.”
It will be plain from what has been already said that Mrs Shelley may possibly have been misinformed about
Miss Alderson. There seems reason to believe that
Godwin did contemplate marriage with her, and
did make a proposal on the subject to Dr Alderson,
if not to the lady herself. The lady to whom Mrs Shelley alludes in
the last paragraph is of course Mrs Reveley, afterwards Mrs Gisborne. It may be added that
Godwin’s dislike of what in “Political Justice” he terms
“co-habitation,” i.e., in his use of the word, the
living perpetually in the same house with another person, and having no time or place which
can be considered absolutely one’s
own, without unkindness or incivility, worked greatly in aid of his graver theoretical
objections to marriage. It is now necessary to give a detailed account of her who broke the
even tenor of Godwin’s passionless existence, who for his sake
altered not a little her own views, and whose character has been a mark for severer censure
than those of women who to a far greater extent than herself have run counter to the
prejudices and instincts of ordinary society.
Mary Wollstonecraft, who was born April 27, 1759,
was the eldest daughter of a large family, the children of a man who had inherited and
spent a considerable fortune. The family appear to have been originally of Irish
extraction, but Mary’s grandfather was a respectable
manufacturer in Spitalfields, and realized the property which his son squandered. Her
mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Dixon. She
was Irish, and of good family. Mr Wollstonecraft was
not bred to any profession, but after he had come to the end of his money he left Hoxton,
where he had lived for a short time, and after many changes of residence—to Essex and to
Beverley, in Yorkshire, among others—he went to live at Laugharne in Pembrokeshire, where
he had a farm. He soon, however, returned to London for a time. Mary
Godwin’s mother died in 1780, leaving six children—Edward, an attorney, settled near the Tower in London;
Mary, Everina, and
Eliza, James, afterwards in the Navy; and Charles, who finally emigrated to America. Mr
Wollstonecraft speedily married again, but though his wife seems to have
done what she could to keep him out of difficulties, he was a man of idle and dissipated
habits, and dropped ever lower in fortune and respectability. His
home became no fit place for his daughters, who indeed were obliged to endeavour to earn
their own livelihood.
Mary had a friend in Fanny Blood,
a girl of her own age, and whose circumstances were somewhat similar. Fanny
Blood supported her family as an artist, and lived for some time at Walham
Green, where Mary joined her, and earned her
livelihood by helping Mrs Blood, who took in needlework. She looked to
an independent career as a teacher in a school; Everina went to keep her brother’s house; and Eliza married, when circumstances occurred which threw on
her a far greater amount of responsibility and difficulty.
Eliza Wollstonecraft had married a Mr Bishop, but the marriage had proved from the first an
unhappy one. It is more than probable there were faults on both sides. All the
Wollstonecraft sisters were enthusiastic, excitable, and hasty-tempered, apt to exaggerate
trifles, sensitive to magnify inattention into slights, and slights into studied insults.
All had bad health of a kind which is especially trying to the nerves, and
Eliza had in excess the family temperament and constitution. With
a great desire for culture and self-improvement, she had less actual education than
Everina, and very far less than her gifted
sister Mary, so that there was little to counteract
the waywardness of a hasty disposition. Yet with all this there can be no doubt that
Bishop was a man of furious violence, and from the letters which
remain it would seem that many of the painful scenes in Mary’s
unfinished novel, “The Wrongs of
Women,” are simple transcriptions of what she had known or even witnessed
in her sister’s married life.
Mary, much attached to all her brothers and sisters,
was devoted to Eliza, and considered no sacrifice
too great to make for her. To save her from her misery, she at once gave up all hopes for
the time of an independent career, and so soon
as it was determined that Eliza should leave her husband, resolved to
make a home for her. On Mary fell the real responsibility of urging so
strong a step as her sister’s flight not only from Mr
Bishop, but also from their child. But Mrs
Bishop’s reason had all but given way under her trials, and to escape
was the immediate and only course which presented itself. As soon as a final separation
from Bishop had been effected, Mary took lodgings
at Islington with Fanny Blood. The scheme proposed
was that Mary and Eliza should obtain daily
pupils, and that Fanny Blood should maintain herself as an artist.
This plan was tried for a very short time, but with no success, and the sisters then
removed to Newington Green, where they had some influential friends, and soon obtained
about twenty day-scholars. A relation, Mrs Campbell, and her little
son, came to board with them, as well as another lady and her three children. This flash of
prosperity induced Mary to take a larger house, the expense of which
involved her in serious difficulties. The sum due for the board of the three children was
irregularly paid, and the Green proved too small a place in those days to support a
day-school, which should prove remunerative. It subsisted, however, in a languishing state
for two years and a half.
George Blood, Mrs
Skeys’ younger brother, had also a great share of her affection. His
disposition and the unfortunate condition of his home, since his father was a drunken spendthrift, attracted her to the
lad, and she felt also much for him because he entertained a hopeless, unrequited love for
her sister Everina, who was considerably older than
herself. Somewhat wild and reckless while a mere lad, and somewhat unsettled, he accepted a
situation as clerk near Lisbon, with hopes of promotion, but abandoned it almost at once.
He then returned to Ire-land, where his father was settled in a
situation far beyond his deserts, gained some good appointment, and appears to have done
very well. During several years Mary’s
correspondence with George Blood was frequent and intimate, and some
of her letters to him, as well as those to her sisters, will at once fill up details, and
receive illustration from this sketch of her life at Newington. Those who have known
Mary Wollstonecraft only by reports which may have reached them of
her after career, and by second-hand criticism on her writings, will be astonished to find
in them so strong a vein of piety of the type that would now be called evangelical.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Saturday Afternoon [November 1783].
“I expected to have seen you before this, but the
extreme coldness of the weather is a sufficient apology. I cannot yet give any
certain account of Bess, or form a
rational conjecture with respect to the termination of her disorder. She has
not had a violent fit of frenzy since I saw you, but her mind is in a most
unsettled state, and attending to the constant fluctuation of it is far more
harassing than the watching those raving fits that had not the least tincture
of reason. Her ideas are all disjointed, and a number of wild whims float on
her imagination, and fall from her unconnectedly, something like strange dreams
when judgment sleeps, and fancy sports at a fine rate. Don’t smile at my
language, for I am so constantly forced to observe her—lest she run into
mischief—that my thoughts continually turn on the unaccountable wanderings of
her mind. She seems to think she has been very ill used, and, in short, till I
see some more favourable symptoms, I shall only suppose that her malady has
assumed a new and more distressing appearance.
“One thing, by way of comfort, I must tell you, that
persons who recover from madness are generally in this way before they are perfectly restored, but whether
Bess’s faculties will ever
regain their former tone, time only will show. At present I am in suspense. Let
me hear from you or see you, and believe me to be yours affectionately,
M. W.
“Mr D. promised to call last
night, and I intended sending this by him. We have been out in a coach, but
still Bess is far from being well. Patience—Patience. Farewell.
“Sunday, noon.”
The Same to the Same.
“[December 1783].
“I don’t know what to do. Poor Eliza’s situation almost turns my brain.
I can’t stay and see this continual misery, and to leave her to bear it
by herself without any one to comfort her, is still more distressing. I would
do anything to rescue her from her present situation. My head is quite confused
with thus being to so little purpose. In this case something desperate must be
determined on. Do you think Edward will
receive her? Do speak to him; or if you imagine that I should have more
influence on his mind, I will contrive to see you, but you must caution him
against expostulating with or even mentioning the affair to Bishop, for it would only put him on his
guard, and we should have a storm to encounter that I tremble to think of. I am
convinced that this is the only expedient to save Bess,
and she declares she had rather be a teacher than stay here. I must again
repeat it, you must be secret; nothing can be done till she leaves the house.
For his friend Wood very justly said that he was
‘either a lion or a spaniel.’ I have been some time
deliberating on this, for I can’t help pitying B.,
but misery must be his portion at any rate till he alters himself, and that
would be a miracle.
“To be at Edward’s is not desirable, but of the two evils she must
choose the least. Write a line by the bearer, or by the post
to-morrow—don’t fail. I need not urge you to use your endeavours; if I
did not see it was absolutely necessary, I should not have fixed on it. I tell
you she will soon be deprived of reason. B. cannot behave properly, and those who
would attempt to reason with him must be mad, or have very little observation.
Those who would save Bess must act and
not talk.”
The Same to the Same.
“Monday Morning [January 1784].
“I have nothing to tell you, my dear girl, that will
give you pleasure. Yesterday was a dismal day, long and dreary. Bishop was very ill, &c., &c. He is
much better to-day, but misery haunts this house in one shape or other. How
sincerely do I join with you in saying that if a person has common sense they
cannot make one completely unhappy. But to attempt to lead or govern a weak
mind is impossible; it will ever press forward to what it wishes, regardless of
impediments, and, with a selfish eagerness, believe what it desires
practicable, though the contrary is as clear as the noonday. My spirits are
hurried with listening to pros and cons; and my head is so confused, that I
sometimes say no, when I ought to say yes. My heart is almost broken with
listening to B. while he reasons the case. I cannot insult
him with advice, which he would never have wanted, if he was capable of
attending to it. May my habitation never be fixed among the tribe that
can’t look beyond the present gratification—that draw fixed conclusions
from general rules—that attend to the literal meaning only, and because a thing
ought to be, expect that it will come to pass. B. has made
a confidant of Skeys; and as I can never
speak to him in private, I suppose his pity may cloud his judgment. If it does,
I should not either wonder at it or blame him. For I that know, and am fixed in
my opinion, cannot unwaveringly adhere to it; and when I reason, I am afraid of
being unfeeling. Miracles don’t occur now, and only a miracle can alter
the minds of some people. They grow old, and we can only discover by their
countenances that they are so. To the end of the chapter will their misery
last. I expect Fanny next Thursday, and
she will stay with us but a few days. Bess desires her love; she grows better, and of course more
sad.”
The Same to the Same.
[January 1784.]
“Here we are, Everina; but my trembling hand will scarce let me tell you so.
Bess is much more composed than I
expected her to be; but to make my trial still more dreadful, I was afraid in
the coach she was going to have one of her flights, for she bit her
wedding-ring to pieces. When I can recollect myself, I’ll send you
particulars; but, at present, my heart beats time with every carriage that
rolls by, and a knocking at the door almost throws me into a fit. I hope
B. will not discover us, for I could
sooner face a lion; yet the door never opens, but I expect to see him panting
for breath. Ask Ned how we are to behave
if he should find us out, for Bess is determined not to
return. Can he force her?—but I’ll not suppose it, yet I can think of
nothing else. She is sleepy, and going to bed; my agitated mind will not permit
me. Don’t tell Charles or any
creature. Oh! let me entreat you to be careful, for Bess
does not dread him now so much as I do. Again, let me request you to write, as
B.’s behaviour may silence my fears. You will
soon hear from me again. Fanny carried
many things to Lear’s, brush-maker in the Strand,
next door to the White Hart—Yours,
Mary.
“Miss Johnston—Mrs
Dodds, opposite the Mermaid, Church St., Hackney.
“She looks now very wild. Heaven protect us!
“I almost wish for an husband, for I want somebody
to support me.”
The Same to the Same.
“Sunday Afternoon January 1784].
“Your welcome letter arrived just now, and we thank you
for sending it so soon. Your account of B. does not surprise me, as I am convinced that, to gratify the
ruling passion, he could command all the rest. The plea of the child occurred
to me, and it was the most rational thing he could
complain of. I know he will tell a plausible tale, and the generality will pity
him and blame me; but, however, if we can snatch Bess from extreme wretchedness, what reason shall we have to
rejoice. It was, indeed, a very disagreeable affair; and if we had stayed a day
or two longer, I believe it would never have been effected. For
Bess’s mind was so harassed with the fear of
being discovered, and the thought of leaving the child, that she could not have
stood it long. I suppose B. told you how we escaped; there
was full as much good luck as good management in it As to
Bess, she was so terrified, that she lost all presence
of mind, and would have done anything. I took a second coach, to prevent his
tracing us. Well, all this may serve to talk about and laugh at when we meet,
but it was no laughing matter at the time. Bess is
tolerably well; she cannot help sighing about little Mary,
whom she tenderly loved; and on this score I both love and pity her. The poor
brat! it had got a little hold on my affections; some time or other I hope we
shall get it. Yesterday we were two languid ladies; and even now we have pains
in all our limbs, and are as jaded as if we had taken a long journey . . . All
these disorders will give way to time, if it brings a little tranquillity with
it; and the thought of having assisted to bring about so desirable an event,
will ever give me pleasure to think of. I hope you sent the letters I enclosed
to you, as Bess writ a few very proper lines to
B. I am very glad you are in town, as I depend on you
for keeping Ned firm.
B. would make a more determined person flinch. This
quiet portends no good; he will burst out at last, and the calm will end in the
usual manner. Tell my brother that Bess is fixed in her
resolution of never returning; but what will be the consequence? And if a
separate maintenance is not to be obtained, she’ll try to earn her own
bread. Write to us an account of everything; you cannot be too particular. She
carried off almost all her clothes, but we have no linen. I wish you could
contrive to send us a few changes at the first opportunity, it matters not whom
they belong to. We have neither chemise, handkerchief, or apron, so our
necessities are pressing.”
The Same to the Same.
[January 1784.]
[After discussing the possibility of keeping a school.]
“With economy we can live on a guinea a week, and that we can with ease
earn. The lady who gave Fanny five
guineas for two drawings will assist us and we shall be independent. . . . If
Ned makes us a little present of
furniture it will be very acceptable, but if he is prudent, we must try to do
without it. I knew I should be the Mrs Brown—the shameful
incendiary, in this shocking affair of a woman’s leaving her bed-fellow,
they thought the strong affection of a sister might
apologize for my conduct, but that the scheme was by no means a good one. In
short ’tis contrary to all the rules of conduct that are published for
the benefit of new married ladies, by whose advice Mrs
Brook was actuated when she with grief of heart gave up my
friendship. Mrs Clare too, with cautious words approves of
our conduct, and were she to see B.
might advise a reconciliation
“Don’t suppose I am preaching, when I say
uniformity of conduct cannot in any degree be expected from those whose first
motive of action is not the pleasing the Supreme Being, and those who humbly
rely on Providence will not only be supported in affliction, but have a Peace
imparted to them that is past all describing. This state is indeed a warfare,
and we learn little that we don’t smart for in the attaining. The cant of
weak enthusiasts has made the consolations of Religion and the assistance of
the Holy Spirit appear ridiculous to the inconsiderate, but it is the only
solid foundation of comfort that the weak efforts of reason will be assisted
and our hearts and minds corrected and improved till the time arrives when we
shall not only see perfection, but see every creature
around us happy. . . .”
Fanny Blood to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Walham Green, Febry. 18th, 1784.
“My dearEverina.—The
situation of our two poor girls grows ever more and more desperate. My mind is
tortured about them because I cannot see any possible
resource they have for a maintenance. The letter I last night received from
Mary disturbed me so much that I
never since closed my eyes, and my head is this morning almost distracted. I
find she wrote to her brother informing him that it was our intention to live
all together, and earn our bread by painting and needle-work, which gives me
great uneasiness, as I am convinced that he will be displeased at his
sister’s being connected with me, and the forfeiting his favour at this
time is of the utmost consequence. I believe it was I that first proposed the
plan, and in my eagerness to enjoy the society of two so dear to me, I did not
give myself time to consider that it is utterly impracticable. The very utmost
I could earn, one week with another, supposing I had uninterrupted health, is
half-a-guinea a week, which would just pay for furnished lodgings for three
people to pig together. As for needle-work, it is utterly impossible they could
earn more than half-a-guinea a week between them, supposing they had constant
employment, which is of all things the most uncertain. . . . I own with sincere
sorrow that I was greatly to blame for ever mentioning such a plan before I had
maturely considered it; but as those who know me will give me credit for a good
intention I trust they will pardon my folly and inconsideration.” [She
then suggests that a small haberdashery shop should be taken and stocked for
the sisters, and proceeds.] “If your brother should be averse to
assisting them from a notion that I should live with them. . . . I wish you
would take the earliest opportunity of assuring him from me that on no account
whatever will I ever live with them unless fortune should make me quite
independent, which I never expect. My health is so much impaired that I should
be only a burthen on them, and for my own part I don’t spend a thought on
what may become of me. All I wish is to see them provided for comfortably; but
I will neither add to their distress, situated as they now are, nor meanly gain
a subsistence by living with them hereafter, if fortune should smile on them.
This is my fixed resolve. I beseech you to let me hear from you as soon as
possible, for I am impatient to know whether there is the least prospect of comfort
for our dear girls. Believe me to be, dear Everina, yours
sincerely,
F. Blood.”
In the spring of the following year Fanny
Blood married Mr Hugh Skeys, a
merchant, and went with him to Lisbon. Mr Skeys had played fast and
loose for some time, the uncertainty had greatly injured her health, and her new found
happiness was to be of short duration. She left behind great sorrows. Her sister
Caroline had disgraced her family, and her father drank. George, who was steady and respectable, had yet been mixed up with some
discreditable associates, and had gone to Ireland only in time to avoid being seriously
compromised by his association with them. Mary’s letters throw light on the trials of the Blood family as well
as on her own.
Mary Wollstonecraft to George Blood.
“Newington Green, July 3d [1785].
“The pleasure I felt at hearing of your safe arrival
[in Ireland] was a good deal damped by the account you gave of the
captain’s brutality. By this time I hope all the effects of so
disagreeable a voyage are gone off, except your being a little weather-beaten
or so; and you and I don’t think that of much consequence, we have met
with so many rough blasts that have sunk deeper than the skin. You need not
have made any apology to me about the old man. When I entreated you, my dear
George, to be prudent, I only meant
to caution you against throwing your money away on trifling gratifications, but
I did not wish to narrow your heart or desire you to avoid relieving the
present necessities of your fellow-creatures, in order to ward off any future
ill which might happen to self. It would give me great
pleasure to hear there was any chance of your getting some employment. In the
meantime give way to hope, do your duty and leave the rest to Heaven, forfeit
not that sure support in the time of trouble, and though your want of experience and judgment may betray you into many
errors, let not your heart be corrupted by bad example, and then, though it may
be wounded by neglect, and torn by anguish, you will not feel that most acute
of all sorrows, a sense of having deserved the miseries that you undergo.
“Palmer has been respited, and of
course will be pardoned. I have made many inquiries concerning the affair that
alarmed us so much, and find that Palmer’s servant
has sworn a child to you, and that it was on that account those men came to our
house. The girl was waiting at a little ale-house near us, so that if you had
stayed, you would have been involved in a pretty piece of business that your
innocence could not have extricated you out of. I suppose the child is
P.’s, or many fathers may dispute the honour.
Let that be as it will, the recent affair of Mary Ann
would have given this some colour of truth. How troublesome fools are!
Mrs Campbell—who has all the constancy that attends on
folly, and in whose mind, when any prejudice is fixed, it remains for ever—has
long disliked you, and this confined ill-humour has at last broken out, and she
has sufficiently railed at your vices, and the encouragement I have given them.
. . . I have been very ill, and gone through the usual physical operations,
have been bled and blistered, yet still am not well; my harassed mind will in
time wear out my body. I have been so hunted down by cares, and see so many
that I must encounter, that my spirits are quite depressed. I have lost all
relish for life, and my almost broken heart is only cheered by the prospect of
death. I may be years a-dying tho’, and so I ought to be patient, for at
this time to wish myself away would be selfish. Your father and mother are
well, and desire their love; the former has received a letter from Fanny, but her letters to your father are
seldom satisfactory to me. I am trying to get your father a place, but my hopes
are very faint. I forgot to tell you that Palmer’s
servant says she followed you one day in town and raised a mob, but that you
ran away. God bless you, and believe me sincerely and affectionately your
friend. I feel that I love you more than I ever supposed that I did. Adieu to
the village delights. I almost hate the Green, for it seems the grave of all my comforts. Shall I never again see your
honest heart dancing in your eyes?”
Palmer, whose name is mentioned in the foregoing letter, was an
attorney, whose clerk, it would seem, George Blood
had been. He was induced to forge documents for a client of his, one Mrs
Jones, with the intent to represent her as a clergyman’s widow, and
her son, therefore, a fit recipient for a charity for clergy orphans. For this he was tried
and sentenced to death, but was, as the letters show, afterwards respited.
The Same to the Same.
“Newington Green, July 20th, [1785]
. . . . . “I am not a fair weather friend; on the
contrary, I think I love most people best when they are in adversity, for pity
is one of my prevailing passions. I am not fond of possessions, yet, once for
all, let me assure you that I have a mother’s tenderness for you, and
that my heart dances when I make any new discovery of goodness in you. It gives
me the sincerest satisfaction to find that you look for comfort where only it
is to be met with, and that Being in whom you trust will not desert you. Be not
cast down while we are struggling with care, life slips away, and, through the
assistance of Divine Grace, we are obtaining habits of virtue that will enable
us to relish those joys that we cannot now form any idea of. I feel myself
particularly attached to those who are heirs of the promises, and travel on in
the thorny path with the same Christian hopes that render my severe trials a
cause of thankfulness when I can think. . . . I often
see your father and mother; they desire to be remembered to you in the kindest
manner, and entirely acquit you of the crime that is laid to your charge, as do
the girls. . . . I have no creature to be unreserved to. Eliza and Everina are so different that I could as soon fly as open my
heart to them. How my social comforts have dropped away—Fanny first, and then you went over the hills
and far away. I am resigned to my fate, but ’tis that gloomy kind of
resignation that is akin to despair. . . . Your affectionate friend,
Mary.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newington Green, July 25th [1785].
“My dear George,—I have received the long expected packet. . . . The account
Fanny gives of her health is far
from pleasing me, though I imagine that her complaints arise from a new cause
that you can easily guess. . . . She has received several of our letters, and
read in the papers an account of Palmer, which made her
very uneasy lest your name should be mentioned, which would have been an
effectual bar to your settling in Lisbon. . . . Skeys has received congratulatory letters from most of his
friends and relations in Ireland, and he now regrets that he did not marry
sooner. All his mighty fears had no foundation, so that if he had had courage
to have braved the world’s dread laugh, and ventured to have acted for
himself, he might have spared Fanny many griefs, the scars
of which will never be obliterated. Nay more, if she had gone a year or two
ago, her health might have been perfectly restored, which I do not now think
will ever be the case. Before true passion, I am convinced, everything but a
sense of duty moves; true love is warmest when the object is absent. How
Hugh could let Fanny languish in
England, while he was throwing money away at Lisbon, is to me inexplicable, if
he had a passion that did not require the fuel of seeing the object. I much
fear he loves her not for the qualities that render her dear to my heart. Her
tenderness and delicacy are not even conceived by a man who would be satisfied
with the fondness of one of the general run of women. . . .—Your affectionate
friend,
Mary.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newington Green, Sept. 4th [1785].
“By this time, my dear George, I suppose you have received Fanny’s letter, informing you that your fortune has at
last taken a turn. I only heard of it yesterday, and I most sincerely rejoice,
as I earnestly wish to hear of your arrival at Lisbon, on
Fanny’s account as well as your own. I hope to
see you before the year is out,
as I am determined to be with her on a certain occasion if I can possibly
contrive it . . . Palmer has hatched up some story to my
discredit, in order to be revenged on me for opening Mrs
D.’s eyes to his villanies. He is still in prison. I
believe I forgot to tell you that the girl laid the child to him when she could
get no one else to father it. . . .—Your ever affectionate friend.
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
Fanny Skeys wrote from Lisbon entreating her friend
to be with her during her confinement, and Mary
Wollstonecraft, then, as always, utterly unselfish, complied, leaving her
scholars and house in Mrs Bishop’s charge. She
arrived only to nurse her friend in what proved the last hours of her life, and returned
almost heart-broken, for her friendship for Fanny Blood was even more
than a sister’s love, to find matters at Newington worse than before. All chance of
future success was at an end, and the school was given up.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Mrs Bishop.
[Lisbon, Nov. or
Dec. 1785.]
“My dear Girls,—I am beginning to awake out of a
terrifying dream, for in that light do the transactions of these two or three
last days appear. Before I say more, let me tell you that, when I arrived here,
Fanny was in labour, and that four
hours after she was delivered of a boy. The child is alive and well, and
considering the very very low state to which
Fanny was reduced, she is better than could be
expected. I am now watching her and the child. My active spirits have not been
much at rest ever since I left England. I could not write to you on shipboard;
the sea was so rough, and we had such hard gales of wind, the captain was
afraid we should be dismasted. I cannot write to-night, or collect my scattered
thoughts, my mind is so unsettled. Fanny is so worn out,
her recovery would be almost a resurrection, and my reason will scarce allow me to think it possible. I labour to be resigned, and by
the time I am a little so, some faint hope sets my thoughts again afloat, and
for a moment I look forward to days that will, alas! I fear, never come.
“I will try to-morrow to give you some little regular
account of my journey, though I am almost afraid to look beyond the present
moment. Was not my arrival providential? I can scarce be persuaded that I am
here, and that so many things have happened in so short a time. My head grows
light with thinking on it
“Friday morning.—Fanny has been so alarmingly ill since I wrote the above, I
entirely gave her up, and yet I could not write and tell you so: it seemed like
signing her death warrant. Yesterday afternoon some of the most alarming
symptoms a little abated, and she had a comfortable night; yet I rejoice with
trembling lips, and am afraid to indulge hopes: she is very low. The stomach is
so weak it will scarce bear to receive the slightest nourishment; in short, if
I were to tell you all her complaints, you would not wonder at my fears. The
child, though a puny one, is well. I have got a wet-nurse for it. The packet
does not sail till the latter end of next week, and I send this by a ship. I
shall write by every opportunity. We arrived last Monday. We were only thirteen
days at sea. The wind was so high, and the sea so boisterous, the water came in
at the cabin windows, and the ship rolled about in such a manner, it was
dangerous to stir. The women were sea-sick the whole time, and the poor invalid
so oppressed by his complaints, I never expected he would live to see Lisbon. I
have supported him for hours together, gasping for breath, and at night, if I
had been inclined to sleep, his dreadful cough would have kept me awake. You
may suppose that I have not rested much since I came here, yet I am tolerably
well, and calmer than I could expect to be. Could I not look for comfort where
only ’tis to be found, I should have been mad before this, but I feel
that I am supported by that Being who alone can heal a wounded spirit. May He
bless you both.—Yours,
“Mary.”
Before the date of the next letter, poor Fanny was in her grave, Mary
Wollstonecraft had returned, as also had George
Blood, who had thrown up his situation, without a word to any one but his
correspondent. It is probable that, after his gentle sister’s death, he did not get
on so well with his brother-in-law, on whom he was in great measure dependent. Shortly
after Mary’s return, she made her first essay in literature,
publishing a small, and in no way remarkable pamphlet called “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,” for
the copyright of which Mr Johnson, the Bookseller in
Fleet Street, gave her ten guineas. This sum she applied to enable Mr and Mrs Blood to carry out their desire of going to
Ireland and settling in Dublin.
Mary Wollstonecraft to George Blood.
“Newington Green, Feby. 4th, [1786].
“I write to you, my dear George, lest my silence should make you uneasy, yet what have I
to say that will not have the same effect? Things do not go well with me, and
my spirits seem for ever flown. I was a month on my passage, and the weather
was so tempestuous, we were several times in imminent danger. I did not expect
ever to have reached land. If it had pleased Heaven to have called me hence,
what a world of care I should have missed. I have lost all relish for pleasure,
and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be endured. My head is stupid, and
my heart sick and exhausted. But why should I worry you? and yet, if I do not
tell you my vexations, what can I write about?
“Your father and mother are tolerably well, and
enquire most affectionately concerning you. They do not suspect that you have
left Lisbon, and I do not intend informing them of it till you are provided
for. I am very unhappy on their account, for though I am determined they shall
share my last shilling, yet I have every reason to apprehend extreme distress,
and of course they must be involved in it. The school dwindles to nothing, and we shall soon lose our last boarder, Mrs
Disney. She and the girls quarrelled while I was away, which
contributed to make the house very disagreeable. Her sons are to be whole
boarders at Mrs Cockburn’s. Let me turn my eyes on
which side I will, I can only anticipate misery. Are such prospects as these
likely to heal an almost broken heart? The loss of Fanny was sufficient of itself to have thrown a cloud over my
brightest days: what effect then must it have, when I am bereft of every other
comfort? I have too many debts. I cannot think of remaining any longer in this
house, the rent is so enormous, and where to go, without money or friends, who
can point out? My eyes are very bad and my memory gone. I am not fit for any
situation, and as for Eliza, I
don’t know what will become of her. My constitution is impaired, I hope I
shan’t live long, yet I may be a tedious time dying.
“Well, I am too impatient. The will of Heaven be done!
I will labour to be resigned. ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is
weak.’ I scarce know what I write, yet my writing at all when my
mind is so disturbed is a proof to you that I can never be lost so entirely in
misery as to forget those I love. I long to hear that you are settled. It is
the only quarter from which I can reasonably expect any pleasure. I have
received a very short, unsatisfactory letter from Lisbon. It was written to
apologize for not sending the money to your father which he promised. It would
have been particularly acceptable to them at this time, but he is prudent, and
will not run any hazard to serve a friend. Indeed, delicacy made me conceal
from him my dismal situation, but he must know how much I am embarrassed. . . .
“I am very low-spirited, and of course my letter is
very dull. I will not lengthen it out in the same strain, but conclude with
what alone will be acceptable, an assurance of love and regard.
“Believe me to be ever your sincere and affectionate
friend,
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
It was soon quite clear that the school must be altogether abandoned, or
rather it abandoned the teachers, and all three sisters determined to seek their livelihood
as governesses. Everina’s home with her brother was comfortless, and
the shelter grudgingly given; they could none of them find a home with their father and
step-mother. Mr Wollstonecraft had again retired on
very small means to Laugharne in Pembrokeshire, with his wife and younger children
James and Charles. James soon afterwards went to sea, and
Charles, after suffering great privations at home, emigrated,
with, as will be seen, indifferent success. At Laugharne Mr
Wollstonecraft led an obscure, besotted life, which could bring nothing but
misery on his children, and the constant harassing thought of his daughters was how they
could best help him, and wring from their brother Edward the support he had promised to give. Mrs
Bishop and Everina obtained and abandoned many
situations, the changes of which are not important, nor need any of them interest us except
one which Mrs Bishop held in Pembrokeshire, from which were dated
letters worthy to be quoted hereafter.
Mary Wollstonecraft obtained a situation as
governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough in Ireland,
through some friends of one of her chief patrons at Newington, and sailed for Ireland with
these friends, Mr and Mrs Prior, who were crossing to Dublin, in the
autumn of 1787. Mr Prior, at this time Assistant
Master at Eton, was a grandson of a former college porter, had obtained a King’s
Scholarship first at Eton and afterwards became Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
He built the red house opposite the west doorway of the chapel at Eton. One of his
daughters became the wife of Dr Goodall, Provost of
the College. Mary’s life in Ireland will be sufficiently
detailed in the letters she wrote thence, and little need be said beyond what she tells us. The “dear Margaret,”
to whom she was so sincerely attached, became afterwards Lady
Mountcashel, was her close friend through life and Godwin’s correspondent in after years. It is
necessary however to draw particular attention to Mary
Wollstonecraft’s own religious views at this time, and to point out
the tone of earnest orthodox piety which pervades them, and the high morality which also is
their characteristic. For one of the chief slanders brought against the governess in long
after days, was that she had corrupted the minds of her pupils, teaching them lax morality
and false religion. On the contrary, her whole endeavour was to train them for higher
pursuits, and to instill into them a desire for wider culture than fell to the lot of most
girls in those days. Her sorrow was deep that her pupils’ lives were such as to
render sustained study and religious habits of mind alike difficult. The tone of Society in
Ireland at that date, even in the highest families, would now scarcely be credited. Most of
the women with whom Mary Wollstonecraft came in contact were
frivolous, and most of the men were coarse. It is not wonderful that her spirits and health
flagged, and that in spite of the affection of the one child to whom she was attracted she
saw almost everything round her in gloomy colours.
The letters will now speak for themselves, or rather extracts from them,
the lines omitted referring to domestic details devoid of interest.
Mary Wollstonecraft to George Blood.
“Newington Green, May 22d [1787].
“By this time, my dear George, I hope your father and mother have reached Dublin. I
long to hear of their safe arrival A few days after they set sail, I received a
letter from Skeys. He laments his inability to assist
them, and dwells on his own embarrassments. How glad I am they are gone.”
[It will be remembered that their voyage to Dublin, where Mr
Blood hoped to obtain a situation, was brought about wholly
through Mary’s exertions, and in great measure by
her money, ill able as she was to afford such assistance.] “My affairs
are hastening to a crisis. . . . Some of my creditors cannot afford to wait for
their money; as to leaving England in debt, I am determined not to do it . .
Everina and Eliza are both endeavouring to go out into the
world, the one as a companion, and the other as a teacher, and I believe I
shall continue some time on the Green. I intend taking a little cheap lodging,
and living without a servant, and the few scholars I have will maintain me. I
have done with all worldly pursuits and wishes; I only desire to submit without
being dependent on the caprice of our fellow creatures. I shall have many
solitary hours, but I have not much to hope for in life, and so it would be
absurd to give way to fear. Besides, I try to look on the best side, and not to
despond. While I am trying to do my duty in that station in which Providence
has placed me, I shall enjoy some tranquil moments, and the pleasures I have
the greatest relish for are not entirely out of my reach. . . . I have been
trying to muster up my fortitude, and labouring for patience to bear my many
trials. Surely when I could determine to survive Fanny, I can endure poverty and all the lesser ills of life. I
dreaded, oh! how I dreaded this time, and now it is arrived I am calmer than I
expected to be. I have been very unwell; my constitution is much impaired; the
prison walls are decaying, and the prisoner will ere long get free. . .
.—Remember that I am your truly affectionate friend and sister,
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newington Green, July 6th [1787].
“. . . Lady
Kingsborough has written about me to Mrs
Prior, and I wait for further particulars before I give my final
answer. Forty pounds a year was the terms mentioned to me, and half of that sum I could spare to discharge my debts, and
afterwards to assist Eliza. . . . I by
no means like the proposal of being a governess. I should be shut out from
society and be debarred the pleasures of imperfect friendship, as I should on
every side be surrounded by unequals. To live only on terms of civility and
common benevolence without any interchange of little acts of kindness and
tenderness would be to me extremely irksome, but I touch on too tender a
string. I said just now friendship, even friendship, the medicine, the cordial
of life, was imperfect, and so is everything in a world which is meant to
educate us for a better. Here we have no resting-place, nor any stable comfort,
but what arises from our resignation to the will of Heaven, and our firm
reliance on those precious promises delivered to us by Him who brought light
and immortality into the world. He has told us not only that we may inherit
eternal life, but that we shall be changed, if we do not perversely reject the
offered grace. Your letters, my dear boy, afford me great pleasure. . .
.—Yours,
“Mary.”
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Eton, Octr.
9th, Sunday, 1787.
[After saying that Mr
and Mrs Prior do not leave for Ireland quite as soon as
they had intended, she continues.] “The time I spend here appears lost.
While I remained in England I would fain have been near those I love. . . . I
could not live the life they lead at Eton; nothing but dress and ridicule going
forward, and I really believe their fondness for ridicule tends to make them
affected, the women in their manners and the men in their conversation, for
witlings abound and puns fly about like crackers, though you would scarcely
guess they had any meaning in them, if you did not hear the noise they create.
So much company without any sociability would be to me an insupportable
fatigue. I am, ’tis true, quite alone in a crowd, yet cannot help
reflecting on the scene around me, and my thoughts harass me. Vanity in one
shape or other reigns triumphant. . . . My thoughts and wishes tend to that
land where the God of love will wipe away all tears from our eyes, where sincerity and truth will
flourish, and the imagination will not dwell on pleasing illusions, which
vanish like dreams, when experience forces us to see things as they really are.
With what delight do I anticipate the time when neither death nor accidents of
any kind will interpose to separate me from those I love. . . .—Adieu; believe
me to be your affectionate friend and sister,
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
The Same to the Same.
“The Castle, Mitchelstown, Oct. 30, 1787.
“Well, my dear Girl, I am at length arrived at my
journey’s end. I sigh when I say so, but it matters not. I must labour
for content, and try to reconcile myself to a state which is contrary to every
feeling of my soul. I can scarcely persuade myself that I am awake; my whole
life appears like a frightful vision, and equally disjointed. I have been so
very low spirited for some days past, I could not write. All the moments I
could spend in solitude were lost in sorrow and unavailing tears. There was
such a solemn kind of stupidity about this place as froze my very blood. I
entered the great gates with the same kind of feeling as I should have if I was
going into the Bastille. You can make allowance for the feelings which the
General would term ridiculous or artificial. I found I was to encounter a host
of females—My Lady, her stepmother, and three sisters, and Mrses. and Misses without number, who of
course would examine me with the most minute attention. I cannot attempt to
give you a description of the family, I am so low; I will only mention some of
the things which particularly worry me. I am sure much more is expected from me
than I am equal to. With respect to French, I am certain Mr P. has misled them, and I expect, in
consequence of it, to be very much mortified. Lady
K. is a shrewd, clever woman, a great talker. I have not seen
much of her, as she is confined to her room by a sore throat; but I have seen
half a dozen of her companions, I mean not her children, but her dogs. To see a
woman without any softness in her manners caressing animals, and using
infantine expressions is, you may conceive, very absurd
and ludicrous, but a fine lady is a new species to me of animals. I am,
however, treated like a gentlewoman by every part of the family, but the forms
and parade of high life suit not my mind. . . . I hear a fiddle below, the
servants are dancing, and the rest of the family are diverting themselves, I
only am melancholy and alone. To tell the truth, I hope part of my misery
arises from disordered nerves, for I would fain believe my mind is not so very
weak. The children are, literally speaking, wild Irish, unformed and not very
pleasing; but you shall have a full and true account, my dear girl, in a few
days. . . .—I am your affectionate sister and sincere friend,
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
The Same to Mrs Bishop.
“Mitchelstown, Nov. 5th [1787].
“. . . Now to introduce the castle to you, and all its inhabitants, a numerous tribe, I assure
you. The castle is very pleasantly situated, and commands the kind of prospect
I most admire. Near the house, literally speaking, is a cloud-capped hill, and
altogether the country is pleasant, and would please me when anything of the
kind could rouse my attention. But my spirits have been in continual agitation,
and when they will be at rest, heaven only knows. I fear I am not equal to the
task I have been persuaded to undertake, and this fear worries me.
“Lady K. is a
clever woman, and a well-meaning one, but not of the order of being that I
could love. With his Lordship I have had
little conversation, but his countenance does not promise more than good
humour, and a little fun not refined. Another face in
the house appears to me more interesting, a pale one, no other than the author of ‘Shepherds I have lost my love.’ His wife is with him—a gentle
pleasing creature, and her sister, a beauty and a sensible woman into the
bargain. Besides them and several visitors, we have resident here
Lady K.’s stepmother, and her three daughters,
fine girls, just going to market, as their brother says. I have committed to my
care three girls, the eldest fourteen, by no means handsome, yet a sweet girl.
She has a wonderful capacity, but
she has such a multiplicity of employments it has not room to expand itself,
and in all probability will be lost in a heap of rubbish, miscalled
accomplishments. I am grieved at being obliged to continue so wrong a system.
She is very much afraid of her mother,—that such a creature should be ruled
with a rod of iron, when tenderness would lead her anywhere! She is to be
always with me. I have just promised to send her love to my sister, so pray
receive it. Lady K. is very civil, nay, kind, yet I cannot
help fearing her. . . . You have a sneaking kindness, you say, for people of
quality, and I almost forgot to tell you I was in company with a Lord
Fingal in the packet. Shall I try to remember the titles of all
the lords and viscounts I am in company with, not forgetting the clever things
they say? I would sooner tell you a tale of some humbler creatures; I intend
visiting the poor cabins; as Miss K. is allowed to assist
the poor, and I shall make a point of finding them out.
“Adieu, my dear girl, “Yours affectionately, “Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Mitchelstown, Nov. 17, [1787].
. . . “Confined to the society of a set of silly
females, I have no social converse, and their boisterous spirits and unmeaning
laughter exhaust me, not forgetting hourly domestic bickerings. The topics of
matrimony and dress take their turn, not in a very sentimental style—alas, poor
sentiment! it has no residence here. I almost wish the girls were novel readers
and romantic; I declare false refinement is better than none at all, but these
girls understand several languages, and have read cartloads of history, for their mother was a prudent woman. Lady K.’s passion for animals fills up the
hours which are not spent in dressing. All her children have been ill—very
disagreeable fevers. Her ladyship visited them in a formal way, though their
situation called forth my tenderness, and I endeavoured to amuse them, while
she lavished awkward fondness on her dogs. I think now I hear her infantine
lisp. She rouges—and in short is a fine lady, without fancy or sensibility. I
am almost tormented to death by dogs. But you will perceive I am not under the
influence of my darling passion—pity; it is not always so, I make allowance and
adapt myself, talk of getting husbands for the Ladies—and the dogs, and am wonderfully
entertaining; and then I retire to my room, form figures in the fire, listen to
the wind, or view the Gotties, a fine range of mountains near us, and so does
time waste away in apathy or misery. . . . I am drinking asses’ milk, but
do not find it of any service. I am very ill, and so low-spirited my tears flow
in torrents almost insensibly. I struggle with myself, but I hope my Heavenly
Father will not be extreme to mark my weakness, and that He will have
compassion on a poor bruised reed, and pity a miserable wretch, whose sorrows
He only knows. . . . . I almost wish my warfare was over.” . . . [The rest is lost.]
The letters after this date show some improvement, both in health and
spirits, though she was much troubled about family matters, which it is not very easy to
understand in full from the allusions in the letters. It would appear, however, that
Edward Wollstonecraft, the elder brother, not
only refused to contribute anything to the support of his father, which fell almost wholly
on Mary, but declined to afford a home any longer to
Everina, who had been with him for some time. He
also retained in his hands a sum of money, apparently a legacy, which the sisters conceived
should have been divided between them all. He seems to have been selfish and extravagant,
though doing a fair business as an attorney. The letters which passed between the sisters
are either of no special interest or harp on the same string as those already quoted. In
the winter of 1787 the Kingsborough family went to Dublin, and the letters thence again
afford suitable extracts.
Mary Wollslonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Dublin, March 24th, 1788.
“. . . I believe I told you before that as a nation I
do not admire the Irish, and as to the great world and its frivolous ceremonies
I cannot away with them. They fatigue one; I thank Heaven that I was not so
unfortunate as to be born a lady of quality. I am now reading Rousseau’s ‘Emile,’ and love his paradoxes. He
chooses a common capacity to educate, and gives as a reason that a genius will
educate itself. However he rambles into that chimerical world in which I have
too often wandered, and draws the usual conclusion that all is vanity and
vexation of spirit. He was a strange, inconsistent, unhappy, clever creature,
yet he possessed an uncommon portion of sensibility and penetration. . . .
Adieu, yours sincerely,
“Mary.”
The Same to [the Same or Mrs Bishop].
“Dublin, March 14th, 1788.
“. . . I am very weak to-day, but I can account for it
The day before yesterday there was a masquerade; in the course of conversation
some time before, I happened to wish to go to it. Lady
K. offered me two tickets for myself and Miss
Delane to accompany me. I refused them on account of the expense
of dressing properly. She then to obviate that objection lent me a black
domino. I was out of spirits, and thought of another excuse; but she proposed
to take me and Betty Delane to the houses of several
people of fashion who saw masques. We went to a great number, and were a
tolerable, nay, a much admired group. Lady K. went in a
domino with a smart cockade; Miss Moore dressed in the
habit of one of the females of the new discovered islands; Betty
D. as a forsaken shepherdess, and your sister
Mary in a black domino. As it was taken for granted
the stranger who had just arrived could not speak the language, I was to be her
interpreter, which afforded me an ample field for satire. I happened to be very
melancholy in the morning, as I am almost every morning,
but at night my fever gives me false spirits: this night the lights, the
novelty of the scene, and all things together contributed to make me more than half mad. I gave full scope to a satirical
vein and suppose . . .” [The rest is lost].
From Dublin Lord and Lady Kingsborough and their family went to Bristol, Hotwells,
and Bath, and from these places again the letters complain bitterly of the tone of society
in which Mary found herself. She speaks of the
“dissipated lives led by the women of quality,” and finds that
“in many respects the great and little vulgar resemble each other, and in none
more than in the motives which induce them to marry.” Her health was better
away from Ireland, yet the employment continued to be thoroughly uncongenial to her nature,
while she had nothing in common with her employers. It is, therefore, not wonderful that in
the autumn of this year Lady Kingsborough dismissed her governess. In
addition to the long standing want of cordiality Lady Kingsborough had
a new grievance because the love which her children were unable to give to her was bestowed
on a stranger. In one of her letters Mary Wollstonecraft speaks of one
of the younger children having cried herself sick because she was to go into the country
with her mother alone, and Margaret above all the
others showed the great affection she felt for one who in return was devoted to her. During
the year spent with Lady Kingsborough, Mary wrote
a tale called by her own name “Mary,” and devoted in a measure to the record of her own deep friendship with
Fanny Blood.
Mr Johnson, the Publisher, had been struck with the
promise Mary Wollstonecraft had shown before she
went to Ireland. By his strong advice she had greatly improved her knowledge of French, and he now proposed to her that she
should settle in lodgings not far from his house of business, and promised her constant
literary work, chiefly to consist in translating from the French. This offer she at once
accepted, and Lady Kingsborough having parted with her
in London, whither the family had come for the winter, the dismissal and the new life were
communicated to her sister in one and the same letter.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“London, Nov. 7th, 1788:
“. . . I am, my dear girl, once more thrown on the
world; I have left Lord K.’s, and they
return next week to Mitchelstown. I long since imagined that my departure would
be sudden.” [From another letter. “The regret Margaret showed, when I left her for a short
time, was Lady K.’s pretext for
parting with me. They had frequent quarrels, and the consequence was this
determination.”] “I have not seen Mrs Burgh,
but I have informed her of this circumstance, and at the same time mentioned to
her, that I was determined not to see any of my friends till I am in a way to
earn my own subsistence. And to this determination I will adhere. You can
conceive how disagreeable pity and advice would be at this juncture. I have two
other cogent reasons. Before I go on will you pause, and if, after
deliberating, you will promise not to mention to any one what you know of my
designs, though you may think my requesting you to conceal them unreasonable, I
will trust to your honour, and proceed. Mr
Johnson, whose uncommon kindness, I believe, has saved me from
despair and vexation, I shrink back from, and feared to encounter, assures me
that if I exert my talents in writing I may support myself in a comfortable
way. I am then going to be the first of a new genus; I tremble at the attempt,
yet if I fail I only suffer, and should I succeed my
dear girls will ever in sickness have a home, and a refuge, where for a few
months in the year they may forget the cares that disturb the rest I shall strain every nerve to obtain a situation for Eliza nearer town: in short, I am once more
involved in schemes, heaven only knows whether they will answer! yet while they
are pursued life slips away. I would not on any account inform my father or
Edward of my designs—you and
Eliza are the only part of the family I am interested
about, I wish to be a mother to you both. My undertaking would subject me to
ridicule, and an inundation of friendly advice to which I cannot listen; I must
be independent. I wish to introduce you to Mr Johnson, you
would respect him, and his sensible conversation would soon wear away the
impression that a formality, or rather stiffness of manners, first makes to his
disadvantage. I am sure you will love him, did you know with what tenderness
and humanity he has behaved to me. . . .
“I cannot write more explicitly. I have indeed been
very much harassed. But Providence has been very kind to me, and when I reflect
on past mercies, I am not without hope with respect to the future. And freedom,
even uncertain freedom, is dear. . . . This project has long floated in my
mind. You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track, the peculiar bent of
my nature pushes me on.—Adieu, believe me ever your sincere friend and
affectionate sister,
Mary Wollstonecraft.”
“Seas will not now divide us, nor years elapse
before we see each other.”
The Same to the Same.
[No date, but a few days later.]
. . . [Mr Johnson]
“has now settled me in a little house in a street near Blackfriars
Bridge, and he assures me I may earn a comfortable maintenance if I exert
myself. I have given him ‘Mary,’ and before your vacation I shall finish another book for young
people, which I think has some merit . . . Whenever I am tired of solitude I go
to Mr Johnson’s, and there I meet the kind of
company I find most pleasure in. . . . I spent a day at Mrs. Trimmer’s, and found her a truly
respectable woman. I intend to try to get Bess a situation near me, and hope to succeed before the summer vacation; at any rate, she
shall spend the approaching one in my house. Mr J. knows
that, next to obtaining the means of life, I wish to mitigate her and your
fate. I have done with the delusions of fancy, I only live to be useful;
benevolence must fill every void in my heart. I have a room but not furniture.
J. offered you both a bed in his house but that would
not be pleasant. I believe I must try to purchase a bed, which I shall reserve
for my poor girls while I have a house. If you pay any visits, you will comply
with my whim, and not mention my place of abode or mode of life. I shall have a
spur to push me forward, the desire of rendering two months in the year a
little pleasanter than they would otherwise be to you and poor uncomfortable
Bess. . . .”
The “other book for young people” is called
“Original Stories from Real
Life,” and is intended to lead the minds of children to truth and
goodness. It is beautifully written, though in a style now obsolete, and for which children
in these days would not care, but it ought not to be quite unknown, since it was
illustrated by some of Blake’s most striking
and beautiful woodcuts. The frontispiece, a simple composition of three figures standing in
a doorway, up either side of which climbs a creeper; and another, in strong contrast, of a
father standing over a bed on which lie his two children, who have died of want, can never
be forgotten by those who have seen them.
A MS. note in Mr Johnson’s
writing gives an account of her work and life at this time:—
“She entered upon her house in George St. at
Michaelmas 1787, and continued there till Michaelmas 1791.
“Here she wrote the ‘Rights of Woman.’ A translation from the
Dutch of ‘Young
Grandison’ was put into her hands, which she almost re-wrote. She
translated ‘Necker on Religious
Opinions,’ compiled the ‘French Reader,’ introducing some original
pieces, and prefixed a preface to it. She began a novel under the title of the
‘Cave of Fancy,’ wrote many articles in the
‘Analytical
Review,’—‘Answer
to Burke,’ ‘Elements of Morality from the German,’ which she first studied here,
and a translation of ‘Lavater’sPhysiognomy’ from the French.
“Her brothers and sisters were occasionally with
her when they were unsettled. Her’s was their home; and she took every method to
improve and prepare them for respectable situations. She consulted with Mr Barlow on the probability of getting a farm in
America for Charles, which was determined upon,
and he was placed with a farmer here for instruction. He left England the latter end of
1792. James, who had been at sea, was sent to
Woolwich for a few months to be under Mr
Bonnycastle, and afterwards on board Lord
Hood’s fleet as a midshipman, where he was presently made a
lieutenant. Much of the instruction which all of them obtained was obtained under her
own roof, and most, if not all the situations which her sisters had were procured by
her exertions. In the beginning of 1788 she sent Everina to Paris for improvement in the language.
“During her stay in George Street she spent many
of her afternoons and most of her evenings with me. She was incapable of disguise.
Whatever was the state of her mind, it appeared when she entered, and the tone of
conversation might easily be guessed. When harassed, which was very often the case, she
was relieved by unbosoming herself, and generally returned home calm, frequently in
spirits.
“In a part of this period, which certainly was the
most active of her life, she had the care of her father’s estate, which was
attended with no little trouble to both of us. She could not during this time, I think,
expend less than £200 on her brothers and sisters.
“At Michaelmas 1791 she went to Store Street, and
continued till Decr. 1792. She then went to Paris.”
The correspondence with her family grew far more infrequent after the
date of the last letter. Nor is there much which needs extraction. The sisters were for
some time at Putney, when intercourse was more easy. Mary
Wollstonecraft was very hard at work, and her sisters had little sym-pathy with the direction in which her
thoughts were now turning. It is not quite so clear why the correspondence with George Blood grew slack—indeed, who can tell why their own
correspondence with one and another friend waxes and wanes?—but from the tone of the few
that remain, the intimacy was less cordial than in former years. The little coolness, from
whatever cause, passed away, and George Blood, now in a good position,
seems to have written to Mary Wollstonecraft to ask if there were any
hope that Everina would become his wife. The
following extract shows the ill-success of his wooing:—
Mary Wollstonecraft to George Blood.
“London, Feb. 4th, ’91.
. . . ” Now, my dear George, let me more particularly allude to your own affairs. I
ought to have done so sooner, but there was an awkwardness in the business that
made me shrink back. We have all, my good friend, a sisterly affection for you;
and this very morning Everina declared
to me that she had more affection for you than for either of her brothers; but
accustomed to view you in that light, she cannot view you in any other. Let us
then be on the old footing, love us as we love you, but give your heart to some
worthy girl, and do not cherish an affection which may interfere with your
prospects when there is no reason to suppose that it will ever be returned.
Everina does not seem to think of marriage, she has no
particular attachment, yet she was anxious when I spoke explicitly to her, to
speak to you in the same terms, that she might correspond with you as she has
ever done, with sisterly freedom and affection. . . .—Your affectionate friend,
“Mary
Wollstonecraft.”
It has been mentioned that Mrs
Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft
were wanderers during these years. Mrs Bishop was teacher in a school
at Market Harborough, at Putney, and at Henley; while her sister was
at the same school at Putney, in Ireland, for a short time in France—now and then resident
with her brother Edward, and then again for a time
with Mary. But few letters are preserved from them
during this time, nor have those which remain any special interest. In 1791 Mrs
Bishop obtained a more permanent engagement in Pembrokeshire, near
Laugharne, the town in which her father, supported by Mary, was now
living. Extracts from the letters from this place will prove of interest. They will shew
the wretchedness of the home of these three sisters, and the utter impossibility that they
should ever permanently return to it in case of ill-health or other misfortune; they will
make it clear that the sisters had to frame for themselves a theory of life; and, with such
a training, how little likely it was this should be the usual one, about the sanctity of
home, and of home relations and ties. They give a curious picture of the savagery still
existing in far corners of the land among those who yet required a cultivated woman as
governess, of ignorance and prejudice, and, towards the end of the series, the view taken
by the family of Mary Wollstonecraft’s change of life and
opinions.
The situation at Upton Castle had been obtained for Mrs Bishop by Mr Woods, a Welsh
clergyman, and an old friend of the family.
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“[Laugharne], Tuesday Night, May [30], 1791.
“My dearestEverina,—Here I am
at Laugharne, without being recollected by anybody. Neither Miss
Brown nor her mother have condescended to call on me. Many of
the inhabitants have left it, others are dead, or else have quite forgotten
Miss Betsy. Mrs Larne is the only
one who wished to recollect me,
but the old face she, sighing, says is quite gone. In fact, the town is now
full of decayed people of fashion. Not one eye have I met that glistened with
pleasure at meeting me unexpectedly, and I revisit our old walks with a degree
of sadness I never felt before. The cliff-side, the churchyard, &c.,
&c., are all truly romantic and beautiful—a thousand times more so than I
imagined; yet all creates a sadness I cannot banish.
“The sight of my father’s ghastly visage haunts me night and day; for he
is really worn to a mere skeleton, and has a dreadful cough that makes my blood
run cold whenever I listen to it, and that is the greater part of the night, or
else he groans most dreadfully; yet he declares he has good nights. There
cannot be a more melancholy sight than to see him, not able to walk ten yards
without panting for breath, and continually falling; still he is able to ride
ten miles every day, and eat and drink very hearty. His
neighbours think, as he has had such a wonderful escape, he will quite recover,
though his death-like countenance tells me it is impossible. I am harassed to
the last degree how to advise him to act; if he gives up his horse now, he is a
dead man in a very short time. When I beg of him to be more careful in money
matters, he declares he will go to London, and force Ned; or when I tell him how Mary has been distressed, in order to make him
save in trifles, he is in a passion, and exhausts himself. He is mad to be in
London. I represented matters as they are, that he might abridge himself of
some unnecessary expenses; but now he is too weak in mind and body to act with
prudence. She is truly a well-meaning woman, and willing to do the little she
can to lessen the debts.
“Charles is
half naked, and is treated by my father in the way that he deserves, for he is
at him perpetually; he never even tried to get him into the Excise, or anywhere
else. He is actually altered rather for the better, drinks never anything but
water, and is much thinner, and all submission. . . . He now talks of listing
for a soldier; if he does, there is an end of him. . . . I am very cool to
Charles, and have said all I can to rouse him; but
where can he go in his present plight? Thanky, my dear, for your kind letter. I am afraid this will not raise your spirits.
Pray tell M. my father received the
note. I have many things to chat over with you when I get to my Haven. Shall I find peace when I get to the end of my
journey? Good night.”
The Same to the Same.
“Upton, June
12, 1791.
“. . . But were you to see my father’s countenance. It is now, I
really think, the most dreadful face I ever beheld! It appears constantly
convulsed by ill-humour, and every unamiable feeling that can be expressed; his
face is quite red, his hair grey and dirty, his beard long, and the clothes he
wears not worth sixpence. In this plight he arrived at Upton the third night
after my arrival, fearing my portmanteau was lost. I was strolling out with the
girls, and was surprised to meet Mr Rees coming to meet
us, and not less so when he stretched out his friendly hand to shake mine,
saying, ‘Who do you think is come to Upton? Your father! in his old
clothes too, poor man! He thought you had lost your box.’ The
good man really thought I should be alarmed at my father’s appearance,
and was anxious to see me first. After keeping me awake the whole night, he
went to Laugharne in the morning, displeased, I believe, at not being asked to
spend the day. If you had seen the good old man trying to behave so that I
might think he was pleased with my father. He is in truth a most amiable man,
though not a very sensible one. He has Mrs Cotton’s
blush, and none of the tricks of old age. He was tutor to
Tom” [name illegible].
“Molly was in his way, as she was waiting-maid
in the same house, and he married her, from what motive I will not pretend to
say. . . .”
The Same to the Same.
“Upton, June
19, 1791.
“. . . The only thing here that resembles man is a
noble Newfoundland dog, and a fine greyhound. Neptune and his friend Shark have
contrived to find a corner in my heart, contrary to my reason. I look on them as Friends; indeed, when with them I am not quite alone! They render my
walks still more delightful. The situation of this spot is truly picturesque.
The way to the house is through a fine wood, dreadfully neglected, so much so,
that one can hardly find a path in it—surrounded by hills. Close to the castle
is an old chapel, and near it is a cross, shaded by a yew tree, and many a
lofty ash at a distance. The castle joins the house. In one of its turrets is
my room, which is furnished in the Eastern manner, though half the ornaments
must not be used, for the Captain gave them to Maria, and
she must keep them for his sake. The library no one values, though it is a most
excellent one. The arm-chair, however, and spacious bed, none of them claim. My
room leads into a large drawing-room, which contains all that might be made
useful. It has a door at one end that opens, and gives a full view of the
woods. . . . There I often sit when all are fast asleep, as it is quite away
from their roosting places. For though the kitchen was
made fit for a nobleman, and the coach-house, stalls, laundry, &c.,
&c., are all rendered truly commodious, the good family here did not like
to have their bedrooms altered, no! nor even the common sitting-parlour, which
is a dark hole. . . . Their room is quite filled with chest upon chest, which
are filled with trumpery sixty years old; and though they have hardly room to
turn themselves, they will not let their boxes remain in the garret. Here is a
strange medley! a farthing candle, or one as thick as my wrist. Though they
have drawers loaded with everything, they still make the shifts that necessity
compelled them to in former times. . . . The girls have dozens of gowns never
worn, which they only look at, and everything else that might be made useful. .
. . They never have been permitted to walk, on account of wearing out shoes. I
am certain I shall break the old woman’s heart if I take them out
a-walking. . . . Send me a few wax tapers, for a farthing one often falls to my
share, and we go to bed very early. . . . Adieu.”
CHAPTER VIII. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. 1791—1796.
In her lonely lodging near Blackfriars, Mary Wollstonccraft had been writing an original work
during the scant time she could give to it from her labours of translation. It was one
which has ever been more known by name than by perusal, on a subject which even now excites
acrimony rather than calm discussion. The very words, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” which
was the title of the book, are held, without examination, to claim emancipation alike from
law, from custom, and from morality. Yet it is evident that the writer, as she has shown
herself in her letters, must have changed far more suddenly than is wont to be the case, if
such were indeed the object she set before her in writing her treatise.
It is not among the least oddities of this singular work that it is
dedicated to M. Talleyrand Perigord, late Bishop of
Autun. Mary Wollstonecraft, always confiding and
always charitable, still believed in him. She little knew how unstable was the liberalism
for which she gave him credit, and though well aware that some of her opinions were opposed
to those which Talleyrand had put forward in his pamphlet on National
Education, she yet thought him quite sincere and working in the same direction as herself.
Mary Wollstonecraft, like so many others, turned to France as the
land from which was rising the day-star of a new time, yet, unlike many, she was far from
considering that all French manners were worthy of imitation. Even in the Dedication to
Talleyrand are some noble words in defence of English cleanliness
in life and talk, even of seeming prudery, rather than much which is still tolerated in
France.
“The main argument” of the work
“is built on this simple principle, that if woman be not prepared by education
to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must
be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general
practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate, unless she know why she ought to
be virtuous?—unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see
in what manner it is connected with her real good. If children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the
love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues springs, can only be produced
by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation
of woman at present shuts her out from such investigations.”—P. viii.
In the carrying out of this argument the most noticeable fact is the
extraordinary plainness of speech, and this it was which caused all or nearly all the
outcry. For Mary Wollstonecraft did not, as has been
supposed, attack the institution of marriage, she did not assail orthodox religion, she did
not directly claim much which at the present day is claimed for women by those whose
arguments obtain respectful hearing. The book was really a plea for equality of education,
a protest against being deemed only the plaything of man, an assertion that the
intellectual rather than the sexual intercourse was that which should chiefly be desired in
marriage, and which made its lasting happiness. In maintaining these theses, in themselves
harmless and to us self-evident, she assailed the theories not only
of Rousseau in “Emile,” which would have been easily borne, but
those of Dr Fordyce, whose sermons had long made a part of a young woman’s
library, of Dr Gregory and others whose words were
as a gospel to the average English nation, when she would teach her daughters less from her
own experience than in sounding periods whose gravity simulated real authority. She did but
carry out what Day had sketched in “Sandford and Merton,” and Miss Simmons was a young lady who might have been trained by
Mary Wollstonecraft herself.
It may, however, be admitted that her frankness on some subjects is little
less than astounding, and that matters are discussed which are rarely named even among
members of the same sex, far less printed for both, while side blows are administered to
much which was then unquestioned, at least in the society to which a woman’s book
would gain admission. The insistance on the reception of the Sacrament in our colleges, the
relics of Popery retained in them, the weekly services she had noticed the Eton boys
unwillingly attend, which was “only a disgusting skeleton of the former
state,” in which “all the solemnity that interested the imagination if
it did not purify the heart is stripped off”—in fact, the whole system which
had come before her in her residence with Mr Prior
was rudely criticised. Nor were other sacred institutions dealt with more gently than our
schools and universities. The fallacy by which virtue is confounded with reputation was
laid bare, and she by no means shrinks from uncovering the worst sores of society.
Yet for extreme plain speaking, there was much reason and excuse. The times
were coarser than ours, the days were not so far distant when the scenes were possible and
the dangers real which Richardson’s novels
pourtray. The very book she assails,
“Dr Fordyce’s
Sermons,” contains words spoken from the pulpit to young women which would now
be considered an outrage on the congregation. Mary
Wollstonecraft shrunk from no directness in dealing with the most dangerous
and explosive subjects.
It was not only the plain speaking which alarmed, and not only that a woman
spoke, but every page showed that she too was affected by the thoughts which claimed rights
for men, and the demand for these had issued in the French Revolution.
The faults of the book are grave over and above those of the time; it is
ill-considered, hasty, and rash, but its merits are great also; there is much that is
valuable for these days also—it is fresh, vigorous, and eloquent, and most remarkable as
the herald of the demand not even yet wholly conceded by all, that woman should be the
equal and friend, not the slave and the toy of man.
One passage only shall here be quoted. It is one in which Mary Wollstonecraft gives her views on elementary
education, and in favour of mixed schools.
“Day schools should be established by Government in
which boys and girls might be educated together. The school for the younger children,
from five to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free, and open to all classes, .
. . where boys and girls, the rich and the poor, should meet together. To prevent any
of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit
to the same discipline, or leave the school. The school-room ought to be surrounded by
a large piece of ground, in which the children might be usefully exercised, for at this
age they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more than an hour at a
time. But these relaxations might all be rendered a part of elementary education, for
many things improve and amuse the senses when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of which dryly laid down children would turn a deaf
ear. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy. Reading, writing, arithmetic,
natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy might fill up the
day, but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastics in the open air. The
elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics might also be taught by
conversations in the Socratic form.
“After the age of nine, girls and boys intended for
domestic employments or mechanical trades ought to be removed to other trades, and
receive instruction in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,
the two sexes being still together in the morning, but in the afternoon the girls
should attend a school where plain work, mantua making, millinery, &c., would be
their employment.
“The young people of superior abilities or fortune
might now be taught in another school the dead and living languages, the elements of
science, and continue the study of history and politics, on a more extensive scale,
which would not exclude polite literature.
“Girls and boys still together? I hear some reader
ask. Yes. And I should not fear any other consequence than that some early attachment
might take place, which, whilst it had the best effect on the moral character of young
people, might not perfectly agree with the views of the parents, for it will be a long
time, I fear, before the world is so enlightened that parents only anxious to render
their children virtuous will let them choose companions for life
themselves.”—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pp. 386-389.
That the publication of “The Rights of Woman” should prove startling
and even shocking to the author’s sisters as it did to many other people, is not
surprising, but the exhibition of small spite which is to be found in the following letter
is unworthy of one for whom the writer had made, and was again ready to make, such great
sacrifices. Charles the worthless had been taken to London,
wholly by the kindness of his sister Mary, who,
since the issue of her book, which had made her in some degree a public character, took the
brevet rank of Mrs Wollstonecraft.
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Upton Castle, July 3d, 1792.
“. . . He” [Charles] “informs me too that Mrs Wollstonecraft is grown quite
handsome; he adds likewise that being conscious she is on the wrong side of
thirty she now endeavours to set off those charms she once despised to the best
advantage. This entre nous, for he is
delighted with her kindness and affection to him.
“So the author of ‘The Rights of Woman’ is going to
France! I dare say her chief motive is to promote poor Bess’s comfort, or thine, my girl, at
least I think she will thus reason. Well, in spite of reason, when Mrs W. reaches the Continent she will be but a
woman! I cannot help painting her in the height of all her wishes, at the very
summit of happiness, for will not ambition fill every chink of her Great Soul
(for such I really think hers) that is not occupied by love? After having drawn
this sketch, you can hardly suppose me so sanguine as to expect my pretty face
will be thought of when matters of State are in agitation, yet I know you think
such a miracle not impossible. I wish I could think it at all probable, but,
alas! it has so much the appearance of castle-building that I think it will
soon disappear like the ‘baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a
wrack behind.’
“And you actually have the vanity to imagine that in
the National Assembly, personages like M. and F[useli] will
bestow a thought on two females whom nature meant to ‘suckle fools and
chronicle small beer.’”
The scheme of going to France, of which Mrs
Bishop speaks above, had been announced to her sister Everina shortly before. Everina
Wollstonecraft had spent a few weeks in France for
the sake of perfecting her French accent; and there was a plan that Mrs
Bishop also should go for the same purpose.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“London, June 20th, ’92.
“. . . I have been considering what you say respecting
Eliza’s residence in France.
For some time past Mr and Mrs Fuseli,
Mr Johnson, and myself have talked
of a summer excursion to Paris; it is now determined on, and we think of going
in about six weeks. I shall be introduced to many people, my book”
[“A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman”] “has been translated, and praised
in some popular prints, and Mr Fuseli of
course is well known; it is then very probable that I shall hear of some
situation for Eliza, and I shall be on the watch. We
intend to be absent only six weeks; if then I fix on an eligible situation for
her she may avoid the Welsh winter. This journey will not lead me into any
extraordinary expense, or I should put it off to a more convenient season, for
I am not, as you may suppose, very flush of money, and Charles is wearing out the clothes which were
provided for his voyage” [to America at her expense], “still I am
glad he has acquired a little practical knowledge of farming. . . .”
A candid friend who published
anonymously in 1803, “A Defence of the
Character and Conduct of the late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” but whose
“Defence” is mingled with a good deal of venom, says that “though we
are not expressly informed,” there seems a probability that she had
experienced a disappointment in her earlier years, and that such disappointment
“tended to increase her irritability.” The writer goes on to say,
“The first sexual attachment that is plainly avowed
was towards Mr Fuseli. . . . She had reason to
esteem him as a particular friend, but on finding that her regard for him had gradually
assumed a more interesting form, mark her prudence and resolu-tion. No sooner had she analysed her feelings, traced them
to their real source, discovered their tendency, and weighed them in the balance of
moral obligation, than, with a just respect for herself as well as for the other
parties interested, she determined to make a sacrifice of her private desires upon the
altar of Virtue; and in order to snap the tie that seemed likely to occasion uneasiness
either to herself or her friends, she prudently resolved to retire into another
country, far remote from the object who had unintentionally excited the tender passion
in her breast.”—(Pp. 58 60.)
The same story, told with much greater circumstance, appears in Knowles’s “Life of Fuseli,” and is supposed to be confirmed
by extracts from her letters which are given. But one of them, the last written after her
return from France, most certainly does not refer to any attachment to Fuseli; and Mr Knowles is so
extremely inaccurate in regard to all else that he says of her, that his testimony may be
wholly set aside, finding, as it does, no confirmation whatever from her correspondence,
and very little from a few ill-natured remarks of Mrs
Bishop, which do not justify the malignant gossip.
Godwin himself, in his Memoir of his wife speaks also of her intimacy with
Fuseli, saying that had he been unmarried, he
would probably have been the man of her choice. He goes on to declare that the friends were
only friends, but his mention of the matter at all is only one of those strange instances
of his somewhat morbid habit of dwelling on matters of which it would have been well to
take no notice. It is probable that he had only heard of the more unfavourable version of
the story at second-hand, and, even after careful attention to her husband’s words,
the correspondence and the uninterrupted friendship with Mrs
Fuseli would seem wholly to clear Mary
Wollstonecraft’s memory from the imputation of any feeling for Fuseli in which there is reason for blame even by the most censorious.
The Fuselis and Mr Johnson having given up the tour, Mary went to France alone in December, and certainly no
object whatever finds place in her letters but the one of rendering herself as good a
French speaker as she was already a reader, and incidentally of finding a situation for her
sister, Mrs Bishop, among the many leading Frenchmen
who were then so eager for all that was English. She found a home at first in the house of
Madame Filiettaz, neé Bregantz, the daughter of Madame
Bregantz, in whose school at Putney Mrs Bishop and
Everina Wollstonecraft had both been teachers.
The following extract gives her first impressions of Paris at a critical time, though none
then knew how critical.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Paris, Dec.
24th, ’92.
“To-morrow I expect to see
Aline” [Mme. Filiettaz];
“during her absence the servants endeavoured to render the house—a most
excellent one—comfortable to me, but as I wish to acquire the language as fast
as I can, I was sorry to be obliged to remain so much alone. I apply so closely
to the language, and labour so continually to understand what I hear that I
never go to bed without a headache, and my spirits are fatigued with
endeavouring to form a just opinion of public affairs. The day after to-morrow
I expect to see the King at the bar, and the
consequences that will follow I am almost afraid to anticipate.
“I have seen very little of Paris—the streets are so
dirty, and I wait till I can make myself understood before I call upon
Madame Laurent, &c. Miss Williams has behaved very civilly to me, and I shall visit
her frequently, because I rather like her, and I meet
French company at her house. Her manners are affected, yet the simple goodness
of her heart continually breaks through the varnish, so that one would be more inclined, at
least I should, to love than admire her. Authorship is a heavy weight for
female shoulders, especially in the sunshine of prosperity. Of the French I
will not speak till I know more of them. They seem the people of all others for
a stranger to come amongst, yet sometimes when I have given a commission which
was eagerly asked for, it has not been executed, and when I ask for an
explanation, I allude to the servant-maid, a quick girl, who, an’t please
you, has been a teacher in an English boarding-school, dust is thrown up with a
self-sufficient air, and I am obliged to appear to see her meaning clearly,
though she puzzles herself, that I may not make her feel her ignorance; but you
must have experienced the same thing. I will write to you soon again, meantime
let me hear from you, and believe me yours sincerely and affectionately,
“M. W.”
Two days afterwards she addressed a letter to Mr Johnson. It has already been printed in the “Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin:
London, 1798.” These volumes were edited by Godwin, but are so very unlikely to be known to many readers at the present
day, that the letter deserves quotation here.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Mr Johnson.
“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. [Wednesday, Dec. 26th, was the day on which the King appeared to
plead, by his advocate Desèze.] 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
anything 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.”
The news which reached England from France was of the most scanty kind,
and little was heard of individuals after the troubles in Paris really began. Mrs Bishop’s letters are full of complaints that she
so seldom has news of Mary; for, in her ignorance of what was really occurring,
she even professes herself ready to join her. Those among whom she lived did not wish to
hear more, and marvelled that anyone, especially a woman, should take any interest in
politics.
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Upton Castle, January 20, 1793.
“. . . I never can get to see a paper; and if anyone of
our Bears call, the whole family leave the room when I say a word about
Politics, or else order them to talk of something else; and, of course, the
conversation turns on Murphy or Irish Potatoes, or Tommy
Paine, whose effigy they burnt at Pembroke the other day. Nay,
they talk of immortalizing Miss
Wollstonecraft in the like manner; but all end in Damning all
Politics: what good will they do men? and what rights have men that three meals
a-day will not supply? So argues a Welshman. I heard a clergyman say that he
was sure there was no more harm in shooting a Frenchman, than in lifting his
piece at a Bird. And a gentleman—I cannot find out who—sent me this receipt:—
“‘An effectual cure for the bite of a Mad
Frenchman: Mix a grain of common sense in the milk of human nature with two
grains of honour, and half-a-dram of loyalty; let the patient take this
night and morning, and he will be in his senses all day.’”
The Same to the Same.
“Upton Castle, February 10, ’93.
“. . . I should like to know what you felt on first
hearing Louis’s death. I own I was
shocked, but not deluged in tears. In short, I could bear to hear it read, and
hoped they had some motive for such an act of cruelty that our newspapers did
not explain. But to hear him cried up as the best of
men, and that no man’s sufferings or fortitude
equalled the King of France’s, is to me quite novel. The depth of his
understanding and the goodness of his heart, is all the
men here can talk of. Was he really that innocent kind of man they here
represent him? The military men at Pembroke, who have left the service, furnish
opinions for the people, who declare, with one voice, that the French are all Atheists, and the most bloody Butchers the world
ever produced. Rees is pale with passion if the subject is
introduced, declaring the world is going to be at an end; that the Assassins are Instruments in the
hands of Providence. I can hardly tell you, then, with what delight I read
Fox’s manly speech, or how clear
and replete with good sense it appeared to me; in short, every word carried
conviction with it; yet this man is condemned, with Paine, as an unworthy wretch. I was obliged to sit up till
three this morning, to read the debates; for a gentleman had lent the paper to
R., and I could not have it
“God bless you.—Yours affectionately,
Eliza.”
In the following year some refugee French priests were lodging at
Pembroke, and Mrs Bishop went from Saturday to
Monday in each week to that town, spending nearly all her time with two of them, an aged
bishop and his brother, for the sake of learning French more thoroughly. The following
extract describes their reception in Pembrokeshire:—
The Same to the Same.
“Upton Castle, May 24th, ’94.
“. . . I believe I told you they fled from wretched
France. They landed near Haverford West, and were used worse, they declare,
than if they had been in Paris. The P[rimat], though he had fainted among the
savages, had a stone flung at his head, and [was] guarded all night—though he
expected every moment to be his last; for, in spite of the letter to
Government, they were treated as Republicans. This good creature was compelled
to walk three miles, though nearly fainting at every step he took, surrounded
by men, women, and children, gazing, not at his pale face, but at a
handkerchief that supplied the place of a wig that the waves had stolen from him. The moment he was
housed at Pembroke, all the children were admitted into the room, where he sat
for many hours, his head sunk on the table, till at last he was allowed to go
to bed. . . .
“He was for a year and a half concealed by friends from
the Republicans, and was so narrowly watched, that neither of the brothers saw
daylight during that period. They at last made their escape, merely with the
hope of saving the family who had sheltered them. At fifty, it is dreadful to
be snatched from the lap of abundance, for M. Graux had
his carriage and every elegance of life, and to feel all the horrors of
dependence in a strange country.”
In the meantime, Mary
Wollstonecraft’s position in France had become extremely difficult, if
not precarious. It was impossible that she should receive remittances from England, nor
could she return when once war was declared. It was at this juncture, at some time in the
spring or summer of 1793, that she met Mr Gilbert
Imlay, an American then living in Paris. He had been a captain in the
American army during the late war, and was afterwards a commissioner for laying out land in
the back settlements. He appears to have been a speculator in many ways, without real
fortune, but with some command of money, and to have been an attractive person. He
certainly was an able man, for a work published by him, called “A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of
North America,” is a model of what a monograph on a new country should be.
It is clear, full, and condensed, yet not so much as to hinder the reader even now from
finding it an interesting work, and in its own day it went through many editions. The
kindness he showed Mary Wollstonecraft disposed her to look on him
favourably, and she soon gave him a very sincere affection. Opposed as were her views to
those of the majority of women in her own, and even in this day,
yet they were those which now are, except on one point, held by very many cultivated women,
without a shadow of blame attaching to them. Her opinions on the equality of the sexes, on
the social and political position of women, might now be held without remark, and it would
not be too much to say that she was simply in advance of her age in giving expression on
those subjects to thoughts which arc held increasingly by men and women of advanced
political views, but of many shades of devout religion. On the question alone of the
relation of the sexes, there is no indication of any approximation to her theories. Her
view had now become that mutual affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should
not bind after the death of love, if love should die. It must be remembered that her own
experience of family life was not likely to ennoble it in her eyes. Her father, Mr Blood, Mr
Bishop, and Lord Kingsborough, in whom
chiefly she had seen what husbands may be, were not favourable specimens; her sister was
living as an unwived wife, without any prospect of such a separation as would enable her to
form another tie. Men who were far from acting on these theories as did Rousseau, yet who were moving the minds of men to an
unprecedented extent, were proclaiming that man should return to a more
“natural” system; the accidental defects of certain marriages were pointed out
as the inherent vices of all.
Yet it is probable that what Mary
Wollstonecraft held, as a theory, in common with others who did not put
their theories into act, would have been held by her most blamelessly, had it not been for
the untoward circumstances which seemed to claim that she should act upon them. A legal
marriage with Mr Imlay was difficult, if not
impossible. Her position as a British subject
was full of danger; a marriage would have forced her openly to declare herself as such. It
may be doubted whether the ceremony, if any could have taken place, would have had validity
in England. Under the protection of Imlay, and passing as his wife
without such preliminary declaration, her safety was assured. Imlay,
long after this period, declared her to be his wife in a document which in some cases would
be considered as constituting a marriage. She believed that his love, which was to her
sacred, would endure. No one can read her letters without seeing that she was a pure,
high-minded and refined woman, and that she considered herself, in the eyes of God and man,
his wife. Religious as she was, and with a strong moral sense, she yet made the grand
mistake of supposing that it is possible for one woman to undo the consecrated custom of
ages, to set herself in opposition to the course of society and not to be crushed by it.
And she made the no less fatal mistake of judging Imlay by her own
standard, and thinking that he was as true, as impassioned, as self-denying as herself.
Mary Wollstonecraft was living with Imlay as his wife in August 1793, in Paris, but he was
soon afterwards called to Havre on business, and was absent for some months. During this
period letters passed between them, of which her own were afterwards returned to her, and
were published after her death. “They are,” as Godwin said of them, “the offspring of a glowing
imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe.”
But they are the letters of a tender and devoted wife, who feels no doubt of her position.
Towards the close of 1793, Imlay had established himself in some
commercial business at Havre, where Mary joined him, and there, in the
spring of 1794, she gave birth to a girl, who received the name of
Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her
youth.
Some rumours of all these circumstances had reached the sisters in
England, but only such as to render them extremely perplexed as to the true state of the
case.
Charles Wollstonecraft to Mrs Bishop.
“Philadelphia, June 16th 1794.
[After saying he was doing extremely well, and making an
offer of a home or assistance to his sisters, he continues] “I heard from
Mary, six months ago, by a gentleman
who knew her at Paris, and since that have been informed she is married to
Captain Imlay of this
country.” . . .
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Upton Castle, August 15th 1794. [Enclosing copy of
the above.]
. . . “Can this be a dream, my heart’s best
friend? I would I could fancy these things matters of fact. I mean the poor
fellow’s wonderful good luck in so short a time. I own I want
faith” [her want of faith was justified; since Charles’s account of himself proved pure
brag], “nay, doubt my senses, so I have sent you word for word, to spell
and put together. . . . If Mary is actually married to Mr
Imlay, it is not impossible but she might settle there”
[in America] “too. Yet Mary cannot be Married!! It is natural to conclude her protector is her
husband. Nay, on reading Charles’s letter, I for an
instant believed it true. I would, my Everina, we were out of suspense, for all at present is
uncertainty and the most cruel suspense; still Johnson does not repeat things at random, and that the very
same tale should have crossed the Atlantic makes me almost believe that the
once M. is now Mrs Imlay, and a
mother. Are we ever to see this mother and her babe?”
In September 1794, business called Mr
Imlay to London, and Mary returned to
Paris. A separation of some months chilled
his affection, and though they met again, his desertion of her had now really begun.
Mr Imlay to Mrs Bishop.
[London, November
1794.]
“My dear Madam.—Mr Johnson gave me your acceptable favor
inclosing one to Mrs Imlay, saying it
was for her, which leaving me ignorant of being included, I could not return an
immediate answer; since which time I have been out of town. I hope this
circumstance will appear to you a sufficient apology for my silence, and that
you will be pleased to consider it a good reason for preventing a forfeit of
that claim to humanity or at least respect and esteem for a person so
affectionately loved by my dear Mary as yourself, which
you say had already been impressed on your mind.
“As to your sister’s visiting England, I do not
think she will previous to a peace, and perhaps not immediately after such an
event. However, be that as it may, we shall both of us continue to cherish
feelings of tenderness for you, and a recollection of your unpleasant
situation, and we shall also endeavour to alleviate its distress by all the
means in our power. The present state of our fortune is rather” [word
omitted]. “However you must know your sister too well, and I am sure you
judge of that knowledge too favourably to suppose that whenever she has it in
her power she will not apply some specific aid to promote your happiness. I
shall always be most happy to receive your letters, but as I shall most likely
leave England the beginning of next week, I will thank you to let me hear from
you as soon as convenient, and tell me ingenuously in what way I can serve you
in any manner or respect. I am in but indifferent spirits occasioned by my long
absence from Mrs Imlay, and our little
girl, while I am deprived of a chance of hearing from them.—Adieu, yours truly,
“G.
Imlay.”
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Havre, March 10th ’94.
“My dear Girl.—It is
extremely uncomfortable to write to you thus without expecting, or even daring
to ask for an answer, lest I should involve others in my difficulties, and make
them suffer for protecting me. The French are at present so full of suspicion
that had a letter of James’s
imprudently sent to me been opened, I would not have answered for the
consequence. I have just sent off great part of my MS., which Miss Williams would fain have had me burn,
following her example; and to tell you the truth, my life would not have been
worth much had it been found. It is impossible for you to have any idea of the
impression the sad scenes I have been witness to have left on my mind. The
climate of France is uncommonly fine, the country pleasant, and there is a
degree of ease and even simplicity in the manners of the common people which
attaches me to them. Still death and misery, in every shape of terror, haunt
this devoted country. I certainly am glad that I came to France, because I
never could have had a just opinion of the most extraordinary event that has
ever been recorded, and I have met with some uncommon instances of friendship,
which my heart will ever gratefully store up, and call to mind when the
remembrance is keen of the anguish it has endured for its fellow-creatures at
large—for the unfortunate beings cut off around me, and the still more
unfortunate survivors. If any of the many letters I have written have come to
your hands or Eliza’s, you know
that I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, who joins to uncommon tenderness
of heart and quickness of feeling, a soundness of understanding and
reasonableness of temper rarely to be met with. Having also been brought up in
the interior parts of America, he is a most natural, unaffected creature. I am
with him now at Havre, and shall remain there, till circumstances point out
what is necessary for me to do. Before I left Paris, I attempted to find the
Laurents, whom I had several times previously sought
for, but to no purpose. And I am apt to think that it was very prudent in them to leave a shop that
had been the resort of the nobility.
“Where is poor Eliza? From a letter I received many many months after it was
written, I suppose she is in Ireland. Will you write to tell her that I most
affectionately remember her, and still have in my mind some places for her
future comfort. Are you well? But why do I ask? you cannot reply to me. This
thought throws a damp on my spirits whilst I write, and makes my letter rather
an act of duty than a present satisfaction. God bless you! I will write by
every opportunity, and am yours sincerely and affectionately,
Mary.”
The Same to the Same.
[Paris, September
1794.]
“As you must, my dear girl, have received several
letters from me, especially one I sent to London by Mr Imlay, I avail myself of this opportunity just to tell you
that I am well and my child, and to request you to write by this occasion. I do
indeed long to hear from you and Eliza.
I have at last got some tidings of Charles, and as they must have reached you, I need not tell you
what sincere satisfaction they afforded me. I have also heard from James, he too talks of success, but in a
querulous strain. What are you doing? Where is Eliza? You
have perhaps answered these questions [in answer to the letters I gave in
charge to Mr I., but fearing that some fatality might have
prevented their reaching you, let me repeat that I have written to you and to
Eliza at least half a score of times, pointing out
different ways for you to write to me, still have received no answers. I have
again and again given you an account of my present situation, and introduced
Mr Imlay to you as a brother you would love and
respect. I hope the time is not very distant when we shall all meet. Do be very
particular in your account of yourself, and if you have not time to procure me
a letter from Eliza, tell me all about her. Tell me too
what is become of George, &c., &c. I only write to ask questions and to
assure you that I am most affectionately yours,
“Mary
Imlay.”
[P.S.]
“Paris, Sep. 20th.
“Should peace take place this winter, what say you
to a voyage in the spring, if not to see your old acquaintance, to see
Paris, which I think you did not do justice to. I want you to see my little
girl, who is more like a boy.
She is ready to fly away with spirits, and has eloquent health in her
cheeks and eyes. She does not promise to be a beauty, but appears
wonderfully intelligent, and though I am sure she has her father’s
quick temper and feelings, her good humour runs away with all the credit of
my good nursing.
“I managed myself so well that my lying-in
scarcely deserved the name. I only rested, through persuasion, in bed one
day, and was out a-walking on the eighth. She is now only four months old.
She caught the small-pox at Havre, where they treat the dreadful disorder
very improperly. I however determined to follow the suggestions of my own
reason, and saved her much pain, probably her life, for she was very full,
by putting her twice a-day into a warm bath. Once more adieu. The letter
not being sent for as soon as I expected, gave me an opportunity to add
this prattling postscript. You will see the last vol. I have written, it is
the commencement of a considerable work. Tell Mrs
Skeys, who could not fulfil her promise respecting her
portrait, that it was written during my pregnancy.”
Imlay was now involved in a multitude of
speculations which rendered him restless and dissatisfied with the competency which it
seems that at one time he had secured. The plan that he and Mary Wollstonecraft had proposed to themselves was to settle on a farm
either in France or America, but he now embarked in trade connected with Norway and Sweden,
which was, he considered, to bring him a large fortune. His interest in
Mary and his child sensibly cooled, and though he allowed them to
join him in England, her letters to him show that she did so with a heavy heart, and gloomy
forebodings of coming sorrow.
Mr Rowan, to whom the following letter is addressed
on her departure from France, was just about to settle in America, where Charles Wollstonecraft already was established in
Philadelphia.
Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq., Secretary of the
Society of United Irishmen, was prosecuted January 29, 1794, for having published a
seditious libel. After a trial at Bar, in which he was defended by Curran, he was found guilty, was sentenced to pay a fine
of £500, to be imprisoned for two years, and at the end of this time to give security for
his good behaviour for seven years, himself in £2000 and two sureties in £1000 each. Within
four months he escaped from gaol, and found his way to Havre, then called Havre Marat, in
lieu of its old name Havre de Grace.
Mary Wollstonecraft to Archibald Hamilton Rowan,
Esq.
“Havre, April 1795.
“My dear Sir,—I wrote a few
hasty lines to you just now, before we entered the vessel, and after hurrying
myself out of breath—for as I do not like exaggerated phrases, I would not say
to death—the awkward pilot ran us aground, so here we are in an empty house;
and with the heart and imagination on the wing, you may suppose that the slow
march of time is felt very painfully. I seem to be counting the ticking of a
clock, and there is no clock here. For these few days I have been busy
preparing, now all is done, and we cannot go. If you were to pop in I should be
glad, for in spite of my impatience to see a friend who deserves all
tenderness, I still have a corner in my heart, where I will allow you a place,
if you have no objection. It would give me sincere pleasure to meet you at any
future period, and to be introduced to your wife. Pray take care of yourself,
and when you arrive let me hear from you. Direct to me at Mr Johnson’s, St Paul’s
Churchyard, London, and wherever I may be the letter will not fail to reach me. You will not find a very comfortable house;
but I have left a little store of provisions in a closet, and the girl who
assisted in our kitchen, and who has been well paid, has promised to do
everything for you. Mr Wheatcroft has all your packages,
and will give you all the information and assistance he can. I believe I told
you that I offered Mr Russell’s family my house, but
since I arrived I find there is some chance of letting it. Will you then, when
Mr Wheatcroft informs you in what manner he has
settled it, write the particulars to them. I imagine that the house will be
empty for a short time to come at any rate, but I found it necessary to take my
linen with me, and the good people here sold my kitchen furniture for me. Still
I think, as they have many necessaries, they will find this house much more
comfortable than an inn. I neither like to say or write adieu. If you see my
brother Charles, pray assure him that I
most affectionately remember him. Take every precaution to avoid danger.—Yours
sincerely,
“Mary
Imlay.”
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft.
April 27th [1795].
“When you hear, my dear Everina, that I have been in London near a fortnight without
writing to you or Eliza, you will
perhaps accuse me of insensibility, for I shall not lay any stress on my not
being well in consequence of a violent cold I caught during the time I was
nursing; but tell you that I put off writing because I was at a loss what I
could do to render Eliza’s situation more
comfortable. I instantly gave Jones ten pounds to send,
for a very obvious reason, in his own name to my father, and I could send her a trifle of this kind immediately,
were a temporary assistance necessary. I believe I told you that Mr Imlay had not a fortune when I first knew
him; since that he has entered into very extensive plans, which promise a
degree of success, though not equal to the first prospect. When a sufficient
sum is actually realized, I know he will give me for you and
Eliza five or six hundred pounds, or more if he can.
In what way could this be of the
most use to you? I am above concealing my sentiments, though I have boggled at
uttering them. It would give me sincere pleasure to be situated near you both.
I cannot yet say where I shall determine to spend the rest of my life; but I do
not wish to have a third person in the house with me; my domestic happiness
would perhaps be interrupted without my being of much use to
Eliza. This is not a hastily-formed opinion, nor is it
in consequence of my present attachment, yet I am obliged now to express it,
because it appears to me that you have formed some such expectation for
Eliza. You may wound me by remarking on my
determination, still I know on what principle I act, and therefore you can only
judge for yourself. I have not heard from Charles for a great while. By writing to me immediately you
would relieve me from considerable anxiety. Mrs
Imlay, No. 26 Charlotte St, Rathbone Place.—Yours sincerely,
“Mary.”
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Pembroke, April 29, 1795.
“Read the following letter: ‘I arrived in town
near a fortnight ago, my dear girl, but having previously weaned my child on
account of a cough, I found myself extremely weak. I have intended writing to
you every day, but have been prevented by the impossibility of determining in
what way I can be of essential service to you. When Mr Imlay and I united our fate together, he was without
fortune; since that, there is a prospect of his obtaining a considerable one;
but though the hope appears to be well founded, I cannot yet act as if it were
a certainty. He is the most generous creature in the world, and if he succeed,
as I have the greatest reason to think he will, he will, in proportion to his
acquirement of property, enable me to be useful to you and Everina. I wish you and her would adopt any
plan in which five or six hundred pounds would be of use. As to myself, I
cannot yet say where I shall live for a continuance. It would give me the
sincerest pleasure to be situated near you. I know you will think me unkind, and it was this reflection which has prevented
my writing to you sooner, not to invite you to come and live with me. But,
Eliza, it is my opinion, not a
readily formed one, the presence of a third person interrupts or destroys
domestic happiness. Excepting this sacrifice, there is nothing I would not do
to promote your comfort. I am hurt at being obliged to be thus explicit, and do
indeed feel for the disappointments which you have met with in life. I have not
heard from Charles, nor can I guess what
he is about. What was done with the £50 he speaks of having sent to England?
Do, pray, write to me immediately, and do justice to my heart. I do not wish to
endanger my own peace without a certainty of securing yours. Yet I am still
your most sincere and affectionate friend,
Mary.’ ‘26 Charlotte St., Rathbone Place,
London.’
“This I have just received. My Everina, what I felt, and shall for ever
feel! It is childish to talk of. After lingering above a fortnight in such
cruel suspense. Good God! what a letter! How have I merited such pointed
cruelty? When did I wish to live with her? At what time wish for a moment
to interrupt their domestic happiness? Was ever a present offered in so
humiliating a style? Ought the poorest domestic to be thus insulted? Are
your eyes opened at last, Everina? What do you now say
to our goodly prospects? I have such a mist before my lovely eyes that I
cannot now see what I write. Instantly get me a situation in Ireland, I
care not where. Dear Everina, delay not to tell me you
can procure bread, with what hogs I eat it, I care not, nay, if exactly the
Uptonian breed. Remember I am serious. If you disappoint me, my misery will
be complete. I have enclosed this famous letter to the author of the
‘Rights of
Women’ without any reflection. She shall never hear from
poor Bess again.
Remember, I am as fixed as my misery, and nothing can change my present
plan. This letter has so strongly agitated me that I know not what I say;
but this I feel, and know, that if you value my existence you will comply
with my requisition, for I am positive I will never tor-ment our amiable
friend in Charlotte Street. Is not this a good spring, my dear girl? At
least poor Bess can say it is a fruitful one. Alas,
poor Bess!”
Mrs Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Pembroke, May 10, 1795.
“My dearEverina,—Though I
know it is impossible for you to have answered either of my last letters, yet I
feel vexed at not hearing from you. I am so eager for you to say you have
procured a situation for me in Dublin. I now have only ten days to spend at
Pembroke, yet am quite uncertain what ‘poor
Bess’s’ future fate is to be. I mean to stay with my
father a week, or little more, so
write and tell me the price of the new stage from Waterford to the capital.
Also inform me from what inn it sets off, not forgetting the hour. There is no
vessel now that can sail for Ireland, so I must send my box to London, and from
thence to our mother country. What say you to Mrs
Imlay’s friendly epistle? I told you I returned it with
only these words: ‘Mrs B. has
never received any money from America.’ Nine days have now
elapsed, and here I am waiting for your letter, my dear
Everina. Can you blame me for returning Mrs
I.’s letter? I am sick of thinking on the subject, and
weary of anticipating ought from to-morrow. If it is impossible to procure me
bread immediately, perhaps George would
permit me to remain with him until you succeed. Recollect I value not what
situation you get me—agreeable or disagreeable will be equally acceptable to
the sister of the author of the ‘Rights of Women.’ I now have not
the smallest wish to quit Wales, nor are my prospects in the least cheered by
the idea of seeing you so soon. For I am sick to death of arguing and
accounting for the unaccountable events of this wretched life, and as
thoroughly tired of the lingering existence I have dragged on year after year,
spring after spring. To receive aught now from your Mary
appears to me to be the height of meanness. Would to God we were both in
America with Charles. Do you think it
would be possible for us to go from Dublin to
Philadelphia in an American ship? This is my only hope, yet I am afraid to
indulge it. I beseech you to write to Charles immediately.
I am sure our sister would be delighted with this plan, and our new brother
will of course display all his energy of character to render it practicable.
Was it greatness of mind or heart which dictated the ever-memorable letter,
which has so stupified me that I know not what I write, for I have incessant
headaches to such a degree that it is a torture for me to take up a pen. Alas!
at the end of four long years, could despair itself have dreamed of such
studied cruelty? No inquiries after my present wants, &c.; no wish to see
us. Mr Imlay’s silence was a bad
omen, and that she could remain in London a fortnight, and then send poor
Bess such a cordial! Oh! that I could find another
Upton, for I never more wish to be near those I love. The last month with the
good and amiable Graux has been dreadfully embittered. He
is now very ill, and thoroughly hurt at my sublime sister. He sends his love to
Everina, whom he is much more anxious to see than the
famous Mrs Wollstonecraft Write to me immediately. Direct
to me at Laugharne, for an answer cannot reach me here before I leave. Send
every particular relative to the coach at Waterford, and what house will
receive me in Dublin? The visit to my father will add greatly to my expense: be
particular about the terms. I know not what I say, I am so dull and weary of my
miserable life. Is not this a goodly spring, and is not
Bess a lucky girl? The amiable
Mary pined in poverty, while Mrs
Imlay enjoys all her heart can sigh for.
“Good night.”
[Unsigned.]
The truth, however, was wholly other than Mrs
Bishop supposed. When Mary and
Imlay again met in England, his affairs proved
seriously embarrassed, and his affection had sensibly cooled. There was not as yet, indeed,
any word of a permanent separation; but as they had, in fact, been actually together during
but a short time of their connection, so
now it was evident that Imlay’s speculations in trade, which
were extended to various countries, would separate them still more; and nothing was further
from his intentions than to settle down on a moderate competence with her who counted
herself his wife, and their child.
It proved necessary that some one should go to Sweden and Norway on
Imlay’s part, on some business, not
clearly stated, but connected with his trade; while his own presence was urgently required
elsewhere. The voyage, it was thought, would prove of advantage to Mary’s health; and, in the June following their
meeting, she made the voyage, and undertook the business.
The document already mentioned remains, in which Imlay spoke of her as his wife, and gave her power to act
for him. It is as follows:—
“May 19, 1795.
“Know all men, by these presents, that I, Gilbert Imlay, citizen of the United States of
America, at present residing in London, do nominate, constitute, and appoint
Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife,
to take the sole management and direction of all my affairs and business which
I had placed in the hands of Mr Elias Bachman, negotiant,
Gottenburg, or in those of Messrs Myburg & Co.,
Copenhagen, desiring that she will manage and direct such concerns in such
manner as she may deem most wise and prudent. For which this letter shall be a
sufficient power, enabling her to receive all the money or sums of money that
may be recovered from Peter Ellyson or his connections,
whenever the issue of the tryal now carrying on, instigated by Mr
Elias Bachman, as my agent, for the violation of the trust which
I had reposed in his integrity.
“Considering the aggravated distresses, the
accumulated losses and damages sustained in consequence of the said
Ellisson’s disobedience of my injunctions, I
desire the said Mary Imlay will clearly
ascertain the amount of such damages, taking first the
advice of persons qualified to judge of the probability of obtaining
satisfaction, or the means the said Ellisson or his
connections who may be proved to be implicated in his guilt may have, or power
of being able to make restitution, and then commence a new prosecution for the
same accordingly. . . .
“Respecting the cargo of goods in the hands of Messrs
Myburg and Co., Mrs
Imlay has only to consult the most experienced persons engaged
in the disposition of such articles, and then placing them at their disposal,
act as she may deem right and proper. . . .
“Thus, confiding in the talent, zeal, and earnestness
of my dearly beloved friend and companion, I submit the management of these
affairs entirely and implicitly to her discretion.
“Remaining most sincerely and affectionately hers
truly,
“G. Imlay.
“Witness, J. Samoriel.”
Her letters to Imlay during this
period were afterwards published, when divested of all that was personal and private, under
the title, “Letters from
Norway,” and are still thoroughly worth reading, as a picturesque and graceful
description of a summer tour. The more personal portions may be found among her posthumous
works, and carry on the sad tale of her sorrows. She returned to England in the late
autumn, to meet letters from Imlay, which made it plain they were to
part, but offering to settle an annuity on her and her child. This, for herself, she
rejected with scorn. “From you,” she writes, “I will not
receive any more; I am not yet sufficiently humbled to depend on your
beneficence.” They met once again, when Imlay attempted to
gloss over the past, so that it seemed possible, for the child’s sake, that they
might still remain together. But though he had assured her that he had no other attachment,
she discovered in a short time that he was carrying on an unworthy intrigue under her own
roof. It was then that, driven to
despair, and for a time quite out of her mind, she attempted to drown herself by leaping
from Putney Bridge; and when that attempt was frustrated, although she was quite insensible
when taken out of the water, she still nursed for some time the desire of ending her
existence. The letters written during this period are some of the most terrible and most
touching ever penned. But calmer counsels, and the loving care of her friends, among whom
Mr Johnson was chief, prevailed. She determined
once again to support herself by her pen, and resented all attempts of
Imlay to induce her to accept support from him. “I
want not such vulgar comfort,” she says, “nor will I accept
it. I never wanted but your heart: that gone, you have nothing more to give. Forgive
me, if I say that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my
necessities as an insult I have not merited, and as rather done out of tenderness for
your own reputation than for me.” With regard to Fanny’s maintenance, she neither accepted nor refused anything.
“You must do as you please with regard to the child,” was her final
decision. Imlay eventually gave a bond for a sum to be settled on his
child, the interest to be devoted to her maintenance; but neither principal nor interest
was ever paid.
The following letter to Mr Rowan
was written just after the final parting with Imlay.
Mary Wollstonecraft to A. Hamilton Rowan, Esq.
“London, 26th
Jany., 1796.
“My dear Sir,—Though I have
not heard from you, I should have written to you, convinced of your friendship,
could I have told you anything of myself that could have afforded you pleasure.
I am unhappy. I have been treated with unkindness, and even cruelty, by the person from whom I had every reason to
expect affection. I write to you with an agitated hand. I cannot be more
explicit. I value your good opinion, and you know how to feel for me. I looked
for something like happiness in the discharge of my relative duties, and the
heart on which I leaned has pierced mine to the quick. I have not been used
well, and I live but for my child; for I am weary of myself. I still think of
settling in France, because I wish to leave my little girl there. I have been
very ill, have taken some desperate steps; but I am now writing for
independence. I wish I had no other evil to complain of than the necessity of
providing for myself and my child. Do not mistake me. Mr Imlay would be glad to supply all my
pecuniary wants; but unless he returns to himself, I would perish first. Pardon
the incoherence of my style. I have put off writing to you from time to time,
because I could not write calmly. Pray write to me. I will not fail, I was
going to say, when I have anything good to tell you. But for me there is
nothing good in store—my heart is broken!—I am yours, &c.
Mary Imlay.”
Still, for the sake of the child, bearing Imlay’s name, she began again to enter into London literary society,
in which she and Godwin were almost equally
conspicuous.
CHAPTER IX. MARRIED LIFE. 1797.
The fragmentary notes which Mrs
Shelley left, in reference to her mother, are all full of very peculiar
interest. They serve to manifest not only the sympathy, partly intellectual, partly
physical, felt by the gifted daughter for the still more gifted mother, who died in giving
her birth, but also the estimate in which that mother was held by Godwin and by such friends as Mrs Reveley, from whom Mrs Shelley learned all that
she knew of her dead mother. Some of these notes are too incomplete for quotation, mere
drafts and hints of sentences, which might afterwards be finished; but one, more entire,
may here be given, describing the estimate which she had been led to form of Mary Wollstonecraft at the time of her marriage.
“Mary
Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a
generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of
circumstances can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard
school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the
oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows. Her
sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager sympathy, stamped all
her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm that enchants
while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her. Many years are
passed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold still
grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without enthusiastic veneration.
Did she witness an act of injustice, she boldly came forward to point it out, and
induce its reparation. Was there discord among friends or relatives, she stood by the
weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and kindliness awoke latent affection, and
healed all wounds. ‘Open as day to melting charity,’ with a heart
brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and
her life had been one course of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter
disappointment.
“Godwin met
her at the moment when she was deeply depressed by the ingratitude of one utterly
incapable of appreciating her excellence; who had stolen her heart, and availed himself
of her excessive and thoughtless generosity, and lofty independence of character, to
plunge her in difficulties and then desert her. Difficulties, worldly difficulties,
indeed, she set at nought, compared with her despair of good, her confidence betrayed,
and when once she could conquer the misery that clung to her heart she struggled
cheerfully to meet the poverty that was her inheritance, and to do her duty by her
darling child. It was at this time that Godwin again met her, at
the house of her friend Miss Hayes,”
having before done so occasionally before she went to Norway.
Godwin’s first impression of her was not a
pleasing one. He wished to hear Tom Paine talk, who
was also of the party, and always a silent man, and he considered that Mrs Imlay talked too much. He was also an extremely
fastidious critic, and had been offended at some slight verbal inaccuracies, as they seemed
to him, in her earlier works. But after reading the letters from Norway, his views about her culture were
wholly altered. He saw that the blemishes, if indeed they had really existed, were but
superficial, and he speedily yielded to the charm which all that knew her recognised. His
own exquisitely written description of their love is published in the Memoirs of his wife, but a passage may here be extracted from a book which now is
scarce, and but little known. He says,
“The partiality we conceived for each other was in
that mode which I have always considered 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. . . . There was no period of throes
and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into
love.”
The description of their married happiness is equally striking. The slight
clouds which will appear in the correspondence which passed between them, were of an
extremely transient character, and arose from Mary
Wollstonecraft’s extreme sensitiveness and eager quickness of temper,
which were perhaps now and then tried by Godwin’s confirmed bachelor habits, and also by the fact that he took
au pied de la lettre all that she said
about the independence of women, when in truth she leant a good deal on the aid of others.
Into one plan of Godwin’s, which may seem strange, his wife
willingly fell. His strong view on the possibility that families may easily weary of the
society of their different members, led him to take rooms in a house about twenty doors
from that in the Polygon, Somers Town, which was their joint home. To this study he
repaired as soon as he rose in the morning, rarely even breakfasting at the Polygon, and
here also he often slept. Each was engaged in his and her own literary occupations, and
they seldom met, unless they walked together, till dinner time each day.
“We agreed, also,” says Godwin, “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 in
complying with this rule.”
Before the marriage was declared, but while the intimate relation in which
they stood to each other was understood, Southey,
then in London, met Godwin and Mary, and wrote to his friend Cottle his views of them.
R. Southey to J. Cottle.
“March 13th,
1797.
“. . . Of all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary
Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the
only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of
Horne Tooke display—an expression
indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary
Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and
although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the
most meaning I ever saw. . . . As for Godwin himself, he has large noble eyes, and a nose—oh most abominable nose! Language is not
vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward
elongation.”—Southey’s Life, Vol. i., pp. 305, 306.
The marriage itself took place at Old St Pancras Church on March 29th,
1797, Marshal and the clerk of the church being the
witnesses. Godwin takes no notice whatever of it in
his diary.
Among those who were entitled to early information was Mr Thomas Wedgwood of Etruria. His correspondence during
the early months of this year with Godwin had been
familiar and lengthy, chiefly concerned with difficult metaphysical problems in the study
of which both were interested. In one,
however, he asks for a loan of £50, and the request was at once granted, but he did not at
once explain the reason that he required such a sum, though he knew that his friend would
be astonished, since his careful frugality was well known. The money was in fact required
to enable him to help Mary Wollstonecraft out of
some difficulties, and after the marriage, he again wrote thus;
W. Godwin to T. Wedgwood, Esq.
“No. 7 Evesham Buildings, Somers
Town, April 19th, 1797.
“. . . You have by this time heard from B. Montague of my marriage. This was the
solution of my late application to you, which I promised speedily to
communicate. Some persons have found an inconsistency between my practice in
this instance and my doctrines. But I cannot see it. The doctrine of my
‘Political
Justice’ is, that an attachment in some degree permanent,
between two persons of opposite sexes is right, but that marriage, as practised
in European countries, is wrong. I still adhere to that opinion. Nothing but a
regard for the happiness of the individual, which I had no right to injure,
could have induced me to submit to an institution which I wish to see
abolished, and which I would recommend to my fellow-men, never to practise, but
with the greatest caution. Having done what I thought necessary for the peace
and respectability of the individual, I hold myself no otherwise bound than I
was before the ceremony took place.
“It is possible however that you will not see the
subject in the same light, and I perhaps went too far, when I presumed to
suppose that if you were acquainted with the nature of the case you would find
it to be such as to make the interference I requested of you appear reasonable.
I trust you will not accuse me of duplicity in having told you that it was not
for myself that I wanted your assistance. You will perceive that that remark
was in reference to the seeming inconsistency between my habits of economy and
independence and the application in question.
“I can see no reason to doubt that as we are both
successful authors, we shall be able by our literary exertions, though with no
other fortune, to maintain ourselves either separately, or which is more
desirable jointly. The loan I requested of you was rendered necessary by some
complication in her pecuniary affairs, the consequence of her former
connection, the particulars of which you have probably heard. Now that we have
entered into a new mode of living, which will probably be permanent, I find a
further supply of fifty pounds will be necessary to enable us to start fair.
This you shall afford us, if you feel perfectly assured of its propriety, but
if there be the smallest doubt in your mind, I shall be much more gratified by
your obeying that doubt, than superseding it I do not at present feel inclined
to remain long in any man’s debt, not even in yours. As to the not having
published our marriage at first, I yielded in that to her feelings. Having
settled the principal point in conformity to her interest, I felt inclined to
leave all inferior matters to her disposal.
“W.
Godwin.”
“We do not entirely cohabit.”
Godwin wrote to his mother at once that she might be, as was right, among the first people
informed about his marriage. But the fact of Fanny’s existence and other details were probably supplied by
Miss Godwin. The old lady took time to answer
the communication.
Mrs Godwin, Sen., to W. Godwin.
[Wood Dalling, Norfolk,] 3rd May, 1797.
“DearWm.—What you say
respecting your dear cousin’s deth is very consolitory and a just remark.
It was rather the pleasure of knowing she was a live than use we could be of to
each other, and upon reflection mater of thankfulness on her account, as the
change to her is so far superior to the infirm body she carried about, only
this that her letters were always incourag-ing me to go on trusting in the Lord
that had been so gratious to me hitherto, and would not forsake any that
reverance his name. Thus did we incourage and comfort one another with passages
out of scripture that never failing word. When lover and friend forsake us then
the Lord will take us up; this is the friend that sticketh closer than a
brother, and though we should lose all other friends, the unchangable god
liveth, for of his years there is no end, blessed for ever be his name.
“Your broken resolution in regard to mattrimony
incourages me to hope that you will ere long embrace the Gospel, that sure word
of promise to all believers, and not only you, but your other half, whose souls
should be both one, as Watts says of his
friend Gunston, the sooner the better. My dear
Wm., the apoligy I have to make for not answering
yours is, Mrs G. was going to send a box to H. soon, and was willing to save ye postage.
You might have been so good as told me a few more particulars about your
conjugal state, as when you were married, as being a father as well as a
husband; hope you will fill up your place with propriety in both relations; you
are certainly transformed in a moral sense, why is it impossable in a spiritual
sense, which last will make you shine with the radiance of the sun for ever.
Mrs G. and, I may say, all your friends and mine wish
you happiness, and shall be glad to see you and your wife in Norfolk, if I be
spared. You must not expect great exactness, as I have a young servant, and
myself able to do nothing at all. I hope you are good walkers, for I have ho
horse, and have not entered my Cart, so can go nowhere but to meeting with it.
I have for many days had the cramp, I call it, rather than ye Rhumatism. I
can’t put on my own stockens, and am obliged to stand to eat my vituals,
and get up and walk about perhaps 40 times while I write this letter. I intend
sending you a few eggs with this in Hannah’s box. Could send you a small fether bed, would do
for a servant, by wagon, if acceptable. If you give me a direction, you may
write by ye return of the box, or Mr Jo.
Godwin, whome, John says, intends coming
into the country in about a fortnight or three weeks, or by post for me at
Mr Munton’s, shopkeeper, Foulsham, will cost but
7d., any other way 8d. Your poor sister
H. is, I fear, a bad oeconemist, her heart too
generous for her comings in, and besides that she has lost her good friend
Mrs Hague. Many people think her character injured by
Marshal, a married man, who, I
suppose dines with her on Sundays; is it not so? Do you commend her, tell me
freely, or advise her against it yourself? She will hear you sooner than
anybody else—faithful are the wounds of a friend. If a righteous man smite me,
it shall be a kindness; it’s an exelent oil that shall not break my head
saith the wise man.
“My dears, whatever you do, do not make invitations and
entertainments, that was what hurt Jo.
Live comfortable with one another. The Hart of her husband safely trusts in
her. I cannot give you no better advice than out of Proverbs, the Prophets, and
New Testament. My best affections attend you both.—From yr. Mother,
A. Godwin.
“I am informed Mr
Harwood’smother is dead; that’s all I know. Your eggs will
spoil soon if you don’t pack them up in sawdust, bran, or something
of the kind, and turn them often. ’Tis pitty to pay carriage for them
if they don’t keep.”
Mrs Shelley’s note on the marriage of her
father and mother is as follows:—
“At the beginning of this year [1797] Mr Godwin married Mary
Wollstonecraft. The precise date is not known; he does not mention it in
his journal, and the ceremony had taken place some time before the marriage was
declared. This secrecy partly arose from a slight shrinking on Mr
Godwin’s part from avowing that he had acted in contradiction to
his theories. Such contradictions occur indeed every day, and are applauded. But the
fervour and uncompromising tone assumed by the author of ‘Political Justice’ in promulgating his
opinions made his followers demand a rigid adherence to them in action, and to comply
with the ordinance of marriage was in the eyes of many among them absolute apostacy.
Yet, in fact, all Mr Godwin’s inner and more private
feelings were contrary to the supposed gist of his doctrines. The former were all strongly enlisted on the side
of female virtue, and he would readily have proved, if questioned, that it was only
misapprehension of his doctrines that could lead any one to think that he was opposed
to marriage.
“Another cause for the secrecy at first maintained
was the stern law of poverty and necessity. My father narrowly circumscribed both his
receipts and disbursements. The maintenance of a family had never been contemplated,
and could not at once be provided for. My mother, accustomed to a life of struggle and
poverty, was so beloved by her friends, that several, and Mr Johnson in particular, had stood between her and any of the
annoyances and mortifications of debt. But this must cease when she married. They both
however looked on this sort of struggle, in which they had been born, and had always
lived, as a very secondary matter, and after a short period of deliberation they, in
the month of April, declared the marriage which had before been solemnized. The
celebrity of both parties rendered the event of importance in their own circle. It is
too usual that when a man marries he commences new habits under such a totally new
influence, and that he is lost to all his former friends. Mr
Godwin spent a portion of every day in society, and was much beloved;
his more intimate friends believed they should suffer from the change. Two ladies shed
tears when he announced his marriage—Mrs
Inchbald and Mrs Reveley. The
former lady seceded from his circle on this occasion, making worldly motives her
excuse. Mrs Reveley feared to lose a kind and constant friend,
but, becoming intimate with Mary Wollstonecraft,
she soon learnt to appreciate her virtues and to love her. She soon found, as she told
me in after days, that instead of losing one she had secured two friends, unequalled,
perhaps, in the world for genius, single-heartedness, and nobleness of disposition, and
a cordial intercourse subsisted between them.”
Mrs Inchbald’s letter, acknowledging the
receipt of the communication, is very characteristic of a woman who, as Godwin remarks, afterwards wished to “shuffle
out” of a difficulty. He did not choose to take the
hint, and it appears, both from his Diary and a later letter, that he and his wife were
present with Mrs Inchbald at the play on the night in question,
Wednesday, April 19th, and that then Mrs Inchbald expressed her
feelings freely to Mrs Godwin.
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
“April 11, 1797.
“I most sincerely wish you and Mrs Godwin joy. But, assured that your
joyfulness would obliterate from your memory every trifling engagement, I have
entreated another person to supply your place, and perform your office in
securing a box on Reynold’s night.
If I have done wrong, when you next marry, I will act differently.”
Godwin merely communicated the fact of the marriage
to Holcroft. He knew that his friend would
understand to whom he was married. He received from him a very different letter.
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin and
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“April 6, 1797.
“From my very heart and soul I give you joy. I think
you the most extraordinary married pair in existence. May your happiness be as
pure as I firmly persuade myself it must be. I hope and expect to see you both,
and very soon. If you show coldness, or refuse me, you will do injustice to a
heart which, since it has really known you, never for a moment felt cold to
you.
“I cannot be mistaken concerning the woman you have
married. It is Mrs W. Your secrecy a
little pains me. It tells me you do not yet know me.
T. Holcroft.”
It will be seen that the above letters are not arranged precisely in the
order of their dates, but they appeared to fall in better with Mrs
Shelley’s note on the marriage than earlier.
The mode of Godwin’s married
life having been described, a selection from the notes which passed between the pair, both
immediately before the marriage and afterwards, to and from the house in the Polygon and
his lodgings in Evesham Place, needs no further explanation. Some of them have been taken
out of their place in order of date, that the series may be presented consecutively.
Mary Wollstonecraft to William Godwin.
“Jan. 5, 1797. Thursday morning.
“I was very glad that you were not with me last night,
for I could not rouse myself. To say the truth, I was unwell and out of
spirits; I am better to-day.
“I shall take a walk before dinner, and expect to see
you this evening, chez moi, about
eight, if you have no objection.”
The Same to the Same.
“Jan. 12, 1797. Thursday morning.
“I am better this morning, but it snows so incessantly,
that I do not know how I shall be able to keep my appointment this evening.
What say you? But you have no petticoats to dangle in the snow. Poor women—how
they are beset with plagues—within and without.”
The Same to the Same.
“Jan. 13th,
1797. Friday morning.
“I believe I ought to beg your pardon for talking at
you last night, though it was in sheer simplicity of heart, and I have been
asking myself why it so happened. Faith and troth, it was because there was
nobody else worth attacking, or who could con-verse.
C. had wearied me before you entered. But be assured,
when I find a man that has anything in him, I shall let my every day dish
alone.
“I send you the Emma”
[Emma, or the Unfortunate
Attachment. A novel. London 1773] for Mrs Inchbald, supposing you have not altered your mind.
“Bring Holcroft’s remarks with you, and Ben Johnson” [sic].
The Same to the Same.
“Jan. 27, 1797.
“I am not well this morning. It is very tormenting to
be thus, neither sick nor well, especially as you scarcely imagine me
indisposed.
“Women are certainly great fools; but nature made them
so. I have not time or paper, else I could draw an inference, not very
illustrative of your chance-medley system. But I spare the moth-like opinion;
there is room enough in the world, &c.”
The Same to the Same.
“Feb. 3, 1797. Friday
Morning.
“Mrs Inchbald
was gone into the City to dinner, so I had to measure back my steps.
“To day I find myself better, and, as the weather is
fine, mean to call on Dr Fordyce. I
shall leave home about two o’clock. I tell you so, lest you should call
after that hour. I do not think of visiting you in my way, because I seem
inclined to be industrious. I believe I feel affectionate to you in proportion
as I am in spirits; still I must not dally with you, when I can do anything
else. There is a civil speech for you to chew.”
The Same to the Same.
“Feb. 17, 1797.
“Did I not see you, friend Godwin, at the theatre last night? I thought I met a smile, but
you went out without looking round.
“We expect you at half-past four.” [She did see
“friend Godwin,” for the
Diary shows that he was there.]
The Same to the Same.
“Feb. 22, 1797.
“Everina’s cold is still so bad, that unless pique urges
her, she will not go out to-day. For to-morrow, I think I may venture to
promise. I will call, if possible, this morning. I know I must come before half
after one; but if you hear nothing more from me, you had better come to my
house this evening.
“Will you send the second volume of ‘Caleb,’ and pray lend me
a bit of Indian rubber. I have lost mine. Should you be obliged to quit home
before the hour I have mentioned, say. You will not forget that we are to dine
at four. I wish to be exact, because I have promised to let
Mary go and assist her brother this afternoon. I have
been tormented all this morning by puss, who has had four or five fits. I could
not conceive what occasioned them, and took care that she should not be
terrified. But she flew up my chimney, and was so wild, that I thought it right
to have her drowned. Fanny imagines that
she was sick, and ran away.”
Everina, who had been residing for some time with
her sister, but who was not in her sister’s confidence as to her relation with
Godwin, now left London, to become governess in
the Wedgwood family, at Etruria.
The Same to the Same.
“Mar. 11th,
1797. Saturday Morning.
“I must dine to-day with Mrs Christie, and mean to return as early as I can; they seldom
dine before five.
“Should you call and find only books, have a little
patience, and I shall be with you.
“Do not give Fanny a cake to-day. I am afraid she staid too long with you
yesterday.
“You are to dine with me on Monday, remember; the salt
beef awaits your pleasure.”
The Same to the Same.
“Mar. 17, 1797. Friday Morning.
“And so, you goose, you lost your supper—and deserved
to lose it, for not desiring Mary to give you some beef.
“There is a good boy, write me a review of Vaurien. I remember there is
an absurd attack on a Methodist preacher, because he denied the Eternity of
future punishments.
“I should be glad to have the Italian, were it possible, this week,
because I promised to let Johnson have
it this week.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft.
[Between March 17 and
29, 1797.]
“I will have the honour to dine with you. You ask me
whether I think I can get four orders. I do not know, but I do not think the
thing impossible. How do you do?”
The Same to the Same.
“March 29, [after the
Wedding.]
“I must write, though it will not be long till five. I
shall, however, reserve all I have to say. Non je ne
veux pas être fâché quant au passé. Au revoir.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin.
“March 31, 1797. Friday.
“I return you the volumes; will you get me the rest? I
have not, perhaps, given it as careful a reading as some of the sentiments
deserve.
“Pray send me by Mary for my
luncheon a part of the supper you announced to me last night, as I am to be a
partaker of your worldly goods, you know!”
The Same to the Same.
“Saturday, April 8, 1797.
“I have just thought that it would be very pretty in
you to call on Johnson to-day. It would
spare me some awkwardness, and please him; and I want you to visit him often of
a Tuesday. This is quite disinterested, as I shall never be of the party. Do,
you would oblige me. But when I press anything, it is always with a true wifish
submission to your judgment and inclination. Remember to leave the key of No.
25 with us, on account of the wine.”
The Same to the Same.
“April 11th,
1797.
“I am not well to-day; my spirits have been harassed.
Mary will tell you about the state of the sink,
&c. Do you know you plague me—a little—by not speaking more determinately
to the landlord, of whom I have a mean opinion. He tires me by his pitiful way
of doing everything. I like a man who will say yes or no at once.”
The Same to the Same.
“April 11th,
1797.
“I wish you would desire Mr Marshal to call on me. Mr
Johnson or somebody has always taken the disagreeable business
of settling with tradespeople off my hands. I am perhaps as unfit as yourself
to do it, and my time appears to me as valuable as that of other persons
accustomed to employ themselves. Things of this kind are easily settled with
money I know; but I am tormented by the want of money, and feel, to say the
truth, as if I was not treated with respect, owing to your desire not to be
disturbed.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“April 20th,
[1797.]
“I am pained by the recollection of our conversation
last night. The sole principle of conduct of which I am conscious in my behaviour to you, has been in everything to study your
happiness. I found a wounded heart, and as that heart cast itself on me, it was
my ambition to heal it. Do not let me be wholly disappointed.
“Let me have the relief of seeing you this morning. If
I do not call before you go out, call on me.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin.
“April 20th,
1797.
“Fanny is
delighted with the thought of dining with you. But I wish you to eat your meat
first, and let her come up with the pudding. I shall probably knock at your
door in my way to Opie’s; but
should I not find you, let me request you not to be too late this evening. Do
not give Fanny butter with her pudding.”
The Same to the Same.
“Saturday morning, May 21st, 1797.
“. . . Montagu
called on me this morning, that is breakfasted with me, and invited me to go
with him and the Wedgwoods into the
country to-morrow, and return the next day. As I love the country, and think
with a poor mad woman I knew, that there is God, or something very consolatory
in the air, I should without hesitation have accepted the invitation but for my
engagement with your sister. To her even
I should have made an apology, could I have seen her, or rather have stated
that the circumstance would not occur again. As it is I am afraid of wounding
her feelings, because an engagement often becomes important in proportion as it
has been anticipated. I began to write to ask your opinion respecting the
propriety of sending to her, and feel as I write that I had better conquer my
desire of contemplating unsophisticated nature than give her a moment’s
pain.
“Mary.”
It does not appear how this knotty point was settled, but Godwin was not long afterwards a companion of Mr Basil Montagu on a somewhat longer excursion, extending
over more than a fortnight. The friends hired a one horse carriage, and made a tour into
Staffordshire, taking journeys which speak well for the quality of the animal they drove.
An abridgement of Godwin’s diary will throw light on the
correspondence with his wife during the tour.
“June 3, Sa.—Tour w. Montagu: sleep at Beaconsfield.
„ 4, Su.—Wycombe: breakfast
at Tetsworth: dine at Horseman’s, Oxford, w. Porter,
Mossop, and 3 Swans: Woodstock: sleep at Chapel House.
„ 5, M.—Shipston: Welsburn:
breakfast at Morley’s, Hampton Lucy, w. C. Parr; dine at
Boot’s, Atherston nr. Stratford, w. Parr, Morley, Bradley, and
Philips: Henley: sleep at Hochley
House.
„ 6, Tu.—Breakfast at
Birmingham: Walsal: dine at Caunoc: Stafford: tea, Stone: sup at Etruria, w.
Br. Allen and ladies.
„ 7, W.—Hobbes’s ‘Human Nature’ p. 14. Dine at
Mrs Wedgwood’s, w.
Miss Ja. Willet: ride to Chesterton w. Montagu.
„ 8, Th.—Hobbes, p. 26. View the Pottery: Theatre,
Stobe, ‘School for
Scandal’ and ‘Catherine.’
„ 9, F.—Hobbes, p. 32, fin. Navigate the Tunnel:
ladies dine.
„ 10, Sa.—‘Life of
Hobbse’ pp. 20. Ladies dine: ride to Newcastle and Burslem w. Montagu.
„ 11, Su.—‘Leviathan’ p. 14:
‘Logique par
Condillac,’ p. 30: Bailly, ‘Sur
les Sciences,’ p. 50: Ride to Trentham w. J. & T.
Wedgwoods and Montagu.
„ 12, M.—‘Leviathan,’ p. 24,
(chap. 6.): Bailly, p. 76. Dine at
Mrs Wedgwood’s w.
Miss Willet junior.
“June 13, Tu.—Breakfast at Uttoxeter: dine at Derby; call on
Mrs Darwin: sleep at
Burton-upon-Trent.
„ 14, W.—Elford, walk w.
Bage: dine at Tamworth:
Bage calls: sup at Bage’s w.
Davis.
„ 15, Th.—Coleshil: breakfast
at George in Tree: dine at Hatton w. Wynns: walk to Kennilworth w. Montagu.
„ 16, F.—Guy’s Cliff:
Coventry Fair: dine at Dunchurch: Daventry: sleep at Northampton.
„ 17, Sa.—Wellingborough:
breakfast at Thrapston: dine at Mr Robt. Montagu’s, Brampton: tea,
Holworthy’s w. Miss Wants.
„ 18, Su.—Breakfast and dine
at Mrs Montagu’s: see Hinchinbrooke House:
Huntingdon: sup at Jones’s, Cambridge, w.
Woodhouse.
„ 19, M.—Breakfast at
Otter’s: dine at Gunnings Ichleton: sleep at
Sawbridgeworth.
„ 20, Tu.—Breakfast on Epping
Forest: Polygon; Fenwick calls:
A. Pinkerton at tea.
The letters which follow give the journey in detail.
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“Stratford-upon-Avon, June 5, 1797.
“I write at this moment from Hampton Lucy, in sight of
the house and park of Sir Thomas Lucy,
the great benefactor of mankind, who persecuted William Shakespeare for deer-stealing, and obliged him to take
refuge in the metropolis. Montagu has
just had a vomit, to carry off a certain quantity of punch, with the drinking
of which he concluded the Sunday evening.
“Is that the right style for a letter?
“We are going to dine to-day at the house of
Mr Boot, a country farmer, with Dr Parr and a set of jolly fellows, to
commemorate the victory, or rather no-victory gained last week by the High
Sheriff of Warwick and the oppositionists over the Lord Lieutenant and the ministerialist, on the matter
of the dismission of Mr Pitt and his
coadjutors. We sleep to-night at Dr Parr’s, 60 miles
from Etruria, at which place therefore we probably shall not arrive till
Wednesday. Our horse has turned out admirably, and we were as gay as larks. We
were almost drowned this morning in a brook, swelled by the rains. We are here
at the house of a Mr Morley, a
clergyman, with whom we breakfasted after a ride of 22 miles. He is an
excellent classic, and, which is almost as good, a clever and amiable man. Here
we met Catherine Parr, the youngest, as
blooming as Hebe, and more interesting than all the goddesses in the Pantheon.
Montagu is in love with her.
“We slept the first night at Beaconsfield, the
residence of Mr Burke, 23 miles. The
town was full of soldiers. We rose the next morning, as well as to-day, a
little after four. We drove about 20 miles to breakfast, and arrived at Oxford,
53 miles from town, about 12. Here we had a grand dinner prepared for us by
letter, by a Mr Horseman, who says that you and I are the
two greatest men in the world. He is very nervous, and thinks he never had a
day’s health in his life. He intends to return the visit, and eat a good
dinner in the Paragon, but he will find himself mistaken. We saw the buildings,
an object that never impressed me with rapture, but we could not see the
collection of paintings at Ch. Ch. Library, because it was Sunday. We saw
however an altar-piece by Guido, Christ
bearing the Cross, a picture I think of the highest excellence. Our escort, one
of whom thinks himself an artist, were so ignorant as to tell us that a window
to which we were introduced, painted by Jervas (as they said), from Reynolds, was infinitely superior. We had also a Mr
Swan and his two wives, or sisters, to dinner, but they were no
better than geese.
“And now, my dear love, what do you think of me? Do
you not find solitude infinitely superior to the company of a husband? Will you
give me leave to return to you again when I have finished my pilgrimage, and
discharged the penance of absence? Take care of yourself, my love, and take
care of Wil-liam. Do not you be drowned, whatever I am. I
remember at every moment all the accidents to which your condition subjects
you, and wish I knew of some sympathy that could inform me from moment to
moment how you do, and what you feel.
“Tell Fanny
something about me. Ask where she thinks I am. Say I am a great way, and going
further and further, but that I shall turn round to come back again some day.
Tell her I have not forgotten her little mug, and that I shall choose a very
pretty one. Montagu said this morning
about eight o’clock, upon the road, ‘Just now little
Fanny is going to plungity-plunge.’ Was he
right? I love him very much. He is in such a hurry to see his chère adorable, that I believe, after all,
we shall set forward this evening and get to Etruria to-morrow.
“Farewell.”
[End torn off.]
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin.
“Tuesday, June 6th.
“It was so kind and considerate in you to write sooner
than I expected, that I cannot help hoping you would be disappointed at not
receiving a greeting from me on your arrival at Etruria. If your heart was in
your mouth, as I felt, just now, at the sight of your hand, you may kiss or
shake hands with the letter, and imagine with what affection it was written. If
not, stand off, profane one!
“I was not quite well the day after you left me; but
it is past, and I am well and tranquil, excepting the disturbance produced by
Master William’s joy, who took it into his head
to frisk a little at being informed of your remembrance. I begin to love this
little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I
do not wish to untie. Men are spoilt by frankness, I believe, yet I must tell
you that I love you better than I supposed I did, when I promised to love you
for ever. And I will add what will gratify your benevolence, if not your heart,
that on the whole I may be termed happy. You are a kind, affectionate creature,
and I feel it thrilling
through my frame, giving and promising pleasure.
“Fanny wanted
to know ‘what you are gone for,’ and endeavours to pronounce
Etruria. Poor papa is her word of kindness. She has been turning your letter on
all sides, and has promised to play with Bobby till I have finished my answer.
“I find you can write the kind of letter a friend
ought to write, and give an account of your movements. I hailed the sunshine
and moonlight, and travelled with you, scenting the fragrant gale. Enable me
still to be your company, and I will allow you to peep over my shoulder, and
see me under the shade of my green blind, thinking of you, and all I am to hear
and feel when you return. You may read my heart, if you will.
“I have no information to give in return for yours.
Holcroft is to dine with me on
Saturday. So do not forget us when you drink your solitary glass, for nobody
drinks wine at Etruria, I take it. Tell me what you think of Everina’s behaviour and situation, and
treat her with as much kindness as you can—that is, a little more than her
manner will probably call forth—and I will repay you.
“I am not fatigued with solitude, yet I have not
relished my solitary dinner. A husband is a convenient part of the furniture of
a house, unless he be a clumsy fixture. I wish you, from my soul, to be
rivetted in my heart; but I do not desire to have you always at my elbow,
although at this moment I should not care if you were. Yours truly and
tenderly,
Mary.
“Fanny
forgets not the mug.
“Miss Pinkerton seems
content. I was amused by a letter she wrote home. She has more in her than
comes out of her mouth. My dinner is ready, and it is washing-day. I am
putting everything in order for your return. Adieu!”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“Etruria, June 7, 1797.
“More adventures. There are scenes, Sterne says, that only a sentimental traveller
is born to be present at. I sealed my last letter at
Hampton Lucy, and set off for Mr Boot’s, farmer at
Atherston, where I expected to meet Dr
Parr to dinner. Our way lay through Stratford-upon-Avon, where,
after having paid our respects to the house, now inhabited by a butcher, in
which Shakespeare is said to have been
born, I put your letter in the post
“But before we entered Stratford we overtook Dr Parr. After a very cordial salutation, he
told us that we saw him in the deepest affliction, and forbad our visit at
present to his house, though he pressed us to wait upon him upon our return
from Etruria. He, however, went on with us upon his trot to the dinner at
Atherston. His affliction was for the elopement of his daughter with a
Mr Wynn, a young man of eighteen, a
pupil of the Doctor’s, son to a member of Parliament, and who will
probably inherit a considerable fortune. They set off for Gretna Green on the
night of Sunday the 4th. To do the Doctor justice, though in the deepest,
affliction, he was not inconsolable. He had said to the young man the Friday
before: Sir, it is necessary we should come to an issue. You must either quit
my house, or relinquish your addresses to Miss
Parr; if, after having ceased to live with me, you choose to
continue your addresses, I shall have no objection to you; but I will have no
Gretna Green work. I allow you till Monday to give in your answer. I cannot
help, however, believing that the Doctor is not very inconsolable for the
match. What do you think of it? I certainly regard Miss
Parr as a seducer, and have scarcely any doubt that the young
man will repent, and that they will be unhappy. It was her, and her
mother’s maxim that the wisest thing a young woman of sense could do was
to marry a fool, and they illustrated their maxim from their domestic scene.
Miss Parr has now, it seems, got her fool, and will
therefore learn by experiment the justice of her maxim.
“I expected to have been rallied by the Doctor upon my
marriage. He was in high spirits, but abstained from the subject. I at length
reminded him of his message by the Wedgwoods. I mentioned
it with the utmost humour, but desired an explanation, as I was really
incapable of understanding it. He appeared con-fused, said he had been in high good
humour the evening he supped with the Wedgwoods, and had
talked away at a great rate. He could not exactly say how he had expressed
himself, but was sure he did not use the word mean. We had a good deal of
raillery. I told him that he understood everything except my system of
‘Political
Justice;’ and he replied that was exactly the case with me.
Montagu afterwards told me that
Dr Parr had formerly assured him that
I was more skilful in moral science than any man now living. I am not, however,
absolutely sure of the accuracy of Montagu’s
comprehension.
“We left the Doctor at the farmer’s house, and
came on on Monday evening to within ten miles of Birmingham and fifty miles of
Etruria. (I forgot to say in the right place that Miss Parr vowed, upon hearing of my expedition, that she would
give me the most complete roasting she ever gave to any man in her life, upon
my marriage. She, however, has got her husband, and I have probably lost my
roasting. Though I think it not improbable that we shall find Mr and
Mrs Wynn at Dr
Parr’s on our return.)
“Every night we have ceased to travel at eleven; every
morning we have risen at four, so that you see we have not been idle. We
breakfasted on Tuesday at Birmingham, where we spent two hours, surveyed the
town, and saw the ruins of two large houses, which had been demolished in the
Birmingham riots. I amused myself with enquiring the meaning of a handbill
respecting a waxwork exhibition, containing, among others, lively and accurate
likenesses of the Prince and Princess of Wirtemberg, and Poet Fruth. As I had never heard of
Poet Fruth, my curiosity was excited. We found that he
was an ale-house keeper of Birmingham, the author of a considerable number of
democratical squibs. If we return by Birmingham, I promise myself to pay him a
visit
“From Birmingham, we passed through Walsall, a large
and handsome town of this county, 8 miles. We went forward, however, and came
at 12 o’clock to Cannock, a pretty little town. Here we proposed to give
our horse some water, and a mouthful of corn. Montagu had repeatedly regretted the
hardship imposed upon the horse of eating his hay with a large bit of iron in
his mouth, and here, therefore, he thought proper to take off his bridle at the
inn door. The horse, finding himself at liberty, immediately pranced off,
overturned the chaise, dashed it against a post, and broke it in twenty places.
It was a formidable sight, and the horse was with great difficulty stopped. We,
however, are philosophers, so, after having amused ourselves for some time with
laughing at our misadventure, we sent for a smith to splinter our carriage. By
two we had eaten our dinner, the chaise was hammered together. We paid the
smith his demand of 2s., and bid adieu to Cannock, the scene of this memorable
adventure.
“Our next town was Stafford, which I viewed with
unfeigned complacence, as having had the honour of being represented in four
successive Parliaments by Richard
Sheridan. We did not, however, stop here (8 miles), but
proceeded to Stone (7 more), and nine short of Etruria. Here we took tea, and
here I wrote the first 18 lines of this letter. You cannot imagine the state of
intoxication of poor Montagu as he
approached the place of our destination. It was little less than madness, but
the most kind-hearted madness imaginable. He confessed to me that he had set
out from London in extreme ill-humour, from preceding fatigue, and from doubts
of the capacity of the horse to perform the journey, in which, however, he was
agreeably disappointed. He added that it was infinitely the most delightful
journey he had ever made.
“We reached Etruria without further accident, a little
after eight. Our reception appears to be cordial. Farewell, my love. I think of
you with tenderness, and shall see you again with redoubled kindness (if you
will let me) for this short absence. Kiss Fanny for me, remember William, but, most
of all, take care of yourself. Tell Fanny I am safely
arrived in the land of mugs.
“Your sister
would not come down to see me last night at supper, but we met at breakfast
this morning. I have nothing to say about her.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“Etruria, June 10, 1797.
“You cannot imagine how happy your letter made me. No
creature expresses, because no creature feels, the-tender affections so
perfectly as you do; and, after all one’s philosophy, it must be
confessed that the knowledge that there is some one that takes an interest in
one’s happiness, something like that which each man feels in his own, is
extremely gratifying. We love, as it were, to multiply the consciousness of our
existence, even at the hazard of what Montagu described so pathetically one night upon the New Road,
of opening new avenues for pain and misery to attack us.
“We arrived, as you are already informed, at Etruria
on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday I finished my second letter to you, which was
exchanged that evening for your letter, written the preceding day. This is the
mode of carrying on correspondence at Etruria: the messenger who brings the
letters from Newcastle-under-Lyne, two miles, carries away the letters you have
already written. In case of emergency, however, you can answer letters by
return of post, and send them an hour after the messenger, time enough for the
mail.
“I wrote last Wednesday a letter which of course you
were to receive this morning. It is probable that you are now reading it: it is
between twelve and one. I hope it finds you in health and spirits. I hope you
hail the handwriting on the direction, though not probably with the surprise
which, it seems, the arrival of my first letter produced. You are now reading
my adventures: the elopement of Mrs
Wynn, the little, good-humoured sparring between me and Dr Parr, and the tremendous accident of
Cannock. These circumstances are presenting themselves with all the grace of
novelty. I am, at the same time, reading your letter, I believe for the fourth
time, which loses not one grace by the repetition. Well, fold it up; give
Fanny the kiss I sent her, and tell
her, as I desired you, that I am in the land of mugs. You wish, it may be, that
my message had been better adapted to her capacity, but
I think it better as it is; I hope you do not disdain the task of being its
commentator.
“One of the pleasures I promised myself in my
excursion, was to increase my value in your estimation, and I am not
disappointed. What we possess without intermission we inevitably hold light; it
is a refinement in voluptuousness to submit to voluntary privations. Separation
is the image of death, but it is Death stripped of all that is most tremendous,
and his dart purged of its deadly venom. I always thought St Paul’s rule, that we should die daily, an
exquisite Epicurean maxim. The practice of it would give to life a double
relish.
“Yesterday we dined at Mrs
Wedgwood’s the elder, Everina was not of the party. They sat incessantly from three
to eleven p.m. This does not suit my propensities; I
was obliged to have a ride in the whiskey at five, and a walk at half after
eight
“Montagu’s flame is the youngest of the family. She is certainly the best of the two
unmarried daughters; but, I am afraid, not good enough for him. She is
considerably fat, with a countenance rather animated, and a glimpse of
Mrs Robinson. Perhaps you know that
I am a little sheepish, particularly with stranger ladies. Our party is
numerous, and I have had no conversation with her. I look upon any of my
friends going to be married with something of the same feeling as I should do
if they were sentenced to hard labour in the Spielberg. The despot may die, and
the new despot grace his accession with a general jail delivery; that is almost
the only hope for the unfortunate captive.
“To-day we went over Mr
Wedgwood’s manufactory. Everina accompanied us, and Mr
Baugh Allen—no other lady. For Everina, she
was in high spirits. She had never seen the manufactory before. The object of
my attention was rather the countenances of the workpeople, than the wares they
produced. . . .
“Tell Fanny we
have chosen a mug for her, and another for Lucas. There is
a F on hers, and an L on his, shaped in an island of flowers, of green and
orange tawny alternately. With respect to their beauty, you will set it forth
with such eloquence as your imagination can supply.
“We are going this evening, the whole family included,
to see the ‘School for
Scandal,’ represented by a company of strollers at
Newcastle-under-Lyne. . . . Your William (do you know me
by that name?) salutes the trio, M., F., and last and least (in stature at
least), little W.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin.
“Saturday, half after one
o’clock.
“Your letter of Wednesday I did not receive till just
now, and I have only half an hour to express the kind emotions which are
clustering about my heart, or my letter will have no chance of reaching
General Tarleton’s to-day, and
to-morrow being Sunday, two posts would be lost. My last letter of course you
did not get, although I reckoned on its reaching you Wednesday morning.
“I read, T[homas]
W[edgwood]’s letter. I thought it would be affectation not
to open it, as I knew the hand. It did not quite please me. He appears to me to
be half spoilt by living with his inferiors in point of understanding, and to
expect that homage to be paid to his abilities which the world will readily pay
to his fortune. I am afraid that all men are materially injured by inheriting
wealth, and, without knowing it, become important in their own eyes, in
consequence of an advantage they contemn.
“I am not much surprised at Miss Parr’s conduct. You may remember
that I did not give her credit for as much sensibility (at least the
sensibility which is the mother of sentiment and delicacy of mind) as you did,
and her conduct confirms my opinion. Could a woman of delicacy seduce and marry
a fool? She will be unhappy, unless a situation in life, and a good table to
prattle at, are sufficient to fill up the void of affection. This ignoble mode
of rising in the world is the consequence of the present system of female
education.
“I have little to tell you of myself. I am very well.
Mrs Reveley drank tea with me one
morning, and I spent a day with her, which would have been a very pleasant one,
had I not been a little too much fatigued by a previous
visit to Mr Barry. Fanny often talks of you, and made
Mrs Reveley laugh by telling her, when she could not
find the monkey to show it to Henry,
‘that it was gone into the country.’ I supposed that
Everina would assume some airs at
seeing you. She has very mistaken notions of dignity of character.
“Pray tell me the precise time—I mean when it is
fixed—I do believe I shall be glad to see you!—of your return, and I will keep
a good look-out for you. William is all alive, and my
appearance no longer doubtful. You, I dare say, will perceive the difference.
What a fine thing it is to be a man!
“You were very good to write such a long letter.
Adieu! take care of yourself. Now I have ventured on you, I should not like to
lose you.
Mary.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“Etruria (finished), June 12, 1797.
“Having dispatched one letter, I now begin another.
You have encouraged me to believe that some pleasure results to you, merely
from thus obtaining the power of accompanying my motions, and that what would
be uninteresting to another may, by this circumstance, be rendered agreeable to
you. I am the less capable of altering my method, if it ought to be altered, as
you have not dealt fairly by me this post I delivered a letter of mine to the
messenger, but I received none from him in return. I am beginning a fourth
letter, but of yours I have as yet only one.
“The theatre, which was at Stoke-upon-Trent, two miles
from Etruria, was inexpressibly miserable. The scene was new to me, and I
should have been sorry to have missed it; but it was extremely tedious. Our own
company, consisting of nine persons, contributed one-half of the audience,
exclusive of the galleries. The illusion, the fascination of the drama, was, as
you may well suppose, altogether out of the question. It was the counterpart of
a puppet-show at a country fair, except that, from the circumstance of these
persons having to deliver the sentiments of Sheridan and Shakespeare (the School for
Scandal and Catherine
and Petruchio) their own coarseness and ribaldry were rendered fifty
times more glaring and intolerable. Lady
Teazle was by many degrees the ugliest woman I ever saw. One man
took the two parts of Crabtree and
Moses. Another, without giving himself
the trouble to change his dress, played Careless and Sir Benjamin
Backbite. The father of Catherine had three servants; and when he came to the
country-house of Petruchio, he had
precisely the same three servants to attend him. The gentleman who personated
Charles in the play was the
Woman’s tailor in the farce, and volunteered a boxing-match with
Sir Oliver Surface in the character of
Grumio. Snake, who was also footman-general to every person in the
play, had by some means contracted the habit of never appearing when he was
wanted, and the universal expedient for filling up the intervals, was for the
persons on the stage to commence over again their two or three last speeches
till he appeared. But enough of these mummers. Peace be to their memory. They
did not leave us in our debt: they paid the world in talent, to the full as
well as they were paid in coin.
“Which is best, to pass one’s life in the
natural vegetation state of the potters we saw in the morning, turning a wheel,
or treading a lay: or to pass it like these players, in an occupation to which
skill and approbation can alone give a zest, without a hope of rising to
either?
“Saturday morning our amusement was to go to a place
called the Tunnel, a sort of underground navigation, about a mile and a half,
at a distance of three miles from Etruria. We went in a small boat, which was
drawn along by a horse. As we approached the Tunnel, we saw a smoke proceeding
from the mouth, which gave it no inadequate resemblance of what the ancients
feigned to be the entrance to the infernal regions. We proceeded to about the
middle of the subterranean, the light that marked the place of our entrance
gradually diminishing, till, when we had made two-thirds of our way, it wholly
disappeared. The enclosure of the Tunnel was by an arch of brick, which
distilled upon us, as we passed, drops of water impregnated with iron. We
discerned our way by means of candles that we brought
along with us, and pushed ourselves along with boat staves, applied to the
walls on either side as we passed. Our voyage terminated, as to its extent, in
a coalpit, of which there are several in the subterranean. We had the two elder
children with us, who exhibited no signs of terror. I remarked, in coming out,
that the light from the entrance was much longer visible in going than
returning; and, indeed, in the latter instance, was scarcely visible till it in
a manner burst upon us at once.
“The only ladies who accompanied us in this voyage was
Mrs Josiah Wedgwood and Mrs Montagu elect. Here, and at the play,
where I contrived to sit beside her, I contrived to see more of this latter
than I had yet done. I am sorry to observe that she does not improve upon me.
“Another evening and no letter. This is scarcely kind.
I reminded you in time that it would be impossible to write to me after
Saturday, though it is not improbable you may not see me before the Saturday
following. What am I to think? How many possible accidents will the anxiety of
affection present to one’s thoughts! Not serious ones, I hope: in that
case I trust I should have heard. But headaches; but sickness of the heart, a
general loathing of life and of me. Do not give place to this worst of
diseases! The least I can think is, that you recollect me with less tenderness
and impatience than I reflect on you. There is a general sadness in the sky;
the clouds are shutting around me, and seem depressed with moisture: everything
turns the soul to melancholy. Guess what my feelings are, when the most
soothing and consolatory thought that occurs, is a temporary remission and
oblivion in your affections.
“I had scarcely finished the above when I received
your letter, accompanying T. W.’s,
which was delayed by an accident till after the regular arrival of the post. I
am not sorry to have put down my feelings as they were.
“We propose leaving Etruria at four o’clock
to-morrow morning (Tuesday). Our journey cannot take less than three days,
viz., Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We propose, however, a visit to Dr
Darwin, and a visit to Dr
Parr. With these data from which to reason, you may judge as
easily as I, respecting the time of our arrival in London. It will probably be
either Friday or Saturday. Do not, however, count on anything as certain
respecting it, and so torment yourself with expectation.
“Tell Fanny the
green monkey has not come to Etruria. Bid her explain to
Lucas the mug he is to receive. I hope it will not be
broken on the journey.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“June 15, 1797.
“We are now at The George in the Tree, 10 miles north
from Warwick. We set out from Etruria, as we purposed, at 5 a.m., Tuesday, June 13. We bent our course for
Derby, being furnished with a letter of introduction to Dr Darwin, and purposing to obtain from him a
further letter of introduction to Mr
Bage, of Tamworth, author of ‘Man as He is,’ and ‘Hermsprong.’ Did we not well?
Are not such men as much worth visiting as palaces, towns, and cathedrals? Our
first stage was Uttoxeter, commonly called Utchester, 19 miles. Here we
breakfasted. Our next stage was Derby, where we arrived at two o’clock.
At this place, though sentimental travellers, we were for once unfortunate.
Dr Darwin was gone to Shrewsbury, and not expected
back till Wednesday night. At this moment I feel mortified at the recollection.
We concluded that this was longer than we could with propriety wait for him. I
believe we were wrong. So extraordinary a man, so truly a phenomenon as we
should probably have found him, I think we ought not to have scrupled the
sacrifice of 36 hours. He is 67 years of age, though as young as Ganymede; and I am so little of a traveller, that
I fear I shall not again have the opportunity I have parted with. We paid our
respects, however, to his wife, who is
still a fine woman, and cannot be more than 50. She is perfectly unembarrassed,
and tolerably well bred. She seemed, however, to me to put an improper
construction on our visit, said she supposed we were come to see the lions, and that Dr Darwin
was the great lion of Derbyshire. We asked of her a letter to Mr
Bage; but she said she could not do that with propriety, as she
did not know whether she had ever seen him, though he was the Doctor’s
very particular friend.
“Thus baffled in our object, we plucked up our
courage, and determined to introduce ourselves to the author of ‘Hermsprong.’ We were
able to cite our introduction to Dr
Darwin by the Wedgwoods, and our intention
of having procured a letter from the Doctor. Accordingly we proceeded from
Derby to Burton-upon-Trent, 16 miles. This is a very handsome town, with a wide
and long street, a beautiful river, and a bridge which Montagu said was the longest he ever saw in
the world. Here we slept, and drank Burton ale at the spring, after a journey
of 48 miles. The next morning, between six and seven, we set out for Tamworth,
15 miles. At Elford, 11 miles, we saw Mr
Bage’s mills, and a house in which he lived for 40 years.
His mills are for paper and flour. Here we enquired respecting him, and found
that he had removed to Tamworth five years ago, upon the death of his younger
son, by which event he found his life rendered solitary and melancholy. The
people at the mill told us that he came three times a-week, walking from
Tamworth, to the mill, four miles; that they expected him at eleven (it was now
nine); and that, if we proceeded, we should meet him upon the road. They told
us, as a guide, that he was a short man, with white hair, snuff-coloured
clothes, and a walking-stick. He is 67 years old, exactly the same age as
Dr Darwin. Accordingly, about a mile and a half from
Tamworth, we met the man of whom we were in quest, with a book in his hand. We
introduced ourselves, and, after a little conversation, I got out of the
chaise, and walked back with him to the mill. This six or seven miles was very
fortunate, and contributed greatly to our acquaintance. I found him uncommonly
cheerful and placid, simple in his manners, and youthful in all his carriage.
His house at the mill was floored, every room below-stairs, with brick, and
like that of a common farmer in all respects. There was, however, the river at
the bottom of the garden, skirted with a
quickset hedge, and a broad green walk. He told me his history.
“His father was a miller, as well as himself, and he
was born at Derby. At twenty-two he removed to Elford. He had been acquainted
forty years with Dr Darwin. The other
acquaintances of his youth were Whitehurst, author of ‘The Theory of the Earth,’ and some
other eminent man, whose name I forget. He taught himself French and Latin, in
both of which languages he is a considerable proficient. In his youth he was
fond of poetry; but, having some motive for the study of mathematics, he
devoted his three hours an afternoon (the portion of time he allotted for
reading) to this subject for twelve years, and this employment destroyed the
eagerness of his attachment to poetry. In the middle of life, he engaged in a
joint-undertaking with Dr Darwin and another person
respecting some iron-works. This failed, and he returned once more to his
village and to his mill. The result filled him with melancholy thoughts; and,
to dissipate them, he formed the idea of a novel, which he endeavoured to fill
with gay and cheerful ideas. At first he had no purpose of publishing what he
wrote. Since that time he has been accustomed to produce a novel every two
years, and ‘Hermsprong’ is his sixth. He believes he should not have
written novels, but for want of books to assist him in any other literary
undertaking. Living at Tamworth, he still retains his house at the mill, as the
means of independence. It is his own, and he considers it as his security
against the caprice or despotism of a landlord, who might expel him from
Tamworth. He has thought much, and, like most of those persons I have met with
who have conquered many prejudices and read little metaphysics, is a
materialist. His favourite book on this point is the ‘Systeme de la Nature.’ We spent a
most delightful day in his company. When we met him, I had taken no breakfast;
and though we had set off from Burton that morning at six, and I spent the
whole morning in riding and walking, I felt no inconvenience on waiting for
food till our dinner time at two, I was so much interested with Mr Bage’s conversation.
“I am obliged to finish this letter somewhat abruptly,
at the house of Dr
Parr, where we arrived Thursday (yesterday) about noon, and
found Mr and Mrs Wynn, but not the Doctor, he having thought proper to
withdraw himself on their arrival. It is most probable we shall be in town
to-morrow evening, but may possibly not arrive till Sunday.
“I should have added to the account of Mr Bage, that he never was in London for more
than a week at a time, and very seldom more than 50 miles from his home. A very
memorable instance, in my opinion, of great intellectual refinement, attained
in the bosom of rusticity.
“Farewell. Salute William in my
name. Perhaps you know how. Take care of yourself!—Tell Fanny that her mug and
Lucas’s are hitherto quite safe. I hope I shall
find that the green monkey has resumed his old station by the time of my
return.”
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
“June 17, 1797.
“You cannot imagine anything like Mr Wynn and his wife. He is a raw country
booby of eighteen, his hair about his ears, and a beard that has never deigned
to submit to the stroke of the razor. His voice is loud, broad and unmodulated,
the mind of the possessor has never yet felt a sentiment that should give it
flexibleness or variety. He has at present a brother with him, a lad, as I
guess, of fifteen, who has come to Dr
Parr’s house at Hatton, with a high generosity of
sentiment, and a tone of mind, declaring that, if his brother be disinherited,
he, who is the next brother, will not reap the benefit. His name is
Julius, and John Wynn, the
husband, is also a lad of very good dispositions. They both stammer:
Julius extremely, John less: but
with the stuttering of Julius there is an ingenuousness
and warmth that have considerable charms. John, on the
contrary, has all the drawling, both of voice and thinking, that usually
characterizes a clown. His air is gauche, his gait negligent and slouching, his
whole figure boorish. Both the lads are as ignorant, and as destitute of
adventure and ambition, as any children that aristocracy has to boast. Poor Sarah, the bride, is the victim of her mother, as the bridegroom is her victim in
turn. The mother taught her that the height of female wisdom was to marry a
rich man and a fool, and she has religiously complied. Her mother is an
admirable woman, and the daughter mistook, and fancied she was worthy of love.
Never was a girl more attached to her mother than Sarah
Wynn (Parr). You do not know, but I do,
that Sarah has an uncommon understanding, and an exquisite
sensibility, which glows in her complexion, and flashes from her eyes. Yet she
is silly enough to imagine that she shall be happy in love and a cottage, with
John Wynn. She is excessively angry with the fathers
on both sides, who, as she says, after having promised the contrary, attempted
clandestinely to separate them. They have each, beyond question, laid up a
magazine of unhappiness: yet I am persuaded Dr Parr is
silly enough to imagine the match a desirable one.
“We slept, as I told you, at Tamworth on Wednesday
evening. Thursday morning we proceeded through Coleshill (where I found a
permanent pillory established, in lieu of the stocks), and where we passed
through a very deep and rather formidable ford, the bridge being under repair,
and breakfasted at the George in the Tree, 18 miles. From thence the road by
Warwick would have been 14 miles, and by a cross-country road only six. By
this, therefore, we proceeded, and a very deep and rough road we found it. We
arrived at Hatton about one, so, after dinner, thinking it too much to sit all
day in the company I have described, I proposed to Montagu a walk to Kenilworth Castle, the seat originally of
Simon De Montfort, Earl of Leicester,
who in the reign of Henry III., to whom he
was an implacable enemy, was the author of the institution of the House of
Commons; and, more recently, the seat of Robert
Dudley, Earl of Leicester—the favourite, and, as he hoped and
designed, the husband of Elizabeth, to
whom he gave a most magnificent and memorable entertainment at this place. The
ruins are, beyond comparison, the finest in England. I found
Montagu by no means a desirable companion in this
expedition. He could not be persuaded to indulge the
divine enthusiasm I felt coming on my soul, while I felt revived, and, as it
were, embodied, the image of ancient times: but on the contrary, expressed
nothing but indignation against the aristocracy displayed, and joy that it was
destroyed. From Dr Parr’s to
Kenilworth, across the fields, is only four miles. By the road, round by
Warwick, it is nine. We of course took the field way, but derived but little
benefit from it, as we were on foot from half after four to half after ten,
exclusive of a rest of ten minutes. One hour out of the six we spent at
Kenilworth, and two hours and a half in going and returning respectively, so
utterly incapable were we of finding the path prescribed us.
“To-day, Friday, as fortune determined, was Coventry
Fair, with a procession of all the trades, with a female representative of
Lady Godiva at their head, dressed in a
close dress to represent nakedness. As fortune had thus disposed of us, we
deemed it our duty not to miss the opportunity. We accordingly set out after
breakfast, for Montagu proved lazy, and
we did not get off till half after eleven. From Dr
Parr’s to Warwick is four miles, from Warwick to Coventry
ten miles. One mile on the Coventry side of Warwick is Guy’s Cliff,
Mr Greathed’s. My description
of his garden was an irresistible motive with Montagu to
desire to visit it, though I by no means desired it. We accordingly went, and
walked round the garden. Mr Greathed was in his grounds,
and I left a card, signifying I had done myself the pleasure of paying my
respects to him, and taken the liberty of leading my friend over his garden.
This delay of half-an-hour precisely answered the purpose of making us too late
for Lady Godiva. We saw the crowd, which
was not yet dispersed, and the booths of the fair, but the lady, the
singularity of the scene, was retired.
“It is now Sunday evening: we are at Cambridge.
Montagu says we shall certainly be
in town to-morrow (Monday) night. The distance is fifty-three miles: we shall
therefore probably be late, and he requests that, if we be not at home before
ten, you will retain somebody to take the whiskey from Somers Town to
Lincoln’s Inn. If Mary be at a loss on the subject,
perhaps the people of Montagu’s lodging can assist
her.
“Farewell: be happy: be in health and spirits. Keep a
lookout, but not an anxious one. Delays are not necessarily tragical. I believe
there will be none.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin.
“June 19. Monday, almost 12 o’clock.
“One of the pleasures you tell me that you promised
yourself from your journey was the effect your absence might produce on me.
Certainly at first my affection was increased, or rather was more alive. But
now it is just the contrary. Your later letters might have been addressed to
anybody, and will serve to remind you where you have been, though they resemble
nothing less than mementos of affection.
“I wrote to you to Dr
Parr’s; you take no notice of my letter. Previous to your
departure, I requested you not to torment me by leaving the day of your return
undecided. But whatever tenderness you took away with you seems to have
evaporated on the journey, and new objects, and the homage of vulgar minds
restored you to your icy philosophy.
You tell me that your journey could not take less than three
days, therefore, as you were to visit Dr
D[arwin] and Dr P[arr],
Saturday was the probable day. You saw neither, yet you have been a week on the
road. I did not wonder, but approved of your visit to Mr Bage. But a show which you waited to see,
and did not see, appears to have been equally attractive. I am at a loss to
guess how you could have been from Saturday to Sunday night travelling from
Coventry to Cambridge. In short, your being so late to-night, and the chance of
your not coming, shows so little consideration, that unless you suppose me to
be a stick or a stone, you must have forgot to think, as well as to feel, since
you have been on the wing. I am afraid to add what I feel. Goodnight.”
Two more notes which follow show that the cordial affection which
subsisted between the married pair was not seriously affected by this little outburst.
The Same to the Same.
“June 25, 1797.
“I know that you do not like me to go to Holcroft’s. I think you right in the
principle, but a little wrong in the present application.
“When I lived alone, I always dined on a Sunday with
company, in the evening, if not at dinner, at St P[aul’s, with Johnson], generally also of a Tuesday, and
some other day at Fuseli’s.
“I like to see new faces as a study, and since my
return from Norway, or rather since I have accepted of invitations, I have
dined every third Sunday at Twiss’s, nay oftener, for they sent for me when they had
any extraordinary company. I was glad to go, because my lodging was noisy of a
Sunday, and Mr S.’s house and
spirits were so altered, that my visits depressed him, instead of exhilarating
me.
“I am then, you perceive, thrown out of my track, and
have not traced another. But so far from wishing to obtrude on yours, I had
written to Mrs Jackson, and mentioned Sunday, and am now
sorry that I did not fix on to-day as one of the days for sitting for my
picture.
“To Mr Johnson
I would go without ceremony, but it is not convenient for me at present to make
haphazard visits.
“Should Carlisle chance to call on you this morning, send him to me;
but by himself, for he often has a companion with him, which would defeat my
purpose.”
The Same to the Same.
“Monday morning, July 3d, 1797.
“Mrs Reveley
can have no doubt about to-day, so we are to stay at home. I have a design upon
you this evening to keep you quite to myself—I hope nobody will call!—and make
you read the play.
“I was thinking of a favourite song of my poor friend
Fanny’s: ‘In a vacant rainy day, you shall be wholly mine,’
&c.
“Unless the weather prevents you from taking your
accustomed walk, call on me this
morning, for I have something to say to you.”
Holcroft’s intimacy with Godwin by no means grew less because his friend was
married. The following letter from him when visiting some friends in Norfolk gives a
pleasant picture of Mrs Godwin, senior, and of the
eagerness which the good old lady really felt to see her distinguished son:—
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Wood Norton, July 26, 1797.
“It was my intention to write, for I feel a kind of
vacuity of heart when I am deprived of the intercourse of my accustomed
friends. But as I cannot write to them all, and as we have many friends in
common, I think there are few whom you may not safely assure on my part that
they have their turn in my thoughts. I deferred this pleasant duty however till
I had seen your mother, whom I thought
it right and respectful to visit. My coming occasioned some little alarm. The
Major, Mrs Harwood, and Fanny
accompanied me. We were seen from the windows as we came up to the gate. I had
my spectacles on, and your sister-in-law ran to inform your mother that
yourself and Mrs Godwin were arrived.
The old lady stood in the portico; the young ones advanced. There was an
anxious curiosity in their countenances, and your sister, addressing herself to
me, said, ‘I think I know you, sir.’ I scarcely knew what to
reply. Imagination had winged her and myself to London, where I supposed that
some years ago I might have seen her at your lodgings, taking it for granted
that she was a relation. But as I did not answer, Major
Harwood relieved our embarrassment by announcing my name. The
change of countenance that took place was visible, for though your sister could
not perhaps have fully persuaded herself that my face was actually yours, yet
she seemed rather to trust to her hopes than to her recollection; and these
being disappointed, an immediate blank took possession of her features, and the rising joy was damped. Your mother,
however, very kindly invited us in, and gave us all the good things she had
that could administer to our immediate pleasures. The expectations which
Major H. had raised by his description of your mother
was not entirely answered. She was neither so alert, so commanding, nor so
animated as he and Anne had described; but as they both
are apt to deal in the superlative, I make some deductions from their previous
description and after remarks, according to which she is very rapidly on the
decline. Having quitted her farming business, I have no doubt myself but that
her faculties will be impaired much faster than they would have been had she
continued to exert them; yet I strongly doubt of the very rapid decline which
the Major supposes. Her memory is good, her conceptions, speaking
comparatively, are clear, and her strength considerable.
“I have seen more of the County of Norfolk than of its
inhabitants; of which county I remark that to the best of my recollection it
contains more flint, more turkies, more turnips, more wheat, more cultivation,
more commons, more cross-roads, and, from that token, probably more
inhabitants, than any county I ever visited. It has another distinguishing and
paradoxical feature, if what I hear be true. It is said to be more illiterate
than other parts of England, and yet I doubt if any county of like extent have
produced an equal number of famous men. This, however, is merely a conjecture,
made not from examination, but from memory.
“As it is necessary for me to bathe, I shall
immediately depart for Yarmouth, and pass through Norwich, which I have not yet
seen. If you or Mrs Godwin, or both, can
but prevail on yourself or selves to endure the fatigue of writing to me, I
hope I need not use many words to convince you of the pleasure it will give me.
And be it understood that this letter is addressed to you both, whatever the
direction on the back may affirm to the contrary. Professions are almost
impertinent, and yet I am almost tempted to profess to you how sincerely and
seriously I am interested in your happiness. But as I am sure my words would
ill describe my thoughts, I shall forbear. Pray inform me, sweet lady, in what state is your novel? And on what, courteous
sir, are you employed? Though I am idle myself, I cannot endure that any one
else should be so. Direct to me at the post-office, Yarmouth. Pray do me the
favour to call occasionally and look into the house and library.
“T.
Holcroft.”
CHAPTER X. MARY GODWIN’S DEATH. 1797.
Mary Godwin had been in
remarkably good health during the whole period of her pregnancy. It will have been seen in
the correspondence that she consulted Dr Carlisle
during this time, but not for any serious indisposition. She had no alarm or even
uneasiness on the subject of her approaching trial, since she had suffered but little at
the birth of Fanny, and had conceived the idea that
women in general made far too much of the difficulties and inconveniences of child-bearing.
She had a strong opinion that in all normal and natural cases women were the proper persons
to attend their own sex, and therefore engaged Mrs Blenkinsop, matron
and midwife to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital to be with her. When Mrs
Blenkinsop arrived, soon after Mary Godwin was taken in
labour on Wednesday, August 30, all seemed well. She had wished that Godwin should not be in the house, and the notes that
follow, written to him during her labour, have probably but few parallels.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to W. Godwin.
“Aug. 30, 1797.
“I have no doubt of seeing the animal to-day; but must
wait for Mrs Blenkinsop to guess at the hour. I have sent
for her. Pray send me the newspaper. I wish I had a novel or some book of sheer amusement to excite
curiosity and while away the time. Have you anything of the kind?
The Same to the Same.
“Aug. 30, 1797.
“Mrs Blenkinsop tells me that
everything is in a fair way, and that there is no fear of the event being put
off till another day. Still at present she thinks I shall not immediately be
freed from my load. I am very well. Call before dinner time, unless you receive
another message from me.”
The Same to the Same.
“Three o’clock, Aug. 30, 1797.
“Mrs Blenkinsop tells me I am in
the most natural state, and can promise me a safe delivery, but that I must
have a little patience.”
The child, not the William so anxiously expected, but
Mary, afterwards Mrs
Shelley, was born at twenty minutes past eleven, and for some hours all
seemed well. But some circumstances then alarmed the midwife, and Dr
Poignard, physician and accoucheur to the same hospital, was called in. He
did what was deemed necessary, and the danger, which was extreme till about eight the next
morning, then appeared at an end. Godwin called in Dr
Fordyce, a very old friend of his wife, who confirmed Dr
Poignard’s opinion that the patient was doing well; indeed, he quoted
Mrs Godwin’s case the same day
“in 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.” On Sunday, however, a very alarming change took place,
and after a week of terror, alternating with some gleams of hope,
she sunk and died on the following Sunday morning, September 10, at twenty minutes before
eight.
All that medical skill could do was done in the case. Dr Fordyce and Dr
Clarke were constant in their attendance, and Mr, afterwards Sir Anthony, Carlisle never left the house from Wednesday,
Sept. 6th, till the time of the patient’s death. Mr Basil
Montagu was constantly with Godwin,
and was full of kindness and sympathy. Through the whole time Godwin
tells us “nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience, and affectionateness
of the poor sufferer.”
Godwin’s diary during these days is very
curious. All that he felt most deeply is recorded in his usual businesslike way; the
hand-writing never falters, the same precise abbreviations and stops, are used, till the
last, when occur the only lines and dashes which break the exceeding neatness of the book.
It is as follows:—
“Aug. 30, W.—‘Mary’ p. 116. Fell and Dyson call:
dine at Reveley’s: Fenwicks and M. sup: Blenkinsop. Birth of Mary, 20 minutes after 11 at night. From 7 to
10, Evesham Buildings.” [This refers to a change of lodgings.]
„ 31, Th.—Fetch Dr
Poignard: Fordyce calls:
in the evening Miss G. and L. J.M.
Reveley and Tuthil:
J. G. calls.
Sep. 1, F.—Call on Robinson, Nicholson, Carlisle, and
M. Hays: Johnson calls: favourable appearances.
„ 2, Sa.—Carlisle, Montagu, Tuthil, and
M. Reveley call: worse in the
evening. Nurse.
„ 3, Su.—Montagu breakfasts: call with him on Wolcot, Opie, Laurence and
Dr Thompson. Shivering fits: Fordyce twice. Poignard,
Blenkinsop and nurse.
“Sep. 4, M.—Blenkinsop: puppies [Dr Fordyce now forbade the patient to nurse
her child, and puppies were employed to draw off the milk]. Johnson and Nicholson call: Masters
calls. E. Fenwick and M. sleep. M.
Hays calls. Pichegrn,
arrested.
„ 5, Tu.—Fordyce twice: Clarke in the afternoon. M.
Hays calls.
„ 6, W.—Carlisle calls: wine diet:
Carlisle from Brixton: Miss Jones sleeps.
„ 7, Th.—Barry, Reveley and Lowry call: dying in the
evening.
„ 8, F.—Opie and Tuthil call. Idea of death: solemn
communication. Barry: Miss G. sleeps.
„ 9, Sa.—Talk to her of Fanny and
Mary: Barry.
„ 10, Su.—20 minutes before 8
—————————— —————————————————————————— ”
It is not easy to characterize the frame of mind in which Godwin sat down
a few hours after these agitated pen-marks were drawn, to write himself to those friends to
whom as he thought he owed the duty of himself communicating the loss he had sustained. It
was probably an attempt to be stoical, but a real indulgence in the luxury of woe. Among
the first of these friends was Holcroft.
William Godwin to T. Holcroft.
“Sunday, Sep. 10, 1797.
“My dear Friend.—The
passage in your last kind letter that related to the subject of self-reproach
was rather out of season. It has dwelt upon my mind ever since. My wife is now dead. She died this morning at
eight o’clock. She grew worse before your letter arrived. Nobody has a
greater call to reproach himself, except for want of
kindness and attention in which I hope I have not been very deficient, than I
have. But reproach would answer no good purpose, and I will not harbour it.
“I firmly believe that there does not exist her equal
in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I
have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again.
“When you come to town, look at me, and talk to me,
but do not—if you can help it—exhort me, or console me.
“W.
Godwin.”
He also wrote to Mrs Inchbald, and
the whole of the letters which ensued are given consecutively, before passing to other
correspondence. Mrs Shelley who had the letters
before her, was certainly lenient in her judgment of Mrs Inchbald in
her note quoted above. Smart writing and an argumentative temper were sadly out of place
over the death-bed of Mary Godwin.
William Godwin to Mrs Inchbald.
“Sep. 10, 1797.
“My wife died at eight this morning. I always thought
you used her ill, but I forgive you. You told me you did not know her. You have
a thousand good and great qualities. She had a very deep-rooted admiration for
you.
“Yours, with real honour and esteem,
“W.
Godwin.”
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
[Sept. 10, 1797]
“You have shocked me beyond expression, yet, I bless
God, without exciting the smallest portion of remorse. Yet I feel most
delicately on every subject in which the good or ill of my neighbours is
involved.
“I did not know her. I never wished to know her: as I
avoid every female acquaintance, who has no husband, I avoided her. Against my
desire you made us acquainted. With what justice I shunned her, your present
note evinces, for she judged me harshly. She first
thought I used her ill, for you would not. I liked her—I spoke well of her. Let
Charlotte Smith be my witness, who
received her character from me, such as I gave of her to everybody.
“Be comforted. You will be
comforted. Still I feel for you at present. Write to me again. Say what you
please at such a time as this; I will excuse and pity you.”
The Same to the Same.
“Sept. 11, 1797.
“The ceremony of condolence is an impertinence, but if
you consider mine superior to ceremony, you will accept it.
“I have too much humility to offer consolation to a
mind like yours. I will only describe sensations which nearly a similar
misfortune excited in me.
“I felt myself for a time bereft of every comfort the
world could bestow, but these opinions passed away, and gave place to others,
almost the reverse.
“I was separated from the only friend I had in the
world, and by circumstances so much more dreadful than those which have
occurred to you, as the want of warning increases all our calamities, but yet I
have lived to think with indifference of all I then suffered.
“You have been a most kind husband, I am told.
Rejoice,—the time might have come when you would have
wept over her remains with compunction for cruelty to her.
“While you have no self-reproaches to wound you, be
pacified. Every ill falls short of that.
“I lament her as a person whom you loved. I am shocked
at the unexpected death of one in such apparent vigour of mind and body; but I
feel no concern for any regret she endured at parting
from this world, for I believe she had tact and understanding to despise it
heartily. Mr Twiss received the news
with sorrow, and Mrs Twiss shed many
tears. They were not prepared, any more than myself, for the news, for they had
not heard of her illness. I showed them your note to me, and if you had seen
the manner in which they treated your suspicion of my influence with them (and
that was certainly your only meaning), you would beg my pardon.
“I shall be glad to hear of your health, and that your
poor little family are well, for believe me concerned for your welfare.”
“E. I.”
William Godwin to Mrs Inchbald.
“Sept. 13, 1797.
“I must endeavour to be understood as to the unworthy
behaviour with which I charge you towards my wife. I think your shuffling
behaviour about the taking places to the comedy of the ‘Will,’ dishonourable to
you. I think your conversation with her that night at the play base, cruel, and
insulting. There were persons in the box who heard it, and they thought as I
do. I think you know more of my wife than you are willing to acknowledge to
yourself, and that you have an understanding capable of doing some small degree
of justice to her merits. I think you should have had magnanimity and
self-respect enough to have shewed this. I think that while the Twisses and others were sacrificing to what
they were silly enough to think a proper etiquette, a person so out of all
comparison their superior, as you are, should have placed her pride in acting
upon better principles, and in courting and distinguishing insulted greatness
and worth; I think that you chose a mean and pitiful conduct, when you might
have chosen a conduct that would have done you immortal honour. You had not
even their excuse. They could not (they pretended) receive her into their
previous circles. You kept no circle to debase and enslave you.
“I have now been full and explicit on this subject,
and have done with it, I hope, for ever.
“I thank you for your attempt at consolation in your
letter of yesterday. It was considerate, and well-intended, although its
consolations are utterly alien to my heart
“W. Godwin.
“I wish not to be misunderstood as to the circles
above alluded to. I mean not to apply my idea to the sacrifices, for one or
two of whom I feel more honour than I can easily express, but to the
idols.”
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
“Sept. 14, 1797.
“I could refute every charge you allege against me in
your letter; but I revere a man, either in deep love or in deep grief: and as
it is impossible to convince, I would at least say nothing to irritate him.
“Yet surely thus much I may venture to add. As the
short and very slight acquaintance I had with Mrs
Godwin, and into which I was reluctantly impelled by you, has
been productive of petty suspicions and revilings (from which my character has
been till now preserved), surely I cannot sufficiently applaud my own
penetration in apprehending, and my own firmness in resisting, a longer and
more familiar acquaintance.”
The Same to the Same.
“Thursday, Oct. 26, 1797.
“With the most sincere sympathy in all you have
suffered—with the most perfect forgiveness of all you have said to me, there
must nevertheless be an end to our acquaintance for
ever. I respect your prejudices, but I also respect
my own.
“E.
Inchbald.”
Mrs Cotton, an old and intimate friend of Mary Godwin, wrote a touching letter of condolence, from
Sonning, near Reading. Godwin thus replied,—
William Godwin to Mrs Cotton.
“Sept. 14, 1797.
“Dear Madam,—I cannot
write. I have half destroyed myself by writing. It does me more mischief than
anything else. I must preserve myself, if for no other reason, for the two
children. I had desired a friend to write to you. I suppose he has forgotten
it. He is not in the way forme to inquire. She expressed a wish to have had you
for a nurse. I wrote a letter to you for that purpose last Wednesday. But the
medical attendants told me it was useless to send it. She died on Sunday
morning at eight o’clock. She lasted longer than any one expected. She
had Dr Fordyce, Dr Clarke, and Mr
Carlisle, the last of whom, who is one of the best and greatest
of men, sat with her the four last nights and days of her life. Mrs Fenwick, author of ‘Secrecy,’ a novel, was
her principal nurse, and Mr Carlisle said, the best nurse
he ever saw. Four of my male friends stayed night and day in the house, to be
sent at a moment’s warning anywhere that should be necessary. I spent the
principal part of my time in her chamber. I will desire Mrs
Fenwick to write to you. If you have any inquiries to make,
address them to her at my house.
“Believe me to be, with a deep sense of the affection
my wife entertained for you,
“Your sincere friend, “W. Godwin.
“I find that the address I gave to my friend,
Mr Basil Montagu, to write to
you, was Mrs Cotton, near
Henley-upon-Thames. He has despatched a letter with that address.”
The Same to the Same.
“Oct. 24th,
1797.
. . .” I partook of a happiness, so much the more
exquisite, as I had a short time before had no conception of it, and scarcely
admitted the possibility of it I saw one bright ray of light that streaked my day of life
only to leave the remainder more gloomy, and, in the truest sense of the word,
hopeless.
“I am still here, in the same situation in which you
saw me, surrounded by the children, and all the well-known objects, which,
though they all talk to me of melancholy, are still dear to me. I love to
cherish melancholy. I love to tread the edge of intellectual danger, and just
to keep within the line which every moral and intellectual consideration
forbids me to overstep, and in this indulgence and this vigilance I place my
present luxury.
“The poor children! I am myself totally unfitted to
educate them. The scepticism which perhaps sometimes leads me right in matters
of speculation, is torment to me when I would attempt to direct the infant
mind. I am the most unfit person for this office; she was the best qualified in
the world. What a change. The loss of the children is less remediless than
mine. You can understand the difference.—I am, madam, with much respect, yours,
“W.
Godwin.”
Mrs Fenwick and Miss
Hayes, the other friend who was with Mary
Godwin in her last hours, each wrote, as did Mr
Basil Montagu, many of the necessary letters. Some words of these ladies may
serve to complete the picture of a very beautiful character, and a very peaceful death. It
was a death, moreover—as here may fitly be remarked in connection with a sentence of her
husband’s quoted above—brightened by the same faith which has brightened the
deathbeds of so many more who have sinned and suffered, faith in the love and mercy of God,
whom she had never doubted, though the words in which she would have couched her creed may
have changed, since she wrote her early letters to George
Blood. Her mind, as Godwin tells us,
was undisturbed by the graver doubts on the very Being of God which assailed his own.
Miss Hayes to [Mr Hugh Skeys.]
“Sir,—Myself and Mrs
Fenwick were the only two female friends that were with
Mrs Godwin during her last illness.
Mrs Fenwick attended her from the beginning of her
confinement with scarcely any intermission. I was with her for the four last
days of her life, and though I have had but little experience in scenes of this
sort, yet I can confidently affirm that my imagination could never have
pictured to me a mind so tranquil, under affliction so great. She was all
kindness and attention, and cheerfully complied with everything that was
recommended to her by her friends. In many instances she employed her mind with
more sagacity on the subject of her illness than any of the persons about her.
Her whole soul seemed to dwell with anxious fondness on her friends; and her
affections, which were at all times more alive than perhaps those of any other
human being, seemed to gather new disinterestedness upon this trying occasion.
The attachment and regret of those who surrounded her appeared to increase
every hour, and if her principles are to be judged of by what I saw of her
death, I should say that no principles could be more conducive to calmness and
consolation.” [The rest is wanting.]
Mrs Fenwick to Everina Wollstonecraft.
“Sept. 12, 1797.
“I am a stranger to you, Miss Wollstonecraft, and at present greatly enfeebled both in
mind and body: but when Mr Godwin
desired that I would inform you of the death of his most beloved and most
excellent wife, I was willing to undertake the task, because it is some
consolation to render him the slightest service, and because my thoughts
perpetually dwell upon her virtues and her loss. Mr Godwin
himself cannot upon this occasion write to you.
“Mrs Godwin
died on Sunday, Sept. 10, about eight in the morning. I was with her at the
time of her delivery, and with very little intermission until the moment of her
death. Every skil-ful
effort that medical knowledge of the highest class could make, was exerted to
save her. It is not possible to describe the unremitting and devoted attentions
of her husband. Nor is it easy to give you an adequate idea of the affectionate
zeal of many of her friends, who were on the watch night and day to seize on an
opportunity of contributing towards her recovery, and to lessen her sufferings.
“No woman was ever more happy in marriage than
Mrs Godwin. Who ever endured more
anguish than Mr Godwin endures? Her
description of him, in the very last moments of her recollection was,
‘He is the kindest, best man in the world.’
“I know of no consolations for myself, but in
remembering how happy she had lately been, and how much she was admired, and
almost idolized, by some of the most eminent and best of human beings.
“The children are both well, the infant in particular. It is the finest baby I
ever saw.—Wishing you peace and prosperity, I remain your humble servant,
Eliza Fenwick.
“Mr Godwin
requests you will make Mrs Bishop
acquainted with the particulars of this afflicting event. He tells me that
Mrs Godwin entertained a sincere
and earnest affection for “Mrs Bishop.”
Mr Marshal who had been, as might be expected, one
of the friends so constant in his attentions, had, with Mr
Basil Montagu, the charge of the arrangements for the funeral. Among those
asked to be present was Mr Tuthil, a very intimate
friend of Godwin, who shared in his views on
religious as on other subjects. The correspondence which ensued is honourable to both
friends.
Mr Tuthil to Mr Marshal.
“3 Chapel Court, off New Burlington
Street, [Sep. 13th, 1797.]
“I feel very much gratified at finding myself
numbered with those who had engaged Mrs
Godwin’s ‘particular esteem,’ and should rejoice to pay any honest tribute to her memory.
If a funeral consisted simply in the expression of affectionate feelings, I
should ardently desire to follow her; but I much doubt the morality of
assisting at religious ceremonies; and I cannot place myself where I should be
inclined to think I did not look like an honest man.
“It would be painful, very painful to me, if
Mr Godwin were for a single instant
to suppose my decision incompatible with the warmest affection.—Yours very
sincerely,
G. Tuthil.”
William Godwin to Mr Tuthil.
“Sep. 13th, 1797
“I think the last respect due to the best of human
beings ought not to be deserted by their friends. There is not perhaps an
individual in my list, whose opinions are not as adverse to religious
ceremonies as your own, and who might not with equal propriety shrink from, and
desert the remains of the first of women. I honour your character; I respect
your scruples. But I should have thought more highly of you, if, at such a
moment it had been impossible for so cold a reflection to have crossed your
mind. Think of the subject again. Consult Holcroft. Act finally upon the genuine decision of your own
judgment.—Yours in sincere friendship,
W. Godwin.”
Mr Tuthil to William Godwin.
“3 Chapel Court, off New Burlington
Street, [Sep. 14th, 1797.]
“I have reconsidered the subject, and can only arrive
at the same conclusion. If there be men who appear to me to violate those
principles which they profess to hold sacred, I cannot imitate them. There has
been a time when you would have thought as I do: but show me that there is,
even at this melancholy moment, a deficiency of true feeling in this
reflection, and I will instantly discard it. Indeed, indeed you do not
understand me. There is a coldness in my manner which has deceived you.—Yours
very sincerely,
G. Tuthil.”
Godwin was too prostrate both in mind and body himself to attend the
funeral or meet the friends who did so. He spent the day at Marshal’s lodgings and thence wrote to Mr
Carlisle.
William Godwin to Mr Anthony Carlisle.
“Sep. 15th,
1797.
“My dearCarlisle,—I am
here, sitting alone in Mr
Marshal’s lodgings during my wife’s funeral. My mind
is extremely sunk and languid. But I husband my thoughts, and shall do very
well. I have been but once since you saw me, in a train of thought that gave me
alarm. One of my wife’s books now lies near me, but I avoid opening it. I
took up a book on the education of children, but that impressed me too forcibly
with my forlorn and disabled state with respect to the two poor animals left
under my protection, and I threw it aside.
“Nothing could be more soothing to my mind than to
dwell in a long letter upon her virtues and accomplishments, and our mutual
happiness, past and in prospect. But the attractions of this subject are
delusive, and I dare not trust myself with it
“I may dwell however with perfect safety upon your
merits and kindness, and the indelible impression they have left on my mind.
Your generous and unintermitted attendance upon the dear deceased constituted
the greatest consolation it was possible for me to receive in that dreadful
period when I most needed consolation. I may say to you on paper, what I
observed to you in our last interview, that I never, in the whole course of my
life, met with the union of so clear and capacious an understanding, with so
much goodness of heart and sweetness of manners.
“It is pleasing to be loved by those we feel
ourselves impelled to love. It is inexpressibly gratifying, when we find those
qualities that most call forth our affections, to be regarded by that person
with some degree of a correspondent feeling. If you have any of that kind of
consolation in store for me, be at the pains to bestow it. But, above all, be
severely sincere. I ought to be acquainted with my own
defects, and to trace their nature in the effects they produce.—Yours, with
fervent admiration and regard.”
By a strange coincidence, Mr Hamilton
Rowan was writing on the same 15th of September to congratulate on her
marriage her who was then committed to the grave.
Archd. H. Rowan, Esq., to Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin.
“Brandywine, near Wilmington,
Delaware, “Septr. 15, 1797.
“Dear Madam,—I rejoice
most sincerely that you have such a companion, protector, and friend as I
believe him to be, whose name the papers inform me you now bear. I have been
much to blame. In the more than two years that I have been in America I have
written only thrice to you. You were not happy. I had no right to trouble you
with my dark reveries. I was displeased with my past and my present conduct and
undecided as to my future; how could I speak comfort to so wounded a mind as
yours? Now I may be allowed to croak. You know it was my fashion in Paris.
Through my wife’s prudent conduct she has been permitted to remain in
possession of my property, and I have thus become a pensioner of the Irish
Government. That I have spent only what was necessary for my subsistence does
not satisfy me. Every letter which I receive from Mrs H. R., though couched in the most affectionate terms, yet
shows me that what I called acting from principle was in her idea wild ambition
or foolish vanity. A mode has been pointed out to me by which I might possibly
rejoin my family, but it is a renunciation of principle. I cannot accede to the
proposition. I should be for ever unhappy, and, I think, should disgrace my
children even as long as it was remembered that I was their ancestor. As my
growling, however, signified little, I set about procuring an independence, and
with this view have commenced calico printer, &c., on the banks of the
Brandywine. I have connected myself with a good sans
culottes dyer from Manchester, who had two great faults
which forced him to quit that place—he could read and he could speak. I rent the place where we are.
Aldred, my partner, has the stone
mansion, and I have in a most romantic corner built, upon a surface of 18 ft.
square, a house in the second stage of civilization, viz., a log house, where I
and Charles, who has a daughter, live and cook, &c.,
just as you saw in the Rue Mousseaux.
“Nov. 17.—This has been lying
by me, and the last papers announce a melancholy event—and have you so shortly
enjoyed the calm repose I hoped you were in possession of. I hope the report is
false; if true, let this convey my condolence to Mr
G.
“Archd. Hamilton
Rowan.”
The funeral took place in Old St Pancras Churchyard, attended by all the
friends, save Mr Tuthil, who had been on terms of
great intimacy with Godwin and his wife. The body
does not now rest there. That churchyard was rudely disturbed when the Metropolitan and
Midland Railways were constructed, before which time Godwin lay by his
wife’s side. Loving hands transported their remains to Bournemouth, where they now
lie together with those of their daughter, Mrs
Shelley.
This Memoir is a record rather of what was than a speculation on what
might have been. Yet it is impossible not to think for a moment on the two lives, one
shortened so untimeously, one so blighted. That each had supplemented and improved at once
the life and genius of the other cannot be doubted, in spite of the little clouds which had
arisen on the fair sky of their domestic happiness. That Mary
Godwin’s calm faith might have in some degree softened her
husband’s ruggedness, that his critical faculty might have aided to mature her style,
and prune her luxuriant fancy, is probable. She too had been more schooled in the actual
work of life than he, and her experience might have saved her
husband from the unfortunate pecuniary difficulties which were so great a burthen on his
later years. But this was not to be. She died in her prime, intellectual and physical,
leaving to the daughter to whom she gave birth a mingled inheritance of genius and sadness,
of filial duty, met by coldness at home, of deep wedded joys and deep widowed sorrows. She
passed to her rest, not to be disturbed by the chorus of vituperation which has assailed
her memory.
“Thee nor carketh care nor slander, Nothing but the small cold worm Fretteth thine enshrouded form— Let them rave. Light and shadow ever wander O’er the green that folds thy grave— Let them rave.”
Yet it may be hoped that in some degree what has here been written may
give some a clearer view of the virtues, and a more tender pity for the failings and the
sorrows of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
The children were with Mrs Reveley
during the few sad days of extreme danger, and after the death. The infant was also for a
few days alarmingly ill, but recovered after her return to her father’s house on
Sunday 17th. Little Fanny had been brought home the
evening before, and Mrs Fenwick remained a few days
to nurse the child. Godwin removed all his books and
papers from Evesham buildings, and in future took for his study the room which had been his
wife’s.
Among those who had been most zealous in offers of help was Mr Nicholson, who, with his wife, wished to have charge of the children for a time, had they
not been already removed. The letter from him which follows shows not only the interest
which “Lavater’s Speculations on
Physiognomy” then were exciting, but one of Godwin’s favourite theories, which he brings out in several books,
and notably in “The
Enquirer,” that education cannot begin too early, and that in the very dawn of
infancy the future character begins to develop. The Diary records that Mr
Nicholson visited Godwin on Monday, Sept. 18, and on
his return home the letter was written.
William Nicholson to William Godwin.
“Newman Street, Sept. 18, 1797.
“Dear Sir,—When I had the
pleasure of seeing your little daughter
this morning, and you asked my opinion concerning her physiognomy, I
experienced some difficulty, partly from an ill-grounded sense of ridicule in
seeming to assume the character of fortune-teller, partly from a consciousness
of imperfect knowledge, but chiefly from the little probability that the
opportunity would afford time for a calm consideration of the individual, and
of my own associated notions, which require meditation and development before I
can satisfy myself. My view was, in fact, slight and momentary. I had no time
to consider, compare, and combine. Yet I am disposed to think the following
imperfect observation may lead you to more than a suspicion that our
organization at the birth may greatly influence those motives which govern the
series of our future acts of intelligence, and that we may even possess moral
habits, acquired during the fœtal state.
“1. The outline of the head viewed from above, its
profile, the outline of the forehead, seen from behind and in its horizontal
positions, are such as I have invariably and exclusively seen in subjects who
possessed considerable memory and intelligence.
“2. The base of the forehead, the eyes and eyebrows,
are familiar to me in subjects of quick sensibility,
irritable, scarcely irascible, and surely not given to rage. That part of the
outline of the forehead, which is very distinct in patient investigators, is
less so in her. I think her powers, of themselves, would lead to speedy
combination, rather than continued research.
“3. The lines between the eyes have much expression,
but I had not time to develope them. They simply confirmed to me the inductions
in the late paragraph.
“4. The form of the nose, the nostrils, its insertion
between the eyes, and its changes by muscular action, together with the side of
the face in which the characteristic marks of affection are most prominent,
were scarcely examined. Here also is much room for meditation and remark.
“6. The mouth was too much employed to be well
observed. It has the outlines of intelligence. She was displeased, and it
denoted much more of resigned vexation than either scorn or rage.
“On this imperfect sight it would be silly to risk a
character; for which reason I will only add that I conjecture that her manner
may be petulant in resistance, but cannot be sullen. I have chosen to send you
these memoranda, rather than seem to shrink from the support of truth by
declining to practise what I have asserted could be done without difficulty in
the case of my own children.
“That she may be everything your parental affection
can desire is the sincere wish of—Yours, with much regard,
“Wm.
Nicholson.”
The Diary shows, as might be expected, an almost complete stagnation in
Godwin’s literary life. Friends were constant in their visits—Holcroft, the Fenwicks, Mrs Reveley, Mrs Barbauld, and many more; but the only reading recorded
is his wife’s published works, the letters addressed to her, and the MSS. which she
left unfinished, and he found almost at once a comfort in beginning to compile the memoirs of her which were published in
the following year. Mr Skeys, who wrote very
cordially to the husband of his first wife’s friend, aided him with all the
information in his power; but Mrs Bishop and
Everina Wollstonecraft, who had never liked the
marriage, gave as little help as they could, and hence the meagreness and even
inaccuracies, in some parts of that narrative. These ladies found, or said that they found,
difficulties in getting situations because of their relationship to Mary Godwin; Mr Skeys, with whom they
quarrelled, said it was because of their own infirmities of temper. At any rate, they
closed as far as possible, and of their own accord, all communication between Godwin and the family of his wife, and for many years
showed no interest in either of the children she had left.
CHAPTER XI. A SINGULAR COURTSHIP—FRIENDS. 1798.
Early in the year of which the domestic record has been given,
Godwin published the “Enquirer.” It is a collection of essays, based,
as he says in his preface, on conversations. It embraces a great variety of subjects, very
much of the character which we have already found he and his friends met to discuss, such
as “Of Awakening the Mind,” “Of Co-habitation,” “Of Riches
and Poverty,” and the like. The volume elaborated in this manner many of the points
which had been treated cursorily in “Political Justice.” It did not in any degree detract from his fame, and
is admirably written, but since it merely reasserted principles already known as his, it
excited no special attention, though it went through several editions. A very furious
onslaught on the clergy, however, was one of the causes of a coolness which grew between
him and Dr Parr. The Doctor had apparently not seen
the book when Godwin paid his visit to Hatton with Basil Montagu.
The beginning of the year 1798 saw Godwin restored to the usual tenor of his life, yet with a sense,
constantly expressed in his letters, of a great void in his existence which nothing could
fill, with pecuniary cares pressing upon him, and an almost bewildered feeling in regard to
the nurture and education of the children his wife had left him. Little Fanny had, from an early period, won his warm affection;
she bore his name,
and was always treated by him as a daughter. The Diary of this year shews him again much in
society; indeed, rarely at home in the evening. He had no companion there, and it has been
seen already that his health did not allow of literary work beyond the time so closely
devoted to it in the morning. Yet the amount of work recorded is surprising. Not only was
his pen constantly employed, the early part of this year, on the “Memoirs” of his wife, and afterwards on one of
the numerous books, of which he had always one or more in hand; but his reading was varied
as ever, and the range was still more extended. He read in this year much Latin literature,
chiefly the Poets; many French works, mainly the older and standard authors; the old
English dramatists; and kept himself au courant
with all the books of merit which issued from the English press. And there is a curious
proof that this reading was, on the whole, thorough and methodical, his extreme honesty
with himself leading him always to note in his private Diary whenever he merely dipped into
a book, and read it here and there. Those who have turned over his MS. notebooks, have been
greatly puzzled by an entry occurring at irregular intervals, consisting apparently of the
mysterious word, “gala,” any explanation of which long seemed quite
hopeless. A longer search, however, has shewn that whereas in the earlier note-books he
occasionally wrote of an author that he studied him ça et
là, this phrase gradually became ça
là, and eventually “gala,” the conundrum so difficult to
solve. The fact that this is occasional, and always in reference to books into which a man
would only care to dip, especially when, as was mostly the case, they had been read before,
shews clearly enough the thoroughness of the usual study.
Any regular, more extended notes have for some time ceased, but there are
occasional memoranda of value. One such relates to literary work intended during this year.
“1798. The following are the literary productions
which I am at present desirous to execute:—
“1. A book to be entitled ‘First Principles of Morals.’ The principal purpose of this work is to
correct certain errors in the earlier part of my ‘Political Justice.’ The part to which I
allude is essentially defective, in the circumstance of not yielding a proper attention
to the empire of feeling. The voluntary actions of men are under the direction of their
feelings: nothing can have a tendency to produce this species of action, except so far
as it is connected with ideas of future pleasure or pain to ourselves or others.
Reason, accurately speaking, has not the smallest degree of power to put any one limb
or articulation of our bodies into motion. Its province, in a practical view, is wholly
confined to adjusting the comparison between different objects of desire, and
investigating the most successful mode of attaining those objects. It proceeds upon the
assumption of their desirableness or the contrary, and neither accelerates nor retards
the vehemence of their pursuit, but merely regulates its direction, and points the road
by which we shall proceed to our goal.
“Again, every man will, by a necessity of nature, be
influenced by motives peculiar to him as an individual. As every man will know more of
his kindred and intimates than strangers, so he will inevitably think of them oftener,
feel for them more acutely, and be more anxious about their welfare. This propensity is
as general as the propensity we feel to prefer the consideration of our own welfare to
that of any other human being. Kept within due bounds, it is scarcely an object of
moral censure. The benefits we can confer upon the world are few, at the same time that
they are in their nature, either petty in their moment, or questionable in their
results. The benefits we can confer upon those with whom we are closely connected are
of great magnitude, or continual occurrence. It is impossible that we should be
continually thinking of the whole world, or
not confer a smile or a kindness but as we are prompted to it by an abstract principle
of philanthropy. The series of actions of a virtuous man will be the spontaneous result
of a disposition naturally kind and well-attempered. The spring of motion within him
will certainly not be a sentiment of general utility. But it seems equally certain that
utility, though not the source, will be the regulator, of his actions; and that however
ardent be his parental, domestic, or friendly exertions, he will from time to time
examine into their coincidence with the greatest sum of happiness in his power to
produce. It seems difficult to conceive how the man who does not make this the beacon
of his conduct can be styled a virtuous man. Every mode of conduct that detracts from
the general stock of happiness is vicious. No action can be otherwise virtuous than
exactly in the degree in which it contributes to that stock.
“I am also desirous of retracting the opinions I
have given favourable to Helvetius’
doctrine of the equality of intellectual beings as they are born into the world, and of
subscribing to the received opinion, that, though education is a most powerful
instrument, yet there exist differences of the highest importance between human beings
from the period of their birth.
“I am the more anxious to bring forward these
alterations and modifications, because it would give me occasion to shew that none of
the conclusions for the sake of which the book on ‘Political Justice’ was written are affected
by them. I am fully of opinion that the sentiments of that book are intimately
connected with the best interests of mankind, and am filled with grief when I reflect
on the possibility that any extravagances or oversights of mine should bring into
disrepute the great truths I have endeavoured to propagate. But thus my mind is
constituted. I have, perhaps, never been without the possession of important views and
forcible reasonings; but they have ever been mixed with absurd and precipitate
judgments, of which subsequent consideration has made me profoundly ashamed.
“2. A book to be entitled ‘Two Dissertations on the Reasons and Tendency of Religious Opinion.’
The object of this book is to sweep away the whole fiction of an
intelligent former of the world, and a future state; to call men off from those
incoherent and contradictory dreams that so often occupy their thoughts, and vainly
agitate their hopes and fears, and to lead them to apply their whole energy to
practicable objects and genuine realities. The first Dissertation would be applied (i)
to shew that the origin of worlds is a subject out of the competence of the human
understanding; (2) to invalidate the doctrine of final causes; and (3) to demonstrate
the absurdity and impossibility of every system of Theism that has ever been proposed.
The second Dissertation would treat of the injurious and enfeebling effects of
religious belief in general, and of prayer in particular. The consideration would be
wholly confined to the most liberal systems of Theism, without entering into
superfluous declamation upon the pretences of impostors and fanatics.
“3. A novel, in which I should try the effect of my
particular style of writing upon common incidents and the embarrassments of lovers.
“4. Five or six tragedies.”
Godwin’s most constant associates at this time
were those named already as his friends and those of his wife; Basil Montagu, T. Wedgwood,
the Fenwicks, the Reveleys, Mrs Cotton, Charlotte Smith: he received at his own house very
frequently the members of his family who were in London. These, as his mother’s
letters imply, were doing but little to their own advantage, and were a great drain on
Godwin’s limited resources. Beyond this inner circle, he
mixed with almost all people then well known in the world of liberal politics and of
letters, and much also in theatrical society: he seems to have attended the theatre almost
whenever he had no other evening engagement. Wordsworth and Southey appear among
the more noteworthy literary acquaintances of this year, the dinners with Horne Tooke and with King were frequent, different as was the society which assembled at the two
tables.
It will be convenient to take first among the correspondence of this year
that which relates to Godwin’s domestic life,
and this requires a few introductory remarks. The care of the children, and the
superintendence of the household at Somers Town, was undertaken by Miss Louisa Jones, a friend of Harriet Godwin. The position was not an easy one to fill; there were
difficulties with the servants in consequence of little Mary’s requiring a wet-nurse; not all people could understand or be
prepared for Godwin’s constant uncertainty about dining or not
dining at home; the combination of friend and upper servant has inconveniences of its own,
and is open to misconceptions. Besides, there is some evidence from the poor lady’s
letters that she would willingly have been a tender stepmother to the children, while
nothing could be further from Godwin’s thoughts than any
relation whatever beyond that of housekeeper and governess to his children. The
arrangement, therefore, was but temporary, and after Miss Jones ceased
to reside in the house, she, Miss Godwin, Mrs Reveley, and other lady friends, seem to have given a kind, but at the
same time necessarily casual superintendence to the nurse in charge of the children, who
was devoted to them, and especially to little Mary.
This was among the circumstances which induced Godwin to think it possible, even at a very early date
after his wife’s death, that he might marry again. Experience had modified his views
on this as on some other matters. He did not find that the ideal best was always
practicable, and the comfort he had found tended to change his ideal. Mrs Shelley writes that his sentiments on the subject were
entirely changed, that—
“the happiness he had enjoyed, instilled the
opinion that he might, at least in a degree, regain the blessing he had lost, if he
married a woman of sense, and of an amiable disposition. Instead of, as heretofore,
guarding himself from the feelings of love, he appears rather to have laid himself open
to them. The two orphan girls left in his charge of course weighed much in the balance;
he felt his deficiency as the sole parent of two children of the other sex. In March
1798, he left town, as he was in the habit of doing for a short time in every year. He
visited Bath, and spent ten days in that city, where he met the authoresses of the
Canterbury Tales, Sophia and Harriet
Lee.” [These ladies were the daughters of John Lee, an actor at Covent Garden; and after their
father’s death they kept a school at Bath. They afterwards retired to Clifton and
died there, Sophia in 1824, Harriet in 1851, aged
94. They each wrote, separately, several novels, and, conjointly, “The Canterbury Tales.”] “The latter soon attracted his
admiration and partiality; to the end of his life he always spoke of her with esteem
and regard, though it was not till his papers were placed in my hands that I learned
the nearer tie that he sought to establish between them. The feeling of love was
awakened on their first acquaintance, and his immediate desire was to study her
mind.”
He made, on returning from visits to her house, in the course of those
few days, elaborate analyses of her conversation, in which they had discussed books
together, Rousseau’s works, Richardson, and others, and soon made up his mind to win
her, if possible, for his wife. They had only met, as appears from the Diary, four times,
but on Godwin’s return to London he wrote as
follows to Miss Lee:—
William Godwin to Miss Harriet Lee.
[April 1798.]
“When I last had the pleasure of seeing you, you said
you supposed you should hear of me. What was your meaning in this, I do not think proper to set myself
to guess, lest I should find that you meant nothing, or what in my estimate
might amount to nothing. In saying, therefore, that you supposed you should
hear of me, I am determined to understand that you expected to hear from me. It
is indeed a very displeasing thought to reflect, when one’s ideas of a
person have just been raised by their writings, and afterwards confirmed by a
direct communication of sentiments and feelings, that possibly years may elapse
before that communication is renewed, and that possibly it may even never be
renewed. There are so few persons in the world that have excited that degree of
interest in my mind which you have excited, that I am loth to have the
catalogue of such persons diminished, and that distance should place a barrier
between them and me, scarcely less complete than that of death. Indulge me with
the knowledge that I have some place in your recollection. Suffer me to
suppose, in any future production that you may give to the world, that while
you are writing it, you will sometimes remember me in the number of your
intended readers. Allow me to believe that I have the probability of seeing you
in no long time here in the metropolis. You said, if I recollect right, that
this was rather the less likely as the friend with whom you used to reside in
London had lately removed to some other place. Why should not I venture to
suggest the practicability of your substituting my house, instead of the
accommodation you have lost? I do not perceive that there could be any
impropriety in it. A sister of the
Miss Joneses, with whom I resided at Bath, lives at my
house upon the footing of an acquaintance, and is so obliging as to superintend
my family, and take care of the children. I am sure she would be happy to do
everything to accommodate you. I should imagine, therefore, that you might
accept the invitation without sinning against the etiquette that you love. It
is true that my establishment is a humble one, but you could not, perhaps, be
under the roof of a person who does more justice to your merits.” [Here
follows some criticism on Miss Lee’s
writings, of no sort of interest now.]
“Be so good as to express to your sister my sense of
the flatter-ing politeness and attention she was so
obliging as to bestow upon me. Farewell.—Yours, with much regard and esteem,
“W.
Godwin.”
This letter remained unanswered, and the lover became tormented by a
thousand doubts. Three drafts of letters remain, which show his great perplexity. Had he
offended? He was sometimes impelled to pour out his feelings with fervour and frankness,
sometimes to be as guarded as possible. The first draft is little more than a concise
announcement of his intention to revisit Bath, the second is an open confession of all his
feelings, and of this there are three copies, but neither the first nor the second of these
letters seems to have been sent. The third which reached Miss
Lee is a curious mixture of confidence and reticence, and half measures did
not please Miss Lee.
William Godwin to Miss Harriet Lee.
[London], “Saturday June 2, 1798.
“Dear Madam.—I have been
extremely mortified at receiving no answer from you, to the letter I wrote soon
after my late excursion to Bath. I am not sure indeed whether, in perfect
strictness I was entitled to an answer. But silence is so ambiguous a thing,
and admits of so many interpretations, that with the admiration I had conceived
for you, I could not sit down tranquilly under its discipline. It might mean
simply that I had not been long enough your knight, to entitle me to such a
distinction. But it might mean disapprobation, displeasure, or offence, when my
heart prompted me to demand cordiality and friendship. My mortification has
since been increased, by finding that you have been in town lately, and had
left town before I knew of your presence: though having a kind of suspicion
that the ‘Two Emilys’
would bring either Miss Lee or yourself to
London, I had made some enquiries on the subject.
“I am obliged to be at Bristol next week. I remember
as my greatest good fortune and pleasure in my last excursion the repeated and
long conversations I enjoyed at Belvidere House. May I hope that now, having a
right to call myself an acquaintance, I have not without intention or
consciousness on my part forfeited the kindness I then experienced as a
stranger. Whether next week shall be a week of pride or humiliation to my
feelings will depend on the solution it will afford to this question.
“Present my best remembrances to your sisters, and
believe me, with the highest regard and esteem, yours,
“W.
Godwin.”
On reading this letter Miss Lee
underlined and bracketted in pencil such words and sentences as she especially noticed, or
to which she took exception, then wrote a sort of minute on the margin. This was returned
to the writer, after the final cessation of their correspondence.
[Note on the above by Miss Harriet Lee].
“The tone of this letter appears to me to betray
vanity disappointed by the scantiness of the homage it has received, rather than mortified
by any apprehension of discouragement. If any offence was given by the former letter this
is calculated to renew and increase it; for it is equally presuming without being more
explicit, except in two sentences so alien to the temper, or distant from the express reach
of the rest, that they should be made under all circumstances to leave the letter. An
alternative proposed by the second clause presents itself to me thus: this journey to
Bristol has no reference to me; as far as that is concerned he visits me simply as an
acquaintance; but his title to be received as such has been lost by his forwardness to
employ the privileges, and claim the rights of a more endeared relation. The purpose of his
journey is addrest to me, and it may be dictated either by humility or assurance. I doubt
that the former interpretation would be given to a letter in which the same air and accent
reign as in this.”
She wrote, however, a civil but formal note, expressing her readiness to
see him, and on his arrival at Bath on June 5th, Godwin formally paid his addresses to Harriet
Lee, and there is a note in his diary of a “conference” on the
subject. That the lady admitted “regard and esteem,” appears from a
correspondence which afterwards ensued, and with this the lover was prepared to be content.
Miss Lee herself was not disinclined to marriage, but feared what
would be thought of it by her sister and the world. Almost persuaded to treat this
objection as lightly as in reality it deserved to be treated, there remained what was to
her a very grave question; were Godwin’s own opinions such as
would promise a happy marriage with a woman who held strongly her faith in God, and the
divine guidance of the world?
It is not possible to fix exact dates to Godwin’s letters to Miss Lee,
because only the undated drafts remain, but they were subsequent to the conference.
Arguments to induce the lady to reconsider her determination are urged with a pertinacity
and elaboration which would be wearisome to all but the principal performers in this little
domestic drama, perhaps to all but the writer. Extracts, however, will prove interesting,
not only as a specimen of love-letters which are probably unique, but also as a statement
of Godwin’s own opinions, thoroughly honest, of course, but
placed in what he considered the most favourable light.
William Godwin to Miss Harriet Lee.
[June 1798.]
“. . . We got thus far, I think, in our last
conversation, that the decision you shall be pleased to make will be of the
greatest importance, since, though it may be easy for either of us to marry,
supposing the present
question to be decided in the negative, yet it is not probable that either of
us will, elsewhere, meet with a fit and suitable partner, capable of being the
real companion of our minds, and improver of our powers. We must remain in that
separate and widowed state of the heart, which is no part of the system of
nature, or must, as St Paul says, be
unequally yoked.
“. . . Pass over in your mind everything which, if we
were united, would employ us from day to day, and from week to week. Things in
which we perfectly sympathised, in which we acted in concert, in which our
feelings would vibrate to each other. In the exercise of the benevolent and
social affections, in the improvement of our understandings, in taste, in the
admiration of natural beauty, or the beauties of human productions; in the
expressions—the refined, the delicious, but evanescent expressions—of mutual
attachment, those expressions in which the true consciousness of life consists,
that attachment which converts this terrestrial scene into a paradise, we
should, I hope, fully coincide, nor should one discord intrude into the
comprehensive harmony.
“. . . What will the world say? In the first place, I
am not sure that you do not labour under some mistake in this case. I must be
permitted to say on this occasion, that among those who personally know me, the
respect and love I have obtained is, I believe, fully equal to any reputation I
may be supposed to have gained for talents. I believe no person who has so far
run counter to the prejudices and sentiments of the world has ever been less a
subject of obloquy. I know that many whose opinions in politics and government
are directly the reverse of mine, yet honour me with their esteem. I cannot,
therefore, be of opinion that your forming a connection with me would be
regarded as by any means discreditable to you.
“. . . I have said to you once before, Do not go out
of life, without ever having known what life is. Celibacy contracts and palsies
the mind, and shuts us out from the most valuable topics of experience. He who
wastes his existence in this state may have been a spectator of the scene of
things, but has never been an actor, and is just such a spectator as a man
would be who did not understand a word of the language
in which the concerns of men are transacted. The sentiments of mutual and equal
affection, and of parental love, and these only, are competent to unlock the
heart and expand its sentiments—they are the Promethean fire, with which, if we
have never been touched, we have scarcely attained the semblance of what we are
capable to be. When I look at you, when I converse with you, it is more, much
more the image of what you might be, and are fitted to be, that charms me, than
the contemplation of what you are. I regard you as possessing the materials to
make that most illustrious and happiest of all characters, when its duties are
faithfully discharged—a wife—a mother. But if you are eminently and peculiarly
qualified for these offices, it is the more to be regretted, and shall I not
add? the more to be censured in you, if you peremptorily and ultimately decline
them.”
The Same to the Same.
[June 1798].
“I sit down as a disinterested friend to give you an
opinion, the result of what has lately passed between us. It is little likely
that anything of consequence to me should arise either way from what I am going
to state. I give up the point I have hitherto sought to enforce. You have
erected an insurmountable wall of separation between us. Henceforth we shall be
no more to each other than persons that had heard of each others’ names,
that remember there was a period when for a short time they had the habit of
seeing each other, and who may now and then have occasion to say,
‘Dear me! no, I believe he is not dead, is he?’ It might
have been otherwise. It ought to have been otherwise. But you have made your
election. I have neglected nothing that became me. I have brought the whole
subject laboriously before you; but you have remained pertinacious and
immoveable. Certainly my opinion of you is not altered; my partiality is not
diminished; if it were yet possible that you should view the question between
us with fairness and liberality, it would afford me a gratification much, much
beyond the power of words to express. It would change me into a new creature, and open to me
afresh the most pleasing prospects of life. I know that your heart—the bias and
leaning of your heart—is on my side. But you have found the secret of
suppressing the feelings of your heart, and subjecting them to the mystery and
dogmas of your creed. Suppose, then, that you are reading the reflections of an
impartial friend, who has the courage to communicate to you the truth; suppose
that the person whose visits you have lately had occasion to receive is dead.
Such a supposition may easily be made, and will cause little difference in
anything to which you look forward. The friend who addresses you, as he has the
courage to treat you ingenuously, so I hope will not forget what is due to your
sex and your merits, or utter a word that it would misbecome you to hear.
“You tell me, that if it were not for your religion,
and your ideas of a future state, you believe you should adopt a system of
conduct selfish and licentious. I do not credit you when you say this; if I
did, it would be impossible for me to have the smallest respect for you. I am
not so unfair as to suppose that your opinion has the effect of rooting out all
liberal and ingenuous sentiments from your mind, but I think it a serious
misfortune that you conceive it has. Every parent and preceptor perfectly knows
that a conduct adopted from the hope of reward or the fear of punishment is not
virtue. If I make myself useful to my fellow-men merely because I expect to be
rewarded for it, it is clear that I have no love of utility or virtue, and that
if the reward were placed on the other side, I should immediately become as
mischievous a creature as lives. Virtue is not a form of external conduct,—it
is a sentiment of the heart. I am a base and low-minded creature, whatever be
my external conduct, if I do not seek to confer happiness from a genuine
principle of sympathy, and because I have a direct and heartfelt pleasure in
the pleasure, the improvement, and advantage of others. If Omnipotence itself
were to annex eternal torments to the practice of benignity and humanity, I
know not how poor a slave I might be terrified into; but I know that I should
curse the tyrant, while I obeyed the command. In reality, the virtue of every
good man is built upon the stable basis of what he sees
and daily experiences, and not upon the precarious foundation of the
retribution which he rather endeavours to credit than certainly believe.
“The second error I have to notice is that your creed,
as you understand it, inculcates the worst part of bigotry. You look, as in
fact you tell me, with suspicion and incredulity upon the virtue of almost all
that was most illustrious in ancient times, and upon half the most unprejudiced
and exemplary men of our own day. This is the very quintessence of bigotry, to
overturn the boundaries of virtue and vice, to try men, not by what we see of
their conduct and know of their feelings, but by their adherence to, or
rejection of, a speculative opinion. You have a certain Shibboleth, a God and a
future state, which if any man deny, you assert he can have no firm and stable
integrity. And, which is most curious, you say to him, ‘If you have
only the sentiment of virtue, if you only do good from a love of rectitude
and benevolence, and do not feel yourself principally led to it by a
foreign, an arbitrary, and a mercenary motive, I can have no opinion of
you.’ I am happy to know that these errors of yours have no
necessary connection with either Deism or Christianity.
“I am happy to say that I have known many Deists and
many Christians, who confess that morality is an independent rule, by a
comparison with which they pronounce on the goodness of providence itself, and
of which the rewards of a future state are not the source, but merely an
additional sanction. Thinking thus, they are not backward or timid in
applauding the virtues of the patriots and sages of ancient times, or of those
benefactors of mankind in their own day, who have discarded the opinions which
they cherish. . I know it has been fashionable among divines to pretend that no
man rejects religion but because he wishes to be profligate with impunity, but
liberal-minded believers despise the shameless assertion.
“But I have done. I entertain no hopes of a good
effect from what I now write, and merely give vent to the sentiments your
determination was calculated to excite. I have made no progress with you. When
you have dropped an objection it has been only afterwards to revive it; when I have begun to entertain
fairer prospects, you have convinced me I was deluding myself. My personal
qualities, good or bad, are of no account in your eyes, you are concerned only
with the articles of my creed. I am compelled to regard the affair as
concluded, and the rational prospect of happiness to you and myself as
superseded by something you conceive better than happiness. I have now
discharged my sentiments, and here ends my censure of your mistake. If ever you
be prevailed on to listen to the addresses of any other man, may his success be
decided on more equitable principles than mine have been.”
Miss Lee’s next letter was intended to close the
correspondence.
Miss Harriet Lee to William Godwin.
[Bath], “July 31, 1798.
“You distress me, sir, extremely, by again agitating a
question which ought to be considered as decided. I had full opportunity, when
in Town, to hear, and attentively to weigh your opinions concerning the point
on which we most differ: for perhaps I do not fully agree with you in supposing
our minds at unison on many others; but that is immaterial—the matter before us
is decisive. All the powers of my understanding, and the better feelings of my
heart concurred in the resolution I declared before we parted; every subsequent
reflection has but confirmed it. With me our difference of opinion is not a
mere theoretical question. I never did, never can feel it as such, and it is
only astonishing that you should do so. It announces to me a certain difference
in—I had almost said a want in—the heart, of a thousand times more consequence
than all the various shades of intellect or opinion. My resolution then remains
exactly and firmly what it was: it gives me great pain to have disturbed the
quiet of your mind, but I cannot remedy the evil without losing the rectitude
of my own.
“I have taken from my sister the unpleasant task of telling you what you are unwilling to credit. She does justice to your understanding,
she wishes you every good that you can reasonably demand, but recollect how
improbable it is that I should cherish opinions she has not entertained long
before; and even if I did, self-dependent as I am both in mind and years, how
little likely is it that I should look to another for a rule either of duty or
happiness.
“You tell me that you are individually beloved by
those who know you, and I can easily believe it, but I will tell you that even
among the number of your friends, or at least well-wishers, there are to my
knowledge those who much lament, and even blame the lengths to which your
systems of thinking have carried you, and who recede insensibly from your
opinions, while they preserve a respect for your intentions.
“If, in our conversations, I have ever appeared in any
moment undecided, it was only at those when it occurred to me that truth and
genuine feeling were so strongly on my side, that while you were collecting
arguments to enlighten my mind, I felt persuaded of the possibility of a change
in your own. And why should I not? A doctrine so necessary to the heart, so
consonant to the reason, as that of a just and all-powerful Diety will I hope
one day find its way to both.
“My own good wishes and those of my sister attend you.
Nothing further can or ought to be said by either of us. Farewell—but let it be
a friendly Farewell.
H. L.”
Godwin, however, was not so to be put down, and
wrote a flood of letters in one week, of which the following extracts may serve:—
William Godwin to Miss Harriet Lee.
[Early in August, 1798.]
“. . . What you have done is in the genuine style of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. You have put out of sight the man, and
asked only what he believed. In the midst of the vast world of conjecture,
before the beginning of all things, that appropriate field of wild assertion, in which proud man, ignorant of
the essence and character of what immediately passes under his eyes, delights
to expatiate, you have chosen a creed. You have done well; it amuses the fancy,
it is the parent of a thousand interesting pictures, it soothes the heart with
pleasing ideas. This is the deism of those persons whom I have known, who,
having shaken off the empire of infant prejudices, yet differ from me in the
point in which you differ. They frankly acknowledge that it is a matter of
taste, and not a matter of reason. What can you know of the origin of the
universe? Wert thou present when the foundations of the earth were laid? Didst
thou see whereupon they are fastened, or who laid the corner stone thereof?
Knowest thou it because thou wert then born, or because the number of thy days
is great? Still more unsupported in reason is the notion of a future state. We
see a man die; we can lock up his body in a vault; we can visit it from day to
day, and observe its gradual waste; and we say that an invisible part of him is
flown off, and inhabits somewhere with a consciousness that that, and that
only, is the man. The evidence that we had of his existence was speech, and
motion, and pulsation, and breath. All this is changed into a motionless and
putrid mass, and we still say the man exists. We pretend to infer the character
of infinite benevolence from what we see in a world where despotism, and
slavery, and misery, and war continually prevail, and then, reasonably growing
discontented with the scene, we piece out most miserably another world with
hallelujahs and everlasting rest, according to our fancy, and we call this
evidence. We first infer the goodness of God from what we see, and then infer
that this world is not worthy of the goodness of that being whose existence we
deduced from it. I have no disrespect for these opinions; far from it I regard
them as the food of a sublime imagination and an amiable temper. But I expect
the unprejudiced man that cherishes them to know them for what they are—the
creatures of taste, and not of reason. I expect him to be moderate and
forbearing in assertion. I know that such a man will never regard this
invisible world, with which he has no acquaintance, and which is the mere
creature of his conjecture, as a balance for the realities around him; will
never, instead of inquiring what is a man’s understanding, what is his
genius, what are his morals, what is his temper, what the improvement, the
pleasure, the mode of happiness he proposes to him; will never, I say, instead
of this, inquire, what is his creed, and judge him by that . . . .”
The Same to the Same.
[Early in August, 1798.]
“. . . Bigots have pretended that the will of God is
the foundation of morality, that what He commands is therefore right, and what
He forbids is therefore wrong. But rational theism teaches that morality is
antecedent to the divine will, and is a rule to which God himself delights to
conform. Rational theism teaches that God is good; and to prove that He is so,
compares His providence and works with the immediate standard of rectitude to
which God and good men equally adhere. The will of God therefore is by no means
the foundation of morality, but merely its sanction, an additional reason why
we should conform to it . . .”
Miss Lee wrote a letter on August 7th, which seems to
have been taken as final, in which she hopes that friendly remembrance may still subsist,
unchecked by “minute misunderstandings,” and so concluded this singular
correspondence. After a time, however, friendly though somewhat formal intercourse was
renewed, and there is a letter extant, written in the following year by Miss
Lee in reference to a literary criticism by Godwin on some new publication by her. But there is no allusion to the more
intimate terms on which he had once desired to stand.
It was just as well that Godwin’s plan of keeping house with Thomas Wedgwood was never carried out. Their correspondence shows the not unexampled state of things in which
two men who were intellectually complementary to each other, who had for each other a
sincere friendship, were yet antipathetic when they met, and suited each other only at a
distance. Wedgwood had discovered this earlier than
Godwin, and though still writing very cordial letters, though
helping his friend with most liberal loans, or rather presents of money, in his need, he
yet, in his now failing health, preferred that they should not meet, and that their
discussions should be conducted only on paper. Godwin, on the
contrary, characteristically desired that they should meet and discuss rationally the
questions whether they were or were not more cordially and kindly disposed to each other
when apart. Only portions of one letter and of its answer are generally interesting.
Thomas Wedgwood to William Godwin.
“Penzance, Jan. 6, 1798.
“It is hardly necessary for me to inform you that the
contents of your letter were highly agreeable to me. You are almost the only
person whose judgment is valuable to me on speculative points, and on that
account I feel continually the necessity of your sanction. On the subject of
friendship, no person ought to think with so much charity of others or to speak
with greater diffidence than myself. I was not satisfied with the propriety of
my last letter, though, as it has happily led to an explanation agreeable to
both of us, I cannot now repent of it. Perhaps I am incapable of friendship—my
habits and disposition are certainly so unfavourable as to require a
concurrence of fortunate circumstances for its birth and support.
‘Sickness,’ says Johnson, ‘makes scoundrels of us all,’ it
impairs and destroys sympathy. But feebleness of constitution and spirits is
not the only obstacle; I have to contend with a timidity of disposition which
has long harassed me inconceivably, and which in a
thousand ways is obstructive to the growth of an entire and affectionate
intimacy. . . .
William Godwin to Thomas Wedgwood.
[London], “Jan. 10, 1798.
“. . . I am pleased with the style of writing you have
lately employed. I have more taste, though I have sometimes suspected and often
been told that it is a vicious taste, for letters and conversations of feeling
than of discussion.
“Allow me to recommend to you a very cautious
admission of the moral apophthegms of Doctor
Johnson. He had an unprecedented tendency to dwell on the dark
and unamiable part of our nature. I love him less than most other men of equal
talents and intentions, because I cannot reasonably doubt that when he drew so
odious a picture of man he found some of the traits in his own bosom. I have
seen more persons than one or two, whom sickness has neither converted into
scoundrels, nor stripped of a sympathetic disposition.
“Your paying the postage of your letters to me is
contrary to established etiquette. It is scarcely worth while to enter into an
argument about it, but I think I could prove to you that it is wrong.
“W.
Godwin.”
Though Godwin was now a
middle-aged man, though his habits were methodical, and his manner somewhat cold and
formal, the fact that his opinions were progressive, and his soul full of what would now be
called the enthusiasm of humanity, continued to attract to him young men of hopeful and
vigorous minds, whom he never failed to receive with kindness, and set forward to the best
of his ability. Their fresh youth, and the earnestness of their minds, served to keep his
own mind buoyant, even in the midst of sorrow and disappointment, and as his relations with
Webb and Cooper served in some degree to show what he was, in his inner life, so now does a correspondence with a young Scotchman
named Arnot, who, coming to London to seek his
fortune, attached himself to Godwin. He left no mark on his
generation, but he wrote excellent letters, and incidentally the correspondence throws
light on Godwin as showing the kind of lad who still attracted him. A
note by the second Mrs Godwin to Mrs Shelley describes Arnot as
“a tall young man, pale faced, with large blue eyes
with much meaning in them, in shabby clothes. Whenever your father spoke of him he
extolled his intellectual powers, saw infinite folly and danger in the intemperance of
his impulses and pursuits, and expressed his fear that he must be mad. At one period
his sister and her husband, Mr and Mrs Fyler from Edinburgh, put him in confinement, and
had a great dislike to your father, on account of ‘Political Justice,’ ascribing their
brother’s conduct to the principles it contains. Arnot and L. Jones [the lady who
lived with Godwin as housekeeper] were in love
with each other. Arnot was desperately attached afterwards to some
German lady of rank. I think this is in the letters.”
The immediate reason why Arnot
left Scotland does not appear, but he walked the whole way from Edinburgh to London, and
wrote the account of his journey to a friend whom he left behind him. These letters
afterwards came into Godwin’s hands, and are
preserved among his papers. An extract from one of them is characteristic of the young man,
and is valuable as a picture of a scene not unfamiliar at this time.
John Arnot to Peter Reid. Peter Reid
“Cambo [Northumberland], April 24, 1798.
. . . “At some distance from the village of Elsdon,
through which I passed to-day, I observed a large post erected on the top of
the hill. I conceived it might be an intimation about the roads leading to such
a place. Being thirsty, I went into a house near it to buy some milk. I sat
down to drink it, and inquired what the post meant ’Tis a Gibbet,
Sir.’ ‘A Gibbet! why was it erected amongst the
hills?’ ‘For murder; an old woman was killed there, and
two men and a woman were hanged for it, upon that gibbet.’
“What a train of horrid ideas did that introduce into
my mind. I looked at the man who told it me; he is a sour-looking fellow. His
wife, a little shrew, in a red jacket, was present. I thought her a devil. I
took care to keep my stick near me, it was my only means of defence. I felt a
strong aversion to them both, and was glad to get away.
“I went up to the gibbet. The bones are still
hanging, kept together with iron. This, no doubt, is intended as a conspicuous
monument of retributive justice. Is it thought this will have a good effect? I
cannot help being of an opposite opinion. Surely the people who live near it
cannot be happy. They cannot even feel easy and contented till their minds
become hardened. The ideas of hanging and of murder must first become familiar
to them. I don’t like them. Let me get away from this place.
“I walked as fast as I could, but could not walk
long. I was fatigued, and my right foot began to give me pain. I sat down,
therefore, upon a stone at the roadside, pulled out my little octave flute, and
began to play a tune, but it only added to my melancholy. I looked around. This
is a wild, barren country; no trees to be seen, no bushes or enclosures, no
fine cultivated fields. All is a dreary waste; this gibbet its only ornament;
the sheep its inhabitants. They were feeding within a few yards of me. I looked
on them with an emotion which I never felt before. Ah! innocent people, as
Thomson calls you, how much happier
are you than man—man who butchers you and his fellow-creatures
indiscriminately.
“Such is the nature of the present state of society.
It punishes, with the utmost severity, crimes to which it holds out
irresistible temptations.”
Arnot, after he had spent a short time in London,
formed the design of visiting the less known portions of Europe on foot, at once to learn
the German language, and to take notes for a book of travels, to be published on his
return. Godwin warmly approved of this plan, and aided Arnot to carry
it into execution. France was of course closed to an English subject, and he therefore went
to Germany in a Baltic ship by way of Russia. The letters that he wrote to Godwin are all extremely good, but only portions of them
can here be given.
John Arnot to William Godwin.
“Petersburg, 10 August 1798, New Style.
“Dear Sir,—I shall leave
this place to-morrow. I am so happy that I have got my passport! And I assure
you that it was no easy matter. It has detained me here for three weeks, living
at no little expense, in the British tavern. . . .
“I arrived at Cronstadt after a tedious and very
disagreeable passage of 30 days, and in 5 days more got my passport to
Petersburg. It was rather odd that I should have pitched upon the worst ship in
every respect, perhaps, of the whole fleet; my patience was tried more ways
than one. I don’t think Job himself had more
patience when he was my age.
“I declare I am afraid to write any more. I am
writing to Godwin just as if I was
writing to my good friend Peter Reid, scribble, scribble,
scribble, I have fifty thousand things to say, and don’t know which to
say first. I dare say my pen has run mad. If I were beside you, you would think
my tongue were mad. . . .
“I intend to walk to Riga, and from Riga to Vienna.
Indeed, I am determined to be at Vienna this winter, that is, if nothing
happens to me by the way, which you know is possible. ‘Walk to Riga!!
The poor lad has lost his wits. Do you know what you are doing? Such
weather, such roads, such a country, and such a people. You may as well
think of walking to the moon.’ But I’ll walk it for all
that. ’Tis nothing at all.
“I don’t think I am half so courageous as when
I left Scotland. I believe I could have taken a bear by the ear as coolly as
you could take your dinner. But now that I have the prospect of being happy
when I return—am I not happy already, at least at this moment?—I begin to think
I am worth the taking care of, and therefore I am determined to take care of
myself, and never to meddle with a bear unless the bear meddles with me, and to
be wondrous civil to the boors and the booresses. . . .
“I have been obliged to lighten my parcel very much.
I gave away ‘Tristram
Shandy’ about five weeks ago, and my two flutes. I have laid
aside all my pistol bullets, except about 20, and am thinking to throw away the
only shirt and pair of stockings I have to spare. . . .—I am, with great
esteem, yours, &c.
“John Arnot.
“I keep no journal on my way to Vienna. I dare
not”
The Same to the Same.
“Dresden, Wednesday, 7th Nov. 1798.
“Dear Sir.—Here I am. Fol
lol de rol, nay I will give you the very notes. No I will not; for you
don’t care for music, at least for the music that I care for. . . .
“I cannot get a grammar. There is none here. I shall
apply very hard, for I wish to be master of the language in 4 months, and then
I may go to the Play, and where else I please. I must also study French, which
in Dresden is the only language that is spoken in fashionable company. I shall
have enough ado. I wish also I had English books, but I cannot have everything
while I have no money.
“I don’t recollect whether I mentioned to you
that I had brought with me from Edinburgh, sets of the best old Scotch songs.
By publishing them here, and perhaps also at Leipsig, or Prague, or Vienna, or
at all of these places, I hope not only to procure a subsistence for the
winter, but to be able to pay such debts as I have contracted. Germany as
you know is a very musical country, and the Scotch songs are very fine. . . .
Adieu, yours sincerely,
“John Arnot.”
“P.S.—I heard something of
a great victory obtained over the French. If you have any of the old
newspapers containing an account of that, or of any other remarkable public
occurrence, I shall be obliged to you for them. But first it would be
proper to enquire whether it is allowed to send papers abroad, for I would
rather want them than run the risk of losing your letters. . . .”
William Godwin to John Arnot.
[London, Nov. 23rd
1798.]
“DearArnot,—I derived
exquisite pleasure from the receipt of your letter. I have thought of you a
thousand times with inexpressible anxiety. I have been accused, as you know, of
countenancing a young man, in whom I felt a powerful interest, in entering
unprovided, and unsupported, upon an attempt the most perilous and insane, from
which it was next to impossible he should not reap intolerable calamities, and
hardly probable that he should come off alive. Without an accuser I should have
sufficiently felt the high responsibility that devolved on me. Yet what could I
do? The first sensation your project excited in me was envy. I wished I could
have been a lad like you to undertake what you proposed. I saw in you many
qualifications, fitting you for the design, courage, though not an uniform
courage, and an easy and assured manner, calculated to smooth a thousand
difficulties, and prepossess strangers in your favour. Feeling approbation,
could I belie my sentiment?
“Under these impressions it seemed to me very long
before I heard from you. I saw you for the last time on the 13th of June, and
your first letter did not reach me till the 10th of November. You promised me
to write from Petersburgh. My active imagination passed in review all the
dangers of your route, immense deserts, rude forests, fierce Cossacks, hunger,
assassination and death. These evils would have impressed me more strongly, had
not the various reports of the vigilance of Russian
police created in me a persuasion that you would not be permitted to enter that
empire. I confess I had my fears that you would return, looking like a fool, by
the same vessel in which you sailed. I considered however that if all activity
and enterprise did not desert you, you would in case of the worst, find means
to push for the other side of the Baltic, and find rest for your foot on the
dry land of Sweden.
“And now, will you forgive me, if I acknowledge, in
spite of the heart-felt pleasure with which I received your letters, my
satisfaction was not unmixed with disappointment. The first consisted of five
poor lines, with a morsel of postscript. The kindest construction I could put
upon this was that you were so sunk in spirit that if you had written more, you
felt your melancholy and dejection would break out, and therefore out of pure
generosity you stopped while you could. But if this were the kindest
construction, it was not the most consolatory. Your second letter has in some
degree removed this uneasy apprehension. It reached me last night, November
22nd, in fifteen days from its date. But in neither do you tell me where you
have been, what you have seen, not even whether you took the route of Livonia,
Poland, and Silesia, or of Sweden, Denmark, Holstein, &c.; whether you took
shore at Petersburgh and continued your route by land, or whether though first
at Vienna, and now at Dresden, you have seen no other country than Germany.
Another fault I find is, that I trace in your letters no feature of the mind I
loved, no sterling observations of man, no agreeable naiveté of adventure. I
hope while your body has been in restless motion, your mind has not slept. But
I suppose you reserve all your good things to surprise the world with.
“I think your famous Dr
John Brown affirms that the natural genuine state of man is
death. I know not what physical truth there may be in this, but morally I
greatly fear that the man who would truly be alive must obstinately spur his
mind into a much better state than that into which, if neglected, it will sink.
I hope you keep a copious journal. I hate travels into the four quarters of the world written after
all is over, within sight of St Paul’s Church. Perhaps it would be better
for your book, and better for yourself that you should visit some countries
that are not travelled every day, such as Hungary, Spain, &c. You ought
too, to take some precautions respecting your manuscripts, that in case of an
accident your name and your usefulness may not be wholly lost. But above all
take care of yourself. I had rather be refreshed by the sight of John Arnot in person than John
Arnot’s book. . . . Study language elaborately, you cannot
know man without understanding his speech.
“You ask for news. . . . The grand topic is Egypt.
Buonaparte sailed for that country in
May. Our Admiral Nelson pursued him, arrived
before him, and returned to Europe. Buonaparte landed his
forces July 1st. Nelson having refitted, sailed again to
Alexandria, where he found the French Fleet still at anchor.
Nelson with 14 ships attacked the French with 13 on
August 1st, took 9 and burned 2, so that only 2 escaped.
Buonaparte, on the other hand, seems impregnably
established in possession of Egypt. The Turk has in consequence declared war
against France.
“Coleridge and
Wordsworth, two names that I believe
you will find in the list I wrote out for you, landed some time ago at
Hamburgh. They are at no great distance from that place, but I cannot learn
where. You may perhaps meet with them in your rambles. They are both
extraordinary men, and both reputed men of genius.
Coleridge I think fully justifies the reputation . . .
“I wish you all manner of prosperity, improvement,
and happiness.”
John Arnot to William Godwin.
“Dresden, Saturday, 8th Dec. 1798.
“DearGodwin,—Your letter
has given me no small degree of pleasure, but I confess it has also given me
anxiety. It seems the letter of a man who once thought well of me, but who now
finds with regret that he has reason in a great measure to retract his good
opinion. It is worse. It seems to me to be written in a tone of melancholy
despondency. I don’t know what to think of it.
What a disappointment that you have not said a word of my friends. Not a word
of Louisa [Jones]—not a word of
Fanny—not a word of sister Mary, who was so fond of me—nor of Miss Godwin, nor Marshall, nor Dyson, nor
Dibbin, nor anybody. Ah,
Godwin, you would not have forgot that, had you
received my letter from Petersburg, or had you known how nearly I feel my
happiness allied to theirs. Are they well? or have they forgot me? or can you
think I have forgot them?
“Curse the news—what care I for Egypt? But that was
my own thoughtlessness and impertinence. . . .
“I took the route of Livonia, Poland, and Silesia. I
passed through Riga, Warsaw, Cracow, Teschen, Olmütz, Brünn, to Vienne. So far
from having kept a copious journal; between Petersburg and Warsaw I marked only
the days of the month, and the place where I slept each night, when that place
had a name and I knew it. Before I reached Warsaw I lost my inkholder—a loss
which in the capital of Poland could not be supplied, so that I did not
afterwards write another word, but trusted solely to my memory. I regret this.
. . .
“I am quite of your opinion that it would be better
to visit countries which are not traversed every day. Hungary, however, I
scarcely expect to see, or any part of the Emperor’s dominions, so
difficult is it to procure admittance, and so closely are you watched when
admitted. . . . Fortune, indeed, has not smiled upon my early youth, and my
infant years have been years of misery; but among the few happy periods of my
life I shall ever rank the time I spent in walking through Poland. And yet I
met with nothing there to make me happy; the generality of young men in my
situation would have considered their condition as most desperate and
deplorable. My happiness was founded in hope, and in thinking of the Polygon. .
. .”
There can be no doubt that Godwin
had, during his married life, withdrawn himself in some degree from those acquaintances who
did not lie within his immediate circle
of friends, and had also taken less interest in the more abstract questions connected with
life and politics than he had done before. His life on the whole was so happy, rounded, and
complete, his literary work had been so sharply defined during that period, that he had
less time and inclination for pursuits and companions once, and to be again, full of
interest for him. But he now began once more to see and correspond with literary and
distinguished men beyond his intimates, though many letters written by him are
unfortunately lost. Such is the case with that to which the following letter is an answer,
but the document itself is of sufficient importance to call for insertion.
The writer, the Rev. T. R.
Malthus, published anonymously his “Treatise on Population” in 1798, but no secret was
made of the authorship, and he gave his name to the fourth edition, published five years
later. Mr Malthus, who was born in 1766 at Albury, was Fellow of Jesus
College, Cambridge, and afterwards, from 1804 till his death in 1831, Professor of History
and Political Economy at Haileybury College, then the place of education for Writers in the
East India Company’s Service. The main doctrine of the Treatise is that assistance
should be refused to poverty for the purpose of preventing over-population—which he
declares to be the main cause of the evils apparent in human life—though his name is more
often associated with some of the details of his argument.
The Rev. R. Malthus to William
Godwin.
“Albury, August 20th [1798].
“Dear Sir,—I went out of
town almost immediately after I left you on Wednesday morning, and therefore
did not receive your obliging letter till I arrived at Albury, whither
Mr Johnson was so good as to send
it.
“In the view in which you now place the subject, do
you not in some degree change the question from the perfectibility and
happiness to the numbers of the human race; and it may be a matter of doubt
whether, without looking to a future state, an increase of numbers without a
perpetual increase of happiness be really desirable.
“Could we suppose any country, by the most
extraordinary exertions, to arrive at the ne plus
ultra of subsistence and population, in one or two
centuries we have reason to think that the pressure of population in its utmost
weight, would be felt in frequent famines and pestilences, and particularly in
the small recompense of labour; for I think you yourself must allow that under
the present form of society the real recompense of labour depends upon the
increase of the funds for its maintenance; and when these funds are completely
stationary, and have continued so some time, this recompense will naturally be
the least possible. You think that the present structure of society might be
radically changed. I wish I could think so too; and as you say I have
completely failed in convincing you on this subject, will you have the goodness
to remove a few of those difficulties which I cannot remove myself, and allow
me to be convinced by you?
“I set out with granting the extreme desirableness of
the end proposed—that is, the abolition of all unnecessary labour, and the
equal division of the necessary labour among all the members of the society. I
ought also to premise, that in speaking of the present structure of society, I
do not in the least refer to any particular form of government, but merely to
the existence of a class of proprietors and a class of labourers, to the system
of barter and exchange, and to the general moving principle of self-love.
“I can conceive that a period may arrive when the
baubles that at present engage the attention of the higher classes of society
may be held in contempt; but I cannot look forward to a period when such a
portion of command over the produce of land and labour as cannot be within the
reach of all will cease to be an object of desire. Moderate cloathing, moderate
houses, the power of receiving friends, the power of purchasing books, and
particularly the power of
supporting a family, will always remain objects of rational desire among the
majority of mankind. If this be allowed, how is it possible to prevent a
competition for these advantages? If the labour of luxuries were at an end, by
what practicable means could you divide the necessary labour equally? Without
the interference of Government, which I know you would reprobate as well as
myself, how could you prevent a man from exchanging as many hours of labour as
he liked for a greater portion of these advantages? Were the island of Great
Britain divided among a great number of small proprietors, which would probably
be the most advantageous system in respect to produce, it would be the natural
wish of each of these proprietors to get the labour of his farm done for as
small a part of the produce as he could, that he might be able to gratify his
inclination in marrying without transgressing the rules of prudence, and
provide for a large family, should he have one. The consequence of this desire
in the proprietor to realise a sufficiency to maintain and provide for a
family, together with the desire in the labourer to obtain the advantages of
property, would be that the labourer would work 6, 8, or 10 hours in the day
for less than would support 3, 4, or 5 persons, working two hours a-day.
Consequently the equal division of the necessary labour would not take place.
The labourers that were employed would not possess much leisure, and the
labourers that were not employed would perish from want, to make room for the
increase of the families of proprietors, who, as soon as they were increased
beyond the power of their property to support, must become labourers to others,
who, either from prudence or accident, had no families. And thus it appears
that, notwithstanding the abolition of all luxuries, and a more equal division
of property, the race of labourers would still be regulated by the demand for
labour, and the state of the funds for its maintenance.
“The prudence which you speak of as a check to
population implies a foresight of difficulties; and this foresight of
difficulties almost necessarily implies a desire to remove them. Can you give
me an adequate reason why the natural and general desire to remove these
difficulties would not cause such a competition as would
destroy all chance of an equal division of the necessary labour of society, and
produce such a state of things as I have described? If you can satisfy me on
this head, I will heartily join with you in invectives against the increase of
labour, and in the general sentiments of your essay on avarice and profusion.
Excuse my descending to particulars, as I am of opinion that the great object
of our researches, truth, cannot be attained without it.
“Your objection against the present form of society,
on account of its preventing the greatest practicable population, would, in
some degree, hold against your system of prudence, the object of which, as I
conceive, would be to keep the population always considerably within the means
of subsistence. Should such a system ever prevail so generally as to remove the
constant want of an increasing quantity of food, it is highly probable that
cultivation would proceed still more slowly than it does at present. I only
approve of the present form of society, because I cannot myself, according to
the laws of just theory, see any other form that can, consistently with
individual freedom, equally promote cultivation and population. Great
improvements may take place in the state of society; but I do not see how the
present form or system can be radically and essentially changed, without a
danger of relapsing again into barbarism. With the present acknowledged
imperfections of human institutions, I by no means think that the greatest part
of the distress felt in society arises from them. The very admission of the
necessity of prudence to prevent the misery from an overcharged population,
removes the blame from public institutions to the conduct of individuals. And
certain it is, that almost under the worst form of government, where there was
any tolerable freedom of competition, the race of labourers, by not marrying,
and consequently decreasing their numbers, might immediately better their
condition, and under the very best form of government, by marrying and greatly
increasing their numbers, they would immediately make their condition worse. As
all human institutions will probably be imperfect, and consequently always open
to censure, it is not surely fair to charge them with evils of which, as far as
I can judge, they are totally guiltless. And in all projected changes of human
institutions, it appears to me of the highest importance previously to
ascertain as nearly as possible how much evil is to be attributed to these
institutions, and how much is absolutely independent of them.
“I have made this letter much longer than I at first
intended; and I certainly ought to apologise for taking up so much of your
valuable time: but if your avocations will not permit you to answer it, I shall
hope for some future opportunity of hearing your opinions upon the subject,
when I have the pleasure of seeing you.—I am, dear sir, yours sincerely,
A. Malthus.”
A letter from Mrs Godwin, senior,
will close the record of the year.
Mrs Godwin, senior, to William Godwin.
[Wood Dalling, 1798.]
“My dearWm.—I’m a poor letter writer at best, but now
worse than ever. After thanking yo. for yr. genteel present of the Memoirs of yr.
wife. Excuse me saying Providence certainly knows best, the fountain of wisdom
cannot err. He that gave life can take it away, and none can hinder, and tho we
see not his reasons now, we shall see them hereafter. I hope yo. are taught by reflection your mistake concerning marriage, there
might have been two children that had no lawful wright to anything yt. was their fathers, with a thousand other bad
consequences, children and wives crying about ye streets without a protector.
You wish, I dare say, to keep yr. own oppinion,
therefore I shall say no more but wish you and dear babes happy. Dose little
Mary thrive? or she weaned? You will
follow your wives direction, give them a good deal of air, and have a good
oppertunity, as yo. live out of ye. Smoke of the city. You will be kind enough to let yr.Sister
know Mr and Mrs G.
and self wish to know if she recd. a box with eggs
whole, they were all new, and sundry trifels I sent her, with a new piece of
print for my grand-daughter Mary for a gown, with 2/6 to
pay for the making, a pr. little Stockens and Hat for
yr. Ch. 16 March last. Am greatly concerned to hear yr.Bro. has lost his
place at Wright’s; am affraid it’s from the
old cause; Seneca’s morals he bostes
off is not sufficient, there is something else wanting of greater moment and
importance. I dont write to him because he gives me such hard names, as that I
don’t act up to the carrector my blessed Saviour has set me, &c.,
though I wish him well, and think I discharge my duty towards him. He wrote me
word he wish’d he had done with Sirvitude or with life, I’m afraid
he is prepared for neither. I have been burning a great number of old letters,
but when I came to yours, it was with great reluctance that I destroyed them,
there is such a kind and benevolent spirit in them towards your dear S. and J.
in their necessities. What a burthen has John been to
yo.! Poor creature, what will become of him I
tremble to think. He trusts providence, but its in a wrong way, not in ye way
of well doing. I have sent him a new shirt for Mr Sothren
to send by private hand, directed to Hanh. I coud send him my riding-coat, its so very heavy, and
I so very week I cant wear it, and perhaps Natty a waistcoat, but imagain the use he will make of them
will be to lay them in pawn, but so he must if he will, who can help it? Money
is of no use, nor is it much otherwise with some others which I shall not name.
“By seling a little Timber, and frugality in my
expences, hope to be able a little after Mic[haelmas] to help you and the rest
to £10 a-piece, taking yr. notes for it, perhaps will just keep their heads
above water. I wd. reserve somthing to keep yr. S. from starving, but yt.
will be difficult. If I leave her a place for her life, and she be deep in
debt, and have interest to pay, she will be nothing ye.
better. I wish you to write very soon by post with your opinion of the matter,
and also how Joe conducts himself
towards his wife and family. I sent Mary
a pritty mourning ring with an emethist and 2 sparks in it; do you ask to see
it, also a box for it; hope she will not loose it. Would not wish yo. to declare the contents of my letter: my best wishes
attend you and yours. Yr. Bro. Hull and wife and Natt join me in the same, Mrs G. is in ye
increesing way; their eldest has got the measels is very full, but hope no danger. I see
in ye news a Miss Foster married of Wisbeach.—From yr. affecate. Mother,
A. G.
“I wish you woud let me know if there is any
better way of directing letters or parcels, are they no more than letters
to London when directed to Somers Town.
“What I send Han wou’d be glad yo. to be
her director what use to make of it. She has told me some former letters
she was affraid she sh’d be put to trouble, and often exprest yo. have been a father to her, but it stands yo. in hand to take care of yourself; an aspiring
temper will be beat down, while the humble shall be exalted.”
CHAPTER XII. ST LEON—MRS REVELEY.
1799.
The year 1799 began with a breach with Mackintosh, which afterwards grew wider.
Mackintosh delivered early in that year, in the hall of
Lincoln’s Inn, a course of lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations. To some
expressions in the first of these Godwin objected,
as unfairly directed against himself. His letter is not preserved, but its purport can be
in great measure divined from the following reply:—
Mr, afterwards Sir, James Mackintosh to
William Godwin.
“Serle Street, Lincoln’s Inn,
30th Jany. 1799.
“Dear Sir,—I read your very
candid and good-tempered letter with real pleasure. I owe you an honest answer.
I think I am disposed to make it a perfectly good-natured one. The strongest
expression you quote, ‘Savage Desolators,’ you will find on
reperusal to be a half-pleasantry directed against metaphysicians in general,
amongst whom I have sometimes the vanity to number myself. ‘Those who
disguise commonplace in the shape of paradox’ is most certainly
not an allusion to you. The thing is so common as an art of literary empiricism
that I rather think no particular writer was present to my mind when I wrote
the passage. Your opinions do not stand in need of any contrivances to make
them appear more singular than they are. As to Turgot, Rousseau, and Condorcet, I have the highest reverence for the first of these
writers. The second I have long considered as the most eloquent and delightful madman that
ever existed. The third I always thought a cold and obscure writer; I never
could think very highly of his talents, partly perhaps because I am no great
judge of his mathematical eminence, which is, I believe, the principal part of
his reputation. His conduct did not appear to me to have been that of a good
man. But in none of the phrases which you have selected have I even so much as
insinuated that he or any other mistaken speculator was influenced by bad
motives. A man may be ‘mischievous’ with the best
‘motives’ in the world. In all discussions of ‘Speculative
Principles’ it is always a most unfair act of controversy to load the
author whom we oppose with the ‘immoral consequences’ which we
suppose likely to flow from his opinion, not to mention that it is a sorry and
impertinent sophism to urge such consequences as an argument against the truth
of a speculative proposition. But the case is very different in moral and
practical disputes. There the consequences are everything, and must be
constantly appealed to, especially by those who, like you and myself, hold
utility to be the standard of morals. To apply this to the present subject.
With respect to you personally, I could never mean to say anything unkind or
disrespectful. I had always highly esteemed both your acuteness and
benevolence. You published opinions which you believed to be true and most
salutary, but which I had from the first thought mistakes of a most dangerous
tendency. You did your duty in making public your opinions. I do mine by
attempting to refute them; and one of my chief means of confutation is the
display of those bad consequences which I think likely to flow from them. I,
however, allow that I should have confined those epithets, which I apply to
denote pernicious consequences, merely to doctrines. Though these epithets,
when they are applied by men to me, are never intended to convey any aspersion
upon the moral or intellectual character of individuals, but merely to describe
them as the promulgators of opinions which I think false and pernicious, yet I
admit that I should not in any way have applied the epithets to men. I feel gratitude to you for having recalled my
attention to this great distinction which I shall observe in my proposed lectures, and in the work which may one day be the fruit
of them, with a caution which is prescribed equally by a regard to my own
character, and to the interests of science. I assure you that I never felt any
desire that our intercourse should be lessened; having never experienced
anything but pleasure from it. Distance, accident, occupation, and laziness
have contributed to make it less; inclination has had no share. I, on the
contrary, hope that we shall continue to exhibit the example, which is but too
rare, of men who are literary antagonists but personal friends.—I am, with
great regard, yours,
James Mackintosh.”
Godwin’s Diary for the year exhibits him engaged in the same, or
even greater intellectual labour than before. The conscientious accuracy which impels him
to state the fact when a book was read only superficially, “ça et la” serves to bring into greater
prominence the number of books of all kinds, and in many languages, which were read
thoroughly. He wrote in this year his novel of “St Leon,” on which he bestowed extreme pains, a
tragedy, and many Essays and Articles. “Caleb Williams” had proved so great a success that he had been much urged
to write a second novel, but he hesitated; he “despaired of finding again a topic
so rich of interest and passion.” At length, however, he thought that if he
could “mix human passions and feelings with incredible situations,” he
might conciliate even the severest judges. The situations of “St
Leon: a Tale of the Sixteenth Century,” are indeed sufficiently
incredible, since the hero, St Leon, has the secrets of
the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir Vitæ; and Godwin took as
his motto to the work a quotation from Congreve,
“Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a
type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.” The aim of the tale is to
show that boundless wrath, freedom from disease, weakness and death, are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection, and
“the charities of private life.” For more than four years he had
desired to modify what had been said under that head in “Political Justice,” while he reasserted his
conviction of the general truth of his system.
Though it had a considerable reputation, and went through many editions,
it never had the popularity of “Caleb
Williams;” its even greater improbability removed it still more from the
region of human sympathies. But the description of Marguerite, drawn from the character of Mary
Wollstonecraft, and of St Leon’s
married life with her, idealized from that which Godwin had himself enjoyed, are among the most beautiful passages in
English fiction, while the portrait of Charles,
St Leon’s son, stands alone. No such picture
has elsewhere been drawn of a perfectly noble, self-sacrificing boy.
It does not appear that the tragedy was ever published, nor is any trace
of it now to be discovered.
When his books were laid aside for the day, he entered into society, and
very few days indeed are now mentioned as spent at home. There is little mention of the
children, who, indeed, were a great and increasing embarrassment to him, but such allusions
as there are in the Diary and Letters, show great tenderness and affection. He took
Fanny out with him to the houses of his intimate
friends, and there are two or three entries of “Astley’s with Fanny.” While his chosen
friends and most constant companions remained the same as in former years, he was
attracting to himself many literary men—Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Lamb,—though the intimacy with these scarcely ripened till the following
year. Frequent visits also to Sheridan and other
political men show a great revival of the old political interests.
though the questions were not so burning nor were men’s minds so keenly exercised
about them, as had been the case a few years before.
But neither literary work, politics, nor society, welcome as Godwin was to all his friends, could make up for the want
of the home-life which he had so greatly enjoyed, even when from his dislike of constant
“co-habitation,” he had striven to minimize the time he gave to it. The
correspondence with Miss Lee has shown that he was
anxious to contract another marriage, and in this year it seemed possible, at least it
seemed so to him, that the way was open to such a marriage, in which his feelings no less
than his reason might be once more deeply engaged. Mrs
Shelley’s note will explain the circumstances.
“An event happened during this year which gave a new
turn to Mr Godwin’s feelings: this was the
death of Mr Reveley, which occurred suddenly from
the breaking of a blood-vessel on the brain, on the 6th of July 1799.
“His widow has often described to me her horror at this
event. He did not die at the moment of breaking the vessel; he became gradually stupefied,
and his senses, one by one—first his taste, then his sight—failed him. He was unaware of
his danger in the first instance, and as the thought that he was really dying flashed
across his wife’s mind, her terror became ungovernable. Mrs Fenwick, the ever kind, cordial, womanly friend, had called in the
morning, and finding Mr Reveley indisposed, remained
to assist in waiting on him. At this moment of horror she looked out of the window, and saw
Marshal passing up the street on horseback. She
called to him, and he was in an instant with the frightened women, ready to devote his
whole time to their assistance. A physician was called in, but it was a case past all
medical aid from the moment the vessel broke. He died in a few hours.
“From the chamber of death his widow rushed to a remote
and desolate room at the top of the house, in a state bordering on frenzy,—for a week she remained in the same place, in
the same state. She and her husband had at times disagreed, and believed themselves
unsuited to each other. But he was the husband of her early youth, the father of her adored
son, the friend and companion of nearly fifteen years. She was endowed with the keenest
sensibility, and her heart received a shock from which she could with difficulty recover.
“Mr Godwin
heard of Mr Reveley’s death at the house
where he dined on the same day.” [This is a mistake of Mrs Shelley’s, as it appears from the Diary that on
Saturday, July 6, Godwin did not dine out, and he went to the theatre
in the evening. But on the next day, Sunday, he dined with his
sister, Harriet Godwin, to meet Mr and Mrs Fenwick,
and there probably heard of what had occurred on the previous evening.] “He became
thoughtful and entirely silent—he already revolved the future in his mind. Maria Reveley had been a favourite pupil, a dear
friend, a woman whose beauty and manners he ardently admired. After his wife’s
death, his visits and attentions had excited Mr Reveley’s
jealousy, and they became to a great degree discontinued. His uprightness and candour
of character made him disdain the suspicion, but he withdrew, unwilling to be the cause
of domestic feud. It was, however, his plan to yield but little to form and etiquette,
and before Mr Reveley had been dead a month, he did not scruple to
ask to see his widowed friend, and to make her understand the feelings and prospects
with which her visits would be paid. She at first refused to see him, and several
letters passed between them.”
Mrs Reveley’s letters have not been preserved,
but copies of those which Godwin sent to her still
remain.
William Godwin to Mrs Reveley.
[July 1799].
“How my whole soul disdains and tramples upon these
cowardly ceremonies! Is woman always to be a slave? Is she so wretched an
animal that every breath can destroy her, and every
temptation, or more properly every possibility of an offence, is to be supposed
to subdue her?
“This ceremony is to be observed for
some time. What miserable, heartless words! What is some time? this phrase, upon which all feeling, all hope of anything
reasonable is left to writhe, and to guess, as it can, when its sufferings
shall have an end. You know in what light such ceremonies have been viewed by
all the liberal and wise, both of my sex and yours.
“If you mean any more than ceremony, say so. You are
free; with this stroke of my pen I sign your freedom. But think, what must be
my sensations, and my tranquillity, while you leave me in doubt whether this
freedom is or is not to be used against me.
“I am the furthest in this world from wishing to give
you a moment’s pain. You, with your entrenchment of ceremony, have forced
me, very, very contrary to my own inclination, to say thus much. I ask not a
word of answer from you. I have no wish that you should know what it is you are
doing, and what are the feelings which you are imposing, and are resolved, for
some time, to impose upon me.
“The conduct which propriety and a generous confidence
in the rectitude of our sentiments dictated to us both was too plain to be
mistaken; to see each other freely and honestly as friends; to lay down no
beggarly rules about married and unmarried men; and to say nothing, for some
time, but what was the strict and accurate result of friendship. If you had
that confidence in me which every sentiment of my heart proclaims to me I
deserve, you would have felt no want of these ceremonies.
“I use no form of superscription, because I know of
none that can at all represent the interest I take in your welfare.
“W. Godwin.
“I give this to Mrs
Fenwick to transmit to you, because whatever I think of your
rules, I will not without your consent break through them in any point in
which I can avoid it
“Do you think you can be more anxious about the
propriety and rectitude of your conduct than I am?
“You cannot be displeased with the above. I do not
pretend to prescribe to
you any article of your conduct. That I should take care to let you know
what my feelings are can never be imputed to me as a crime.”
The Same to the Same.
[August 1799.]
“I think you have the courage to excuse the plainness
with which I am going to speak. The game for which we play, the stake that may
eventually be lost is my happiness and perhaps your own.
“You have it in your power to give me new life, a new
interest in existence, to raise me from the grave in which my heart lies
buried. You are invited to form the sole happiness of one of the most known men
of the age, of one whose principles, whose temper, whose thoughts, you have
been long acquainted with, and will, I believe, confess their universal
constancy. This connection, I should think, would restore you to self-respect,
would give security to your future peace, and insure for you no mean degree of
respectability. What you propose to choose in opposition to this I hardly know
how to describe to you. You have said you cannot live without a passion; yet
you prefer a mere abstraction, the unknown ticket you may draw in the lottery
of men, to the attachment of a man of some virtues, a man whom you once, whom
you long believed you loved. Your temper is so gentle and yielding, in those
moments in which your heart is moved, that you indeed want a protector and an
amulet I cannot bear to think of what, but for the sake of warning you, I would
not suffer to remain a moment in my thoughts, the new difficulties,
embarrassments, and repentance in which this amiable softness of your character
will, too probably, involve you. I offer you a harbour, once your favourite
thought; you prefer to launch away into the tempestuous treacherous ocean. I
should not forgive myself in case of any new misfortune to you, if I had not
ventured to say thus much.
“How singularly perverse and painful is my fate. When
all obstacles interposed between us, when I had a wife, when you had a husband,
you said you loved me, for years loved me! Could you for
years be deceived? Now that calamity on the one hand, and no unpropitious
fortune on the other, have removed these obstacles, it seems your thoughts are
changed, you have entered into new thoughts and reasonings.” . . . [The
end of the letter is lost]
The Same to the Same.
[Sept. 1799.]
“I am surprised, and will you forgive me if I add,
pleased, at Mrs Fenwick’s
intelligence, that your objection to what you once desired is wholly grounded
upon your opinion of my understanding. I cannot persuade myself to regard this
as an invincible objection. If Mrs Fenwick has
misunderstood you, if your objection have any other basis beside this, I think
you owe it to me to correct my mistake.
“And so you would really demand in a partner an
understanding too little comprehensive to see into many things, and a heart,
for these are wholly or nearly inseparable, of too little sensibility to feel
many things? Surely to state such a requisition is sufficiently to display the
misapprehension on which it is founded. I should have thought experience would
have shown you how little is to be hoped from characters of this kind. Make one
generous experiment upon a man of a different sort. Can you fail to be aware
that the man of real powers will infallibly, at least when he loves, be
affectionate, attentive, familiar, and totally incapable of all questions of
competition or ideas of superiority; while the man of meaner or middling
understanding may almost always be expected to be jealous of rivalship,
obstinate, self-willed, and puffed up with the imaginary superiority he
ascribes to himself? Can you fail to be aware of the inferences which you ought
to draw from the respective characters of the two sexes? We are different in
our structure; we are perhaps still more different in our education. Woman
stands in need of the courage of man to defend her, of his constancy to inspire
her with firmness, and, at present at least, of his science and information to
furnish to her resources of amusement, and materials for studying. Women richly
repay us for all that we can bring into the common stock, by the softness of
their natures, the delicacy of their
sentiments, and that peculiar and instantaneous sensibility by which they are
qualified to guide our tastes and to correct our scepticism. For my part I am
incapable of conceiving how domestic happiness could be so well generated
without this disparity of character. I would not, if I could, marry a man in
female form, though that form were the form of a Venus.
“You say you are incapable of reasoning with me.
Believe me, there is no good to myself I would not cheerfully sacrifice, rather
than consciously be guilty of an atom of sophistry. Ask yourself whether any
word I have put down on this subject be not unquestionable truth, and I might
almost say put down dispassionately. This, as I have just said, is the
privilege of our sex, from superiority of education, to collect the materials
of decision: your sex, though feeling both exquisitely and admirably, are often
in danger of deciding from a partial view of the subject.
“But what I have just said was not the purpose for
which I sat down to write, though I could not prevail on myself to omit it. I
am willing to leave this question to time. There is no character I have so much
repugnance to act as that of a tormentor. The point I have principally to press
is one which, so far as I at present see, tends to decide whether you have a
heart or have no heart; I mean the point of the continuance of our
acquaintance.
“We have now lived on terms of the most cordial and
unreserved friendship for six years. For more than four of those six years I
suffered no thoughts respecting you, but those of single and unmixed
friendship, to find harbour in my heart. You showed, in a thousand instances,
that you valued my friendship, as I hope it deserved to be valued. On my part,
at a moment when what would have happened without my interference I regarded as
your ruin, I spared no exertion of my faculties or my industry, I defied
misrepresentation and obloquy in every shape they might assume, so I might
rescue you. Esteeming me probably more than you ever esteemed any other man,
you, with a resolution that does you the highest honour, preserved my
acquaintance, often in spite of Mr
Reveley, once in spite of myself. Again and again, when he was unwilling to receive my visits, by your perseverance
you conquered his inflexibility: at another time, when I was no longer willing
to pay them to him, you conquered me. If, the moment all these complicated
obstacles are removed, you of your own accord cease from all further
intercourse with me, what, I beseech you, would you have me think of you? You
always professed the highest regard for Mrs
Godwin; naturally it would be expected you should feel some
interest in her children and mine: are these motives all at once become nothing
to you?
“You cannot form so despicable an opinion of me as to
suppose that I can view you with no eyes but those of a lover. You saw the
contrary for years; and believe me, I know what I say; I can conquer myself
again and again, as often as the conquest shall be necessary. There is nothing
upon earth that I desire so ardently, so fervently, so much with every
sentiment and every pulse of my heart, as to call you mine. But dispose of that
point as you please, I am too vigorous and robust of soul ever to be made the
suicide of my body or the suicide of my mind. No objection to our intercourse
can therefore arise from that point.
“If you are all at once become so thoroughly the slave
of a miserable etiquette that you must not even risk the seeing me alone, you
may dine here with my sister; she comes to me every other Sunday through the
year: next Sunday is her day: or order me to invite Mrs Fenwick: when the heart is willing, such trifles are easily
adjusted.
“It is, however, more than probable that in all I have
said respecting our intercourse, I have been fighting a shadow. In one of your
first intimations to me since your widowhood, you said you could not see me, or
any unmarried man, for some time: that did not sound as
if our intercourse was to be closed for ever. I think, however, you pay too
little attention to my feelings. Two months of etiquette have now nearly
elapsed, and no elucidation of this some time has yet reached my ears. You
ought perhaps to have known that respecting persons in whom I feel myself
interested, uncertainty fills my soul with tumults, and tortures my fancy with
a thousand painful and monstrous images.”
Whatever answer Mrs Reveley
returned to this was probably accepted as conclusive, and Godwin no longer prosecuted a suit which was unwelcome, or strove to
anticipate the date at which it would be possible that those between whom so strange a
correspondence had passed should meet on the old terms of intimacy. They did not in fact
meet till December 3d, as it appears from the Diary, and then Mrs
Reveley was in the company of Mr
Gisborne, whom she afterwards married. And thus ended a curious wooing.
A considerable number of letters from Arnot to Godwin were written during
this year. He was in Dresden after his tour from Vienna, often in great poverty, during
which he had seriously thought of hiring himself out as a footman to obtain the very
necessaries of life. But his desire of writing his travels, and making, as he believed, a
very important book, was never laid aside, in spite of much discouragement from those who
encountered him, Tuthil,
Godwin’s friend, now residing at Dresden, among the number.
From Hamburg his journals were despatched to England, with the intention that they should
be simultaneously published in English, French, and German. There is, however, no trace of
such a work discoverable, his family strongly opposed the publication, and it is probable
that their objections prevailed. The letters written to Godwin are
less full than those presented already of his personal experiences of travel, because these
were recorded in the now missing journal, but some shrewd observations are worthy of
extraction as showing what subjects he knew would interest Godwin,
while they are moreover striking in themselves, because, though coming from a young man at
such a time, they breathe such an essentially modern spirit.
John Arnot to Godwin.
“Hamburg, Sunday, 4th August 1799.
“. . . Having first delineated the character of the
[Russian] people, I meant then to have pointed out to the English, and to every
civilised nation, how much they had to dread if ever such a people, or rather
if such machines should be put in motion against them as enemies, and to have
called their attention to the prodigious extent of the Russian Empire, and the
gradual encroachment of its Sovereign, first in Asia from south to north, and
now in Europe from north to south. After a due consideration of these facts, I
flattered myself that I might be able perhaps to persuade the English to
dissolve their present alliance with Russia. In this I now think I was too
sanguine, but it is not improbable that my representations might in time have
produced a good effect . . .
“Another project soon occurred, which would not have
been difficult to execute. I had not pored long over my books before I was
struck with the difference in the combination of the words in the German and in
the English languages; the one the language of imagination, yet minutely
accurate and metaphysical in its distinctions; the other the language of
reflection, simple and philosophical, for such do these languages appear to me
to be. When I shall have considered them better, it may be that I shall find
myself mistaken. As I proceeded with my reading, this difference of arrangement
became to me still more remarkable, and at length suggested the idea of
attempting an analysis of the German language, and a comparison of it with the
English. With the minutiæ of the grammar of both I had no concern; that would
have been more than I could have grasped; I meant only, from several well
chosen sentences in both languages, to select of each that sentence which
should seem to me most complete for my purpose, to analyse them both, tracing
the order of ideas, and placing them in various points of view, and then to
compare them together. The study of
philosophical grammar is generally supposed to be a very dry study. I had long
been of opinion that no study was dry if it were pursued in a proper manner; I
thought I had now an opportunity of making the experiment, and for two months I
continued collecting remarks and preparing materials, all of which were to me
agreeable and entertaining, and, as I hoped, would have proved so to
others.”
In the winter Arnot was again at
Vienna, where Godwin sent him money, and though the
amount is not stated, it was clearly no inconsiderable sum. It came when he was in great
poverty, in want of food, and with scanty clothing, one pupil, a Polish Count, to whom he
taught English, his only means of livelihood, but with still undaunted purpose of writing a
great book of travel, which should supersede all existing books on the subjects treated,
and come as a very revelation to his countrymen. What might be done by a determined walker
appears in the following extract:—
The Same to the Same.
“Vienna, 26th
Novr. 1799.
“. . . I left Hamburgh with a few shillings in my
pocket, but instead of taking the straight road to Vienna, or even to
Frankfort-on-the-Main, where I had addressed my portmanteau, I turned aside to
Bremen. I then went to Ferden, Hanover, Hildesheim, Gottingen, Cassel. From
Cassel I turned to the left to Mülhauser, and from thence to Gotha, Erfurt,
Weimar, Jena. At Weimar I saw Wieland
and Heider; I called also upon Göethe, but was not admitted. At Jena, where I
saw Tuthil, I staid a few days, and then
travelled over Coburg, Schweinfurt and Wurtzburg to Frankfurt; from Frankfurt I
returned to Wurtzburg, and went to Bamberg, Nurnberg, and Ratisbon. Ratisbon is
said to be about 270 or 280 English miles from Vienna, which, however, I might
have reached in four days by sailing down the Danube, at the expense of perhaps
six shillings, but instead of doing that I turned to the
north, and, travelling through the Upper Palatine, and crossing those mountains
of Bohemia covered with wood that go by the name of the Bohemian Forest, I
arrived towards the end of October at Prague. Here I wished to have staid for a
short time, but being in great want, I was obliged to depart in three or four
days for Vienna.
“The weather during the summer was as extraordinary as
during the winter. The long continuance of the rain was equally astonishing,
vexatious, and ruinous. Having no change of clothes, and being amongst a most
unfeeling and inhospitable people, and frequently without a penny, you may
conceive that I endured many hardships, and that my health was not thereby
improved. Yet whatever effect this may have had upon me at the time, it has
upon the whole acted differently upon me from what might naturally have been
expected,—instead of disheartening me it has increased my ardour, and rendered
me doubly sanguine in my hopes of favourable weather for my travels through
Hungary. Having endured so much, I wish to have now some compensation. . . .
“Perhaps I shall pay a visit to the Black Sea. But I
don’t know if this would be advisable, and I confess I am not fond of
venturing into the Turkish dominions.—I am, with much esteem, &c.,
John Arnot.”
On the receipt of Arnot’s
MSS. towards the end of this year, Godwin lent them
to Arnot’s brother, from whom remains an angry letter in regard
to them, protesting against their publication. According to this gentleman, “the
ingenuity and knowledge which he may have evinced is prostituted in the support of
sentiments which are visionary, and subversive of all social order, and yet (thank God)
totally irreducible to practice.” He requires Godwin
“in the most particular manner not to publish these MSS.,” or if it
be not in his power to withhold them from the press, he desires that the publication may be
an anonymous one.
Of Godwin’s friends on the
Continent, Arnot had met not only Tuthil, but
Holcroft also, who was residing for a
considerable part of this year at Hamburgh. His reasons and plans appear in the
correspondence, where also appears a renewal of the squabbles which had from time to time
interrupted the usual cordiality between the friends, but with this difference that the
“little rift” which now was made was never again completely closed, as it had
been on former occasions.
“We have been in this place eight days, and, had I
time, the description of what I have already seen would be certainly more than
sufficient to fill eight pages. But it is not my present intention to say
anything on this subject, except to remark that though there may be few
essential differences in the morals, or great outlines of behaviour in two
nations, yet the numberless little particulars produce so striking an effect
upon the eye and imagination, and we are so apt to wonder and laugh at what we
are not accustomed to, that for some few days young and unpracticed persons
might imagine themselves suddenly transported to another, and, certainly not in
their opinion, to a better world.
“I received your second volume, and made enquiries immediately
after my arrival, but have not yet met with any person who could give me
sufficient information relative to the translating and publishing it in the
German language. I think it right to tell you that Louisa and Fanny have
read the two volumes, and are both of opinion that Leon is a second Falkland,
but much his inferior. I was present when Louisa several
times laid down the book to exclaim against his feeble and absurd conduct, to
which I made no reply whatever. But it was a consolation to me to find they
were both delighted with Marguerite. They
think, however, there is by no means the same degree of interest created as
that which they felt in reading ‘Caleb Williams.’ I inform you of this
because you have always wished to enquire into the
feelings of your readers, and because I consider such experiments as
beneficial.
“I was somewhat moved, and rather surprized at the
note included in the parcel. You reproach me for not having consulted you on my
travelling plan, which you say you have always disapproved and loathed. I have
been frequently amazed at your forgetfulness, but never more than in the
present instance. It is full two years, I believe indeed much more, since I
first conceived the project. I spoke of it frequently, and I dare affirm
oftener to you than to any other person. I cannot recollect whether you then
made any objections, but had they been very serious and pointed they would
surely have been attended to, and not forgotten. My reasons, however, I think
you have already heard, and when again brought to your recollection will
scarcely be thought feeble. I had a house and establishment, which, my family
being dispersed, were a heavy and unnecessary expense; my debts were great, and
several of them of so long standing that I remembered them with a poignant
anxiety, neither were my creditors, however they might forbear to dun me,
entirely satisfied. These debts could only be discharged by the sale of my
effects, and the breaking up of what was become in my opinion an immoral
establishment, to support which I subjected myself to unnecessary labours,
turmoils, and obligations. Persecuted at the Theatre as I continually have been
from the appearance of ‘Love’s Frailties’, whenever a piece was known to be
mine, what could I do better than disappear from the scene, and no longer
excite malice or anger, call it which you will, that I could not appease? This
was my train of thoughts, this train of thinking you have often witnessed, and
in it, in my apprehension, you have acquiesced. That I was the first to
recommend, both in language and practice, an unreserved communication, I well
remember, and though certainly it has not existed between us of late in the
same high and unspeakably gratifying degree it once did, its decline as far as
I am a judge did not begin with me. This decline had I think two marked and
decisive periods. The first was that which immediately preceded your marriage,
and the second the lament-able
event by which it was terminated. The anguish of heart I felt, first from the
event itself, and afterwards from circumstances which I cannot endure to
repeat, was such as never can be forgotten. You will not, I am sure, wound me
by saying I do want or ever have wanted, since I have known your worth,
confidence in you. Question me on any possible subject, any act or thought of
my life, and I will answer you with the openness due to the honesty of your
intentions, and the sincerity exacted by truth. No one, however, better
understands than you do how impossible it is to be totally unreserved on one
side, where there is a conviction of reserve being practised on the other. Of
this you have given a fine picture between your St.
Leon and Marguerite. That I
shall never cease to have an unequivocal and active friendship for you I am
certain, and what I have said has been accidentally drawn from me. . . .
T. Holcroft.”
William Godwin to Thomas Holcroft.
“Polygon, Somers Town, near London, September 13th, 1799.
“DearHolcroft.—I know I
have been guilty of what the world calls a crime, in suffering your letter to
be so long by me unanswered. But for this you were prepared: you knew there
were few offices I loathed more than that of sitting down to write, without
having my mind previously filled with some subject on which to discourse. I
come to the employment with the utmost repugnance; and I hate myself, and for
the moment half hate my correspondent, all the time I am engaged in it. I
believe this is a defect; but there are some propensities in the mind, whether
taking their date from before or after the period of birth, that to say the
least, almost surpass all human force to conquer. Supply me with a subject, and
I will discourse upon it most eloquently; believe that scarcely a day passes
without your being in my mind, but do not expect me to amend.
“What could I have said? ‘I bear you in the
highest regard; I think of you continually; I felt the loss of you an
irreparable one.’ This and no more,
however honest and cordial, discovering itself in the folds of a letter, would
have looked dry and repulsive. It would have been still worse, if I had made
you pay postage for it a second time. I did not like to enter on the point
which makes the principal topic of your letter. If I had I could have shewn,
demonstratively to my apprehension, that the breach of confidence and reserve
came first on your part. This I might perhaps never have known, but for
Mrs Inchbald. I afterwards
discovered it in other instances. This was the true St
Leon and Marguerite point
between us; you date it too low.
“I should have been much mortified if my friend
Arnot had taken your advice and
returned to England. It would have snapped the series, and broken the goodly
harmony of his undertaking. I always thought, and his manuscript confirms me in
the opinion, that he was happily formed for a traveller, and I have never been
able to repent that I encouraged his purpose. There is nothing relative to the
publication of his remarks that may not be managed full as well in his absence;
wherever he was, he must have subsisted in the meantime, and subsistence, as I
take it, is as cheap on the continent as here.
“I am glad that you treated him kindly; I can perceive
that it had a good effect on him. In some things indeed you failed; in your
marginal annotations you were too rude and harsh, especially to a stranger. In
one place you say ‘This is the knave’s morality.’ This
he took considerably in dudgeon; you had not been long enough acquainted with
him to be able to form a regard for the author, distinct from his work.
Mrs Cole, he says, treated him with
the most supercilious neglect; in that case I am more sorry for her than for
him. Observe, neither of these things were mentioned in his letter to me, but
are merely noted in his private journal put down every night, which he has sent
me. I know that according to the maxims of the world, I am guilty of a breach
of decorum in mentioning them to you. But I think one of the crying sins of
society is that we do not sufficiently explain our feelings to one another, and
I am willing to make this solitary experiment whether it will not do more good
than harm.
“No alteration, so far as I have observed, has taken
place in the politics or tone of this island, since you left it. If there had,
I should be almost afraid to state it. Parliament is to meet on the 24th
instant, a period uncommonly early.
“Nicholson,
Col. Barry, and Opie (your friend, no friend of mine) are well.
I have seen the two latter once, the former several times, since your absence.
I am unable to say whether his school will succeed; it goes on, like its
master, at a slow and German-sort of a pace, but he appears sanguine. . . .
“You say nothing in this new communication by means of
Arnot respecting my novel. I could
send you another volume: there will be four.
“You are so anxious with your machine to get a legible
copy of your letter, that you make a very devil of the original, and one has
scarcely courage to attempt to decipher it. You water it too copiously.
“The above letter is to Mr
Holcroft; but as he may not be at Hamburgh, and I would not
willingly lose a moment in transmitting the enclosed £20 to Mr Arnot, I have addressed it so that
Mr Cole may open it, who, I am happy
to hear by Mr A., is well. Advise me of the receipt.
W. Godwin.”
The letter is addressed, “Mr
Cole, 100 Catherinen Strasse, Hamburgh.”
“. . . Do not imagine you have been long out of my
thoughts. Your novel, your
tragedy, your
well-being and happiness in every sense, are the frequent and serious subjects
of recollection. Having made four at least fruitless attempts in Hamburg to
make the first productive of some small gain to you, I hoped to have been more
successful at Berlin, where I am told the booksellers are more liberal and
enterprising. Two men of considerable literary merit here have read it, and,
after considerable praise of the style, have pronounced it cold and
uninteresting: at least they plead, when I endeavour to
controvert them, as far as they are judges of the taste of readers in Germany.
I have not read it since I left England, but the impression it then made cannot
have been so entirely false as for their decision to be entirely true, though I
never felt satisfied with your choice of a subject. In your last I learned with
pleasure you have extended it to four volumes, for I suppose you would not have
done this, had you not found incidents and passion grow upon you, and where
these are, success must be.
“For your Tragedy I am still more, I may say, irritably anxious. I saw it
only in its half-finished state. Give me the history of its theatrical
progress. When is it to be performed? What are your feelings? Do you remain
thoroughly concealed? Are you yet thoroughly under the scourge of Managerial
tyranny? I am very desirous to hear this, and anything else you can tell me on
the subject.
“. . . Let me know if Opie has received my pictures, what you think of them, and what
he and others say. In my opinion, the ‘Guide’ is a masterpiece, though it will not appear so,
perhaps, till it has been deeply considered. . . . Care has been taken of young
Arnot.
T. Holcroft.”
The expressions about the pictures refer to a scheme of Holcroft’s of buying art treasures at a cheap rate
abroad, and sending them home for sale. It is scarcely necessary to say that he was about
as successful as amateur buyers usually are when in competition with professional dealers.
The Same to the Same.
“Hamburg, December 13th, 1799.
“. . . My second motive for writing relates to
yourself. I became acquainted here with a man of letters who wished to
translate your novel, but
who could not find a bookseller that approved the undertaking. This gentleman,
whose name is Bulow, is now at Berlin, and I have received
a letter from him to-day, to inform me that a publisher of that city, named
Unger, will give ten guineas if I will send him the
sheets I have, and the remainder as soon as possible. The novel being now
published, I made no difficulty of answering by to-day’s post that I
would accept the terms; and I hope I have acted as you would have advised.
Bulow himself is a man of indifferent character; I
therefore wrote that the copy should be delivered on payment of the money, of
which, the moment it is received, you shall have notice, and either a draft on
London, or payment by some other means. Do not, therefore, neglect to send me
the remaining sheets, with a copy inclosed for myself.
“Being at this distance, my heart revolts at
concluding without signing myself—Ever and ever affectionately yours,
“T.
Holcroft.”
The following extract, which ends for the year the correspondence between
the friends, is interesting for the mention of an almost forgotten book and its translator,
but which once produced a profound sensation. It is curious, too, as showing the extreme
difficulty of holding any communication between England and France:—
William Godwin to Thomas Holcroft.
“December 31, 1799.
“. . . Mr
Marshal desires me to add that he has conceived the intention of
writing to Volney, who is now at Paris,
and printing, as we understand, his travels in America, to request him, upon
the strength of having been the translator of his ‘Ruins of Empires’—a translation which
has been very successful and much praised here—to send him, if he felt no
impropriety in it, the sheets of his present work before publication. But our
laws relative to corresponding with an enemy are so complicated and severe,
that Mr Marshal, upon trial, has found it impracticable to
send his letter. He thinks it not impracticable that, through Pougens, you might effect his object for him.
He observes that the reputation of Volney as a traveller
has been so puffed by Gibbon and others, and is consequently
so unprecedentedly high, that, if he could obtain the work in time, he would
think of publishing the translation on his own account.”
Godwin was still extremely anxious to make up his
quarrel with Mrs Inchbald. He sent her a copy of his
novel, “St Leon,” with a
letter requesting a renewal of the old friendly intercourse. After giving her reasons for
delay in reading it, the seeing a new play through the press, and other engagements, and
after a promise to give her sincere opinion on his work, she continues—
“. . In respect to the other subject, you judged
perfectly right that I could not have expressed any resentment against you, for
I have long ago felt none. I also assure you that it will always give me great
pleasure to meet you in company with others, but to receive satisfaction in
your society as a familiar visitor at my own house I never can.
“Impressions made on me are lasting. Your
conversation and manners were once agreeable to me, and will ever be so. But
while I retain the memory of all your good qualities, I trust you will allow me
not to forget your bad ones; but warily to guard against those painful and
humiliating effects, which the event of my singular circumstances might once
again produce.—Your admirer and friend,
E. Inchbald.”
Three weeks later she sent an elaborate and very clever critique on
“St Leon,” written with
some bitterness, but it dwells too much on details to be interesting to the general reader,
who has not the work in his mind.
That Godwin, in spite of his own difficulties, had
sent £20 to Arnot has been already recorded in his
own letter. There are other indications of
large and self-denying charity, extending to most distant and unexpected quarters. One such
is a letter from Mrs Agnes Hall, of Jedburgh, acknowledging the
receipt of £10 for some poor lady whose name is not mentioned, in which Mrs
Hall says that, “though grief like my friend’s can admit of
no remedy, yet your judicious bounty was a means, by enabling her to procure the
necessary comforts to her dying children, of preventing that grief from becoming
absolute despair.”
The name of James Ballantyne, the
Edinburgh printer, needs no note. The Dr Bell whom he
introduces to Godwin was probably Dr James
Bell of Edinburgh, who died in Jamaica in 1801, and is still remembered by
his writings on professional subjects.
James Ballantyne to William Godwin.
“Kelso, Nov.
14, 1799.
“Sir,—About three years
ago there dined in your company at Mr
Holcroft’s, introduced by the late Mr
Armstrong, a young man from Scotland, on whose mind your wisdom
and benevolent condescension have left impressions of affection and gratitude,
which no time will efface. The writer of this letter is the person so
delightfully distinguished: but as he is sensible that an interview which
constituted so prominent a period of his life may long ere this have melted
into the common mass of uninteresting events which consume your time without
attracting your attention, he begs leave to mention a circumstance which may
recall him to your memory. He promised to send up to London a distinguished
portrait, which promise remains to this day unfulfilled. He was not to blame
that on enquiry he found every impression of that portrait was sold off; but he
severely condemns the mingled indolence and timidity which prevented him from
stating that circumstance to account for apparent neglect
“The customs which fetter man in his intercourse with
his fellows do not justify this tardy intrusion on your leisure; but these
customs Mr Godwin will disregard when
they interfere with his power of communicating instruction and extending
happiness. The gentleman who will deliver this letter is Doctor Bell, an amiable and accomplished
physician, whose mind since his earliest perusal of your writings, has been
filled with the most exalted respect for your talents, and affection for your
heart.
“The Jamaica fleet which sails in a few days, conveys
him from his country, perhaps for ever. His situation will be one of high
influence and authority, and I know he will exert his power to lighten the woes
and diminish the horrors of slavery. Once only will he be able to avail himself
of this introduction, but to see and converse, for however short a time, with
Mr Godwin, will prove a source of
pleasure, both in enjoyment and reflection, which he cannot leave his native
soil without endeavouring to attain. It is no common motive which would incline
me to trespass thus on your leisure.
“I beg to be considered, my dear sir, with the utmost
respect and affection, your obliged friend,
“James
Ballantyne.”
“One line from you to say
you forgive what the world would term my presumption would give me supreme
pleasure. I confess I would rather be assured of this by yourself, than by
the report of my friend.”
A few lines from the good old lady at West Dalling contain the only
domestic facts worth recording.
Mrs Godwin sen. to William Godwin.
[Wood Dalling], “Sep. 21st, ’99.
“DearWm.—I hope yo
recd. a letter from me dated 5 July by ye hand of
yr.sister. I wish you happy. If you be not
I shall have ye sattisfaction in my own mind that I
have tryed to make yo so.
“Terms are agreed upon to sell Dalling Estate to
yr. brother Hull, that he may not be thrown out of business when I die with
his young family which he must mortgage. What will be yr. shares I don’t know yet the notes each have given will be
considered as past and disstroyed. Is all I can say at present. I have wrote a
few lines to John yo may show yours to him if yo please. Have
not wrote to Jo. or Hanh. because ye
affair is not finish’d.
“Yr. affec.
Mother, “A.
Godwin.”
“I’m sorry to put yo to this expense, however its not necessary yo shoud write till yo hear from me again.”
“My dearWm—Since the
above I’ve recieved yr. very kind letter of
ye 16 Sep. The little dear boy
Johny’s arm was not out, and was quite well
in a day or two. Your bro. Nath came
home ye 7 of July, very poorly indeed, went to
Norwich next day for advice of Dr.
Alderson, whose prescription with the blessing of God was of
service. He returned in 3 weeks to his place again, repeated the physick
several times, is better, but fear he will never get clear of his laxating
dissorder, but like John wishes to
be in buissness for himself but fear he will not be a good ecconomist,
especially without a good wife, and they are as hard to be met with as
farms. However its the last I can do for him in my life time. Your share
and John’s will fall short of a Hundred,
Natt’s and Hull’s a little more, Hanh’s. least of all,
because she have had most. I purpose clearing of that I gave to
Wright, on Jo’s account
I should have said, and White the former is dead a
year or two agoe insolvent, the latter broke lately. I’m not sure I
shall not send this in a parcel to Hanh. If I do I
shall write a few lines to her. I do put much trust in your advice and
management for John and your sister, who has always
told me you was a father to her.’
CHAPTER XIII. VISIT TO IRELAND—LITERARY SQUABBLES. 1800.
Godwin’s
acquaintance with Coleridge rapidly increased, and
had now developed into a most cordial and confidential friendship. It will be remembered
that Coleridge was the fourth and last of those persons whom
Godwin names as having made on him a profound intellectual
impression. The change of thought and view which he attributed to
Coleridge coincided, however, with that which was brought about
also by other causes. He had recommenced the habit, now for some time laid aside, of
placing on paper the results of his constant self-introspection. He examined the state of
his belief, and the causes of his mental change, and then are recorded, truly enough as it
would seem, other influences contemporaneous with that of Coleridge.
The extract which immediately follows was written indeed some years later, though it
chronicles the reading which mainly occupied him about this time.
“A great epocha, or division in my life, which may
as well deserve to be recorded as almost any other event, is that at which I began to
read the old English authors. This was in 1799-1800, when I had completed my
forty-third year.
“During the term of my college life, from 1773 to
1778, I endeavoured to take a survey of the world of knowledge, and to select the
branches to which in preference I should devote my attention, I was deeply impressed with the maxim
that art is long, and life is short. My
judgment dictated to me that it would be best to read few things but to read them well.
In fact life is to a young man entering on the era of manhood, a term of ten or twenty
years; to look further than that with any certainty, and as to a period in which given
things are to be done, seems deviating into the visionary and romantic.
“I resolved to read the classics; but I purposed to
confine myself to a few of the greater classics, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus,
among the Romans, and Homer, Sophocles, Xenophon,
Herodotus and Thucydides among the Greeks. I considered this list as admitting of
enlargement, but such was the general outline.
“It is surprising how much men are guided in their
whole plan of life by a few external circumstances—the creatures of accident. I was
brought up to a profession, that of a preacher among the dissenters. This I was very
likely to exercise, at least at first, in a rural situation. My pecuniary means were
much confined; my income was likely to be small; I should have few books. On this
account I was well pleased with this plan of classical reading, in which, as my
education in this branch of knowledge had been a very imperfect one, one author might
last me for six months.
“The same principle that guided me in the field of
classical reading, was of still more obvious and necessary application in the
literature of my own country. Contemplating the immense library that might be filled
with our vernacular authors, I resolved that my reading should be select; and one of
the first rules I was induced to adopt was, that I would, for the most part, confine my
reading to our modern authors. History was a study to which I felt a particular
vocation; and I should say now what I thought then, that the modern writers of history
in English are eminently superior to their predecessors. Their narrative is more free
and unincumbered; they have more taste; their views are more extensive; they
philosophise better on the principles of evidence and the progress and vicissitudes of
human society. One of the first trials of comparison I was prompted to make, was
between Hume and the English translation of Rapin; and,
to be sure, there can scarcely be a comparison in which all the advantage is more
clearly on one side. I believe I should hardly have found the superiority of the
moderns to the ancients so decisive in any other department as in this of history. The
result of my feelings and habits in this kind is strikingly exhibited in the Essay on English Style, at the close of the ‘Enquirer,’ written when I was
forty.
“A rule of study which I adopted at College, and
adhered to with exceptions and interruptions for many years, was to divide my day into
several parts, adapting a particular species of study to each part. Thus there was not
a day passed in which I did not read a portion, first of the Greek, and then of the
Roman classics, another part of the day was appropriated to metaphysics, theology, and
books of reasoning, a third to history, and so forward. This habit was very beneficial
in giving system to my mind and clearness to my reasonings.
“It was not till 1799 that I broke in upon my rule
of confining my English reading principally to the moderns. The only considerable
exception to this rule was Shakespeare. That was
an exception hardly to be avoided by a native of this island. At the period I have
mentioned, and often before, my thoughts were turned to the Drama, and I had designed,
if my talents had been found sufficient for the undertaking, to look to it as one of my
sources of subsistence. About this time I got possession of a copy of Beaumont and Fletcher; and looking into them at first with reference to the object I
had in view, I found in them a source of sentiment and delight of which I had not
before had the smallest conception. This opened upon me a new field of improvement and
pleasure, and engaged me in a course of reading which, from that hour [to 1813], I have
never deserted.
“I soon felt that I had gained an uncommon advantage
from this discovery made at this time. While I was at College, I had thought that art is long and life is short. In the
course of years that had elapsed since, I had sometimes felt inclined to alter my mind:
in other words, I had felt that the scheme of reading I had prescribed to myself was
rather too narrow. I remember, when I was a very little boy, saying to myself,
‘What shall I do, when I have read through all the books that there are in
the world?’ and my sensation in this limited application of the question
was now somewhat similar. I had gradually a little enlarged my plan in the matter of
classical reading.
“But on the present occasion a new world was opened
to me. It was as if a mighty river had changed its course to water the garden of my
mind. I was like a person who, for many years, had subsisted on a slender annuity, and
had now an immense magazine of wealth bequeathed to him. I looked over the inventory of
my fortune, and felt that these treasures would never be exhausted. This illustration
does not come up to the idea I felt, that everything enumerated in this inventory was
new, and that I was, therefore, suddenly put in possession of a museum of untried
delights. What a blessing for a man at forty-three years of age, a period at which we
are threatened with the blunting of some of the senses from the monotonous repetition
of their gratifications, to enter into the lease of a new life, where everything would
be fresh, and everything would be young!”
Such were his recollections of this time some thirteen years later, but
they have about them a ring of truth, which shows they were as genuine as unforgotten. Here
is also another note, undated, but probably somewhat earlier than the last, which records
the change in his religious creed.
“In my thirty-first year I became acquainted with
Mr Thomas Holcroft, and it was probably in
consequence of our mutual conversations that I became two years after an unbeliever,
and in my thirty-sixth year an atheist.
“In my forty-fourth year I ceased to regard the
name of Atheist with the same complacency I had done for several preceding years, at
the same time retaining the utmost repugnance of understanding for the idea of an
intelligent Creator and Governor of the universe, which strikes my mind as the most
irrational and ridiculous anthropomorphism. My theism, if such I may be permitted to call it, consists in a reverent and soothing
contemplation of all that is beautiful, grand, or mysterious in the system of the
universe, and in a certain conscious intercourse and correspondence with the principles
of these attributes, without attempting the idle task of developing and defining
it—into this train of thinking I was first led by the conversations of S. T. Coleridge.”
A fragment of an analysis of his own character, not merely looking back
upon, but actually written about this time, will serve to give other indications of what
Godwin now was, subject, however, to the
unavoidable drawback, that no man, however desirous of truth, is a fair judge of himself.
“Why does a man feel any degree of eagerness to
expose his character to the world? For the most part it is a disclosure made to
enemies, who will study it for purposes of degradation, and to find, if the writer
acquired any degree of applause, that it was impossible he should have owed it to his
merit. Such a disclosure is, however, of high value; it adds to the science of the
human mind, and, by the operation of comparison, enables each reader to make an
estimate of himself.
“A timorous advocate, both of men and opinions, on
individual occasions—afraid to advance opinions lest I should be unable to support
them—always beginning with a kind of skirmishing war. This owing to frequent
miscarriage, and experience of my own inaccuracy.
“Too sceptical, too rational, to be uniformly
zealous. Nervous of frame, mutable of opinion, yet in some things courageous and
inflexible.
“So fond of disinterestedness and generosity that
everything in which these are not has always been insipid to me—inextinguishably loving
admiration and fame, yet scarcely in any case envious. Habitually disposed to do
justice to the merits of others; never depreciating an excellence I felt, and eager for
the discovery of excellence, yet in some cases too languid an assertor of it—ever
addicted to reflection and reasoning, frequently to ardour.
“I am extremely modest. What is modesty? First, I
am tormented about the opinions others may entertain of me; fearful of intruding
myself, and of cooperating to my own humiliation. For this reason I have been, in a
certain sense, unfortunate through life, making few acquaintances, losing them
in limine, and by my fear producing
the thing I fear. I am bold and adventurous in opinions, not in life; it is impossible
that a man with my diffidence and embarrassment should be. This, and perhaps only this,
renders me often cold, uninviting, and unconciliating in society. Past doubt, if I were
less solicitous for the kindness of others, I should have oftener obtained it.
“I am anxious to avoid giving pain, yet, when I
have undesignedly given it, I am sometimes drawn on, from the painful sensation that
the having done what we did not intend occasions, to give more.
“My nervous character—to give it a name, if not
accurate, well understood—often deprives me of self-possession, when I would repel
injury or correct what I disapprove. Experience of this renders me, in the first case,
a frightened fool, and in the last, a passionate ass; in both my heart palpitates and
my fibres tremble; the spring of mental action is suspended; I cannot deliberate or
take new ground; and all my sensations are pain and aversion—aversion to the party,
impatience with myself. This refers merely to active scenes, not to colloquial
disquisition; in the latter my temper is one of the soundest and most commendable I
ever knew.
“Perhaps one of the sources of my love of
admiration and fame has been my timidity and embarrassment. I am unfit to be alone in a
crowd, in a circle of strangers, in an inn, almost in a shop. I hate universally to
speak to the man that is not previously desirous to hear me. I carry feelers before me,
and am often hindered from giving an opinion, by the man who spoke before giving one
wholly adverse to mine.
“I am subject to sensations of fainting,
particularly at the sight of wounds, bodily infliction, and pain: perhaps this may have
some connection with my intellectual character.
“I am feeble of tact, and occasionally liable to
the grossest mistakes respecting theory, taste, and character; the latter experience
corrects the former consideration; but this defect has made me too liable to have my
judgment modified by the judgment of others; not instantaneously perhaps, but by
successive impulses. I am extremely irresolute in matters apparently trivial, which
occasionally leads to inactivity, or subjects me to the being guided by others.
“I have a singular want of foresight on some
occasions as to the effect what I shall say will have on the person to whom it is
addressed. I therefore often appear rude, though no man can be freer from rudeness of
intention, and often get a character for harshness that my heart disowns.
“I can scarcely ever begin a conversation where I
have no preconceived subject to talk of; in these cases I have recourse to topics the
most trite and barren, and my memory often refuses to furnish even these. I have met a
man in the street who was liable to the same infirmity; we have stood looking at each
other for the space of a minute, each listening for what the other would say, and have
parted without either uttering a word.
“There are many persons that have gone out of life
without enjoying it—that is not my case. I have enjoyed most of the pleasures it
affords. I know that at death there is an end of all, but I have not lived in vain for
myself; I hope not for others.
“There is an evenness of temper in me that greatly
contributes to my cheerfulness and happiness; whatever sources of pleasure I encounter,
I bring a great part of the entertainment along with me; I spread upon them the hue of
my own mind, and am satisfied. Yet I am subject to long fits of dissatisfaction and
discouragement; this also seems to be constitutional. At all times agreeable company
has an omnipotent effect upon me, and raises me from the worst tone of mind to the
best.
“No domestic connection is fit for me but that of a
person who should habitually study my gratification and happiness; in that case I
should certainly not yield the palm of affectionate attentions to my companion. In the
only intimate connection of that kind I
ever had, the partner of my life was too quick in conceiving resentments; but they were
dignified and restrained; they left no hateful and humiliating remembrances behind
them, and we were as happy as is permitted to human beings. It must be remembered,
however, that I honoured her intellectual powers, and the nobleness and generosity of
her propensities; mere tenderness would not have been adequate to produce the happiness
we experienced.
“If it is curious to observe those propensities of
the mind which appear so early that philosophers dispute whether they date their origin
from before or after the period of birth, it is no less curious to remark how much is
indisputably to be attributed to the empire of circumstances. I had an early passion
for literary distinction, but an extreme uncertainty as to the species of literature by
which it was to be attained. Poetry may be said to have been my first, my boyish
passion. Afterwards, abandoning poetry, I hesitated between history and moral
philosophy, dreading that I had not enough of elaborate exactness for the former, or of
original conception for the latter. My first attempt, in 1782, a very wretched attempt,
was history. To this I was immediately, and at the time reluctantly, spurred by the
want of money. In 1790 I wrote a tragedy on the story of St
Dunstan, which has since been laid aside. In 1791 I planned and begun my
‘Political
Justice.’ In 1793 I commenced my ‘Caleb Williams,’ with no further design than
that of a slight composition, to produce a small supply of money, but never to be
acknowledged: it improved and acquired weight in the manufacture. To the choice of each
of these kinds of composition I was more or less determined by mercantile
considerations. If I had been perfectly at my ease in this respect, I cannot tell when
I should have gravely attempted original composition, and in what species of
literature.
“My mind, though fraught with sensibility, and
occasionally ardent and enthusiastic, is perhaps in its genuine habits too tranquil and
unimpassioned for successful composition, and stands greatly in need of stimulus and
excitement. I am deeply indebted in this point to Holcroft.”
These observations are but fragmentary, and the remainder is lost. In
some points Godwin’s knowledge of self is
remarkable; in others it may be doubted whether his extreme minuteness of detail did not
lead him astray in regard to the whole truth of his picture.
The Diary for this year throws some light on a portion of the above. His
tendency to faintness seems to have increased about this time to a somewhat alarming
extent, and there are frequent notices of “deliquium” as having taken place
when he was in society as well as when alone. In the early part of the year Coleridge was in London, and the intercourse between the
two friends was constant, while during the rest of the time it was maintained by very
frequent letters. With Lamb also Godwin became now intimate; and there are many notes of
suppers at Lamb’s and at the Polygon, where are also to be found
the names of all that circle of friends known to the readers of “Lamb’s Life and Letters.” There was indeed scarcely a name of any
literary, artistic, or theatrical eminence, that does not appear in these brief notes as
among Godwin’s circle.
In May 1800 Mrs Reveley married
Mr Gisborne. The engagement was kept a profound
secret from all but the family of the gentleman, and from Mr and Mrs Fenwick, old friends both
of Mrs Reveley and of the Godwins. It was not
only a severe blow to Godwin, who had never abandoned the hope that he
might overcome the lady’s objections to a marriage with him, but he was greatly
wounded at having been kept in the dark. What he felt, however, can only be gathered, not
from any words of his own, but from Mr Fenwick’s manly and
sensible letters to him, excusing himself from any unfriendliness in having kept a secret
which Mrs Reveley had
a right to require him to keep. Friendly relations were afterwards renewed, but
Godwin was not sorry to make a longer tour than usual during this
year—to accept Curran’s invitation to Ireland,
in the hope of driving from his thoughts a sentiment which was probably much deeper than
any he had ever felt, except his love for Mary
Wollstonecraft.
In July he went to Ireland, after repeated invitations, of which the
following is a sample:—
J. P. Curran to William Godwin.
“Dublin, June 8th, 1800.
“. . . I have yet two months to remain here. I am too
much of a slave to have as much of your company as I would wish, but I will
treat you with perfect candour, and promise you that I will act as your host as
I would as your guest. I have an house in town and a cottage in the country
within three miles of it; a spare bed in each, books in each, and a bottle of
wine in each, and in each you will find the most absolute power of doing what
you please as to idling, working, walking, eating, sleeping, &c. There are
many here that know you in print, and are much pleased with the hope I have
given them of knowing you in person. One of them, Lady
Mountcashel, who is now settled in Dublin for the summer, speaks
of you with peculiar regard, mixed with a tender and regretful retrospect to
past times and to past events with which you have yourself been connected.
“Let me add, this is the pleasantest time of the year.
The journey is but little: a sit down in a mail-coach and a ferry brings a
philosopher, six shirts, his genius and his hat upon it, from London to Dublin,
et vice versa, in fifty-four hours. I think, too,
you would feel a curiosity to see a nation in its last moments. You would think
that slavery is no such fearful thing as you have supposed in theory. I assure
you our trees and our fields are as green as ever. Thus have I stated the pro
and con with as much fairness as can be expected from a person so much
interested in your decision. If, therefore, it does not
interfere with some material object or engagement, in the name of God, even
trust yourself to the hospitality of these Irish barbarians, with whom your
nation is about to communicate her freedom and her wealth. One word or two more
on this subject, which, as an old traveller, I may speak with some authority.
There are only two things that make a journey a grievance, preparation and
luggage. During the former, a man travels it over a thousand times, instead of
once; and travelling in idea is a thousand times more tiresome than travelling
in fact. Say to me, then, by a line, that I may put your sheets to the fire. If
you land here in the night, you will find your bed ready at No. 12 Ely Place at
any hour. . . .
“Will you give my very kind respects to Mrs Inchbald, if you should see her?—Yours
truly,
John P. Curran.”
He also visited Skeys and
Lady Mountcashel, by both of whom he was cordially
welcomed; and at the house of the first he again met the sisters of his wife, Everina Wollstonecraft and Mrs
Bishop, on amicable if not wholly cordial terms. He did not, however, go
beyond the immediate neighbourhood of Dublin, and was absent from London less than six
weeks, the last week or ten days having been spent in a homeward tour in North Wales.
His own record of the tour is contained in letters to Marshal, which follow without break, as they all relate to
the same subject.
William Godwin to J. Marshal.
[Dublin, July 11,
1800.]
“I received your letter this morning, four days from
its date. I forget now what I said in my last letter about the poor little
girls, but in this letter I will begin with them. Their talking about me, as
you say they do, makes me wish to be with them, and will probably have some
effect in inducing me to shorten my visit. It is the first time I have been
seriously separated from them since they lost their mother, and I feel as if it was
very naughty in me to have come away so far, and to have put so much land, and
a river sixty miles broad, between us, though, as you know, I had very strong
reasons for coming. I hope you have got Fanny a proper spelling-book. Have you examined her at all, and
discovered what improvement she has made in her reading? You do not tell me
whether they have paid and received any visits. If it does not take much room
in your next letter, I should be very glad to hear of that. Tell Mary I will not give her away, and she shall
be nobody’s little girl but papa’s. Papa is gone away, but papa
will very soon come back again, and see the Polygon across two fields from the
trunks of the trees at Camden Town. Will Mary and
Fanny come to meet me? I will write them word, if I
can, in my next letter or the letter after that, when and how it shall be. Next
Sunday, it will be a fortnight since I left them, and I should like if possible
to see them on the Sunday after Sunday 20th July. . . . .
William Godwin to J. Marshal.
[Dublin, Aug. 2,
1800.]
“Mrs Elwes
tells me in her letter that I shall be at home on the 3d of August. Probably
she had the intelligence from you. From what premisses the conclusion was drawn
I know not, but I am apprehensive it will prove in some measure erroneous. My
original purpose was to have quitted Dublin the 27th of July, last Saturday,
and exactly four weeks from the day I quitted London. I am now writing on
Saturday, the 2d of August, one week later, and am seated quietly in Mr Curran’s bookroom, in his rural
retreat he visits from Dublin. It was originally proposed between him and me
that the week now concluding should be spent in an excursion to Wexford,
whither he expected to be called for the assizes. That expectation has been
frustrated, and he has now prevailed on me to attend him to the assizes at
Carlow, and has promised that I shall be on board the packet for England on
Thursday evening, the 7th inst. That Thursday, however, will probably be
Friday. I then propose, as I believe I have told you
already, to walk three days amidst the natural and almost unrivalled beauties
of N. Wales, and have a letter of introduction from Mr Grattan to Lady Harriet
Butler and Miss Di
Ponsonby, two old maids in the vale of Llangollen, with whom I
propose to spend a couple of hours. I shall, however, certainly endeavour to
give you precise notice of the time of my arrival at the trunks of the trees,
which I can at any time by despatching a line from any part of N. Wales,
twenty-four hours before I quit it in person. . . .
“I wish also that you would write to Arnot immediately, poste-restante, at Fünfkirchen, if there is any chance of your letter
reaching its destination in time to cheer the beloved wanderer. Tell him of my
absence from London, tell him of my increasing affection and anxiety for his
welfare, tell him of my increasing admiration and respect for his narrative.
Beg him to give me under his hand an explicit permission to publish his journal
in case of any unhappy accident to himself, and an approbation beforehand of my
conduct, whatever it shall happen to be. Keep a copy of your letter.
“I have kept pretty good company here. Last Wednesday
I dined with three countesses—Countess-dowager
Moira (it was at her house), Earl and Countess Granard,
and Countess Mountcashel, and on Sunday I
am to dine at Lady Mountcashel’s. I mean to call on
Lady Moira the moment I have quitted this letter. But
I have not yet seen either Grattan or
Ponsonby. They are however, I
believe, to dine with us at Mr
Curran’s barn (as he calls it) to-morrow. He wishes me to
go with him to the assizes at Wexford, but that I believe I must decline. They
are in the beginning of August. Hitherto there have been daily sittings of the
courts of law, and I see nothing of him from breakfast till five o’clock.
This will last ten days longer, and I wish much to spend one week with this
charming creature when he is at full leisure. On that computation I shall not
cross the channel till about the 28th inst.
“I am fully sensible to your care of my children and
my establishment. Every minute particular that you will be so good as to write
to me respecting them will be highly gratifying. . . . .
“I depute to Fanny and Mr Collins, the gardener, the
care of the garden. Tell her I wish to find it spruce, cropped, weeded, and
mowed at my return; and if she can save me a few strawberries and a few beans
without spoiling, I will give her six kisses for them. But then Mary must have six kisses too, because
Fanny has six.
“It would be highly gratifying if on my return I could
find the elaborate repairs and papering of my house finished, the garden-door
erected, and the household linen ready for use. Do not forget the directions of
this or my preceding letter, though they should not be repeated in any of my
subsequent ones. . . .
The Same to the Same.
“Dublin, Aug. 2, 1800.
“I begin another letter immediately on despatching its
predecessor, as much, I believe, by way of recording my own feelings and
adventures, as with a view to any amusement you may derive from the narration.
Two persons, as you know, exclusive of Mr
Curran, I was particularly desirous of seeing in Ireland,
Mr Grattan and the Countess of Mountcashel. This desire I have had a
reasonable opportunity of gratifying; and, in addition to this, have been a
spectator of a considerable portion of most interesting scenery, which was not
in my contemplation when I left England. I saw Mr Grattan,
for the first time in Ireland, at Mr Curran’s
country house, on Saturday the 12th of July, ten days after my arrival at
Dublin. He then dined with us, but it was a numerous company, that afforded me
very little opportunity of diving into his characteristic qualities. The next
day, however, we went over to Grattan’s own house,
where we arrived in the evening, and slept that and the succeeding night.
Mr Curran was obliged on Monday morning to go to
Dublin to attend the courts, in consequence of which I had
Grattan almost, though not entirely, to myself till
dinner-time, when Curran and another person, his
companion, returned from Dublin, about 18 English miles. The Sunday of this
week I had dined at Lady Mountcashel’s, about the
same distance from Dublin, and 4 miles from Grattan, in
company with Mr Curran. These two days, July 13, 14, were the first
time in which I saw any of the beautiful scenery with which Ireland, and
especially the county of Wicklow, abounds. I was particularly struck with a
scene they call the Scalp, which has, I think, a finer effect than Penmanmawr
in N. Wales, as in this latter instance you pass between two vast acclivities
of rocks, with immense fragments broken off, and tumbled round you to the right
and the left.
“With this quantity of gratification I might have
rested satisfied. No more than this obtruded itself on my acceptance. But I
invited myself to a second and a third dinner with Lady Mountcashel, July 21 and 28, and a second at Grattan’s, July 29. On the 28th,
Lady Mountcashel conducted me in her cabriole to the
Devil’s Glen, 20 or 30 miles from Dublin, and infinitely the most
stupendous scene I ever saw. You travel for at least a mile and a half
surrounded by rocks and mountains, varied and magnificent in their form beyond
all imagination, and with a current all the way at the bottom, encumbered with
stones of astonishing dimensions, and terminating at the further end in a grand
waterfall, which changes its direction two or three times in the descent. You
are not here, as in a similar scene nearer Dublin, fettered and hemmed in by
the too great nearness of the opposing rocks, but, while cut off, on the one
hand, from the whole world, your soul has room to expand in its desert, and
savour its divinity. My visit at Grattan’s, July 29,
was peculiarly fortunate. I spent two mornings with him alone.
“And now let me recollect with what degree of kindness
and cordiality I have been received in this country. No one has been ignorant
who I was; to no one in that sense have I needed an introduction; and by none,
so far as I know, have I been received with an unfavourable prepossession. Yet,
believe me, I feel no atom intoxicated by the kindness of this people. I am not
aware that I have been received with distinguishing or inordinate favour,
except by a few. The good opinion of Joseph Cooper
Walker, an Irish antiquarian, seems to have been marked with
sufficient explicitness. Hugh Hamilton,
whom I conceive to be the most
eminent painter in Dublin, has shown himself enthusiastically partial to me.
Mr Curran’s kindness has been
satisfactory, cordial, animated and unceasing. Grattan conversed with me with perfect familiarity, and
answered me on all subjects without reserve, but not one word of personal
kindness and esteem towards me ever escaped his lips. Let me observe by the
way, that the characters of the two most eminent personages of this country,
though sincere and affectionate friends to each other, are strongly contrasted.
They are both somewhat limited in their information, and are deficient in a
profound and philosophical faculty of thinking. They have both much genius.
Grattan, I believe, is generally admitted to be the
first orator in the British dominions; and variety and richness of picturesque
delineation perpetually mask the slightest sallies of
Curran’s conversation. But
Grattan is mild, gentle, polished, and urbane on every
occasion on which I have seen him; Curran is wild,
ferocious, jocular, humorous, mimetic and kittenish; a true Irishman, only in
the vast portion of soul that informs him, which of course a very ordinary
Irishman must be content to want. He is declamatory, and his declamation is apt
to grow monotonous, so that I have once or twice on such an occasion, felt
inclined to question the basis of my admiration for him, till a moment after a
vein of genuine imagination and sentiment burst upon me, and threw contempt and
disgrace on my scepticism. I have had the good fortune to hear from him a
speech of two hours, in the cause of Latten versus the publisher of a pamphlet by Dr Duigenan, which was tried a little before
in England, Erskine being advocate for the
plaintiff. Erskine got £500 damages and Curran 6d.; so
disgracefully high does the spirit of party, even in courts of law, run on this
side the water.
“Lady Mountcashel
is a singular character: a democrat and a republican in all their sternness,
yet with no ordinary portion either of understanding or good nature. If any of
our comic writers were to fall in her company, the infallible consequence would
be her being gibbetted in a play. She is uncommonly tall and brawny, with bad
teeth, white eyes, and a handsome countenance. She
commonly dresses, as I have seen Mrs
Fenwick dressed out of poverty, with a grey gown, and no linen
visible; but with gigantic arms, which she commonly folds, naked and exposed
almost up to the shoulders.
“Monday, July 14, was rendered memorable here by the
execution of Jemmy O’Brien, a
notorious informer, for murder. He had been accustomed, I am told, to sell
warrants of imprisonment on suspicion of treasonable practices for 2 s. 6d.
a-piece. Persons came out of the country 30 and 40 miles barefoot to enjoy the
spectacle of his exit. One exclaimed, he was the death of my husband, and
another, my two brothers were brought to the gallows by his instrumentality. An
individual stationed himself on the highest pinnacle in the neighbourhood, that
the whole population, however remote, might join in one shout of deafening and
unbounded rapture the moment the scaffold sunk from under him. For the rapture,
however, you will observe that they were partially indebted to the apprehension
which both he and they entertained to the last moment, that the government
would interfere with a pardon. When his execution was completed, his body was
for a few moments in the hands of the populace, and they tore away fingers and
toes with the utmost greediness, to preserve as precious relics of their
antipathy and revenge.
“I am exceedingly offended with Mrs Elwes for her fiction, equally wilful and
malicious, of a quarrel between me and Mrs
Robinson. There is not a shadow of foundation for it. I was
somewhat displeased with her (Mrs R.) the last time I saw
her for her copious vein of vulgar abuse against a quondam, most despicable
friend of hers, and endeavoured in vain to stop it, but I scarcely imagined she
was even sensible of the degree of pain and displeasure she inspired.
“And now what shall I say for my poor little girls? I
hope they have not forgot me. I think of them every day, and should be glad, if
the wind was more favourable, to blow them a kiss a piece from Dublin to the
Polygon. I have seen Mr Grattan’s
little girls and Lady Mountcashel’s
little girls, and they are very nice children, but I have seen none that I love
half so well or think half so
good as my own. I thank you a thousand times for your care of them. I hope next
summer, if I should ever again be obliged to leave them for a week or two, that
I shall write long letters to Fanny in a
fine print hand, and that Fanny will be able to read them
to herself from one end to the other. That will be the summer 1801.”
The Same to the Same.
[Ireland] “Aug. 14, 1800.
“I see by my memoranda that it is now near a fortnight
since I wrote to you last. On that day I wrote to you two letters, both of
which, I take it for granted, you have long before this received. What I said
in them I cannot now with exactness recollect. I had, however, by that time
made my contract with Mr Curran to go to
the assizes at Carlow, for which place we set out, Sunday, Aug. 3, the day
after I closed these letters. On our road, we called on Mr Geo. Ponsonby. . . . We, however, only
spent an hour or an hour and a half at his house, and I saw no more of him. At
Carlow I was introduced to my Lord Judge, Michael Kelly,
Esq., eighty years of age, and by his invitation had the honour to sit on the
bench with him. Here we hanged a postmaster, worth by his own evidence £1000 a
year, for opening letters and robbing the mail (he was appointed for execution
this morning), and procured an estate for a friend of Mr
Curran, by setting aside a last will in favour of the
testator’s relations, or a last will but one, in behalf of their friend,
who was no relation at all. Poor old Kelly made a grand speech in summing up,
the most ex parte pleading I ever
heard, the famousness and effort of which, as I was assured, was all prepared
for the ears of the author of ‘St Leon.’ (N.B.—‘St Leon’ is a much
greater favourite everywhere in Ireland than ‘Caleb Williams.’) These trials last
two days. Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 5, 6, at Carlow I also made acquaintance
with Mr Whaly, commonly called
Buck (in the Irish idiom Book)
Whaly, who made himself famous, a few years ago, by
undertaking for a wager, to go to Jerusalem and return in the space of 2 years.
This man, as a traveller, is really a curiosity: he
affirmed that Georgia was the capital of Circassia, and that Mocsia (a
province) was the original name of the ancient Byzantium (a city). We returned
by a famous old monastic ruin called the Seven Churches, and slept on Wednesday
night at Rackets’ Town, lately distinguished for its flourishing streets,
but of which every house but two, including the church and the barracks, was
reduced to a heap of ruins by the late rebellion. We arrived at the Seven
Churches about 5 o’clock Thursday afternoon, when we found neither inn,
nor even alehouse, but a camp, the officers of which, generously spying our
distress, and hearing the name of Counsellor Curran,
supplied us, starving as we were, with dinner, tea, supper, and bed. Friday,
Aug. 8, we called for the last time on Grattan, and arrived in Dublin to dinner. Saturday, I proposed
starting for England, but the wind was contrary, and I was prevailed on to stay
till Monday (Sunday there is no packet), by which I gained two days in Ireland,
and lost but one day in England: for if I had sailed on Saturday, I could only
have left Holyhead by the Tuesday morning’s mail-coach, so tedious was
their passage: and, sailing on Monday I was in time, though the passage was 24
hours, for the Wednesday morning’s mail. Wednesday, therefore, Aug. 13,
at 4 a.m., I once more landed on my beloved native
isle. At 6 a.m. I got into the mail-coach, and dined
with the passengers at Conway at 1 p.m. There I left
them, being determined, as I told you before, to penetrate on foot through some
of the most delightful scenery of N. Wales. I slept last night at Llanrwst (the
w is pronounced like oo), and breakfasted this morning, by the most purely
accidental recommendation, at the house of a most stupid dog, Mr
Edwards, a brewer, whose town house is in Portman Square, and
who has built himself a mansion in the vale of Llanrwst, because in this valley
he passed the most pleasing years of his childhood. Llanrwst is 12 miles from
Conway, this place 10 miles more, where I am just sitting downto dinner, and
Corwen, where I propose to sleep, is 13 miles further. Llangollen, to which I
purpose to proceed to-morrow, is 14 miles beyond Corwen. . . . Whether I shall
leave Llangollen Friday or Saturday will depend pretty much on these ladies [Lady Eliza Butler and Miss Ponsonby], but I think I will contrive to
be in town so as to be able to give you an accurate previous notice of the
time, for the sake of the dear little girls and the trunks of the trees:
perhaps you may have a letter by Monday’s post, to tell you exactly of
the final particulars of my arrival the day after.
“Tell Fanny and
Mary I have brought each of them a
present from Aunt Bishop and Aunt Everina. I love Aunt
Bishop as much as I hate (you must not read that word)
Aunt Everina: and therefore
Fanny, as the eldest, must, I believe, have the privilege
of choosing Mrs Bishop’s present, if she prefers it.
Will not Fanny be glad to see papa next Tuesday? It will
then be more than seven weeks since papa was at Polygon: I hope it will be a
long, long while before papa goes away again for so much as seven weeks. What
do you think, F.? But he had to come over the sea, and the
sea would not let him come when he liked. Look at it in the map. . . .
“A further object of curiosity with which I have been
gratified was, that Mr Grattan
introduced me to a poor man who had been twice half-hanged by the King’s
troops in the rebellion. I had, therefore, the account of the transaction from
the fellow’s own mouth. The first time, seven cars were brought, and set
on end, that seven villagers might be suspended from the tops of their shafts,
to extort a confession of arms from them. The second time, the poor
fellow’s wife, who was on her death-bed, crawled to the threshold to
entreat for mercy for him in vain. She survived the scene, of which she thus
became the spectator, exactly ten days. God save the king!”
[Enclosed in letter.]—“I have
just closed the week with a very interesting conversation with Curran, upon the charge I had heard alleged
against him of insincerity and prostitution of friendship. I am convinced it
has no shadow of foundation to lean upon. I like him a thousand times better
than ever.
“We are now going to set out for Carlow, and shall
spend an hour or two this morning with Geo.
Ponsonby, who is by most persons pronounced the third orator in
Ireland, and by the devo-tees of chaste and level
declamation, is affirmed to be the first. I have never yet seen him, except for
a few minutes, in England.
“Ah, poor Fanny! here is another letter from papa, and what do you think he
says about the little girls in it? Let me see. Would pretty little Mary have apprehension enough to be angry if I
did not put in her name? Look at the map. This is Sunday that I am now writing.
Before next Sunday I shall have crossed that place there, that you see marked
as sea, between Ireland and England, and shall hope, indeed, to be half way
home. That is not a very long while now, is it? My visit to Ireland is almost
done. Perhaps I shall be on the sea in a ship, the very moment Marshall is reading this letter to you. There
is about going in a ship in Mrs
Barbauld’s book. But I shall write another letter, that
will come two or three days after this, and then I shall be in England. And in
a day or two after that, I shall hope to see Fanny and
Mary and Marshall, sitting on the
trunks of the trees. . . .”
The tender domestic tone of these letters is in strong contrast to the
acrimony which now began to mark Godwin’s
intercourse with Dr Parr. According to
Godwin’s own testimony at a later date, the Doctor had
always been “an advocate of old establishments,” and even “of
old abuses.” But “his heart had always seemed better than his
logic,” he had a ready sympathy for those with whom his reason did not wholly
agree, as was shown in his letter to Godwin at the time of the
political trials, he could take Godwin with all his heresies as a
chosen friend.
But his opinions, in common with those of many others, had insensibly
become more reactionary. The French Revolution had proved a test which few could bear.
Mackintosh became, according to Godwin, “an apostate,” and though
Godwin could not apply the term to Dr
Parr, he had soon to find that the division was no longer only of creed but
of sympathy, and that the friendship was fading away.
He sent a copy of “St
Leon” to Hatton, but heard nothing of its reception, and after waiting
more than a reasonable time, wrote to his friend.
William Godwin to Rev. Dr Parr.
“Polygon, Somers Town, Jan. 3, 1800.
“Dear Sir,—I received a
visit more than twelve months ago from Mr
Morley of Hampton Lucy, the express purpose of which was to
vindicate himself from any supposed concern in a foolish story that was
propagated of my having been, through the influence of a certain melancholy
event, converted to Christianity. This was the first time I had ever heard his
name joined with that story. His vindication with me was therefore easy. From
all that I know of Mr Morley, I should feel great
difficulty in persuading myself that a conduct pitiful and unmanly could justly
be imputed to him, and I had no hesitation in completely acquitting him.
“I felt some inclination on that occasion to have
written to you for the purpose of removing any unpleasant impression that might
remain on your mind in connexion with that story. This inclination, after an
interval, was renewed in my mind with still greater force, in consequence of my
being told, though I cannot now recollect by whom, that you had been heard to
do me the honour to express your regret at some unfortunate misunderstanding
that had arisen between us. But procrastination is of very fatal influence. I
deferred my explanation; I reserved it for the occasion that now presents
itself, which I calculated would have occurred much sooner than it has done. I
said, I will request Dr Parr’s
acceptance of a copy of my second attempt in the way of a novel, and will then
write to him on the subject at large.
“The story was first brought to me by a very amusing
and good-natured young man, Mr Basil
Montagu. He represented you as the assiduous propagator of the
tale. If his representation had been true, I should have regretted the
circumstance, but I should have looked upon it as a ground of misunder-standing with a man I so profoundly value and esteem as
Dr Parr. I saw you soon after in town
(June 1798), and with my customary frankness related to you what I had heard.
You instantly assured me that you had heard the tale, only to contradict it. No
answer could be more satisfactory. From that moment the circumstance ceased to
give me the slightest uneasiness, and, but for the incidents related in the
preceding page, would, I am satisfied, long since have vanished from my mind. I
hope this explanation will be received by you as complete. There are few things
I regret so much as that petty considerations of miles and hours should now for
a year and a half have withheld from me the improving conversation, and the
cordial assurances and encouragements I might otherwise have held with and
received from Dr Parr.
“I ordered my bookseller to send you a copy of my new
novel. I hope you received it in due course. It would give me great pleasure if
you did not hold it lost time to communicate to me, with your usual manliness,
your sentiments respecting it: if you would give yourself the trouble, in case
of your discovering in it any fundamental mistake, to set up a beacon to direct
me better in my future efforts, and in case you thought it did not disgrace me,
to cheer me with one breath of your applause, that I might proceed with greater
confidence and strength to future exertions.
“You made a long visit at Norwich last summer. If I
had heard of it in time, I should, perhaps, have been tempted to review the
scene of my boyish years. You saw, I am told, a good deal of Mackintosh; you therefore, no doubt, settled
accounts with him as to your opinion of his political lectures. I am, myself,
exceedingly disgusted with some of their leading features. Sheltering himself
under, what I think, a frivolous apology of naming nobody, he loads
indiscriminately the writers of the new philosophy with every epithet of
contempt,—absurdity, frenzy, idiotism, deceit, ambition, and every murderous
propensity dance through the mazes of his glittering periods: nor has this
mighty dispenser of honour and disgrace ever deigned to concede to any one of
them the least particle of understanding, talent, or taste. He has to the utmost of his
power contributed to raise a cry against them, as hollow, treacherous, noxious,
and detestable, and to procure them either to be torn in pieces by the mob, or
hanged up by the government. There is a warmth in this style of speculation,
that does not well accord, either with the conclusions of my understanding, or
the sentiments of my heart. I have noticed it accordingly, en passant, in the third volume, p. 247,
of my novel.—I remain, with sentiments of much regard, dear sir, yours,
“W.
Godwin.”
To this letter Dr Parr returned no
answer by way of letter, but he replied to it with a vengeance on the following Easter
Tuesday, April 15, 1800. He was selected to preach the annual “Spital Sermon” before the Lord Mayor, and
delivered a great manifesto on “the new philosophy” with direct and
unmistakeable reference to Godwin and “Political Justice.”
The remaining letters may speak for themselves, with the remark only that
Godwin’s “notes” to Dr Parr’s letter of April 29 form the first draft of
a pamphlet published by him in the following year, called “Thoughts occasioned by the Perusal of Dr Parr’s Spital
Sermon.” He complained in this with considerable vigour of the treatment
he had received from Parr and Mackintosh, and of the “flood of ribaldry, invective, and
intolerance which had been poured against him and his writings.” So ended a
friendship which once had been close and cordial.
William Godwin to Rev. Dr Parr.
“Polygon, Somers Town, April 24, 1800.
“Dear Sir,—I was very
desirous to see you. I have called twice for that purpose. Saturday,
unfortunately, you were on the point of going out: to-day you slept in the
country.
“If I had seen you, I designed to ask whether you had
received a letter from me, written in December [January] last. I meant to have
listened, to know whether intention or simple forgetfulness had caused it to
remain unanswered. It did not appear to me an ordinary letter, but one the
author of which was entitled to a reply.
“This subject dismissed, I should then have mentioned
your sermon of Easter
Tuesday. I spoke in that letter of Mackintosh’sletters, in which that gentleman,
without the manliness of mentioning me, takes occasion three times a-week to
represent me to an audience of a hundred persons, as a wretch unworthy to live.
Your sermon, I learn from all hands, was on the same subject, handled, I take
it for granted, from what I know of your character, in a very different spirit.
I am sorry for this. Since Mackintosh’s Lectures, it
has become a sort of fashion with a large party to join in the cry against me.
It is the part, I conceive, of original genius, to give the tone to others,
rather than to join a pack, after it has already become loud and numerous.
“These subjects were better adapted for a conversation
than a letter, and I much wish they had been so treated. Every difference of
judgment is not the topic for a grave complaint
“If, however, both my letter and my visit would have
passed unnoticed, I am entitled to conclude that you have altered your mind
respecting me. In that case I should be glad you would answer to your own
satisfaction, what crimes I am chargeable with now in 1800, of which I had not
been guilty in 1794, when with so much kindness and zeal you sought my
acquaintance.—I am, dear sir, yours, with the warmest regard,
W. Godwin.”
Rev. Dr Parr to William Godwin.
“38 Carey Street, April 29, 1800.
“Sir,—I have read your
letter attentively, and I believe that you know enough of my serious and
importunate avocations in London to consider them as a sufficient excuse for
the delay of my answer.
“‘You designed,’ it seems,
‘to ask me whether I had received a letter from you written in
December last.’ ‘You meant,’ also, ‘to have listened
to know whether intention or simple forgetfulness had caused it to remain
unanswered.’ You further represent it ‘as appearing to
yourself not an ordinary letter, but one, the author of which was entitled
to a reply.’ If you had seen me and spoken what you thus wrote, I
should not have given you the trouble of listening to
hear my answer. Without professing to adopt your system about the
undistinguishing disclosure of truth, I shall follow my own, which appears to
me equally sound and salutary.
“A parcel came to my house in December last, when I
was absent. Upon my return I opened it, and found four volumes, together with a
letter, which from the direction I knew to be from you. I read only the preface
to your novel, and afterwards, having heard from Mrs
Parr some account of its contents, I felt no anxiety at the time
to look into them. I happened to be then very busy upon subjects which were far
more interesting to me; and perhaps, if I had been more at leisure, yet I might
not have found myself disposed to read your book till I knew the opinion
entertained of it by the very sagacious person whom I had desired to peruse it.
Certainly, sir, I was not for one moment insensible of your civility in sending
it to me. But I had determined to return it to you; and the reluctance I felt
to do what might seem to you ungracious, made me put off from day to day the
execution of what I intended. I now thank you, sir, for sending me the book. I
also apologise to you for not having made my acknowledgments sooner, and after
my arrival at Hatton I will take the earliest opportunity of conveying back to
you the volumes which for obvious reasons I cannot keep without impropriety.
“Your letter I laid aside, and as I did not expect to
find the contents of it agreeable to me, I laid it aside unopened. With some
uncertainty whether I should or should not venture to read it, I afterwards
looked for it in my library and could not find it. But my search was not very
diligent, and I suppose that some day or other it will fall into my hands. I
cannot, however, pledge myself, either upon finding to read, or upon reading,
to answer it.
“I have told you, sir, with all possible plainness,
every circum-stance I remember about your letter and in
the books: and in consequence of what you wrote to me the other day, I think
myself justified in confessing that I am now not disposed towards you entirely
as I once was.
“Your letter of April 24th goes on thus:
‘This subject dismissed, I should then have mentioned your sermon of Easter Tuesday. I
spoke in the letter above referred to of Mackintosh’sLectures, in which that gentleman,
without the manliness of mentioning me, takes occasion three times a week
to represent me to an audience of an hundred persons as a wretch unworthy
to live.’ Indeed, sir, I must congratulate myself upon not
opening a letter containing a passage so offensive to me as this
misrepresentation of Mr Mackintosh, be it accidental or
voluntary. From various quarters I had heard of the ability and success with
which Mr Mackintosh had combated opinions which you are
supposed to hold, and of which I am accustomed to disapprove. But I never was
told by other men that he had been guilty of any unbecoming personalities
towards you; and by Mr Mackintosh himself I have been
informed that he never insulted your character, never pronounced your name,
never even opposed your tenets, as holden by yourself exclusively. You will
therefore permit me to express my fixed belief, that what you wrote in your
former letter, and have repeated in your last, is utterly unwarranted by the
conduct of Mr Mackintosh in his lectures. Of his genius,
his judgment, his erudition, and his taste, I have always thought and spoken
with high admiration. From the doubts which I may now and then have entertained
of his firmness, I am happily relieved. Inexperience I am convinced of his
sincerity in friendship, and for the important services which he is now
rendering to a cause which is most dear to my heart, I gladly give him the
tribute of my thanks and my praise.
“I return to your letter, in which you say,
‘Your sermon, I
learn from all hands, was on the same subject, handled, I take it for
granted, from what I know of your character, in a very different spirit. I
am sorry for this.’
“Be assured, sir, that you have done me no more than
justice, when you acquit me
of describing you ‘as a wretch unworthy to live.’ I hope,
sir, you are not sorry for this.
“For the principles which I defend from the pulpit, I
am conscious of an awful responsibility, not only to society, but to Almighty
God, and it is at my own peril that, in speaking of my fellow-creatures, I
forget the obligations which lie upon me to preserve the candour of a
gentleman, and the charity of a Christian. Let me hope, that for this also you
are not sorry.
“In your letter you thus proceed: ‘Since
Mackintosh’s lectures, it
has become a sort of fashion with a large party to join in the cry against
me. It is the part, I conceive, of original genius to give the tone to
others, rather than to join a pack, after it has already become loud and
numerous.’
“So far as the foregoing passage contains a statement
of facts relating to other men, it may or may not be just. So far as it
contains your general opinion upon the duty of men who are endowed with
original genius, I am inclined rather to admit than to contradict it. But if it
be meant in any degree whatsoever to contain a particular accusation against
me, I must lament the want of precision, and the want of fairness in the
writer. Sir, I lay no claim ‘to that original genius which is to give
the tone to others.’ But I have too delicate a sense of decorum
to join a pack because it is loud and numerous, or to act with a party because
it is large, or to repeat any cry against you because it is fashionable. I
trust, sir, that, upon reconsidering what you have thus written, you will be
very sorry for it, and, let your motives be what they may, when you wrote the
passage above mentioned, and let your feelings be what they may, when you have
reconsidered it, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it quite unauthorised,
either by what you know of my general character, or from what you can have
heard from any man of sense about my sermon at Christ Church.
“‘These subjects,’ you proceed to
say, ‘were better adapted for a conversation than a letter; and I much
wish they had been so treated. Every difference of judgment is not the
proper topic for a grave complaint.’
“Confessing myself at a lots to find any close
connection be-tween the beginning and the conclusion of
the foregoing paragraph, I am under the necessity of replying to them
separately. If the subjects upon which you meant to speak to me were those upon
which you actually have written to me, I think that they may be discussed more
temperately and more correctly by letter than by conversation; and, of course,
I very much rejoice that they have not been treated in the manner you say you
very much wish to treat them. True it is, that every difference of judgment is
not the proper topic for a grave complaint. But if I had joined a pack against
you, there would have been reason for very loud complaint on your part; and if
you in conversation had accused me, as you seem to accuse me in writing, of
having acted thus unbecomingly, I should have complained of you, not for
weakness in judgment, but for rashness in reproach, not for differing from me
on a point of opinion, but for calumniating me as a point of fact.
“I now quote your concluding paragraph:—‘If,
however, both my letters and my visits would have passed unnoticed, I am
entitled to conclude that you have altered your mind respecting me. In that
case I should be glad you would answer to your own satisfaction what crime
I am chargeable with now in 1800, of which I had not been guilty in 1794,
when with so much kindness and zeal you sought my acquaintance.’
“The letter you wrote to me on the 24th of April does
not pass unnoticed. Your visits entitled you to civility, and yet I am under
the painful necessity of acknowledging that I do not wish you in future to give
yourself the trouble of writing to me any more letters, or favouring me with
any more visits. Upon the alteration of my mind towards you, I can speak
entirely to my own satisfaction, though not without some doubts upon the degree
in which you will be glad to find I am satisfied.
“I never sought your acquaintance, sir, with any
zeal. I received you with kindness when you were introduced to me by Mr Mackintosh. I have treated you with the
respect that is due to your talents and attainments. But before the year 1800,
I had ceased to think of you so favourably as I thought of you in 1794. I had
not in 1794 read in your Enquirer the passage where you speak so irreverently and unfavourably about
the Founder of that religion of which you know that I am a teacher, and of
which you can have no reason for doubting but that I am a sincere believer. And
in truth, sir, though I found in that book many judicious observations upon
life, and many pleasing instances of your improvement in style, still your
mis-statement of Christ’s meaning, and your insinuations against his
benevolence, have occurred to me again and again, and from the resemblance they
bear to the impious effusions of Mr
Voltaire, which I have lately read, they have displeased, and
ever will displease me more and more.
“I had not in 1794 been shocked, in common with all
wise and good men, by a work which you entitle ‘Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of
Women.’
“I had not then discovered the dreadful effects of
your opinions upon the conduct, the peace, and the welfare of two or three
young men, whose talents I esteemed, and whose virtues I loved.
“I had not then seen your eagerness and perseverance
in employing every kind of vehicle to convey to every class of readers those
principles which, so long as they appeared only in the form of a metaphysical
treatise, might have done less extensive mischief.
“Above all, sir, I had not considered the dangerous
tendency of your tenets with the seriousness which the situation of the moral
and political world has lately produced in my mind upon subjects most
interesting to the happiness of society, and to the preservation of that
influence which virtue and religion ought to have upon the sentiments and the
happiness of mankind.—I am, Sir, very sincerely your well-wisher and obedient
servant,
S. Parr.”
Notes on Dr Parr’s Letter.
“‘As I did not expect to find the contents of
it agreeable to me,” &c. This is a very curious remark. What disagreeable
contents did the Doctor divine he should find in my letter? There was not the shadow of
a misunderstanding between us. The most obvious interpretation is, that the Doctor
expected to find in my letter expressions of consideration, kindness, and friendship,
and that these expressions, under the circumstance of the secret aliena-tion of mind he had harboured against me, would have been
disagreeable to him.
“‘Misrepresentation of Mr Mackintosh.’ This remark is sufficiently
answered in my “Thoughts occasioned
by Dr Parr’s Sermon.”
“‘Never pronounced your name,’
ditto. Here Dr Parr converts, with what propriety
I will not decide, my allegation against Mr
Mackintosh in a defence of his conduct.
“‘I hope, sir, you are not sorry for this.’ Be it recollected that my letter was
written instantly upon my return home, with the suspicion upon my mind of Dr Parr’s desertion of his former friendship for
me. The instances I had repeatedly observed of warm and affectionate temper in
Dr Parr had produced in me a considerable attachment to him. I
beg pardon for this, as well as for having been so far disturbed at the moment by the
first apprehension of his unkindness as to have fallen into the inaccuracy of making
the pronoun the Doctor amuses himself with, refer in strict construction to the latter
member of my sentence, while in spirit and intention it refers to the former.
“‘I never sought your acquaintance, sir,
with any zeal.’ In August 1793 the unfortunate and illustrious Mr Gerrald, whom I then saw for the first time,
communicated to me the favourable opinion he entertained of the E[nquirer] and P[olitical] J[ustice], and his anxiety to be
acquainted with the author. Soon after Mr
Mackintosh made me a similar communication. In February 1794 the Doctor
was in town, and at Mr Mackintosh’s desire I attended him to
the Doctor’s lodgings. He received me with the cordiality and warmth which have
so often delighted me. To Mr Mackintosh he said,
‘Jemmy, I was very angry with you yesterday, but
now you have brought Godwin to me, I cannot
help forgiving you.’ Dr Parr
invited me to spend some time with him in Warwickshire. I went thither in October. The
Doctor introduced me to all his neighbours. We dined out almost every day, and his
manner of announcing me was in the highest terms of eulogium and regard. After a stay
of six days, I was unexpectedly called to town by some circumstances connected with the
state trials at the Old
Bailey. The Doctor dismissed me with reluctance, complained of the shortness of my
visit, and insisted that, when the affair was over, or if not then, in the following
summer, I should return and make up to him the injury he now sustained. In November
following, the Doctor, at my particular instigation, visited Mr
Gerrald in the prison of the New Compter. I repeated my visit to the
Doctor in 1795, and staid sixteen days: still the same round of distinguishing kindness
and panegyrical introductions. In April 1796 Dr Parr invited
himself, his family, and a party of ten or twelve persons to dine with me in a little
hovel which I then tenanted near London. In June 1797 I was in Warwickshire on a
journey northwards. I then saw Dr Parr, who regretted to me his
absence from home, but insisted I should make some stay at his house on my return. In
June 1798 I had another cordial interview with him in London.
“‘The passage in which you speak so
irreverently and unjustly of the Founder, &c.’ In the period of the
Doctor’s greatest cordiality and friendship, he was accustomed to call and
believe me an atheist. This remark brings to my mind a passage in Hume’sHistory of England, where he says: ‘At
God’s altar in Canterbury, there were offered in one year £3, 2s. 6d.; at the
Virgin’s, £63, 5s. 6d.; at St. Thomas’s, £832, 12s. 3d. But next year
the disproportion was still greater; there was not a penny offered at God’s
altar; the Virgin’s gained £4, 1s. 8d., but St Thomas had got for his share
£956, 6s. 3d.’
“‘I had not then discovered,’
&c. Whether any, and what meaning is to be ascribed to this mysterious and terrible
sentence, Dr Parr only, I suppose, is able to
explain.
“‘Above all,’ &c. Thus, by
Dr Parr’s own confession, the E[nquirer] and P[olitical] J[ustice] which originally induced him
to seek my acquaintance, is the great and principal reason why he now desires that
‘in future I will not give myself the trouble of writing any more letters,
and favouring him with any more visits.’
“The above remarks I have put down under the idea
that Dr. Parr’s letter may one day be
printed. I feel the utmost delicacy in exercising any jurisdiction over the
communications of private correspondence; but I do not regard the letter a man writes
me, for the purpose of dismissing me from all future intercourse with him, as private
correspondence.
“(If Dr Parr’s letter
should ever be printed, mine of April 1800 should stand as a general introduction, and of
January in the same year.)”
From Dr Parr to William Godwin.
“Hatton, Oct. 28, 1800.
“For reasons which were some time ago communicated to
Mr Godwin, Dr Parr takes the liberty of returning him a
book which has been read by Mrs Parr,
Mrs Wynne, and Catherine; and he begs leave to unite with them
in thanks to the courtesy of the writer. In the sincerity of his soul,
Dr Parr wishes Mr
Godwin health, prosperity, and such a state of mind, united with
a possible and proper use of his great talents, as may obtain for him a lasting
reputation among wise and good men, and secure his happiness both here and
hereafter.”
Unfinished draft of letter from William Godwin to
Dr Parr.
“Sir,—I very sincerely
thank you for your letter. I feel the most pungent grief in witnessing your
disgrace; but, since it must be so, I am well satisfied to possess this
evidence of your disgrace, subscribed in your own hand and with your own name.
“If I could ever be prevailed upon to present to the
public the luxuriant but short-lived vegetation of your professions of regard,
as they now lie by me in my closet, contrasted with the expressions of this
letter, and the frivolous reasons by which they are attempted to be supported,
your character would be placed in a light in which it was never yet the lot of
a human being to be exhibited.
“I rejoice that there are not many men like you. If
there were, there would indeed be little inducement to the attempting public
benefit by the acquisition of talents, when the very production which first
obtained for its author the attention of one who was a stranger to him, is
afterwards unblushingly assigned as the ground, and, ‘above all,’
the ground of alienation and a tone of reproach that I think it would rather
unmanly to apply to the most atrocious criminal that ever held up his hand at
the bar of Old Bailey.
“My ‘unwarranted misrepresentation’ of
Mackintosh’slectures, stated in my own
terms, I am ready to support, if necessary, with a body of evidence as complete
as ever obtained the attention of a court of justice in a public trial.”
WILLIAM GODWIN:HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.BYC. KEGAN PAUL.WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.VOL. II.Henry S. King & Co., London1876.The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 1800, 1 CHAPTER II. HOLCROFT AND ARNOT. 180O, 17 CHAPTER III. TRAGEDY OF ANTONIO. 1800, 36 CHAPTER IV. SECOND MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 1801—1 56 CHAPTER V. FRIENDS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 1802—1803, 107 CHAPTER VI. ENTRANCE INTO BUSINESS LIFE. 1804—1806, 122 CHAPTER VII. POLITICS AND LITERARY WORK. 1806—1811, 152 PAGE CHAPTER VIII. THE SHELLEYS. 1811—1814, 201 CHAPTER IX. FANNY’S DEATH—THE SHELLEYS. 1812—1819, 227 CHAPTER X. NEW FRIENDS AND NEW TROUBLES. 1819—1824, 261 CHAPTER XI. LAST LITERARY LABOUR. 1824—1832, 291 CHAPTER XII. THE LAST YEARS. 1832—1836, 321LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.Mary Wollstonecraft.
After a portrait by Opie. Frontispiece.Facsimile of William
Godwin’s Handwriting, p. 201Godwin’s Grave.
From a Sketch by Lady Shelley. 333
WILLIAM GODWIN:HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.CHAPTER I.CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 1800.
It seems well to give Godwin’s correspondence with Coleridge during 1800 without break. The play therein mentioned was
“Antonio,” represented
at Drury Lane, and damned, of which more will be said hereafter.
S. T. Coleridge to William Godwin.
“Wednesday Morning, Jan. 8, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—To-morrow and
Friday business rises almost above smothering point with me, over chin and
mouth! but on Saturday evening I shall be perfectly at leisure, and shall
calendar an evening apart with you on so interesting a subject among my
‘Noctes Atticæ.’ If this do not suit your engagements, mention any
other day, and I will make it suit mine.—Yours with esteem,
“S. T.
Coleridge.
“P.S.—How many thousand
letter-writers will in the first fortnight of this month write a 7 first,
and then transmogrify it into an 8, in the dates of their letters! I like
to catch myself doing that which involves any identity of the human race.
Hence I like to talk of the weather, and in the fall never omit observing,
‘How short the days grow! How the days
shorten!’ And yet that would fall a melancholy phrase indeed
on the heart of a blind man!”
The Same to the Same.
“8, Monday Morning, Mar. 3, 1800.
“DearGodwin,—The punch, after the wine,
made me tipsy last night. This I mention, not that my head aches, or that I
felt, after I quitted you, any unpleasantness or titubancy; but because
tipsiness has, and has always, one unpleasant effect—that of making me talk
very extravagantly; and as, when sober, I talk extravagantly enough for any
common tipsiness, it becomes a matter of nicety in discrimination to know when
I am or am not affected. An idea starts up in my head,—away I follow through
thick and thin, wood and marsh, brake and briar, with all the apparent interest
of a man who was defending one of his old and long-established principles.
Exactly of this kind was the conversation with which I quitted you. I do not
believe it possible for a human being to have a greater horror of the feelings
that usually accompany such principles as I then supposed, or a deeper
conviction of their irrationality, than myself; but the whole thinking of my
life will not bear me up against the accidental crowd and press of my mind,
when it is elevated beyond its natural pitch. We shall talk wiselier with the
ladies on Tuesday. God bless you, and give your dear little ones a kiss a-piece
from me.—Yours with affectionate esteem,
S. T. Coleridge. “Mr
Lamb’s, No. 36 Chapel St.”
The Same to the Same.
“Wednesday, May 21, 1800.
“DearGodwin,—I received
your letter this morning, and had I not, still I am almost confident that I
should have written to you before the end of the week. Hitherto the translation
of the Wallenstein has
prevented me; not that it so engrossed my time, but that it wasted and
depressed my spirits, and left a sense of wearisomeness and disgust, which
unfitted me for anything but sleeping or immediate society. I say this, because
I ought to have written to you first, and as I am not behind you in
affectionate esteem, so I would not be thought to lag in those outward and
visible signs that both show and vivify the inward and spiritual grace. Believe
me, you recur to my thoughts frequently, and never without pleasure, never
without making out of the past a little day dream for the future. I left
Wordsworth on the 4th of this month.
If I cannot procure a suitable house at Stowey, I return to Cumberland, and
settle at Keswick, in a house of such a prospect, that if, according to you and
Hume, impressions and ideas constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become
a god, so sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence. But
whether I continue here or migrate thither, I shall be in a beautiful country,
and have house-room and heartroom for you, and you must come and write your
next work at my house. My dear Godwin, I remember you with
so much pleasure, and our conversations so distinctly, that I doubt not we have
been mutually benefitted; but as to your poetic and physiopathic feelings, I
more than suspect that dear little Fanny
and Mary have had more to do in that
business than I. Hartley sends his love
to Mary. ‘What? and not to
Fanny?’ ‘Yes, and to
Fanny, but I’ll haveMary.’ He often talks
about them. My poor Lamb! how cruelly
afflictions crowd upon him! I am glad that you think of him as I think; he has
an affectionate heart, a mind sui generis; his taste
acts so as to appear like the unmechanic simplicity of an instinct—in brief, he
is worth an hundred men of mere talents. Conversation
with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells—one warms by exercise,
Lamb every now and then irradiates, and the beam, though single and fine as a hair, is yet
rich with colours, and I both see and feel it. In Bristol I was much with
Davy, almost all day; he always talks
of you with great affection. . . . If I settle at Keswick, he will be with me
in the fall of the year, and so meet you. And let me tell you,
Godwin, four such men as you, I,
Davy, and Wordsworth, do not meet
together in one house every day of the year. I mean, four men so distinct with
so many sympathies.
“I received yesterday a letter from Southey. He arrived at Lisbon, after a
prosperous voyage, on the last day of April. His letter to me is dated May-Day.
He girds up his loins for a great history of Portugal, which will be translated
into the Portuguese in the first year of the Lusitanian Republic.
“Have you seen Mrs
Robinson lately? How is she? Remember me in the kindest and most
respectful phrases to her. I wish I knew the particulars of her complaint. For
Davy has discovered a perfectly new
acid, by which he has restored the use of limbs to persons who had lost them
for years (one woman 9 years) in cases of supposed rheumatism. At all events,
Davy says it can do no harm in Mrs
Robinson’s case, and if she will try it, he will make up a
little parcel, and write her a letter of instructions, &c. . . .
“God bless you.—Yours sincerely affectionate,
“S. T.
Coleridge. “Mr T.
Poole’s, “N.
Stowey, Bridgewater.
“Sara
desires to be kindly remembered to you, and sends a kiss to Fanny and ‘dear meek little
Mary.’”
William Godwin to S. T. Coleridge.
“Dublin [September 1800.]
“DearColeridge,—You
scarcely expected a letter from me of the above date. But I received last
September an invitation from John Philpot
Curran, the Irish barrister, probably the first advocate in
Europe, then in London, to spend a few weeks with him in Ireland this summer,
which I did not feel in myself philosophy enough to resist. Nor do I repent my
compliance. The advantages one derives from placing the sole of one’s
foot on a foreign soil are extremely great. Few men, on such an occasion, think
it worth their while to put on armour for your encounter. I know Fox and Sheridan, but can scarce consider them as my acquaintance. Your
next door neighbour, before he admits you to his familiarity, considers how far
he should like to have you for his familiar for the next seven years. But
familiarity with a foreign guest
involves no such consequences, and so circumstanced, you are immediately
admitted on the footing of an inmate. I am now better acquainted with Grattan and Curran, the
Fox and Sheridan of Ireland,
after having been four weeks in their company, than I can pretend ever to have
been with their counterparts on my native soil.
“Curran I
admire extremely. There is scarcely the man on earth with whom I ever felt
myself so entirely at my ease, or so little driven back, from time to time, to
consider of my own miserable individual. He is perpetually a staff and a
cordial, without ever affecting to be either. The being never lived who was
more perfectly free from every species of concealment. With great genius, at
least a rich and inexhaustible imagination, he never makes me stand in awe of
him, and bow as to my acknowledged superior, a thing by-the-by which,
de temps à d’autre, you
compel me to do. He amuses me always, astonishes me often, yet naturally and
irresistibly inspires me with confidence. I am apt, particularly when away from
home, to feel forlorn and dispirited. The two last days I spent from him, and
though they were employed most enviably in tête à
tête with Grattan, I began to feel dejected and home-sick. But
Curran has joined me to-day, and poured into my bosom
a full portion of his irresistible kindness and gaiety.
“You will acknowledge these are extraordinary traits.
Yet Curran is far from a faultless and
perfect character. Immersed for many years in a perpetual whirl of business, he
has no profoundness or philosophy. He has a great share of the Irish
character—dashing, étourdi, coarse,
vulgar, impatient, fierce, kittenish. He has no characteristic delicacy, no
intuitive and instant commerce with the sublime features of nature. Ardent in a
memorable degree, and a patriot from the most generous impulse, he has none of
that political chemistry which Burke so
admirably describes (I forget his words), that resolves and combines, and
embraces distant nations and future ages. He is inconsistent in the most
whimsical degree. I remember, in an amicable debate with Sheridan, in which
Sheridan far outwent him in refinement, penetration,
and taste, he three times surrendered his arms, acknowledged his error, yea, even began to declaim (for declamation is
too frequently his mania) on the contrary side: and as often, after a short
interval, resumed his weapons, and renewed the combat. Now and then, in the
career of declamation, he becomes tautological and ineffective, and I ask
myself: Is this the prophet that he went forth to see! But presently after he
stumbles upon a rich vein of imagination, and recognises my willing suffrage.
He has the reputation of insincerity, for which he is indebted, not to his
heart, but to the mistaken, cherished calculations of his practical prudence.
He maintains in argument that you ought never to inform a man, directly or
indirectly, of the high esteem in which you hold him. Yet, in his actual
intercourse, he is apt to mix the information too copiously and too often. But
perhaps his greatest fault is, that though endowed with an energy the most
ardent, and an imagination the most varied and picturesque, there is nothing to
which he is more prone, or to which his inclination more willingly leads him,
than to play the buffoon.”
S. T. Coleridge to William Godwin.
“Monday, [Sep.
11, 1800.]
“DearGodwin,—There are
vessels every week from Dublin to Workington, which place is 16 miles from my
house, through a divine country, but these are idle regrets. I know not the
nature of your present pursuits, whether or no they are such as to require the
vicinity of large and curious libraries. If you were engaged in any work of
imagination or reasoning, not biographical, not historical, I should repeat and
urge my invitation, after my wife’s confinement. Our house is situated on
a rising ground, not two furlongs from Keswick, about as much from the Lake
Derwentwater, and about two miles from the Lake Bassenthwaite—both lakes and
mountains we command. The river Greta runs behind our house, and before it too,
and Skiddaw is behind us—not half a mile distant, indeed just distant enough to
enable us to view it as a Whole. The garden, orchards, fields, and immediate
country all delightful. I have, or have the use of, no inconsiderable
collection of books. In my library you will find all the
Poets and Philosophers, and
many of the best old writers. Below, in our parlour, belonging to our landlord,
but in my possession, are almost all the usual trash of Johnsons, Gibbons, Robertsons,
&c., with the Encyclopedia
Britannica, &c. Sir Wilfred
Lawson’s magnificent library is some 8 or 9 miles distant,
and he is liberal in the highest degree in the management of it. And now for
your letter. I swell out my chest and place my hand on my heart, and swear
aloud to all that you have written, or shall write, against lawyers, and the
practice of the law. When you next write so eloquently and so well against it,
or against anything, be so good as to leave a larger space for your wafer; as
by neglect of this, a part of your last was obliterated. The character of
Curran, which you have sketched most
ably, is a frequent one in its moral essentials, though, of course among the
most rare, if we take it with all its intellectual accompaniments. Whatever I
have read of Curran’s, has impressed me with a deep
conviction of his genius. Are not the Irish in general a more eloquent race
than we? Of North Wales my recollections are faint, and as to Wicklow I only
know from the newspapers that it is a mountainous country. As far as my memory
will permit me to decide on the grander parts of Caernarvonshire, I may say
that the single objects are superior to any which I have seen elsewhere, but
there is a deficiency in combination. I know of no mountain in the North equal
to Snowdon, but then we have an encampment of huge mountains, in no harmony
perhaps to the eye of a mere painter, but always interesting, various, and, as
it were, nutritive. Height is assuredly an advantage, as it connects the earth
with the sky, by the clouds that are ever skimming the summits, or climbing up,
or creeping down the sides, or rising from the chasm, like smoke from a
cauldron, or veiling or bridging the higher parts or lower parts of the
waterfalls. That you were less impressed by N. Wales I can easily believe; it
is possible that the scenes of Wicklow may be superior, but it is certain that
you were in a finer irritability of spirit to enjoy them. The first pause and
silence after a return from a very interesting visit is somewhat connected with
languor in all of us. Besides, as you have observed,
mountains, and mountainous scenery, taken collectively and cursorily, must
depend for their charms on their novelty. They put on their immortal interest
then first, when we have resided among them, and learned to understand their
language, their written characters, and intelligible sounds, and all their
eloquence, so various, so unwearied. Then you will hear no ‘twice-told
tale.’ I question if there be a room in England which commands a view of
mountains, and lakes, and woods, and vales, superior to that in which I am now
sitting. I say this, because it is destined for your study, if you come. You
are kind enough to say that you feel yourself more natural and unreserved with
me than with others. I suppose that this in great measure arises from my own
ebullient unreservedness. Something, too, I will hope may be attributed to the
circumstance that my affections are interested deeply in my opinions. But here,
too, you will meet with Wordsworth,
‘the latch of whose shoe I am unworthy to unloose,’ and
five miles from Wordsworth, Charles Lloyd has taken a house.
Wordsworth is publishing a second volume of the
‘Lyrical
Ballads,’ which title is to be dropped, and his
‘Poems’ substituted. Have you seen Sheridan since your return? How is it with your tragedy? Were
you in town when Miss
Bayley’stragedy was represented? How was it
that it proved so uninteresting? Was the fault in the theatre, the audience, or
the play? It must have excited a deeper feeling in you than that of mere
curiosity, for doubtless the tragedy has great merit. I know not indeed how far
Kemble might have watered and
thinned its consistence; I speak of the printed play. Have you read the
‘Wallenstein?’ Prolix and crowded and dragging as it is, it is yet
quite a model for its judicious management of the sequence of the scenes, and
such it is held in German theatres. Our English acting plays are many of them
wofully deficient in this part of the dramatic trade and mystery.
“Hartley is
well, and all life and action.—Yours, with unfeigned esteem,
S. T. Coleridge.
“Kisses for Mary and Fanny. God
love them! I wish you would come and look out for a house for yourself
here. You know, ‘I
wish’ is privileged to have something silly to follow it.”
The Same to the Same.
“Monday, Sep. 22, 1800.
“DearGodwin,—I received
your letter, and with it the enclosed note, which shall be punctually
re-delivered to you on the 1st October.
“Your tragedy to be exhibited at Christmas! I have indeed merely read
your letter, so it is not strange that my heart still continues beating out of
time. Indeed, indeed, Godwin, such a stream of hope and
fear rushed in on me, when I read the sentence, as you would not permit
yourself to feel. If there be anything yet undreamed of in our
philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel
thought out of the visual limit of a man’s own skull and heart; if the
clusters of ideas, which constitute our identity, do ever connect and unite
with a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves without the
servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light—I seem to feel
within myself a strength and a power of desire that might dart a modifying,
commanding impulse on a whole theatre. What does all this mean? Alas! that
sober sense should know no other to construe all this, except by the tame
phrase, I wish you success. . . .”
[In a previous letter not here given he had begged Godwin to stand godfather to his child. The
compliment was of course declined.]
“Your feelings respecting Baptism are, I suppose, much
like mine! At times I dwell on Man with such reverence, resolve all his follies
and superstitions into such grand primary laws of intellect, and in such wise
so contemplate them as ever-varying incarnations of the Eternal Life—that the
Llama’s dung-pellet, or the cow-tail which the dying Brahmin clutches
convulsively, become sanctified and sublime by the feelings which cluster round
them. In that mood I exclaim, my boys shall be christened! But then another fit
of moody philosophy attacks me. I look at my doted-on Hartley—he moves, he lives, he finds impulses
from within and from without, he is the darling of the
sun and of the breeze. Nature seems to bless him as a thing of her own. He
looks at the clouds, the mountains, the living beings of the earth, and vaults
and jubilates! Solemn looks and solemn words have been hitherto connected in
his mind with great and magnificent objects only: with lightning, with thunder,
with the waterfall blazing in the sunset. Then I say, shall I suffer him to see
grave countenances and hear grave accents, while his face is sprinkled? Shall I
be grave myself, and tell a lie to him? Or shall I laugh, and teach him to
insult the feelings of his fellow-men? Besides, are we not all in this present
hour, fainting beneath the duty of Hope? From such thoughts I stand up, and vow
a book of severe analysis, in which I will tell all I
believe to be truth in the nakedest language in which it can be told.
“My wife is now quite comfortable. Surely you might
come and spend the very next four weeks, not without advantage to both of us.
The very glory of the place is coming on. The local Genius is just arranging
himself in his highest attributes. But above all, I press it, because my mind
has been busied with speculations that are closely connected with those
pursuits which have hitherto constituted your utility and importance; and
ardently as I wish you success on the stage, I yet cannot frame myself to the
thought that you should cease to appear as a bold moral
thinker. I wish you to write a book on the power of the words, and the
processes by which the human feelings form affinities with them. In short, I
wish you to philosophize Horne
Tooke’s system, and to solve the great questions, whether
there be reason to hold that an action bearing all the semblance of
pre-designing consciousness may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of
such actions are possible? And close on the heels of this question would
follow, Is Logic the Essence of Thinking? In other
words, Is Thinking impossible without arbitrary signs?
And how far is the word ‘arbitrary’ a misnomer? Are not words,
&c., parts and germinations of the plant? And what is the law of their
growth? In something of this sort I would endeavour to destroy the old
antithesis of Words and Things; elevating, as it were, Words into Things, and living things too. All
the nonsense of vibrating, &c., you would of course dismiss. If what I have
written appear nonsense to you, or commonplace thoughts in a harlequinade of
outré expressions, suspend your judgment till we see
each other.—Yours sincerely,
S. T. Coleridge.
“I was in the country when Wallenstein was published.
Longman sent me down
half-a-dozen. The carriage back, the book was not worth.”
The Same to the Same.
“Monday, Oct. 13, 1800.
“DearGodwin,—I have been
myself too frequently a grievous delinquent in the article of letter-writing to
feel any inclination to reproach my friends when peradventure they have been
long silent. But, this is out of the question. I did not expect a speedier
answer, for I had anticipated the circumstances which you assign as the causes
of your delay.
“An attempt to finish a poem of mine for insertion in
the second volume of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ has thrown me so fearfully back in my
bread-and-beef occupations, that I shall scarcely be able to justify myself in
putting you to the expense of the few lines which I may be able to scrawl on
the present paper; but some parts in your letter interested me deeply, and I
wished to tell you so. First, then, you know Kemble, and I do not. But my conjectural judgments concerning
his character lead me to persuade an absolute, passive obedience to his
opinions; and this, too, because I would leave to every man his own trade. Your
trade has been in the present instance, 1st, To furnish a wise pleasure to your
fellow-beings in general; and 2dly, to give to Mr Kemble
and his associates the means of themselves delighting that part of your
fellow-beings assembled in a theatre. As to what relates to the first point, I
should be sorry indeed if greater men than Mr Kemble could
induce you to alter a ‘but’ to a ‘yet,’ contrary to
your own convictions. Above all things, an author ought to be sincere to the
public; and when William Godwin stands
in the title page, it is implied that W.
G. approves that which follows. Besides, the mind and finer
feelings are blunted by such obseqiousness. But in the theatre, it is as
Godwin & Co. ex
professo. I should regard it almost in the same light as
if I had written a song for Haydn to
compose and Mara to sing. I know indeed
what is poetry, but I do not know so well as he and she what will suit his
notes and her voice. That actors and managers are often wrong is true; but
still their trade is their trade, and the presumption is in favour of their
being right. For the Press, I should wish you to be solicitously nice, because
you are to exhibit before a larger and more respectable multitude than a
theatre presents to you, and in a new part—that of a poet employing his
philosophical knowledge.
“If it be possible, come therefore, and let us discuss
every page and every line. The time depends of course on the day fixed for the
representation of the piece.
“Now for something which I would fain believe is still
more important, namely the property of your philosophical speculations. Your
second objection, derived from the present ebb of opinion, will be best
answered by the fact that Mackintosh and
his followers have the flow. This is greatly in your
favour, for mankind are at present gross reasoners. They reason in a perpetual
antithesis; Mackintosh is an oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally
impossible that Mackintosh and the sophists of his school
can retain this opinion. You may well exclaim with Job, ‘O that my
adversary would write a book!’ When he publishes, it will be all
over with him, and then the minds of men will incline strongly to those who
would point out in intellectual perceptions a source of moral progressiveness.
Every man in his heart is in favour of your general principles. A party of
dough-baked democrats of fortune were weary of being dissevered from their
fellow rich men. They want to say something in defence of turning round.
Mackintosh puts that something into their mouths, and
for awhile they will admire and be-praise him. In a little while these men will
have fallen back into the ranks from which they had stepped out, and life is
too melancholy a thing for men
in general for the doctrine of unprogressiveness to remain popular. Men cannot
long retain their faith in the Heaven above the blue
sky, but a Heaven they will have, and he who reasons best on the side of that
universal wish will be the most popular philosopher. As to your first
objection, that you are no logician, let me say that your habits are analytic,
but that you have not read enough of Travels, Voyages, and Biography,
especially of men’s lives of themselves, and you have too soon submitted
your notions to other men’s censures in conversation. A man should nurse
his opinions in privacy and self-fondness for a long time, and seek for
sympathy and love, not for detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your
theory of Collision of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsions. I wish to
write more to state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently
serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity of
doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and look out for a
house.
S. T. Coleridge.
“I would gladly write any verses, but to a
prologue or epilogue I am utterly incompetent. . . . .”
The Same to the Same.
“Saturday night, [Dec. 9th, 1800.]
“DearGodwin.—The cause
of my not giving you that immediate explanation which you requested, was merely
your own intimation that you could attend to nothing until the fate of your
‘Melpomene,’ was decided. The plan was this: a system of
Geography, taught by a re-writing of the most celebrated Travels into the
different climates of the world, choosing for each climate one Traveller, but
interspersing among his adventures all that was interesting in incident or
observation from all former or after travellers or voyagers: annexing to each
travel a short essay, pointing out what facts in it illustrate what laws of
mind, &c. If a bookseller of spirit would undertake this work, I have no
doubt of its being a standard school-book. It should be as large as the last edition of Guthrie—12 or 1400 pages. I mentioned it to you because I
thought this sort of reading would be serviceable to your mind: but if you
reject the offer, mention it to no one, for in that case I will myself
undertake it. The ‘Life of Bolingbroke’
will never do in my opinion, unless you have many
original unpublished papers, &c. The good people
will cry it down as a Satan’s
Hell-broth, warmed up a-new by Beelzebub.
Besides, entre nous, my Lord Bolingbroke was but a very shallow
gentleman. He had great, indeed amazing, living talents, but there is
absolutely nothing in his writings, his philosophical writings to wit, which
had not been more accurately developed before him. All this, you will
understand, goes on the supposition of your being possessed of no number of
original letters. If you are, and if they enable you to explain the junction of
intellectual power and depraved appetites, for heaven’s sake go on
boldly, and dedicate the work to your friend Sheridan. For myself, I would rather have written the
‘Mad Mother’
than all the works of all the Bolingbrokes and
Sheridans, those brother meteors, that have been
exhaled from the morasses of human depravity since the loss of Paradise. But
this, my contempt of their intellectual powers as worthless, does not prevent
me from feeling an interest and a curiosity in their moral temperament, and I
am not weak enough to hope or wish that you should think or feel as I think or
feel.
“One phrase in your letter distressed me. You say that
much of your tranquillity depends on the coming hour. I hope that this does not
allude to any immediate embarrassment. If not, I should cry out against you
loudly. The motto which I prefixed to my tragedy when I sent it to the manager,
I felt, and I continue to feel. “‘Valeat res scenica, si me ‘Palma negata mærum, donata reducit
opimum.’
“The success of a tragedy in the present size of the
theatres (‘Pizarro’ is a pantomime) is in my humble opinion rather
improbable than probable. What tragedy has succeeded for the last 15 years? You
will probably answer the question by another. What tragedy has deserved to
succeed? and to that I can give no answer. Be my thoughts therefore sacred to
hope. If every wish of mine had a pair of hands, your
play should be clapped through 160 successive nights, and I would reconcile it
to my conscience (in part) by two thoughts: first, that you are a good man; and
secondly, that the divinity of Shakespere would remain all that while unblasphemed by the
applauses of a rabble, who, if he were now for the first time to present his
pieces, would tear them into infamy. Κόυρον γτορ εχει τό πλειστον άνθρώτων. The
mass of mankind are blind in heart, and I have been almost blind in my eyes.
For the last five weeks I have been tormented by a series of bodily grievances,
and for great part of the time deprived of the use of my poor eyes by
inflammation, and at present I have six excruciating boils behind my right ear,
the largest of which I have christened Captain Robert, in
honour of De Foe’s
‘Captain Robert Boyle.’
Eke, I have the rheumatism in my hand. If therefore there be anything fitful
and splenetic in this letter, you know where to lay the fault, only do not
cease to believe that I am interested in all that relates to you and your
comforts. God grant I may receive your tragedy with the πότνια νίχη in the title
page!
“My darling Hartley has been ill, but is now better. My youngest is a fat
little creature, not unlike your Mary.
God love you and
“S. T.
Coleridge.
“P.S.—Do you continue to
see dear Charles Lamb often? Talking
of tragedies, at every perusal my love and admiration of his play rises a peg.
C. Lloyd is settled at Ambleside,
but I have not seen him. I have no wish to see him, and likewise no wish
not to see him.”
The Same to the Same.
“Wednesday night, Dec. 17th, 1800.
“DearGodwin.—I received
the newspaper with a beating heart, and laid it down with a heavy one. But
cheerily, friend! it is worth something to have learnt what will not please.
Kemble, like Saul,
is among the prophets. The account in the Morning Post, was so unusually well
written, and so unfeelingly harsh, that it induced suspicions in my mind of the
author.
“If your interest in the theatre is not ruined by the
fate of this, your first piece, take heart, set instantly about a new one, and
if you want a glowing subject, take the death of Myrza as
related in the Holstein Ambassador’s Travels into Persia, in p. 93, vol
ii. of ‘Harris’s
Collections.’ There is crowd, character, passion, incident and
pageantry in it; and the history is so little known that you may take what
liberties you like without danger.
“It is my present purpose to spend the two or three
weeks after the Christmas holidays in London. Then we can discuss all and
everything. Your last play
wanted one thing which I believe is almost indispensable in a play—a proper rogue, in the cutting of whose throat the
audience may take an unmingled interest.
“We are all tolerably well. God love you, and
“S. T.
Coleridge. “Greta Hall, Keswick.
“P.S.—There is a paint, the
first coating of which, put on paper, becomes a dingy black, but the second
time to a bright gold colour. So I say—Put on a second coating,
friend!”
CHAPTER II. HOLCROFT AND ARNOT. 1800.
Holcroft was at Hamburg
during the year 1800, turning over a variety of schemes in his busy brain, and carrying
some of them into action—schemes of translations from foreign languages, of recasting
travels in Russia for the English book market, of plays, novels, reviews, schemes also of
buying pictures to re-sell, and of making art catalogues of the contents of various foreign
galleries. But these and their results may best be told in selections from his own letters.
Godwin’s replies are for the most part
irrecoverable. He took copies of all by a machine, but the copying ink has faded, while the
paper was so thin, that it falls to bits in the attempt to decipher the faint trace of
writing left on it.
It is not now possible to discover what particular act of kindness on
Godwin’s part led to the burst of
gratitude in the following letter. It was either the unwearied sacrifice of his valuable
time on his friend’s behalf, or some actual relief in money, sent at a period when he
was himself sorely straitened in means, and was under considerable obligations to the
Wedgwoods.
T. Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Hamburg, January 24th, 1800.
“On the 20th instant yours of the 24th of December
arrived, and this day I received those of December 10th, Decr. 31st, and Jan. 14th. The mixed sensations they have excited in me
are such as never can be forgotten. The ardour, firmness, and activity of your
friendship, the true and simple dignity with which you feel and act, the
embarrassment under which you are at this moment, and the relief which you find
in the confidence that on the receipt of yours I shall immediately do my
duty,—in short that delightful mingling of souls which is never so intimately
felt as on such extraordinary occasions as these, are now all in full force,
and producing such emotions in me as you yourself cannot but both have desired
and expected. . . .
“The first volume of ‘St Leon’ has been sent to Berlin, and
whether it may there have found a publisher I cannot yet say, but I shall write
this evening, and if it be not already in train, send for it back that it may
be translated here, and if possible still some emolument derived for you. You
say you will act for me as you would for yourself, and you have so acted. I
will endeavour not to be far behind you. I feel there is even more pleasure in
receiving than in performing such acts of kindness.
“You blame me for not saying more of Arnot. I imagined he had written to you his
whole history. He went to Vienna, where he has been ill, and recovered, and
where, I suppose, he still is. While he was here, I gave him a little of the
little I had in my pocket, and Mr Cole
paid for his lodging and some other trifles. Sophy conceived some prejudice against him, for which I am
sorry, and at which, it seems, he was more angry than gratified by the kindness
testified to him by all the rest, particularly by my dear Louisa, who, with Fanny, feels toward you and for you almost as much as I do. Not
knowing you quite so well, they are still more struck at the decisive
friendship with which you act, and love you for it most affectionately. . . .
“Farewell.
T. Holcroft.”
“My dearest father has done justice to the
feelings your most excellent letter, and still more excellent—nay,
noble—conduct, have excited. Yes, we love you most affectionately, and hope
again to realise the exquisite pleasure of emulating while we witness the
virtues and genius of yourself and those friends who make truth so lovely. You have not
mentioned your sister, the dear children, and Louisa Jones. By that, we hope and infer they are all in
health. Remember us all very affectionately to them, and tell Fanny and Mary that in two or three years we may perchance bring them
a little visitor as amiable and lively as themselves. He really is a fine
boy. I mean, my dear, dear brother, the infant of our dear, excellent
Louisa, who, dear soul, has a
bad cold, but in other respects she is very well. I hope you know me too
well to doubt the sincerity of heart with which I sign myself—Your
affectionate young friend,
Fanny Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Hamburg, Feb. 11th, 1800.
“. . . The chief, though not the only purpose of this
letter, is to inform you that Mr Villiaume has at last
undertaken to have your book
translated and a thousand copies printed, the profits of which, without risk,
you are to share. But it is necessary to premise that these profits, if any,
will not be paid till Easter, 1801, and that the agreement is verbal. I meet
this Mr Villiaume at the house of a merchant. Delicacy
would not permit me to ask for formal written documents, and I have no reason
on earth to suspect him of dishonesty, with this only exception, that
dishonesty is here practised beyond credibility. Such, at least, is the cry,
which the anecdotes I have heard confirm. You may gain eighty pounds, you can
lose nothing. . . .
“Has your Tragedy been performed? I think it would suit the German stage; but
the German stage, honour excepted, is almost barren of emolument.
“Of my Comedy, according to your account, there is
little hope. Mr Richardson’s improvements are some
unintelligible, and others, in my opinion, of the Irish kind—they would improve
it to its destruction. I approve my plan, and as a plan will not alter it; for
that plan is its very soul, if any soul it has. Perhaps, from his suggestion, I
may make my simple Lawyer a Judge. If that will satisfy him, it shall be done;
if not, so be it.
“The incidents of the last six months have occasioned
me to neglect my father’s widow, and I am fearful lest the kind little
woman should be in distress. You delight in the charities of life. If money is
advanced on my pictures, so that I can pay debts contracted for them here, and
if as much as twelve pounds in addition be to be had from them, I entreat you
to write, in my name, to the Rev. Mr G. Smith of
Knotsford, in Cheshire, to state absence, distance, &c., as the reason of
her not having heard sooner from me, and to say that on receiving a draft and
line under her own hand, the said sum of twelve pounds shall be immediately
paid, and annually continued as usual.
“Were a man to be made miserable by the sudden
deprivation of conveniences to which he had long been accustomed, I should be
sufficiently so; but you know either my heroism or my romance, for I am happy
amidst cold, dirt, ignorance, selfishness, and a long et
cetera. My dear Louisa is in
excellent health, my kind-hearted and industrious Fanny is my active and very
essential assistant, You do not forget me, Mr
Marshal and others take pleasure in serving me,—and think you I
can be miserable?
“We shall soon stand still for ‘St Leon.’ Two vols, must
appear at the Leipsic Easter Fair.
T. Holcroft.”
Several letters follow from which no extract need be made. They are one
wail of distress at the sale of the precious pictures having realised next to nothing, and
at the failure of a journal which was “to make England acquainted with the
literary merit of the North,” of which the sheets had been sent to Godwin and Marshal.
The sale of this was under one hundred, instead of exceeding thousands, and the future
publication was of course stopped. In regard to the pictures, it is simply wonderful that
Holcroft, whether a judge of art or not, could
have believed that the world was so rich in treasures as to enable him to gather at Hamburg
pictures of great value, which he shipped to England in twenties and thirties at a time.
In calmer moments he speaks himself of
“this picture-dealing insanity of mine;” but at other times he
persisted in buying whatever came in his way, in spite of the warnings of Opie the artist and Christie the dealer, both his friends, and both anxious to serve him.
Godwin’s reply, after telling him his firm
conviction that friends and auctioneers had done their best, proceeds with this very
plain-spoken advice:—
William Godwin to T. Holcroft.
[May 1800.]
“. . . I most earnestly wish, as you hint in your last
letter, that you would come over and superintend the sale of these pictures
yourself. I have a further and very strong reason for wishing it. If the
consequence of your embarrassments should be your being thrown into prison,
reflect on the difference between being a prisoner here and at Hamburg. Here
you may be a prisoner in the rules of the King’s Bench, or the Fleet,
which is almost nominal imprisonment. You may see booksellers and other persons
with whom you wish to transact business, with whom, I fear, you will never make
advantageous engagements without being on the spot. There—I turn away with
horror from the supposition—there, imprisonment would be little less than a
sentence of death, and starvation to your family. Reflect seriously on this.
“I will take every care in my power respecting the
pictures, which, I suppose, are now on their voyage to England. I will see
Opie, I will see Gillies; I will, if possible, clear them at
the Custom House, and lodge them in a place of safety, to wait your further
orders. Beyond this I cannot go.
“And now, to dismiss this subject, I say firmly,
‘Stop!’ Think how much anguish, how many sleepless nights you are
preparing for yourself. Your life—as much of it as is spent in this
pursuit—will be one series of corroding expectation and continual
disappointment. Indeed, it is madness; for what is madness but a constant
calculation of feelings and a sentiment in mankind—the
sentiment in this instance of bestowing a large price on your pictures—which is
never realised. You give the greatest pain to all your friends here, who are
anxious for your welfare. What can we think, when we see a catalogue of
pictures, rated by you at so many thousand pounds, which no man here thinks
will sell for as many hundreds? You will go near in the sequel to make us as
mad as yourself. . . .”
T. Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Hamburg, May 27th, 1800.
“I cannot but suppose the letters I have written, from
their tenor and the circumstances under which they were dictated, have been
among the most disagreeable you have ever received. This will increase their
number. On Friday evening, the 16th instant, as I was preparing to wash my
feet, and had a half-pint vial of aqua fortis in my hand, after pouring in
about a spoonful to the warm water—from which kind of bath my feet had found
benefit—the vial suddenly burst in my hand, and the contents, partly flying up
into my face, and the rest upon my hands, arms, and thighs, burned me in so
dreadful a manner, that during two hours, till medical help could be procured,
I was firmly persuaded my eyes had been destroyed. I thought I felt them run
down my cheeks in water. The torture I suffered is indescribable. The places
most burnt were my forehead, left eye and cheek, nose and chin, right hand and
wrist, and the right thigh and knee; the forehead and wrist shockingly; though
the left side was far from escaping. What degree of permanent injury may arise,
I do not yet know; but it will be well if my eyes, especially the left, recover
their former strength. In other respects, a few scars, I am told, are the only
things to be feared, and these not of a hideous nature.
“Now to business. . . .
“Fanny has been
reading parts of “Fischer’s Travels in
Russia” to me during my Jobation. I suppose
Job had been burnt with aqua fortis, since I hear so
much of his patience; and my opinion is still very favourable. It is a work to
which I am willing to attach my
name, though not to all translations, e.g., ‘Mirabeau’s Berlin Memoires de Voltaire,
ecrits par lui même,’ &c.
“Perhaps it is impatience which is astonished, not
reason, that you had heard nothing of the arrival of my pictures. My situation
is so painful, that, damnable as the burning of aqua fortis is, I feel as if I
could better endure it than this state of mind in which my moral character
remains for a time degraded. . . .
“T.
Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Altona, June 3rd, im Pflockschen
Hause, bei Hamburg.
“. . . The first volume of the translation of
‘St Leon’
appeared at the Leipsic fair; but the number subscribed for was not quite a
hundred copies, which the bookseller considers as rather unfavourable. You,
however, can sustain no loss.”
The Same to the Same. [In answer to Godwin’s letter of May.]
“Altona, June 13th, 1800.
“Though the attacks I have lately received of body and
mind have been extraordinary, yet surely I am not mad. Or if I were, it cannot
be that I am surrounded by none but madmen. I have not depended merely upon my
own judgment in the pictures I have sent to London. I consulted a variety of
persons, and, among others the best artists and judges I could find, two of
whom I may certainly affirm are competent to the task of giving an opinion. . .
. I tremble lest the impressions under which Messrs Opie and Birch may have gone to examine
the pictures should have led them to decline interference, and even suffer
pictures which cost here between four and five hundred pounds to be sold at the
Custom House to pay the duties. Surely this cannot have happened. I believe
there is a plain way of proceeding. Christie is not the only auctioneer. Cox
and Burrel are, or very lately were, men of enterprize.
Phillips might do the business
profitably, and he would undertake it with eagerness. . . .
“It is needless to add anything to impress you with a
deep feeling of my present situation. I refer you to my
former letters. It is not a prison, it is disgrace, that I dread, and which, I
own, I want the fortitude to meet with any degree of apathy. I therefore
request you to proceed with the earnestness and expedition you have hitherto
used, and to let me know the result as soon as possible; for if it should be
that no man will advance money on these pictures, I must then try whether I
have not a friend on earth who will on my own credit and for my own sake
entrust me with such a sum till it can be repaid by the produce of my brain. I
am proceeding with the ‘Abbe de
L’Epée.’ ‘The
Lawyer’ shall likewise be altered and sent. I have written to
Robinson, as you are doubtless
informed by a note addressed to you and enclosed in his letter” [which
contained proposals for a German-English Dictionary], “and I am in treaty
with a German bookseller on the same subject. Were I a thousand pounds in debt
at this moment, allow me only two years, and I have no doubt it would be paid.
The fact, however, is, that unfortunate as my affairs have been, and gloomy as
appearances are, I have pictures in my possession, unless sold at the Custom
House, which, exclusive of duties, have cost me about six hundred pounds; I
have ‘The Lawyer,’ which certainly will
not take me a month to alter; I have the piece I am now employed upon, that
will be finished in less than three weeks; and you have the trifle, which, if
accepted, has a chance of concurring to raise supplies.
“The burns in my wrist and forehead reached almost to
the bone and skull; consequently they are yet far from cured. The pain of them
continues to be considerable, though such as may be supported with entire
calmness. It was the accident of having my spectacles on that saved my eyes,
and I feel rather as if I had obtained a blessing, than suffered agony and
injury.
“We are all well, these burns of mine excepted, and
the boy grows finely. No enquiries of mine can excite you to say a word of any
being whom I love and esteem, not even of your children. I know you have enough
to do with my damned affairs: however, notwithstanding their ill turn, you
cannot but receive the applauses of your own heart, as you do most fervently of
mine.
“T.
Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Altona, August 15th, 1800.
“. . . At last we have received a letter from
Mr William Nicholson, so
circumstantially meagre and hide-bound. Damnation! His frost inflames my gall.
He does not mean it thus; but experimental philosophy has rendered him most
wise, and full of incoherency. I suppose he might be induced to walk as far as
the end of the street to serve a friend, provided it was quite certain his wife
would not want him to weigh ten grains of rhubarb in the interim. Good God! how
nearly are greatness and littleness allied. And so it is with us all. I have
not told you, nor can I at present tell, how nobly Clementi behaved to me; but you, and more than you, shall some
day hear.”
The Same to the Same.
“Altona. Sept. 9th, 1800.
“. . . I know not how to speak of ‘St Leon’ so as to do you
justice. I always felt the insurmountable defect of the work, and the strained
if not improbable incidents that must be invented to exhibit a miserable man
who had every means of enjoyment in his power. You have repeated to me times
almost innumerable the necessity of keeping characters in action, and never
suffering them to sermonize, yet of this fault ‘St
Leon’ is particularly found guilty by all whom I have heard
speak of the work, with whom my feelings coincide. Is it then a weak and
unworthy performance? Far indeed the reverse. Men must have arrived at an
uncommon degree of general wisdom, when ‘St
Leon’ shall no longer be read. Your Marguerite is inimitable. Knowing the model after which you
drew, as often as I recollected it, my heart ached while I read. Your Bethlem Gabor is wonderfully drawn. It is like
the figures of Michel Angelo, any
section of an outline of which taken apart would be improbable and false, but
which are so combined as to form a sublime whole. Having read I could coldly
come back, and point to the caricature traits of the portrait, but while
reading I could feel nothing but astonishment and admiration. Through the whole work there is so much to censure, and so much to
astonish, that in my opinion it is in every sense highly interesting. Its
faults and its beauties are worthy the attention of the most acute critic. . .
.
“Do you wilfully omit to sign your letters? No. The
question is an outrage.
“T.
Holcroft.”
Before Holcroft wrote the last
letter to be quoted in this year, he had heard that “Antonio” had been acted and had failed.
The Same to the Same.
“Altona, Decr. 26th, 1800.
“. . . Enough of these paltry and repining thoughts.
Would that [want of money] were the worst of evils. You have a grief upon your
mind which requires all your fortitude to keep at bay. Do not imagine it is
unfelt by me. Before your account reached me I read the malignant and
despicable triumph of ‘The
Times.’ It was not ‘Alonzo’ but William Godwin who was brought to the bar, and
not to be tried, but to be condemned. It was in vain to croak, having seriously
warned you as I did: you were of a different opinion; and to have been more
urgent would only have produced disagreeable feelings, not conviction, but with
me it was a moral certainty that if your name were only whispered, the
condemnation of your tragedy was ensured. J. P.
Kemble well knew this; and hence his refusals and forebodings.
Yet it pleased me to see that malignity itself was obliged to own the play had
beauties. It then asks, if it were any wonder? Good God! how disgusting is the
naive and open impudence of such a question, when joined to the ribald abuse by
which it was preceded. I cannot relieve you; that is—do not think the phrase
too strong—that is my misery: yet I wish you would tell me what is the state of
your money affairs? I am in great anxiety. I form a thousand pictures of
hovering distress of the dear children, the house you have to support, and the
thoughts that are perhaps silently corroding your heart. Do not subtract from
the truth in compassion
to my feelings, strong as they are for myself and others, they always end in
enquiring if there be any effectual remedy? Direct in future to me, at
Mr Schuhmacher’s, New Burg, Hamburg: he is my
friend, and will remit my letters safely, for I know not where I shall
be.”
Besides Holcroft, Godwin’s other foreign correspondent was Arnot, whose letters begin again early in the year; he was
as undaunted and as poor as ever, and suffering much in bodily health. The loss of the
journal kept by him is greatly to be regretted, for, as will be seen, his travels extended
to a part of Europe even now but little known to foreigners; and he had the great merit,
still rare, of sympathy with those among whom he came.
J. Arnot to William Godwin.
[Vienna] “February 16, 1800.
“I have not yet received an answer to two letters
which I wrote to you about the end of November.
“My friends would write to me more frequently, if
they knew what a gratification to me a letter from them affords. It rouses me
from my indifference, revives my affection for them, and imprints afresh their
image upon my mind: and this is not a little necessary in a mode of life which,
as Dyson, in his only letter to me, well
observes, is so unfavourable to the growth of amicable attachments. When I read
his letter first, I thought he might possibly be in the right in this, but I
did not then so strongly feel its truth as I have done since.
“When I received my portmanteau, I began to write my
journal of last year. When I had brought it up to my arrival in Riga, I read
over all I had written, and was so little satisfied with it, that I lost all
courage to proceed. I now think I shall scarcely have time to finish it till I
return to England. . . .
“In one or other of the two letters I have mentioned,
I told you I would go next summer to Hungary. I shall set out pro-bably about the beginning of May. My route I have not yet
determined. Upon looking at the map, I have been thinking to go from Opa and
Pesth straight to Belgrade, or at least to Semlin, which is over against it,
and from thence going through the Bannat, to travel over Transylvania and the
North of Hungary toward the Carpathian Mountains. I need scarcely tell you,
that every one here who has heard of my design, has advised me against it, as a
thing highly dangerous, if not impracticable.
“When I left England I had no thoughts of going to
Hungary. I meant to have gone from Germany immediately to France, on the
supposition that peace would, ere this, have been established. In going to
Hungary, I deviate from my first project; though it is a deviation which I hope
will be rather an improvement. But I will deviate from it no further. Upon
returning from Hungary, I intend to go directly to France, peace or not. If I
can do so with safety to myself, I do not suppose that any disadvantage will
thereby arise to others, and the consciousness of this makes me hesitate the
less in following my own inclinations, without regarding any edicts that may
have been made to the contrary in England. To what part of the world can a man
go to avoid the encroachments and tyranny of his fellows? I must not go to
France, it seems, because, if I do, a man called William Pitt will not let me return to England without
molestation, but will endeavour to punish me by a law of his own making. What
an impudent fellow he is!. . .
“My love to all my friends. I hope the children are
well, and that they still continue to be the sources of much happiness to you.
Long may they be so. I am, with great esteem, yours,
“John
Arnot.”
The Same to the Same.
[Vienna], “19th
Feb. 1800.
“I am sorry you showed my brother my journal from
Edinburgh to London. Although I do not think it contains anything, as far as I
can now recollect, to entitle me to the abhorrence of those who shall peruse
it, yet I am sensible that my mind, at the time in which I wrote it, was in a very perturbed
state; and I do not much wonder that my brother should not wish, as indeed I do
not wish myself, that it should come before the public eye in its present form.
I wish you had not showed it him. I know my family better than you. I cannot,
indeed, bring myself to doubt my brother’s honour; but when you gave it
him upon the two conditions, that he only should peruse it, and that he should
return it as soon as read, why did he say you should have it in four days? why
specify four days? and having specified four days, why keep it for a fortnight?
Mr Sevright is in London.
“But why do I put these questions to you? Can you
answer them any more than myself?
“Abhorrence! Do you abhor me, Godwin? I cannot recollect all that I wrote,
but this I remember, that your sensations upon having read it seemed to me to
be not those of abhorrence. My brother is a good young man, as men go; I do not
doubt his honour, but I doubt very much if his sense of right and wrong is
either more just or more acute than yours. . . .
“Man, as you justly observe, is the creature of
success. If I finish my undertaking successfully, I shall ever acknowledge that
the concern you had in it, though accidental, was far from trivial. I formed
the design before I knew or had any hopes of knowing you; without you I would
certainly have attempted it, but without the assistance which I have derived by
your means, I should as certainly have sunk under the execution. When I
consider the history of my own mind, I may almost say that to travel was my
destiny. I was driven to it by an irresistible impulse; by an inextinguishable
thirst of knowledge, which is probably inherent in every youthful uncorrupted
mind. The dangers, and even the hardships which I have already overcome,
although great, are not superior to those which, by all accounts, I shall still
have to encounter. I may be cut off: such an event may well happen: but I see
no reason that you should therefore have a portion of remorse, as if you had
been my murderer. You know better than any others the motives by which you have
been influenced in giving me the encouragement and assistance you have done;
and the consciousness of these, if good—why that
if?—ought to inspire fortitude sufficient to suppress—I will not say regret,
for that, if I may judge from my own feelings, it would be difficult to
withhold from the memory of a friend—but certainly remorse. The risk I run is
great. If I perish, I don’t know whether it were not better that my name
and my actions should alike be buried in oblivion; since I am convinced that
nothing that shall be found in my papers will do justice either to me, or the
undertaking, or to the advantages to accrue from it, if completed. . . .
J. A.”
The Same to the Same.
[Presburg], “Sunday, 18 May 1800.
“Dear Sir,—I write from
Presburg. I have sent my manuscripts, &c., to the care of my sister, and
have told her to deliver them unopened to you. . . .
“Upon recollection, I am much pleased with your last
letter in which you say you feel yourself identified in some measure with me.
Our acquaintance was but short, yet I feel as if our souls were nearly allied.
But our situations are very different. You live in retirement. Although in the
neighbourhood of a great city, you may be said to be widely removed from the
influence of those violent passions which agitate in so extraordinary a degree
the present generation. But I am tossed to and fro in a tempestuous world. I
have hourly to encounter the passions and prejudices of men, and to suppress my
own passions, naturally strong, on occasions eminently calculated to rouse them
to the utmost. Wherever I have turned my steps I have met with obstacles; in
almost every man I have found an opposer; disease, poverty, and persecution
have united to afflict me. If, in such circumstances as these, you have
supposed that I was at all times to preserve the same collected coolness which
I might be able to do in maturer age, and in the quiet of retirement, you have
expected from me what is probably more than will ever be performed by man. It
is perhaps enough that I can recover myself, and collect my powers for new
efforts; and that I never lose sight of the main object, but continue to pursue
it with steadiness while it is possible to be pursued. . . .
“I am going to Pesth, Fünfkirchen, Semlin, Temeswar,
Hermanstadt. I shall thence turn towards the north. I will visit Deehczin,
Cashan, and Eperin, and cross the Carpathians into Poland. I have gotten an
invitation from a Polish prince to visit him at his country seat, from whence,
by the way of Cracow, we are to return together to Vienna.
“I shall write again from Pesth.
John Arnot.”
Two more letters, in October and November, containing Arnot’s thanks for £20 which Godwin had sent him from a “Mr
Boswille or Borville,” who heard from Godwin of,
and pitied his sad condition, speak, but very cursorily, of a lady of whom he thinks more
than of his travels, and announce his intention of returning to England.
And in a third and final letter there are these lines of interest.
J. Arnot to William Godwin.
“Vienna, 26 Decr. 1800.
. . . ” The enemy are within a few posts of this
city. In the midst of winter, all strangers are ordered to depart. That need
not hinder you to write if you intend to write.
“John
Arnot.”
It has seemed inexpedient to interrupt either series of the foregoing
letters, to give those of Mrs Godwin which follow.
They, however, and one from Mrs Robinson, fitly find
place here, before those of Charles Lamb, so closely
mixed up with the story of Godwin’s tragedy,
“Antonio,” with which
his brain had travailed during all the months of the spring and summer, which was produced,
and failed at once with the failing year.
Mrs Godwin Sen. to William Godwin.
“Feb. 6, 1800.
“DearWm.,—I shoud be glad to hear a good account of
Joseph. I doubt much his amendment
it is not the first time he has overcome you with fine words. He seems
according to what I can learn to be poorer for ye £44 I
have given him than he was before he had it, he now can’t neither board
nor cloth Harriot. I hear she is gone to service somewhere
in the country. Well, she had better begin low than be puffd up with pride now and afterwards become low, for she had certainly
no good exampels at home. I heard once she was in expectation of being sent to
her Aunt Barker’s, but what barbarity is it not to
let her have shoes to her feet when she came to your sister’s. I am glad
she did not go where her education woud have been as bad as at home. London is
the place where girls go too for Servises to get better wages than they can in
the country, but I know the reason is he is given up to pride and sensuality
and well know where yt will lead him to and all that
tread in the same steps. I hoped, tho’ it was not likely, to have done
him good and your Sister too but I find
I am misstaken. We in the country deny ourselves because of ye dearness of provisions, make meal dumplings, meal crusts to pies
mix’d with boil’d rice and a very little butter in them, our bread
meal and rice which we have bout at twopence per pound,
and very good it is, pancakes wth boil’d rice in
water till tender and very little milk or egg with flower. we have had a very
favourable winter hitherto, only one sharp frost one fortnight. Did you pay
Mary Bailey £5 or not, has her father done anything
for them, how do they go on, what is their direction? Is J.
Jex steady and give content in his sittuation. I wish him to
learn his business stay his time I hope he is bound till 21 years of age I hope
yr brother John will take a prudent care. I cannot promise for Natty he wishes to be in business for himself
and to marry. He has made one attempt but she was pre-ingaged and I don’t
know another in the world I should like so well, so most likely he must remain
a servant all his days. Providence ought to be submited to, ’tis but a
little while we have to live here in comparison of Eternity and wedlock is
attended with many cares and fears. I am not well very few days together
tho’ I keep about. My great complaint is a bad dejestion. I desire to
resign myself to ye almighty will in every thing but
life to me is now a burthen rather than a pleasure. I wish you the truest
happiness I don’t mean what ye world calls
happiness for that’s of short duration, but a prospect of that happiness
that will never fade away—from your affectionate mother
A. Godwin.
“I have not written to yr
sister now because I have written not long since and she seems to be in her
old strain, the same note and I am afraid ever will be remember me to her
and JohnMrs Cooper and
Wilcox.”
The Same to the Same.
“March 28, 1800.
“DearWm.—I have but just time to write three or four lines
on a parcel to Mary Bailey. I hope you will write very
soon. I wish to hear how you and Your dear children do and poor JohnHanhJax
GodwinMary Bailey goes on and poor
Harriot, and if Mary Bailey have
had the £5 I intended for her. Likewise if you recd
Turkey and Saccages sent in a basket to Hanh about 2 of January. I understand Jo accepts an invitation from Hull of coming to Dalling the latter end of
May or beginning of June. In his letter never mentioned wife or child. How
shall I meet such a disgraceful wretch as He my god Sustain me if this be
marrying may the others for ever keep single but what is men when left to their
own unruly passions. ‘The highest Heaven of their Persuit Is to live equal to the Brute Hapy if they could die as well Without a Judge, without a Hell.’
“Your affecate
Mother, A. G.”
“I am as well as I can expect to be and the rest
of the family who with Nath desire
respects to you and yours.”
The friendship which existed between Godwin and Mrs Robinson has been
already noticed. The only letters which passed between them now remaining are a few from
the lady, belonging to the year on which we are now engaged. They show a clever woman,
unregulated and undisciplined, whose hold over Godwin was maintained,
after the glamour of her exceeding beauty had ceased to charm, by unbounded flattery, to
which he was only too accessible. And he had a sincere pity for her sorrows. She was at
this time a martyr to rheumatism, and in great poverty, owing to the irregular payment of
the annuity from the Prince of Wales. The present
generation has nearly learned to estimate that person at his true value, yet an extract
from the letters of his former mistress may help to show what were some of the qualities
which went to “mould a George.”
The writer at the date of her letter was under arrest for debt.
Mrs Robinson to Godwin.
“Friday, 30th
May 1800.
“. . . .—The fact is simply this, were I to resist
the action as a married woman, I might set it aside, and
recover damages from my persecutor, because the arrest is for necessaries, and
my husband is therefore by law obliged to pay the debt, there being no kind of
legal separation between us. But then, I should involve that husband, and act,
as I should feel, dishonestly towards my creditors. I therefore submit
patiently. I have had various proposals from many friends to settle the
business, but I am too proud to borrow, while the arrears now
due on my annuity from the Prince of
Wales would doubly pay the sum for which I am arrested. I have
written to the Prince, and his answer is that there is no money at Carlton
House—that he is very sorry for my situation, but that his own is equally
distressing!! You will smile at such
paltry excuses, as I do. But I am determined to persist
in my demand, half a year’s annuity being really due, which is two
hundred and fifty pounds, and I am in custody for sixty-three pounds only! So circumstanced I will neither borrow, beg, nor
steal. I owe very little in the world, and still less to
the world,—and it is unimportant to me where I pass my days, if I possess the
esteem and friendship of its best ornaments, among which I consider you,—Most sincerely, I am, dear sir, your obliged and
humble servant,
M. Robinson.”
Mrs Robinson died on Dec. 26th, at her residence at
Englefield Green, and on the last day of the year 1800. Godwin attended her funeral at Old Windsor.
CHAPTER III. TRAGEDY OF ANTONIO. 1800.
The letters from Charles
Lamb which belong to this year are, as well as the criticism which follows
the earliest which are found among the Godwin papers. The acquaintance between them had
been one of some standing, which had now ripened into great intimacy. “Cooper,”
named in this and some other letters, is not our friend “Tom,” who was still in America, but Godwin’s maid-servant.
The object of the meeting on the Sunday evening of which the letter speaks
was to re-read the play of “Antonio” before its representation, and may therefore fitly introduce the
whole subject of that drama.
C. Lamb to William Godwin.
[Dec. 4.]
“Dear Sir,—I send this speedily after the heels of
Cooper (O! the dainty expression) to say that
Mary is obliged to stay at home on
Sunday to receive a female friend, from whom I am equally glad to escape. So
that we shall be by ourselves. I write, because it may make some difference in
your marketting, &c.
“C. L.” “Thursday morning.
“I am sorry to put you to the expense of twopence
postage. But I calculate thus: if Mary comes she will
eat Beef 2 plates, 4d. Batter Pudding 1 do. 2d. Beer, a pint, 2d. Wine, 3 glasses, 11d. I drink no wine! Chesnuts, after dinner, 2d. Tea and supper at moderate calculation, 9d. ——— 2s. 6d. From which deduct 2d. postage ——— 2s. 4d.
You are a clear gainer by her not coming.
The chief literary work of the year 1800 was the “Tragedy of Antonio,” and so little do authors
know their own powers, that to the latest day of his life Godwin considered it his best work. To us, looking at it with calmer minds,
it seems an extremely poor production.
The plot is of the simplest. Helena
was betrothed, with her father’s consent, to her brother Antonio’s friend, Roderigo. While
Antonio and Roderigo were at the wars, Helena fell
in love with, and married, Don Gusman. She was the
king’s ward, who set aside the pre-contract. Antonio, returning, leaves his friend behind; he has had great sorrows, but
all will be well when he comes to claim his bride. When Antonio finds his sister is married, the rage he exhibits is ferocious. He
carries his sister off from her husband’s house, and demands that the king shall
annul the marriage with Gusman. There is then talk of
Helena’s entrance into a convent. At last the
king, losing patience, gives judgment, as he had done before, that
the pre-contract with Roderigo was invalid, and the
marriage to Gusman valid. Whereupon Antonio bursts through the guards, and kills his sister.
It will be seen that here is no human interest. We cannot at all
sympathize with Antonio, or with the neglected lover,
for whom we have only Antonio’s word that he was
an excellent man; and since there is no poetry whatever in the blank verse, the effect of
the whole is dull beyond measure or belief.
Yet Godwin had taken more pains
with this drama than with perhaps any other work which had ever proceeded from his pen. The
diary records constant and laborious work on it, continual revisions and polishings.
Poetry, it will be remembered, had been the delight of his early years, and with that
blindness to the true nature of his powers, which is the characteristic of many another
writer, he considered poetry the pursuit in which his maturer manhood was destined to
excel. Such was not altogether the opinion of his friends. Lamb sent him an elaborate criticism, which should have made him suspect
that all was not as it should be in his great work, and Colman’s rejection of it should have satisfied him that it was not a
play which would be acceptable to the public. But Lamb was so
genuinely kind, and even affectionate in his criticism, so anxious to see all the beauty
that he could, that Godwin did not perceive the real disapproval of
which Lamb himself was scarce aware.
So much of this critique as is not simply verbal may here be given:—
Minute sent by C. Lamb to William
Godwin.
“Queries. Whether the best
conclusion would not be a solemn judicial pleading, appointed by the king,
before himself in person of
Antonio as proxy for Roderigo, and Guzman for himself—the forms and ordering of it to be highly
solemn and grand. For this purpose, (allowing it,) the king must be reserved,
and not have committed his royal dignity by descending to previous conference
with Antonio, but must refer from the
beginning to this settlement. He must sit in dignity as a high royal arbiter.
Whether this would admit of spiritual interpositions, cardinals,
&c.—appeals to the Pope, and haughty rejection of his interposition by
Antonio—(this merely by the way).
“The pleadings must be conducted by short
speeches—replies, taunts, and bitter recriminations by Antonio, in his rough style. In the midst of the undecided
cause, may not a messenger break up the proceedings by an account of Roderigo’s death (no improbable or
far-fetch’d event), and the whole conclude with an affecting and awful
invocation of Antonio upon Roderigo’s spirit, now no longer dependent
upon earthly tribunals or a froward woman’s will, &c., &c.
“‘Almanza’s daughter is now free,’ &c.
“This might be made very affecting. Better nothing
follow after; if anything, she must step forward and resolve to take the veil.
In this case, the whole story of the former nunnery must be omitted. But, I
think, better leave the final conclusion to the imagination of the spectator.
Probably the violence of confining her in a convent is not necessary; Antonio’s own castle would be sufficient.
“To relieve the former part of the Play, could not
some sensible images, some work for the Eye, be introduced? A gallery of
Pictures, Almanza’s ancestors, to
which Antonio might affectingly point his
sister, one by one, with anecdote, &c.
“At all events, with the present want of action, the
Play must not extend above four Acts, unless it is quite new modell’d.
The proposed alterations might all be effected in a few weeks.
“Solemn judicial pleadings always go off well, as in
Henry the 8th, Merchant of Venice, and perhaps Othello.”
Of other friends Holcroft was, as
has been seen, in Germany. Marshal regarded the productions of which he had
witnessed the begetting and watched the gestation with a feeling amounting to veneration.
Godwin had, moreover, made up his mind that the
play, if damned at all—a possibility he could hardly contemplate—would be so only because
the public knew that he was the author, and would be venting their scorn on him through his
play. Hence the authorship was to be kept profoundly secret, and in all those who were in
the secret, there grew up a certain feeling as of conspirators bound to carry through their
undertaking, which by that very fact appeared nobler in their esteem.
Though constantly afterwards retouched, the play was yet sufficiently
finished in June to be submitted to Colman, then
Manager of the Haymarket, not as Godwin’s own,
but as a composition of which he approved, and which he highly recommended.
Colman replied that—
“On perusal of the MS. which you have done me the
favour to send for my inspection, I do not think its representation would serve
the interests of my Theatre. I return it, therefore, with this letter, and with
many thanks for the offer.—I am, Sir, your obedient very humble servant,
G. Colman.”
It is not unlikely that the refusal was peculiarly mortifying from
Colman, who had given evidence already that he
recognized a certain dramatic, if not poetical, power in his correspondent;
Colman’s play of “The Iron Chest” being adapted from the novel
of “Caleb Williams.”
The play was again carefully revised, and was submitted to Curran and Sheridan, the latter of whom—whose taste may well be thought less
unquestionable in tragedy than in comedy—mentioned it to Kemble, on whom, at his request, Godwin called with a portion of the MS, urging that the earlier acts should
at once be put in rehearsal, and pro-mising to send the rest—still in want of revision—within a month. To this somewhat
strange demand Kemble at first consented, and promised suggestions,
but soon after wrote as follows:—
“My dear Sir,—Any hints
that my professional experience enables me to offer, you shall command. I find,
however, that, till I see the Catastrophe, I can be of no service. I overrated
my sagacity.—Yours,
J. P. Kemble.”
When the play was completed and in Kemble’s hands, he did not think it would succeed, but Godwin claimed a promise made to him by Sheridan that it should be represented, and that he was
himself “prepared cheerfully to encounter any theatrical gauntlet which the rules
of your play-house may be thought to prescribe.”
The Same to the Same.
[Drury Lane, Oct. 30, 1800.]
“My dear Sir,—I shall give
your Play to the Copyist
this very day; and I believe that is the only answer that can be made to so
plain a statement as you have just sent me.—Yours truely,
“J. P.
Kemble.”
Godwin, however, again reclaimed the MS. for further
revision.
The Same to the Same.
“No. 89 Great Russel Street, Bloomsbury
Square, Nov. 3, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—All I can say
in answer to your letter of yesterday is, that you asked me my sincere opinion
of your Tragedy, and I sincerely told you that I thought it would not
succeed. I am of that opinion still. I wish I had known that you were from the
Beginning decided to have it acted, because I would have spared myself the
ungracious task of giving any Opinion at all. As Matters stand, I have only to
beg that you will let me have the Manuscript, at least two or three acts of it,
by the end of this week, otherwise I will not answer that the engagements the
theatre is under may not oblige me to defer your Play till next year, which I
should be very sorry for, believe me.
“I mention this circumstance of Despatch again and
again to you, because you seem to think that your Piece cannot be acted as long
as any other new Play is in preparation. This is a Mistake. Your Tragedy will
be the next novelty in representation, as it is the next in Promise. There is
another Mistake of no great moment, indeed, yet it is one. I never ventured to
say that Antonio would be
acted only one Night—very possibly it may be acted five or six or seven nights,
but that kind of success would at once be a great loss to the theatre, and I
daresay a great disappointment to your expectations. In all events, you may
rely on my doing everything a Manager can do towards the Furthering of your
Success.—I am, my dear Sir, truely yours,
J. P. Kemble.”
The Same to the Same.
“T. R., D. L., Nov. 11, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—Depend on my
observing all your Instructions. I don’t know how to advise you
respecting the Papers. I have no confidential Intercourse there. Perhaps the
best way will be to trust entirely to another Person’s being ostensibly
the Authour. Nobody will suspect otherwise unless Doubts are excited by over
caution.—Yours truely,
J. P. Kemble.”
The Same to the Same.
“No. 89 Great Russel Street, Bloomsbury
Square, Nov. 15, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—I shall be
glad to see you about four o’clock to-day, if not inconvenient to you, to
settle all the Parts in Antonio for the Reading on
Monday. I wish you success with all my heart, and I will undertake Antonio. I fear the event, but you shall not want
the Assistance you are so good as. to say I might render you.—Yours truely,
J. P. Kemble.”
The Same to the Same.
“No. 89 Great Russel Street, Bloomsbury
Square, “Thursday, November
27th, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—An accident I
met with on the stage on Monday evening, and which has confined me to my bed
till this Morning, must be my Apology for not answering your note sooner. You
may rely on my taking care that the Parts shall be faithful to your Copy; and
the Copy shall be returned to you as soon as a Transcript can be made for the
Prompter. I really don’t know how to set about such an affair as sending
word to any newspaper that Mr Tobin is
the Authour of Antonio
while I know the contrary, but it will glide into a Paragraph, of course, as
other undesigned mistakes do, after he has been seen at a Rehearsal or two,
that you may be sure of. I will only add, that if I don’t answer every
line you send me, it is because I think it unnecessary to assure you, over and
over again, that I shall punctually observe all your wishes.—I am, my dear sir,
yours,
“J. P.
Kemble.”
Some unfinished drafts of letters from Godwin to Kemble remain, which it is
not always easy to date, but it would seem that quite late in the correspondence,
apparently towards the end of November, Kemble again expressed his
dislike to undertake the character of Antonio, which
had been from the first almost forced upon him by the author’s importunity. He placed
his objection on the somewhat strange ground of the villainy of the character he had to
represent, as though he had played none but model heroes, but his object was no doubt to
save the author and himself also the humiliation of failure, by inducing him to withdraw the play. The following extracts from a draft of one of
Godwin’s voluminous letters, in so great contrast to
Kemble’s notes, are curious as showing
Godwin’s own estimate of his tragedy, of
Kemble’s acting, and of some favourite plays.
William Godwin to J. P. Kemble.
“. . . .—And now, sir, for the essential point, the
character of Antonio. Your objection turns
upon this assertion that his conduct admits of no justification, and that the
audience will not feel with him. Surely this objection requires to be
reconsidered. Instantly on your mentioning it, it occurred to me that there was
a host of the most popular tragedies to which that objection would completely
lie. The one I immediately recollected was the Grecian Daughter, and you willingly
admitted that the ferocious and inhuman character of the tyrant, who produces
all the distress, did not prevent the piece from being on the whole a very
interesting exhibition. But, who, I beseech you, sir, sympathises with
Richard? Who feels for him when he is
stabbing King Henry, murdering the young
Princes, and poisoning his wife? Who sympathises with Macbeth? I hope no one when he assassinates his benefactor and
his guest; I am sure no one, when he murders the infant family of Macduff, ‘all the pretty chickens and
their dam, at one fell swoop.’ Who feels with the delectable
Iago? Who feels for the vile and
slave-hearted hypocrisy of Zanga? Yet these
are among the most inestimable treasures of the British Theatre.
“And now, sir, to conclude this appeal to your
candour, and your justice. The decision you have to make in the present
instance is not a decision of an every-day magnitude. Upon an occasion like
this, to speak of myself ceases to be justly liable to the imputation of
egotism. I am neither a young man nor a young author. I am now in the full
maturity of my age, and vigour of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have
repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of
my thoughts in my school-boy cell.
“But I did not easily yield to their representations.
Among various considerations that deterred me, none of the least was the
fewness of our London Theatres, and what I esteem to be the consequence, the
paucity of good actors, a circumstance that places every dramatic writer,
particularly every writer of tragedy, at the foot, and dependent on the
fallible judgment of a few persons, probably of a single individual. When I
wrote works of a different value from this, I encountered criticism, censure,
political and party hostility in their bitterest style. But it was in the power
of none of these to stifle me in the bud. In the two novels I have published,
it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the
most unqualified censure, long before it was possible for me to hear the voice
of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued. I went
on, and you are acquainted with the result. It is not in all the power of
individual criticism, censure, or even party hostility (which has nothing to do
in the present case) to stop an author in his progress to the public. If he
will be content to incur the risque, the literary condemnation, or political
prosecution, the press is always accessible to him.
“But so is not the stage. You have in your single
breast to decide upon the fate of what Milton calls ‘the most consummate act of an
author’s fidelity and ripeness.’
“You, sir, stand upon the present occasion in the
situation of a licencer of the press, and will you not allow me to say that, in
a man exercising so awful a responsibility, it is necessary to the most perfect
integrity, to add great candour, great forbearance, and a consummate spirit of
toleration?
“Tragic writers are not the growth of every summer.
It depends upon you, sir, more than upon any man in this country, to decide
whether, if talents for that species of writing arise among us, they shall be
permitted to be exercised. If Racine had
not been allowed to exhibit his ‘Thebaide,’ he would probably never
have produced his ‘Iphigenia’ and his ‘Phœdra.’ This is not a species of manufacture in which the artist can take down
different commodities from his shelf, till he has suited the partialities of
his customer. For myself, if I have any propensity to this species of
composition, I cannot look at the prospect now opened before me without
shuddering.
“You anticipate, sir, the application of all this
eager, but I hope not ungentlemanlike, expostulation. The truth must be spoken,
though with modesty, yet firmness. The play can have no justice done it, unless
the character of Antonio be in your hands.
By how much the bolder is the pencil with which I have pourtrayed him, by how
much the nearer I have suffered his character to border upon what has scarcely
a precedent, by so much the more does he require the support of an eminent
performer. Conceive what the tragedy of the ‘Revenge’ would be, with Mr Barrymore in the character of Zanga!
“You have often made sacrifices to the arrangements
and conduct of the Theatre. You have often made sacrifices to the claims,
perhaps the just claims of authors, living and dead. You will do this again and
again. Good God! if you were to personate no characters, but such as were
precisely and eminently the favourites of your choice, what havoc would you
make in the list of acting plays hung up at your theatre! It is not much that I
ask from you. It is little to you, it is everything to me. If I am right in my
conception of ‘Antonio,’ it will add to your reputation. If you are right,
the appearing for a single night in a character that does no honour to your
abilities will certainly, at the same time, inflict no lasting injury on your
professional fame.
“Excuse the earnestness and freedom of this address.
My solicitude to secure your performance of my character, is the highest
compliment I can pay to your dramatic excellence. The sanguine temper with
which I have enforced my appeal, is the strongest proof I can give of the high
opinion I entertain of your manliness and candour.”
Kemble’s objections, though not removed, were
over-ruled, the play was put in
rehearsal, and the rehearsals were attended by Godwin’s friend, Mr Tobin, in
the hope that he might be supposed the author of the piece. The following letter shows that
Godwin was not without his grave anxieties, although ‘Antonio’ was cast as he had
desired.
J. P. Kemble to William Godwin.
“No. 89 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury
Square. “December 9th, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—I will not
advertize any Play beyond Monday, depend on it, since you wish I should not. As
to next week’s being eminently unfavourable to the Theatre, whoever told
you so was eminently ignorant of what he pretended to know. The week in which I
acted the ‘Haunted
Tower,’ was said to be eminently unfavourable to the Theatre,
so was the week in which I acted the ‘Siege of Belgrade,’ and the
‘School for
Scandal,’ and ‘Pizarro.’ The two most successful
pieces that ever were acted were both presented to the Public in the End of
May, a time of all others the most eminently unfavourable to the Theatre. There
is no time unfavourable to a work of real merit, with Judges so good, so
unbiassed, and considerately kind, as generally compose the Audiences in
London.
“As to Orders, pray use your own Discretion about the
number of Friends you wish to send into the Boxes or Gallery for your Support,
but into the Pit no Orders are ever admitted from any person whatsoever. I
never wrote an Order for the Pit in my life. Having told you this, now let me
tell you, that, if you take my Advice, you will not send an Order at all into
the theatre on the first night. I am perfectly convinced that I have seen many
a piece expire at its first Appearance, that might have lived to a good old
age, if it had not been smothered in the Birth by the over-officiousness of
injudicious Friends,—Yours truly,
“J. P.
Kemble.”
The epilogue was written by C.
Lamb, and is printed among his collected works.
C. Lamb to William Godwin.
“Wednesday morning [Dec. 11.]
“Dear Sir,—I expected a
good deal of pleasure from your company to-morrow, but I am sorry I must beg of
you to excuse me. I have been confined ever since I saw you with one of the
severest colds I ever experienced, occasioned by being in the night air on
Sunday, and on the following day, very foolishly. I am neither in health nor
spirits to meet company. I hope and trust I shall get out on Saturday night.
You will add to your many favours, by transmitting to me as early as possible
as many tickets as conveniently you can spare,—Yours truly,
C. L.
“I have been plotting how to abridge the
Epilogue. But I cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the
connection, except these two, which are better out. ‘Why should I instance, &c., The sick man’s purpose, &c.,’
and then the following line must run thus, ‘The truth by an example best is
shown.’
Excuse this important
postscript.”
The play was presented on Saturday, December 13th, and damned finally and
hopelessly. Godwin’s Diary was as usual almost
passionless, though the rare underlining represents that he was more moved than was his
wont. The entry for the day runs thus:—
“13. Sa. Captain Acts 3, 4, 5: Heptameron, p. 227. Call on TobinM[arshall] dines. Theatre w. M. Antonio. Meet
Reynolds: sup at Lamb’s w. M.”
The Cast was as follows: —
“Don Pedro, King of Arragon, Mr Wroughton. Don Gusman, Duke of Zuniga, Mr Barrymore. Don Antonio D’Almanza, Mr Kemble. Don Henry, his brother, Mr C. Kemble. Don Diego de Cardona, Mr Powell. Lopez, servant to Gusman, Mr Maddocks. Alberto, servant to Antonio, Mr Holland. Helena, wife to Gusman, and sister to Antonio, Mrs Siddons.
“A prologue and epilogue were spoken by Mr C. Kemble and Miss
Heard—both productions well suited to the piece, too bad to pass without
censure except when they pass without observation.”—Morning Post, Dec. 15th, 1800.
Kemble’s final letter on the subject was
written next day.
J. P. Kemble to Godwin.
“No. 89 Great Russel Street Bloomsbury
Square, “December 14th, 1800.
“My dear Sir,—I wish with
all my heart we had been more successful. I told Mrs Siddons as you desired me, that the Play was your
Composition, and will do your present Commission to her. I do assure you I
thought nothing of any Trouble I took on your account, for I am very much
yours,—
J. P. Kemble.”
At supper at Lamb’s after the
Play, it was decided to publish immediately, and Lamb took the MS.
home for revision. The verbal criticism which accompanied the following letter has now no
interest, unless it be these few lines—
“‘Enviable’ is a very bad word. I
allude to ‘Enviable right to bless us.’ For instance, Burns, comparing the ills of manhood with the state of
infancy, says, ‘Oh! enviable early days;’ here ’tis good,
because the passion lay in comparison. Excuse my insulting your judgment with an
illustration. I believe I only wanted to beg in the name of a
favourite Bardie, or at most to confirm my own judgment.”
C. Lamb to William Godwin.
“Late o’ Sunday [Dec. 14.]
“Dear Sir,—I have
performed my office in a slovenly way, but judge for me. I sat down at 6
o’clock, and never left reading (and I read out to Mary) your play till 10. In this sitting I
noted down lines as they occurred, exactly as you will read my rough paper. Do
not be frightened at the bulk of my remarks, for they are almost all upon
single lines, which, put together, do not amount to a hundred, and many of them
merely verbal. I had but one object in view, abridgement for compression sake.
I have used a dogmatical language (which is truly ludicrous when the trivial
nature of my remarks is considered), and, remember, my office was to hunt out
faults. You may fairly abridge one half of them, as a fair deduction for the
infirmities of Error, and a single reading, which leaves only fifty objections,
most of them merely against words, on no short play. Remember, you constituted
me Executioner, and a hangman has been seldom seen to be ashamed of his
profession before Master Sheriff. We’ll talk of the Beauties (of which I
am more than ever sure) when we meet,—Yours truly,
C. L.
“I will barely add, as you are on the very point
of printing, that in my opinion neither prologue nor epilogue should
accompany the play. It can only serve to remind your readers of its fate.
Both suppose an audience, and, that jest being
gone, must convert into burlesque. Nor would I (but therein custom and
decorum must be a law) print the actors’ names. Some things must be
kept out of sight.
“I have done, and I have but a few square inches
of paper to fill up. I am emboldened by a little jorum of punch (vastly
good) to say that next to one man, I am the most
hurt at our ill success. The breast of Hecuba, where she did suckle Hector, looked not to be more lovely than Marshal’s forehead when it spit forth sweat, at
Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest lines by Marvel, (whose poems by the way I am just
going to possess). “‘Where every Mower’s
wholesome heat Smells like an Alexander’s sweat.’”
The catastrophe was recorded by C.
Lamb many years afterwards, in the London Magazine [April 1, 1822] in a paper entitled
“The Old Actors.” The
portion relating to Antonio, deserves
quotation here, especially since this part of the paper has rarely been re-printed in
Lamb’s collected Essays. Godwin did not resent the fun which his friend made of him and of Marshal, for the pages, endorsed with the date in his own
hand, were carefully preserved among his papers. Perhaps time had softened the blow, and he
could afford to jest at what once he felt so keenly, or, and this is more likely, the
ridicule bestowed on Kemble disguised and palliated
that which was directed against himself.
“John Kemble
had made up his mind early, that all the good tragedies which could be written had been
written; and he resented any new attempt. His shelves were full. The old standards were
scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolute—and ‘fair in
Otway, full in Shakspeare shone.’ He succeeded to the
old lawful thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer, or any casual speculator that
offered. I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put
upon my friend G.’s ‘Antonio.’
G., satiate with visions of political justice (possibly not to
be realized in our time), or willing to let the sceptical worldlings see, that his
anticipations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as they are and
have been—wrote a tragedy. He chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish—the plot
simple, without being naked—the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained.
Antonio, who gives the name to the piece, is a
sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of his country honour,
immolates his sister—
“But I must not anticipate the catastrophe—the play,
reader, is extant in choice English—and you will employ a spare half-crown not
injudiciously in the quest of it.
“The conception was bold, and the denouement—the
time and place in which the hero of it existed, considered—not much out of keeping; yet
it must be confessed, that it required a delicacy of handling both from the author and
the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a modern English audience.
G., in my opinion, had done his part.
“John, who
was in familiar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were formed. A
philosopher’s first play was a new æra. The night arrived. I was favoured with a
seat in an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M——. G. sate
cheerful and confident. In his friend M.’s looks, who had
perused the manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at
length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dispute, and in most
irreproachable mustachios. John always dressed most provokingly
correct on these occasions. The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as
G. assured M., exactly as the opening act
of a piece—the protasis—should do. The cue of the spectators was to be mute. The
characters were but in their introduction. The passions and the incidents would be
developed hereafter. Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent attention was the
effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced—but in his honest
friendly face I could discern a working which told how much more acceptable the plaudit
of a single hand (however misplaced) would have been than all this reasoning. The
second act (as in duty bound) rose a little in interest; but still
John kept his forces under—in policy, as
G. would have it—and the audience were most complacently
attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely unfolded. The interest would warm in the
next act, against which a special incident was provided. M. wiped
his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration—’tis
M.’s way of show-ing his zeal—‘from every pore of him
a perfume falls—.’ I honour it above Alexander’s. He had once or twice during this act joined his
palms in a feeble endeavour to elicit a sound—they emitted a solitary noise without an
echo—there was no deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly begged
him to be quiet. The third act at length brought on the scene which was to warm the
piece progressively to the final flaming forth of the catastrophe. A philosophic calm
settled upon the clear brow of G. as it approached. The lips of
M. quivered. A challenge was held forth upon the stage, and
there was promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this extraordinary occasion,
and, as their manner is, seemed disposed to make a ring,—when suddenly Antonio, who was the challenged, turning the tables upon
the hot challenger, Don Gusman (who by the way
should have had his sister) baulks his humour, and the pit’s reasonable
expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new philosophy against
duelling. The audience were here fairly caught—their courage was up, and on the alert—a
few blows, ding dong, as R——s the dramatist afterwards expressed it to me, might have done the
business—when their most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist in the
mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They could not applaud for disappointment;
they would not condemn, for morality’s sake. The interest stood stone still; and
John’s manner was not at all calculated to unpetrify it.
It was Christmas time, and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for asthmatic
affections. One began to cough—his neighbour sympathized with him—till a cough became
epidemical. But when, from being half-artificial in the pit, the cough got frightfully
naturalized among the fictitious persons of the drama; and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down in the stage directions)
seemed more intent upon relieving his own lungs than the distresses of the author and
his friends,—then G. ‘first knew fear’ and
mildly turning to M., intimated that he had not been aware that
Mr K. laboured under a cold; and that the performance might
possibly have been postponed with advantage for some nights further—still keeping the
same serene countenance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In
vain did the plot thicken in the scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more
passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment point more and more clearly
to the arduous development which impended. In vain the action was accelerated, while
the acting stood still. From the beginning John had taken his
stand; had wound himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which no
exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his
rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for from the
onset he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on an eminence vastly above the
audience, and he kept that sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of
elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with a most sovran and becoming
contempt. There was excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would receive it,
so; an they would not receive it, so. There was no offence against decorum in all this;
nothing to condemn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard. The
procession of verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to
predict what would come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger
Helena herself—for she had been coolly arguing
the point of honour with him—suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the
heart. The effect was, as if a murder had been committed in cold blood. The whole house
rose up in clamorous indignation demanding justice. The feeling rose far above hisses.
I believe at that instant, if they could have got him, they would have torn the
unfortunate author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a
complexion different from what they themselves would have applauded upon another
occasion in a Brutus or an Appius—but for want of attending to Antonio’s words, which palpably led to the expectation of no less
dire an event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which seemed to promise a sleep
of a less alarming nature than it was his cue to inflict upon Helena, they found themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, a perfect misprision of
parricide, while they dreamed of nothing less. M., I believe, was
the only person who suffered acutely from the failure; for G.
thenceforward, with a serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a
precarious popularity, retired into his fasthold of speculation,—the drama in which the
world was to be his tiring room, and remote posterity his applauding spectators at
once, and actors.
Elia.”
CHAPTER IV. SECOND MARRIAGE AND MARRIED LIFE. 1801—1803.
The failure of Antonio was a very serious matter to Godwin. His pecuniary circumstances had long been increasingly
unsatisfactory, and he was of all men least fitted to manage such a household as his own,
the expenses of two little girls and their attendants lying quite outside his experience.
In play-writing he had found, as he considered, an occupation peculiarly suited to his
genius, one, moreover, which could more quickly yield definite results, and bring at once
fame and money. The disappointment of his hope brought matters to a crisis, and many
letters of this year, not interesting in their details, exhibit him in the position, so sad
for any man, saddest of all for a man of great ability and lofty aims, of applying to one
friend after another for money aid, of making excuses for non-payment, and neither in
applications or refusals, was he, or could he perhaps be quite straightforward. Who ever
was or is so under similar circumstances?
The need of writing for bread, though this of course had been one element
in all his former work, had grown so imperative that it over-mastered his deeper interest
in his occupations, and a tendency becomes manifest in him to sink from author into mere
bookmaker. “Political
Justice,” the novels, and the play had sprung from his conviction and his
fancy,—were parts of his very self. The same
cannot be said of many of his later works. They were undertaken as commercial speculations,
whereas for prose writers as well as poets, the saying of Goethe’s “Minstrel,” “Ich singe wie der
Vogel singt,” is that which should be the inmost thought of
their heart, even if they be not like him, independent of the reward.
It must not, however, be considered that all Godwin’s work was perfunctory, or his whole life absorbed in sordid
money cares; nor would it be advantageous to follow the details of his struggles or of his
literary experiments. But it would not be honest to conceal the fact that here were the
elements of a deterioration which more or less affected his character through many
remaining years of his life.
The care also of the children became an increasing anxiety. The person in whose charge they were was in an ill-defined
position, scarcely a companion, yet not quite a servant, sensitive and exacting, but
without real authority; willing to accept the attentions of the wayward Arnot, between whom and herself some indefinite engagement
seems to have existed, yet so jealous in regard to Godwin as to give rise to the opinion that she was not indisposed to become
his wife if he asked her. His sister Hannah seemed
willing to further the idea; but Godwin himself, aware of the
half-developed intention, had no desire that it should be carried out.
The women whom Godwin had thought
it possible he could really love after his wife’s death had both rejected his
advances, yet his marriage was becoming each day more necessary to the daily life of his
household and to his own comfort. In the case of the lady whom he made his wife, no wooing
was needed, for all the advances came from her side. This was a Mrs Clairmont, a widow, with a son then at school, and one little daughter
somewhat older than Fanny, who came to occupy the next house to
Godwin in the Polygon. She was clever, enthusiastic and handsome,
yet not a person in any measure fitted for the task of managing such a household, and
supplying the place of a mother to the children—whom she did not like. But she fell in love
with Godwin even before she had spoken to him; and as he made no steps
towards the cultivation of an acquaintance, Mrs Clairmont herself took
the initiative. Godwin sometimes sat in the little balcony at his
window; and here, one evening, Mrs Clairmont addressed him from her
own—“Is it possible that I behold the immortal
Godwin?” To swallow flattery, however coarsely served,
was always one of his weaknesses—nor did even this repel him. Under date of May 5th, when
hard at work on his Life of
Chaucer, the entry is underlined, “MeetMrs
Clairmont”—after which her name constantly appears. The
acquaintance rapidly developed, intercourse between the houses became very frequent, ending
in marriage before the close of the year.
It was not a happy one. Mrs
Clairmont was a querulous though always admiring wife, but she was a harsh
and unsympathetic stepmother; and Jane Clairmont,
her daughter, became the cause in after-years of much sorrow to
Godwin’s own daughter Mary, afterwards Mrs Shelley. But of this in its own
place.
The diaries for this year show no variety in Godwin’s regular life. His brothers find record at intervals. They
were usually in want of money, and always were relieved from his own slender purse. The
Wollstonecrafts renewed with him a somewhat fitful intercourse;
the old friends whom he visited, and who visited him, remained almost unchanged; a few more
acquaintances disappear, a few new ones are added.
Not all Mrs Godwin senr.’s
letters are given. But a large portion is presented because, spite of the aberrations in
spelling, in a day when many ladies of her age spelt still worse, the sound common sense
displayed is wholly independent of the accuracy of the language. And that Godwin could have such letters written to him places him
in an amiable light. He was content to be a child still to his mother, to be lectured at
her will.
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
“Jan. 1, 1801” [First written
18001.]
“Dear SonWilliam,—I do
purpose in a few weeks to send the remaining part of Joe’s Share to you, which is about £25
(now Wright’s bond is paid), for you to take the
managment of it for the benefit of his children, to put out. I think
Mary and John
have had all that can be expected of it, as I cannot give them anything by
will, and whatever he may have promissed to do for them is all a hazard, as he
may think he wants it for his own use. I think he can make a good shift without
it. Suppose he has wholy cast of Mary, now she has a
husband, though an Indolent one. I have not certainly heard
William is got into the bluecoat School. Doth he do
credit to it by improvment? I will give you notice when I send the money, and
hope you will write also. Tell me what Harriot and
Pheby are doing, and how John
goes on. I hope he will stay his time, and behave so as to be respected by his
master, and how your children do. I did not mean the snuffbox for a plaything
for Mary. It is of value, but for you to
take care of till she knows its value, and is told it was her
grandfather’s present to her grandmother. I hope for some good account of
John, that he has not wasted his little. As to
Hannah, she complains much; her
expenses must be great, besides her lodgings being unoccupy’d half the
year. She tells me Mr Hague, her good friend, is failed
again: sure he must have missmanaged very greatly. I shall send you a Turkey
this week, hope it will prove good. What do you think of
the war? O what scarcity of bread and all kinds of provision. Malt 44s. per
coomb; and the poor, some starving, some stealing, though wages
increes’d, and parish allowance. Sin is certainly the cause of calamity.
We have every need to look into our own hearts and repent and turn unto the
Lord with Supplication and prayer that he would avert his Judgments. I’m
not justifieing myself. I am full of sin, and need forgiveness and acceptance
through Christ.— Yr. ever affectionate mother,
A. Godwin.
“Do you think a smal matter would do your
sister good? I have sent her
about £2, 10s. Do you think that as much more would enable her to go on?
“I hope I can send the £25 I mentioned above
without expence by Mr Munton’s order to Messrs
Wood, Bishopgate St. If you call too soon,
it’s but little to call again, for letters cost something. But it
will be necessary to live a memorandum or acknolegement of it with
Mr Wood, with a date on plain paper, no stamp, for
Mr Munton’s and my sattisfaction. Likewise
give me a proper acknowledgement of it by a post letter when you have
received it.
“Your brother Hully is going to send you a turkey. I am, through mercy,
better.
“I have enclosed the money above mentioned, to
save expences and trouble.”
The correspondence with Ritson is
preserved as a specimen of similar letters which took place in this year with him, and with
others, especially Wedgwood, whose patience and
purse were alike exhausted in regard to Godwin. It
is satisfactory to know that the anger expressed on both sides was often merely
amantium iræ. Those who know the
character of Ritson the Antiquary and Vegetarian will easily
understand that his mode of spelling the personal pronoun proceeds from whim, and not from
want of education, or from humility.
J. Ritson to William Godwin.
“Gray’s Inn, Jan. 16, 1801.
“DearGodwin,—I wish you
would make it convenient to return me the thirty pounds i lent you. My
circumstances are by no means what they were at the time i advanced it:—nor did
i, in fact, imagine you would have detained it for so long. The readyness with
which i assisted you may serve as a proof that I should not have had recourse
to the present application without a real necessity.—I am very sincerely yours,
J. Ritson.”
The Same to the Same.
“Gray’s Inn, March 7, 1801.
“Though you have not ability to repay the money i
lent, you might have integrity enough to return the books you borrowed. I do
not wish to bring against you a railing accusation, but am compelled,
nevertheless, to feel that you have not acted the part of an honest man, and,
consequently, to decline all further communication.
“I never received a copy of your unfortunate tragedy: nor, from the fate
it experienced, and the character i have red and heard of it, can i profess
myself very anxious for its perusal.
“The offer you make of a security, with interest,
seems merely a piece of pleasantry, but, however serious, i have no desire to
accept it; for, though you have urged me to it, and my temper is somewhat
irritable, i do not mean to persecute you: but shall, nevertheless, reserve to
myself the liberty of speaking to your conduct according to its merit.—Yours,
J. Ritson.”
The Same to the Same.
“Gray’s Inn, March 10, 1801.
“A very slight degree of candour and confidence could
not have misbecome you, and would have prevented these disagreeable
consequences. The business, however, has proceeded so far, and i have already
spoken of it with such acrimony, as a person of
conscious integrity cannot be safely expected either to forget or forgive. I
could only judge of your sentiments by your actions, and your never having
taken the least notice of my little loan in the course of two years, until you
had occasion to apply for further assistance, was in itself, in my mind, a very
suspicious circumstance. You had no reason to conclude me affluent, though i am
willing to put myself to some inconvenience in order to oblige a friend; nor
does it seem either prudent or considerate that you should, in such
circumstances, put yourself to the expense of a journey to Ireland, when those,
perhaps, who had enabled you to perform it were on that very account obliged to
stay at home. The style of your former letter also seemed too easy and flippant
for the occasion; and, in fact, the irritation of my mind had been provoked or
increased about the very same time by a swindling trick of the editor of the Albion, who obtained 5 guineas from me on a false pretence and
promise of punctual payment, but of which i have been able by threats to extort
no more than a couple of pounds, which i presume is the whole i shal ever get.
These transactions, hapening together, brooded in my mind, and made me regard
every one as a confederated conspirator, being, peradventure, like Iago— ‘vicious in my guess, As i confess it is my nature’s plague To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy Shapes faults that are not.’ I am much obliged by the handsome and friendly manner in which you profess
yourself to have regarded me: though i confess i had no idea of standing so
fair in your good graces. This is all i can bring myself to say, except that i
am
“An admirer of your talents, and A sincere wel-wisher of your success. “J.
Ritson.”
The Same to the Same.
“Gray’s Inn, Aug. 25 [1801.]
“I flatter myself the publication of your book will
enable you to repay me the ten pounds that remains due, and which I should not
have mentioned, if a considerable loss i have lately sustained in the funds
(which i was obliged, for the most part, to defray with borrowed money, and
which makes the whole much more than a thousand pounds) had not been peculiarly
embarrassing and distressful.—Yours sincerely,
J. Ritson.
“P.S.—My book is begun; and i am happy to have
become acquainted with so affable and intelligent a printer as mister Taylor, whom you doubtless know:
we, in conjunction, ejected the dangerous passages to mister Philipses satisfaction.”
William Godwin to Joseph Ritson.
[Polygon, 10th
March 1801.]?
“DearRitson,—I should be
sorry to interrupt your business or occupations one moment unnecessarily by
this correspondence. Give me leave, however, to say,
“‘I can easily and entirely forgive the
acrimony (if that is what you allude to) of your note of the date of
Saturday. We have all of us too many frailties not to make it the duty of
every man to forgive the precipitation of his neighbour; and the
unfortunate state of your health and spirits which often painfully recurs
to my mind, gives this duty a double portion of obligation in the present
case. I think a person of conscious integrity may be expected more easily
to forget a reflection cast on his character than one of a different
description.
“But I am still further incited to forgive your
misconstruction in this instance, because I am conscious of the blameableness
of my conduct. I have, perhaps, a peculiar sentiment in this case: I feel as if
it would be a sort of insult to ask the patience of a friend to whom I was in
debt, unless I came to him with the money in my hand;
and this in a full and entire sense I was unable to do. But I perceive I owed
you an explanation. I might easily have said to you, as I said to myself,
‘I believe I shall not spend more in my journey to Ireland (my
residence there being entirely without expense) than I shall save in my
housekeeping in England during my absence.’ The journey had an
appearance of extravagance. I might also have told you that my tragedy was accepted by
Mr Sheridan as long ago as April
1799, and that the unexpected delays of the theatre were the direct causes of
the delays that occurred as to your payment. I never failed before in any
literary effort, and I had not the slightest apprehension of the misfortune
that awaited me. Let me add that, instigated by Mr
Sheridan’s approbation, I applied a great [part] of the
year 1800 to the rendering my play as perfect as the plan upon which it was
constructed and the abilities I possessed would allow.
“Restore me entirely to your good opinion. The letter
I have just received from you manifests an inclination to do so. Let the
consequences be only temporary and transient, which flowed from a transient
misapprehension. I have some idea of engaging in a literary work, the nature of
which will render your advice singularly interesting to me. Suffer me, when the
time comes, to apply to you for that advice. Your silence in answer to what I
have written shall be construed into a sufficient permission.”
The literary work in which Ritson’s aid would be of use was the “Life of Chaucer,” which, with little
intermission, occupied Godwin during the whole of
this and the next years. The preparation of his “Remarks to Dr Parr’s Spital Sermon” can
hardly be called an exception, since in this he scarcely did more than re-cast the letters
he had already written to the preacher.
Early in September Godwin finished
another tragedy, which was to vindicate his fame as a dramatic author, and retrieve his
fallen fortunes. Convinced as he was that per-sonal reasons had in great measure influenced the fate of
Antonio, this was to be anonymously
presented; for though this had been intended before, the secret had been scarcely kept,
and, distrusting the fairness of the professional reader, he applied once more to head
quarters. The following correspondence needs no elucidation. Of the first letter two copies
are extant, one in Godwin’s own writing, the other in that of
Mrs Clairmont. She wrote an excellent and
legible hand, and as an amanuensis was scarce less useful than Marshal.
William Godwin to Mr Sheridan.
“Polygon, Somers Town, Sept. 10, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—I enclose to you
the copy of an Historical Tragedy, entitled ‘Abbas,
King of Persia.’ You will immediately perceive the necessity,
if you should think it might be of use to your Theatre, and the justice to me
on every supposition, which require the not publishing my name.
“I need not tell you, after the approbation you were
pleased to express of my last
piece when put into your hands, that I suffered a very severe
disappointment in the total miscarriage and defeat it sustained. My first
impulse, however, upon that event was to sit down and write another, in which I
should carefully avoid all the errors, which contributed, with certain external
causes, to decide the fate of my piece of last year. The present performance is
not so complete as I could wish: it is too long, but such as it is, it will be
easy to perceive whether it is radically what it ought to be; and I really want
encouragement to make those lesser improvements which, with encouragement, I
could effect with great expedition.
“I cheerfully commit the piece to your disposal. What
I most earnestly request is, that I may not be exposed to unnecessary delays
and uncertainty. After the misfortune I have sustained, I know enough of the
generosity of your nature to be confident that you
would, with the utmost promptness, embrace any opportunity of indemnifying and
reinstating me.
“I would not have troubled you personally on this
occasion, but for the sort of dilemma into which some statements of last year
from Mr Kemble have thrown me. He said
that he had no concern with the reading and accepting of pieces, but that they
were entirely referred to two nameless gentlemen (two men in buckram) who
perused and decided. How was I to conduct myself in this case? Were these
unknown gentlemen to be the depositaries of the secret I deem it necessary to
preserve? I think it too much that my tragedy should come before them
absolutely fatherless, as a mere waif or a stray, and to be exposed to the same
inattention as, perhaps, five hundred others. I think myself entitled to the
casual advantage which may arise from my being the author of one or two well
known novels and other pieces, not that I desire by this means in the least to
influence their judgment, but to rouse their perspicacity and excite their
attention.—I am dear sir, with the highest regard, yours,
“W.
Godwin.”
On second thoughts, however, an almost duplicate letter was despatched
also to Kemble, leaving it to him to decide on the
momentous question whether the author’s name should or should not be communicated to
the reader.
J. P. Kemble to William Godwin.
“Sept. 16, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—Your directions
shall be punctually observed. The Buckram Men shall not know that the Play
comes from you, and I will let you know their answer as soon as they give it
me, which I will endeavour shall be at furthest within this fortnight.—I am,
Sir, your obedient Servant,
J. P. Kemble.
“I send this by the post, that nobody may observe
any communication between us.”
The Play was declined on Sep. 23d, in a civil note signed “Wm. Powell, Prompter,” and addressed merely to “The
Author.” Godwin sent a note to Kemble, asking if his directions had been observed,
whether it would be accepted if curtailed, &c.
The Same to the Same.
“Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Sep. 26, 1801.
“My Dear Sir,—When you have
made such alterations in your Tragedy as you judge proper, it will give me
great pleasure to present it for a Re-perusal. You must have the goodness not
to press me further, for this is all I can honestly promise,—I am, my dear sir,
your obedient Servant,
J. P. Kemble.”
William Godwin to J. P. Kemble.
“Sep. 28, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—The sole object
of the note with which I troubled you on Friday last, was to ascertain whether
the piece I had written had received that vigilant and attentive perusal which
I conceive to be due to the production of a person already in the possession of
some sort of literary character. There are I should suppose from fifty to a
hundred manuscripts of all sizes and denominations handed to your theatre every
season; a great majority of them the production of sempstresses, hair dressers,
and taylors, without a glimmering of sense from one end to the other. It is
impossible that these should be bona fide read through by your committee of
censors, three or four pages will often be enough in conscience. The drift of
my enquiry was, was my piece or was it not put into the heap?
“Your answer, without applying exactly to this point,
opens a new question. You hint at alterations to be made by me. Indeed, sir,
standing as the affair does, it is impossible that I should make alterations.
“My piece is promising, or it is not. If it is
radically bad, can my efforts be worse employed than in attempting alterations?
If it is worthy of encouragement your readers are bound by every sentiment of honour and justice to say, ‘In
these respects we approve of the piece, in these other respects we lament
that the subject has not been otherwise treated.’ It would be
lunacy to attempt to alter it to please I know not whom, who object to I know
not what, but who simply communicate to me their disapproval in toto.
“The principal alteration I have myself meditated,
consists in elevating the principal character, the exhibiting in every scene in
which he appears (which I perceive I have not properly done) sensitive,
jealous, the slave of passion, bursting out on the most trifling occasions into
uncontrollable fits of violence, at the same time that his intentions are
eminently virtuous. But I have no doubt that other alterations might be
suggested to me by men of sense and experience, which reflection would lead me
to approve and enable me to execute.”
Godwin has here touched on a question which must
ever be of great importance to all literary men, and on which they are always sufficiently
sensitive. His position is, however, as it seems, an essentially false one, built on the
fallacy that literary wares offered for sale are to be treated in quite another way to that
in which all other wares are treated, and that those who buy ought also to be able to
produce. Literary goods are offered for sale, much as in the old days when shops were
fewer, and communication difficult, the weaver would bring his web to the houses of his
customers. The thrifty housewife oftentimes knew at once, and always after a close
examination, whether the stuff would suit her, and often whether it was well or ill made,
it was not her business, however, in the latter case to suggest possible improvements, nor
was she to be denounced as incompetent if she were thoroughly unable to do so.
Kemble’s answer would have been convincing to
any other than Godwin.
J. P. Kemble to William Godwin.
“No. 89 Great Russel Street, Bloomsbury
Square. “Sep. 28, 1801.
“My Dear Sir,—If it could
be supposed that a Play of your writing resembled the Production of those
unfortunate ‘Sempstresses, Hairdressers and
Taylors’ you condescend to waste your contempt on, I
should not wonder if after a reading of ‘three or
four pages of it,’ it had been thrown aside out of
despair of finding in it ‘a glimmering of Common
Sense from one end to the other,’ and I fancy too that
under such a Supposition there would be nothing outrageously reprehensible in
the matter. If instead of ‘fifty or a hundred
Manuscripts’ you talked of five or six hundred, you
would go nearer the Truth, I assure you, and he must be prodigal of Patience
indeed, who would persevere through a toil, when the mere entering on it had at
once convinced him that it would be fruitless.
“Your Play, there is no room to doubt, has been read
with the attention due to it, and I have all the reason in the world to believe
that the answer you have received was dictated by an upright regard to the
Interests of the Proprietors of the Theatre and yours.
“You love Frankness:—now give me leave to ask you
whether or not it is quite fair to seem to draw me into a difference with you,
by telling me that ‘I hint at
alterations.’ If I do, which is more than I own, you will be so
good as to remember that I only take a hint of your own offering. In the
Letter, which I had the honour of receiving with your Manuscript, you say,
‘The Play is too long, then are parts which
ought to be omitted, and Parts which might be improved’
Shorten it, exchange what you think objectionable, amend what seems to you
imperfect, if there are any ‘men whose Sense and
Experience’ you can rely on, take their opinions. In the
very note I have this moment opened from you you allow that your ‘principal Character’ is unfinished. When
you have completed it, I shall have the Honour of presenting your Piece for a
Re-perusal, and be assured that the Theatre will be as
well pleased to receive a good Tragedy, as you to be the Authour of it. I am,
very dear Sir, your very obedient Servant,
“J. P.
Kemble.”
Two more letters on Godwin’s
side remain, and one curt and final on Kemble’s, but they only repeat, and in much the same words, the
statements of those already presented.
Closely connected with the question of the rejection of Manuscripts is
that of how far an Editor or Publisher is justified in altering that which he undertakes to
place before the world. It is one which can scarcely be answered categorically, but
Godwin’s position in the following letter
is undoubtedly far stronger than it was in his controversy with Kemble.
It is not clear to what “papers” it refers; there is no entry
in the Diary which throws light on it, the MS. is the rough draft unaddressed. But it was
evidently written to Phillips—his publisher since
Robinson’s death, which had taken place on
May 6th—and personally has reference to a prospectus circulated in regard to the
forthcoming life of Chaucer.
It is here given, not in strict date, as connected with what has gone
before.
William Godwin to Mr Phillips.
“1801.
“Dear Sir,—I thank you for
your attention to the paper I sent you, and for the civility of enclosing me
one of the printed copies.
“Here, however, my gratitude stops. I never did, and
I never will thank any man for altering any one word of my compositions without
my privity. I do not admit that there is anything indecorous or unbecoming in
the statement which you have omitted. But that is not material. I stand upon
the principle, not upon the detail. If the part omitted had been to the last
degree solecistical and
absurd, my doctrine is the same. ‘No syllable to be altered, without
the author’s privity and approbation.’ It is highly
necessary, my dear Sir, that I should be explicit on this point. I am now
writing a book, of which you are to be the publisher. It is to be “Godwin’s Life of
Chaucer,” and no other person’s. My reputation and my
fame are at stake upon it. The moment therefore, I find you alter a word of
that book (and you cannot do it without my finding it) that instant the copy
stops, and I hold our contract dissolved, though the consequence should be my
dying in a jail. I know you have contracted that worst habit of the worst
booksellers (the itch of altering) and I give you this fair and timely warning.
Yours truly,
W. Godwin.
“In glancing over the Prospectus you have sent
me, I find (in the 4th line from the end of the paragraph in the middle of
page 2, the word untried for untired, which makes nonsense.”
The following Memorandum is connected with the subject of the above
letter, and was also addressed to his Publisher.
“It is my will that in any future Editions of Enquiry concerning Political Justice,
my pamphlet in answer to Dr Parr be
annexed to the work, in Place immediately following the prefaces to the different
Editions, not so much to perpetuate the fugitive and obscure controversies which have
been excited on the subject, as because it contains certain essential explanations and
elucidations with respect to the work itself. Let the title then stand, “Defence of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice.” The
index, in consequence of this arrangement, should be removed from the place it at
present occupies, and thrown to the end of the work.”
The only other matter of literary interest, and that not directly
connected with Godwin himself, yet deserves record.
Holcroft had completed a translation of Goethe’sHermann and Dorothea. The price which Messrs Longman offered, though less than that expected by the sanguine author and
his friend, shows the solid fame which Goethe had acquired even at a
time when we have been taught to believe that he was scarcely known in England.
William Godwin to Holcroft.
“March 6, 1801.
. . . “The purpose of my writing now is simply to
inform you of my having put the manuscript of Hermann and Dorothea into the hands of
Messrs Longman and Rees, and of their answer. They say they cannot
think of giving more than sixty guineas, but it seems to me not impossible that
they may be prevailed on to give an hundred.”
The following draft of a Letter (in Marshal’s hand) has no address, but it is important as indicating
Godwin’s mind at this period, and it is,
in fact, a fragment of autobiography:—
William Godwin to —— Anonymous
“Aug. 29, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—I thank you
most sincerely for the kindness of your letter. Human creatures, living in the
circle of their intimates and friends, are too apt to remain in ignorance of
the comments and instructions which may be made of what they say and do in the
world at large. I entertain a great horror of this ignorance. I do not love to
be deceived, and to spend my days in a scene of delusions and chimera. I feel
it is an act of unequivocal friendship that you have thus communicated to me a
fact in which I must hold myself interested, though you deemed the
communication to be ungracious.
“Good God! and so you heard me gravely represented in
a large company yesterday as an advocate of infanticide. I have been so much
accustomed to be the object of misrepresentation in all its forms, that I did not think I
could be surprised with anything of that sort. The advocates of those abuses
and that oppression against which I have declared myself, have chosen it as
their favourite revenge to distort every word I have ever written, and every
proposition I have ever maintained. But there is a malignity in this accusation
which, I confess, exceeds all my former calculations of human perverseness.
“They build the accusation, it seems, upon a few
pages in my ‘Reply to Dr
Parr,’ where I am considering the hypothesis of the author of the Essay on Population. They eagerly confound
two things so utterly dissimilar as hypothetical reasoning upon a state of
society never yet realized, and the sentiments and feelings which I, and every
one whom it is possible for me to love or respect, must carry with us into the
society and the transactions in which we are personally engaged. Because I have
spoken of a certain practice, prevailing in distant ages and countries, which I
deprecate, and respecting which I aver my entire persuasion, that in no
improved state of society will it ever be necessary to have recourse to it,
they represent me as the recommender and admirer of this practice: as a man who
is eager to persuade every woman who, under unfortunate and opprobrious
circumstances, becomes a mother, to be the murderer of her own child.
“Really, my friend, I am somewhat at a loss whether
to laugh at the impudence of this accusation, or to be indignant at the brutal
atrocity and the eager sentiment of persecution it argues in the man who
uttered it. I see that there is a settled and systematical plan in certain
persons to render me an object of horror and aversion to my fellow-men: they
think that when they have done this they will have sufficiently overthrown my
arguments. Their project excites in me no horror. As the attack is a personal
one, it is only by a retrospect to my individual self it can be answered.
“I say then to my own heart, and I will resolve to
say to you, that in spite of the machinations of these persons, there will
always remain some man in the world who will read my writings, as long as my
writings shall be thought worthy of curiosity or dis-cussion, with sufficient impartiality to discern in them a spirit of humanity
in the author. To you, and to every man who knows me, I appeal, without the
slightest apprehension, to my present habits. Am I a man likely to be
inattentive to the feelings, the pleasures, or the interests of those about me?
Do I dwell in that sublime and impassive sphere of philosophy that should teach
me to look down with contempt upon the sentiments of man, or the little
individual concerns of the meanest creature I behold? To come immediately to
the point in question: Am I, or am I not, a lover of children? My own domestic
scene is planned and conducted solely with a view to the gratification and
improvement of children. Does my character as a Father merit reprehension? Are
not my children my favourite companions and most chosen friends?
“This, I think, is all the answer to which such an
accusation as the one you mention is entitled. It is too monstrous to suppose
that a man of my turn of mind can be the advocate of an unnatural disposition,
the inciter and persuader of acts of horrible enormity. I would cherish and
encourage in the minds of every father and every mother the sentiment of that
relation, as the most sacred band of human society. I would not willingly
disturb or diminish, by one single atom, those impulses which so irresistibly
and imperiously guide every well constituted mind under the circumstance of
this relation. My literary labours for ten years have been solely directed to
the melioration of human society, and prompted by an anxiety for human
happiness. Let, then, these men go on in their despicable task of
misrepresentation and calumny. Let them endeavour to represent me as the
advocate of everything cruel, assassinating, and inhuman. You and I, my friend,
I firmly persuade myself, shall yet live to see whether their malignant
artifice, or the simple and unalterable truth, shall prove triumphant.
But one letter remains addressed to Mrs
Clairmont. It had been well for Godwin had he reflected that one who before marriage needed advice to
“manage and economize her
temper” might prove somewhat difficult to live with when the tie was binding,
and the promise irrevocable. It may be doubted whether after marriage
Godwin would have addressed to his wife the exhortations which he
ventured to write her from a distance.
The journey to Woodstock was undertaken mainly with a view of seeing a
spot with which Chaucer’s name was so closely
connected. They stayed at the Wheatsheaf Inn for four days, visiting Oxford twice during
the time.
William Godwin to Mrs Clairmont.
“Friday, Oct. 9,
1801.
“Chère
amie. I begin my letter now before breakfast, apprehensive that
something or other may occur, if it is delayed, to prevent its being written at
all. Yesterday I did not feel that I could write, and to-morrow is no post-day.
It may possibly happen, but I think it shall not, that I may be obliged to
commit my scroll to the post before it is finished. If I do, you will
understand my situation, recognise my motive, and excuse it.
“You cannot imagine how dull it is to travel with
such a man as Phillips. I thought I
understood him before, but, as I am always apprehensive of mistakes, and
fearful to be unjust, I suspended my judgment. One day’s tête-a-tête instructs one, I believe,
beyond the possibility of error. Such a snail in his discourse, so pompous, so
empty, so fifty other things that are most adverse to my nature, I think I
never encountered. My old bookseller Robinson, was a god to him. Though, to confess the truth, I
never spent a day alone with Robinson; and if I had, I do
not doubt I should have found him equally gross and worldly-minded, but not
equally dull.
“A thousand times, as we passed along, I wished
myself at home. I cursed my own folly in ever having consented to such a
journey. To me, who had just left so different a scene, where we understood
each other by looks, where we needed but few words, and words were often
volumes, could anything be more humiliat-ing? A
post-chaise had generally been to me, by some accident or other, a scene of
festivity, of lightness of heart, and a sensitive tranquillity of temper. I
wondered what, in the name of heaven, was come to me. I reached my
journey’s end fatigued beyond all measure of fatigue.
“Yesterday I suffered the effects of it, and was in a
continual fever. Yet yesterday insensibility did me good, and by night I was a
great deal better. Yesterday was principally spent in the park and castle of
Blenheim. The park is a fine scene by nature, which not all the puppy
experiments of that mountebank Brown
could entirely spoil. The castle is a magnificent pile of building, and
contains many excellent pictures. Everything on a grand and lofty scale, most
especially the grandeur of nature, seems to me in proportion to enlarge and
elevate my existence. Yet here is even an uncommon mixture of genuine simple
greatness with the poor stretchings and strainings of impotent pride, chiefly
introduced by the stupid attempts of the famous Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough,—a pillar inscribed with the eulogies of
her husband’s campaign, and crowded with Acts of Parliament in his
praise,—and a most amazing funereal monument in the chapel. By the way, I am
not sure I should like to have all my dead family repose under the same room
with me. But what I principally like in the scene is its antiquity, not that it
sheltered the sordid Duke of Marlborough,
but that this was the favourite residence of our Henrys
and Edwards, that it was crowded with knights in armour
and a splendid train of ladies, that it was the seat of honour, and a generous
thirst for glory, that all among them was decorous and all was picturesque, and
that it is still haunted by the departed ghost of chivalry. My own Chaucer, too, adds glory to the object with
the recollection of the simple square house that he inhabited just on the
outside of the gate of the park. Poets then were loved by princes: they were so
rare, and by their appearance such a novelty in the world, that the greatest
and proudest of the species never thought they could pay them sufficient honour
and attention.
“My dear love, take care of yourself. Manage and
economize your temper. It is at bottom most excellent: do not let it be soured and spoiled.
It is capable of being recovered to its primaeval goodness, and even raised to
something better. Do not however get rid of all your faults. I love some of
them. I love what is human, what gives softness, and an agreeable air of
frailty and pliability to the whole. Farewell a thousand times. I shall be at
home on Monday evening: are not you sorry? Kiss Fanny and Mary. Help
them to remember me, and to love me. Farewell.”
The letters which follow, from Mrs
Inchbald, from Coleridge, and from
C. Lamb, need few remarks. Those of each writer
are arranged by themselves in chronological order, since there was no reason to break the
sequence by the introduction of others.
Mrs Inchbald certainly excelled most of her sex in
the power of saying a disagreeable thing in the most irritating manner.
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
“Leinster Square, 5th of Jan. 1801.
“Dear Sir,—I thank you for
the play of Antonio, as I
feel myself flattered by your remembrance of me; and I most sincerely wish you
joy of having produced a work which will protect you from being classed with
the successful dramatists of the present day, but which will hand you down to
posterity among the honoured few who, during the past century, have totally
failed in writing for the stage.—Your very humble Servant,
E. Inchbald.”
S. T. Coleridge to William Godwin.
“Greta Hall, Keswick, March 25, 1801.
“DearGodwin,—I fear your
tragedy will find me in a very unfit state of mind to sit in judgment on it. I
have been, during the last three months, undergoing a process of intellectual
exsiccation. In my long illness I had compelled into hours of delight many a
sleepless, painful hour of darkness by chasing down metaphysical game—and since
then I have continued the hunt, till I found myself unaware at the root of Pure
Mathematics—and up that tall, smooth tree, whose few poor branches are all at
its very summit, am I climbing by pure adhesive strength of arms and thighs,
still slipping down, still renewing my ascent. You would not know me! all
sounds of similitude keep at such a distance from each other in my mind that I
have forgotten how to make a rhyme. I look at the mountains (that visible God
Almighty that looks in at all my windows), I look at the mountains only for the
curves of their outlines; the stars, as I behold them, form themselves into
triangles; and my hands are scarred with scratches from a cat, whose back I was
rubbing in the dark in order to see whether the sparks in it were refrangible
by a prism. The Poet is dead in me. My imagination (or rather the Somewhat that
had been imaginative) lies like a cold snuff on the circular rim of a brass
candlestick, without even a stink of tallow to remind you that it was once
clothed and mitred with flame. That is past by! I was once a volume of gold
leaf, rising and riding on every breath of Fancy, but I have beaten myself back
into weight and density, and now I sink in quicksilver, yea, remain squat and
square on the earth, amid the hurricane that makes oaks and straws join in one
dance, fifty yards high in the element.
“However I will do what I can. Taste and feeling have
I none, but what I have give I unto thee. But I repeat that I am unfit to
decide on any but works of severe logic. I write now to beg, that if you have
not sent your tragedy, you may remember to send Antonio with it, which I have not yet
seen, and likewise my Campbell’s
‘Pleasures of
Hope,’ which Wordsworth
wishes to see.
“Have you seen the second volume of the ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ and
the preface prefixed to the first? I should judge of a man’s heart and
intellect, precisely according to the degree and intensity of the admiration
with which he read these poems. Perhaps instead of heart, I should have said
Taste, but when I think of the Brother, of Ruth,
and of Michael, I recur to
the expression, and am enforced to say heart. If I die,
and the booksellers will give you
anything for my life, be sure to say; ‘Wordsworth descended on him like the Γνωθι σεαυτόν from
heaven, by showing to him what true poetry was, he made him know that he
himself was no Poet.”
“In your next letter you will perhaps give me some
hints respecting your prose plans. God bless you,—
S. T. Coleridge.
“I have inoculated my youngest child, Derwent, with the cowpox. He passed
through it without any sickness. I myself am the slave of
rheumatism—indeed, though in a certain sense I am recovered from my
sickness, yet I have by no means recovered it. I congratulate you on the
settlement of Davy in London. I hope
that his enchanting manners will not draw too many idlers round him, to
harass and vex his mornings.”
The Same to the Same.
“Keswick, July 8, 1801.
“My dearGodwin,—I have this evening sent your
tragedy (directed to you) to Penrith to go from thence to London by the mail.
You will probably receive it on Saturday. . . . It would be needless to recount
the pains and evils that prevented me from sending it on the day I meant to do.
Your letter of this morning has given me some reason to be glad that I was
prevented. My criticisms were written in a style, and with a boyish freedom of
censure and ridicule, that would have given you pain and perhaps offence. I
will re-write them, abridge, or rather extract from them their absolute
meaning, and send them in the way of a letter. In the tragedy I have frequently
used the following marks: *, T, I, ‡. Of these, the first calls your attention
to my suspicions that your language is false or intolerable English. The second
marks the passages which struck me as flat or mean. The
third is a note of reprobation, levelled at these sentences in which you have
adopted that worst sort of vulgar language, common-place book language: such as
‘Difficulties that mock narration,’ ‘met my
view,’ ‘bred in the lap of luxury.’ The last
mark implies bad metre. I was much interested by the last three acts, indeed, I
greatly admire your management of the story. The two
first acts, I am convinced, you must entirely re-write. I would indeed open the
play with the conspirators in Ispahan, confident of their success. . . . In
this way you might with great dramatic animation explain to the audience all
you wish, and give likewise palpable motives of despair and revenge to
Bulac’s after conduct. But this I
will write to you—the papers in which I have detailed what I think might be
substituted, I really do not dare send.
“You must have been in an odd mood when you could
write to a poor fellow with a sick stomach, a giddy head, and swoln and limping
limbs, to a man on whom the dews of heaven cannot fall without diseasing him,
‘You want, or at least you think you want, neither accommodation
nor society as ministerial to your happiness,’ and strangely
credulous too, when you could gravely repeat that in the island of St
Michael’s, the chief town of which contains 14,000 inhabitants, no other
residence was procurable than ‘an unwindowed cavern scooped in the
rock.’ I must have been an idle fool indeed to have resolved so
deeply without having made enquiries how I was to be housed and fed.
Accommodations are necessary to my life, and society to my happiness, though I
can find that society very interesting and good which you perhaps would find
dull and uninstructive. One word more. You say I do not tolerate you in the
degree of partiality you feel for Mrs
I., and will not allow your admiration of Hume, and the pleasure you derive from Virgil, from Dryden,
even in a certain degree from Rowe.
Hume and Rowe I for myself hold
very cheap, and have never feared to say so, but never had any objection to any
one’s differing from me. I have received, and I hope still shall, great
delight from Virgil, whose versification I admire beyond
measure, and very frequently his language. Of Dryden I am,
and always have been, a passionate admirer. I have always placed him among our
greatest men. You must have misunderstood me, and considered me as detracting
when I considered myself only as discriminating. But were my opinions
otherwise, I should fear that others would not tolerate me in holding opinions
different from those of people in general, than feel any difficulty in
tolerating others in
their conformity with the general sentiment. Of Mrs I. I
once, I believe, wrote a very foolish sentence or two to you. And now for
‘my late acquisitions of friends.’ Aye, friends!
Stoddart indeed, if he were nearer
to us, and more among us, I should really number among such. He is a man of
uncorrupted integrity, and of very very kind heart; his talents are
respectable, and his information such, that while he was with me I derived much
instruction from his conversation. Sharpe and Rogers had an
introductory note from Mr Wedgwood; as
to Mr Rogers, even if I wished it, and were in London the
next week, I should never dream that any acquaintance I have with him would
entitle me to call on him at his own house.
S. T. Coleridge.”
The Same to the Same.
“Greta Hall, Keswick, Sep. 22, 1801.
“My dearGodwin,—When once a correspondence
has intermitted, from whatever cause, it scarcely ever recommences without some
impulse ab extra. After my last
letter, I went rambling after health, or at least, alleviation of sickness. My
Azores scheme I was obliged to give up, as well, I am afraid, as that of going
abroad at all, from want of money. Latterly I have had additional source of
disquietude—so that altogether I have, I confess, felt little inclination to
write to you, who have not known me long enough, nor associated enough of that
esteem which you entertain for the qualities you attribute to me, with me
myself me, to be much interested about the carcase Coleridge. So, of Carcase Coleridge no
more.
“At Middleham, near Durham, I accidentally met your
pamphlet and read it—and
only by accident was prevented from immediately writing to you. For I read it
with unmingled delight and admiration, with the exception of that one hateful
paragraph, for the insertion of which I can account only on a superstitious
hypothesis, that, when all the gods and goddesses gave you each a good gift,
Nemesis counterbalanced them all with the destiny, that, in whatever you
published, there should be some one outrageously imprudent suicidal passage. But you have had enough of this. With the exception of this passage, I never
remember to have read a pamphlet with warmer feelings of sympathy and respect.
Had I read it en masse when I wrote
to you, I should certes have made none of the remarks I once made in the first
letter on the subject, but as certainly should have done so in my second. On
the most deliberate reflection, I do think the introduction clumsily worded,
and (what is of more importance) I do think your retractations always
imprudent, and not always just. But it is painful to me to say this to you. I
know not what effect it may have on your mind, for I have found that I cannot
judge of other men by myself. I am myself dead indifferent as to censures of any kind. Praise even from fools has
sometimes given me a momentary pleasure, and what I could not but despise as
opinion, I have taken up with some satisfaction as sympathy. But the censure or
dislike of my dearest Friend, even of him whom I think the wisest man I know,
does not give me the slightest pain. It is ten to one but I agree with him, and
if I do, then I am glad. If I differ from him, the pleasure which I feel in
developing the sources of our disagreement entirely swallows up all
consideration of the disagreement itself. But then I confess that I have
written nothing that I value myself at all, and that
constitutes a prodigious difference between us—and still more than this, that
no man’s opinion, merely as opinion, operates in any other way than to
make me review my own side of the question. All this looks very much like
self-panegyric. I cannot help it. It is the truth, and I find it to hold good
of no other person; i.e. to the extent of the
indifference which I feel. And therefore I am without any criterion, by which I
can determine what I can say, and how much without wounding or irritating. I
will never therefore willingly criticise any manuscript composition, unless the
author and I are together, for then I know that, say what I will, he cannot be
wounded, because my voice, my looks, my whole manners must convince any good
man that all I said was accompanied with sincere good-will and genuine
kindness. Besides, I seldom fear to say anything when I can develope my
reasons, but this is seldom possible in a letter. It is not improbable, that
is, not very im-probable that, if I am absolutely unable to go
abroad (and I am now making a last effort by an application to Mr John King respecting his house at S. Lewis,
and the means of living there), I may perhaps come up to London and maintain
myself as before by writing for the Morning Post. Here it will be imprudent for
me to stay, from the wet and the cold. My darling Hartley has this evening had an attack of fever, but my medical
man thinks it will pass off. I think of your children not unfrequently. God
love them. He has been on the Scotch hills with Montagu and his new father, William Lush,—Yours,
S. T. Coleridge.”
The Same to the Same.
“25 Bridge Street, Westminster, Nov. 19, 1801.
“My dearGodwin,—I arrived here late on Sunday
evening, and how long I shall stay depends much on my health. If I were to
judge from my feelings of yesterday and to-day, it will be a very short time
indeed, for I am miserably uncomfortable. By your letter to Southey, I understand that you are
particularly anxious to see me. To-day I am engaged for two hours in the
morning with a person in the city, after which I shall be at Lamb’s till past seven at least. I had
assuredly planned a walk to Somerstown, but I saw so many people on Monday, and
walked to and fro so much, that I have ever since been like a Fish in air, who,
as perhaps you know, lies pantingly dying from excess of oxygen. A great change
from the society of W. and his sister—for though we were three persons, there
was but one God—whereas I have the excited feelings of a polytheist, meeting
Lords many and Gods many—some of them very Egyptian physiognomies, dog-faced
gentry, crocodiles, ibises, &c., though more odd fish than rare ones.
However, as to the business of seeing you, it is possible that you may meet me
this evening. If not, and if I am well enough, I will call on you; and if you
breakfast at ten, breakfast with you to-morrow morning. It will be hard indeed
if I cannot afford a half-crown coach fare to annihilate the sense at least of
the space. I write like a valetudinarian: but I
assure you that this morning I feel it still more.—Yours, &c.,
“S. T.
Coleridge.”
Lamb’s letters are so like himself that it were
sin to omit any of those which follow, though they have lost much of their point, since it
is now impossible to discover the work of which Godwin had sent him a plan. It is only mentioned in the diary as
“Sketch,” and no draft of any work which corresponds to the expressions in the
letters is to be found among the papers.
C. Lamb to William Godwin.
“June 29, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—Doctor
Christy’s Brother and Sister are come to town, and have
shown me great civilities. I in return wish to requite them, having, by
God’s grace, principles of generosity implanted
(as the moralists say) in my nature, which have been duly cultivated and
watered by good and religious friends, and a pious education. They have picked
up in the northern parts of the island an astonishing admiration of the great
author of the New Philosophy in England, and I have ventured to promise their
taste an evening’s gratification by seeing Mr
Godwinface to face!!!!! Will you do them and me in them the pleasure of drinking
tea and supping with me at the old number 16 on Friday or Saturday next? An
early nomination of the day will very much oblige yours sincerely,
Ch. Lamb.”
The Same to the Same.
Sep. 9, 1801.
“Dear Sir,—Nothing runs in
my head when I think of your story, but that you should make it as like the life of Savage as possible. That is a known
and familiar tale, and its effect on the public mind has been very great. Many
of the incidents in the true history are readily made dramatical. For instance,
Savage used to walk backwards and
forwards o’ nights to his mother’s window, to catch a glimpse of
her, as she passed with a candle. With some such situation the play might
happily open. I would plunge my Hero, exactly like Savage,
into difficulties and embarrassments, the consequences of an unsettled mind:
out of which he may be extricated by the unknown interference of his mother. He
should be attended from the beginning by a friend, who should stand in much the
same relation towards him as Horatio to
Altamont in the play of the Fair Penitent. A character of
this sort seems indispensable. This friend might gain interviews with the
mother, when the son was refused sight of her. Like Horatio with Calista, he
might wring his soul. Like Horatio, he
might learn the secret first. He might be exactly in the
same perplexing situation, when he had learned it, whether to tell it or
conceal it from the Ton (I have still Savage in my head)
might kill a man (as he did) in an affray—he should receive a pardon, as
Savage did—and the mother might interfere to have him
banished. This should provoke the Friend to demand an interview with her
husband, and disclose the whole secret. The husband, refusing to believe
anything to her dishonour, should fight with him. The husband repents before he
dies. The mother explains and confesses everything in his presence. The son is
admitted to an interview with his now acknowledged mother. Instead of embraces,
she resolves to abstract herself from all pleasure, even from his sight, in
voluntary penance all her days after. This is crude indeed!! but I am totally
unable to suggest a better. I am the worst hand in the world at a plot. But I
understand enough of passion to predict that your story, with some of
Savage’s, which has no repugnance, but a natural
alliance with it, cannot fail. The mystery of the suspected relationship—the
suspicion, generated from slight and forgotten circumstances, coming at last to
act as Instinct, and so to be mistaken for Instinct—the son’s unceasing
pursuit and throwing of himself in his mother’s way, something like
Falkland’s eternal persecution of
Williams—the high and intricate passion
in the mother, the being obliged to shun and keep at a distance the thing
nearest to her heart—to be cruel, where her heart yearns
to be kind, without a possibility of explanation. You have the power of life
and death and the hearts of your auditors in your hands—still Harris will want a skeleton, and he must have
it. I can only put in some sorry hints. The discovery to the son’s friend
may take place not before the 3d act—in some such way as this. The mother may
cross the street—he may point her out to some gay companion of his as the
Beauty of Leghorn—the pattern for wives, &c. &c. His companion, who is
an Englishman, laughs at his mistake, and knows her to have been the famous
Nancy Dawson, or any one else, who
captivated the English king. Some such way seems dramatic, and speaks to the
Eye. The audience will enter into the Friend’s surprise, and into the
perplexity of his situation. These Ocular Scenes are so many great landmarks,
rememberable headlands and lighthouses in the voyage. Macbeth’s witch has a good advice to a magic writer, what
to do with his spectator. ‘Show his eyes,
and grieve his heart.’ The most difficult thing seems to be, What to do with the husband? You
will not make him jealous of his own son? that is a stale and an unpleasant
trick in Douglas, &c.
Can’t you keep him out of the way till you want him, as the husband of
Isabella is conveniently sent off till
his cue comes? There will be story enough without him, and he will only puzzle
all. Catastrophes are worst of all. Mine is most stupid. I only propose it to
fulfil my engagement, not in hopes to convert you.
“It is always difficult to get rid of a woman at the
end of a tragedy. Men may fight and die. A woman must
either take poison, which is a nasty trick, or go mad,
which is not fit to be shown, or retire, which is poor, only retiring is most
reputable.
“I am sorry I can furnish you no better: but I find
it extremely difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before
me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint
crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you
could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the
deed, for I most sincerely wish success to your play.—Farewell,
C. L.”
Fragment of letter from the Same to the Same. [The
second sheet, endorsed by C. Lamb himself on the address as
“only double”]
“Margate, Sept. 17, 1801.
“I shall be glad to come home and talk these matters
with you. I have read your scheme very attentively. That Arabella has been mistress to King
Charles, is sufficient to all the purposes of the story. It can only
diminish that respect we feel for her to make her turn whore to one of the
Lords of his Bedchamber. Her son must not know that she has been a whore: it
matters not that she has been whore to a King: equally
in both cases, it is against decorum and against the delicacy of a son’s
respect that he should be privy to it. No doubt, many sons might feel a wayward
pleasure in the honourable guilt of their mothers, but is it a true feeling? Is
it the best sort of feeling? Is it a feeling to be exposed on theatres to
mothers and daughters? Your conclusion (or rather Defoe’s) comes far short of the tragic ending, which is
always expected, and it is not safe to disappoint. A tragic auditory wants blood. They care but little about a man and his wife
parting. Besides, what will you do with the son, after all his pursuits and
adventures? Even quietly leave him to take guinea-and-a-half lodgings with mama
in Leghorn! O impotent and pacific measures! . . . I am certain that you must
mix up some strong ingredients of distress to give a savour to your pottage. I
still think that you may, and must, graft the story of Savage upon Defoe. Your
hero must kill a man or do some
thing. Can’t you bring him to the gallows or some great
mischief, out of which she must have recourse to an explanation with her
husband to save him. Think on this. The husband, for instance, has great
friends in Court at Leghorn. The son is condemned to death. She cannot teaze
him for a stranger. She must tell the whole truth. Or she may teaze him, as for a stranger, till (like Othello in Cassio’s
case) he begins to suspect her for her importunity. Or, being pardoned, can she
not teaze her husband to get him banished? Something of this I suggested
before. Both is best. The murder and the pardon will
make business for the fourth act, and the banishment and
explanation (by means of the Friend I want you to draw)
the fifth. You must not open any of the truth to Dawley by means of a letter. A letter is a feeble messenger on
the stage. Somebody, the son or his friend, must, as a coup de main, be exasperated, and obliged
to tell the husband. Damn the husband and his ‘gentlemanlike
qualities.’ Keep him out of sight, or he will trouble all. Let him be in
England on trade, and come home as Biron
does in Isabella, in the fourth act, when
he is wanted. I am for introducing situations, sort of counterparts to
situations, which have been tried in other plays—like
but not the same. On this principle I recommended a
friend like Horatio in the ‘Fair Penitent,’ and on
this principle I recommend a situation like Othello, with relation to Desdemona’s intercession for Cassio. By-scenes may likewise receive hints. The son may see
his mother at a mask or feast, as Romeo,
Juliet. The festivity of the company
contrasts with the strong perturbations of the individuals. Dawley may be told his wife’s past
unchastity at a mask by some witch-character—as Macbeth upon the heath, in dark sentences. This may stir his
brain, and be forgot, but come in aid of stronger proof hereafter. From this,
what you will perhaps call whimsical way of counterparting, this honest
stealing, and original mode of plagiarism, much yet, I think, remains to be
sucked. Excuse these abortions. I thought you would want the draught soon
again, and I would not send it empty away.—Yours truly,
WILLIAM GODWIN!!! ‘Somers Town, 17th Sept. 1801.”
In November of this year Godwin
had intended making a trip to Paris. He was, it may be presumed, still considered
politically dangerous, for permission was refused, as appears by the following note:—
Mr Flint to William Godwin.
“Alien Office, 3d
Nov. 1801.
“Mr Flint
presents his compliments to Mr Godwin,
and is desired by Lord Pelham to acquaint
him that he is extremely sorry he cannot at the present moment grant the
passport Mr Godwin requests to enable him to go to
Paris.”
Towards the end of December Godwin
married Mrs Clairmont, at Shoreditch Church, the
lady having probably taken lodgings in that parish to enable the marriage to be there
solemnized. It was kept a profound secret; no one was told till it was over, and this was
probably one reason for the selection of a distant church. Perhaps, however, St
Pancras’ Church was still too full of memories of Mary
Wollstonecraft to make it a suitable spot in which her husband should put
another wife in her place.
Of this marriage, as of the former, the faithful Marshal was the only witness besides the parish clerk. An
extract from the Diary briefly tells the story.
“1801. Decr. 20.—Su: write to David Webster. Tobin and Fenwick call:
M[arshall] and C[lairmon]ts dine: call on Philips adv[ens], Surrs, and Fenwick.
“21. M. Shoreditch Church, &c., with
C[lairmon]t and Marshall]: dine at Snaresbrook: sleep.
“22. Call at the Red Cow: adv[enæ]
farmers, K of Bohemia’s table: dine chez moi: Tuthil calls.”
The entries for the next few days show that a vast number of letters were
despatched and calls made to tell friends of the event, and then are recorded calls on
their part to make the acquaintance of Mrs Godwin.
Then from these diaries vanishes all record of the romance—if indeed it can be called so.
The writer was not quite so much his own master as before. Mrs Godwin
was a determined and imperious woman, who ruled her house, who did not like all Godwin’s friends, and occasionally adopted devices
more ingenious than honest for keeping them at a distance. One such, recorded by
Miss Baxter, the daughter of one of
Godwin’s oldest friends, may fitly be recorded here, though
the precise date is unknown. It was not, however, long after the marriage.
Mr Baxter called to see Godwin, and on admittance to the house Mrs
Godwin met him with the news that the kettle had fallen from the hob, and
scalded Godwin’s legs badly, as he sat by his fireside, that in
drawing off his stockings much of the skin had come off with them, so that the poor man was
in a state of terrible suffering, quite unable to see any one. Next day Mr
Baxter and his daughter set out, as was natural, to enquire after their
friend, having already told the tale to a circle of sympathising acquaintances.
“But wha d’ ye think we should meet coming down the street,”
said Miss Baxter, “on his ain twa legs but Maister
Godwin himsel’, and it was a’ a lee from beginning to
end.”
In 1803 Mrs Godwin gave birth to a
son, William. The event made no difference in
Godwin’s placid and invariable routine.
The Diary thus records it:—
“March 28th, M.—Birth of William, 10 minutes
before 11 a.m. Call on Lamb; adv. Coleridge, Museum. M[arshal] dines. Call on M., on L. Ht. [Louisa
Holcroft] and Nicholson.
Condé calls.”
Certain entries in the Diary have a pathos from their extreme brevity.
Their very baldness shows concentrated feeling in the determination not to show it. They
are those of the deaths of friends, which begin to occur frequently. They are in the fewest
possible words, as—
“Feb. 21, Su.—Jewish History. Sup. w.
Miss at Fells. Dr Moore dies.”
The first letter of the year which has been preserved is from Mrs Godwin, sen., accepting a visit proposed for the
following autumn.
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
“Ap. 27, 1803.
“My dearWilliam,—Doubtless
I should be glad to see you and your wife, as she is part of yourself, or any of your children, but
the distance is so great, and the expence of the journey, that we cannot expect
it. The youngest of us cannot assure ourselves of a day, especialy I, that am
advanced so far beyond the common age of life. Each of us ought to prepare for
the approach of death, as this is the only time we shall ever have. When death
comes, it will be two late. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of
Salvation. The Lord affect our hearts with solemn truth. May we be washed and
made accepted of god through the sacrifice which Christ has wrought out for
such guilty depraved siners as we all are.
“I hearwith send a doll for one of your daughters and
a testement that was yours for yours. I hope you will promote the knowledge of
the undoubted truths in it. Your sister loves you two well to speak slighting
of you or yours. I put in a Shirt you can put on and off at pleasure: it is
made of old [linen], and will therefore last but a little while. I fear
Harriet is thro pride and indulgence going the high
way to ruin herself, if not her father two. She had learned a business by which
many young people get their living, Mr Sam Lewel’s
daughter for one. You woud be kind to talk to them and see if you can perswade
them to brake of the acquantance and apply to work, till she gets the offer of
an honest man to marry. I hope Mary Bailey follows it. I
have never heard of her since she was at her father’s last Autumn, but
think to write to her very soon by post, and send her a guinea by Hannah, as I did this time twelvemonth. I hope
she will never leave her husband so long again: it is the way to make a good
husband bad. If he is bad, she may thank herself.
“If you do come into Norfolk, perswade yourself to
hear the worthy Mr Sykes on Lord’s
Day. Present my kind respects to your wife, whom I wish to be a helpmeet to you
in spiritual things, and instruct your dear children in the same. It’s a
duty incumbent on parants: we may see every day their proneness to evil and backwardness to that which is good. You cannot be
insencable of that. I cannot write otherwise, so you must not be offended.
“I am as well as most old people, can just creep
about the house, had pain about me, and a cold in my head for a fortnight, but
am better now. My maid a poor weak constitution, could not go through hard
work; the children well, except colds and coughs. It is a very sickly time,
very few houses escape the Influensy. Mr
Sykes have had it six weeks, is very much Shrunk, but hope he
will recover. Wish to hear of you as often as you can, or your wife, if she has
more time. You did not say she suckled. That is the likeliest way to its
thriving.
“Conclude, your ever affectionate mother,
A. Godwin.
“Your brothers and Mrs G.
send their kind respects to you and Mrs
Godwin. I wish to know what Joe’s son is doing, whether industerous or lazy, and
sucking the blood of others. That trick of going to Plays is the ruin of
young people.”
It is not now possible to find any trace of the work sketched by
Coleridge in the following letter, which is
certainly not to be identified with any actually published. Were it not that he says he is
“ready to go to press,” it might be supposed to have had existence
only in his teeming brain. Yet a MS. so remarkable and so valuable, if it really existed,
can scarcely have been lost or destroyed. Search’s “Light of Nature,” of which
Coleridge speaks as valuable and scarce, was published originally
in seven volumes in 1768, and went through several editions. Search was a fictitious name,
the author being Abraham Tacher, born 1705, died
1774.
S. T. Coleridge to William Godwin.
“Greta Hall, Keswick, June 4, 1803.
“My DearGodwin,—I trust
that my dear friend C. Lamb will have
informed you how seriously ill I have been. I arrived at Keswick on Good Friday, caught
the influenza, have struggled on in a series of convalescence and relapse, the
disease still assuming new shapes and symptoms; and though I am certainly
better than at any former period of the disease, and more steadily
convalescent, yet it is not mere low spirits that makes me doubt whether I
shall ever wholly surmount the effects of it. I owe this explanation to you. I
quitted town with strong feelings of affectionate esteem towards you, and a
firm resolution to write to you within a short time after my arrival at my
home. During my illness, I was exceedingly affected by the thought that month
had glided away after month, year after year, and still had found and left me
only preparing for the experiments which are to
ascertain whether the hopes of those who have hoped proudly of me have been
auspicious omens, or mere delusions—and the anxiety to realise something and
finish something, has, no doubt, in some measure retarded my recovery. I am
now, however, ready to go to press with a work which I consider as introductory
to a System, though to the public it will appear altogether a thing by itself.
I write now to ask your advice respecting the time and manner of its
publication, and the choice of a publisher. I entitle it ‘Organum verè Organum, or an Instrument of Practical Reasoning
in the Business of Real Life; to which will be prefixed, i, a
familiar introduction to the common system of Logic, namely that by Aristotle and the schools; 2, a concise and
simple yet full statement of the Aristotelian Logic, with references annexed to
the authors, and the name and page of the work, to which each part may be
traced, so that it may be seen what is Aristotle’s,
what Porphyry, what the addition of the
Greek commentators, and what of the Schoolmen; 3, of the Platonic Logic; 4, of
Aristotle, containing a fair account of the
”Οργανόν, of which Dr
Reid, in ‘Kaimes’
Sketches of Man,’
has given a false, and not only erroneous but calumnious statement—as far as
the account had not been anticipated in the second part of my work—namely, the
concise and simple, yet full,&c.,&c.; 5, a philosophical examination of
the Truth and of the Value of the Aristotelian System of Logic, including all
the after additions to A. C. on the characteristic merits and demerits of
Aristotle and Plato as philosophers in general, and an
attempt to explain the vast influence of the former during so many ages; and of
the influence of Plato’s works on the restoration of
the belles lettres, and on the Reformation; 7, Raymond Lully; 8, Peter
Ramus; 9, Lord Bacon, or
the Verulamian Logic; 10, Examination of the same, and comparison of it with
the logic of Plato (in which I attempt to make it probable
that, though considered by Bacon himself as the antithesis
and antidote of Plato, it is bonâ fide the same, and that Plato
has been grossly misunderstood); 10, Descartes; 11, Condillac, and a philosophical examination of his logic, i.e. the logic which he basely purloined from Hartley. Then follows my own ‘Organum vere Organum,’ which consists of a
Σύστημα of all possible modes of
true, probable, and false reasoning, arranged philosophically, i.e. on a strict analysis of those operations and
passions of the mind in which they originate, and by which they act, with one
or more striking instances annexed to each, from authors of high estimation,
and to each instance of false reasoning, the manner in which the sophistry is
to be detected, and the words in which it may be exposed. The whole will
conclude with considerations of the value of the work and its practical utility
in scientific investigations, especially the first part, which contains the
strictly demonstrative reasonings, and the analysis of all the acts and
passions of the mind which may be employed in the discovery of truth:—in the
arts of healing, especially in those parts that contain a catalogue, &c.,
of probable reasoning. Lastly, in the senate, the pulpit, and our law courts,
to whom the whole, but especially the latter, three-fourths of the
work,—namely, the probable and the false, will be useful. And, finally,
instructions how to form a common-place book by the aid of this Instrument, so
as to read with practical advantage, and (supposing average talents) to ensure
a facility in proving and in confuting.
“I have thus amply detailed the contents of my work,
which has not been the work of one year or two, but the result of many
years’ meditations, and of very various reading. The size of the work
will, printed at 30 lines a page, form one volume octavo, 600 pages to the
volume, and I shall be ready with the first half of the work for the printer at
a fortnight’s notice. Now, my dear friend, give me your thoughts on the subject. Would you
have me offer it to the booksellers, or, by the assistance of my friends, print
and publish it on my own account? If the former, would you advise me to sell
the copyright at once, or only one or more editions? Can you give me a general
notion what terms I have a right to insist on in either case? And lastly, to
whom would you advise me to apply? Longman and Rees are very
civil, but they are not liberal, and they have no notion of me except as a
Poet, nor any sprinklings of philosophical knowledge
that could in the least enable them to judge of the value or probable success
of such a work. Phillips is a pushing
man, and a book is sure to have fair play if it is his property, and it could
not be other than pleasant to me to have the same publisher with
yourself—but—Now, if there be anything of importance that with truth and
justice ought to follow that ‘but,’ you will inform me. It is not
my habit to go to work so seriously about matters of pecuniary business, but my
ill health makes my health more than ordinarily uncertain, and I have a wife
and three little ones. If your judgment led you to advise me to offer it to
Phillips, would you take the trouble of talking with
him on the subject? and give him your real opinion, whatever it may be, of the
work, and of the power of the author?
“When this book is fairly off my hands, I shall, if I
live and have sufficient health, set seriously to work in arranging what I have
already written, and in pushing forward my studies and my investigations
relative to the omne scibile of human
nature, what we are, and how we become what we are: so as to solve the two
grand problems, how, being acted upon, we shall act. But between me and this
work there may be Death.
“I hope that your wife and little ones are well. I
have had a sick family, at one time every individual, master, mistress,
children, and servants were all laid up in bed, and we were waited on by
persons hired from the town by the week. But now all are well, I only excepted.
If you find my paper smell, or my style savour, of scholastic quiddity, you
must attribute it to the infectious quality of the folio on which I am writing,
namely, ‘Joh. Scotus Erigena De Divisione
Nature,’ the forerunner by some centuries of the schoolmen.
“I cherish all kind and honourable feelings towards
you, and am, dear Godwin, yours most
sincerely,
S. T. Coleridge.
“You know the high character and present scarcity
of ‘Search’s Light
of Nature.’ ‘I have found in this
writer,’ says Paley in his
preface, ‘more original thinking and observation upon the several
subjects he has taken in hand than in any other, not to say in all
others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled.
But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular
work,” &c. A friend of mine, every way calculated by his tack and prior
studies for such a work, is willing to abridge and systematize that work
from eight to two volumes,—in the words of Paley,
‘to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles,
and to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses what, in that
otherwise excellent performance, is spread over too much
surface.’ I would prefix to it an Essay, containing the whole
substance of the first volume of Hartley, entirely defecated from all the corpuscular
hypotheses, with more illustrations. Likewise I will revise every sheet of
the abridgement. I should think the character of the work, and the above
quotation from so high an authority (with the present public I mean) as
Paley, would ensure its success. If you will read,
or transcribe and send this to Mr
Phillips, or to any other publisher (Longman and Rees excepted), you would greatly oblige me—that is to say,
my dear Godwin, you would
essentially serve a young man of profound genius and original mind, who
wishes to get his Sabine subsistence by some
employment from the booksellers, while he is employing the remainder of his
time in nursing up his genius for the destiny he believes appurtenant to
it. Impose any task on me in return. Qui cito
facit, bis facit.”
The “Chaucer” demanded incessant labour, and it is interesting to find how
thoroughly, according to the scholarship and the facilities for work existing at that time,
the work was done. Godwin worked almost daily at the British Museum, and corresponded with the
Librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford,
with the Keeper of the Records in the Exchequer Office, with the Clerk of the Bills, with
the Record Office of the Chapter at Westminster, and with the Heralds’ College. There
are also many letters showing that he had consulted Horne
Tooke and others on philological questions; in fact, it is plain that, what
had begun as task-work, became a labour of love. Two volumes of the work were published on
Oct 13, the last sheets having been revised on Sep. 23d, the day before he left London for
the country.
The price paid by Phillips appears
to have been £300, and as much more for two succeeding volumes. This, however, Godwin calls “extremely penurious.”
Godwin’s health had been very indifferent
during the summer. There are frequent notices of fainting fits and vomiting, for which the
treatment was of the kind termed “heroic.” It was probably from a feeling that
he needed more than the annual excursion of less than a week, his usual holiday, as well as
the desire to introduce Mrs Godwin to his mother,
that they left London in October for a tour of three weeks among his old friends in
Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire. They went to Stowmarket, the first time since he had
been there as a minister, spent two days with his mother at Dalling, and he renewed the old
intimacy with the Aldersons, Opies,
Rigbys, and other families prominent among the Norwich society of
those days, who are not even now forgotten.
Godwin returned with Mrs
Godwin to London Oct. 11, 1803, and the Diary again becomes a bare record of
his reading and of visits paid to and by him. But towards the end of
the month are no less than four notices of dinners to friends, and on each of them are the
words, “Curran expected.” How the
mistake arose cannot now be known, but out of it arose a misunderstanding between
Godwin and his wife, which led to the following letter. It may
well be supposed that a serious threat of separation did not take place on the first
occasion that disagreements had arisen. The time at which Mrs Godwin
kept her temper may refer to that of his serious indisposition and frequent fainting-fits
in July.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“October 28, 1803.
“In our conversation this morning you expressed a
wish to separate. All I have to say on the subject is, that I have no obstacle
to oppose to it, and that if it is to take place I hope it will not be long in
hand. It is not my wish; because I know that here you have every ingredient of
happiness in your possession, and that in order to be happy, you have nothing
to do but to suppress in part the excesses of that baby-sullenness for every
trifle, and to be brought out every day (the attribute of the mother of
Jane), which I saw you suppress with
great ease, and in repeated instances, in the months of July and August last.
The separation will be a source of great misery to me; but I can make up my
resolution to encounter it, and I cannot but wish that you should have the
opportunity of comparing it with the happiness which is completely within your
reach, but which you are eager to throw away.
“As to the ground of your resentment, I owe it to
myself to re-state it, with all the additions with which you in your remarks
have furnished me. Mr Curran promised to
dine with me on Tuesday, the 18th inst., and again on Wednesday the 26th.
Yesterday he promised to come to me at twelve o’clock and spend the day
with me. On each of the two first days I provided a dinner for him and was
disappointed. Yesterday you provided a dinner, contrary to my order to the servant,
since his promise, which I gave you in writing, showed
that if I did not see him by twelve or one (coming from breakfast at Lord Hutchinson’s), I had no right to
expect him at four. A woman of any humanity would have endeavoured to console
me under these repeated disappointments. If we part, you will have the
consolation to reflect that we part ‘because I did not exact from a
friend (who till within these ten days never disappointed me) something more than a promise that he would keep his engagements.
“I earnestly wish, however, though I cannot say I
hope, that wherever you go, you may find reason to be satisfied with the choice
you have made.
“You part from the best of husbands, the most anxious
to console you, the best qualified to bear and be patient towards one of the
worst of tempers. I have every qualification and every wish to make you happy,
but cannot without your own” [incomplete].
Old Mrs Godwin had only seen the
better side of her daughter-in-law, who could be, no doubt, as pleasant for a short time as
she was clever.
Mrs Godwin, Sen., to William Godwin.
Nov. 15, 1803.
“My DearWilliam,—Whose
Countenance gave me the highest delight to see with your wife, whom I also
respect for her many amiable qualities. I wish you had paid so much respect to
good Mr Sykes as to have heard him
preach one Lord’s Day in your good father’s Pulpit. Think with
yourself, if you were in his place, and your mother’s that loves you, and
at the same time highly values Mr Sykes, who in many
respects is the very Image of your dear father, for friendliness and wish to do
everybody good. A man of unblemished carrector and serious godliness. He told
me he was ingaged before he received my invitation to spend the afternoon,
which I was sorry for, for he is so sensible a man, that you could not but been
pleased with his company. It now remains to tell you and Mrs Godwin I have done the best I ever could about the sheets, and think them a very great
pennyworth. I desired Hannah to cut off
lines of her letter, and send them to you to inform you how to remit the
money—£4, 4s.—for the sheets, and one shilling for the pack-cloth, which makes
£4, 5s. Pay it into Barklay’s bank, taking his recipt on your letter for
Ann Godwin sen.’s account at
Guirney’s bank, Norwich. They will do it without puting you to the
expence of a stamp. Leave room to cut it of, that I may send it.
“Mrs
Godwin’s kind letter I rec’d; was rejoiced you got
safe home, and met your dear children in good helth, and the particulars of
your journey. The time we spent together was to me very pleasing, to see you
both in such helth and so happy in consulting to make each other so, which is
beutiful in a married state, and, as far as I am able to judge, appears husifly
which is a high recommendation in a wife: give her the fruit of her hands, and
let her own hands praise her. I might go back to the 10th verse. But will
conclude with, ‘favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman
that feareth the lord, she shall be praised.’
“I wish your brother John had ever so mean a place where he had his board found, if
it were Mr Finche’s footman’s, for he must
actualy starve on half a guinea a week. If his master will give him a
carrector. I have sent him 7 lb. of butter, but that can’t last long, and
I am in earnest. If he don’t seek a place while he has deasent clothes on
his back, nobody will take him in. I cannot, nor I will not, support him. I
shall not be ashamed to own him, let him be in ever so low a station, if he
have an honest carrector. He is two old to go to sea, but may do for such a
place if his pride will let him: its better than a jale, and I can’t
pretend to keep him out. Now I have another meloncholy story to tell you. Your
dear brother Natty, I fear, is declining
apace. He is still at Mr Murton’s, but I have
invited him home to do what I can for him. If my maid cannot nurss him, he must
have one. Tell HannahMrs
Hull’s brother Raven seems declining
too, may perhaps live the winter out, but has no appitite, nor keep out of bed
half the day. You see Deth is taking his rounds, and the young as well as the old are not
sure of a day. The Lord grant that we may finish our warfare so as not to be
afraid to die.
“Now I will tell you Mr
Sykes’s text last Lord’s Day,—Isaiah liv.,
‘O thou afflicted and tossed with tempests, behold I will lay thy
stones with fare coulars, and lay thy foundations with
sapphires’—one of the finest sermons I ever heard. I wish you to read
Henery’s exposition on that
chapter.
“I am unwell with a cold. I’ve not been so well
since you left us. I believe I did myself no good with such long walks, but
have not missed the meeting since. Mr
and Mrs G. send their respects to you, and so do their
children, and my maid Molly.
“I would advise you to let your children learn to
knit little worsted short stockens, just above their shoes, to keep their feet
from chilblains this winter. We cannot but be anxious about this war. It was
pride that begun it, and will most likely ruin it. Cursed pride, that creeps
securely in, and swels a haughty worm. It was the sin that cast the divils out
of heaven, and our first parents out of Paradise.—I am, with real affection,
your loving mother,
Ann Godwin.
“I have sent your two pocket handkerchifs, a pair
course stockens for your brother, the rest for my Grandson
John.”
The change in temper which has been already noticed led to a distinct
breach between Godwin and Holcroft,—the letters in reference to this
misunderstanding are not in themselves of any interest—as well as between
Godwin and Lamb, and
contributed in some degree to the production of an acrimonious letter to Horne Tooke, which is given below. It is true that
Godwin was always extremely sensitive to anything which looked
like, or could be tortured into looking like, a slight; yet such an outburst is an
exaggeration of his usual feeling. In the other cases, Lamb, as will
be seen, hints that Mrs Godwin was guilty of at
least a suppressio veri, while
Holcroft still more decidedly charges her with being the cause of
estrangement.
These quarrels were of course healed; but none the less did they tend
towards a more restrained and less affectionate tone between the old friends, though the
regard which had been felt could never wholly cease, and Godwin had arrived at a time of life in which a man seldom makes new
friends. The few real friendships made at such an age are indeed sometimes as warm as those
of youth, but the opportunities are rarer; and a man looks that conjugal passion and filial
obedience should each gradually pass, if it be possible, into friendship and equality. But
for this to take place, a wife must make her husband’s friends her own; and
Godwin, more than many men, kept that youth of heart which clave
to old friends with enthusiasm, and still attracted the young.
With these few words of explanation, the following letters speak for
themselves. If Lamb’s review of “Chaucer” was written and
published after all, it is not now discoverable.
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
“Nov. 8, 1803.
“My dear Sir,—I have been
sitting down for three or four days successively to the review, which I so much
wished to do well, and to your satisfaction. But I can produce nothing but
absolute flatness and nonsense. My health and spirits are so bad, and my nerves
so irritable, that I am sure, if I persist, I shall teaze myself into a fever.
You do not know how sore and weak a brain I have, or you would allow for many
things in me which you set down for whims. I solemnly assure you that I never
more wished to prove to you the value which I have for you than at this moment;
but although in so seemingly trifling a service I cannot get through with it, I
pray you to impute it to this one sole cause, ill health. I hope I am above
subterfuge, and that you will do me this justice to think so.
“You will give me great satisfaction by sealing my
pardon and oblivion in a line or two, before I come to see you, or I shall be
ashamed to come.—Yours, with great truth,
C. Lamb.”
The Same to the Same.
“Nov. 10, 1803.
“DearGodwin,—You never
made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to suppose that the reason of my
not writing that cursed thing was to be found in your book. I assure you most
sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with Chaucer. I may be wrong, but I think
there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a conjecturing
spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did and how he felt, where the
materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of mistaken
tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs Godwin that I did find a fault,
which I should reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she
may very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she
drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the work. I
then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into particulars until
I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things before third persons,
because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped.
If Mrs Godwin has been the cause of your misconstruction,
I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also
telling Mrs G. (which she may have dropt) that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I
expected. But I wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had
conceived an expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of
the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In
particular, I should have brought forward that on ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and Shakespear, which, it is little to say,
delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely instructed
me, yet put into full-grown sense many conceptions which had arisen in me
before in my most discriminating moods.) All these things I was preparing to
say, and bottling them up till I came, thinking to please my friend and host,
the author! when lo! this deadly blight intervened.
“I certainly ought to make great allowances for your
misundering me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained
over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common
letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will
act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as
three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylor’s boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for
a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command,
I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so
whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man’s book, let it
have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I
cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in
conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my
talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I
can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts;
but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may
be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no
reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite
irreducible into column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to shew it
you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I
neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any
(most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I
will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time
taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you, since you desire it: and if
I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it, and forgive
me; if it proves anything better than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of
sweet incense between us.
C. Lamb.”
J. Horne Tooke to William Godwin.
“Wimbledon, Dec. 6, 1803.
“My Dear Sir,—I this
moment received your letter, and return an immediate answer, that you may not
have an uneasy feeling one moment by my fault. What happened on Sunday to you
may happen, and does happen to every one of my friends and acquaintance every
day of my life. Bosville, his three
friends, and Mr Wood, came first, spoke to me in my study
a very few minutes, and went away, leaving me to shift myself. W. Scott should have walked with them, but I
called him back, having particular and important business to converse upon.
Whilst we were importantly engaged, you arrived and sent up your name: to avoid
interruption, I answered that I would come down speedily. I intended to finish
my conversation, to dress myself, and then to ask you upstairs, or myself to go
down. I had not finished my business with W. Scott when
the others returned; and they had not been in my room many minutes when they
mentioned your being in the garden. I immediately begged them to call to you
out of the window, at the same time telling them (what was very true) that I
had quite forgot that you were there. You have the whole history, and ought to
be ashamed of such womanish jealousy. You will consult your own happiness by
driving such stuff from your thoughts. I know you do sometimes ask explanations
from other persons, supposing that they fail in etiquette towards you: all
compliments and explanations of the kind appear to me feeble and ridiculous.
Every man can soon find out who is glad to see him or not, without compelling
his friends to account for accidents of this kind, which must happen to every
mortal.
“Your jealousy, like all other jealousy, is its own
punishment. I wish you punished a little for compelling me to write this
letter, which is a great punishment to me; but I do not
wish you to be tormented so much as this fractious habit will torment you if
you indulge it. And besides, I should be very sorry that you missed any friends
or valuable acquaintance by the apprehensions persons might entertain of your
taking offence at trifles. You say Mr Ward
was a stranger. He is no stranger. He is Bosville’s nephew, and a frequent visitor of mine. He did
not act like a stranger: he went away in the middle of dinner; but I was not
displeased at the liberty, but wish all my friends to accommodate themselves;
and if I shall ever suspect (which I am not likely to do) that any of them
slight me, I shall never seek an explanation, but leave it to time, and a
repetition of slights, to discover it to me.
“Hang you and your weakness, or rather Hang your
weakness for making me write this stuff to you, upon such a foolish business.—I
am, with great compassion for your nerves, very truly yours,
J. Horne Tooke.”
Some curious letters remain for this year which testify to the great
attraction Godwin’s society still possessed
for those much younger than himself. To him, as to their confessor, young men brought their
difficulties, intellectual and social, and confided to him their sorrows and their sins,
with their aspirations after a higher life. Some of these, which
Godwin must have forgotten to destroy, it is only now no violation
of confidence in an Editor to read, because the names are so impossible to identify. Nor
would it be well to print them, but it is desirable to notice the fact that such
outpourings of spirit were made to Godwin, if we would understand what
he really was who seemed to some only the unimpassioned philosopher, but who yet was to
those who could get beyond his shell the eager, sympathetic man, who had not forgotten the
days of his own youth.
CHAPTER V. FRIENDS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 1802-3.
We have now entered on a period of which the interest mainly
depends on the correspondence which has been preserved. The life which Godwin led was singularly barren of events; his opinions
and his habits were stereotyped. It is true that he made new friends, and there are
constant indications that many persons, especially young and enthusiastic men, sat at his
feet and gained from him kindliest counsel in difficulties mental and other. But he had
ceased to throw himself eagerly into the questions of the day, and the stern need of
winning his bread forced him more and more to such literary work as would pay. That his
views were unchanged, however, is clear from an interesting letter to him from his friend
Fell, whom he had reproached for apparent untruth
to the principles of the French Revolution. Fell says that he had
denounced the excesses of Robespierre and Marat, while admitting the excellence of that for which
they had originally contended. Godwin’s position seems to have
been that the work was so good, and the principles so true, that to remark the crimes,
however gross, of individuals, is to seek for specks on the sun. Whatever may be thought of
the argument, it is evidence that Godwin in no degree shrunk from the
views of his youth, or from carrying them out to what he considered their legitimate
conclusion.
He took much trouble during 1802 in endeavouring to gain Charles Clairmont admission into Christ Hospital, which is
another evidence of the pressure of money difficulties. He was now in the receipt of a very
small income arising from the rents of ten houses in Primrose Street—No. 11 to 21—the
property of the Wollstonecraft family, ‘and divided between the
survivors, or their legal representatives. All else depended on his own exertions.
The diaries show no change; the same names recur as formerly, the same old
friends and some new ones—but with this meaning change that fewer seek him than in earlier
years. His visits are made in increasing proportion to them. The old acquaintances did not
like Mrs Godwin, and she did not like them; she was
a harsh stepmother, whom his children feared. She had strong views, in which many would
agree, that each child should be educated to some definite duties, and with a view of
filling some useful place in life; but this arrangement soon had at least a show of
partiality. It was found that Jane Clairmont’s
mission in life, according to her mother’s view, was to have all the education and
even accomplishments which their slender means would admit, and more than they would admit;
while household drudgery was from an early age discovered to be the life-work of Fanny and Mary
Godwin. That Mary Shelley was afterwards a worthy
intellectual companion to Shelley is in no degree
due to Mrs Godwin, and little to her father’s direct teaching.
All the education she had up to the time when she linked her fate with
Shelley’s was self-gained; the merits of such a work as
“Frankenstein”
were her own, the faults were those of her home training.
There is indeed one fact recorded in the Diary, in the usual curt way, of
which it would be interesting to know further particulars. On March 2d Godwin visited Lord Lauderdale, and met there, also as a casual caller, the
Prince of Wales, accompanied by Lord R. Spencer and R.
Adair. Godwin had dined with Horne Tooke the night before, and all the other names
which occur in the Diary at and about the same time are those of men of opinions congenial
to his own. We should like to know how Godwin made his reverence to
the Prince, whose training and character he had held up to such scorn in “Political Justice;” and how the
Prince—who could, when he pleased, seem to be a gentleman—treated the philosopher.
Holcroft’s letter, which begins the year, may
at once be followed by the rest of those which he and Lady
Mountcashel wrote to Godwin, that the
whole story may be told at once. We are not now personally interested in the
misunderstandings between a lady and her governess, but the strong feeling on political
questions is too characteristic of the time to be omitted.
The Loir and Marmot mentioned in the letters were for Sir Anthony Carlisle, who was at this time deeply engaged
in researches in comparative anatomy.
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Paris, Rue De Lille, Jan. 1, 1802.
“I cannot write a word of business till I have first
spoken of the information in your letter, which excited infinitely the most
emotion. You are by this time married. I would say something that should convey
my feelings: but what are common-place expressions of wishing you joy, hoping
you may be happy, or pretending to moralize on a subject which depends so
almost entirely on the feelings of the parties. There is not anything on earth
so requisite, as well to the every-day, as to the exquisite, happiness of man,
as the love and friendship of woman. I know you deserve
the love and friendship of the whole earth, and I think you better calculated
to find it in a married life than perhaps any man with whom I am acquainted.
With the same ardent desire to practice and to create virtue, which I attribute
to myself, you have more forbearance. I do not know Mrs Godwin, but I have great reliance on your discrimination.
As the beginning of future friendship, speak of me, Louisa and Fanny, to her
as kindly as your conscience will permit. The time, I hope, will come for us to
realize the promises you shall make in our name.
“I have received the bill for £266, 6s. Would you were
a man of business as well as a poet. I requested you not to send me the money,
but a letter of credit. It might have saved me £8 or £10. I lose now on the
whole £16, 8s. 0d. This is a trifle. . . .
“I shall do my utmost to procure books. I begin to
have doubts of my securing the work of Madam de
Stael. . . . I would by no means libel a nation: but the habits
and manners of the people are such, that a promise is frequently here nothing
better than warm breath. I have had a quarrel on the subject, still I am not
without hopes. When I say a quarrel, you know with what caution and desire of
doing right I conduct my quarrels. . . . I think I understand, permit me the
expression, the whole history of Le Voyageur. You shall have it with the
first parcel, but I think, for Madam de
Genlis, it is sad trash. This lady lives at Versailles: distance
and bad weather prevented a visit; and Lady
Mountcashel gave the letter to me, which has been duly sent.
Mr Marshal has not answered my
question concerning books of science, agriculture, the fine arts, &c.
“You enquired of S. concerning
Fanny’s marriage. The young
man is not what his letters appeared to paint him. I forbear to say more,
except that Fanny behaves like an
angel, I give you this under my own hand, and, as I can well perceive,
feels no regret. She is strongly invited to assist Lady Mountcashel in the education of her daughters: and we
sincerely wish you were here to help us to consider the question and to decide.
Nothing but the utmost independence will be suffered, nor, I believe, will
anything else be offered. Lady M. is a woman of uncommon
powers of mind, and with
respect to little failings, charity to ourselves will teach us toleration:
those I have hitherto discovered certainly are not great. If Tuthil be not in London, I request you will
write to him to say how earnestly we desire to show that our feelings and
affections are still the same.
T. Holcroft.”
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Paris, Feb.
17, 1802.
“The devil of misfortune is everlastingly at my heels.
I wrote to you on the 2d, informing you of having sent an opera already
performed. This was severe enough, but it was little to the present. Doubtless
you have read or heard of a paragraph in the Times, Jan. 26th, warning Englishmen in Paris against me as a spy.
A few days ago, being at Lord
Mountcashel’s on one of his public nights, Lady Mountcashel, after great civility, and
placing my daughter at the pianoforte to play and sing, with praises,
compliments, and every apparent satisfaction, put a letter into my hand at
going away, to inform me that Lord Mountcashel, having
been so repeatedly warned against me as a democrat tried for high treason,
domestic peace required her to part with my daughter. I immediately sent for
Fanny home; and these circumstances
have been followed by several letters and one conversation. The first I wrote
is the enclosed, which it appears to be necessary you should read. You will
then send it to its address, that it may immediately be published, unless,
which I think impossible, you see it to be unjust. Lady
Mountcashel is averse to the publication, for Lord
M. (and perhaps even she herself) is averse to see his name
joined to mine. She first argued; and since, in order to deter me, has been
guilty of unpardonable injustice, that of threatening to publish to the world
that my being a democrat was not the only reason, but that she was obliged to
part with Fanny because of “an uncultivation of
understanding, a want of polish of mind, and (observe the phrase) an entire
absence of those numerous little delicacies easier to be imagined than
expressed.” Lady M. is a woman of great
understanding: she never once spoke to Fanny during her
residence with dissatisfaction or blame, but with
repeated praise, to herself, to me, and others: she never thought proper to
warn her, or give her any serious advice, yet suddenly at this critical moment
she makes a charge as unqualified as it is exaggerated. I have written proper
answers to her, as I hope, should she publish her letters, mine will also
appear, and it will be seen whether the Peeress or the Poet are the most noble.
If I do her wrong, it will be unintentional; but her threats have only
fortified me in what I think the just resolution to publish the enclosed. I
must write to Foulkes to commence an
action against the Times, if
an action will lie, as I have little doubt that it will, though my name is not
mentioned.
“During summer the Loir is easily found, but not in
winter, when it burrows and hides: various unsuccessful efforts have been made,
but I still hope to procure one soon. The vile marmotte has scratched half
through, and in part spoiled Fanny’s favourite symphonies by Haydn; besides disturbing us at night, and
again unbottoming and spoiling chairs. It almost excites the unfeeling wish of
seeing it under the knife of Carlisle.
“Have you received the books? Will they answer the
purpose? This I ought to know.
“I lost nearly a fortnight on the opera; and before my
mind was again thoroughly in train for my Travels, this
second wretched interruption came. With my young children round me, a mind thus
distracted, and spirits thus worn and preyed upon, should you wonder if I felt
moments of despair? I am indeed of iron, for they come but seldom. Every
blessing on you and Mrs Godwin. Shall we
see her? Louisa and Fanny will treat her very kindly. Mr Manning called yesterday, and desired the
following message to be sent to you: ‘Mr Manning is
desired by Mr Cunningham to request Mr Godwin to return the books he has from
Caius College Library as soon as possible.’
“Tuthil and
Maclean, the only persons consulted,
are both of opinion that what I send should be published. I have shewn
Tuthil the whole correspondence, and his feelings
coincide with mine: he thinks the attack on Fanny a mean artifice, to say the
least.
T. Holcroft.
“I wish you to recollect that my intercourse with
the family of Mountcashel was courted; that I was
pressed to suffer Fanny to undertake
this charge; that there is nothing in the letter I send for publication
that ought to wound the feelings of the family, after I had been so courted
and pressed, unless it be the reason given by them for breaking off
intercourse; and that it is absolutely necessary I should defend myself, as
well against the attempts to exclude me from society, as the wicked charge
of being a spy. Your conviction, therefore, must certainly be very strong,
if it should induce you to suspend the publication.”
Lady Mountcashel to William Godwin.
“Paris, February 21, 1802.
“Dear Sir,—I am very much
concerned at being obliged to trouble you on a subject which has lately
occasioned me some uneasiness, and on which I must request your kind
assistance. Before I left London, you were so good as to give me letters of
introduction to two persons here with whom you thought I should like to be
acquainted. In a very few days after my arrival I sent that which was addressed
to Mr Holcroft, who immediately called
on me, and has been since that time (till within this last fortnight) one of
our constant visitors. I met him with prejudices in his favour, the result of
his political opinions, his literary pursuits, and your friendship for him. His
conversation at first pleased me, as it appeared to be rational and moral, and
the great affection which he expressed for his wife and children interested me
in regard to both him and them. I am too apt to form favourable opinions
precipitately, and it was unfortunately the case in this instance. I thought so
well of Mr Holcroft after a fortnight’s
acquaintance, that I asked his advice respecting a governess for my daughters,
thinking it probable that he might know of some English or French woman in
Paris who might be qualified for such a situation. He said he knew of but one
person whom he could recommend as being perfectly calculated for such a trust;
that this person was his daughter, but that he did not believe that it would be
possible for her to undertake it. However, he gave me some hopes; in short, in about a month after Miss Holcroft (whom I had only seen about four
times) came here on trial (the agreement being that if
either party found reason to disapprove of the arrangement, she was immediately
to return home) as governess to my daughters, with a salary of £60 a-year.
“She had been represented to me as being extremely
well educated and highly accomplished, deficient in nothing except those
exterior trifles respecting manner which proceed from knowledge of the world,
and an intercourse with polished society. Imagine my disappointment at finding
her a frivolous, romantic girl, with an uncultivated mind, a character devoid
of delicacy, a total want of method, order, and discretion; in short, with
nothing to recommend her but a clumsy goodness of heart, a sweet temper, and
her accomplishments, which consist of music, and of some of the modern
languages. Of all persons I have ever met with, she is the most unfit to be
entrusted with the education of youth; and had my daughters been a very few
days older than they are, I could not have suffered them to remain with her for
even so short a time as three weeks. In a very few days after the arrival of
Miss Holcroft, Lord Mountcashel was informed by some officious
persons who had seen Mr Holcroft here
that he had been tried for high treason, and that he and some other of my
acquaintance were notorious English democrats, whom it would be prudent for
loyal British subjects to avoid. This was about the 23d or 24th of January.
“Lord Mountcashel
informed me of it some days afterwards as a thing very disagreeable to him,
saying that he was extremely sorry I had brought Miss Holcroft into the house, and wished her to be removed from
it as soon as possible; and on finding that the more I knew of her the less I
approved of her as a governess for my children, I determined to avail myself of
this prejudice of Lord Mountcashel to dismiss her in a
delicate manner, without hurting the feelings of either father or daughter. I
therefore wrote Mr Holcroft a letter (a
copy of which I will send you), in which I suppressed a part of the truth, and
only mentioned one of the causes of her dismission. Mr H.
immediately sent for his daughter,
declared that her removal was occasioned by a paragraph in a newspaper, and
informed me in a long letter that he should publish it to the world. I called
at his house to explain his mistake, to assure him that Lord
Mountcashel had never heard that there was such a paragraph
until he mentioned it, to tell him that I thought he would act imprudently in
publishing the circumstance of his daughter’s residence (of not quite
three weeks) in my family, and to request that he would not obtrude a private
transaction, which concerned me, on the public eye. I was much surprised at
discovering in this interview, that the man whom I had supposed to be mild,
moderate, and rational, was selfish, violent, and self-sufficient: beyond the
power of cool argument, and utterly regardless of the feelings of any person
but himself. He, however, promised to reconsider the matter, and inform me of
his determination. The next day I received a letter, in which he declared the
intention of adhering to his resolution, and I was thus laid under the
disagreeable necessity of acquainting him with all the causes which occasioned
the removal of his daughter. The copies of his answer and all other letters
concerning this affair shall be conveyed to you by a friend of yours, who
leaves Paris in a few days, and who can inform you of all the circumstances
relative to this business; which (however I may dislike having my name absurdly
forced on public notice) would give me very little uneasiness, were it not on
account of the displeasure of Lord Mountcashel, who barely
tolerated Mr Holcroft’s visits, and latterly had
taken a complete dislike to the man, totally distinct from any political
prejudice. The favour I have to request from you is, that if Mr
Holcroft has sent any paper on this subject to you for
publication, you will have the goodness to defer obtruding on the world what I
positively assert to be an absolute falsehood, until you have heard the
circumstances related by a very rational friend of yours, who will see you in a
few days.
“With a thousand good wishes for your little girls,
and all the rest of your family, I remain, dear Sir, with great respect and
esteem, yours very sincerely,
M. J. Mountcashel.”
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Paris, March 1, 1802.
“Your last was dated Jan. 29. I have since written
February 2d and 16th, and am anxious for your answer. S.
will deliver you the Marmot. No price (for I offered any that should be asked)
could obtain the Loir. In two months I suppose it may be had for five
shillings. I sent, and went again and again, but all in vain. A bird man told
me he had one, but that it disappeared on the approach of winter, having
previously done him much mischief by killing his birds. Assure Mr Carlisle that my zeal to oblige him was
great, and that I am heartily vexed at my failure.
“T.
Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Paris, March 20, 1802.
“I have seen Madame de
Stael, and she has promised me her novel, volume by volume, but she is
anxious to be well translated, and asks more questions than I can answer
concerning the former translations of Mr
Marshal. I dare not cite the Ruins, because
Volney complains much of his English
dress. Recapitulate to me what Mr Marshal has translated.
. . . I hope that the Marmot, and the voyage dans le Crimée with their bringer are all safe, of
which I am anxious to hear.
T. Holcroft.”
The Same to the Same.
“Paris, May
2, 1802.
“A few days ago I a second time dined with Madame de Stael, who told me it will still be
some months before her novel will appear, and that I should have it for my
friend, volume by volume, on the strict and absolute condition (to which I
pledged myself) that no person except the translator should read it in this
partial manner. I interceded for you and myself, but she positively refused:
alleging, and, indeed, very justly, that the effect intended to be produced in
any work was spoiled by such partial reading. Having entered into this
engagement with her, Mr Marshal will, of
course, think himself bound to its strict observance. . .
T. Holcroft.”
Dr Wolcot, from whom is the next letter, was better
known as Peter Pindar. He was a Devonshire physician and artist, born
in 1738, and in this latter capacity was the instructor of Opie, through whom, no doubt, began his intimacy with Godwin. Some years before the present date, he had given
up the practice of medicine, and become a poetical critic of Royal Academicians, under his
assumed name. His satirical Poems, of various degrees of power and scurrility, were much
read in their day, and are now not quite deservedly forgotten. Dr
Wolcot became blind, and died in 1819.
J. Wolcot to William Godwin.
“Camden Town, Jan. 8, 1802.
“My dear Sir,—Most
willingly would I join your philosophic party at the Polygon, but Death on
Sunday last sent one of his damned young brats to attack me in bed at Lord
Nelson’s at Merton. Inspired with a little of his
Lordship’s courage, I fired away at him flannel, brandy,
hot bricks, and red-hot coals, which, by the blessing of God (on whom you most
devoutly believe), overcame him, and I am now at Camden Town, singing Te Deum
for the victory. Though I have not gained the laurels of Aboukir, I have (as
Marshal Boufflers said of his
troops) ‘performed wonders.’
“To descend from lofty metaphor to humble prose, I
have been plagued with my asthma for nearly a week past, and have flown to
Camden Town to recover. Here I am at Delaney Place, No. 7, with a fiddle and a
good fire, the one a balm for the mind, and the other for the body.—I am, truly
yours,
J. Wolcot.
“P.S.—The instant I can
with safety crawl forth, I will peep in upon you. Report says you are
married again. Fortunate man! Forty years have I been trying to get my tail
into the trap and have not succeeded. What a monkey!”
The letter to Mr Cole, which
follows, is one of a large number written by Godwin
in answer to questions on every conceivable subject. The advice
given is so wholesome, and the letter so good that it is given, though the reaction against
such books as are here assailed has set in, and carried the day.
William Godwin to William Cole.
“March 2, 1802.
“Sir,—Your question is much
too copious to admit of being properly answered in an extemporary letter, and
it may happen that my opinions upon some parts of the subject are so singular
that they can stand little chance of obtaining your approbation without a
further explanation than I can here give. I will, however, give you a proof of
my willingness to oblige you on this point by giving you such an answer as I
can.
“You enquire respecting the books I think best adapted
for the education of female children from the age of two to twelve. I can
answer you best on the early part of the subject, because in that I have made
the most experiments; and in that part I should make no difference between
children male and female.
“I have no difficulty in the initiatory part of the
business. I think Mrs Barbauld’s
little books, four in number, admirably adapted, upon the whole, to the
capacity and amusement of young children. I have seen another little book in
two volumes, printed for Newbury,
entitled ‘The Infants’
Friend, by Mrs
Lovechild,’ which I think might, without impropriety,
accompany or follow Mrs Barbauld’s books.
“I am most peremptorily of opinion against putting
children extremely forward. If they desire it themselves, I would not baulk
them, for I love to attend to these unsophisticated indications. But otherwise,
Festina lente is my maxim in
education. I think the worst consequences flow from overloading the faculties
of children, and a forced maturity. We should always remember that the object
of education is the future man or woman; and it is a miserable vanity that
would sacrifice the wholesome and gradual development of the mind to the desire
of exhibiting little monsters of curiosity.
“As far as Mrs
Barbauld’s books I have no difficulty. But here my
judgment and the ruling passion of my contemporaries divide. They aim at
cultivating one faculty, I should aim at cultivating another. A whimsical
illustration of this occurred to me the other day in a silly bookseller, who
was observing to me what a delightful book for children might be made, to be
called ‘A Tour through Papa’s House.’ The object of this book
was to explain all the furniture, how carpets were made, the history and
manufacture of iron, &c., &c. He was perfectly right: this is exactly
the sort of writing for children which has lately been in fashion.
“These people, as I have said, aim at cultivating one
faculty, and I another. I hold that a man is not an atom less a man, if he
lives and dies without the knowledge they are so desirous of accumulating in
the heads of children. Add to which, these things may be learned at any age,
while the imagination, the faculty for which I declare, if cultivated at all,
must be begun with in youth. Without imagination there can be no genuine ardour
in any pursuit, or for any acquisition, and without imagination there can be no
genuine morality, no profound feeling of other men’s sorrow, no ardent
and persevering anxiety for their interests. This is the faculty which makes
the man, and not the miserable minutenesses of detail about which the present
age is so uneasy. Nor is it the only misfortune that these minutenesses engross
the attention of children: I would proscribe them from any early share, and
would maintain that they freeze up the soul, and give a premature taste for
clearness and exactness, which is of the most pernicious consequence.
“I will put down the names of a few books, calculated
to excite the imagination, and at the same time quicken the apprehensions of
children. The best I know is a little French book, entitled ‘Contes de ma Mere, or Tales of Mother Goose.’ I
should also recommend ‘Beauty and the
Beast,’ ‘Fortunatus,’ and a
story of a Queen and a Country Maid in Fenelon’s ‘Dialogues of the Dead.’ Your own
memory will easily suggest to you others which would carry on this train, such
as ‘Valentine and Orson,’ ‘The Seven Champions of
Christendom,’ ‘Les Contes de Madame
Darmon,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ if weeded of its method, ism, and the
‘Arabian Nights.’
I would undoubtedly introduce before twelve years of age some smattering of
geography, history, and the other sciences; but it is the train of reading I
have here mentioned which I should principally depend upon for generating an
active mind and a warm heart.—I am, Sir, yours, &c.,
“W.
Godwin.”
It has been said that Godwin’s second marriage was not a happy one, and ample proof of this
will hereafter appear. Meanwhile, the only letter to his wife preserved for 1802, written
during a visit to Norfolk, shows Godwin still under an illusion, which
faded abruptly in the following year. But in the letters to his friends, is evidence that
his natural loneliness was greatly increased. This came, no doubt, partly from increasing
pecuniary embarrassment, but probably also from the want of comfort and perfect union at
home, which affected him even before the existence of it was quite evident to himself.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“East Bradenham, May 6, 1802.
“My Dearest Love,—I am
extremely sorry—but no: I will not say that.
“I am at this moment (twelve o’clock, Tuesday)
under my brother’s roof at East
Bradenham. I found two conveyances from Swaffham to this place, when I expected
none. Mr Sturley, the cabinetmaker, my brother’s
wife’s brother-in-law, kindly offered to bring me on in his taxed cart (a
thing very little different from an open chaise), and when we were a mile on
the road, my brother met me with a similar intention. Thus circumstanced,
however, Mr Sturley did not turn back, and will therefore
form one of our party at the dinner which is on the spit.
“For God’s sake, write to me often, and
especially if you have any good news to communicate. I had some thoughts
extremely deject and wretched last night on the road
near Puckeridge (for that was the road we took, and supped at Cambridge), but
as morning approached, and promised a beautiful day, these thoughts were
dissipated.
“I should not have troubled you with a letter to-day
(I am extremely stupid, owing to having travelled all night) were it not that,
in my hurry, and exceeding anxiety to forget nothing, I forgot the letter to
Mr Norman, which I left open on the
table. Pray, seal and despatch it without delay. Something else also I forgot,
which recurred to me in the darkness of the night, but I cannot now recollect
it. I know that it belongs to something in. one of the brown paper parcels
which I left on the green table. One of these parcels consists of Christmas
bills, and the other contains papers of various sorts, which I put together
thus that they might come to my hand with more facility at my return. Open
everything, but leave, as nearly as possible, as you find.
“I set out to-morrow morning for Dalling upon a horse
of my brother’s. What I am to do, and what course the thing will take, I
know not, but I will do the best I can. Of course, I can give no account of my
motions till I have let down my fathom-line, and sounded the bottom.
“God for ever bless you, and for your sake and the
sake of those you love, bless me too!”
Charles Lamb to Mrs Godwin.
[1802].
“DearMrs G.,—Having
observed with some concern that Mr
Godwin is a little fastidious in what he eats for supper, I
herewith beg to present his palate with a piece of dried salmon. I am assured
it is the best that swims in Trent. If you do not know how to dress it, allow
me to add, that it should be cut in thin slices and boiled in paper previously prepared in butter. Wishing it exquisite, I
remain,—Much as before, yours sincerely,
“C. Lamb.
“Some add mashed
potatoes.”
CHAPTER VI. ENTRANCE INTO BUSINESS LIFE. 1804—1806.
The Diaries for 1804 show no fact of general or social interest,
except the usual intercourse with the literary world of London, among whom is now found
Miss Owenson (Lady Morgan),
whose fame far exceeded her literary merits; and a renewal of relations with Everina Wollstonecraft, which were not, however, firm or
abiding.
Some of Godwin’s own family
who were in London grew less and less satisfactory, and his poor old mother at Dalling
wrote pathetically that she feared the streets would be “full of begging
Godwins.” William, for the
position he filled, was perhaps in as great straits as any, but his purse, when there was
anything in it, his house and all that it contained, were constantly at the service of one
or the other relative. And when Godwin is seen deteriorating by slow
but sure steps, asking for pecuniary assistance in words, and with subterfuges which fill
those who read with a feeling akin to real pain, it must always be remembered that his
needs were not selfish, and that the use of money to provide luxury or even comfort was the
last of which he thought.
After the publication of Chaucer, the novel of “Fleetwood” occupied the greater portion of his time, but the play of
“Faulkener” also was
completed in this year. One of the many quarrels with Holcroft took place in regard to this play. Holcroft was, it will be remembered, an accomplished and successful
writer for the Theatre, he knew what would and would not succeed far better than did
Godwin, however superior were the literary
powers of the latter. Hence when Godwin submitted his piece to
Wroughton, then Manager of Drury Lane Theatre,
it was not unnatural that while admitting the great ability of much in the play, the
criticism on the whole was unfavourable. “Your character of Benedetto (to sport a
vulgar phrase) dies Dunghill,” wrote Wroughton,
“and Orsini might, I think, satisfactorily
be kept alive.”
Thereupon Godwin sent the play to
Holcroft to touch it up for the stage, who,
acting on the instructions given, remodelled the whole, and re-wrote from
Godwin’s materials a considerable portion. But “Faulkener” failed, and great was
the wrath which fell on the devoted friend, whose forbearance under the storm was dignified
and commendable.
The letters during this year, which are appended, need no explanation.
William Godwin to Thomas Wedgwood.
“Polygon, April 14, 1804.
“DearWedgwood,—It
is with the utmost reluctance of feeling that I obtrude on you the following
statement.
“I know not whether I am entitled to the possession of
several opulent friends: this has been almost universally the lot of persons of
as much literary publicity as myself: it has been my fortune never, except you,
to have had one.
“Among the various measures which, since I have become
the father of a family, I have had recourse to for their support, one which
inevitably suggested itself was the theatre; a resource which is, if
successful, I believe usually found more productive
than any other. I applied myself with great diligence to the experiment I made
in that way four years ago: as has always been my habit, I proceeded not merely
on my own judgment but consulted my friends. The production I ultimately
brought forth, though perhaps in one or two points not sufficiently adapted for
popularity on the stage, cost me more thought proportionally, and is perhaps
more finished, than any other of my writings.
“It was however necessary that I and my family should
subsist while I prepared the experiment. A young man not opulent, but who had
then some money at his command, spontaneously lent me £100 for that purpose. My
experiment was unsuccessful, and the money was never repaid. Mrs Godwin and myself will, I believe, not be
found deficient in industry. I by original works, and she by translation,
contrive fully, or nearly, to support a numerous family in decency, but this is
all we can do.
“Unhappily the young man who so generously assisted me
is since fallen into great embarrassments, and has become liable to arrests and
the other difficulties arising from these embarrassments. He has never asked me
for his money, he would never accept any memorandum or acknowledgment that it
was due. Yet how can I bear to think that he wants money so cruelly, while I am
in this manner his debtor? I hope I could almost perish, sooner than apply to
you for further assistance for myself, but in this case, to use the ordinary
phraseology, I would move heaven and earth to acquit myself. If I had any other
resource that I could imagine or invent, you should not have been troubled with
this ungracious intrusion.
“Yet my dear friend, consult your own convenience in
this case. I am sure you would assist me if that would permit. But this is no
claim upon you, whatever it is on me.
“Though it is now a very long time since I have heard
from, or seen you, yet I have occasionally the satisfaction, I wish I could say
the pleasure, of hearing concerning you from Tobin, Coleridge, and
others. The last opportunity of this sort was a letter by you to
Coleridge a short time before his departure, in which
you spoke of your health as being a little better than it had been some time before. What
pleasure would it afford to me, and to every one that knows you, could we have
a well-grounded prospect of its being ultimately restored. With sincere
affection,
“W.
Godwin.”
Thomas Wedgwood to William Godwin.
“Gunville, April 15, 1804.
“DearGodwin,—I am so unwilling to leave
you in a moment’s suspense, for I give you full credit for the reluctant
scruples you express—that I shall not defer a post to get a stamp for a draft
but give you the trouble of calling personally on Mr
Howslip in York Street on Wednesday next at 3, who will deliver
you a note containing the £100. I have adopted this mode to prevent a personal
application from you at the Bank, which I conceived might be disagreeable, and
it also secures from danger of loss by post, and this same. Mr
Howslip will not have the least idea of the nature of our
transaction.
“And now let me beg of you to set your mind perfectly
at ease. I will tell you honestly what I have felt, and always feel, on the
occasion. I have no opinion of the good, upon the whole, resulting from great
facility in the opulent, in yielding to requests of the needy. I have no doubt
but that it is best that every one should anticipate with certainty the pinch
and pressure of distress from indulging in indolence, or even from misfortune.
It is this certainty which quickens the little wit that man is ordinarily
endowed with, and calls out all his energies: and were it removed by the idea
that the rich held funds for the distressed, I am convinced that not only half
the industry of the country would be destroyed, but also that misfortune would
be doubled in quantity. I confess to you then, that I have always a doubt of
the value of any donation or loan. At the same time, I have the strongest
desire to give relief to suffering, and an excessive repugnance to that
hardness of heart, that vicious inclination to hoard,—to that depraved state of
mind which enables me to view sufferings with calmness, if not with
indifference, whilst I should never miss the sum that would instantly relieve
them. In the case of the applicant being a friend, you
may imagine that the inclination to yield is doubled at least. In the present
case, I was extremely moved at the fervour of your determination never again to
apply to me for yourself, and in feeling swore a great oath that it should be
your own fault if you did not. I could not bear the idea of your struggling day
after day with new perplexities. I passed your life hastily in review, and
renewed my assurance of the soundness of your principles. I am not speaking of
your politics or philosophy: on these subjects I have no sentiments of any
assurance, but I am speaking of the goodness of your moral feelings, your
subjection to the dictates, erroneous or otherwise, of a moral conscience.
“And I do therefore invite you to still consider me as
your friend in every honourable sense of the word. You have placed me in a most
ambiguous capacity. I have an excellent friend in T. W.,
you say: he is the man I should rely upon in a moment of distress, only that I
feel that I cannot ask him to make the smallest personal sacrifice for my
advantage.
“I wish you may seize the spirit of my confessions,
for I really cannot stay the process of writing one moment for a more explicit
and luminous statement. I write in pain and great distraction of mind, knowing
the injury I do myself. I feel most gratefully your kind wishes for my health.
Without indulging an unmanly despondency, I may say after some years continued
struggle, I see no prospect of permanent amendment. I left town a day or two
after you saw me in Bedford Row. Let me have a line from you when you have
received the £100.
“With the sincerest wishes for your happiness, I
remain, dear Godwin, faithfully and cordially yours,
Thos. Wedgwood.”
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin.
“Sep. 25, 1804.
“I am sorry our feelings are not in unison. I am sorry
that a work which cost me
such deep thought, and was, in my own opinion, so happily executed, should
excite in your mind nothing but the chaos of which you inform me. I came up to
town with a high
hope of having rendered my friend an essential service, with which, when he saw
it, he would be delighted, and would perfectly understand all the emotions
which passed in my mind, while stimulated by such an endearing reflection. I
must bear my disappointment as well as I can, and have only to request that,
since you think all conference must produce painful sensations, you will either
adopt the piece as I have sent it you (which I by no means wish, since you
think as you do), or put the whole of it into your own language. I don’t
in the least expect, after your long hesitation, that it corresponds with your
ideas of good writing, for which I am sorry, but I hope that you will not think
it unreasonable that I should object to that which your judgment shall direct,
unless I could be made acquainted with it. I hope I have not spent my time
wholly unprofitably, since you cannot be insensible that my zeal to serve you
effectually has been great.
“Respecting the £20, we were much distressed last
week, but shall not be this, or the next. The week after, I am afraid, it may
still prove inconvenient to you, though I know we shall be very short.
Louisa mends so slowly, that my mind
is quite uneasy. I came up to town with high hopes of various kinds, but hope
was always a sad deceiver, and the error of my life is that of being too
sanguine. Forgive me that Fanny copies
this. She copied the tragedy, and it was inevitable she should know the whole
transaction. . . .
T. Holcroft.”
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
“December, 1804.
“DearWilliamandMary,—You must excuse my
incorrectness in writing. I can scarce write, my memory is so bad. I can say no
more about Harriet than I have in a former letter. I am
the unhappy grandmother of such naughty children, and must say that the parents
are as much to blame as their children, for that they have set no better guard
on them, and instructed them no better, have Idled away their own time on
Sabbath days. . . . In answer to yours, relating to young
John, I’m much obleged to you that you show such
frendship to him. I purpose sending you and his father
and all of you equal alike, what I have scraped together with the utmost
frugality, and if you please to lay out for the tooles he wants, I will keep it
back out of his father’s and send it to you and am much obleged to your
wife for the regard she professes for your brother John, but fear most, if not
all, are so deep in debt as not to be the better for anything I can do for
them, am affraid that London streets will be filled with begging
Godwins when I am gone, but that’s not the
worst. Idleness is the mother of all vice, forgers, pickpockets or Players,
which I take to be very little better. Do you know of any of them that are
following the precepts of the precious Redeemer who suffered the Ignominious
deth of the Cross to save sinners from eternal death? I wish you to let me know
if you will lay out what I mentioned for young John by a
parcel we expect from Hannah. I
don’t know if it will be soon, but that’s no matter, if you set him
in a way of geting his bread. I shall send a few things for his wife against
she lies in, as a bed-gown, a decent shirt and shift. And if you can give 10s.
for interist of the £10 you have in hand for 4 yards of strong cloth for a
shirt, and get it made for him, there will be some left to mend it, and any
little old things for the child. I am in hopes it will not be ill bestowed, and
will be returned to you in better blessings than earth affords, for without the
Lord bless, vain is the help of man. I hope Hannah will be
wiseer than to make any entertainment this year, coles are 46s. the chaldron,
and 15s. carriage to Dalling. Hully
finds enough to do with all his industery. You will receive a turkey from me.
Don’t once think of sending me the least thing. I shall be very angry if
you do. I wish your happiness most sincearly. Hully, his
wife, and children are well. Their little one just begins to go alone, a year
and a quarter old. I would recommend you to get an oven to hang over the fire
to bake pudding and meat upon it. If you can get smal wood to burn on the top,
it takes very little fire under it. We bake most of our victuals so: it will
save many steps for yr. servants. Young Mr Raven is not
likely to live many days; no medican has been found successful. It would
surprise you to know how greedyly he swallows physic, so loth to die. They all think his mother will
loose her sences for him, she is shrunk with grief and fiteague in a surprising
manner, but, I am afraid, looks not up to the supreem being; reads the
prayer-book to him, but that’s all.—Your affectionate mother,
A. Godwin.”
The year 1805 is the date of Godwin’s greatest and most disastrous venture. If he could but have
let well alone, if Mrs Godwin had not been a
speculative, and, as she calls herself, “a managing woman,” there was at the
same moment a tide in his affairs which, had he taken it at the flood, would have led to a
very different state of things.
The account had best be given in an autobiographical letter, of which the
copy is unfinished and unaddressed.
“My manner of life for several years in respect of
pecuniary matters, you, I daresay, are acquainted with. . . . As long as I remained
alone, I neither asked nor would accept aid from any man. I even contrived to bring up
by my own means, and to inform by my own instructions, the son of one of my poor
relations, as well as frequently to afford assistance to others. I lived entirely as I
listed.
“Since I have been a married man, the case has been
otherwise. I never repented the connections of that sort I have formed; but the
maintenance of a family and an establishment has been a heavy expense, and I have never
been able, with all my industry, which has been very persevering, entirely to
accomplish this object. . . . I have five children in my house. Fanny, the daughter of Mr
Imlay, who bears my own name, Mary, my own daughter by the same mother, two children of my present
wife by a former husband, and a son, the offspring of my present marriage.
“My temper is of a recluse and contemplative cast;
had it been otherwise, I should, perhaps, on some former occasions, have entered into
the active concerns of the world, and not have been connected with it merely as a
writer of books. My present wife is of a different complexion.
She did her best for some years to assist our establishment by translations; but her
health and strength have somewhat given way, I really believe, for want of those
relaxations and excursions to sea-bathings and watering-places, which are the usual lot
of women in the class of life in which she was born.
“Under these circumstances, and being by nature
endowed with a mind of prudence and forecast, her thoughts forcibly turned towards some
commercial undertaking. With united health and strength we could hope for no more, in
the mode of selling MSS. to booksellers than making our yearly income equal our yearly
expenditure. But the health of one or both of us might give way, the advance of age
might diminish my powers of unintermitted exertion, or death might cut off one or the
other of us; then, what was to become of the maintenance and education of our children?
The commercial undertaking which most naturally offered itself was a magazine of books
for the use and amusement of children, and my wife, with a sagacity commensurate to her
forecast, pitched upon a person singularly well qualified to superintend the details of
the concern. . . .
“On the 15th of March [1805] I concluded a contract
with my bookseller for writing a History of England, of the same size with that of
David Hume, which would of course be the
occupation of years, and for which I was to receive £2000, besides a share of the
copyright. . . . This contract secured me a provision in part for some years to come,
and assigned me an employment to my heart’s content.
“While this negotiation was pending, my wife laid
before me her plan, and I felt that the arguments by which it was recommended were such
as I could not resist. As the discussion with my bookseller, previous to signing the
contract, occupied some weeks, I employed that time in writing the chief of a work
which was to be the first-born child of our new undertaking.
“Among many difficulties which were to be conquered
in this enterprise, one arose from the absolute necessity there was that the public
should entertain no suspicion that I was connected with the concern. The popular cry for some years past on
the topics of government and religion has been so opposite to the principles I am known
to entertain as to fill the Reviews and other ordinary publications of the day with
abuse against me of the most scurrilous cast. I had seen several things treated in this
style, borrowed from the fish-market, for no other reason than that they were mine. I
knew that I had nothing to do but to suppress my name, and I should immediately have
all these gentlemen in my train. That I was not mistaken in this will appear in part
from a paper I enclose containing their character of my first production under this
plan, entitled ‘Baldwin’s
Fables,’ published in October last [1805].
* * * * *
“Thus prepared I placed my agent at Midsummer last
in a little house in Hanway Street, Oxford Street, a small street, but of great
thoroughfare and commerce. The rent of the house is £40 per annum (£35 of which are
made by lodgers), and the coming in and fixtures were £60. I have a renewable agreement
for the house for a term of years . . . [Unfinished]
The Fables of which
Godwin speaks were begun on Feb. 22d, were rapidly written, and finished on March 26th. The
books published by him under the name of Baldwin were:—
“Fables Ancient and
Modern.”
“The Pantheon, or
Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome.”
“The History of
England.”
“The History of
Rome.”
“The History of
Greece.”
Many men of middle age must remember that their first introduction to
History was through the medium of these little books, excellently printed and illustrated.
Uncritical they necessarily were, in pre-Niebuhrian days, nor could they now be read with
advantage by the young, in whom we might wish to cultivate, if it
might be, some historic sense.
But they may be turned over with interest, for they show how fresh and
keen was the interest Godwin took in the young, how
he, who evidently had some difficulty in placing himself at the standpoint of other men,
could do so at that of a little child, and hence we grow more and more to understand the
power and attraction he still had for the young.
The Prefaces are all worth reading now, and are couched in clear,
vigorous English. One passage is so far reaching and pregnant that it may well bear
quotation here. It is from the Preface to the History of Rome.
“It has been disputed whether Mucius ever thrust his hand into the fire, whether
Curtius leaped into the gulf, or Regulus returned to Carthage, and some writers, following
up this hint, have endeavoured, by sophistical reasonings and subtle distinctions, to
set aside almost every example of Roman virtue on record. In answer to this I shall
only say here that the stories were thus understood by the Romans themselves, who had
the best means of information, and who felt in their own bosoms what a Roman was, and
that the different parts of the Roman History, considered as the different stages of a
particular scene of civilization, hang together with a consistency beyond all fiction,
and even beyond the real history of any other country or people in the world. Youth is
not the period of criticism and disquisition. If these narratives are to be destroyed,
let that task be reserved for a riper age, when books of the plan and size of the
present are no longer applicable; and in the meantime, let our children reap the
benefit of such instructive and animating examples. If they are fables (which I hope no
one of the juvenile readers of my work will at any time be induced to believe), they
are at least more full of moral, and of encouragement to noble sentiments and actions
than all the other narratives, fictitious or true, which mere man ever
produced.”
The books were one and all admirably printed, and well illustrated,
Godwin made no vain boast when, in the Preface
to the “History of England,
“he claims for his pages that “they are so printed as to be agreeable
and refreshing to the eye of a child.” And though Godwin
is in error in ascribing Montaigne’s practice
to Moliere, the following autobiographical sentence,
which takes us into the home circle at the Polygon, is worth retention:—
“Moliere,
when he wrote his admirable comedies, was accustomed to read them in manuscript to an
old woman, his housekeeper, and he always found that when the old woman laughed or was
out of humour, there the audience laughed or was out of humour also. In the same
manner, I am accustomed to consult my children in this humble species of writing in
which I have engaged. I put the two or three first sections into their hands as a
specimen. Their remark was, ‘How easy this is! Why, we learn it by heart
almost as fast as we read it!’ Their suffrage gave me courage, and I
carried on my work to the end.”
The “Fables,” modernized and rewritten, are full of merit, excellently adapted for
children, and well deserve the honour of a reprint, having gone, in their day, through more
than a dozen editions, and having been translated into French.
Although the pseudonym of Baldwin was continued to
the end for Godwin’s own productions, the
business was, after a short time, carried on by Mrs
Godwin, under the style of M. J. Godwin and Co. She
translated several children’s books from the French, which were published by her with
success; but, beyond all doubt, the work which will live, written at
Godwin’s request and published by Mrs
Godwin, is the “Tales from
Shakespere,” by Mary and Charles Lamb. The latter also contributed his
“Voyages of Ulysses,”
to which a letter which will be quoted refers; the “Stories of Old Daniel,” delight of the past
generation; and, for its date, an excellent “English Grammar,” by Hazlitt, also came from the busy Skinner Street house.
It was a meritorious attempt, but starting without capital, the twenty
years during which the business was carried on, were one long struggle, a series of shifts
and a series of failures.
The Diaries for this year give no new facts of importance, old friends
and new came and went, Mrs Godwin fell out with
them, and Godwin resented their resentment. Yet on
the whole he had settled down, as so many men before and since, into an acquiescence with
his lot; he grew to have some admiration and regard for his wife, though she irritated him
at every turn. The letters, however, which passed between them, during a visit paid by
Godwin to his relatives in Norfolk, in the autumn, show a painful
effort at a profession of affection, as though to meet a certain exaction. Their ring is
wholly different to those which disclosed his truer and deeper feelings in past years.
One only is given, describing the state in which he found his mother,
whose letters of this year will be the last which we shall read. Her long and kindly life
was setting in as much outward comfort as she needed or desired, though her health had been
for some time indifferent, and her mental powers now in great measure failed her. The
children who were nearest to her were well to do in their stations, were prosperous and
affectionate, and at her age the misdoings of those at a distance moved, but did not deeply
distress her. Age, if it brings loss and disappointment, deadens the mind against the
poignant misery which the same accidents entail upon the younger; and the religion which
had comforted Mrs Godwin’s earlier life
supported her in her last years. To be absolutely certain of the divine favour, and of a
happy immortality is a pleasant anodyne during
sickness and in the last agony, for such minds as are illogical enough to disregard the
other side of Calvinism, and refuse to contemplate the condition of those who are not so
favoured and not so confident.
Such soothing comfort her stern creed gave to the good old lady, whose
shrewd worldly sense was in such remarkable, though not singular, contrast to the unreason
of her belief.
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
May 1, 1805.
“DearWilliam,—You and
your wife have been exceeding kind to young John. I hear
the youngest child is a fine boy, the eldest a poor little sickly girl. It was
your kindness and good intention to set him to work for himself, but what does
he do, or how is he to be employed? Is he industerous? He wrote me a very prity
letter some time agoe to thank me. I hope your wife is better of her rhumatism,
and the blister had a good effect. I prescribe it to everybody since you was
advised to it, for our country doctors have not found out a cure for it.
Miss Woodhouse have had it in her head all this winter
very violently, but I have not got her in the mind to try a blister. . . . He
has begun his shop, and has met with some incouragement, but when the weather
is bad and nobody comes his spirits flag, and he says he don’t care what
he doth if he could get a living. He wants a good wife to spend his vacant
hours with, but they are hard to find and he fearfull to try. How doth
John go on? I have heard he is out
of Mr Wright’s place again: he talked of advertising
for a place: he should not delay, but not quit his old one till he is sure of
another, for half a lofe is better than no bread. . . . If you live to see me,
I am brown, wrincled, week, my eyes rather dim, hands and head shake. . . .
Give my kind love to your wife. I hope she will excuse me, I cannot write to
her this time. If you and she can come to see me, set your time, for I live in
a barren land, but the best entertainment I can give
you shall be welcome to. Has Joseph
chose a buisness for his son? I can’t write to him. Caushon him not to
indulge him too much, nor give him money to spend as he please. Children cannot
be fit to be masters. If he don’t employ him, he will run into vice
immediately, and there is no staying in the down hill road. We are all
tolerable. Accept my best wishes for time and eternity.
A. Godwin.
“Your brothers desire their best respects to
you.”
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
“Wood Dalling, July 9, 1805.
“Dear SonWilliam,—I have
received your wife’s kind letter and your children’s. I think they
have made great improvement. May they go on and prosper, and be bles’d of
god, but that is impossable without prayer and watchfulness against their
strong enemys, Satan, the world, and their own depraved
hearts. There is much duty lies upon you as a parent. If it was but a few miles
of, and I could visit them, and they me, one or two at a time, it would be a
pleasure; but as it is, we must content ourselves with now and then hearing of
one another. If I live till the time of your Tower into Norfolk, I need not
tell you I shall be glad to see you and your wife; but why cannot you attend on
Lord’s-day at Guestwick, on such a Judishous man as Mr Sykes. . . . We are all tolerable,
Mrs G. in a family way again, your brother very industerous but not strong to
labour, Natty much the same. He is
unsuccessful in his business, and must seek a jorneyman’s place again. O
my trials and difficulties increase! how heavy when so old. I wish
Pheby not to come: I cannot help her, nor do I think
her aunt Barker can. Young John is, I
fear, next to starving; but who can help it? They are taught nothing but pride,
so must fall into ruin. My kind love to Mrs
Godwin and all your children, and to your sister.—Your ever affectionate mother,
“A.
Godwin.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Norwich, Sep. 8, 1805.
“My Dearest Love,—I am now
again at Norwich. I arrived at Dalling between six and seven on Wednesday
evening, and staid there till Friday morning at eleven. By the man who came
with me to drive back the gig which I hired at Norwich, I despatched a line to
you, scarcely less hasty than the one of yours which accompanied my
‘customary garb of solemn black.’ This I suppose you received on
Friday.
“During the whole of my stay at Dalling I applied my
attention principally, every time I saw my mother, to discover whether she knew me. I speedily found that
she was lying under a stroke of palsy or apoplexy (the country apothecary
decides for the latter), and that she would very probably continue in the same
state for weeks, and perhaps for months. She was seized in the night of
Wednesday, August 28th. The next morning she rose, seemingly unconscious that
anything extraordinary had occurred, dressed herself, came downstairs and made
her tea, though all these offices were performed by her with awkwardness and
difficulty. She did not even go to bed that night before her usual hour. She
spoke, however, very little all day, and seemed scarcely to know anybody. She
has never risen since, except to have her bed made. For the first day or two
she frequently fed herself, but since has constantly been fed by the maid, and
drinks only from a teaspoon. Yet she feeds tolerably heartily, and looks well,
fresh and plump in the face. No one of her limbs are affected, or features
distorted, by the present attack, which is the circumstance that convinces the
apothecary that her disorder is not palsy. She has been visited by Mr Sykes, the minister, to whom she was
exceedingly partial, and by his wife, but seemed scarcely to take any notice of
them, though I think she called Mr Sykes by his name: this
happened before I came down. She takes no notice of my brothers. When spoken
to, she scarcely ever answers to the purpose, except sometimes by
‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ but goes off into a few incoherent words
in the form of a prayer. She scarcely ever utters these
ejaculations, unless when roused by some question proposed to her. She is very
positive and obstinate in anything she has determined to do, and will not
suffer any one to feed her but her own maid.
“On Thursday morning I took down from my brother
Hull’s dictating an inventory
of her income. Afterwards I mounted on horseback, and rode over to Mr Sykes, who I found was principally trusted
by her in her pecuniary affairs. His account agreed in all essential points
with my brother’s. I then rode over to the apothecary’s, whom I did
not find at home in the morning, but who called in the afternoon. I thought it
necessary to learn from his own lips his ideas of my mother’s complaint,
which were as above stated. My mother was exceedingly distressed, as she had
been before, by his visit, and expressed the strongest aversion to all medical
applications, whether external or internal. One incident, evidently marking the
remains of recollection and understanding, amidst this general failure of
faculties, occurred on Thursday night. When she had ordered the maid to go to
bed, who had risen in the middle of the night to give her some assistance, she
suddenly called to mind that she had a bolster of the maid’s bed, which
had been put under her to raise her head in the middle of the day, and pulled
it out and gave it her. She has hitherto had one person sit up with her every
night, besides the attendance of the maid, who sleeps in the room.
“I thought, when I first saw her on Wednesday, that
she knew me. But finding that every time she saw me on Thursday she took no
notice of me, and that I could not excite her to acknowledge me, I doubted.
‘O Lord,’ ‘Spare me,’
‘Pardon my sins,’ ‘Grace,’ and
‘Jesus,’ were all the answers I could obtain to
everything I said. On Friday morning I took infinite pains to ascertain this
point. I used every expression and gesture of taking leave, repeated my name,
and ‘Do you know me?’ mentioned that I was going to London,
and asked whether she had anything to say to her daughter, or anybody there.
Frequently before she had pressed my hand, but with so vague an expression that
I could not be sure of her meaning. At the last moment she re-peated this action, and said
with much emphasis, ‘My dear son, I love you dearly.’ Still,
as she did not mention my name, it is not absolutely certain that she knew to
whom she was speaking. I mentioned in my note of Wednesday, immediately after
my arrival, that she said to me, ‘I have my senses.’ My
brother, and my brother’s wife, when I mentioned this to them, would not
believe that these were her words; and from what I myself observed afterwards,
I am inclined to think that what she said was, ‘I have no
sense,’ a phrase she often repeated. Her utterance was very
indistinct, and it was considerably difficult to make out what she said. She
lies, however, apparently free from pain of body, or disturbance of mind,
except when she is thwarted, or when she sees the apothecary.
“The most material point, perhaps, that I have
ascertained by this journey is that she is in excellent hands in her present
situation. I learn from the most decisive testimony of Mr Sykes, and my brother, and my
brother’s wife, that she is exceedingly attached to
Molly, and that Molly is the
pattern of integrity and tenderness towards her. Molly
tells me that it was her mistress’s constant desire that she should
continue with her as long as she lives, and go to my sister when she is no
more. When we consider the helpless situation to which my poor mother is now
reduced, nothing could be more deplorable than the idea of her being treated
with harshness and neglect, and nothing can be more consoling than the
recollection that she has a person about her who places her pleasure and her
pride in serving and gratifying her. Molly’s integrity too, I am assured,
is not less than her attachment. She has now the sole possession of my
mother’s keys, and no idea is entertained by anyone that they could be in
more trustworthy hands. . . .” [Unfinished.]
William Godwin to Hull Godwin.
“Oct. 17, 1805.
“Dear Brother,—I am
exceedingly gratified by the information of your last letter, and hope you will
continue the same kindness to me as long as circumstances shall remain the
same. . . .
“You will of course favour me with a letter when you
send the certificate I mentioned, and will write sooner if anything new occurs.
“I have consulted the most eminent man in the medical
profession among all my acquaintance in London, and he says, from my
description of the symptoms, that our mother’s complaint is apoplexy. He
would not advise anything to be done, and further gives it as his opinion that
she will not die till she has had a fresh attack of the complaint.
“Love to your wife and children. We are all well. How
is poor Nat?—Your affectionate
W. Godwin.”
Harriet to Hull Godwin [on the same sheet!]
“DearHull,—. . . I avail
myself of this opportunity of writing a few lines, though I have but little to
say, except to thank brother Nat for his
letter, and that I will write to him when next I send a box or parcel. Yes, one
thing I have thought several times I would say to you: which is, that I wish
much before my busy time comes on again to read Henry’sExposition of the Bible or Testament.
If you can either borrow it for me, or are not using our mother’s
yourself, will you send it to me? . . . If it is not extravagantly dear, I
shall send you a bit of salmon next week, so you must send to the
carrier’s on Saturday night that you may unpack it as soon as possible,
for I am a little fearful about the keeping except I send it pickled, which I
think will not be so well, as my dear mother cannot then have a hot dinner of
it. . . . —Your affectionate sister,
H. Godwin.”
Harriet to William Godwin.
“DearWilliam,—I had a
letter from Hull yesterday. He says our
dear mother has taken a little more
notice of things lately, and seems to understand some things a little better,
but speaks very imperfectly and looks thin. She is extremely anxious about
their attending to religion. O that I had attended to her anxiety on this head
always! O that all my dear brothers would, ere it be too late, that we might
hereafter all meet together with her in that state of happiness and perfection which she will
assuredly ere long enjoy. How earnestly has she prayed, for how many years,
that she might hereafter say to God Almighty, ‘Here am I, and the
children that Thou hast given me.’ Molly
told me that before she was deprived of her senses, she would sometimes
scarcely speak for half a day, but sigh most deeply, and then break out in an
agony, ‘O Molly, Molly, what
will become of my children?’”
The letters from acquaintances during this year require little
explanation. That from Thomas Wedgwood was written
in answer to an application from Godwin for a
further advance of £100 to enable him to carry out the Baldwin scheme.
It seems to have been the last which passed between the friends. Thomas
Wedgwood closed his kindly life on July 10, 1805, his kindness to
Godwin was in a measure continued by Josiah Wedgwood; but the friend of so long standing could not be replaced.
Extract from Letter from Thomas Wedgwood to
William Godwin.
“March 28, 1805.
“I am sincerely glad you have made so promising an
engagement, and that you are likely to have your mind undisturbed for so long a
period by harassing negotiations with booksellers.
“My illness is of a nature absolutely to preclude
writing, and I have no prospect of any change from constant and dreadful
suffering.
“I honour exceedingly the perfect openness of the
statement preceding the request in your letter. I allude particularly to the
use you made of the probability of another advance from me, if necessity should
urge you to apply again. Let there never be any false shame or concealment
between us.—Farewell, and believe me ever your attached and faithful friend,
T. Wedgwood.”
After a separation of several years, Godwin and Mrs Inchbald again
corresponded and met. But their inter-course was a little stiff, and
the lady’s sprightliness was gone. Few passages out of many letters deserve
quotation. Godwin was looking over Mrs
Inchbald’s MS., and objected to a sentence in which she had written
“Osah is prettier than me.” She writes as
follows:—
Mrs Inchbald to William Godwin.
“Saturday Morning, 11th of May, 1805.
. . . ” Permit me here to make an observation, to
which I will not give you the trouble to reply, because it is on a subject of
which I myself am not the slightest judge—Grammar. I once thought that Grammar
was a point established and immoveable by taste or custom. I have of late heard
this contradicted, and have been shown precedents of the very best writers
differing extremely in their modes of Grammar, and I am even told that
correctness is often inelegant.
“If this be true, it is a fine thing for women, and
for some men.
“But it seems that ‘Osah is prettier than
I;’ has Godwin, Lowth, and Scripture on its side. Three high
authorities.—Yours most truly,
E. Inchbald.”
The Same to the Same.
“. . . I am glad you are going to see my play again. . . .
“I am more proud to hear of Kemble’s praise in his character than of
any other part of the play, because my whole aim was directed to represent him
as a Lover, though I knew at the same time that it was not in his power to make
love. So I left him to act, and not to speak the passion.
“Finely as he plays, he has hurt the part by his
spruce manner of dressing. I wanted him to be clean, but not nice. To be
somewhat rugged in appearance as well as in manners, to prove his fondness of
books in his neglect of dress. The power of Love on such an object had been
doubly comic, but when I saw how neat and smart he looked, I feared every
effort for which I had laboured would be lost. . . .
The following letter from Phillips
the publisher, or, since the business was then one, the bookseller, is interesting. It is
evidence that the trade of mere book-making was as well known then as now, and of a very
natural fear that Godwin might be suspected of the
trade. He had offered to “compile” a History of England; as his letters recount
he had written a prospectus for publication in which the word was used, and
Phillips thus replies:—
R. Phillips to William Godwin.
“Bridge Street, June 26, 1805.
“Dear Sir,—I still object
to the word compile—it indicates a work of shreds and
patches, and the compiler is one of the lowest pioneers in Grub Street. The
word is not susceptible of a good sense except when it is honestly meant to
confess the author’s obligation to scissors and paste. If you will have a
dissyllable, take compose, anything rather than compile.
Don’t let it be said that ‘Mr
Godwin is compiling a History of
England.’ What will be said, if this passes, even by your
friends, and by your enemies in the obnoxious sense to which the words are
liable.
“Now, Sir, for another point, but I have a garrulous
old gentleman at my elbow, while I write, who, I fear, may disturb my chain of
argument.
“It appears to me that you have not made the best of
your cause. It would not seem from the connection of your reasoning that you
have as yet any new materials on which to found your ‘History,’ but
that having ‘undertaken to compile’ such a
work, you have begun to look about you for materials, and that the readiest way
is to advertize for them. I could then most humbly
suggest that some idea like the following should be introduced. That since the
time when Mr Hume wrote his ‘History,’ or during some
late years, much attention has been paid to our national records, and all
descriptions of Literati have been labouring to collect materials for the
illustration of our ‘History,’ that the collections of the British
Museum have been formed or greatly enlarged since that
time, that many disputed points have been elaborately discussed by the most
able men, that many curious tracts have been published, and that in the
estimation of many persons, Mr Hume’s
‘History’ is deformed by obvious partialities, &c., that
therefore the said William Godwin is led
to undertake to write a new History, &c., &c., &c.
“Treat all this as you will, believing me to be, Dear
Sir, devotedly and truly yours, &c.
R. Phillips.”
Godwin’s novel of “Fleetwood; or, The New Man of Feeling,” was
published by Phillips in the same year, but neither
it, nor other later novels, had such distinguishing merit as saved them from the fate of
all but the very highest works of prose fiction,—forgetfulness after the lapse of a few
years. The beauty of style remained, but the power and originality which had marked
“Caleb Williams” and
“St Leon,” were wanting.
J. Horne Tooke to William Godwin.
“Wimbledon, Oct. 22, 1805.
“Dear Sir,—A letter from
you, announcing a visit, is at all times pleasant to me; but the present is
peculiarly so, because Mr Jer. Joyce
gave me much sorrow on Sunday last by informing me that Mrs Godwin was ill.
“I shall therefore see you on Friday with more
pleasure than usual, and you may depend upon it, that if I was half so good at
a leap as I am persuaded Mrs Godwin is,
I should often leap to Somers Town.
“Mind, I do not say at Somers Town; for I am very
careful how I employ the English particles, and am besides your most obedient
servant,
J. Horne Tooke.”
Mrs Knapp was the lady to whom the Somers’
Town House belonged. The letter subjoined is valuable as showing at once Godwin’s difficulties and the estimation in which he was held, even by those who were the
sufferers in consequence of his necessities.
Mrs Knapp to William Godwin.
“Dec. 10, 1805.
“Dear Sir,—On my return
the other day from a five months’ excursion, I was gratified by a note
from you, expressive of your esteem, and a present of two volumes of fables from the great and
worthy Mr Baldwin, to whom I send my thanks, with the hope
that he will continue the career he has begun, of writing books so well
calculated to benefit the rising generation.
“With respect to your note of Sunday, I have only to
observe that you are welcome to stay in the house till you have perfectly
suited yourself with another, and when the golden cloud descends, that some
drops of it would be very very acceptable at Kentish town.—With respects to
Mrs Godwin, I remain, dear Sir, your
much obliged,
Leonora Knapp.”
A vast mass of correspondence exists extending over 1806, and the
following years, some of it interesting, but the events to which it relates are few.
Those in 1806 need no elucidation. The family letters show a pleasant
calm after storm, and before storms which were to come in years when Mrs Godwin’s stepdaughters needed more and more, a
tenderness which they did not find.
Extract from letter from William to Hull
Godwin.
“Jan. 16, 1806.
“Dear Brother,—. . . I
should take it as a very great favour if you would send me up the quarter of
sheet of paper that my mother made you write on the first of January. Though
you can make nothing of it, perhaps I should, or should fancy I did. It would
be a gratification to me.
“I thank you very much for the turkeys. They
contributed to our cheerfulness and enjoyments in this social season. Mat. brought his to our house, and we ate it
together, with two or three friends. Joe
should have been of the party, but was prevented by business.
“I approve by all means of continuing my
mother’s subscription to the meeting, as long as she lives. Remember me
respectfully to Mr Sykes.
“We are all well here. My wife desires to join in
kind remembrances to all, with,—Yours very affectionately,
W. Godwin.”
Hull to William Godwin.
“Feb. 9, 1806.
“Dear Brother,—According
to your request, I take the pleasure of letting you know that my wife was
brought to bed Friday evening with a girl, and is finely, thank God. Our
mother pays great attention to her:
she’s very finely, have a good appetite, and looks healthy. My
wife’s doctor say he thinks it possible she may live these seven years.
Mother takes so much notice of her money I durst not think of removing it.
I’ll order and send the certificate against the time. I suppose you are
got through the stock business before now.
The other side is the copy of whatever mother said on New
Year’s day, and insisted on me to write.
Hull Godwin.”
[This is a copy of quite incoherent rambling.]
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin[at Southend.]
“June 2, 1806.
“Thank you a thousand times for what you call your
dull letter. There are two or three words in it, which though of very plain
stuff, without either edging or brocade, are worth more than the eight pence I
gave for them.
“I can promise you an answer not inferior in dulness
to your own. I have got one of my sick-headaches, which though in the way in
which I have them, they are the pettiest and most despic-able of all complaints, are death to poetry and
sentiment, and every kind of refinement. I have been trying Cowper’sTask, and many other approved medicines, but
the intellectual shroud, the symbol of my disease, clings to my heart, and I
may tear my heart out, but cannot separate it from the vile and loathsome
covering that stifles it.
“Mr Burton and your letter
knocked at the door together. The children say they were to have no lessons
from him as long as Fanny was away.
Mr Burton says they were to have half-hour lessons as
usual. Neither to me, nor to Miss Smith, as she says, did
you utter a word on the subject. So, till further orders, I yield to the
authority of the adult party in the dispute.
“I have had specimens of colouring from
Watts and Stodhart, as well as
from Hardy, of the Gaffer Gray, and am so far satisfied, that
I am the less solicitous for your return home on that account. I should have
sent you a copy with this, as well as some letters that the children have
written you, but Charles, whom I sent
for a frank, has contrived to return without one.
“Do begin to talk in your next about the time and
manner of your return. . . . .”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
June 5, 1806.
“Yesterday (was that right or wrong?) we kept
Charles’s birthday, though his
mother was absent. . . . Charles has written an account of
the day to Fanny; it passed pleasantly
enough. . . .
“Do not imagine that I took Charles into my good graces the moment your
back was turned. He indeed took care to prevent that if I had been inclined, by
displeasing me the day I sent him for a frank, and on another errand. So that I
had only just time to forgive him for his birthday.
“I wish to impress you with the persuasion that he is
infinitely more of a child, and to be treated as a child, than you imagine.
Monday I sent him for a frank, and set all the children to write letters,
though by his awkwardness the occasion was lost. The
letter he then wrote, though I took some pains previously to work on his
feelings, was the poorest and most soulless thing ever you saw. I then set him
to learn the poem of “My Mother” in
Darton’sOriginal Poetry. Your letter
to him came most opportunely to re-inforce the whole, and at last he has
produced what I now send you. I went upstairs to his bedside the night before
you left us, that I might impress upon him the importance of not suffering you
to depart in anger: but instead of understanding me at first, he, like a child,
thought I was come to whip him, and with great fervour and agitation, begged I
would forgive him. He is very anxious that no one should see his letter but
yourself, and I have promised to enforce his petition. . . .
“I shall be very happy to listen to you on that
subject, on which so many poets have shone already, the praise of the country.
But will you give me leave, my dearest love, to recall to your consideration
the ties and bonds by which we are fettered? We cannot do as we would, and must
be satisfied, for some time at least, if we can do at all. And do you really
believe that ‘the sordid thoughts that in London make a necessary part
of your daily existence’ could never find their way to Tilford?
Alas, I am afraid that a narrow income, a numerous family, and many things to
arrange and provide for, are the same everywhere. I am of my old friend
Horace’s opinion, ‘that
happiness may be found even in Rag fair (allow me the license of a
translator) if we do but bring with us to the shed that covers us a well
regulated mind.’ Yet I swear to you, I will with all pleasure
retire with you to the country, the moment you shall yourself pronounce it to
be practicable.
“Will you allow me to play with you the part of a
monitor? or will you think that is incompatible with the feelings of a lover?
You have effected, as you have repeatedly told me, one most excellent
revolution in yourself since your marriage, that of taking many things quietly
that were once torture, for example, money embarrassments and importunities.
That you did not so from the first, was owing to your estrangement from the
usages of the world, and to the want of that easily acquired tincture of
philosophy, that enables us to
look at things as they will appear a week hence, or, for the most part, even
to-morrow. That sorrow which will be no sorrow to-morrow, should not touch a
wise woman’s heart. The offences of children should be taken as from that
sort of beings that children always are, yourself in your early years only
excepted; the offences of tradesmen as from tradesmen; and the nonsense of
servants as from servants. Indeed, best beloved Mamma, if we do not learn this
little lesson of prudence, it is not Tilford, no, nor Arno’s Vale, nor
the Thessalian Tempe, that will make us happy. Our vexations will follow us
everywhere with our family, and, if you will allow me once more to quote
Horace, when we mount our neighing
steeds, Care will mount too, and cling close behind us. It is a sad thing, but
such is the nature of human beings: we cannot have ‘the dear, beyond
all words dear objects,’ as you so truly call them, that this
roof covers, without having plenty of exercise for the sobriety and steadiness
of our souls. Oh, that from this moment you would begin to attempt to cultivate
that firmness and equanimity! You would then be everything that my fondest and
warmest wishes could desire: you would be Tilford and Tuscany and Tempe all
together, and you would carry them ever about in your heart. . . .
“The most extraordinary thing I send is William’s letter. Miss
Smith, and all three children attest the fact. He asked
Miss Smith to rule him some lines. When he began, she
said to him, William, do not go out of the lines, and this
was all the instruction he received.
“I think it is a little cruel of Fanny to have written to Charles and Jane, and not a line to her own sister.
“I called at Rowan’s on Monday evening. Not at home. I then passed on
to Carlisle’s, and supped by
accident on Carshalton fish. Tuesday I supped at Lamb’s, and they are engaged to be here on Sunday
evening. G. M. C. dined with us last
Sunday. This is all I have to tell you of that sort.
“My foot is nearly well. I could distinguish you in
the coach as far as the corner of Chancery Lane. I thought you would have gone
over Blackfriars’ Bridge: but, as you went my way, I deter-mined to leave you, as a last legacy, my figure popping
up and down in the act of running.—Ever your friend, brother, husband,
“W. Godwin.
“Mrs Fraser called, Tuesday
evening, to recommend a housemaid. I have seen and rather like her. I will
swear she is sober and good-tempered. She is 21 years of age.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“June 11, 1806.
“Here is a sheet of paper that says, How do you do
Mamma? Bless me! why, you have travelled almost forty miles to-day. Are you not
very much fatigued? . . . .
“I am almost angry with Dr Wolcot for engaging me on Thursday, and have more than half
a mind to break the engagement. I am afraid, however, that you will say, now, I
should like to have this evening to myself with the family at Wimbledon, for,
wicked wretch that you are! how often have you complained that my presence
spoiled your pleasures. Not all your pleasures. . . . What a heavenly western
breeze! It almost tears my paper from me as I write. God send you may have had
that, or something as refreshing as that, on your Thursday’s ride!
“Remember how complete a Jesuit H[orne] T[ooke] is. Do not let him worm
anything from you, to be employed in assailing your lord and master afterward.
. . .
“Adieu. God bless you, as William says.”
The occasion of the letter from Lamb cannot now be discovered, but it is too characteristic of the writer
to be omitted. The disposition shown in it, at once so genial and so humble, prevented his
little tiffs with Godwin from assuming such serious proportions as did Godwin’s misunderstandings with other friends.
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
“1806.
“I repent. Can that God whom thy votaries say that
thou hast demolished expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the
black Hypocondria never gripe thy heart, till thou hast
taken a friend for an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four
inched bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain
positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything written
from this domicile as serious.
“I rank thee with
Alves, Latinè, Helvetius, or any of his cursed crew? Thou art my friend, and
henceforth my philosopher—thou shalt teach Distinction to the junior branches
of my household, and Deception to the greyhaired Janitress at my door.
“What! Are these atonements? Can Arcadias be brought
upon knees, creeping and crouching?
“Come, as Macbeth’s drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock,
knock, knock, knock, knock—seven times in a day shalt thou batter at my peace,
and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may Briareus, with
his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker, lead me such a life.
C. Lamb.”
CHAPTER VII. POLITICS AND LITERARY WORK. 1806—1811.
A renewed intimacy, of which more hereafter, with Lords
Holland and Lauderdale, awakened Godwin’s
somewhat waning interest in politics, which however, had only waned, because he had drifted
out of political into purely literary circles. On the death of Charles James Fox, for whom his admiration had always been sincere, he
wrote the éloge which is subjoined, and which was printed in the Morning Chronicle. It is an excellent specimen of his style at this
period of his life, dignified and worthy of the great statesman, whose frailties are too
well, whose services to liberty are too little remembered by this generation.
To the Editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle’
“Sir,—You will, if you
think proper, insert the inclosed in your paper, and subscribe it with my name.
It is an unexaggerated statement of what I think of the character of our lately
deceased Minister, taken in a single point of view. In writing it, I have
dismissed from my mind all temporary feelings of regret, and expressed myself
with the severity and plainness of a distant posterity. I have nothing to do
with Administration, and have scarcely a slight acquaintance with a few of its
Members. My character, such as it is, and my disposition, are subjects of
notoriety; and every one capable of judging righteous judgment, has a tolerably
sound idea respecting them. Perhaps then even my testimony, individual and uninfluenced as it
necessarily is, may not be an unacceptable tribute to the memory of the great
man we deplore.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
W. Godwin. “London, October 21, 1806. CHARACTER OF FOX.
“Charles James
Fox was for thirty-two years a principal leader in the
debates and discussions of the English House of Commons. The eminent
transactions of his life lay within those walls; and so many of his
countrymen as were accustomed to hear his speeches there, or have
habitually read the abstracts which have been published of them, are in
possession of the principal materials by which this extraordinary man is to
be judged.
“Fox is the
most illustrious model of a Parliamentary Leader, on the side of liberty,
that this country has produced. This character is the appropriate glory of
England, and Fox is the proper example of this character.
“England has been called, with great felicity of
conception, ‘The land of liberty and good sense.’ We
have preserved many of the advantages of a free people, which the nations
of the Continent have long since lost. Some of them have made wild and
intemperate sallies for the recovery of all those things which are most
valuable to man in society, but their efforts have not been attended with
the happiest success. There is a sobriety in the English people,
particularly in accord with the possession of freedom. We are somewhat
slow, and somewhat silent; but beneath this outside we have much of
reflection, much of firmness, a consciousness of power and of worth, a
spirit of frank-dealing and plain-speaking, and a moderate and decent
sturdiness of temper not easily to be deluded or subdued.
“For thirty-two years Fox hardly ever opened his mouth in Parliament but to
assert, in some form or other, the cause of liberty and mankind, and to
repel tyranny in its various shapes, and protest against the encroachments
of power. In the American war, in the questions of reform at home, which
grew out of the American war, and in the successive scenes which were
produced by the French Revolution, Fox was still
found the perpetual advocate of freedom. He endeavoured to secure the
privileges and the happiness of the people of Asia and the people of
Africa. In Church and State, his principles were equally favourable to the
cause of liberty. Englishmen can nowhere find the sentiments of freedom
unfolded and amplified in more animated language, or in a more consistent
tenor, than in the recorded Parliamentary Debates of
Fox. Many have called in question his prudence,
and the practicability of his politics in some of their branches; none have
succeeded in fixing a stain upon the truly English temper of his heart.
“The reason why Fox so much excelled, in this
reign, William Pulteney, and other
eminent leaders of Opposition, in the reign of George II. was, that his heart beat in accord to sentiments
of liberty. The character of the English nation has improved since the year
1760. The two first Kings of the House of Hanover, did not aspire to the
praise of encouragers of English literature, and had no passion for the
fine arts; and their minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, loved nothing, nor pretended to understand
anything, but finance, commerce, and peace. His opponents caught their tone
from his, and their debates rather resembled those of the directors of a
great trading company, than of men who were concerned with the passions,
the morals, the ardent sentiments, and the religion of a generous and
enlightened nation. The English seemed fast degenerating into such a people
as the Dutch; but Burke and
Fox, and other eminent characters
not necessary to be mentioned here, redeemed us from the imminent
depravity, and lent their efforts to make us the worthy inhabitants of a
soil which had produced a Shakespeare, a Bacon, and a Milton.
“Fox, in
addition to the generous feelings of his heart, possessed, in a supreme
degree, the powers of an acute logician. He seized with astonishing
rapidity the defects of his antagonist’s argument, and held them up
in the most striking point of ridicule. He never misrepresented what his
opponent had said, or attacked his accidental oversights, but fairly met
and routed him when he thought himself strongest. Though he had at no time
studied law as a profession, he
never entered the lists in reasoning with a lawyer that he did not show
himself superior to the gowned pleader at his own weapons. It was this
singular junction of the best feelings of the human heart, with the acutest
powers of the human understanding, that made Fox the
wonderful creature he was.
“Let us compare William
Pitt in office, and Charles James
Fox out of it; and endeavour to decide upon their respective
claims to the gratitude of posterity. Pitt was
surrounded with all that can dazzle the eye of a vulgar spectator: he
possessed the plenitude of power; during a part of his reign, he was as
nearly despotic as the minister of a mixed government can be: he dispensed
the gifts of the Crown; he commanded the purse of the nation; he wielded
the political strength of England. Fox during almost
all his life had no part of these advantages.
“It has been said, that Pitt preserved his country from the anarchy and confusion,
which from a neighbouring nation threatened to infect us. This is a very
doubtful proposition. It is by no means clear that the English people could
ever have engaged in so wild, indiscriminate, ferocious, and sanguinary a
train of conduct as was exhibited by the people of France. It is by no
means clear that the end which Pitt is said to have
gained, could not have been accomplished without such bloody wars, such
formidable innovations on the liberties of Englishmen, such duplicity,
unhallowed dexterity and treachery, and so audacious a desertion of all the
principles with which the minister commenced his political life as
Pitt employed. Meanwhile, it was the simple,
ingenuous and manly office of Fox to
protest against the madness and the despotic proceedings of his rival in
administration; and, if he could not successfully counteract the measures
of Pitt, the honour at least is due to him, to have
brought out the English character not fundamentally impaired, in the issue
of the most arduous trial it was ever called to sustain.
“The eloquence of these two renowned statesmen
well corresponded with the different parts they assumed in public life. The
eloquence of Pitt was cold and
artificial. The complicated, yet harmonious, structure of his periods,
bespoke the man of contriv-ance and study. No man
knew so well as Pitt how to envelope his meaning in a
cloud of words, whenever he thought obscurity best adapted to his purpose.
No man was so skilful as Pitt to answer the questions
of his adversary without communicating the smallest information. He was
never taken off his guard. If Pitt ever appeared in
some eyes to grow warm as he proceeded, it was with a measured warmth;
there were no starts and sallies, and sudden emanations of the soul; he
seemed to be as much under the minutest regulation in the most vehement
swellings and apostrophes of his speech, as in his coldest calculations.
“Fox, as an
orator, appeared to come immediately from the forming hand of nature. He
spoke well, because he felt strongly and earnestly. His oratory was
impetuous as the current of the river Rhone; nothing could arrest its
course. His voice would insensibly rise to too high a key; he would run
himself out of breath. Everything showed how little artifice there was in
his eloquence. Though on all great occasions he was throughout energetic,
yet it was by sudden flashes and emanations that he electrified the heart,
and shot through the blood of his hearer. I have seen his countenance
lighted up with more than mortal ardour and goodness; I have been present
when his voice has become suffocated with the sudden bursting forth of a
torrent of tears.
“The love of freedom, which marks the public
proceedings of Fox, is exactly
analogous to the natural temper of his mind; he seemed born for the cause
which his talents were employed to support. He was the most unassuming of
mankind. He was so far from dictating to others, that it was often imputed
to him, though perhaps erroneously, that he suffered others to dictate to
him. No man ever existed more simple in his manners, more single-hearted,
or less artificial in his carriage. The set phrases of what is called
polished life, made no part of his ordinary speech; he courted no man; he
practised adulation to none. Nothing was in more diametrical opposition to
the affected than the whole of his behaviour. His feelings in themselves,
and in the expression of them, were, in the most honourable sense of the
word, childlike. Various anecdotes might be related of his innocent and
de-fenceless
manners in private and familiar life, which would form the most striking
contrast with the vulgar notions of the studied and designing demeanour of
a statesman. This was the man that was formed to defend the liberties of
Englishmen: his public and his private life are beautiful parts of a
consistent whole, and reflect mutual lustre on each other.
“To conclude, Fox is the great ornament of the kingdom of England during
the latter part of the eighteenth century. What he did is the due result of
the illumination of the present age, and of the character of our ancestors
for ages past. Pitt (if I may be
excused for mentioning him once again) was merely a statesman, he was
formed to seize occasions to possess himself of power, and to act with
consummate craft upon every occurrence that arose. He belonged to ancient
Carthage—he belonged to modern Italy—but there is nothing in him that
expressly belongs to England. Fox, on the
contrary—mark how he outshines his rival—how little the acquisition of
power adds to the intrinsic character of the man!—is all over English. He
is the mirror of the national character for the age in which he lived—its
best, its purest, its most honourable representative. No creature that has
the genuine feelings of an Englishman, can recollect, without emotions of
exultation, the temper, the endowments, and the public conduct of
Fox.”
The business in Hanway Street and the books issued from it took up a great
amount of time, and Godwin’s devotion to it,
as well as that of his wife, was great. His literary work was more incessant than it had
been since the years of his early residence in London. His correspondence with friends was
almost wholly on this subject, and the help he received was very considerable. Old friends
and new, whose acquaintance had hitherto been only with his writings, came forward with
loans or gifts, among them conspicuously Sir Francis
Burdett, Lords Holland, Selkirk, and Lauderdale,
and the sale of the books themselves was large. In the spring of 1807 it seemed desirable
to move into more spacious premises than those in Hanway Street,
and a shop was taken in Skinner Street, Holborn.
Attached to this was a good dwelling-house; and since Godwin’s identity, or at least close connection with
Baldwin, had ceased to be a secret, there was no need for a double
establishment. The business was removed to the new house on May 18, and on August 11th,
1807, Godwin and his wife took up their abode there. The home at
Somers Town was not entirely abandoned for a few months, however: the children only joined
them in Skinner Street late in the autumn.
There was now a fair ground for believing that the experiment would prove
remunerative, and ensure a competence when actual brain work could no longer be depended on
for the needs of each year. To render this more certain, however, it occurred to Marshal and others, among Godwin’s most intimate friends, to start a subscription for him over
and above the sums which had been advanced or given in aid of the business by the friends
named. So soon as this was mentioned to Godwin, he, who never thought
his merits had been fully or sufficiently recognized, took the conduct of the scheme into
his own hands. And though it is a sorry sight to see and hear a man blow his own trumpet so
loudly, the letters which passed on the subject, and the appeal circulated by
Marshal, but drawn up by Godwin himself, are
too characteristic to be omitted.
The list of subscribers is very incomplete in the rough draught from which
the copy is taken. The Diaries show very considerable additions, but from whom they came is
too uncertain for extract here. The help thus given tided over the difficulty, and did much
to place the household in Skinner Street on a more comfortable scale. Among the subscribers
there were, no doubt, many who gave their aid rather to the veteran liberal than to the
needy man of letters, since we find in the list most of the leading Whigs.
William Godwin to J. Marshall.
“March 19, 1808.
“I have seen Johnson this
morning, and laid before him every paper that I thought could throw light on
this subject. He says that I am wrong to think of £50 subscriptions, and that,
in his opinion, there ought to be none less than £100. He also objects to
attending a meeting, and thinks (in which I agree with him) that if he writes a
proper letter, it will answer every purpose. Perhaps in that case there will be
no need of any meeting. I am to see him again on Monday: it would best forward
the purpose if you would come here Monday evening or Monday to dinner, to
settle final arrangements.”
The Same to the Same.
“June 9, 1808.
“Once again I trouble you. You gave me reason to
expect you to-day. Perhaps the rain has prevented you.
“I am much more resolute than when I saw you last. I
feel it an indispensable duty to know the mind of Lord
Grey, the Duke of Bedford,
the Duke of Norfolk, Coke of Norfolk, &c. &c. If you and
nobody else will go to them, I must, and I will. We will dispense with authority to receive money,
and merely use a name, Grattan or
Sharp, or &c. at the door.
“I am prepared for the worst. I will go to prison. I
will be in the Gazette. I will move to a meaner situation, or anything
else that is necessary. But I must first know these men’s minds. Look at
the enclosed list of subscriptions (I have distinguished those that are not
present money). Will Lord Grey, or Lord
anybody else, venture to regard this as a scheme to be blown upon? But we must
be beforehand with evil reports.
“Let them say to you personally, ‘Put down
our names,’ and I will contrive a way to receive their money.
“I also wish much to close Phillips’ question.
“Surely I need not tell you, that to be beforehand
with evil reports, not a moment, not half a moment, is to be lost. Come, then,
instantly.
“Johnson says in his letter many
things to our purpose; among others, that our copyrights, with moderate care,
would net £300 a year.”
The Same to the Same.
“June 11, 1808.
“By all means begin with Fox’s men—Grey first,
Bedford second, &c.
“If you see them, be eloquent.
“Mr William
Godwin, a gentleman well known to the public by his various
writings, but who in worldly circumstances partakes of the usual fate of
authors, has lately digested a plan for providing for himself and family by
entering into the business of a bookseller, principally in the mode of
supplying books for schools and young persons. He has composed several works in
prosecution of this plan under the feigned name of Edward
Baldwin, an expedient to which he felt himself obliged to have
recourse in consequence of the prejudices which have been industriously
circulated against him. These books are so written as to be incapable of
occasioning offence to any; as, indeed, Mr Godwin would
have held it an ungenerous and dishonourable proceeding to have insinuated
obnoxious principles into the minds of young persons under colour of
contributing to their general instruction. The books have accordingly been
commended in the highest terms in all the reviews, and are now selling in the
second and third editions respectively. A commercial concern, however, can only
have a gradual success, and requires a capital greater than Mr
Godwin can command. He has cheerfully devoted himself to this
species of pursuit, that he might secure independence and competence to his
family, and nothing can be more promising than the progress the undertaking has
already made. But it is feared that it cannot be carried on to that maturity to
which, it naturally tends, unless such opulent persons as are impressed with
favourable sentiments of the talents and personal character of Mr
Godwin will generously contribute to supply him with those means
which he does not himself possess.
“Influenced by these considerations, and by the
opinion that it is a much truer act of liberality to assist a man we esteem in
giving effect to the projects of his industry, than to supply his necessities
when such industry is no more, the undernamed gentlemen have respectively
engaged to advance for the furtherance of Mr
Godwin’s project the following sums:—
Earl of Lauderdale £100 Rt Hon. H. Grattan, £50 Lord Holland, 100 Rt Hon. J. P. Curran, 100 Duke of Devonshire, 50 Hon. J. W. Ward, 50 Earl Cowper, 50 S. Whitbread, Esq., M.P., 50 Earl of Thanet, 50 W. Smith, Esq., M.P., 50 Duke of Bedford, 50 R. Sharp, Esq., M.P., 50 Earl Grey, 50 S. Rogers, Esq., 50 Earl of Rosslyn, 50 Mr J. Johnson, 100 Earl of Selkirk, 50 Sir R. Phillips, 100 Lord Kinnaird, 50 Sir F. Baring, 20
Lord Holland to William Godwin.
“May 11, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—£150 will be
placed payable to your draft at Messrs. Coutts & Co.
to-morrow.
“The Duke of
Devonshire and Lord Cowper,
the only persons to whom I mentioned the subject, having immediately advanced
me £50 each, I thought it might be convenient to you to have the £150 without
loss of time; and when the time of the pending elections is over, and my
friends returned to town, I have no doubt of being able to send you the other
moiety of the loan, or at any rate you shall receive in a few days ample legal
security for such a sum.
“I have been studying Mr
Baldwin’s books, and think them very good indeed.—Yours
ever,
Holland.”
The Same to the Same.
“May 19, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—On Friday next
there will be another £150 answerable to your draft at Messrs
Coutts, Strand. I ought to add
that Lord Kinnaird, to whom I ventured to
mention some of the circumstances detailed in your letter, begged me to let him
concur in showing you this mark of attention and respect.—Yours,
“Holland.”
The Same to the Same.
“May 21, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—You do very
right in letting me know the whole of the case, as, if in my power, I should
have been happy to have secured the success of your undertaking; but I assure
you that I have exceeded rather than fallen short of what I could do with any
convenience to myself. I hope you received the letter I wrote yesterday, which
will have relieved you from your embarrassment as to the mode of making out the
draft.—Yours ever,
Holland.”
The tragedy of “Faulkener” had been at last played at Drury Lane on Dec. 16, 1807. It was
received with favour, and repeated for several nights.
The delay in the representation of it, though it had been accepted so long
before, arose from the vacillation of the boy Betty,
then called the young Roscius, who gave himself great airs, and seems
to have dealt precisely as he pleased with the management of Drury Lane Theatre. He would
and he would not play the part, he studied and left it off, sent for Godwin to read it to him, accepted it, then would not fix
a time to play it, and a definite arrangement for its production more than once fell
through, to Godwin’s great annoyance, which in this case was
certainly not unreasonable. He did not finally undertake the part, and the hero was played
by Elliston. Lamb again wrote the Prologue, this time to a more successful play, and
announced the fact that for the motive of the play Godwin was indebted
to an incident in some of the editions of Defoe’s “Roxana.” Wolcot wrote an Epilogue,
but it came too late to be spoken by
Mrs Henry Siddons, who played the Countess Orsini.
The tragedy is powerful, though disagreeable, turning on a son’s
discovery that his mother has been unfaithful to his father. She is now married again, and
the second husband, who had believed himself to have married a chaste woman, falls by her
son’s hand. Its power preserved it from damnation, but it took no permanent hold of
the stage.
Among the books already mentioned as published by Godwin in Skinner Street was the “Adventures of Ulysses,” by C. Lamb. When the MS. was placed in
Godwin’s hands, he objected to some portions of it. The
correspondence which ensued, treats of a matter of still daily interest to authors and
publishers alike. It is one which will probably for some time remain unsettled till the
happy hour, still far distant, when the literary and commercial value of a book are
necessarily the same. We may be grateful that Godwin’s criticism
saved us from some details sketched by Lamb’s too vivid
imagination.
William Godwin to Charles Lamb.
Skinner St., March 10,
1808.
“DearLamb,—I address you
with all humility, because I know you to be tenax
propositi. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.
“It is strange with what different feelings an author
and a bookseller looks at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was
an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his
honour: the bookseller what will cause his commodities to sell.
“You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It
is children that read children’s books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose them. The critical thought of the
tradesman put itself therefore into the place of the parent, and what the
parent will condemn.
“We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your
manuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the
squeamish say to such expressions as these,—‘devoured their limbs, yet
warm and trembling, lapping the blood,’ p. 10. Or to the
giant’s vomit, p. 14; or to the minute and shocking description of the
extinguishing the giant’s eye in the page following. You, I daresay, have
no formed plan of excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a
bookseller, must consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human
species.
“Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if
you please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.
“Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the
matter.
“I should also like a preface. Half our customers know
not Homer, or know him only as you and I
know the lost authors of antiquity. What can be more proper than to mention one
or two of those obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every
human creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.—Believe me, ever faithfully
yours,
W. Godwin.”
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
”March 11, 1808.
DearGodwin,—The giant’s vomit was perfectly nauseous,
and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other
passages I can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless
passages besides, such as of Scylla
snatching up the six men, etc., that is to say, they are lively images of shocking things. If you want a book, which is not
occasionally to shock, you should not have thought of a
tale which was so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these
things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty
should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author
to author, I must say that I think the terrible in those two passages seems to
me so much to preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than
disgusting. Who is to read them, I don’t know: who is it that reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such
things sell. I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I
know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to you, an author,
Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it is, or
refuse it. You are as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a
friend I say, Don’t plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I
assure you I will not alter one more word.”
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
[Undated.]
“DearGodwin,—I have found it for several
reasons indispensable to my comfort, and to my sister’s, to have no
visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave
town.
“I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest
degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs
Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious
in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up
more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to
those from whom I have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not
do for them. Let me request you not to be offended, and to request
Mrs G. not to be offended, if I beg both your
compliances with this wish. Your friendship is as dear to me as that of any
person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity
at home, I would not seem so unreasonable.
“If you were to see the agitation that my sister is
in, between the fear of offending you and Mrs G. and the
difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we must do to live without
wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange request, which I send with
a trembling anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I
rely on your goodness.
“C. Lamb.”
The next two letters also relate to a matter which not all consider
wholly decided—the respective claims of parents and masters over the time and punctual
attendance of a school-boy, though there would scarcely seem room for doubt that home
claims must, as a rule, give way, if discipline and regularity are to obtain in a school.
The position taken by Dr Raine is one to which even
Godwin, with all his love of argument, could
find no satisfactory reply.
William Godwin to Dr Matthew Raine.
“April 12, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—I am a little
shocked at a message I received from you yesterday by Clairmont.
“This message is, ‘That you were the proper
judge whether my reasons from detaining him from school were
sufficient.’ To this I cannot agree.
“The authority of the tutor is in my opinion derived
from that of the parent, and cannot supersede it. I could never consent to lay
my reasons for detaining him before you for your approbation.
“I should, however, be exceedingly sorry to be
wanting in any sort of attention or on ceremony. If the meaning of your message
is, that you would wish to receive a line beforehand, requesting leave for his
absence, I will cheerfully comply whenever it is possible, which is not
always.—I remain, etc.,
W. Godwin.”
Dr Matthew Raine to William Godwin.
“Charter House, April 12, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—It may spare
you and myself some trouble if, without entering into the accuracy or
inaccuracy of the statement of my message by Clairmont, I should explain to you the general rule at this
place, relating to attendance upon school business. A rule of this sort I have.
I hold it to be indispensably necessary; and bold as the position may be, it is
a rule with which I cannot allow
parental power or parental caprice to interfere. The rule is this:—That during
the time for the performance of school business, no boy is allowed to be
absent, except on the score of ill-health or with the leave of a master,
previously had. For granting this leave I have ever been accustomed to expect,
and never was refused, a sufficient reason in my own judgment, independent of
the parent’s will.
“I have no wish certainly to pry into matters which
do not concern me; but I must think that a scholar’s absence always
concerns a master, and it materially improves the discipline of a school that
the master alone should decide on the propriety of a scholar’s absence.
Nor do I believe this rule to be peculiar to Charter House, but if it were, I
feel so little disposition to give it up, that I should rather part with my
scholar than relinquish a principle so just, and, so far as I have been
concerned, so universally acknowledged. It will not be denied that the mere
request of a parent for his child’s absence would occasionally be
complied with; but I should strongly protest against a frequent repetition of
such a request. A man must be everything in his school, or he is nothing; and
that parent would seem to me to act the wisest part who should so contrive that
his and the schoolmaster’s authority would never clash. If this cannot be
without inconvenience in this or that case, I am still of opinion that the
individual instance must bend to the general rule. I trust you will believe
that I have no wish to perplex you, and that I am very far from seeking to hurt
any man’s feelings. The point we differ upon may be a point of etiquette,
but I have a rule; and, as the venerable Sergeant
Hill said, ‘If I part with my rule I do not know where
I shall find another.’
“I am, dear Sir, your very obedient servant,
“Matthew
Raine.”
Charles Clairmont’s letter was written during
a visit which Godwin paid to Norfolk, and gives a
pleasant picture of the brighter days in a home where all was not always so smooth, and the
letter which follows it closes with one of those bits of true
philosophy which so often lend brightness to Godwin’s least
important letters.
Charles Clairmont to William Godwin.
“May 6, 1808.
“Dear Sir,—Mamma has got
franks for each of us to send you a letter, and hopes you will not think us too
troublesome. We are all going to-morrow to Hampstead Heath to spend a whole
day, and Mr and Mrs Mulready, Mr and Miss Dawe, and
Mr Linnell, are all going with us.
Mr Linnell and Mr Mulready will sketch part of the time,
which will be very amusing, and I hope to do something in the same way, which,
when you come home, you will see. I think you have had very fine weather for
your journey, which is very fortunate; and we are all thinking we shall have a
rainy day for Fanny’s birthday. It
has been fine weather for bathing, and I have already been into Pearly’s
Pool twice, which, by the by, is now Watt’s Pool, and can swim much
better than last summer, and we can subscribe monthly or quarterly. But now I
should wish to know something of your journey, how you find poor grandmamma. I
hope she is not worse. Pray send us word whether she knows or can converse with
you. We were very much baulked at finding we did not say either our history or
lecture, as we had learned it so very perfect; and as you will be home to
Fanny’s birthday, on the Saturday after next, we
hope to say it to you on the Sunday.
“I hope that Mr Capel
Lofft and his family will be well, and that he will tell you a
few odd stories to tell us. William does
not talk of you and when you will come back, at which I am not a little
surprised.
“Mr Mulready
says that Linnell is the best painter he
knows, and I asked him if he was as good as Wilkie, and he said that Wilkie painted
better, but that Linnell had a great deal more taste; he
says I have got a cleverer master than I think for. I think him very clever; as
to his being the best painter in England, I cannot believe it.
“I was at Mr
Mulready’s on Thursday when he told me all this, and at
the same time gave me a lecture on boxing, and he says that Linnell is almost as good a boxer as himself.
“When mamma went to Mr
Mulready’s to invite him, Linnell was there, and mamma, thinking it would be a civility
to make him know a little more of us, asked him to be of the party, to which he
answered in his bluff way, It’s too hot. Mamma then asked him to consider
of it, and he said, I’m obliged to you, ma’am; I’ll go, and
so it was agreed. . . .
“Farewell, dear Sir, and I still remain your ever
affectionate son-in-law,
C. Clairmont.”
“P.S.—As we cannot all of
us expect a whole letter apiece from you, you will be so good as to send a
line or two to each of us in your next letter to mamma.”
This is the last glimpse we shall have in life of old Mrs Godwin. Her good old age was passing painlessly, and
soothed by all possible attentions from her eldest son and his wife.
Mrs Godwin, sen., to William Godwin.
“DearWm.,—I’m very uncapable of writing now, but would
have you loose no time waiting for the fall of Stocks, put yr. £25 out to a bank which gives 4 pr. cent., as Carrisons of
Norwich, am sorry its loosing interest waiting the fall, I know the buying in
or selling out ever so small a sum is 2s. 6d. brokrage, the same as one
hundred. Let me know it is in in your name, and I will rest myself sattisfied
that you will act a father’s part to your brother’s Josh. children for wish not to be
encumber’d any further. I am next June 21 new stile 78 years of age, and
find my days attended with labour and sorrow, wish to be desolv’d and be
with Christ, not my will but the will of my God in Xt be done, think myself
obleged to you that Joe’s son Wm. is got into the blue Coat school. I
know If its in his mother’s power to unsettle him or get him out, She is such an imprudent woman, She will;
but I hope you’ll prevent it.
“I gave yr. thanks to
Hullys wife for ye. Turkey the Farmers now don’t put them up to fat only give
them corn in ye. yard for their own use or to sell yet
will not sell them under 10d pr pound, and country carriers extortion very much
I sent a brace of chickens to Joseph ye. carrier wou’d fain have had is to Norwich but at last with
many words took 8d ye. London carrs. is but 1s & 1d
booking will have 3 half pence if more than 8 pound all above. O this dreadful
war what will become the midle sort as well as ye. poor
malt 46 pr Coomb and 8d and 9d. for pork a pound, Saccages 1s veal 6½, bread 4d
per lb fine flower 7s per sto I wish you coud advise Hanh. to be more
frugal you can do more with her than anybody in particular her Sundays
excurtions she will never be in better case till she alter that and go to a
place where ye. word of God is preached but that is
unfashonable We have souls and therefore are not at liberty to live as ye. bruits that have no life after this. Its a mercy
yr. children have got over ye. measles so well but there is a great duty belongs to you to
instruct them in the word of God in their youth for they are nateraly prone to
vanity and idleness there is no need to teach them that
“Mrs H Godwin is near her time
they Joine me in wishing you hapyness Natty also
“Yr. affecate. Mother
A G
“Yr.Sister will not its likely be long
before she sends or if G pleas when ye. have put
out yr. money may write by post Mr
Copland has sold his farm so Tim Tomson
leves it next Mic”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“East Dereham, May 5, 1805.
“I found my mother in bed yesterday, but to-day she rose to breakfast.
There is little satisfaction in seeing her: her intellect is exceedingly
slender: she understood that I was one of her children, but she would not own
that she knew more than that, I mean who I was: and her continual talk was that
she wished me to be gone, for
she had nothing, no provisions, nothing at all, to give me. Her speech is very
imperfect; she calls everything by a name of her own, and changes it often. But
she compared my watch, which she asked me by signs to take out of my pocket,
with hers, though I believe she saw nothing, and showed me a letter of my
sister’s, addressed to her, written about eighteen months ago, and a book
in which Joseph had written the names of
all his children. . . . In the description of my mother, which I wished to make
complete, I purposed to have added, that though her thoughts are imperfect, her
speech, when the visible objects to which it relates are before her, is not so.
She said to me at breakfast this morning: ‘Do not wait no more for
me.’ She walks firmly and steadily, and drank her tea three or
four times with her spoon, which she carries steadily to her mouth without
losing a drop.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Troston, May 8, 1808.
“My last letter was addressed to you from Dereham,
the scene of the death and burial of Cowper. I was there on Thursday, taking shelter from the
intense heat of the mid-day sun. I have suffered indeed (I wish we had another
word less solemn than suffered to express these petty
misfortunes) more than you can imagine, from the warmth of the season. The skin
of the greater part of my face is completely peeled off, and my nose and nether
lip are adorned with small protuberances, as a sort of fungus which Phoebus has raised from the richness of the soil.
“In the evening of Thursday I proceeded once more to
Bradenham, where I felt no temptation to stay, and of consequence set off the
next morning for Thetford. My brother conveyed me twelve miles out of the
twenty, which separates his habitation from that town, and I walked the rest,
having arrived there at three o’clock on Friday. I had written from
Dereham to Mr Lofft, but was uncertain
when my letter would reach him, and therefore only said I should sleep on
Friday at Thetford, leaving to his mercy when he would appear there to release
me. I might have staid a day and a half longer at
Bradenham, and this would have been economy. But though I tasked my resolution
to bear the squalidness of the good people there, I assure you I felt it high
time to get away after my breakfast of Friday. I had a serious motive for my
journey into Norfolk, but one view that made me consider it with pleasure was
that I contemplated in it a means of renewing my youth and recruiting my
spirits. I sought, therefore, a little for indulgence and not altogether for
penance. . . . Friday evening and Saturday morning were, if possible, hotter
than the preceding days. Saturday (having just taken a slice of cold beef and a
glass of brandy and water) I set off at half after four in the afternoon, on
foot, for Troston: the distance seven miles. The evening was favourable, the
extreme heat was gone, and the weather was apparently changing. When I had
walked four miles and a half, and had already turned into an obscure cross
road, I saw a handsome carriage advancing in the opposite direction. I gazed
attentively upon it, and soon found that it contained Mr Capel
Lofft. He, good man, had only received my letter at four
o’clock, and, having gobbled up his dinner, set off in an immense hurry,
in his list slippers, to meet me. . . .
“Mr Lofft put
into my hands your letter of Friday, the perusal of which quite revived my
soul: it is so considerate, so provident, so encouraging! The bill of the Br.
had begun to spread its raven wings over my head. I hope you will not have
failed to write again on Monday, as you seem to promise. I will then remain at
peace. . . . I shall be very happy to receive the children’s letters.
Give my love to them all, and a kiss to William, whom you do not mention. I will endeavour, as you say,
to keep up my spirits. I can bear prosperity, and I know I can bear adversity.
The dreadful thing to endure is those uncertain moments, which seem to be the
fall from one to the other, which call for exertions, and exhibit faint gleams
of hope amidst the terrible tempest that gathers round.”
In 1807-8 the Diaries not unfrequently record “Deliquium” day
after day, and even “Deliquiaduo.” A natural feeling of anxiety about his health drew from Godwin the following letter to Dr
Ash. His old habit of self-analysis is now applied with the same unimpassioned
minuteness to his bodily aliments as once it had been to his mental constitution. It is an
interesting evidence of his calmness and power over himself that these attacks were in no
degree allowed to interfere with his daily occupations, about which he went as usual, even
when it might appear that a fit might reasonably be expected.
It would seem, however, that the attacks were cataleptic rather than
simple fainting fits.
William Godwin to Dr Ash. Dr. Ash
May 21, 1808.
“Sir,—Upon reflection I
deem it most advisable to trouble you with the leading particulars of my case
in writing; as now, in the fifty-third year of my age, I am desirous of
arriving, if possible, at a clear view of the affair, and the safest and most
judicious way of treating it.
“As this complaint has attacked me at many different
periods of my life, I am inclined to suppose that it has a deep root in my
frame, and that it may most usefully be explained by historical deduction.
“Its first appearance was in the twenty-eighth year
of my age; the fits continued to visit me for some weeks and then disappeared.
They did not return till 1800, after an interval of seventeen years.
“In 1792 I had an attack of vertigo, accompanied with
extreme costiveness, the only time at which I have experienced that symptom in
an excessive degree.
“In 1795 I first became subject to fits of sleepiness
in an afternoon, which have never since left me, and occasionally seize me even
in company.
“In 1800 and 1803 my old disorder revisited me; the
attacks were preceded by a minute’s notice, and each fit (of perfect
insen-sibility) lasted about a minute. Air was of no
service to repel a fit, but hartshorn smelled to, or a draught of hartshorn and
water, seemed to drive them off, particularly in the last days of an attack. If
seized standing, I have fallen on the ground, and I have repeatedly had the
fits in bed.
“It should be observed, that when first attacked in
1783, it was difficult to have been of more temperate habits than I was, seldom
tasting wine or spirituous liquors. Since that time I have never been
intemperate; but for the last twenty years have indulged in the moderate
regular use of both, not more than three or four glasses of wine in a day.
“All these three attacks were in the midst of a hot
summer; in every instance each single fit seemed to find me and leave me in
perfect health. . . . The approach of the fit is not painful, but is rather
entitled to the name of pleasure, a gentle fading away of the senses; nor is
the recovery painful, unless I am teazed in it by persons about me. . . . I am,
etc.,
W. Godwin.”
On March 23, 1809, Holcroft died,
aged 63. He had been in failing health for some time, but the end came rapidly at last. Of
all Godwin’s friends he was perhaps the one
who had loved him and known him best; their differences, though many, had never been deep.
Each had been associated with the other in the deepest joys and sorrows that had come to
their lives. When Holcroft was dying, Godwin was
the friend he most desired to see, and though too weak for conversation, he pressed
Godwin’s hand to his heart with the words, “My
dear, dear friend.”
Hazlitt undertook to compile Holcroft’s life and edit his letters, and the work appeared in the following January.
During its composition the following correspondence took place. Godwin’s views had altered, since he himself had thought it right to
print the letters which had passed between Gilbert
Imlay and Mary Wollstonecraft.
W. Hazlitt to William Godwin.
‘[Undated.]
Dear Sir,—I am forced to trouble you with the
following questions, which I shall be much obliged to you to answer as well as
you can.
“1. At what time H[olcroft] lived with Granville
Sharpe? whether before or after he turned actor? and whether the
scene described in “Alwyn,” as the occasion by Holkirk (i.e., himself in the subsequent
part) went on the stage, really took place between Sharpe
and Holcroft? I mean the one when Seddon discovers his appearance at a sporting club, in the
character of Macbeth.
“What was the maiden name of Mrs Sparks?
The Same to the Same.
“I received yours of the 2d yesterday. As to the
attack upon Murray, I have hit at him
several times, and whenever there is a question of a blunder, ‘his
name is not far off.’ Perhaps it would look like jealousy to make
a formal set at him. Besides I am already noted by the reviewers for want of
liberality, and an undisciplined moral sense. . . . I was, if you will allow me
to say so, rather hurt to find you lay so much stress upon the matter as you do
in your last sentence; for assuredly the works of William Godwin do not stand in need of those of E.
Baldwin for vouchers and supporters. The latter (let them be as
good as they will) are but the dust in the balance compared with the former.
Coleridge talks out of the
Revelations of somebody’s ‘new name from heaven;’ for
my own part, if I were you, I should not wish for any but my old one.
“I am, dear sir, very faithfully and affectionately
yours,
“W. Hazlitt.
“I send this in a parcel, because it will arrive
a day sooner than by the post. Will you send me down a copy of the grammar when you write
again, by the same conveyance? As for the postage of the proof sheets, it
will not be more, nor so much, as the extra expense of correcting in the
printing, occasioned by blurred paper in the author. It may therefore be
set off.”
Draft of letter from William Godwin to Mrs
Holcroft.
“Dear Madam,—You ask my
feelings respecting the manuscript life of Mr Holcroft. When your note
reached me, I had no feelings on the subject worth communicating. The two or
three slight criticisms that suggested themselves to me I mentioned to
Mr Hazlitt, and he promised to
attend to them. The narrative which Mr
Holcroft dictated in the last weeks of his existence impressed
me with the strongest feelings of admiration, and the life appeared a very
decent composition, with a few excellent passages, sufficiently fitted on the
whole for the purpose for which it was intended.
“I had not then seen the diary part, this was
detained from me till yesterday, I believe by accident. This part is a
violation of the terms originally settled with Mr
Hazlitt. The book, it was agreed, should consist of life, and a
selection of letters. I knew of the existence of this diary, but had not read
it; and had not the least imagination that it was ever to be printed. When
Mr Hazlitt told me he had inserted the greater part of
it, I did not immediately set up my judgment, who had not read it, against his,
who had.
“I have now examined it, and consider it (as a
publication) with the strongest feelings of disapprobation. It is one thing for
a man to write a journal, and another for that journal to be given to the
public. I am sure Mr Holcroft would
never have consented to this. I have always entertained the highest antipathy
to this violation of the confidence between man and man, that every idle word,
every thoughtless jest I make at another’s expense, shall be carried home
by the hearer, put in writing, and afterwards printed. This part will cause
fifty persons at least, who lived on friendly terms with Mr
Holcroft, to execrate his memory. It will make you many bitter
enemies, who will rejoice in your ruin, and be transported to see you sunk in
the last distress. Many parts are actionable.
“I will give you instances of each sort. There is a
story of one Marriott, an attorney, whom Mr Holcroft never saw; that is, no doubt, actionable, if the
man is living. Mr Dealtry, an intimate
friend of Dr Parr, is introduced, saying
that the Doctor could not spell. There is probably an eternal breach between
them, and how occasioned? By the circumstance of a thoughtless joke, uttered
with no evil intention, being caught up by the hearer, and afterwards sent to
the press. Two or three detestable stories (lies, I can swear) are told of
Mrs Siddons; and Miss
Smith, the actress, is quoted as the authority; that is,
Miss Smith, as other people do, who are desirous of
amusing their company, told these stories as she heard them, borne out with a
sort of saw, ‘You have them as cheap as I.’ The first
meeting of Emma Smith and Mr Holcroft
occurs, and he sets her down, and Mr
Hazlitt prints her, as a young woman of no talents; I believe
Mr Holcroft altered his opinion on that subject. A
tale is introduced about the private transactions and affairs of Mrs
Wollstonecraft and Mr
Imlay; what right have the publishers of this book to rake up
and drag in that subject? For myself, I can fairly say that if I had known that
every time I dined with or called upon Mr Holcroft, I was
to be recorded in a quarto book, well printed, and with an ornamental
frontispiece, in the ridiculous way of coming in to go out again fifty times, I
would not on that penalty have called upon or dined with him at all. In short,
the publication of the whole of this part of the book answers no other purpose
than to gratify the malignity of mankind, to draw out to view the privacies of
firesides, and to pamper the bad passions of the idle and worthless with
tittletattle, and tales of scandal.
“I would have gone to Mr
Nicholson immediately on the subject, had he not by a letter of
the most odious and groundless insinuations rendered that, at least for the
present, impossible. By what I here write, therefore, I beg leave to enter my
protest on the subject, and so to discharge my conscience. I will be no part or
party to such a publication.
The chief literary work of the year 1809 was the “Lives of Edward and John Philips, nephews and
pupils of Milton.” In a letter to his daughter, which will hereafter be
quoted, Godwin says plainly that this work was no real part
of himself, and though it has considerable merit as a painstaking Biography, would not at
all occupy our time but for one circumstance. This is, that Godwin was
the first English writer since the year 1612 who gave any lengthy and appreciative notice
of the Don Quixote of Cervantes.
This is all the more remarkable since the first translation and the
best—if we except that of the Italian by Franciosini in 1612—was that
by Thomas Shelton. Smollett’s so-called translation was made, as is well known, from the
French, and gives but a slender idea of the great original. Neither Addison, or Steele,
or Swift, or Johnson, make any use of the great Spaniard, except Pope, who, however, does not quote in his well-known
epigram the Don Quixote of Cervantes, but
the pseudo-Quixote of Cervantes’ malignant enemy,
Avellaneda, and Pope probably did not know
the difference. Beaumont and Fletcher, however, used him pretty well. So did Fielding—the first in the “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” the second in his
“Don Quixote in England,”
while Tom D’Urfey misused him shamefully. But
no great Englishman appears to have appreciated the aims of Cervantes,
and therefore not one ever exhibited him in his service as a humorist, a satirist, a
moralist, artist, and traveller. It is almost certain therefore that the grand book was all
but unknown. Among those who helped to defame the “Don Quixote in
England” was John Philips. Perhaps
he was the very first to suggest the indelicacy which has clung to its memory.
It was left to Godwin,—who was the
first to maintain, with vigour and keen insight, that George
Chapman’stranslation
of Homer was one of the greatest treasures the English language could boast,—it
was left him to tell Englishmen that the Don
Quixote was a—
“distinguished monument of genius and literature
among the moderns.” (Lives of
Edward and John Philips, cap. x., p. 240.)
“Philips’ translation of
the Don Quixote is a work of great power and spirit. But, alas it is the
power and spirit of John Philips, and placed at an immeasurable distance from the
character and style of Cervantes (p. 253).
“But the greatest blot of the translation is the
filthy and ribald obscenity with which it abounds. The sweet story of Dorothea, told with such indescribable delicacy by
Cervantes, is made the occasion of introducing a
horrible idea (p. 254).
“One of the finest passages in this incomparable
monument of Spanish literature and genius is the defence delivered by Marcella. The simplicity, the delicacy, and the frankness
of her reasonings, are altogether irresistible. The venerableness of the style, the
rich and easy eloquence with which it steals on the soul, are such as no modern
language can equal. John Philips has interlarded
this speech with his usual obscenity, at the same time carefully omitting every trace
of the sacred and solemn chastity that characterises it” (p. 255).
Thus Godwin was not only the first
English writer who was able to declare the truth regarding the sweetness and beauty of the
grand Spanish novel. He was the first to defend it from the disgraceful uses to which it
had been put by hack writers and money-grubbing booksellers, who, not being able to steal
the purse of Cervantes, thus proceeded to filch from him
his good name.
Old Mrs Godwin died at Dalling, on
Sunday, August 13, 1809, and was buried on the following Friday. Godwin’s account of the funeral shows an unusual
amount of outward tenderness in one who was generally so sternly repressive of his
feelings. He went back in thought once more to the day when he had knelt at his
mother’s side, and believed as she believed.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Bradenham, Aug. 21, 1809.
“My last letter was not finished when the company
began to assemble for the funeral. This was a very long scene, filling many
hours. Our procession was certainly near three miles, from Dalling to the
burying-ground. Mr Sykes, the dissenting
minister, rode foremost; next followed six bearers on foot, then the hearse,
and next after that myself as chief mourner on horseback, and the line was
closed with four or five open chaises, containing my brothers and other
relations and friends, chiefly of Hull’s wife’s family. Mourning coaches had first
been thought of, but this scheme I think was better. Certainly, if procession
is to be thought of, that is the most impressive when the persons of those who
form it are completely exposed to view. We set out from the house at one
o’clock, and did not get back to the house till five. My brothers went
and dined at Mrs Raven’s
(Hull’s mother-in-law), but I preferred
returning home, and being alone. That night I slept in the chamber you used,
and where my mother’s corpse had reposed the night before. . . . I have
had strange feelings, arising from the present occasion. I was brought up in
great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led
to much independence of feeling. While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had
somebody who was my superior, and who exercised a mysterious protection over
me. I belonged to something—I hung to something—there is nothing that has so
much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents. The knot is now
severed, and I am, for the first time, at more than fifty years of age, alone.
You shall now be my mother; you have in many instances been my protector and my
guide, and I fondly trust will be more so, as I shall come to stand more in
need of assistance.”
But few outside events broke the even tenor of Godwin’s life during the next few years, nor was
there any important change in his domestic circumstances. Charles Clairmont left the Charter House and, through the
intervention of Mr Fairley, an umbrella maker in
Edinburgh, who had interested himself in Godwin’s business, the
lad was received as a clerk in Constable’s
publishing house for a period of two years. There, says Mr
Thomas Constable in his “Memoirs” of his father,
“Charles Clairmont gave perfect
satisfaction.” After the expiration of the time for which he was bound
apprentice, Mr Constable wished to keep him in his service, but he
returned to London at the urgent wish of his mother and step-father to aid in the Skinner
Street business. After the break-up of the Skinner Street household, he went abroad,
obtained the post of tutor to the Austrian Imperial family, and resided till his death in
Germany, where he had married.
Several letters from Godwin to Constable are to be found in the “Memoirs” of the latter, in reference to
Charles Clairmont, and on other business
matters, but the remarks which accompany those letters are based on imperfect knowledge of
facts. The letters are not in themselves of much interest.
Godwin’s relations with his stepson were, on
the whole, pleasant. Charles Clairmont treated him
with great deference, always addressing him as “Mr
Godwin,” never as father, though Mrs
Godwin was called mamma by her step-daughters; but the boy was clever and
painstaking, and interest in his intellectual development stood to
Godwin in the place of any warmer feeling.
Though he lived in Godwin’s
house, and habitually saw the prophet unveiled, Charles
Clairmont had not been insensible to the charm which, still as of old,
attracted to Godwin in his study above the small shop in Skinner
Street, not only those who had known him long, and valued him for
past associations, but young enthusiastic lads, just entering into life.
The domestic letters during the year 1811, concluding with Charles Clairmont’s start for his new home, give a
pleasanter picture of his home circle than we shall ever find again. Money difficulties
were pressing at times, but there was greater affection at home. Mary was away from home, and Fanny’s pliant, even temper enabled her to live more easily than did
her sister with Mrs Godwin; and Jane Clairmont was also absent.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin[who was at Ramsgate]
“May 18, 1811.
“My Dearest Love,—Saturday
was my great and terrible day, and I was compelled to look about me, to see how
it could be provided for. I had less than £20 remaining in my drawer. I sent
Joseph to Lambert and Macmillan: no answer from either: Lambert
not at home. Bradley then undertook the expedition to
Mercu and Jabart: he preferred Friday to Saturday: I therefore desired
him to take Lambert on the way. This time I was
successful: the good creature sent me £100, and at six in the evening
Macmillan sent me £50, having, as you remember,
brought me the other £50 on Tuesday last. This was something, but as there is
no sweet without its sour, about the same time came a note from Hume desiring he might have £40 on Monday.
“After dinner Fanny told me she was sure she had seen Mr and Miss
Lamb walking arm-in-arm at a distance in the street. I could not
be easy till I had ascertained the truth of this intelligence, and I hastened
to the Temple. It was so: they were not at home; gone to the play: but their
Jane told me that her mistress came home on Tuesday
the 7th of May. Lamb returned my visit at breakfast this
morning. To return to business.
“I began to cast about how I was to comply with
Hume’s request. I was still
short for my bills—£30 and £40 are £70. I had, however, Place’s bill in my possession, but who
was to discount it? I thought perhaps Toulmin would do it,
I looked upon my list of discounters. By some oversight I had omitted to put
the name to the discounter of one of Hume’s bills. I thought by studying my journal I should
be able to find it. I was unsuccessful. In the midst of this, however, my eye
caught a bill of £140 of Place, that fell due next Friday.
I had carefully put this out of my mind in the midst of the embarrassments of
the present week, and had wholly forgotten it. Perhaps I never felt a more
terrible sensation in my life, than when it thus returned to me. Lambert’s and Macmillan’s money had made me cheerful: I walked erect in
my little sally to the Temple: I flung about my arms. with the air of a man who
felt himself heart-whole. The moment I saw the £140 I felt a cold swelling in
the inside of my throat—a sensation I am subject to in terrible situations—and
my head ached in the most discomfortable manner. I had just been puzzling how I
could discount the £100 I had by me: what was I to do with £140 beside? If
Turner had not come in just then, I
think I should have gone mad; as it was, the morsel of meat I put in my mouth
at supper stuck in my throat. My ultimate determination was, that I had no
resource but to write to Norwich.
“This morning, however, the first thing I did was to
send a note to Place, to state the
circumstances, and to ask whether he must have the money to a day. He
immediately came to me by way of answer, and told me he could wait till the
30th: a glorious reprieve!
“. . . . The post of to-day brought me £100 upon the
house of Baring. It comes from the great American manager,
with directions for me to furnish books, according to certain rules he lays
down, at the rate of £100 per annum—this £100 being the earnest for the first
year. His letter is a very kind one: I daresay he takes this step with a view
to serve me in a certain degree: at any rate never did windfall come more
opportunely. I need not tell you that Theobald or anybody
will discount a bill, when accepted, on the house of Baring. . . .
“. . . . Take care of yourself. Remember that you
have gone to the place where you are in search of repose. The money and the
time will be worse than thrown away if this is not the purchase. . . . . Tell
Mary that, in spite of unfavourable
appearances, I have still faith that she will become a wise and, what is more,
a good and a happy woman. . . . . I have just been into the next room to ask
the children if they have any messages. They are both anxious to hear from you.
Jane says she hopes you stuck on the
Goodwin sands, and that the sailors frightened you a little.
Extract from Letter from William Godwin to Mrs
Godwin.
“May 20, 1811.
“——Charles
comes to you to-morrow. I hope this will not displease you. But I set my heart
and soul on his learning no idle habits. I could almost wish that he had not a
day’s holiday between the two schools: the Charter House concludes at
eleven o’clock to-morrow, and I believe it would poison all my
tranquillity to see him wasting three days to no earthly purpose that I can
conceive, being the precise difference between Tuesday and Friday. I have been
with him to Tate’s to-day, and half over the town,
among Jews and Christians, to ascertain precisely
Tate’s character and his competence for what he
undertakes. It strikes me that (if we can get on) our tranquillity depends more
upon Charles than upon any human creature. I hope, but I
tremble while I hope. I watch all his motions, and live in his looks.
“Give a thousand loves to William and Mary. By the
way, you do not insert in your letter a single message from either, which I
regard as a portentous and criminal omission in each.”
From the Same to the Same.
“May 24, 1811.
“——I send Charles’s book agreeably to his desire: I want to win his
heart; whether I shall succeed or no I know not. He said he could read with
particular satisfaction to himself on the sea-shore, and I wish him to be indulged. I know
from reflection as well as experience, that a book read when it is desired is
worth fifty of a book forced on the reader, without regard to seasons and
occasions. The very choice of the book is taken out of my hands: T. T. undertook to procure for him Paine’s ‘Age of Reason:’ this I objected to. It
is written in a vein of banter and impudence, and though I do not wish the
young man to be the slave of the religion of his country, there are few things
I hate more than a young man, with his little bit of knowledge, setting up to
turn up his nose, and elevate his eyebrows, and make his sorry joke at
everything the wisest and best men England ever produced have treated with
veneration. Therefore I preferred a work by Anthony
Collins, the friend of Locke, written with sobriety and learning, to the broad grins
of Thomas Paine. Do not, I entreat you, grudge 1s. 6d.,
the price, I am told, of the carriage of this parcel, to the gratifying the
inclination of your son in this most important era of his life. . . . .
Observe, I totally object to Mary’s reading in Charles’s
book. I think it much too early for him, but I have been driven, so far as he
is concerned, from the standing of my own judgment by the improper conduct of
T. T.”
From the Same to the Same.
“May 30, 1811.
“I am delighted with the cheerfulness that pervades
your letter of yesterday. Fanny conducts
herself delightfully, and I am what you call comfortable. But I cannot look
with the sanguine temper I could wish on the prospect before us. N’importe! “’Tis not in mortals to command
success: But we’ll do more—we’ll deserve
it.’ No effort, no invention of mine shall be left untried. I will never give
in, while I have strength to wield a pen or tell a tale. . . .
“I went last night to the Haymarket to see a new
two-act piece, called ‘Trial by
Jury.’ But my chief entertainment arose from two persons in
the next box to me. They had for sometime the whole box to themselves, and sat
in the front row—a man and, as it seemed, his daughter.
The man was sixty, a long, lank, colourless face, with deep furrows and
half-shut eyes, something, I thought, between primitive simplicity and cunning.
His face was overshadowed on all sides with thick, bushy, lank, dark-brown
hair. He was precisely such a figure as they would make up on the stage for a
saint; indeed he seemed escaped from the stage, and seated for a joke in the
side box. His dress was like that of a farmer in Westmoreland, and under his
arm he had all night a chapeau de
bras. The daughter was thirty, dressed like the daughter of
a substantial farmer, where, as Lamb
describes it, they have twelve long miles to the nearest church—nothing could
be more unfashionable. She looked a great deal about her, stared me and others
full in the face, burst into roars of laughter at the jokes on the stage. I
looked often on these very singular neighbours. I had difficulty to confine my
observations within the bounds of decorum. Once or twice I said to myself, Is
it possible this should be a man to lend me money? At last I could no longer
sit still, but went out of the box to ask the box-keeper who he was. Earl Stanhope—I said to myself; this box-keeper
dares not attempt to hoax me. I went and examined the box book—Earl
Stanhope.
“Fanny is
quite ferocious and impassioned against the journey to Margate. Her motive is a
kind one. She says, This cook is very silly, but very willing; you cannot
imagine how many things I have to do. She adds, Mamma talks of going to
Ramsgate in the autumn; why cannot I go then?”
Charles Clairmont to T. Turner.
[Ramsgate, May,
1811.]
“I think I will not pass a whole week in the country,
doing nothing but sauntering about the fields. I am quite delighted with
Ramsgate. There are the most beautiful fields of barley, corn, and tares that
you can imagine—high cliffs, and the sea, to a person who never saw it before.
In short, it is a place calculated above all others to excite my attention to
that subject which my mind has of late been so intent upon. I have determined
(not that I think myself the proper
person to judge, but because I think it quite necessary as the first step) to
put aside the Old and New Testaments, for I can do nothing with them unless I
make up my mind to believe in prophecies, hobgoblins, witches, and so forth. Do
not, however, think that I am going to do as Patrickson did, and trouble myself no more about it. I am, I
assure you, very much awed by it, and consider it a subject of the greatest
importance, an everlasting something to be employed about—both a recreation
from labour and occupation for the most industrious moments. . . . I am afraid
that the idea of a God and of a future state is so deeply rooted in me that it
holds me back, keeps me from thinking freely, and that I shall never be able to
get over it. I hope, after I have read some book on the subject, that my ideas
will be more clear, for I shall then have some foundation to work upon, and
from which I shall gradually raise for myself a magnificent palace. Mr Godwin told me why he did not choose me to
read Paine’s book, which I think
is all very reasonable, for it would certainly have been improper for a young
thinker to read a burlesque on the subject, and I believe would rather have
tended to shock me than otherwise. I shall read it, however, after the book
which is promised me.”
Mrs Godwin to William Godwin.
“Aug. 14, 1811.
“I know not what the state of your mind is at this
moment, but mine will be that to which 10,000 daggers are mild, till I hear you
accept the reconciliation I now send to offer. Perhaps I was irrational; but it
is not a trifling wound to my heart to see myself put by, and thought of as a
burden that the law will not let you be free from, because in the hardest
struggle that ever fell to the lot of woman, I have lost my youth and beauty
before the natural time. However, I will try to reconcile myself to what I have
long foreseen.
“I repeat that I send to offer reconciliation, and
the greatest favour you can do me is to meet me this evening as well as you can, that strangers may know nothing of my sorrows. . .
. Answer by a line whether you will come to Baker St., and if we shall be
friends.
M. G.”
The Same to the Same.
“Aug. 30, 1811.
“Your dear balmy letter, brought stump-a-stump
upstairs at ½-past 9, has set my heart at ease. . . . I almost doubt if you can
read this scrawl. My neck aches, my head aches. We are at a cleaning upstairs.
Charles smiled in a most heavenly
manner at your kiss and a half. Fanny
stood quite still; Jane capered. She
looks very poorly, but her spirits are good. Jane and
Willy have been reading in the
Temple Gardens, and brought the umbrella from Lamb’s. God bless you.
M. J. G.
“I write from the shop, so the children are not
by to send love.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Chichester, Aug. 31, 1811.
“My Best Love, . . .—I have passed few pleasanter
days in my life than I passed yesterday. After some debate with myself, and
finding that there was no means of public conveyance, I resolved to walk to
Felpham (between seven and eight miles). The weather was very hot (the
‘literary hermit’ [Hayley]
insisted on receiving me at noon), yet, to my astonishment, I was not at all
fatigued. The literary hermit I dismiss in one word.—I do not like him. His
wife, however, seems a pleasant, unaffected, animated girl (he swears he
himself is only sixty-five); and his house is quite a toy. He has erected a
turret on the top, with a corridor over that, for the sake of the prospect, and
to this corridor he climbs at least once every day by a ladder, which can only
be descended by crawling backwards, and which, being on the top of the house in
the open air, looked to me frightful, but I escaped without breaking either my
neck or my leg. Pictures, drawings, splendid books, and splendid bindings adorn
every room in the house,
everything that cannot be consumed or worn out. He does not go out of his
little domain, prison in that sense, I should call it, four times in a year,
and he told me he made it a rule never to invite anybody to dinner. His
bookseller (with whom I have been
negociating) tells me he was in the habit of dining with him every Sunday, but
with a Chichester shopkeeper he could dispense with display. Thus he has
everything for the eye, and nothing for the heart. Damn him.
“I say this in the sobriety of my deliberate
judgment, and without a spice of resentment, for the moment I quitted his
babyhouse my happiness began. I went to Bognor, I inhaled the lifegiving
breezes of the sea, which I think, were I expiring with the imbecility of old
age, would make me young again. Bognor is a sweet place. Why is it so? Merely
because it is on the open beach of the sea, and is scattered over with neat
little houses for the opulent, built for the purposes of health and recreation.
Sarah Pink, the generous landlady of the hotel, gave
me that dinner. which the frozen-hearted Hayley refused. . . . She completed all her other kindnesses by
refusing me a chaise to bring me back to Chichester last night, so that I was
compelled to spend till eleven at night—the beautiful, serene, moonlight
evening of one of the most beautiful days I ever saw, on the open shore, and
only quitted the beach to repair to my bed. . . . I have got my pencil-case. It
was in the coat pocket where Betsey swore it was not. . .
. Ever and ever yours,
W. Godwin.”
The Same to the Same.
“Newport, I. Of Wight, Sep. 2.
“I have not passed a pleasant day since I left Bognor
till today. Portsmouth is detestable, and Ryde to me insipid. Dr Stoddart showed me a pretty park, and a
pretty garden, and two pretty villas, dearly looked upon by gaping strangers,
but this to me is nothing. I except, however, the voyage from Portsmouth to
Ryde, six miles in length, and one hour in duration. This was delicious. But
to-day I am this moment come from Carisbrooke Castle, a beautiful ruin in the
first place, and in the second, the prison in which
Charles I. was imprisoned for some
months, and from which, with a short interval, he was conducted to his trial.
They show a window through which he is said to have attempted his escape. I
have just passed by the school-house where he is said to have met the
Commissioners of Parliament, and made his last experiment for re-ascending the
throne. There a monarch was arraigned, and now a school boy. It is with great
regret that I refrain from risking a visit to the schoolmaster, and trying to
make him talk over old times, and show me old walls. . . . The whole of this
letter has been written in coffee rooms, where it is difficult to preserve the
thread of narrative, but impossible to write sentiment. From Southampton I will
endeavour to mix both; but I cannot help wishing briefly to put down my
feelings in situations which I have just visited, and which I suppose certainly
I shall never visit again.—Ever and ever yours,
W. Godwin.”
“Guildford, Sep. 5, 1811.
“Be assured, as I think I said in a letter of last
week, that I admire you not less than I love you. We are both of us, depend
upon it, persons of no common stamp, and we should accustom ourselves
perpetually so to regard each other, and to persuade ourselves, without
hesitation, without jealousy, and with undoubted confidence, that we are so
regarded by each other. God bless you! Good night.
W. Godwin.”
William Godwin to Mr Fairley.
“Skinner St., Oct. 5, 1811.
“DearFairley,—Would you
have any objections to call on my part on Mr
Constable the bookseller, to inquire of him personally the
answer to a letter I addressed to him last week, on the subject of which I feel
the greatest impatience? This letter, if you think you want one, may serve you
as a passport.
“The purpose of my letter above mentioned, was to
solicit Mr Constable to receive into his
house for a short time, as the best possible introduction to the world of
business, Charles Clairmont, the son of
Mrs Godwin. . . . I gave my young
man a high char-acter in my letter to
Mr Constable for prepossessing manners, and a diligent
and accommodating temper. I observed that I had kept him for six years at the
Charter House, one of our most celebrated schools, not without proportionable
profit, and that he has once been several months under one of our most
celebrated arithmeticians. You may think how interesting it is to us, at our
time of life, and with our infirmities, to look forward to introducing into our
concern a short time hence, a young man perfectly accomplished, who has been
initiated in one of the first houses, and whose interests would, by the
circumstance of his relationship, be almost necessarily coincident with our
own. . . . Believe me, etc.,
W. Godwin.”
From the Same to the Same.
“Oct. 15, 1811.
“DearFairley,—I have
received a second letter from Constable,
and the affair of Charles Clairmont is
closed agreeably to our wishes. He will be with you in the first week of
November. Will you accept him for a friend, and endeavour to keep the lyre of
his mind in tune? He is going 400 miles from his home, and the connections of
his youth. I rely much on you to endeavour to bend his pliant years to
sobriety, to honour and to good. . . . The only question between us and
Constable was the period of his absence.
Constable proposed four years; this appeared to us an
eternity. But Constable has appeared willing, in that and
everything else, to accommodate himself in the handsomest manner to our
desires. . . . Mrs Godwin says what I
have above written about Charles is too poetical, and that
you will be apprehensive that it means that I wish him to live with you.
Nothing can be further from my thoughts. I think his living expressly and
solely under the direction of Mr Constable essential to
the purpose for which he goes, and all I desire from you is the offices of
friendship on his behalf.—Yours, etc.,
W. Godwin.”
From the Same to the Same.
“Skinner St., Nov. 3, 1811.
“DearFairley,—With this
letter in his hand, presents himself before you a poor, forlorn, sea-sick
minstrel, worn out with toils and watching, and scarcely able to open his
eyes—an unhappy vagrant, now sent for the first time from the parental roof,
and cast on the ocean of the world—whom we, to whom the care of the said
vagrant appertains, cast with all confidence upon the professed kindness of
Archibald Constable, and the kind
friendship of John Fairley. Impart to him the charities of
your hospital roof; give him a basin of water to refresh his skin; give him a
dish of tea to moisten his burning lips, and accommodate him with an
elbow-chair, where he may slumber for an hour or so unfuddled and unturmoiled
by the rocking of the elements. . . . Mr Constable’s
proposition is, that he will pay to the youth for his services a salary of £15
per annum, and that if we add £30 to that, the whole will be sufficient for his
subsistence, upon the same footing as the other young men whom Mr
Constable is in the habit of receiving. . . .
“Where art thou, my friend, my genius, my
philosopher, the cultivator of Beaufort?—Your entire friend,
W. Godwin.”
The attraction which Godwin’s society always possessed for young men has often been
noticed, nor did it decrease as years passed on. Two young men were drawn to him in the
year 1811, fired with zeal for intellectual pursuits and desiring help from
Godwin. They were different in their circumstances, but were both
unhappy, and both died young. The first was a lad named Patrickson, the second Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
Patrickson had determined to go to College in spite
of hindrances from want of means, and from the opposition of his family, who wished that he
should enter into trade; and to this end he asked Godwin’s influence to gain for him certain exhibitions in the gift of various city
companies. Such an ambition was one which appealed to Godwin’s
sympathy, and, finding that Patrickson’s own home-life was
thoroughly unhappy, without any hope of improvement, he did his best, and with success, to
collect means to send the lad as sizar to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This was done, in
the first place, by subscription among friends, (Basil
Montagu, Dr Raine, Master of Charter
House, and others); it was hoped that the exhibitions might come afterwards.
All Godwin’s correspondence
with Patrickson shows him in his most wise, amiable,
and attractive mood. Some extracts from his letters may follow:—
William Godwin to P. Patrickson.
“Skinner Street, London, Dec. 18, 1810.
“. . . . You will inevitably meet with some young men
whose academical pursuits are a lien and burthensome to them; they will tempt
you to dissipation, and the only security you can have against infection is a
severe frugality of your time, and, in subordination to that, of your money:
count your hours; be not prone to pity yourself, and say, Well, for this day I
have done enough for my strength. Give me a sketch of what acquaintance you
make, and how you spend your time.
“Let me have, as soon as possible, the proper
certificates and documents, to enable me to apply to the city companies for
their exhibitions. I foresee we shall have considerable difficulty in meeting
the expenses of the university, let us be as frugal and active as we will. I
have heard of college exhibitions by which somehow or other the receiver is
ultimately out of pocket: you will, of course, be on your guard against such.
“I have been told of 300 books or volumes of which
your father made you a present, previous to your going to Cambridge. I think I
should have heard of this from you. Having undertaken the superintendence of
your affairs, I had a right to be acquainted with all
their advantages and disadvantages. This is the only instance which has
occurred to me of your practising any sort of concealment.
“I enclose two pounds as a small supplement to your
finances. If you have any necessary demands against you, more than I am aware
of, you must not scruple to let me know.”
The Same to the Same.
“Skinner Street, London, June 20, 1811.
“ . . . . I wish the letters I receive from you were,
as somebody calls it, a thought less dry. I wish you would tell me something of
your feelings, your reflections, and your meditations. It is impossible, at
your age, and under your peculiar circumstances, but that some other
abstractions should pass through your mind besides the abstractions of the
mathematics. Tell me how far you are gratified with the occupations and
impressions of a college life. Tell me how much and in what respects you regard
the present, with pleasure or pain. Tell me how much and in what respects you
regard the future—I mean that scene of life upon which you are to enter
hereafter, with ardent hope or with unimpassioned indifference. Tell me what
you love and what you hate. At present you lock up your reflections in your own
breast, with the same niggardliness that a miser locks up his treasure, and
communicate with no one the wealth of your bosom, or at least impart no shred
of the wealth to me. King Solomon, the great Jewish
philosopher, says, ‘The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a
stranger intermeddleth not with his joy.’ I wish I could prevail
upon you not to make me altogether this stranger.
“It is of great advantage to a human being in this
way to open himself. It takes away the savageness of our nature; it smooths
down the ruggedness of our intellectual surface, and makes man the confederate
and coadjutor of man. It also tends, in the most eminent degree, to expand and
mature the best faculties of the human mind. It is scarcely possible for a man
to reason well, or understand his own heart, upon a subject which he has not
copiously and minutely unfolded, either by speech or in writing.
“All happiness attend you.—Your true friend,
“William Godwin.
“Mr
Blackall’s [the College Tutor] bill is £9, 6s. 11½d;
Lady Day quarter. It seems a most generous action on his part to have given
you the £5 you mention; and generosity in this case is, I suppose, the
index of a thing more to be prized—esteem.”
Letters running through the three next years show constant affection and
aid on Godwin’s part, ever increasing morbid
moroseness on that of poor Patrickson. He felt his
poverty keenly, and the want of a home, on which two subsequent extracts throw some light.
He dignified the petty annoyances, which the free outspoken habits of companions scarce
more than boys brought upon him, with the name of persecution, those who were not his
chosen friends—he chose but few—were called by him his enemies. Soon his brooding mind
created words as spoken by passers-by, and the ill-defined boundary was passed which
divides extreme sensitiveness from madness.
William Godwin to P. Patrickson.
“Skinner Street, Feb. 4. 1812.
“DearPatrickson,—I take
the earliest opportunity to answer your letter, because it requires an answer.
I am shocked with the passage in it, where you say you will write to your
mother, and tell her you do not wish to hear from her any more.
“Surely a mother is a thing of more worth than this.
The being that watched over you indefatigably in infancy, that had a thousand
anxieties for you, and that reared you with care, and perhaps with difficulty,
is not to be so treated. Your mother is a wrong-headed, not an abandoned woman.
This is the great difference, at least with few exceptions, between one human
creature and another. We all of us endeavour to square our actions by our
conscience, or our conscience by our actions: we examine what we do by the
rule, and pronounce sentence of acquittal or approbation on ourselves: but some
of us are in error, and some enlightened. You and I, who are of course among
the enlightened, should pity those that are less
fortunate than ourselves, and not abhor them: even an erroneous conscience, by
which he who bears it in his bosom tries and examines his actions, is still a
thing to be respected.
“I think that you should write to your mother as
little as possible, and perhaps for the present ask no favours of her. . . .
But to go out of your way to insult her is horrible. . . .
“The ties between one human creature and another are
so few in number, and so scanty, as society is at present constituted, that I
would not wantonly break any of those that nature has made, and least of all
that to a mother. Human creatures are left so much alone, hardly sufficiently
aided in the giddiness of youth, and the infirmities of age, that I am sure it
is not the part of a wise or a good man to increase this crying evil under the
sun. I still hope the time will come when you shall relieve the sorrows of a
mother, and when she shall look up to her son with pride and with pleasure. . .
.—Your sincere friend,
W. Godwin.”
William Godwin to P. Patrickson.
“April 1, 1812.
“I perceive that you set up the present state of your
understanding as the criterion of reason and justice, and have no notion that
anything can be right which you do not understand, or, in other words, that any
other person can see, or that you may hereafter see, what at present you do
not. This tone of mind is a perfect leveller, and a leveller of the worst sort,
bringing down to your own standard everything that may happen to be above you,
but certainly not equally anxious about raising those that may happen to be
below you.
“The opposite tone of mind cannot be designated by
any name more properly than that of the religious feeling. It is the feeling
which pious men cultivate towards the Author of the world. It consists in the
acknowledgement that there may be something right which we do not comprehend,
and something good that we do not perfectly see to be such. It is built upon a
sober and perfect conviction of our weakness, our ignorance, and the errors to
which we are perpetually liable. It therefore cherishes in us sentiments of honour,
admiration, and affection, for those whom we apprehend to be in any way wiser
and better than ourselves. I do not very distinctly see how love can grow up in
the mind, or there can be anything exquisitely amiable in the character, where
the religious feeling, in this explanation of the term, is wanting. This
feeling, however, is perfectly consistent with the highest and purest notions
of erectness and independence: nay, it strengthens and corrects them, because
it converts what was before a cold decision of the judgment into a noble and
generous sentiment.”
The Same to the Same.
“July 10, 1812.
“You do not care if the result of what you do shall
be to show the worst side of yourself to those you have intercourse with. This
is very wrong. I know many persons in the world who, like you, are afraid that
frankness, if they practised it, would become cant, or something similar to
cant. It is true that he is the son of an opulent father, and therefore may say
to me in the words of Hamlet, “‘But what revenue can I hope from
thee?’ A full heart, however, scorns the difference between riches and poverty,
and will not whisper itself to hold its tongue, and not vent its emotions,
because it has no revenue.”
The Same to the Same.
“Jan. 4, 1813.
“My objection to your coming is on a point of
prudence, and I earnestly entreat you, as you have any regard for your future
peace and prosperity, to weigh well what I am going to say. Poverty, I assure
you, is a very wretched thing. The prayer of Agur in the
Bible is excellent, ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, lest I be
full and deny Thee, and say, who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain.’ I should not of course
express the reasons of my wish in my own behalf, or in behalf of any one in
whom I was interested, in so pious and religious a
manner; but my sense would be nearly the same. Riches corrupt the morals and
harden the heart, and poverty breaks the spirit and courage of a man, plants
his pillow with perpetual thorns, and makes it all but impossible for him to be
honest, virtuous, and honourable.”
P. Patrickson to William Godwin.
“Cambridge, July 27, 1814.
“Upon my return to this place I found my persecutors
more active than they were before I left it. On that account I have determined
to confine myself to my lodgings during the day. I take my walks before seven
o’clock in the morning, and after dusk in the evening. However, I
don’t entirely escape them by staying at home. Many times a day I hear
people passing my window say to one another, ‘Mr Patrickson, that came to college upon a
subscription, lives there.’ Sometimes this information causes a
laugh; among working men commonly anger. They often cry, ‘A
damn’d barber’s clerk: I wish he had to work as hard as
me!’ This expression ‘barber’s clerk,’ which
seems to be an indefinite term of contempt, has, I suppose, been the occasion
of some persons, not versed in slang, taking up the idea that I’m the son
of a barber. . . .”
William Godwin to P. Patrickson.
“July 30, 1814.
. . . ” I am so exceedingly pressed at this moment,
that I must request you to be contented with £2, and must endeavour to send you
a further supply on this day week. . . . I am sorry you still allow yourself to
be so plagued by the people you dignify with the name of your enemies. They
ought to be regarded no more than if you were ‘hush’d with
buzzing night-flies to your slumber.’ What harm do they do you?
None: but seize upon a sickly part of your nature, which your better nature
would bid be well, whenever you thought proper to call on him. Will they hinder
your promotion? Will they cause you to be thought a profligate or a fool? Will they, if you are
called to the bar, hinder you from having clients, or prevent the judge from
paying proper attention to the solidity of your arguments? I am sure a little
reading in Seneca, the philosopher, would
set you right in this pitiable wrong. You will outlive, and rise superior to
all this, and will then wonder that you could suffer yourself to be disturbed
by it.—Your sincere friend,
W. Godwin.”
On August 8th, Patrickson dined
with Godwin in London, and on the next day returned
to Cambridge. Immediately on his arrival he wrote the following letter to
Godwin:—
P. Patrickson to William Godwin.
. . . ” My spirits have for some time been subject to
fits of extreme depression, in which I have invariably felt myself compelled to
put an end to my existence. I leave this letter to account to you for my
conduct, in the event of my obeying one of these. I have endeavoured to the
utmost of my power to combat these fits of low spirits, but my efforts have
been in vain. Nothing, I believe, could relieve me but change of scene and
agreeable company: and you know it is at present quite out of my power to try
the effect of either. . . . I know not whether to ascribe it to an unhappy
natural disposition, or to the joyless life that I have led, marked only with
misfortune and misery, wanting the cheering kindness of friends and relations,
and unenlivened by the amusements and pleasures which other young men have
enjoyed in passing through the same stages of existence. But I certainly have
not the same perceptions of enjoyment that others have: from the earliest of my
recollections, life has been a thing of no value to me, and I have been
accustomed in times of sorrow to envy even the ground I trod on, for its
insensibility to the evils that vexed and tormented me. . . . My past
expectations have been so continually disappointed, that I am unable to place
any dependence upon what at present appears favourable in my future prospects.
Indeed, the more I think of the future, the more I am inclined to despair: I believe I can never enjoy any kind of
happiness or comfort until I shall have some kind of respectable settlement in
life, and to obtain this requires exertions which, broken-spirited and
broken-hearted as I am, are perfectly impracticable.”
Mrs Godwin has noted on the letter, from which the
last extract is taken, that it was soon followed by a note from the College Tutor,
informing Mr Godwin that Patrickson had shot himself on the following day, Aug. 10th. No record of
the event is to be found in the College books, but the “Bedmaker,” who attended
the unfortunate young man, died only a few years ago, and the event is still remembered as
a tradition at Emmanuel.
CHAPTER VIII. THE SHELLEYS. 1811-1814.
The intimacy with Shelley, which also was not of Godwin’s seeking, was destined to have a far more abiding influence
on the lives of both. The first notice of Shelley in the
Godwin Diaries is under date Jan. 6, 1811. “Write to
Shelly.” It is the only time his name is so spelt,
his letter was in answer to Shelley’s first letter, in which he
introduced himself, and was written at once, when he was not quite clear about the name of
his correspondent.
Shelley was at this time living at Keswick, in the
earlier and happier days of his marriage with Harriet
Westbrook, and his eager and restless spirit prompted him to form the
acquaintance, by letter, with others whom he believed to be like himself enthusiasts in the
cause of humanity, of liberty, and progress. He had already, in this manner, made the
acquaintance of Leigh Hunt, when, in January 1811, he
wrote thus to Godwin:—
P. B. Shelley to William Godwin.
Keswick, Jan. 3, 1811.
“——You will be surprised at hearing from a stranger.
No introduction has, nor in all probability ever will, authorize that which
common thinkers would call a liberty. It is, however, a liberty which, although
not sanctioned by. custom, is so far from being reprobated by reason, that the
dearest interests of mankind imperiously demand that a certain etiquette of
fashion should no longer keep ‘man at a
distance from man,’ and impose its flimsy barriers between the
free communication of intellect. The name of Godwin has been accustomed to excite in me feelings of
reverence and admiration. I have been accustomed to consider him as a luminary
too dazzling for the darkness which surrounds him, and from the earliest period
of my knowledge of his principles, I have ardently desired to share in the
footing of intimacy that intellect which I have delighted to contemplate in its
emanations. Considering, then, these feelings, you will not be surprised at the
inconceivable emotion with which I learned your existence and your dwelling. I
had enrolled your name on the list of the honourable dead. I had felt regret
that the glory of your being had passed from this earth of ours. It is not so.
You still live, and I firmly believe are still planning the welfare of human
kind. I have but just entered on the scene of human operations, yet my feelings
and my reasonings correspond with what yours were. My course has been short,
but eventful. I have seen much of human prejudice, suffered much from human
persecution, yet I see no reason hence inferable which should alter my wishes
for their renovation. The ill treatment I have met with has more than ever
impressed the truth of my principles on my judgment. I am young: I am ardent in
the cause of philanthropy and truth: do not suppose that this is vanity. I am
not conscious that it influences the portraiture. I imagine myself
dispassionately describing the state of my mind. I am young: you have gone
before me, I doubt not are a veteran to me in the years of persecution. Is it
strange that, defying persecution as I have done, I should outstep the limits
of custom’s prescription, and endeavour to make my desire useful by
friendship with William Godwin? I pray you to answer this
letter. Imperfect as it may be, my capacity, my desire, is ardent, and
unintermitted. Half-an-hour would be at least humanity employed in the
experiment. I may mistake your residence. Certain feelings, of which I may be
an inadequate arbiter, may induce you to desire concealment. I may not in fine
have an answer to this letter. If I do not, when I come to London I shall seek
for you. I am convinced I could
represent myself to you in such terms as not to be thought wholly unworthy of
your friendship. At least, if any desire for universal happiness^has any claim
upon your preference, that desire I can exhibit. Adieu. I shall earnestly await
your answer.
“P. B.
Shelley.”
The answer to this is lost, but it appears from the diary that the
correspondence was frequent. From Keswick Shelley
went to Dublin, and devoted himself to the cause of Irish Patriotism, with his usual
chivalry, and perhaps even less than his usual discretion. Godwin did all that he could, not by any means to change
Shelley’s principles, but to inculcate prudence and
discretion in the mode of carrying them out. The following letters serve well to show their
writer’s political standpoint, though it may be doubted if they had much effect on
the vehement young dreamer to whom they were addressed. In fact, very shortly after the
last was written, Shelley had made Ireland too hot to hold him, for
venturing to suggest that even Protestants were entitled to toleration. The police warned
him that he had better quit the country, and after a while he settled for a time his
wandering household at Lynmouth, in North Devon.
William Godwin to P. B. Shelley.
March 4, 1812.
“My good Friend,—I have
read all your letters (the first perhaps excepted) with peculiar interest, and
I wish it to be understood by you unequivocally that, as far as I can yet
penetrate into your character, I conceive it to exhibit an extraordinary
assemblage of lovely qualities not without considerable defects. The defects
do, and always have arisen chiefly from this source, that you are still very
young, and that in certain essential respects you do not sufficiently perceive
that you are so.
“In your last letter you say, ‘I publish
because I will publish nothing that shall not
conduce to virtue, and therefore my publications, as far as they do
influence, shall influence for good.’
“Oh, my friend, how short-sighted are the views that
dictated this sentence! Every man, in every deliberate action of his life,
imagines he sees a preponderance of good likely to result. This is the law of
our nature, from which none of us can escape. You do not in this point
generically differ from the human beings about you. Mr Burke and Tom Paine,
when they wrote on the French Revolution, perhaps equally believed that the
sentiments they supported were essentially conducive to the welfare of man.
When Mr Walsh resolved to purloin to his
own use a few thousand pounds, with which to settle himself and his family and
children in America, he tells us that he was for some time anxious that the
effects of his fraud should fall upon Mr. Oldham rather
than upon Sir Thomas Plumer, because, in
his opinion, Sir Thomas was the better man. And I have no
doubt that he was fully persuaded that a greater sum of happiness would result
from these thousand pounds being employed in settling his innocent and lovely
family in America, than in securing to his employer the possession of a large
landed estate. . . .
“In the pamphlet you have just sent me, your views and mine as to the
improvement of mankind are decisively at issue. You profess the immediate
objects of your efforts to be ‘the organization of a society whose
institution shall serve as a bond to its members.’ If I may be
allowed to understand my book on Political Justice, it’s pervading principle is, that
association is a most ill-chosen and ill-qualified mode of endeavouring to
promote the political happiness of mankind. And I think of your pamphlet,
however commendable and lovely are many of its sentiments, that it will either
be ineffective to its immediate object, or that it has no very remote tendency
to light again the flames of rebellion and war. . . . .
“Discussion, reading, enquiry, perpetual
communication: these are my favourite methods for the improvement of mankind,
but associations, organized societies, I firmly condemn. You may as well tell
the adder not to sting: ‘You may as well use question with the wolf: You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops, and to make no noise When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven,’ as tell organized societies of men, associated to obtain their rights and
to extinguish oppression,—prompted by a deep aversion to inequality, luxury,
enormous taxes, and the evils of war,—to be innocent, to employ no violence,
and calmly to await the progress of truth. I never was at a public political
dinner, a scene that I have now not witnessed for many years, that I did not
see how the enthusiasm was lighted up, how the flame caught from man to man,
how fast the dictates of sober reason were obliterated by the gusts of passion,
and how near the assembly was, like Alexander’s compotatores at Persepolis, to go forth and
fire the city, or, like the auditors of Anthony’s oration over the body of Cæsar, to apply a flaming brand to the mansion of
each several conspirator.
“Discussion and conversation on the best interests of
society are excellent as long as they are unfettered, and each man talks to his
neighbour in the freedom of congenial intercourse as he happens to meet with
him in the customary haunts of men, or in the quiet and beneficent intercourse
of each other’s fireside. But they become unwholesome and poisonous when
men shape themselves into societies, and become distorted with the artifices of
organization. It will not then long be possible to reason calmly and
dispassionately: men will heat each other into impatience and indignation
against their oppressors; they will become tired of talking for ever, and will
be in a hurry to act. If this view of things is true, applied to any country
whatever, it is peculiarly and fearfully so when applied to the fervent and
impetuous character of the Irish. . . . .
“One principle that I believe is wanting in you, and
in all our too fervent and impetuous reformers, is the thought that almost
every institution and form of society is good in its place and in the period of
time to which it belongs. How many beautiful and admirable effects grew out of
Popery and the monastic institutions in the period when
they were in their genuine health and vigour. To them we owe almost all our
logic and our literature. What excellent effects do we reap, even at this day,
from the feudal system and from chivalry! In this point of view nothing perhaps
can be more worthy of our applause than the English Constitution. Excellent to
this purpose are the words of Daniel in
his Apology for Rhyme:
‘Nor can it touch but of arrogant ignorance, to hold this or that
nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this manifold
creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world, hath always some
disposition of worth, entertains and affects that order of society which is
best for his use, and is eminent for some one thing or other that fits his
humour and the times.’ This is the truest and most sublime
toleration. There is a period, indeed, when each institution is obsolete, and
should be laid aside; but it is of much importance that we should not proceed
too rapidly in this, or introduce any change before its due and proper season.
. . . .
“You say that you count but on a short life. In that
too you are erroneous. I shall not live to see you fourscore, but it is not
improbable that my son will. I was myself in early life of a remarkably puny
constitution. Pope, who was at all times
kept alive only by art, reached his fifty-seventh year. The constitution of man
is a theatre of change, and I think it not improbable that at thirty or forty
you will be a robust man. . . . .
“To descend from great things to small, I can perceive
that you are already infected with the air of the country [Ireland]. Your
letter with its enclosures cost me by post 1s. 8d., and you say in it that you
‘send it in this way to save expense.’ The post always
charges parcels that exceed a sheet or two by weight, and they should therefore
always be forwarded by some other conveyance. . . . .
The Same to the Same.
“March 14, 1812.
“I take up the pen again immediately on the receipt of
yours, because I am desirous of making one more effort to save yourself and the Irish people from the
calamities with which I see your mode of proceeding to be fraught. In the
commencement of this letter you profess to ‘acquiesce in my
decisions,’ and you go on with those measures which, with no
sparing and equivocal voice, I have condemned. I smile, with a bitter smile, a
smile of much pain, at the impotence of my expostulations on so momentous a
topic, when I observe these inconsistencies. . . .
“You say, ‘What has been done within these
last twenty years?’ Oh, that I could place you upon the pinnacle
of ages, from which these twenty years would shrink to an invisible point! It
is not after this fashion that moral causes work in the eye of him who looks
profoundly through the vast and—allow me to add—venerable machine of human
society. But so reasoned the French Revolutionists. Auspicious and admirable
materials were working in the general mind of France; but these men said, as
you say, ‘When we look on the last twenty years, we are seized with a
sort of moral scepticism; we must own we are eager that something should be
done.’ And see what has been the result of their doings. He that
would benefit mankind on a comprehensive scale, by changing the principles and
elements of society, must learn the hard lesson, to put off self, and to
contribute by a quiet but incessant activity, like a rill of water, to irrigate
and fertilise the intellectual evil. . . .
“I wish to my heart you would come immediately to
London. I have a friend who has contrived a tube to convey passengers sixty
miles an hour: be youth your tube. I have a thousand things I could say, really
more than I could say in a letter on this important subject. You cannot imagine
how much all the females of my family, Mrs
Godwin and three daughters, are interested in your letters and
your history.”
The Same to the Same.
“March 30, 1812.
“I received your last letter on the 24th inst., and
the perusal of it gave me a high degree of pleasure. . . . I can now look upon
you as a friend. Before, I knew not what might happen. It was like making an acquaintance with Robert Emmet, who, I believe, like yourself,
was a man of a very pure mind, but respecting whom I could not have told from
day to day what calamities he might bring upon his country; how effectually
(like the bear in the fable) he might smash the nose of his mother to pieces,
when he intended only to remove the noxious insect that tormented her; and what
premature and tragical fate he might bring upon himself. Now, I can look on
you, not as a meteoric ephemeral, but as a lasting friend, who, according to
the course of nature, may contribute to the comforts of my closing days. Now, I
can look on you as a friend like myself, but I hope more effectually and
actively useful, who is prone to study the good of his fellow men, but with no
propensities threatening to do them extensive mischief, under the form and
intention of benefit. . . .
“You say, ‘I will look to events in which it
will be impossible I can share, and make myself the cause of an effect
which will take place ages after I shall have mouldered into
dust.’ In saying this you run from one extreme to another. I have
often had occasion to apply a principle on the subject of education, which is
equally applicable here—‘Be not easily discouraged; sow the seed, and
after a season, and when you least look for it, it will germinate and
produce a crop.’ I have again and again been hopeless concerning
the children with whom I have voluntarily, or by the laws of society, been
concerned. Seeds of intellect and knowledge, seeds of moral judgment and
conduct, I have sown; but the soil for a long while seemed ungrateful to the
tiller’s care. It was not so; the happiest operations were going on
quietly and unobserved, and at the moment when it was of the most importance,
they unfolded themselves to the delight of every beholder.
“These instances of surprise are owing solely to the
bluntness of our senses. You find little difference between the men of these
islands of Europe now and twenty years ago. If you looked more into these
things you would perceive that the alteration is immense. The human race has
made larger strides to escape from a state of childhood in these twenty years
than perhaps in any hundred years preceding. . . .
When arranging his usual short summer excursion in 1812, Godwin determined to combine this with a visit to the
Shelleys. They had asked him to visit them, but
no time had been fixed for his arrival; indeed the invitation had not been pressed when
Godwin first thought of making his tour westward, for the
Shelleys feared they could scarcely make him quite comfortable in
the limited accommodation they could offer him. But on his arrival at Lynmouth, the
Shelleys were gone, and had taken up their abode at Tanyr-alt in
North Wales. The diary illustrates the difficulties of a pleasure tour sixty years since,
and the perseverance of the tourist in spite of ill-health.
“Sep. 9, W. Twice to Bagley’s banker:
coach Gerards Hall: sup at Slough. Write to Place.
“10, Th. Breakfast at
Thatcham: lunch Beckhampton: cyder, Bath: sleep at Bristol, Bush. Fellow
travellers; Mrs Major Wms (Picton) rev. Gibbs, spouter, and
Mrs Harwood. Write to M. J.
[Mrs Godwin.]
“11, F. Call on
Gutch: New Passage to Chepstow:
Black Rock Inn, Mr and Mrs Griffiths: dine w.
Vivian, Beaufort Arms; walk to the Castle. Write to
M. J.
“12, Sa. Boat to
Tintern; St Peter’s Thumb, Twelve Apostles, Lover’s Leap: dine at
Chepstow: walk to Black Rock; adv. Griffiths (al
Lewis) and Yescomb. Write to M. J.
“13, Su. Passage, with
12 horses, &c .: return chaise to Bristol: call on Dr
Kentish, deceased. Write to Shelley.
“14, M. Call on
Gutch, and w. him on Cottle: meet Vivian: w.
him Cathedral and Redcliffe: dine at Gutch’s w.
Dr Pritchard. Write to M. J. French enter Moscow.
“Sep. 15, Tu. Breakfast at Gutch’s: walk w. him to St Vincent’s: tea Cottle’s: Bradbury’s theatre.
Write to M. J., sent Wednesday.
“16, W. Call on
Gutch and
Shephard: Jane, Capt.
Edwards, w. Lawrence and son,
Capt. Cotham, Miss Fisher,
Mrs Kirkby, &c.
“17, Th. Rainy morning:
pass Minehead: turned back by a squall, to Penarth, one mile from Cardiff,
where it was proposed by the Captain we should sleep on shore, I believe in a
barn. Deliquium.
“18, F. Lynmouth, three
in afternoon: eat nothing from Wednesday’s dinner: walk to the Valley of
Stones. Deliquium, in bed-chamber.
“19, Sa. Call on
Mrs Hooper; see Mrs Sandford:
horses to Barnstaple; mall and fair.
“20, Su. Coach w.
East-Indian and wife, Capt. Burke, Major
Hatherley, Lyndon cripple, &c.: South Molton: dine at
Tiverton: Peverel; Wellington: sleep at Taunton. Write to
M. J.
“21, M. Breakfast at
Somerton: walk and prospect at Castle Carey: Wincaunton; Mere: dine at Hindon:
sleep at Salisbury: call on Dowding:
Cathedral, moonlight. Write to M. J.
“22, Tu. Del. impm. Call on Dowding, and w. Luxford
on Jeffery, picture-dealer: meet Tinney: Cathedral and Close: dine at
Luxford’s: sup on Welch Rabbit.
“23, W. Deliquia
impa. Call on Dowding and Jeffery: Cathedral, charity-sermon, Bp. &c.:
dine at Jeffery’s w. Coates,
Finches, Miss Noyes,
Long and Luxford: adv. Bushel and
Mitty. Write to M.
J.Darmany calls.
“24, Th. Call on
Dowding and Luxford, Jefferyn. and Coates: chaise to Stonehenge
and Amesbury: return do. to Andover; call on
Godden, tanner. Write to M. J.
“Sep. 25, F. Coach, outside; w. postmaster, Jew, and 2 daughters,
D. Hayter of Whitchurch, mechanist: dine at Staines:
tea Skinner Street.”
The narrative is given in greater detail to Mrs Godwin. The letter has already been printed by Lady Shelley in her “Shelley Memorials.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Lynmouth, Valley of Stones, Sep. 19th, 1812.
“My dear Love,—The
Shelleys are gone! have been gone
these three weeks. I hope you hear the first from me; I dread lest every day
may have brought you a letter from them, conveying this strange intelligence. I
know you would conjure up a thousand frightful ideas of my situation under this
disappointment. I have myself a disposition to take quietly any evil, when it
can no longer be avoided, when it ceases to be attended with uncertainty, and
when I can already compute the amount of it. I heard this news instantly on my
arrival at this place, and therefore walked immediately (that is, as soon as I
had dined) to the Valley of Stones, that, if I could not have what was gone
away, I might at least not fail to visit what remained.
“You advise me to return by sea; I thank you a
thousand times for your kind and considerate motive in this, but certainly
nothing more could be proposed to me at this moment than a return by sea. I
left Bristol at one o’clock on Wednesday, and arrived here at four
o’clock on Friday, after a passage of fifty-one hours. We had fourteen
passengers, and only four berths, therefore I lay down only once for a few
hours. We had very little wind, and accordingly regularly tided it for six
hours, and lay at anchor for six, till we reached this place. This place is
fifteen miles short of Ilfracombe. If the Captain, after a great entreaty from
the mate and one of his passengers (for I cannot entreat for such things) [had
not] lent me his own boat to put me ashore, I really think I should have died
with ennui. We anchored, Wednesday night, somewhere within sight of the Holmes
(small islands, so called, in the British Channel). The
next night we came within sight of Minehead, but the evening set in with an
alarming congregation of black clouds, the sea rolled vehemently without a wind
(a phenomenon which is said to portend a storm) and the Captain in a fright put
over to Penarth, near Cardiff, and even told us he should put us ashore there
for the night. At Penarth, he said, there was but one house, but it had a fine
large barn annexed to it capable of accommodating us all. This was a cruel
reverse to me and my fellow-passengers, who had never doubted that we should
reach the end of our voyage some time in the second day. By the time, however,
we had made the Welsh coast, the frightful symptoms disappeared, the night
became clear and serene, and I landed here happily—that is, without further
accident—the next day. These are small events to a person accustomed to a
seafaring life, but they were not small to me, and you will allow that they
were not much mitigated by the elegant and agreeable accommodations of our
crazed vessel. I was not decisively sea-sick, but had qualmish and
discomforting sensations from the time we left the Bristol river, particularly
after having lain down a few hours of Wednesday night.
“Since writing the above I have been to the house
where Shelley lodged, and I bring good
news. I saw the woman of the house, and I was delighted with her. She is a good
creature, and quite loved the Shelleys. They lived here
nine weeks and three days. They went away in a great hurry, in debt to her and
two more. They gave her a draft upon the Honourable
Mr Lawless, brother to Lord
Cloncurry, and they borrowed of her twenty-nine shillings,
besides that she got for them from a neighbour, all of which they faithfully
returned when they got to Ilfracombe, the people not choosing to change a
bank-note which had been cut in half for safety in sending it by the post. But
the best news is that the woman says they will be in London in a fortnight.
This quite comforts my heart.”
The Shelleys arrived in London
after their stay at Tanry-alt on October 4th, and dined with Godwin. They remained in London just six weeks, during which time Shelley and Godwin met almost daily, and he with
his wife and her sister, Miss Westbrook, were frequent visitors in Skinner Street. Of the two
persons who were most to influence Shelley’s life in after years, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Jane Clairmont, who made her home with him and his second wife, he saw but
little. Mary Godwin was just fifteen, was still a child, and
considered as such in her family. Her half sister Fanny was Miss Godwin, and was, after this visit,
Shelley’s friend and occasional correspondent.
Jane Clairmont was only at home for two nights during the six
weeks Shelley spent in London. She was several years older than
Fanny, and even then led a somewhat independent life apart from
her mother and step-father, presumably as a governess, since that was the occupation she
afterwards followed in Italy, during the intervals of her residence with the
Shelleys. In those later days, however, it seemed more poetical to
an imaginative mind to call herself ‘Clare’ instead of
Jane, by which self-chosen name she appears in the
Shelley diaries. Godwin, however, preferring
blunt reality, sticks to her true name.
When Mary Godwin was fifteen her
father received a letter from an unknown correspondent, who took a deep interest in the
theories of education which had been held by Mary
Wollstonecraft, and who was anxious to know how far these were carried out
in regard to the children she had left. An extract from Godwin’s reply paints his daughter as she was at that period:—
“Your enquiries relate principally to the two
daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. They are
neither of them brought up with an exclusive attention to the system and ideas of their
mother. I lost her in 1797, and in 1801 I married a second time. One among the motives
which led me to chuse this was the feeling I had in myself of an incompetence for the
education of daughters. The present Mrs Godwin has great strength and activity of mind, but is not
exclusively a follower of the notions of their mother; and indeed, having formed a
family establishment without having a previous provision for the support of a family,
neither Mrs Godwin nor I have leisure enough for reducing novel
theories of education to practice, while we both of us honestly endeavour, as far as
our opportunities will permit, to improve the mind and characters of the younger
branches of our family.
“Of the two persons to whom your enquiries relate,
my own daughter is considerably superior in capacity to the one her mother had before.
Fanny, the eldest, is of a quiet, modest,
unshowy disposition, somewhat given to indolence, which is her greatest fault, but
sober, observing, peculiarly clear and distinct in the faculty of memory, and disposed
to exercise her own thoughts and follow her own judgment. Mary, my daughter, is the reverse of her in many particulars. She is
singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is
great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible. My own
daughter is, I believe, very pretty; Fanny is by no means
handsome, but in general prepossessing.”
In 1813 Shelley was again in
London for a short time during the summer, but Mary
was absent in Scotland. She was not strong, and as a growing girl needed purer air than
Skinner Street could offer; she had therefore gone to Dundee with her father’s
friends, Mr Baxter and his daughter; and remained
with them six months. It was not until the summer of 1814 that Shelley
and Mary Godwin became really acquainted, when he found the child whom
he had scarcely noticed two years before had grown into the woman of nearly seventeen
summers.
The story has often been told, and told in different ways; but the facts
as far as they can be gleaned from the scanty entries in Godwin’s Diary are these. Shelley came to London on May 18th, leaving his wife at Binfield, certainly without the least idea that it was to be a final
separation from him, though the relations between husband and wife had for some time been
increasingly unhappy. He was of course received in Godwin’s
house on the old footing of close intimacy, and rapidly fell in love with Mary. Fanny Godwin
was away from home visiting some of the Wollstonecrafts, or she, three
years older than Mary, might have discouraged the romantic attachment
which sprang up between her sister and their friend. Jane
Clairmont’s influence was neither then, nor at any other time, used,
or likely to be used, judiciously.
It was easy for the lovers, for such they became before they were aware
of it, to meet without the attention of the parents being drawn to the increasing intimacy,
and yet without any such sense of clandestine interviews, as might have disclosed to
themselves whither they were drifting. Mary was
unhappy at home; she thoroughly disliked Mrs Godwin,
to whom Fanny was far more tolerant; her desire for
knowledge and love for reading were discouraged, and when seen with a book in her hand, she
was wont to hear from her step-mother that her proper sphere was the storeroom. Old St
Pancras churchyard was then a quiet and secluded spot, where Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave was shaded by a fine weeping willow. Here
Mary Godwin used to take her books in the warm days of June, to
spend every hour she could call her own. Here her intimacy with Shelley ripened, and here, in Lady
Shelley’s words, “she placed her hand in his, and linked her
fortunes with his own.”
It was not till July 8th that Godwin saw in any degree what was going on. The Diary records a
“Talk with Mary,” and a
letter to Shelley. The explanation was
satisfactory—it was before the mutual confession in St Pancras
churchyard—and Godwin and Shelley still met
daily; but the latter did not dine again in Skinner Street. On July 14th Harriet Shelley arrived in London. The entries in the
Diary for that and the following day are:—
“15, F. M[arshal] and Shelley for Nash: Balloon: P.
B. and H. Shelley to
calln.: M. and F.
Jones call, for Miss White: call on
H. Shelley.
“16, Sa.
C. Turner (fr. Mackintosh and Dadley) call: call on
Shelleys; coach w. P. B.
S.”
It is quite certain that Godwin
used all his influence to restore the old relations between husband and wife; and on the
22d “Talk with Jane, letter fr. do. Write
to H. S.,” evidently refer to his
dislike of the attention which Shelley now paid his
daughter. But it was too late; for on July 28th, early in the morning, Mary Godwin left her father’s house, accompanied by
Jane Clairmont. They joined
Shelley, posted to Dover, and crossed in an open boat to Calais
during a violent storm, during which they were in considerable danger. As soon as the
elopement was discovered Mrs Godwin pursued the
party.
Godwin’s Diary is here also extremely brief:—
“28, Th. Five in the morning.
Macmillan calls. M.
J. for Dover.”
Charles Clairmont wrote to break the news to
Fanny, and devoted himself to his step-father
during the three days of uncertainty, till Mrs
Godwin returned from Calais on July 31st.
On the evening of their arrival at Calais, Shelley and Mary began a joint
diary, which was continued by one or the other through the remainder of
Shelley’s life. The entry for the second day gives an
account of the entrance into their room
of the landlord of the Calais Hotel to say that “a fat lady had arrived who said
that I had run away with her daughter.” As all the world knows, her
persuasions had no avail, and she returned alone; Jane
Clairmont, in spite of her mother’s remonstrances, determined to stay
with Shelley and Mary. The three went to Paris,
where they bought a donkey, and rode him in turns to Geneva, the others walking. He was
bought for Mary as the weakest of the party, but
Shelley’s feet were soon blistered, and he was glad to ride
now and then, not without the jeers of the passers by, in the spirit of those who scoffed
in the Fable of the “Old Man and his Ass.”
Sleeping now in a cabaret and now in a cottage, they at last finished
this strange honeymoon, and the strangest sentimental journey ever undertaken since
Adam and Eve went forth with all the world
before them where to choose.
Godwin’s irritation and displeasure at the
step his daughter had taken were extreme. His own views on the subject of marriage had
undergone a considerable change, and he was more alive than in former years to the
strictures of the world. Nor is it possible for the most enthusiastic admirers of Shelley to palliate materially his conduct in the matter.
On any view of the relations between the sexes, on any view of the desirableness of
divorce, the breach with Harriet, was far too recent
to justify his conduct. In spite of her after-conduct our sympathies cannot but be in some
measure with the discarded wife. But neither need they be refused to Mary Godwin. Let it be remembered that she was not
seventeen, that her whole sympathies were with her mother, who had held views on marriage,
different indeed to those which her daughter was upholding by her action, but which a young
inexperienced girl might easily confuse with them, that her
home was unhappy, and that she had met one who was to her then, and through all her married
life, as one almost divine, last and not least that she was upheld in all that she did by
an astute and worldly woman, who, though no relation, stood to Mary in
the place of an elder sister. For Miss Clairmont
indeed it is difficult to find excuse.
Godwin’s sources of trouble were considerable
at the time of Mary’s leaving her home. He was
not a tender father in outward show, but he was sincerely attached to his children, and
Mary was bound up with the happiest and the
saddest days of the past. William also began to give
his father a good deal of uneasiness, and the week after Mrs
Godwin returned from her bootless mission to Calais, the boy ran away from
home—the first, but by no means the last, escapade of the kind—and could not be found till
after two nights’ search and anxiety. And the day after his disappearance was that on
which Godwin heard of Patrickson’s suicide.
It has seemed best to give the narratives of Patrickson and Shelley without
intermission, but the following letters, which need little elucidation, fall within the
period to which the death of the one and the elopement of the other, bring the narrative of
Godwin’s life.
William Wordsworth to William Godwin.
“Grasmere, March 9, 1811.
“Dear Sir,—I received your
letter and the accompanying booklet yesterday. Some one recommended to
Gainsborough a subject for a
picture: it pleased him much, but he immediately said with a sigh,
‘What a pity I did not think of it myself!’ Had I been
as much delighted with
the story of the Beauty and the Beast as you appear
to have been, and as much struck with its fitness for verse, still your
proposal would have occasioned in me a similar regret. I have ever had the same
sort of perverseness: I cannot work upon the suggestion of others, however
eagerly I might have addressed myself to the proposed subject, if it had come
to me of its own accord. You will therefore attribute my declining the task of
versifying the tale to this infirmity, rather than to an indisposition to serve
you. Having stated this, it is unnecessary to add that it could not, in my
opinion, be ever decently done without great labour, especially in our
language. Fontaine acknowledges that he
found ‘les narrations en vers très
mal-aisées,’ yet he allowed himself, in
point of metre and versification, every kind of liberty, and only chose such
subjects as (to the disgrace of his country be it spoken) the French language
is peculiarly fitted for. This tale, I judge from its name, is of French
origin; it is not, however, found in a little collection which I have in that
tongue: mine only includes Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood,
and two or three more. I think the shape in which it appears in the little book
you have sent me has much injured the story, and Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister both have an impression of its being told differently,
and to them much more pleasantly, though they do not distinctly recollect the
deviations. I confess there is to me something disgusting in the notion of a
human being consenting to meet with a beast, however amiable his qualities of
heart. There is a line and a half in the Paradise Lost upon this subject, which
always shocked me,— ‘. . . . . . for which cause Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.’”
“These are objects to which the attention of the mind
ought not to be turned even as things in possibility. I have never seen the
tale in French, but, as every one knows, the word Bête in French conversation perpetually occurs as
applied to a stupid, senseless, half-idiotic person. Bêtise in like manner stands for stupidity. With us,
beast and bestial excite loathsome and disgusting ideas—I mean when applied in
a metaphorical manner: and consequently something of
the same hangs about the literal sense of the words. Brute is the word employed
when we contrast the intellectual qualities of the inferior animals with our
own, the brute creation, &c. ‘Ye of brutes human, we of human
gods.’ Brute, metaphorically used, with us designates ill manners
of a coarse kind, or insolent and ferocious cruelty. I make these remarks with
a view to the difficulty attending the treatment of this story in our tongue, I
mean in verse, where the utmost delicacy, that is, true, philosophic, permanent
delicacy, is required.
“Wm. Taylor of
Norwich took the trouble of versifying ‘Blue Beard’ some years ago, and
might perhaps not decline to assist you in the present case, if you are
acquainted with him, or could get at him. He is a man personally unknown to me,
and in his literary character doubtless an egregious coxcomb, but he is
ingenious enough to do this, if he could be prevailed upon to undertake it.
“Permit me to add one particular. You live, and have
lived, long in London, and therefore may not know at what rate parcels are
conveyed by coach. Judging from the size, you probably thought the expense of
yours would be trifling. You remember the story of the poor girl who, being
reproached with having brought forth an illegitimate child, said it was true,
but added that it was a very little one, insinuating thereby that her offence
was small in proportion. But the plea does not hold good, as it is in these
cases of immorality, so it is with the rules of the coach-offices. To be brief,
I had to pay for your tiny parcel 4/9, and should have to pay no more if it had
been twenty times as large. . . . . I deem you, therefore, my debtor, and will
put you in the way of being quits with me. If you can command a copy of your
book upon burial,
which I have never seen, let it be sent to Lamb’s for my use, who in the course of this spring will
be able to forward it to me.—Believe me, my dear Sir, to be yours sincerely,
“W.
Wordsworth.”
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
“‘Bis dat qui dat
cito.’
“I hate the pedantry of expressing that in another
language which we have sufficient terms for in our own. So in plain English I
very much wish you to give your vote to-morrow at Clerkenwell, instead of
Saturday. It would clear up the brows of my favourite candidate, and stagger
the hands of the opposite party. It commences at nine. How easy, as you come
from Kensington (à propos, how is
your excellent family?) to turn down Bloomsbury, through Leather Lane (avoiding
Hay Stall St. for the disagreeableness of the name). Why, it brings you in four
minutes and a half to the spot renowned on northern milestones, ‘where
Hicks’ Hall formerly stood.’ There will be good cheer ready
for every independent freeholder; where you see a green flag hang out go boldly
in, call for ham, or beef, or what you please, and a mug of Meux’s Best.
How much more gentlemen like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing
one’s sentiments, then to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is
dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Saturday
you’ll cut into the mutton. I’d go cheerfully myself, but I am no
freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for
£50. If they’d accept a copy-holder, we clerks are naturally copy-holders.
“By the way, get Mrs
Hume, or that agreeable Amelia or Caroline, to stick a bit of
green in your hat. Nothing daunts the adversary more than to wear the colours
of your party. Stick it in cockade-like. It has a martial, and by no means
disagreeable effect.
“Go, my dear freeholder, and if any chance calls you
out of this transitory scene earlier than expected, the coroner shall sit
lightly on your corpse. He shall not too anxiously enquire into the
circumstances of blood found upon your razor. That might happen to any
gentleman in shaving. Nor into your having been heard to express a contempt of
life, or for scolding Louisa for what
Julia did, and other trifling incoherencies.—Yours
sincerely,
“C. Lamb.”
S. T. Coleridge to William Godwin.
“Mar. 15, 1811.
“My DearGodwin,—I receive twice the pleasure
from my recovery that it would have otherwise afforded, as it enables me to
accept your kind invitation, which in this instance I might with perfect
propriety and manliness thank you for, as an honour done to me. To sit at the
same table with Grattan, who would not
think it a memorable honour, a red-letter day in the almanac of his life? No
one certainly who is in any degree worthy of it. Rather than not be in the same
room, I could be well content to wait at the table at which I was not permitted
to sit, and this not merely for Grattan’s undoubted
great talents, and still less from any entire accordance with his political
opinions, but because his great talents are the tools and vehicles of his
genius, and all his speeches are attested by that constant accompaniment of
true genius, a certain moral bearing, a moral dignity. His love of liberty has
no snatch of the mob in it.
“Assure Mrs
Godwin of my anxious wishes respecting her health. The scholar
Salernitanus says: “‘Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi
fiasHaec tria: mens hilaris, requies, moderata
diæta.’
“The regulated diet she already has, and now she must
contrive to call in the two other doctors. . . . God bless you.
“S. T.
Coleridge.”
The Same to the Same.
“Mar. 26, 1811.
“DearGodwin,—Mr Grattan did me the honour of calling on me and leaving his
card on Sunday afternoon, unfortunately a few minutes after I had gone out, and
I am so unwell that I am afraid I shall not be able to return the call to-day,
as I had intended, though it is a grief even for a brace of days to appear insensible of so much
kindness and condescension. But what need has Grattan of
pride? “‘Ha d’ uopo solo Mendicar dall’ orgoglio, onore e stima Chi senza lui di vilipendio è degno.’ (Chiabrera.)
“I half caught from Lamb that you had written to Wordsworth with a wish that he should versify some tale or
other, and that he had declined it. I told dear Miss
Lamb that I had formed a complete plan of a poem, with little
plates for children, the first thought, but that alone, taken from Gesner’s ‘First Mariner;’ and this thought I
have reason to believe was not an invention of
Gesner’s. It is this: that in early time, in
some island or part of the continent, the ocean had rushed in, overflowing a
vast plain of twenty or thirty miles, and thereby insulating one small
promontory or cape of high land, on which was a cottage, containing a man and
his wife and an infant daughter. This is the one thought. All that
Gesner has made out of it (for I once translated into
blank verse about half of the poem, but gave it up under the influence of a
double disgust, moral and poetical), I have rejected, and, strictly speaking,
the tale in all its parts, that one idea excepted, would be original. The tale
will contain the cause, the occasions, the process, with all its failures and
ultimate success, of the construction of the first boat, and of the undertaking
of the first naval expedition. Now, supposing you liked the idea—I address you
and Mrs Godwin as commerciants, not you as the philosopher who gave us the first system
in England that ever dared reveal at full that most important of all important
truths, that morality might be built up on its own foundation like a castle
built from the rock, and on the rock, with religion for the ornaments and
completion of its roof and upper storeys—nor as the critic who in the life of Chaucer has given
us, if not principles of aesthetic, or taste, yet more and better data for
principles than had hitherto existed in our language. If we, pulling like two
friendly tradesmen together (for you and your wife must be one flesh, and I
trust are one heart), you approve of the plan, the next
question is whether it should be written in prose or verse, or if the latter,
in what metre—stanzas or eight-syllabled iambics with rhymes (for in rhyme it
must be) now in couplets and now in quatrains, in the manner of Cooper’s admirable translation of the
‘Lament of
Gresset.’ (NB.—Not theCowper.)
“Another thought has struck me of a school-book in
two octavo volumes of ‘Lives’ in the manner of Plutarch’s, but instead of comparing and
coupling Greek with Roman, Dion with
Brutus, and Cato with Aristides, of
placing ancient and modern together, Hume
with Alfred, Cicero with Bacon,
Hannibal with Gustavus Adolphus, and Julius
Cæsar with Buonaparte. Or,
which perhaps might be at once more interesting and more instructive, a series
of ‘Lives,’ from Moses to
Buonaparte, of all those great men who in states, or
in the mind of man, had produced great revolutions, the effects of which still
remain, and are more or less distant causes of the present state of the world.
. . .”
The Same to the Same.
“March 29, 1811.
“DearGodwin,—My chief motive in
undertaking ‘the first
mariner’ is merely to weave a few tendrils around your
destined walking stick, which, like those of the wood-bine (that, serpent-like
climbing up, and with tight spires embossing the straight hazel, rewards the
lucky school-boy’s search in the hazel-copse), may remain on it when the
wood-bine, root and branch, lies trampled in the earth. I shall consider the
work as a small plot of ground given up to you to be sown at your own hazard
with your own seed (gold grains would have been but a bad pun, and besides have
spoiled the metaphor). If the increase should more than repay your risk and
labour, why then let me be one of your guests at Harvest Home.
“Your last letter impressed and affected me strongly.
Ere I had yet read or seen your works, I, at Southey’s recommendation, wrote a sonnet in praise of the author. When I
had read them, religious bigotry, the but half-understanding of your
principles, and the not half-understanding my own, combined to render me a warm
and boisterous
anti-Godwinist. But my warfare was open; my unfelt and harmless blows aimed at
an abstraction I had christened with your name; and you at that time, if not in
the world’s favour, were among the captains and chief men in its
admiration. I became your acquaintance when more years had brought somewhat
more temper and tolerance; but I distinctly remember that the first turn in my
mind towards you, the first movements of a juster appreciation of your merits,
was occasioned by my disgust at the altered tone and language of many whom I
had long known as your admirers and disciples. Some of them, too, were men who
had made themselves a sort of reputation in minor circles as your acquaintance,
and were therefore your echoes by authority, themselves
aided in attaching an unmerited ridicule to you and your opinions by their own
ignorance, which led them to think the best settled thoughts, and indeed
everything in your ‘Political Justice,’ whether ground, or deduction, or
conjecture, to have been new thoughts, downright creations. Their own vanity
enabled them to forget that everything must be new to him that knows nothing.
Others again, who though gifted with high talents had yet been indebted to you,
and the discussions occasioned by your wish for much of their development, who
had often and often styled you the Great Master, written verses in your honour,
and, worse than all, had brought your opinions with many good and worthy men
into as unmerited an odium as the former class had into contempt by the
attempt, equally unfeeling and unwise to realise them in private life, to the
disturbance of domestic peace. And lastly, a third class; but the name of
—— spares me the necessity of describing it. In all
these there was such a want of common sensibility, such a want of that
gratitude to an intellectual benefactor which even an honest reverence for
their great selves should have secured, as did then, still does, and ever will
disgust me.
“As for ——, I
cannot justify him; but he stands in no one of the former classes. When he was
young he just looked enough into your books to believe you taught republicanism
and stoicism; ergo, that he was of your opinion and you of his, and that was
all. Systems of philosophy were never his taste or
forte. And I verily believe that his conduct originated wholly and solely in
the effects which the trade of reviewing never fails to produce at certain
times on the best minds,—presumption, petulance, callousness to personal
feelings, and a disposition to treat the reputations of their contemporaries as
playthings placed at their own disposal. Most certainly I cannot approve of
such things; but yet I have learned how difficult it is for a man who has from
earliest childhood preserved himself immaculate from all the common faults and
weaknesses of human nature, and who, never creating any small disquietudes, has
lived in general esteem and honour, to feel remorse, or to admit that he has
done wrong. Believe me, there is a bluntness of conscience superinduced by a
very unusual infrequency, as well as by a habit of frequency of wrong actions.
‘Sunt, quibus cecidisse
prodesset,’ says Augustine. To this add that business of
review-writing, carried on for fifteen years together, and which I have never
hesitated to pronounce an immoral employment, unjust to the author of the books
reviewed, injurious in its effects on the public taste and morality, and still
more injurious in its influences on the head and heart of the reviewer himself.
The pragustatores among the luxurious Romans soon lost their taste; and the
verdicts of an old praigustator were sure to mislead, unless when, like dreams,
they were interpreted into contraries. Our Reviewers are the genuine
descendants of these palate-scared taste dictators.
“I am still confined by indisposition, but intend to
step out to Hazlitt’s, almost my
next door neighbour, at his particular request. It is possible that I may find
you there.
“Yours, dear Godwin, affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.”
CHAPTER IX. FANNY’S DEATH—THE
SHELLEYS. 1812—1819.
After the subscription which had been made for the payment of
his debts, which left him a considerable sum in hand, Godwin’s circumstances were fairly comfortable for some years. They
were not indeed wholly so, since having begun business without capital, the heavy payments
required by that business at times, which did not always correspond with his receipts,
necessitated frequent raising of money on bills, and some consequent anxiety. Yet, on the
whole, there was no serious difficulty, and the daily life at Skinner Street was
undisturbed. Godwin’s reading became more and more devoted to
past literature, the diaries from 1812 onwards make almost exclusive mention of old
writers—Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, &c. His
mornings were given to study, his afternoons to writing, his evenings to society or the
theatre; the old names occur, which have appeared in the Diaries for years—Mackintosh, Basil
Montagu, the Lambs, but few new
names—in fact old age was creeping on Godwin, though his powers of
mind were quite undimmed. Charles Clairmont had
found occupation for himself, but still lived mainly with the Godwins;
Jane was with the Shelleys abroad, or afterwards at Binfield; Fanny had more and more taken her place as a daughter at home, and, as she
wrote to Mrs Shelley, “got on very well
with Mamma, whose merits she could see, though she could not really like
her.”
Two only, among the domestic letters of these years, possess any interest.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Skinner St., July 10, 1815.
“——I had a disagreeable dinner yesterday at
Alexander’s with a parcel of miserables, who
seemed, so far as I could collect, to know nothing of the stranger who sat down
with them, and to have no desire to hear anything from him: but I had a very
pleasant walk home across the fields, to White’s Conduit House.
“How happy should I be, if I could persuade you to
look at human life through different optics! There are persons, perhaps, so
constituted that they must see all creation in sables: there is, too, a sort of
refinement in regarding all the world with loathing and aversion, in which a
sickly temper is too apt to indulge. But, separately from these two causes,
almost all the lives of individuals are made up of a dark and a bright side;
and yours is not, in itself considered, the worst. We ought all to consider
that we have but one life to make the best or the worst of, as imagination
shall prompt us. But all prudence and all wisdom bids us make the best of it.
You are surrounded with many comforts, you have a boy that you love, you have
not the worst of husbands; our principal embarrassments are on the point of
being cleared off, and we must then be very unlucky if we are not able to
continue to supply our wants . . . .
“. . . . Tell Fanny I am very well, and have found no want as yet of her kind
cares. Charles has taken the
cook’s account, and performed the offices of an able housekeeper and
superintendent.”
The Same to the Same.”
“Aug. 3, 1815.
“Miss Lamb has
just called in to ask me to sup with them on Saturday evening at Mr Alsager’s in the Borough, a clever
man, she says, a bachelor, a whist player, and a new acquaintance of theirs. She says they were
within an ace of embarking in the “Friendship” on Saturday last for
Southend, agreeably to your invitation. . . . .
“Adieu! Oh, be well, be cheerful! Banish depressing
recollections. Look on me and Lovewell, the two great
pillars of the establishment in Skinner Street, with approving and hopeful
sensations. Take care of fatigue, take care of the cold. Feel some love, some
lingering of the heart for the corner house with the Æsop
over the door.—Ever, with unalterable affection, yours,
“William
Godwin.”
It was characteristic of Godwin,
and was indeed one of the best parts of his character, that he always considered that
principles were to be carried out at any cost. That the Allies were guided by immediate and
pressing political needs to do all that in them lay to prevent the possibility of another
Buonapartist rule, would have seemed to him no reason at all. To destroy individualism in
the name of liberty seems to him the great and inexpiable crime against liberty.
Individualism was to be asserted at whatever immediate cost.
In political matters, the only document of interest is the following
letter:—
William Godwin to the Editor of —— Paper. Anonymous Editor
“April 18, 1815.
“Sir,—I observe in your
paper of yesterday a statement that the Allied Sovereigns are to issue from
Frankfort a declaration ‘that the people of France are at perfect
liberty to judge for themselves, that their territory shall be unviolated,
and their public institutions held sacred, and hostilities only to ensue if
they shall determine to submit to the authority of one
individual.’ (Buonaparte, whom
these sovereigns think proper to proscribe.) And this seems to be regarded as a
safe and happy expedient, by which the Allies are to
get rid of the odium of interfering in the internal affairs of an independent
nation.
“Now, sir, I beg to suggest, through the medium of
your paper, that this is a refinement, rendering the interference of foreign
powers in the internal affairs of a nation ten thousand times more intolerable
and odious than if it were brought forward in any other form. They might issue
a declaration in which they should state, beside the hereditary indefeasible
right of the family of the Bourbons, that they are the choice of the whole
French nation—that they have been expelled by an insignificant faction with
arms in their hands, and that the Allies march accordingly to rescue thirty
millions of men from an ignominious yoke, and to preserve them from being
dragooned by a military despotism into subjection to a tyrant who is detestable
in their eyes: and such a declaration, though containing many falsehoods, would
be to a certain degree according to rule, and would undoubtedly be infinitely
less insulting than the declaration your paragraph announces . . . .
“Why is this man selected as the individual they may
not choose? The selection is not made at random: the name is not brought
forward because the person is indifferent. He is named because the Allies find
the greatest reason to fear that he will be the man of their choice, and that
an infinite majority of the French people are eager to adhere to him. Never did
a sovereign ascend the throne of any nation under such astonishing instances of
general favour, as Buonaparte has just now ascended the throne of France. The
Allies therefore say to the French people, Take any course you please, we
promise not to interfere: only there is one course upon which your hearts
appear to be set, and that we interdict you.
“Is it possible that such a declaration should not
render Buonaparte infinitely more dear to
the people of France than he ever could be before? Does it not show them their
honour as bound up with him, and their independence and character as a nation,
as invaded by a pretended attack upon him.
“How will the Allies say that the French shall rid
themselves of Buonaparte? His return among them has
re-animated them as a nation; they fear no longer those principles of
counter-revolution and disturbance of the established system of property which
they saw secretly at work among them; they have restored him to the throne on
the most auspicious conditions for general benefit; they have obtained for
themselves a sovereign whose energy of character is capable of rendering them
suspected among foreign powers. But the Allies are regardless of all this. They
say, We come to confer on you the blessings of a civil war; form yourselves
into knots and cabals, try secretly to gather a strength that shall overcome
the power that now reigns over you, and amidst plots and cabals, and
conspiracies and treasons, every man arming himself against his neighbour, we
will come with our Uhlans and Cossacks and freebooters, and bless you with our
presence.”
To return to Godwin’s
home-life. After the Shelleys returned from France, bringing Miss Clairmont with them, the latter was after a time received in Skinner
Street as an occasional visitor, and in March 1816, the Shelleys being
then at Binfield, Godwin paid a visit to Bracknell, and thence walked
over to see his daughter. From that time there was fairly frequent intercourse established
between himself and Shelley, both by letter and by
visits from Shelley when in town.
On April 7, 1816, Godwin started on
a tour to Scotland; his business relations with Fairley and Constable had become
somewhat complicated, and the hope of making personally some satisfactory arrangement led
him to undertake this long journey. The diary will give in his own words a condensed but
interesting account of his fellow travellers, associates, and reading during this time.
“April 7, Su. Call on Lambert. Mail for York; Adey from Ware.
“April 8, M. Breakfast at Huntingdon, smuggling old woman: dine at
Newark: tea Doncaster, ex-captain of Militia: sleep, Tavern, York.
“9, Tu. Call on
Wolstenholme,
Todd and Nicol: walk w. Nicol on
the walls (Clifford’s Tower and Jail), Minster and St Mary’s Abbey:
Paterson dines. Write to M. J.,
Fanny, Davison, and Fairley.
“10, W. Dine at
Darlington: pass Durham: sleep at Newcastle, intelligent bailiff, pleasing
gentleman, Cumberland farmer.
“11, Th. Miss
Farkison fr.Mrs Waters: Morpeth: breakfast at Alnwick: dine at
Berwick: Pease Bridge: Dunglas: Dunbar: Edinburgh: Fairley sups.
“12, F. Call on
Constable; adv. Leslie, Napier, Evanses, Cadel: Castle Hill, Writers’ Library:
dinner Mathews, R.
Miller, Wrench, Ballantine, Downie, Playfair, Wilson,
Buchanan, Thomson,
Cadel, and Russell, player.
“13, Sa. Explanation;
write to M. J. Shop adv.
Forster (clouds), Jeffrey, &c.: walk w. Leslie, Calton Hill and Holyrood House: dinner Matthews, Wrench,
Evanses, Leslie, Peter Hill, and G. H.
Walker: Buchan’s
card.
“14, Su. Write to
M. J.Jeffrey and Boswell call: meet Ballantine: Matthews,
Wench, Foster,
Willison and 2 Cadels dine. Invited by Buchan.
“15, M. Call on
Buchan, Fletchers
and Murray (w. Fairley), Ferguson,
Macdonald, Nairn and Cadel: Holyrood House and
Hume w. Mathews: shop, Dalzel,
Duncan and Yaniewiczes: dine at Napier’s w. Bruntons, Playfair, Leslie, Pellings.
“16, Tu. Write to
M. J. Shop,
Morrit, and Boswell: chaise to Kinneal w. Constable and
Dr Miller: visit Linlithgow: adv. Miss
Cruickshank; sleep.
“April 17, W. Ferrier, on Apparitions, pp. 139. Parisina: Knox v. Crosraguel ça la. Sleep.
“18, Th. Return; see
Hopetoun House, Roseberry and Barnton Parks: dine at Ballantine’s w.
Belcours, Douglases, Leslie, Fraser, and
Constable: adv.
Ainslie. Deep snow.
“19, F. Write to
M. J. Shop, Hepburn and Crawford:
call on Raeburn w. R. Miller and Yaniewicz (W. C.): dine at Boswell’s w. Mackenzie and fille, Jeffrey, Brewster,
Coventry, L. and C.: invite
Cranston.
“20, Sa. Breakfast at
Murray’s w. Dewar,
Ritchie, Fairley, &c., sit: Heriot’s Hospital: dine at
Fletcher’s w. Brown,
Craigs, Mr Miller, Miss
Miller, and Miss Wilks.
“21, Su. Call on
Jeffrey: Playfair calls n. Nicholsons and Jas.
Ballantine’s w. Ballantine: Hugh Murray, Jamieson, Willison, and G. H.
Walker dine.
“22, M. Breakfast at
Ainslie’s w. Dr Ainslie and
wife, Mr and Mrs Gray, Clarinda,
Constable, &c.: meet
Mrs Fletcher: call on Playfair and Dewar: sit: Yaniewiczes, Duncans,
Ainslies and Leslie dine.
“23, Tu. Dine at
Hepburn’s, Barfoot, w.
Macallum, Walker,
Hope, Inglis and family: sleep at
Oman’s.
“24. W. Breakfast,
Yaniewicz’s: shop, Dr Jamieson: Advocates’ Library: meet
W. Erskine and R.
Miller: call with Mrs Y. on Sir
W. D. Gray, Campbell,
Dewar, Ritchie,
Fairley, &c., dine: Theatre w.
Y’s, Duncan,
Gordon, &c., sup: sleep at
Oman’s, call on Gregoryn.
“25. Th. Breakfast at
Brodies, w. Moore and Hepburn: call on Forster:
meet Fleming: chaise w. Constable and Ballantine: dine at Abbotsford: sleep.
“26. F. Constable and Ballantine depart: Melrose w. Scott; adv. Buchann.Chas.
Erskine and wife dine: take coach at Selkirk.
“April 27. Sa. Breakfast at Carlisle: coach to Penrith: chaise
along Ulswater: dine at Wordsworth’s: call w. him on
Jackson; adv. Wakefield: circuit of
Grasmere: Derwent Coleridge dines: write
to M. J. and Thos. Moore.
“28. Su. Derwent dines: horse to Kendal: sleep.
“29. M. Coach:
breakfast at Lancaster: dine at Preston with Dilworth and Latham: sleep at Manchester.
“30. Tu. Call on
Reddish, Dean
and Jackson; adv. Kershaw: chaise w. Jackson and Kershaw:
dine at Walker’s, Longford, w.
do., Mrs Walker, Charles and 2
sisters.
“May 1. W. Call on Jackson and Dean, and
(w. Kershaw) at Church, College and
Hawkes. Coach evening; Stockport, Macclesfield; tea at
Leek: sleep at Ashbourne.
“2. Th. Call on
Mooren. seek
Boothby. Coach: dine at Derby: sleep
at Leicester. Write to M. J. grocer from
Perth, settled in Leicestershire. Coburg
Marriage.
“3. F. Coach: dine at
Woburn, w. squirrel-hunt: sleep in Skinner St. H.
Robinson calls.”
The following extracts from letters refer to the same tour, though they
are unfortunately in scarcely greater detail than the Diary:—
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Edinburgh, April 12, 1816.
. . .” I write these lines on Mr Constable’s own desk. I did not meet
with him till twelve at noon, and it is now half after one. He insists on my
making his house at Craigleith my home, and we are going there to-day; to dine
with Mr Matthews, the player, and a
small party. Not a word with him of business yet. A prologue of unbounded good
humour will, I hope, happily intro-duce the five-act play of the Man of
Business. . . . If he will help me to meet my bills, I shall stay the longer:
if he is not kind, I shall set on my return in two or three days.”
The Same to the Same.
“April 13, 1816.
. . . “I have had an explanation with Constable this morning, in our walk from
Craigleith to town. All is well. All will be done. I must be content with
bills, however, and with such as I can get. But this is better than nothing. .
. . Do tell me what is going on about Shelley? Has Hume been to
David? Must I hasten back immediately, to prevent that
affair from going wrong?”
The Same to the Same.
“Craigleith, April 14, 1816.
. . . “I am glad now, as things have turned out, that
you did not send me £10. I knew you could only do it by having recourse to
Lamb. But if I had failed in my main
negociation I should probably have left Edinburgh this very day, the moment I
received your dispatch, at farthest.
“My reception at Edinburgh has been, as I knew it
would be, kind and flattering in the extreme. I have already been introduced to
one-half of the literati of their city. Yesterday I was introduced to Jeffrey, the formidable editor and proprietor
of the Edinburgh Review. I am
going on Tuesday with Constable, to
spend two days with Dugald Stewart, the
crack metaphysician of Great Britain, nine miles from this town. To-day I
received an invitation to dine with the Earl of
Buchan, the elder brother to Lord
Erskine, which Constable made me refuse,
because he, who was also invited, could not go with me. I did not like to
refuse, and I do not like the persons who are to dine here to-day, but what
could I do? I could not disoblige Constable. He therefore
made me write that, next Sunday were equally convenient, I would stay one day
longer in Edinburgh than I had proposed, to have the honour of dining with his
lordship. . . . Under the circumstances, I cannot well disap-point all the good people that have a desire to see the
monster. And I firmly believe the connection will do me a world of good.”
. . .
The Same to the Same.
“Edinburgh, April 19, 1816.
. . . “I think I told you in my last, that I was going
on Tuesday to pay a visit of twice twenty-four hours to the celebrated
Dugald Stewart. My reception was
truly kind and unaffected. He lives in a palace, formerly inhabited by the
Dukes of Hamilton, of which he occupies not more than a third part, the rest of
the house being left to fall into ruin, a fit scene for the imagination of
Mrs Radclyffe to people with
wonders. It stands on the banks of the Frith of Forth, and opposite, on the
other side of the water, is a vast ridge of mountains with their tops covered
with snow. On our road we visited the ruins of Linlithgow, one of the most
splendid of the habitations of the ancient kings of Scotland, in which
Mary Queen of Scots was born.”
. . .
The Same to the Same.
“Abbotsford, April 26, 1816.
. . .” The place from which I now date is the
residence of the author of ‘The
Lady of the Lake,’ etc. Constable and another friend brought me hither yesterday. We
arrived to a six o’clock dinner, and all slept here. In the morning,
Constable and his friend set off on their return for
Edinburgh, and Mr Scott and myself for the
ruins of Melrose Abbey, which makes so distinguished a figure in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and from
which we are this moment returned. After dinner I shall proceed to Selkirk, and
in the evening take the mail for Carlisle.”
The Same to the Same.
“Manchester, April 30, 1816.
“I received your letter, directed to me at Rydal
Mount, the moment I was going to set off for Kendal. . . . I am all on fire to resume my novel. Would you have the indulgence
for me to have the first volume of ‘Guy Mannering’ in the house against my
return, to serve me, if God so pleases, in the nature of a muse.
“I stopped at Manchester Monday night at the joint
request of Constable and Mr
George Walker, a barrister whom I met at his house, to visit
Thomas Walker, the father of George,
a famous republican of the times of Gerrald, whom I had encountered two or three times at the house
of Horne Tooke about twenty years ago.
This venerable old gentleman lives at Longford, four miles from Manchester, and
I spent a delightful day with him. His wife is not less intelligent, and was
not a less ardent patriot than himself. He was, at the time I refer to, I
believe, the first manufacturer in Manchester, but was ruined in his business
by the party spirit of the period; and Felix
Vaughan, a relation I think of Horne Tooke,
bequeathed him a property, which has improved since so as to render him in his
latter days an independent country gentleman.”
Having arranged his business satisfactorily, and seeing his way to meet
some outstanding business debts, Godwin returned to
London in the enjoyment of comparative ease. He found his old friend, who had so patiently
and so often aided his labours, in difficulties, from which his extreme frugality had for
many years preserved him. Godwin returned the kindness which Marshal had done him in his embarrassments, and drew up an
appeal to friends for aid. Kindness of heart, egotism, and a half communistic belief that
the rich are bound to support literary paupers, are strongly displayed in a letter to
Josiah Wedgwood, which is copied in
Marshal’s own hand. It is impossible not to feel glad, to
know that a man so worthy and so loveable, was placed beyond the reach of want, in spite of
a strong opinion that whether in Godwin’s case or
Marshal’s the kind of appeal thus made is one which cannot
be too much discouraged or too severely criticised. Distress is of
course always pitiable, nor will there ever come a time when the rich may not find room for
the exercise of charity, and the poor be thankful to receive; but, save in the rarest
instances, it is well that the feeling of shame in receiving should not be absent. The
literary man who has failed in literature is no more entitled to demand help from his
neighbours than the grocer who has failed to sell his figs; the cases are in fact the same.
William Godwin to Josiah Wedgwood (Copy in
Marshal’s own hand)
“The person whose interests are at this moment the
subject of my thoughts is a person nearly of the same age as myself, whom I
first became acquainted with when I was seventeen, and whom from that time I
have never lost sight of. His career in the world has been similar to my own,
except that he wanted that originality of talent that the world has been
good-natured enough to impute to me. In my own outset in literature I was
engaged with the booksellers in obscure labours, reviews, compilations,
translations, etc., and during that time this gentleman was for several years
my coadjutor. Afterwards, when I engaged in writings of a superior cast, he set
up for himself; and now for twenty-five years he has subsisted respectably by
the compilation of indexes, the correction of English in works written by
foreigners in our language, translations, and the superintendence of works in
their passage through the press; and in these useful labours he has been at all
times indefatigable. But . . . owing to various circumstances, he finds himself
for the first time oppressed with debts which he is unable to discharge. . . .
“I have yet, however, but mentioned half the claims I
conceive him to have upon the kindness of others. Mr Marshal (that is his name) has spent the greater part of his
life in the disinterested service of others. By his indefatigable exertions,
principally in going from friend to friend, and from house to house, £1000 were collected a few years ago
for the widow and six young children of Mr
Holcroft, who by his death were left pennyless in the world; and
I could fill a sheet of paper with the bare list of his kindnesses of a similar
nature. It is therefore particularly painful to me to think that he who has in
a multitude of instances been the means of relief to others should be without
relief himself. What I am anxious to do is to raise for him £200 or £300, by a
proper application of which he might be set free from the world.”
Through the summer of 1816 the Diary is thickly strewn with the entries of
deaths. Mrs Jordan, the Bishop of Llandaff, who had been Godwin’s earliest literary patron,
and Sheridan died within the same fortnight,
June-July, the last especially being a loss which was sensibly felt by one who had ever
admired his political career. Day after day which succeeded the funeral saw Godwin standing by Sheridan’s
grave; the poetry in the man’s nature, which refused to exhibit itself in his
tragedies, was wont to exhibit itself unconsciously in these pilgrimages to what became to
him sacred shrines, and a walk to a dead man’s grave was the kind of hero worship
which was with him a favourite form of devotion.
But a domestic sorrow which was to touch him far more nearly came with
the autumn days. Fanny Godwin, as she was always
called, the daughter of Gilbert and Mary Wollstonecraft, is, after her mother, the most
attractive character with whom we meet in the whole enormous mass of Godwin’s MSS. Little mention is made of Mary Shelley, she was but a child when she left her
father’s roof, and her maturer nature expanded under Shelley’s influence—not Godwin’s. But
Fanny, in 1816 aged 22, was a young woman of marked individuality,
and most lovable nature. She was full of what was termed in the
language of that day “sensibility,” a word which has fallen out of use, and for
which there is no precise equivalent. Well educated, sprightly, clever, a good
letter-writer, and an excellent domestic manager, she had become not only a dear child, but
a favourite companion to Godwin, was useful to, and not unkindly
treated by Mrs Godwin. She saw the better side of
all who surrounded her, and in writing to Mary Shelley made excuses
for all the little jarrings of the household at home, and for Mrs
Godwin’s tempers. The difficulties of business were confided first to
her, and her ready sympathy stood in the place of more active help, which then she could
not give. Altogether a bright, attractive girl. Had she been at home when
Shelley’s attachment to Mary began, it
is possible that her strong common sense might have prevented the elopement which took
place, though we cannot pretend to regret that two such natures as the
Shelley’s should each have found their complement in the
other. Yet, however this may be, there can be no doubt that had Fanny
Godwin instead of Jane Clairmont been the guest of the
Shelleys, a far more wholesome, a far less disastrous influence
would have been brought to bear upon their lives.
Yet there was a reverse to this picture. The extreme depression to which
her mother had been subject, and which marked other members of the
Wollstonecraft family, seized hold of Fanny Godwin also from time to time; the outward circumstances of her life
cannot be called happy, and though she put the best face on them to others, she was, to
herself, often disposed to dwell on them and intensify them in a way which may fairly be
called morbid. She made at times a luxury of her sorrows.
In September 1816 Mrs Bishop and
Everina Wollstonecraft were in London, and saw a
good deal of Godwin and his family. They left London
on September 24th, and it was arranged that Fanny
should follow her aunts early in October, and spend some time with the relatives of whom
she had seen so little. It is not quite clear where she was to join her aunts, who had been
long in Ireland, but, as far as can be gathered from the slight indications in the Diaries
and letters, it would seem that the sisters had gone into South Wales, where some of the
family still resided, that Fanny was to join them there, and cross
with them to Ireland from Bristol or Haverfordwest.
Before leaving London she wrote a cheerful letter to Mary Shelley, then at Bath, and on the 7th of October she
started to join her aunts. But she never reached them. On her arrival at Bristol, she
wrote, what Mrs Shelley calls in her Diary, “a very alarming
letter,” and Shelley started at once
for Bristol. He returned that night, hoping that these fears were vain, as
Fanny had pursued her journey. At Swansea she put an end to
herself, without having written any further letter either to Godwin, her sister, or her aunts, who were expecting her arrival, except a
few lines without address.
The Cambrian newspaper for Saturday, Oct. 12,
1812, has an account of the tragedy:—
From the “Cambrian.”
“Swansea, Sat.
Oct. 12, 1816.
“A melancholy discovery was made in Swansea
yesterday. A most respectable looking female arrived at the Mackworth Arms Inn
on Wednesday night by the Cambrian Coach from Bristol; she took tea and retired
to rest, telling the chambermaid she was exceedingly fatigued, and would take
care of the candle herself. Much agitation was created in the house by her
non-appearance yesterday morning, and in forcing her chamber door, she was
found a corpse, with the remains of a bottle of laudanum on the table, and a
note, of which the following is a copy:—
“‘I have long determined that the best thing
I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was
unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons
who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps
to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing
of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as * * *’
“The name appears to have been torn off and burnt,
but her stockings are marked with the letter ‘G.,’ and on her stays
the letters ‘M. W.’ are visible. She was dressed in a blue-striped
skirt with a white body, and a brown pelisse, with a fur trimming of a lighter
colour, lined with white silk, and a hat of the same. She had a small French
gold watch, and appears about 23 years of age, with long brown hair, dark
complexion, and had a reticule containing a red silk pocket handkerchief, a
brown berry necklace, and a small leather clasped purse, containing a 3s. and
5s. 6d: piece. She told a fellow-passenger that she came to Bath by the mail
from London on Tuesday morning, from whence she proceeded to Bristol, and from
thence to Swansea by the Cambrian coach, intending to go to Ireland. We hope
the description we have given of this unhappy catastrophe, will lead to the
discovery of the wretched object, who has thus prematurely closed her
existence.”
From the “Cambrian” of Saturday,
October 19th, 1816.
“On Friday last an inquest was held on the body of
the young lady, the melancholy termination of whose existence we mentioned last
week, verdict—found dead.”
Here is the account, if such it may be called, in Mrs Shelley’s Diary:—
“[Bath] Thursday, 8th October, 1815. Letter from
Fanny. . . . . .
“Wednesday 9th. . . . . In the evening a very
alarming letter comes from Fanny.
Shelley goes immediately to Bristol.
We sit up for him until two in the morning when he returns, but brings no
particular news.
“[Written later, and in different ink,] Fanny died this night.
“Thursday 10th. Shelley goes again to Bristol, and obtains more certain trace.
Work and read. He returns at 11 o’clock.
“Friday 11th. He sets off to Swansea. Work and read.
“Saturday 12th. He returns with the worst account; a
miserable day. Two letters from papa.
Buy mourning, and work in the evening.”
Godwin’s record is still more brief. On the
9th, below the account of the reading and visits of the day, is the one word
“Swansea,” and next day, no doubt in consequence of a similar letter from
Bristol to that received by Mrs Shelley, he started
by the Bristol coach. From Bristol he went back to Bath, finding that all was over, and
that Shelley had gone to Swansea, and the next day
he returned to London. For some unexplained reason he did not visit his daughter at Bath.
He wrote to Shelley at Swansea, and to Jane Clairmont, who was with his daughter in her lodgings, not a quarter of
a mile from the York House Hotel, where he slept.
There is nothing whatever in the Godwin or Shelley papers which
throws even the smallest ray of light on Fanny’s death, and conjecture is idle, even if inevitable. There is
no trace of disappointed love, no sign of any exceeding weariness of life, except in
moments of occasional despondency, which were constitutional. It may be that alone, and
possibly, with the full particulars of her own birth, and her mother’s story, but
lately known to her through her recent intercourse with her aunts, the morbid feelings to which she was occasionally subject gained the mastery
over her reason, usually so sound, and led her to seek a lasting rest.
The theory, which owes its origin to Miss
Clairmont, that Fanny was in love
with Shelley, and that his flight with her sister
prompted self-destruction, is one above all others absolutely groundless. To
Shelley, as to Mary, she
was an attached sister; she was never in love with him, either before or after her
sister’s flight.
One month after this occurrence to the very day, another suicide, for
which unhappily it is all too easy to account, finds entry in Godwin’s Diary. On Saturday, Nov. 9th, Harriet Shelley drowned herself in the Serpentine. The body was not found
till Dec. 10th, and on the 16th Godwin received a letter on the
subject from Shelley. It is not the object or the
duty of this work to discuss the relations between Shelley and poor
Harriet, and so much as is necessary has been already said, but it
is impossible to pass over this tragical event without one remark. Whatever view may be
taken of the breach between husband and wife, it is absolutely certain that
Harriet’s suicide was not directly caused by her
husband’s treatment. However his desertion of her contributed or did not contribute
to the life she afterwards led, the immediate cause of her death was that her father’s door was shut against her, though he had at
first sheltered her and her children. This was done by order of her sister, who would not allow Harriet
access to the bed-side of her dying father.
A frequent correspondence followed between Godwin and Shelley, and on December
24th the former wrote a letter to his daughter, the first which had passed between them since she left her home. She is
carefully described in the diary as M. W.
G. Shelley’s second marriage took place
on Monday, December 30; the entries relating to it in Godwin’s
diary are extremely curious, as though intended to mislead any one who might, without
sufficient information, glance at his book. It is probable that the diary in use during the
year always lay on his desk, obvious to prying eyes, while those not in use were locked
away. However this may be, the entries are as follows:—
“Decr. 29, Su. Mandeville ça la. P. B. S.
and M. W. G. dine and sup.
“30, M. Write to
Hume. Call on Mildred w. P. B. S., M. W.
G., and M. J.; they dine
and sup; tea Constable’s w.
Wells, Wallace,
Patrick, and Miss C. See No. XVIII. infra pag ult.
“31, Tu. They
breakfast, dine, and sup. Holinshead,
Ric. iii.”
On turning to the last page of Diary, vol. xviii., the last but one used,
and containing entries of two years before the present date, the words “Call on
Mildred” are explained. On the blank page at the end of that volume is
written:—
“Percy Bysshe Shelley
married to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at St
Mildred’s Church, Bread Street, Dec. 30, 1816. “Haydon, Curate. “Spire, Clerk. “Present—William
Godwin. “Mary Jane
Godwin.”
The record of this event may fittingly close with an extremely
characteristic letter to Hull Godwin, written early
in the following year. If there be no suppressio
veri beyond what may be considered justified by the occasion, there is
at any rate a needless suggestio falsi.
William Godwin to Hull Godwin.
“Skinner St., Feb. 21, 1817.
“Dear Brother,—I have not
written to you for a great while, but now I have a piece of news to tell you
that will give you pleasure, I will not refuse myself the satisfaction of being
the vehicle of that pleasure.
“I do not know whether you recollect the
miscellaneous way in which my family is composed, but at least you perhaps
remember that I have but two children of my own: a daughter by my late wife and
a son by my present. Were it not that you have a family of your own, and can
see by them how little shrubs grow up into tall trees, you would hardly imagine
that my boy, born the other day, is now fourteen, and that my daughter is
between nineteen and twenty. The piece of news I have to tell, however, is that
I went to church with this tall girl some little time ago to be married. Her
husband is the eldest son of Sir Timothy
Shelley, of Field Place, in the county of Sussex, Baronet. So
that, according to the vulgar ideas of the world, she is well married, and I
have great hopes the young man will make her a good husband. You will wonder, I
daresay, how a girl without a penny of fortune should meet with so good a
match. But such are the ups and downs of this world. For my part I care but
little, comparatively, about wealth, so that it should be her destiny in life
to be respectable, virtuous, and contented.
“It will always give me the greatest pleasure to hear
how you and your family are going on. We have been in the habit of sending you
little presents of books, but Mrs Godwin
says that she feels a little puzzled on the subject, and doubtful, now that
your children are grown up, whether books are acceptable. We will therefore
endeavour to think of something else. I have to thank you this Christmas for a
ham and a turkey, which, exclusive of their intrinsic value, gave me much
satisfaction as marks of your remembrance.—Very affectionately yours,
“William
Godwin.”
The intercourse now resumed between the father and daughter was again
cordial and constant. Godwin frequently visited the
Shelleys at Marlow, and the diary for 1817 records excursions by
water with Peacock and his son-in-law to row the
boat, Mrs Godwin, Mrs
Shelley, and Jane as the other
sitters. They went to Medmenham and Hurley, when the talk was “of novels and
perfectibility.” There were other days when Godwin and
his daughter drove in a gig, and Peacock and
Shelley walked to meet them at a given point, Bisham or Hampden,
in the bright October weather, the last autumn of Shelley’s stay
in England.
In March 1818 the Shelleys went to Italy. The
immediate cause of the journey was a demand from Byron,
then at Venice, for Allegra, his natural daughter,
who had been under Mrs Shelley’s care from the
time of her birth—about a year and a quarter before. Though Mrs
Shelley had given the child all a mother’s care, and had accepted the
charge ungrudgingly, there was every reason that Byron should have the
superintendence of Allegra’s education, and that she should be
removed from her mother’s influence, less likely now to reach her under
Byron’s roof than anywhere else. But there was so much
reason to fear that Byron might change his mind, that when once the
summons came, scarcely a moment was lost in preparing to carry it out; and the
Shelleys, with Miss
Clairmont, took the child as far as Milan or Leghorn, whence it was sent to
Byron at Venice, with its nurse.
Moore’s note in Byron’s life is as follows:—“This little
child had been sent to him by its mother about
four or five months before, under the care of a Swiss nurse, a young girl not above
nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect unfit to have the charge of such
an infant, without the superintendence of some more experienced person.” This is not quite correct. Byron
had himself sent for the child, and the nurse had never been intended by Mrs Shelley to do more without superintendence than to
take the child the short journey in Italy to her father’s home. Lord
Byron, no doubt, found himself somewhat embarrassed by the difficulties of
his charge, and the child was unintentionally neglected. But no blame whatever attached to
Mrs Shelley for the selection of the nurse, and she felt as
strongly as Byron, that Allegra’s mother
was the worst person possible to train the child.
Godwin kept up a constant correspondence with the
Shelley’s, but the letters which passed are in great measure
lost, and those that remain belong rather to a complete life of Shelley, which yet has to be written.
After the troubles of the past year or two, Godwin began a late summer of literary activity. His novel Mandeville was written in 1817, and
the important Essay in answer to
Malthus in 1818. In these years also were written many detached Essays, some of
which were published in his lifetime under the title “Thoughts on Man,” and others have been only
recently collected and edited, when their value has become rather antiquarian than
literary. Old friends, too, from whom he had kept somewhat aloof, were resought; Basil Montagu, Mrs
Inchbald, and other names unseen for some years, appear again in the
Diaries; the routine of work and reading was resumed for each day, and society and the
theatre again occupied many evenings. There was little pecuniary pressure, life on the
whole was easy, and domestic troubles few. Mrs
Godwin was able to visit some friends in France, with whom she had been
intimate before her marriage, and a few extracts from her husband’s letters furnish
some particulars of the family.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin. [Paris.]
“Skinner Street, May 14, 1817.
. . . “I did not intend to write till in answer to
your first letter from France. But, now that it is so long in coming, I begin
to fear that if I wait for that no letter will reach you during your stay at
Paris. I have, however, little to communicate: everything thus far goes with a
tolerable degree of tranquillity. On Friday, the day after you left me, I wrote
to Shelley, and introduced in my letter
the story I had learned from Hill at the
Exhibition the Monday before, which had so much disturbed me. I wrote on
Friday, because to a Friday’s letter I could have no answer till Monday,
and therefore I calculated on two days’ repose. But my calculation was a
bad one. I knew that Shelley’s
temper was occasionally fiery, resentful, and indignant, and I passed this
interval in no very enviable state. I thought perhaps I might have tried his
temper too far. By the post-time on Monday my nerves were in a degree of
flutter that I have very seldom experienced. But the letter came, and there was
no harm: it was good-humoured. As to Hill’s story (I
took care not to name my authority), he only said in a vague way that it was
‘much exaggerated, and that for the present explanation was
superfluous.’”
The Same to the Same.
“May 22, 1817.
. . . “Your silence of ten days (ten days it was to
me) after you quitted the Terra Firma of England, filled me with a thousand
anxieties. I thought you were drowned: ‘Though not a blast from Œol’s cave had strayed: The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope, with all her
sisters, played.’ I did not know even the name of the vessel that had conveyed you, nor
scarcely how to enquire about it. Then I imagined that you had left me with the
intention that I should see and hear from you no more. You cannot conceive,
therefore, how pleasantly your letters came on Saturday last to dispel all
these surmises. . . .
“I have hardly any news. While you wander from
province to province, and every day see wonders that you never saw before, we
barely vegetate. . . . This tremendous fit of wet weather totally deprives me
of my understanding. It feels as if it turned all my brain into a soft pulp,
where no conceptions would stay, and all the traces ran into each other.”
The Same to the Same.
“June 2, 1817.
. . .” And so I am now to suppose that, at the
receipt of this, you are actually at St Etienne. And how, poor creature! have
you borne the fatigue of so many wearisome leagues? To you the immense journey
from Paris to the department de la Loire must be like the circumnavigation of
the globe. But I hope that some of the good family of the Grand Magasin des
Armes met you at least at Lyons. And now you are seated in the midst of them,
and are happy, endeavouring to compare present things with the recollection of
twenty-five years past. Does not all this make you utterly forget the fusty old
fellow in Skinner Street, in his black morning coat, shivering over the
half-extinguished embers of a June fire. How can he stand the comparison with
the beautiful Sophia, the all-amiable
Charlotte, and the animated
Perico? . . .
“Mary has just
been spending a few days here: Shelley
brought her up, and left her with us. On Friday last (the day before she
returned to Marlow) we went together to Lamb’s in the evening, and had the pleasure to find
Miss Lamb, who had returned home the
Saturday before.
“You will, I believe, be pleased to hear that
Jane is taking to new habits: she
wears stays, and dresses herself every day becomingly and with care: this at
the entreaty of Shelley and Mary.”
The Same to the Same.
“June 17, 1817.
. . . ” This is a very busy week in our town. The
trials of Watson senior, Thistlewood, &c., began June 9. After a
sitting of seven complete days, Watson was acquitted at
half after six yester- day evening.
To-morrow, Wednesday, a grand ceremony is to take place at the opening of the
Waterloo Bridge. The Prince Regent is to be
there in state: and the Duke of Wellington,
together with the charger he rode in the battle, is come over from Paris, on
purpose to do honour to the solemnity. On Thursday, Talma and Mademoiselle
George are to make their first appearance at the Opera House, in
an appropriate exhibition of select scenes from the French drama.”
The Same to the Same.
“Skinner Street, July 9, 1817.
“——You arrived at St. Etienne on the 11th of June,
and on the 3rd inst., only three weeks after, according to your last letter,
you have the resolution to leave it, and they allow you to depart. I cannot but
feel some compunction from the fear that by abridging, you have poisoned all
the pleasure you went so far to seek.
“Then, what a contrast will your sober and sombre
home afford! No adulation, no worship, no multitudes waiting on your steps! I
can send out no procession on horse and foot to meet you at Streatham and
Croydon. It is all prose here: life stripped of its romance, its fringe and its
gilding, and not unmixed with sad realities. Examine yourself, how far you
shall be able to bear it
“William, I
think, is decidedly improved. Mr Burney
writes this concerning him, ‘My pupil left me in good looks, and with
an excellent character. I am not, I believe, extremely prone to bestowing
praise, and shall therefore deserve to be believed when I assure you, with
real pleasure, that I think your boy very essentially improved. This
amendment you cannot, I think, but see yourself, and you will, I know, on
such a point not be very unwilling to trust my judgment.’”
The Same to the Same.
“July 16, 1817.
“And so this letter will actually find you on English
ground! . . . . News when we meet. We are all well. William has been uncommonly well. Two or three times we have
been threatened with a storm since you left us, but all is tranquil now.
“I forgot to tell you in my last that Mr and Miss
Lamb set out for Brighton on the 26th ult., to pass a month of
holiday-making. Mrs Morgan went in their
company
“Come, then, my love! We are trying to get everything
ready, so that your nice eye may find nothing to be offended with. This week
was our wash. Esther is all on the qui vive, saying, What will my mistress
expect me to have done? The cook preserves her composure, and thinks it would
be unbecoming her station to betray the symptoms of a perturbed mind.”
The following letter to Jeffrey is
in answer to one which, as it appears, was written on Oct. 15th in reference to Mandeville, then just completed.
Godwin’s letter is not to be found, but
its contents are plain from the answer to it. A more excellent editorial letter was seldom
written, and if reprinted, with the necessary alterations, it might serve as a useful
circular, to be used by modern editors in answer to similar applications.
Francis Jeffrey to William Godwin.
“Edinburgh, Oct. 30, 1817.
“My Dear Sir,—It is
impossible that I can be offended with the frankness of a man of honour, or
insensible to the natural anxieties of an author. At present, however, I can
only say that I am every way disposed to oblige or to serve you, but that I
have a duty to discharge from which I am sure you have no disposition to divert
me. I know nothing whatever of any arrangement for committing your work, which I am very impatient
to see, either into the hands of Mr
Hazlitt or of Sir James
Mackintosh; and as it is generally my office to offer or propose
these tasks to my several contributors, I rather imagine it will be left for me
to undertake the determination in this case also. Now, before deciding such a
matter, I really must first see the book myself. I really do not quite agree
with you in the opinions you seem to hold as to the critical qualifications of
the two gentlemen you have alluded to. If the one is somewhat too cautious and
discursive, and afraid of offending, the other is far too rash and exaggerated,
and too exclusively studious of effect to be a safe, exemplary reviewer. Will
you permit me to add that if there be any particular intimacy between
Mr. Hazlitt and you, or if you have communicated
together on the project of his being your reviewer, I must certainly consider
that as a serious objection to his being intrusted with the task. I have no
doubt of his fairness and impartiality, so far as intention is concerned, but
he seems to be a person whose judgment is somewhat at the mercy of partialities
and prejudices—and, besides, the thing is of ill example, and affects the
purity of our tribunal. Nothing of the kind has ever been done before among us
to my knowledge, and I cannot give my consent to it now. I think it extremely
probable that the thing will end by my taking you into my own hands, but I
cannot now pledge myself to anything, and am not sure that I ought to encourage
any further communication on the subject. On a little reflection, I am
persuaded you will be satisfied of the propriety of all I have now said.—I am,
&c.,
F. Jeffrey.
“I have burned your letter, and shall not speak
of it to anybody.”
Hannah Godwin died on Dec. 27th, 1817, and her death
and funeral are duly recorded in the Diary, as are from time to time visits from, and the
deaths of, members of his family. But except the interchange of kindly intercourse
occasionally, intimacy of thought and feeling had long ceased
between Godwin and his family. Save perhaps in early
youth, there can be no cordial pleasure in family gatherings, when the relatives live in
different intellectual worlds, and Godwin’s sympathies were at
all times called out rather by community of mind than community of blood. Consanguinity is
a fetish, to which even those whose faith in it is on the wane, find it difficult to pay
only the legitimate respect.
A few letters to Mrs Godwin for
1818 may carry on the family history, and, though the events are few, they show Godwin in his lighter and pleasanter moods. Comparative
freedom from care had softened Mrs Godwin’s
temper, and the absence of her step-children and her own contributed to the same result.
Charles Clairmont had found his way to Vienna,
where he was engaged as tutor to the Imperial Princes, married a German lady, and made his
home permanently on the continent. His sister, when
not with the Shelleys, occasionally lived with him,
and also became at one time governess in the family of Lady
Mountcashel, who had, by a second
marriage, become Mrs Mason, and was resident in Italy.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin. [Southend.]
“Skinner St., Sep. 10, 1818.
“Of all the cursed inventions that the devil has
entailed upon mankind, since the establishment of posts by Cyrus, King of Persia, it has ever been my
opinion that the sending of letters by a private hand is the worst. I am now
arrived at the middle of the fourth day, since I have known nothing of your
feelings, or even if you exist. It appears that on Sunday morning last you were
alive, and able to hold a pen; but whether you lived to eat your duck I am
still ignorant. I cannot come to you, for Mrs Lacey may
have cried out, and you may have run away, at least six hours before my
arrival.
“Kenny seems
to be entirely off from the idea of coming to Southend, so I shall not come
with him, according to my project. In fact he is such a shilly-shally
know-me-nothing fellow, that he was never worth your thought.
“They dined with me yesterday, and brought Tom with them, whom I have always taken notice
of, and I like; the nurse and baby also. William
Curran called in about half-an-hour before dinner, and I served
him up to table. Mrs Giles provided so economically that
by twelve at night there was not a morsel left; in other respects we did very
well. The Lambs came in the evening, and
I am sorry to say he went away high drunk.
“I cannot conceive for what reason, except to
increase my perplexities, you have kept back the newspapers. The post would
bring them, ten every day if you chose it, for nothing. Coleridge says that in his part of the country
the poor people were very desirous to hear from their kindred at a distance,
and could not afford the postage. They were therefore in the habit of going to
the post office and saying, Is there a letter for me? which, when they looked
at the direction of, they laid down again and went away, satisfied from having
seen the handwriting of their relatives, of their locality at least, and that
they lived. The Morning
Chronicle would have served if you chose it, for that sort
of economical daily communication between us, when you were indisposed to
anything else. But you are indeed a niggard.
“I have kept this open to the latest hour of the post
on Thursday. Still no intelligence. Seas roll to part us. Alps arise to
intercept our intelligence, and all that is left me is to hope that we shall
meet ‘in another, a better world.’
“Ever affectionately yours,
William Godwin.”
The Same to the Same.
“Sep. 18, 1818.
“On Thursday last I had a visit from Mr R—— of Barbadoes, who drank three glasses
of wine, and I began to be afraid would want thirteen more. He is a sort of
greasy, dingy, short and thick player-looking man. He enquired about the three
pounds we have been overpaid, in rather an
equivocal way; but I have seen no more of him. He says Mrs Fenwick is very well, and that Eliza was expected to lie down in two days
after he sailed. He has taken up his abode for the present at Thomas Fenwick’s.”
The Same to the Same.
“Sep. 21, 1818.
“I have not had a line from William since my letter of remonstrance. I
certainly cannot feel towards him exactly as I could wish to feel towards a
son, till he puts an end to this gloomy silence and expresses some sentiments
on the subject. . . .
“I went to Drury Lane Theatre on Tuesday last, and to
my mortification found my name blotted out of the ‘Book of Life.’ I
wrote, however, a letter of remonstrance, and on Friday received an answer of
restoration from the constituted authorities. I am afraid I shall always be a
little chagrined when, anywhere or for any purpose, I am put on the
superannuated list.
“We had a very fine day yesterday, save and except
two very short showers. Two days ago I put away my nankeens, as I thought, for
the season; but the soft and genial air of yesterday brought them out again. .
. . Would it not be worth while, in the way of commercial speculation, to bring
a Southend fowl or two with you when you return?
“Most affectionately yours,
W. Godwin.
“I miss my pocket comb! likewise two stomacher
pins, stuck in a play-bill. If the comb is at Southend, that must be owing
to the notable contrivance of Mrs Susan.”
The Same to the Same.
“Skinner St., Sep. 26, 1818.
“I tremble for your journey home. The mornings here
are the loveliest possible; but before four o’clock the day is overcast,
and the evening brings with it torrents of rain. Twice I have purposed to go out at nine
o’clock to a new farce, in which Liston is the principal figure, and twice I have suffered
disappointment from this cause. If you come by the packet you will in all
probability be driven below, and how you will be able to bear that, if there
are many passengers, I cannot guess. For God’s sake, cheer your heart
with some of Mrs Snow’s excellent boiled beef. . . .
“I am getting a little intimate with Tom Holcroft, and I like him. I have lent him
the first volume of ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ at his own choice; for, poor fellow,
he is sadly at a loss for useful occupation. He says he wishes Mrs Godwin were come home. . . .
“Most affectionately yours,
William Godwin.
“The wood frame which supported two of the three
arches of Southwark Bridge has been removed, and you cannot imagine how
light and enchanting it looks.”
The remaining letter for the year, which seems worth preservation,
relates to William Godwin, junior. The
father’s matured and completed estimate of his son will appear in a later year; but
though here the trouble that William had given at home is not
unnaturally concealed, the close analysis of character, which was always a favourite
pursuit of Godwin, is not abandoned, even when his interests and
feelings might alike incline him to be less minute.
William Godwin to ——
“Nov. 21, 1818.
“The application I desired to make to you related to
my only son, who is now sixteen years of
age. He does not feel a vocation to literature as a profession, and I am glad
of it; for though I do not think so ill of the literary character as Mr D’Israeli would persuade his readers
to think, yet I know that it is a very arduous, and a very precarious
destination. I propose therefore to place him in commerce. Till his character
became decided in this respect, I kept him at Dr
Burney’s school at Greenwich, which I need not tell you has a high reputation for classical
learning. A year ago I removed him to Mr Jay’s
commercial establishment at Bedford. He has therefore had nearly every
advantage of education. His proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and French
languages is considerable. He has been initiated in algebra, geometry,
chemistry, etc. He has begun Spanish. My own opinion of his intellectual
abilities is, that he is not an original thinker; but he has a remarkably clear
head, and retentive memory. He is the only person with whom I have been any way
concerned in the course of education, who is distinguished from all others by
the circumstance of always returning a just answer to the questions I proposed
to him, so that I could always lead him to understand the thing before him, by
calling in the stock of his own mind. He is besides of a very affectionate
disposition. . . .
“I have sometimes been idle enough to think that the
only son of William Godwin could not
want friends if he deserved them. What I ask in the present case, is not money
out of any man’s pocket, but to accept a servant, who in all probability
would prove a most valuable acquisition to his employer. My vanity may
nevertheless have misled me on this point. There are many men who think of an
author and his works, just as a child thinks of a plaything, and who do not
conceive they owe any kindness to him who has occupied all his days for the
public benefit and instruction.” . . .
Apart from the family history, and the usual details of daily life,
study, and relaxation, there is but little in the diaries which calls for notice, nothing
which demands quotation. More political events are recorded than for some time previously,
though in the briefest way, indicating that the writer’s mind was freer from cares
which concentrated the attention on self. And in the year 1818 Godwin again flung himself into politico-social controversy, by devoting a
very large share of his time and study to the refutation of Malthus’sEssay on
Population. It would appear that to no other of his works, except perhaps ‘Political Justice,’ did he give
himself up so thoroughly. Not a day passes without a record of pages written and rewritten,
with minute and scrupulous care.
It was by no means the last of his works, but those which followed were
written with diminished power. For while writing it, came the first warning of seriously
failing health. On 25th Nov. 1818 he had a slight stroke of paralysis, so slight that it in
no degree interfered with his usual course of life, and he dined out the very next day, But
there are records afterwards of numbness, now in this, now in that limb, and from time to
time the significant entry, that he felt quite well for so many days, showing clearly that
the prevailing sensation was one of somewhat failing bodily powers.
The following letter to Mrs Godwin
reflects his state of mind with great vividness, and shows the store he set by this work:—
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin[at Southend],
“Aug. 31, 1819.
. . . “I never was so deep in anything as I am now in
Malthus, and it is curious to see
how my spirits fluctuate accordingly. When I engage in a calculation, I cannot
pursue it for an hour without being sick to the lowest ebb. I told you in my
last that I have employed William and
Rosser. I wrote to Booth for a calculation early on Tuesday last,
entreating him to let me have it by the first post on Wednesday, that I might
not be prevented from getting on. As usual, I heard nothing of him on
Wednesday, nor till Thursday dinner, when he dropped in to my mutton. I was,
therefore, miserable. On Friday I made an important discovery and I was happy.
The weather has since changed, and you know how that affects me. I was nervous
and peevish on Saturday to a degree that almost alarmed me. On Sunday I was in
heaven. I think I shall make a chapter expressly on the
geometrical ratio that will delight my friends and astonish the foe. To-day I
woke as usual between five and six, and my mind necessarily turned on my work.
It was so fruitful that I felt compelled to come down stairs for pen and ink,
which I made use of in bed. I invented what I believe are two fine passages,
and minuted them down. But the consequence is, there my day’s work ends.
I rose in a little fever.
“I did not intend to tell you all this, and I am
afraid of your not reading it in the spirit of sympathy. But this way of life
is my destination, and I must pursue it. I think it will preserve my faculties
and lengthen my existence. But if it does exactly the contrary, I care not.
What matters what becomes of this miserable carcase, if I can live for ever in
true usefulness? And this must be the case in the present instance: for
whatever becomes of my individual book, if I am right the system of Malthus can never rise again, and the world is
delivered for ever from this accursed apology in favour of vice and misery, of
hard-heartedness and oppression.
“Why, to borrow your own words, do I talk so much of
myself? Because I have nothing else to think about?”
The answer to
Malthus was published by Longmans, on Nov. 25th, 1820. But it was published for
the author, and as will be seen by a subsequent letter to Mrs
Shelley, failed to realize in any degree the sum on which the writer had
counted.
CHAPTER X. NEW FRIENDS AND NEW TROUBLES. 1819—1824.
Once more the pages of the Diary are thickly studded with the
records of death. One whose acquaintance had been so varied and so numerous, presented a
large band of friends to the attacks of the great divider. But the stoical calm after which
Godwin had ever striven, deprives these records
of anything like lament, or the pathos lies in obscure touches. One such is to be found in
the entry under August 1, 1820—“E. Inchbald
dies, Suffield dies.” His most intimate friends
are described as Miss, Mrs, and the men simply by their names. Mrs
Inchbald alone in these pages is mentioned as though he thought of her under
the intimacy of a Christian name. Speculation is out of place in a biography, but it is
almost impossible not to think that this death brought to Godwin a
very keen pang. She was the woman whom once he had desired to make his wife, with whom he
quarrelled for the sake of one he loved yet more, in whose grave the romance of his life
was buried.
Two new acquaintances, who ripened into friends were made by Godwin in 1819; the first being a young man, attracted, as
so many others had been, to one whose writings had taught them so much. Mr Rosser’s name occurs as a most frequent guest in
Godwin’s house, and a companion in his walks, whenever the
Cambridge vacations made it possible that they should be together.
Once more the sympathy for the young, and the prudent advice for their career, which have
been so manifest on former occasions, come out in the letters to
Rosser which follow. They are not in strict order of time, but in
a sequence which is not inappropriate.
Henry Blanch Rosser to William Godwin.
“Cambridge, March 14, 1819.
“——I am introducing myself to the study of the
Ancients with ardour. The more I know of them, the more I meditate on them, and
weigh the meaning of every letter of their words, the more I love and honour
them. . . . . When I review my past life, and look for the causes that have
operated to mould me into what I am, I always recur to the time I first read
‘Political
Justice,’ September 1815. I should not now be in Cambridge had
I not read it. How doubly fortunate then am I in the friendship of the man to
whose book I, the world, owe so much. The ardour and enthusiasm it produced may
have cooled, but the conviction of its truth has gathered strength. Nor do I
forget, though I am forced to silence here, that my inclination and duty are
combined in fostering and spreading the doctrines I adopt.”
The Same to the Same.
“Cambridge, April 13, 1819.
“——I suppose, from what I have heard, that a majority
of men here are miserable. Several causes may perhaps be assigned for this. . .
. . The solitude, to those who cannot find a resource in books and study, is
insupportable; ennui and disgust seize their souls, and companions and
dissipation cannot quiet them. Another species of solitude—no female society. .
. . The disgusting monotony of the whole, and, with me at least, the constant
attendance at chapel, and the dull, cold, miserable, sombre religious sound of
the bell. Another cause, the wretched
country. . . . . How great an advantage it would be if the University were
situated in a romantic, mountainous country, with a ‘matchless
cataract,’ a forest, a volcano, or the sea; some magnificent object of
nature, or association of art. At the foot of the Alps, at Rome or Athens, or
the Bay of Naples, or, as it must be in England, in the Peak, or the coast of
Devon, or in Wales.”
William Godwin to H. B. Rosser.
“March 7, 1820.
“DearRosser,—I do not
like your last letter, and why should I not tell you so? You rejoice in having
made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of
proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made
after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I
think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that
a man is wrong who is without religion.
“But if a zeal in proselytism in such a cause might,
under certain circumstances, be right, think how it shows in a young man
conforming in all outward shows with the Church of England—regular in
frequenting her worship, and even joining her in her most solemn act of
communion. Do you think that this character looks well. Oh! shut up your
thoughts on this subject for the present in your own mind. Do you think there
is no danger of their growing too mature? Or would you be ashamed of reflecting
deeply and patiently before you finally cease to reflect and examine in a
question, which all mankind in all ages have agreed to regard as of the deepest
importance?
“I am also displeased with your telling me of your
letter to Wooler, advising him to leave
a question you think contemptible to the Whigs. Formerly I took some pains to
convince you that the Whigs, as a party in the state, were of the highest value
to the public welfare, and constituted the party to which a liberal-minded and
enlightened man would adhere. My pains, I see, were thrown away. It is possible
I was wrong. But was it necessary that you should go
out of your way, and make an occasion to oppose me (I use the language of the
world) with your contempt for my partialities?. . . . .”
The Same to the Same.
“March 27, 1820.
“——I now as frankly say, I like your letter of the
24th inst. as that I disliked your letter of Feb. 23rd.
“My first feeling was that I must have been wrong in
censuring its elder brother. But I went back to it, and there was still entire
all that had offended me at first. You rejoiced in making an Atheist. I saw no
end to this. The man who is bitten with the zeal of proselytism hopes to make a
convert at least three times a week. You say now, how could you help doing as
you did? You were in solitude: had but one friend. To this I answer—it stands
in your February letter—‘I need not add that Austen
is of my faith. Bedingfield also, my old friend
Bedingfield, is become an Atheist.’
“I look also to the passage about Wooler. There it stands,—pure, unmitigated,
groundless contempt for the Whigs. As you express yourself now, you come so
near to my sentiments that it is not worth disputing with you, and I have done.
“You seem not to know what I mean by religion. You
ask whether I do not mean benevolence. No: I should be ashamed of such a juggle
of words. The religious man, I apprehend, is, as Tom Warton phrases it in the title of one of his poems, ‘An
enthusiastic or a lover of nature.’ I am an adorer of nature: I
should pine to death if I did not live in the midst of so majestic a structure
as I behold on every side. I am never weary of admiring and reverencing it. All
that I see, the earth, the sea, the rivers, the trees, the clouds, animals,
and, most of all, man, fills me with love and astonishment. My soul is full to
bursting with the mystery of all this, and I love it the better for its
mysteriousness. It is too wonderful for me; it is past finding out: but it is
beyond expression delicious. This is what I call religion, and if it is the
religion you loath you are not the man I took you for.
“You express yourself ready to burst with joy on the
event of the Spanish Revolution. All that I have seen I like, and I am willing
to anticipate all that is good from it. A revolution that gives representation,
that gives freedom of the press, that sets open the door of the prison, and
that abolishes the inquisition; and all this without bloodshed, must have the
approbation of every liberal mind. But I know too little respecting it. If it
gives, as you say, universal suffrage, that is pain to my heart. Without the
spirit of prophecy, I can anticipate the most disastrous effects from that.
England is not yet ripe for universal suffrage, and, as I have often said, if
it were established here, the monarchy probably would not stand a year. Now the
medicine that is too strong for the English nation, I can never believe will
work well in Spain.
“I understand the picture you make of yourself. You
begin to find yourself at home, and you can do comparatively very well without
me. It is well. An old man is perpetually losing friends by death or otherwise,
and he would be glad to keep some. But I also must do as well as I can. As
Shakespeare says, ‘Crabbed
age and youth cannot live together.’ It is of more importance
that you should go on well, than that you should stand in need of me.”
The other new friend was Lady Caroline
Lamb. She was daughter of Lord
Bessborough, and wife of William Lamb, afterwards
Lord Melbourne. Lady Caroline
died Jan. 25, 1828, before her husband succeeded to the title. Her literary powers were
considerable, and her novel, “Glenalvon,” is still remembered. Almost all the letters which passed
between herself and Godwin have appeared worthy of
preservation both for their intrinsic value, and as the record of the last of
Godwin’s many friendships with clever and remarkable women.
The Lady Caroline Lamb to William
Godwin.
“Feb. 25, 1819.
“Lady Caroline
Lamb presents her compliments to Mr
Godwin, and fears his politics will incline him to refuse her
request of his interest for Mr George
Lamb. She hopes, however, it will not offend if she solicits
it.”
William Godwin to Lady C. Lamb.
“Feb. 25, 1819.
“My dear Madam,—You have
mistaken me. Mr G. Lamb has my sincere
good wishes. My creed is a short one. I am in principle a Republican, but in
practice a Whig.
“But I am a philosopher: that is, a person desirous
to become wise, and I aim at that object by reading, by writing, and a little
by conversation. But I do not mix in the business of the world, and I am now
too old to alter my course, even at the flattering invitation of Lady Caroline Lamb.”
Lady Caroline Lamb to William Godwin.
“Brocket, May 15, 1821.
“I cannot express to you how pleased I was to see
your note, and how much I regret not being able to meet you upon the day you
name, as I intend staying at Brocket Hall until June, to enjoy this most
beautiful season of the year. I wish I could induce you to come here instead,
if that is possible. I will send my carriage to Barnet to fetch you any day,
but not just at present, when we shall be with people. Write and tell me all
you would have said, or half, if you will not all. It shall be sacred unless
you permit otherwise. I am impatient to know what you have been doing since the
great work came
out. I read it, and admired it much. It is a more delightful and cheering view
of this world than the other.
I am no judge which is the truest. Pray tell me when you write (if you do) what
you think of the ‘Doge of
Venice,’ if you have read it, and also whether you are an
admirer of Cobbett. I think he writes better to my
fancy than almost any one. I hope you are well; are you happy? Pray honour me
so far as to write me a longer letter than the last, for every word you write
is to the purpose. Yours is a beautiful style. I believe the saying so to you
is the repeating what has been said by everyone for years. Forgive me. I am too
stupid and comfortable to think of anything new or witty.—Believe me, however,
with much interest and respect yours,
“C. L.”
The Same to the Same.
“Thank you for the book. Mr
Lamb begs me to remind you of your promise, and as we shall be a
week at Brocket, and your time is precious, choose the day which happens to be
most convenient to you. Your room shall be always ready. We are, and shall be
entirely alone until I have seen my dear father, who returns from Italy in May. A quiet day or two in
the country may not displease you; and as I said before, a person with your
mind can, I am sure, encounter all the dulness of a mere family party without
fear. We shall be at Brocket after Sunday next, and until Monday shall continue
there. You have only to choose a fine day, and let us know the night before.
You will be sure to be welcome.—I am, with respect and truth, yours,
“Caroline Lamb. “Melbourne House, Actually Four in the Morning.”
The Same to the Same.
“You would not say, if you were here now, that nature
had not done her best for us. Everything is looking beautiful, everything in
bloom. It is impossible for me to come just yet to London, but I will if I live
in June. Yet do not fancy that I am here in rude health, walking about, and
being notable and bountiful. I am like the wreck of a little boat, for I never
come up to the sublime and beautiful—merely a little gay merry boat, which
perhaps stranded itself at Vauxhall or London Bridge—or wounded without killing
itself, as a butterfly does in a tallow candle. There is nothing marked, sentimental or interesting in my career. All I know is, that
I was happy, well, rich, joyful, and surrounded by friends. I have now one
faithful, kind friend in William Lamb, two
others in my father and brother—but health, spirits, and all else is gone—gone
how? Oh, assuredly not by the visitation of God, but slowly and gradually, by
my own fault! You said you would like to see me and speak to me. I shall, if
possible, be in town in a few days. When I come I will let you know. The last
time I was in town I was on my bed three days, rode out and came off here on
the 4th.
“God preserve you.—Yours,
C. L. “Brocket Hall.”
The other letters which belong to this period need but little
elucidation. The stoicism which is so admirable when employed in repressing his own
feelings, is less beautiful when used to condole with Mrs
Shelley on the death of her child. It
is fair to remark, however, that he is dealing with his daughter as he would have desired
that men should deal with him had he given way to what, had he indulged it, he would have
considered a blameable weakness.
William Godwin to W. Wallace.
“Skinner St., Sep. 3, 1819.
“My dear Sir,—Will you
forgive me if I say one word to you on the subject of the introduction with
which you favoured me yesterday?
“There are two kinds of introductions, and I am
unable to ascertain to which class your friend belongs. Otherwise one word
would stand in the place of fifty.
“I am not yet so old but that I should be glad to
add to the number of my acquaintance, any man from whom I was likely to obtain
profit or pleasure. But to be such a man, Hamlet says, ‘as this world goes, is to be one man
picked out of ten thousand.’
“Now, if your friend is not such a man (will you
excuse me?) my time is too precious, and I have too few days left in my little
span of life to wish to increase my acquaintance without some absolute gain. I
desire no more than that you would examine yourself and enquire whether he is a
man whose intercourse would afford me reasonable delight, you cannot bring him
too soon, and I shall hold myself your debtor. If he is not, put him off for
this time.—Sincerely and thankfully yours,
“W.
Godwin.”
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Skinner St., Sep. 9, 1819.
“My dearMary,—Your letter
of August 19 is very grievous to me, inasmuch as you represent me as increasing
the degree of your uneasiness and depression.
“You must, however, allow me the privilege of a
father, and a philosopher, in expostulating with you on this depression. I
cannot but consider it as lowering your character in a memorable degree, and
putting you quite among the commonality and mob of your sex, when I had thought
I saw in you symptoms entitling you to be ranked among those noble spirits that
do honour to our nature. What a falling off is here! How bitterly is so
inglorious a change to be deplored!
“What is it you want that you have not? You have the
husband of your choice, to whom you seem to be unalterably attached, a man of
high intellectual attainments, whatever I, and some other persons, may think of
his morality, and the defects under this last head, if they be not (as you seem
to think) imaginary, at least do not operate as towards you. You have all the
goods of fortune, all the means of being useful to others, and shining in your
proper sphere. But you have lost a child: and all the rest of the world, all that is beautiful, and
all that has a claim upon your kindness, is nothing, because a child of two
years old is dead.
“The human species may be divided into two great
classes: those who lean on others for support, and those who are qualified to
support. Of these last, some have one, some five, and some ten talents. Some can support a husband, a child, a small
but respect able circle of friends and dependents, and some can support a
world, contributing by their energies to advance their whole species one or
more degrees in the scale of perfectibility. The former class sit with their
arms crossed, a prey to apathy and languor, of no use to any earthly creature,
and ready to fall from their stools if some kind soul, who might compassionate,
but who cannot respect them, did not come from moment to moment, and endeavour
to set them up again. You were formed by nature to belong to the best of these
classes, but you seem to be shrinking away, and voluntarily enrolling yourself
among the worst.
“Above all things, I entreat you, do not put the
miserable delusion on yourself, to think there is something fine, and
beautiful, and delicate, in giving yourself up, and agreeing to be nothing.
“Remember, too, that though at first your nearest
connections may pity you in this state, yet that when they see you fixed in
selfishness and ill-humour, and regardless of the happiness of everyone else,
they will finally cease to love you, and scarcely learn to endure you.
“The other parts of your letter afford me much
satisfaction. Depend upon it, there is no maxim more true or more important
than this, Frankness of communication takes off bitterness. . . . True
philosophy invites all communication, and withholds none.”
Towards the end of 1819 came the first indications of pecuniary troubles
connected with the Skinner Street business, and the Shelleys wrote
strongly from abroad to urge that it should at once be abandoned. Godwin was still sanguine, and wrote the letter of which
an extract is here given:—
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Skinner Street, March 30, 1820.
“I consider the day on which I entered on this
business as one of the fortunate days of my life. The faculty of invention and
intellectual exertion in the
human mind has its limits. ‘Political Justice’ was published in 1793, and ‘Caleb Williams’ in 1794.
‘St Leon’
did not come till 1799, ‘Chaucer’ in 1803, and ‘Fleetwood’ in 1805. My mind then
felt exhausted; I could no longer pursue unintermittedly the same course; or if
I had it would have been ineffectively and with aversion.
“Blessed, therefore, and thrice blessed was the
interval which enabled me to renew my strength! I did not begin ‘Mandeville’ till
1816, and I have ever since felt that I have gained a new tenancy of my
intellectual life. I write and I plan works, and I feel all the vigour of
youth, that I shall never leave off writing again, till the infirmities of
nature, or some terrible convulsion in my circumstances, shall perhaps put an
end to my literary career for ever.
“You will know that I did not remain idle in this
precious interval, to which I am indebted for everything I value in this
present life. I manufactured the works of Baldwin! I
digested a School Dictionary; I wrote the ‘Essay on Sepulchres,’ and the
‘Lives of the Nephews
of Milton.’ But these were not me; I
did not put forth the whole force of my faculties; the seed of what peculiarly
constitutes my individual lay germinating in the earth, till in its own time it
should produce its proper fruit. . . .
“Even the ‘Answer to Malthus’ could never
have been produced without the business. I thought this ‘Answer’
might have been completed in six months; it is now more than two years since I
undertook it. New views are perpetually opening upon me; new difficulties, with
their solutions; and though I work upon it in every day of health, it is far
from being finished. I have resolved not merely to attack Malthus in his remedies, his vice, and his
misery; but to show that there is no need of any remedies, that the numbers of
mankind never did and never can increase in the preposterous way he lays down;
and though I shall be able perfectly to make out this, yet it is attended with
a world of difficulties, and requires patience indescribable. While, then, I
pursue this Herculean task, the inglorious transactions of the shop
below-stairs furnish me with food, clothing, and habitation, and enable me to
proceed . . .
“I have read the tragedy of ‘Cenci,’ and am glad to
see Shelley at last descending to what
really passes among human creatures. The story is certainly an unfortunate one,
but the execution gives me a new idea of Shelley’s
powers. There are passages of great strength, and the character of Beatrice is certainly excellent.—Ever most
affectionately yours,
William Godwin.”
The letters which follow relate to the answer to Malthus, and though some deduction must
be made for the fact that they were written to the author by admiring friends, they
certainly express a feeling which at the time was widely spread. But the answer came too
late; the interest in Malthus’ book had
greatly died away, and not all the enthusiasm of Godwin’s admirers could give the
book success.
W. Morgan to William Godwin.
“Nov. 6, 1820.
. . . “I have delayed acknowledging the receipt of
your valuable present, till I had time to examine it thoroughly, that I might
be better able to give my opinion of it. I can now assure you, with great
truth, that I have carefully read the whole of your answer to Mr Malthus with much
pleasure and instruction, and am fully convinced that you have given the
death-blow to his geometrical and arithmetical ratios. It might have been
thought that a system so disgusting could not have required any great effort to
destroy it: but the popularity of Mr
Malthus’s publication has proved the contrary: and I think
the public are much indebted to you for quieting their alarms, and for exposing
the folly and impiety of a system which made the kind and benevolent Author of
Nature to appoint vice and misery as his agents in the world. I do not know
whether you have not granted too much in supposing that the existence of the
present population may be preserved by four children to a marriage. If half the
inhabitants die before they attain the age of 21, as in the Northampton Tables,
which give the mean probabilities very fairly, what compensates for the bachelors and old
maids? Illegitimate births may do a little towards it, but certainly not
enough. I have always thought that 4½ children, or more, are necessary, and
therefore that Dr Franklin’s 8 children (if such a mean ever existed)
would not be sufficient to double the number in the way he mentions. It should
also be observed that the inhabitants of America are remarkably short-lived,
which proves an earlier decay of their constitution, and consequently a shorter
period for procreation. This goes a little way towards strengthening your
argument with respect to America, but it really wants no assistance. I am
myself convinced that population fluctuates in all parts of the world. In some
it becomes less, in others greater: but I cannot subscribe to your opinion that
the human race may become extinct, any more than I can to that of Mr
Malthus that they are in danger of increasing so fast as to
render it our duty to check it, by divesting ourselves of our best and noblest
feelings, in relieving or preserving the lives of our fellow-creatures.”
H. B. Rosser to William Godwin.
“Cambridge, Jan. 9, 1821.
“DearGodwin,—The morning I received your
letter I called on Barron, the man in
whose rooms in College I have been, till within this week, since last May. He
is quite satisfied that you have overthrown Malthus, and I am satisfied, from some conversation I had with
him, that he fully comprehends the pith of the argument. This is a valuable
opinion. He is a first-rate classic, and no ordinary mathematician. He is yet
only twenty-one, and has begun to think about a year.
“The present Vice-Chancellor, who is also Master of
Trinity, is so determined to be made a Bishop, and has descended
to so scoundrelly inquisitorial practices, that I have judged it best to have
no personal communication with Hatfield. . . .
“I went to see and talk with Place and Mill, from both of whom it shall be their fault, not mine, if I
do not get a distinct statement of their—if Place has
any—objections to your book.
“Has there been any article on it in the
‘Examiner?’ I shall
see Henry Hunt upon this point. . . .
“In the ‘Black Dwarf?’ I shall endeavour to see Wooler upon this.
“In the ‘Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,’ now publishing,
Mr Mill is a frequent contributor.
The letter ‘P’ is yet distant, and an article,
‘Population,’ must go in. If he is converted: why should not he?
and, if not, why should not some other person make your book a mine for an
article?
“These are all words. . . . I can only send you my
best wishes.—Very sincerely yours
H. B. Rosser.”
Sir James Mackintosh to William Godwin.
“Mardocks near Ware, Sep. 6, 1821.
“My dear Sir,—When I
received your work
last year, I was labouring under a distressing illness, which rendered me for a
time unable to read or write, and for a longer period unfitted me for serious
application of mind.
“The first exertions of my understanding after an
imperfect recovery, were claimed by the duties of a laborious session of
Parliament, and since the almost entire restoration of my health, I have only
had time to look over your work in a very cursory way. I shall shortly study it
with the attention which the nature of the subject requires. But I can no
longer delay this short explanation of a silence which you must have thought
unpardonable.
“I should be wanting in that frankness, of which you
have always set the example, if I were to say that your reasonings (as far as I
have hitherto considered them) have changed my opinions on population. But I
must add, that these opinions do not appear to me inconsistent with the firmest
belief in the indefinite improvement of the human character and condition. The
theory of the increase of mankind does not, by just inference (as I think),
lead to any consequences unfavourable to their hopes. I before intimated to you
my notion on that subject, and should be glad to talk of it when I see you
next, which I will take care to do when I go to town.
“I own I thought your tone towards Malthus somewhat intolerant, and that you
might have maintained your argument as firmly with more forbearance towards
such an opponent.
“There is a review of your book in the present
‘Edinburgh
Review,’ which I have only just seen. I beg you to be assured that
I never knew or heard anything of it till I saw it in print. I should be
exceedingly sorry (for more than one reason) to take any part in the
application of any language to you personally but that of esteem and regard. I
make this observation to satisfy my own feelings and your claims on me. I need
not say that several circumstances would render it unpleasant to me to have any
public use made of my language.—I am, my dear Sir, with sincere regard, yours
faithfully,
J. Mackintosh.”
The pecuniary troubles already mentioned assumed no serious form till the
year 1821, nor did any real crisis arrive till the year 1822. The title to the
proprietorship of the house in Skinner Street, of which Godwin held a long lease, was disputed, and an action for ejectment was
brought against him. After considerable litigation the suit was finally decided adversely
to Godwin’s interests. The results were an enforced move from
Skinner Street, a claim for arrears of rent, which was wholly unlooked-for, the
disorganization of the whole of the business which had been carried on with considerable
and increasing success, and finally Godwin became bankrupt.
Lamb, with prompt sympathy, wrote the following
letter. The loan was indeed munificent, when his own slender circumstances are considered.
Charles Lamb to William Godwin.
“May 16, 1822.
“DearGodwin,—I sincerely feel for all your
trouble. Pray use the enclosed £50, and pay me when you can. I shall make it my
business to see you very shortly.—Yours truly,
C. Lamb.”
A letter from William Godwin
junior to Mrs Shelley, though of a
later date, will here fitly summarize the troubles through which the family had passed.
William Godwin, junior, to Mrs Shelley.
“No. 195 Strand, 25th Feb., 1823.
” . . . . I am not aware how far my father may have
informed you—I mean, of course, as to particulars—relative to our affairs, the
Skinner Street business, &c.; but as I know he is not very minute in
general, it may afford you some gratification for me to run them over, and
discuss them as they strike me.
“On quitting Skinner Street in May [1822], which we
were obliged to do at two days’ notice, we were glad to find anybody, you
may well suppose, that would receive us. Read at the time
that he brought into the house his ejectment, coupled with it a power to seize
for his bill of costs £135. This was an oppressive circumstance indeed, for the
ejectment compelled everything to be moved, under pain of being thrown into the
street,* by the Saturday night—this was Thursday night—while the
sheriff’s distress prevented us from moving a single thing. Well, as the
money could not be raised to meet the writ, it was clear that we must submit to
the seizure. So to prevent any time being lost in the clumsy way the auctioneer
would set about making a catalogue, I wrote out overnight a list of our best
bound books, and those most likely to fetch the required sum, so that by about
3 o’clock on the Friday, the auctioneer being satisfied, we were suffered
to begin to move. In the morning of this day my mother had secured a lodging
and a warehouse for us in the neighbourhood—the former in Pemberton Row, close
to Gough Square, and the latter in Gunpowder Alley, close to Strahan the King’s Printer. . . . .
Suffice it to say we were fortunate enough to get all our things out
* Understand this literally. At a pianoforte
makers in Tottenham Court Road, where an ejectment was served, which he
refused to obey, they actually tossed his pianofortes, finished and
unfinished, from the second floor windows into the street.
by the appointed time, and bade a long
farewell for ever to Skinner Street. In Pemberton Row we were put up for six
weeks, first deciding what we would do, and then doing what we had decided. My
father at last agreed for the house we now inhabit, at the awful rent of £210
per annum: how we shall get on God only knows: I have some fear, it is true,
but, like Pandora’s box, I still find hope at the bottom. Subsequently
Read obtained a verdict against us for £373, 6s. 8d.,
for rent from the beginning of 1820 with costs, but this we are in hopes will
be met by my father’s friends.
“‘Valperga’ is finished”
“Valperga” was a novel by Mrs Shelley,
which she had sent to her father in MS. the moment she heard of his renewed embarrassments,
begging him to publish it and use the proceeds as his own. After some hesitation he
accepted the generous gift, making sundry alterations which he conceived would more fit it
for the public taste. In a later letter he says of it—
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Feb. 1823.
“——Your novel is now fully printed, and ready for
publication. I have taken great liberties with it, and I am afraid your
amour propre will be
proportionally shocked. I need not tell you that all the merit of the book is
exclusively your own. The whole of what I have done is merely confined to
taking away things which must have prevented its success. . . . .”
Before, however, he had made up his mind to accept the work, the
following correspondence passed between the Godwins and the
Shelleys. Shelley’s
own letter has a peculiar interest, as it is the last one remaining written to England by
that hand, which less than six weeks afterwards was “to toss with tangle and with
shells.”
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Skinner St., May 3, 1822.
“DearMary,—I wrote to
you a fortnight ago, and professed my intention of not writing again. I
certainly will not write when the result shall be to give pain, unmitigated
pain. It is the questionable shape of what I have to communicate that still
thrusts the pen into my hand. This day we are compelled by summary process to
leave the house we live in, and to hide our heads in whatever alley will
receive us. If we can compound with our creditor, and he seems not unwilling to
receive £400 (I have talked with him on the subject), we may emerge again. Our
business, if freed from this intolerable burthen, is more than ever worth
keeping.
“But all this would perhaps have failed in inducing
me to resume the pen, but for an extraordinary accident. Wednesday, May 1, was
the day when the last legal step was taken against me. On Wednesday morning, a
few hours before this catastrophe, Willatts, the man who
three or four years before lent Shelley
£2000 at two for one, called on me to ask whether Shelley
wanted any more money on the same terms. What does this mean? In the
contemplation of such a coincidence I could almost grow superstitious. But
alas, I fear, I fear, I am a drowning man, catching at straws.—Ever most
affectionately your father,
“William
Godwin.”
P. Bysshe Shelley to Mrs Godwin.
“Lerici, May
29, 1822.
“Dear Madam,—Mrs Mason
[Lady Mountcashel] has sent me an
extract from your last letter to show to Mary, and I have received that of Mr Godwin, in which he mentions your having left Skinner
Street. In Mary’s present state of health and
spirits, much caution is requisite with regard to communications which must
agitate her in the highest degree, and the object of my present letter is
simply to inform you that I have thought right to exercise this caution on the
present occasion.
“Mary is at
present about three months advanced in pregnancy, and the irritability and
languor which accompany this state are always distressing and sometimes
alarming: I do not know how soon I can permit her to receive such
communication, or how soon you and Mr
Godwin would wish they should be conveyed to her, if you could
have any idea of the effect. Do not, however, let me be misunderstood. It is
not my intention or my wish that the circumstances in which your family is
involved should be concealed from her, but that the details should be suspended
until they assume a more prosperous character, or at least the letters
addressed to her or intended for her perusal on that subject, should not convey
a supposition that she could do more than she does, thus exasperating the
sympathy which she already feels too intensely, for her father’s
distress, which she would sacrifice all she possesses to remedy, but the remedy
of which is beyond her power. She imagined that her novel might be turned to immediate
advantage for him; I am greatly interested in the fate of this production,
which appears to me to possess a high degree of merit, and I regret that it is
not Mr Godwin’s intention to publish it immediately.
I am sure that Mary would be delighted to amend anything
that her father thought imperfect in it, though I confess that if his
objections relate to the character of Beatrice, I shall lament the deference which would be shown by
the sacrifice of any portion of it to feelings and ideas which are but for a
day. I wish Mr Godwin would write to her on that subject,
and he might advert to the letter, for it is only the last one which I have
suppressed, or not, as he thought proper.
“I have written to Mr
Smith to solicit the loan of £400, which, if I can obtain it in
that manner, is very much at Mr
Godwin’s service. The views which I now entertain of my
affairs forbid me to enter into any further reversionary transactions, nor do I
think Mr Godwin would be a gainer by the contrary
determination, as it would be next to impossible to effect any such bargain at
this distance. Nor could I burthen my income, which is barely sufficient to
meet its various claims, and the system of life in which it seems necessary
that I should live.
“We hear you have Jane’s news from Mrs
Mason. Since the late melancholy event (the death of Allegra) she has become far more tranquil, nor
should I have anything to desire with regard to her, did not the uncertainty of
my own life and prospects render it prudent for her to attempt to establish
some sort of independence as a security against an event which would deprive
her of that which she at present enjoys. She is well in health, and usually
resides in Florence, where she has formed a little society for herself among
the Italians, with whom she is a great favourite. She was here for a week or
two, and though she has now returned to Florence, we expect her soon to visit
us for the summer months. In the winter, unless some of her various plans
succeed, for she may be called la fille aux mille
projéts, she will return to Florence.
“Mr Godwin
may depend on receiving immediate notice of the result of my application to
Mr Smith. I hope to hear soon an
account of your situation and prospects, and remain, dear Madam, yours very
sincerely,
P. B. Shelley.”
In the same week which saw Shelley drowned in the Gulf of Spezzia, and before the sad news reached
England, Godwin, already so harassed by pecuniary
difficulties, had to mourn the death of Henry Blanch
Rosser. He died in the early days of the Long Vacation, the last he would
spend at Cambridge, where he had hoped to take honours, and he certainly was a man of great
promise. He had written a pamphlet on
Godwin’s side in the Malthusian controversy of singular
ability and grasp of his subject. Less perhaps than any of
Godwin’s younger friends had he shown any disposition to
waver from his teacher’s views. He was the last but one of the young people who
regarded Godwin as guide, philosopher, friend, almost more than
father.
Both deaths are recorded with the same stern repression of self which
has appeared throughout the Diaries, but to Mrs
Shelley her father wrote a letter full of feeling and sym-pathy. After her return from Italy with
her son in August 1823, the most cordial intercourse and affection marked the relations of
father and daughter, even though as some sort of concession to Mrs Godwin’s jealous temperament, he speaks of her in writing to his
wife as “Mrs Shelley,” and not as
“Mary.” The only letter, however, which need be
quoted, is one which Godwin wrote before the return
of the widow to England. Sir Timothy Shelley offered
to take the entire charge of his grandson, provided
his mother would give up all control over him. Godwin’s letter
was written while Mrs Shelley’s answer was unknown to him. It
was, of course, an absolute refusal to give up her now only child.
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“195 Strand, Feb. 14, 1823.
“My
DearMary,—I
have this moment received a copy of Sir Timothy
Shelley’s letter to Lord
Byron, dated February 6, and which, therefore, you will have
seen long before this reaches you. You will easily imagine how anxious I am to
hear from you, and to know the state of your feelings under this, which seems
like the last blow of fate.
“I need not, of course, attempt to assist your
judgment upon the vile proposition of taking the child from you. I am sure your
feelings would never allow you to entertain such a proposition. But were it
otherwise, even worldly prudence would forbid your taking such a step. While
you retain the child you are, in spite of all they can do, a member of your
husband’s family. But the moment you give it up, you appear to surrender
all relationship to them or to him. Your child is still, in case of Charles Shelley dying before him without
issue, heir to the whole estate. . . .
“Do not, I entreat you, be cast down about your
worldly circumstances. You certainly contain within yourself the means of subsistence. Your talents are truly extraordinary:
Frankenstein is
universally known, and though it can never be a book for vulgar reading is
everywhere respected. It is the most wonderful book to have been written at
twenty years of age that I ever heard of. You are now five-and-twenty. And,
most fortunately, you have pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your
mind in the manner most admirably adapted to make you a great and successful
author. If you cannot be independent, who should be? Your talents, as far as I
can at present discern, are turned for the writing of fictitious adventures.
“If it shall ever happen to you to be placed in
sudden and urgent need of a small sum, I intreat you to let me know
immediately. We must see what I can do. . . . We must help one another. . . . .
Your affectionate father,
“William
Godwin.”
Once more Godwin’s friends
came forward to help him in his difficulties, and the manner in which he was really
regarded by those who knew him was even more shown now than it had been before. Then he was
a politician, vigorous and fierce; a warm friend indeed and a dangerous enemy. Then the
chief subscribers were among the leading Whig statesmen, and the subscription was in some
degree a manifesto, but political and religious opinions played no part on this occasion.
Then he was one whom men found it their interest to conciliate and help. But now he was
broken and feeble—his pen was no longer vigorous, though always graceful; he was no more
dangerous or very helpful. What was done was done for himself, and because men really
valued him. The following letters refer to his difficulties and the aid given to him.
“Albemarle St., July 8, 1823.
“We take the liberty of soliciting your attention to
the case of Mr Godwin, a writer of great
talents and reputation, distinguished by works of literature, not relating to
any disputed questions, who in the sixty-seventh year of his age has been
suddenly involved in difficulties without any want of industry and prudence on
his part. He has for fifteen years earned a moderate income as a bookseller. He
was unexpectedly engaged in a law-suit, occasioned by a disputed title to the
premises which he occupied, and being compelled to change his residence, he has
again established himself in another house, with all appearances of the same
moderate success as before. But the arrears of his former rent, which he had no
reason to expect would ever have fallen on him, together with the costs of the
law-suit, amount to a sum which he is wholly unable to pay. We hope that this
sum, which does not exceed £600, may be raised by a subscription, which will
not press heavily on any individual, and that a man of genius may thus be
enabled by his own industry to earn a creditable subsistence during the
remainder of his life.
“We have the honour to be your most obedient
servants,
“H. C.
Robinson. “F.
L. Gower.
“W.
Ayrton. “Dudley.
“John
Murray. “Wm.
Lamb.
“Charles
Lamb. “J.
Mackintosh.”
William Godwin to Lady Caroline Lamb.
“Sep. 20, 1823.
“My Dear Madam,—Do you
remember that it was contrary to my inclination that you were acquainted with
the story of the judicial avalanche that threatened to fall on my head in the
month of November next? How wrong I was. Yet I wished that all the
communication that occurred between us should be an interchange of thoughts and
sentiments. There is a conventional equality be-tween
the gentle and the simple as long as the one are not benefactors, the others
the receivers of benefits. Can that equality and reciprocity of sentiment exist
afterwards? It is too late now to ask this question in relation to you and me.
The Rubicon is past.
“Cæsar passed the
banks of that river and came to other impediments. In this respect I am like
Cæsar. He had his Ides of November, and so have I.
November is now fast approaching, and my adversary is inexorable. In how brutal
a manner he is capable of proceeding he showed in Skinner St., and when
November arrives he will show here, unless he is prevented.
“My subscription has gone on unfortunately, or
rather has stood still. Mr Murray,
unluckily for me, undertook to be my Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary
of State, and has slept in his offices. He has issued a very small number of
letters. I have always been of opinion that a bare circular letter was of
little efficacy: persons even well-disposed are inclined to wait till some
special messenger comes to rouse their attention. Mr
Murray has, however, baffled me there: he has no list, and
cannot even guess who are the persons to whom his letters have been sent.
“This is all unlucky enough, but, your Ladyship will
ask, what is in your power to do for me? That is the point for me to come to.
The Earl of Bessborough and Mr William Blake were names which you
particularly did me the favour to point out: and you were so good as to add
that you were persuaded they would have a pleasure in being brought into the
business. Circular letters have therefore been dispatched to them in the
present week, and would it be impertinent in me to add that a single word in
any shape coming from your Ladyship might turn the index to a yes, instead of a
no?
“I would have addressed this letter to Mr Lamb, as being perhaps more properly the
business of man and man, but you have so much accustomed me to present my
trifles to you that my thoughts, whether I will or no, when I take up the pen
with the idea of Brocket Hall, sets the image of your Ladyship before me.
“May I hope soon to hear from you, to tell me you
forgive this fresh act of impertinence?”
Lady Caroline Lamb to William Godwin.
“My Dear Sir,—I will, and
indeed have written, and would that I could be of use to you. Some
circumstances which I do not much wish to explain prevent me from offering my
own assistance in the manner I could wish. Believe me, however, I will warmly
press the matter to the few I know. In the meantime, will you in charity send
me another ream of that thick drawing paper, 100 more pens, and two dozen
sticks of wax. Not that I either write or do anything with it, but it goes as
quick as lightning. Pray tell me if Mrs
Shelley is your daughter: they say she is very interesting and
beautiful, and is returned from abroad.
“Write to the Marquis of
Lansdowne, Earl Fitzwilliam,
Lord Dacre, the Duke of Devonshire, without naming me: merely
send the circular letter, also to Mr
Mansfield, Upper Winpole St., the Dowager Lady Lansdowne, Mr
Lambton, Earl Grey, Lord Holland. None of these are friends of mine,
but I think from circumstances it will be well to write to them. There is also
Mr Rogers in St James’ Place.
Douglas Kinnaird too: he is a friend
of Lord Byron’s, and to him I have
already written; but in all these cases you must not name me, only send the
letters as from Mr Murray.—Believe me
sincerely yours,
C. L.
“Will you send my small account due to your
secretary to Dr Roe, that I may
discharge it?”
The Same to the Same.
“My dear Sir,—From the
moment when I saw you last under such excessive agitation, until the present
moment, I have been, as you said I might be if I would, calm and perfectly
well, and tolerably happy. Is it not strange, then, that I can suffer my mind
to be so overpowered, and mostly about trifles? can you think of me with
anything but contempt? Tell me, would you dislike paying me a little visit? I
will not allure you by descriptions of a country life. If you come, I imagine
it is to pay me a friendly visit, and if you do not, I shall feel secure you
have good reasons for not coming. The whole of what
passed, which set me so beside myself, I forget and forgive; for my own faults
are so great that I can see and remember nothing beside. Yet I am tormented
with such a superabundance of activity, and have so little to do, that I want
you to tell me how to go on.
“It is all very well if one died at the end of a
tragic scene, after playing a desperate part; but if one lives, and instead of
growing wiser, one remains the same victim of every folly and passion, without
the excuse of youth and inexperience, what then? Pray say a few wise words to
me. There is no one more deeply sensible than myself of kindness from persons
of high intellect, and at this period of my life I need it.
“I have nothing to do—I mean necessarily. There is
no particular reason why I should exist; it conduces to no one’s
happiness, and, on the contrary, I stand in the way of many. Besides, I seem to
have lived 500 years, and feel I am neither wiser, better, nor worse than when
I began. My experience gives me no satisfaction; all my opinions and beliefs
and feelings are shaken, as if suffering from frequent little shocks of
earthquakes. I am like a boat in a calm, in an unknown, and to me unsought-for
sea, without compass to guide or even a knowledge whither I am destined. Now,
this is probably the case of millions, but that does not mend the matter, and
whilst a fly exists, it seeks to save itself. Therefore excuse me if I try to
do the same. Pray write to me, and tell me also what you have done about my
journal.
“Thank you for the frame; will you pay for it, and
send me in any account we have at your house. I am very anxious about my dear
boy. I must speak to you of him. Every one as usual is kind to me—I want for
nothing this earth can offer but self-control. Forgive my writing so much about
myself, and believe me most sincerely yours,
Caroline Lamb.
William Godwin to Mr Sergeant Lens.
“Sep. 24, 1823.
“Sir,—It is a thousand to
one whether you recollect a little boy to whom you did a kind action between 50
and 60 years ago, and
who has never seen you since. You, I daresay, have done so many kind actions
since, that this may well be obliterated from your mind.
“We met at Mr Christian’s
dancing-school at Norwich. You were almost a man grown, and I was perhaps about
twelve years of age. You and your sister and a Miss Carter
were, I believe, at the head of the school. Miss Carter
was a very plain girl, but a good dancer. I was in reality no dancer at all. It
so happened that one day in your hearing I said, thinking perhaps of nothing, I
should like for once to dance with Miss Carter. You
immediately answered, I will take care that you shall, and accordingly you
brought it about. This is altogether a trifle, but it has a hundred times
recurred to my memory.
“We have since run a different career. I have
written ‘Caleb
Williams’ and ‘St Leon,’ and a number of other books. Did you ever hear of
those books? And if you did, did your quondam school-fellow at the
dancing-school ever occur to your mind? You have been perhaps more usefully
employed in an honourable profession. The consequence is, you are rich, and I
am—something else.
“I have been twice married: my first wife was
Mary Wollstonecraft. My present
wife, fifteen years ago, looked with
anxiety to the precariousness of our situation: my resources were those I
derived from my pen: and persuaded me to engage in a commercial undertaking as
a bookseller. We were neither of us fit for business, and we made no great
things of it, but we subsisted. Till at length I was inevitably engaged in a
lawsuit which, after being several times given in my favour, was at length last
year decided against me.
“The consequence was heavy losses: costs of suit,
the purchasing the lease of a new house, the fitting it up, and many more.
These I have encountered, and I am doing tolerably well. But there is an arrear
due on the lawsuit (which was respecting the title to a house), under the name
of damages, &c., to the amount of £500, which will come against me in the
most injurious form the law can give it, in the beginning of November.
“Several noblemen and gentlemen a few months ago
formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of collecting this sum. . .
. But many delays occurred in forming this committee, and it was not completed
till July last. . . . My subscription falls short. This is principally owing to
the time of year. My friends tell me that if I could keep it open till the
meeting of Parliament it would still answer. But the beginning of November must
decide my good or ill fortune. In this emergency I am reduced to think of
persons whom I suppose to be in opulent circumstances, and respecting whom I
can imagine they may be kindly disposed towards me, to fill up the
subscription. It is by a very slender, and almost invisible thread that I can
hope to have any hold upon you, but I am resolved not to desert myself. The
subscription has gone about half way.
“Thus, Sir, I have put you in possession of my
story; and begging pardon for having intruded it on your attention, I remain,
not without hope of a favourable issue to my impertinence,—Your most obedient
servant,
W. Godwin.”
Sir James Mackintosh to William Godwin.
“Weedon Lodge, Tuesday.
“DearGodwin,—I am more grieved than you
perhaps would have expected by what you consider, I hope too precipitately, as
the final result of our projects. If you should be driven from the respectable
industry which, with your talents, reputation, and habits, you have undertaken
for your family, it will, in my cool opinion, be a scandal to the age. The
mortification of my own disability is aggravated by my natural, though not very
reasonable repugnance to an avowal of its full extent, and of all its vexatious
causes. But you must not give up. Be of good heart. New publications, I grant
to you, are not likely to increase your fame. But they will refresh your
reputation, and give you all the advantages of present popularity. When
liberality and friendship are quickened by public applause, they are more
trustworthy aids than in their solitary state. The great are to be pushed on by
the movement given to the many. I see
your novels advertised to-day. Could you ask Mr
Hazlitt to review them in the Edinburgh Review. He is a
very original thinker, and notwithstanding some singularities which appear to
me faults, a very powerful writer. I say this, though I know he is no
panegyrist of mine. His critique might serve all our purposes, and would, I
doubt not, promote the interests of literature also.
“I shall receive the two books with much
thankfulness, for, after much research, I have not yet traced the accounts of
Kirke and Jefferies to the original witnesses.
“Can you tell me whether L’Estrange continued the ‘Observator’ during James II.’s reign?
“I am sorry to hear of Mrs Godwin’s illness. Lady
Mackintosh begs her kindest remembrances, and I am most truly
yours,
“J.
Mackintosh.”
In 1824 Mrs Shelley submitted to
her father the MS. of a tragedy on which his opinion was unfavourable. The letter has in
great degree lost value now, except one sentence of keen, far-reaching criticism, and
another paragraph which shows that his own dramatic disappointments rankled still.
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Feb. 27, 1824.
“. . . . Is it not strange that so many people
admire and relish Shakespeare, and that
nobody writes, or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens I
should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written
since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions, the lines
and points of a Mathematical Diagram, and not men and women. If A crosses B,
and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? . . .
“For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if
you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches would that entail on you. Managers to be consulted,
players to be humoured, the best pieces that were ever written negatived and
returned on the author’s hands. If these are all got over, then you have
to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience,
whose senseless non-fiat shall in a moment turn the labour of a year into
nothing.”
CHAPTER XI. LAST LITERARY LABOUR. 1824—1832.
In the four years, 1824-28, Godwin published his “History of the Commonwealth of England.” Once more his interest in his
work had overpowered the paralysis of energy which so often attends the mere writing for
bread, and the book produced is vigorous, able, and, on the whole, wonderfully correct.
Subsequent historians have had access to documents which Godwin never
saw, but in the last volume, wholly devoted to Cromwell’s life, he has given a portrait of that great man which
deserves to stand by the side of that which Mr
Carlyle has painted for the world. No one before him had so fathomed the
character of that extraordinary man, who, as his historian says, having had to struggle
against all parties, religious and political, which divided England, succeeded in subduing
them all, while he raised the power of the nation to a degree unknown before his day.
It was the last of his greater works. The “Thoughts on Man,” published in 1830, were
essays already lying by him, and written during many previous years, and which required but
slight revision. They contain his mature convictions on religion and philosophy, but, like
his posthumous volume edited for his representatives in 1870, the difficulties discussed
are not our difficulties, still less are the solutions our solutions.
His last two novels, “Cloudesley” and “Deloraine,” and “The Lives of the Necromancers,” call for
slight mention. The great beauty of the English in which they are written is their chief
merit, but they have no special interest now.
When engaged in the “History of the Commonwealth,” he applied to Sir
Walter Scott for information on some points of Cromwell’s rule in Scotland, and received the following valuable
letter:—
Sir Walter Scott to William Godwin.
“Edinburgh, Nov. 22, 1824.
“Dear Sir,—I did not
answer your letter of the 20th August, being prevented by something at the
moment, and intending to do so whenever I should come to Edinburgh, for in the
country I had little opportunity of procuring the information you wanted. I
came here only on the 15th of this month, and since that time we have been
visited by a succession of the most tremendous fires with which this city has
ever been afflicted. A very large portion of the Old Town of Edinburgh, the
dwelling of our ancestors, is at present a heap of ruins. Everybody was obliged
to turn out; the young to work, the old to give countenance and advice, and to
secure temporary refuge and support to upwards of 200 families turned naked in
many instances into the street: and I had my share of labour and anxiety. We
are now, I thank God, in quiet again. Our princely library (that of the
Advocates’), worth commercially at least half a million, but in reality
invaluable as containing such a mass of matter to be found nowhere else,
escaped with the utmost difficulty, and in consequence only of the most
strenuous exertions. This will, I am sure, be an apology for my not writing
sooner what I now have to say.
“Your letters are a little vague in respect to the
precise nature of the information you require. In Thurlow’s state papers you will find an accurate list of
the Council of State by which Cromwell
governed Scotland. But his well-disciplined army under Monk was the real force of his government, and they were
exer-cised, as they would have
termed it, by more than one insurrection, particularly that made first by
Glencairn and afterwards by General Middleton, and by the constant though
useless harassing manoeuvres of the cavaliers and discontented Scottish,
forming a kind of guerillas termed mosstroopers, who seem to have existed in
all the wilder districts, and to have carried on a war rather of a harassing
than an effectual character. A person named Nichol kept a
large and copious diary of the events of the period, which I caused to be
transcribed some years since. The transcriber, I am sorry to say, was rather
careless, in fact, a person to whom I had given the book more out of
consideration to his wants than to his competence. If this transcript could be
useful to you, I will with pleasure give you the use of it, begging only you
will take care of it. It is voluminous and contains much trash (as diaries
usually do,) but there are some curious articles of information which occur
nowhere else. Some of the Diurnals of the Day also contain curious minutiæ, but
these you have in the Museum more complete than we. I picked up some weeks ago
a contemporary account of the battles of Kilsyth and Philiphaugh. I am
particularly interested in the last, as the scene lies near my abode and my own
ancestor was engaged in it—at that time a keen covenanter. I am thinking of
publishing, or rather printing, a few copies of these tracts, and, if you wish
it, I will send you one. Brodie’s
Diary has also some interest, though stuffed with fanatical trumpery. The Lord,
as he expresses himself, at length intimated to this staunch Presbyterian that
he should, in conformity to the views of Providence for our Scottish Israel,
embrace the cause of the Independent Cromwell, and he
became one of our judges. His diary is very rare, but I have a copy, and could
cause any extracts to be made which you want. I am not aware that our records
could add much to the mass of information contained in
Thurloe’s collection, where there are many
letters on the state of the country. The haughty and stubborn character of the
Scottish people looked back on the period of
Cromwell’s domination with anger and
humiliation, and they seem to have observed a sullen silence about its
particular events. There is no period respecting which
we have less precise information. If, however, you will shape your enquiries
more specifically respecting any points which interest you, I will be happy to
make such researches as may enable me to answer them, or to say that I cannot
do so. I made a scandalous blunder in my prosody sure enough, in doing honour
to a deceased friend. I should have remembered I had been, ‘Long enamoured of a barbarous age, A faithless truant to the classic page.’ Anything, however, is pardonable but want of candour, and my comfort is
that of Miss Priscilla Tomboy, ‘I am
too old to be whipped’—I am, dear sir, your most obedient servant,
“Walter
Scott.”
And, as relating to the same work, though written in a later year, a
letter of the elder D’Israeli here finds
fitting place.
I. D’Israeli to William Godwin.
“6 Bloomsbury Square, July 12, 1828.
“Dear Sir,—It is with
great pleasure I communicate to you the striking anecdote which confirms the
notice you find in Voltaire of Cromwell, who, when Protector, would be
addressed, much against Louis XIV.’s
inclination, as ‘brother’ by the French monarch. At the same time I
beg to repeat that I find in my note on this anecdote, a loose reference to
Thurlow’s papers, by which I
infer that I must have read in Thurlow’s collection
something relative to the subject of your enquiry.
“The present anecdote is very circumstantial and of
undoubted authority: Dr Sampson derived
it from Judge Rookly, who was present at the delivery of
the letter: I transcribe it literally from the Diary of Dr
Sampson, Sloane MSS.
“‘He was in the Banqueting House to receive the
Duke of Crequi, as ambassador from the French king.
Great was the state and crowd. The ambassador made his speech, and after all
compliments, he delivered a letter into his hands which was super-scribed:
“To his most serene Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and
Ireland.” He looks wistfully at the letter, puts it in his
pocket, turns away without speaking a word or reading it. The ambassador was
highly vexed at this, and as soon as he could meet with Secretary
Thurlow, expostulates with him for the great affront and
indignity offered to his master, so great a prince—asked him what he thought
the cause might be. Thurlow answered, he thought the
Protector might be displeased with the superscription of the letter. The Duke
said he thought that it was according to form, and in terms as agreeable as
could be. “But,” says Thurlow,
“the Protector expected he should have written to our dear
Brother Oliver.” It is said the
ambassador writing this over to France, the king replied, “Shall I
call such a fellow my brother?” to which
Cardinal Mazarin answered,
“Aye, call him your father, if need be, if
you would get from him what you desire.” And so a letter was
procured, having the desired superscription.’
“I need not assure you of the correctness of the
transcript.—Believe me, very truly yours,
I. D’israeli.”
After Godwin’s complete
failure, and the disastrous lawsuits, he resided for some years in the Strand, living
almost apart from society, and working hard at his books. A quiet rubber of whist in the
evening, and an occasional visit to the theatres—to most of which he held free
admissions—were almost his only relaxations. But though he went from home little, and did
not entertain at all, it is pleasant to find, from entries in the Diary, that friends were
constant in their visits. His books, though he could lay up from their proceeds but little
for the future, yet brought in a modest competence. His only son, William, had married, and was earning his own livelihood.
Mrs Shelley was constant in her attentions to
her father, who took great delight in the society of his grandson. Godwin’s few domestic letters are the record of these uneventful
years.
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Gower Place, March 31, 1826.
“I am afraid, my dear love, that you will be
disappointed by this letter, for I have little to say.
“Stoddart
inserted W.’s critique upon
Rembrandt upon Easter Monday and Tuesday, and gave him two guineas, with which
he is satisfied. They then started other subjects, three miraculously fine
pictures that have just been purchased from the Angerstein Gallery for 9000 gs., and four designs of Martin to illustrate Milton. W. has this
morning written, and is gone to carry to Stoddart, the
first number of his critique, relating to a Bacchus and
Ariadne by Titian. He made me
go with him to Angerstein’s yesterday, to look at
the pictures. But all this is precarious, depending first on his industry, and
secondly on fancy and vacancy in Stoddart to insert his
paper.
“I own I have not genius enough to make a story of
Percy’s first play. He sat for
the most part very silent and attentive; and when we came away in the middle of
the afterpiece, asked why we could not stay longer. But there was nothing
bravely obstreperous and ungovernable in his emotions and his will. We were
joined at the play by Kenny and
Sir Richard Phillips.
Phillips, with flushed cheeks and ruddy health,
telling us how completely he is ruined. He has left Brighton, and resides with
his family in St. Paul’s Churchyard.
“Jane behaves very well, and
when I attempted to order my Thursday’s dinner, told me what joint it
should be, and how it should be dressed, to which, as in duty bound, I
submitted.” . . .
The Same to the Same.
“44 Gower Place, April 6, 1826.
“My dear Love,—You are
very wrong in saying I do not want your society, and still more in supposing
Mrs Shelley supplies the deficiency. I see her perhaps twice
a week; but I feel myself alone ten times a day, and particularly at meals, and
after meals, which are the periods at which, from nature or habit, I most feel
the want of a human countenance to look at, and of a human voice with which to
exchange the accents of kindness and sympathy.
“William calls
on me every day. He works for nobody but Stoddart. He is now on Martin’s designs for Milton, of which Septimus
Prowet has requested him to accept a copy. But I do not buy the
papers in which his articles appear. I never know of the papers till
afterwards, and have no opportunity of procuring them.
“There have been no letters from Vienna, or Moscow,
or anywhere else.
“We go on quietly here. I am in good health, and
working. I asked Jane, previous to writing this letter,
how she was, and she answers she is very well now. Everything is smooth; but I
cannot take a frisk, as I used to do with another servant, and give a dinner to
Kenney, or some other fool.
Jane had a visit from Mrs Eamer,
who promises to bring her her things the week after next. She brought you two
presents, a pint bottle of ketchup, and a gallipot of nasturtiums. . . .
“Do not, I intreat you, from any recollection of me,
shorten your visit. It is true, it is not good for man to be alone, and I feel
it so. But I can summon philosophy to my aid, and can have consideration for
some one beside myself; especially when one can take the consolation to
oneself, this will soon be over.” . . .
Fuseli, of whom Godwin had seen little or nothing for many years, died in April 1825, and
Mr Knowles was writing his Biography. He applied
to Godwin for aid, who could give him only slender information. It has been already seen
how little Knowles attended to the request that Mary Wollstonecraft should be “very slightly
mentioned, or not at all,” and how little to be trusted is the mention of her
in the “Life of Fuseli.”
William Godwin to Mr Knowles.
“Sep. 28, 1826.
“Dear Sir,—I am sorry to
say that my recollections of Mr Fuseli
are very imperfect. You knew much more of him in his latter years, and
therefore, I doubt not, can recollect much more. I seldom saw him but in
company, and consequently know much less of his systems of thinking and his
habits. . . . The most remarkable thing that comes to my mind I had from my
first wife, whom, by the way, I should
wish, if you please, to be very slightly mentioned, or not at all. She told me
that when he first came to England, his two deities were Homer and Rousseau. No other authors were worthy to be named with them.
Homer retained his place to the last, but
Rousseau, who was once placed on an equal column, was
obliged, I suspect, afterwards to descend to a lower pedestal.
“You know, no doubt, his strange book on the character and writings
of Rousseau, wild, scarcely English, and
scarcely common-sense, yet with some striking things interspersed.
“He was the most frankly ingenuous and conceited man
I ever knew. He could not bear to be eclipsed or put in the back-ground for a
moment. He scorned to be less than highest. He was an excellent hater; he hated
a dull fellow, as men of wit and talents naturally do; and he hated a brilliant
man, because he could not bear a brother near the throne. He once dined at my
house with Curran, Grattan, and two or three men of that stamp;
and retiring suddenly to the drawing-room, told Mrs
Godwin that he could not think why he was invited to meet such
wretched company.” . . .
A domestic letter of this year contains a paragraph in Godwin’s old introspective manner, and gives
evidence of the philosophic calm he was still able to maintain, despite of troubles.
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“Oct. 9, [1827.]
“. . . How differently are you and I organized! In my
seventy-second year I am all cheerfulness, and never anticipate the evil day
with distressing feelings till to do so is absolutely unavoidable. Would to God
you were my daughter in all but my poverty! But I am afraid you are a
Wollstonecraft. We are so curiously made that one atom
put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for
life. But my present cheerfulness is greatly owing to ‘Cromwell,’ and the nature of my
occupation, which gives me an object omnium
horarum, a stream for ever running and for ever new.
“May blessings shower on you as fast as the
perpendicular rain at this moment falls by my window! prays your affectionate
father,
“William
Godwin.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Hastings, June 21, 1828.
“——Here I am at Hastings, and here I have been the
better part of two days. At twelve at noon, however, on Wednesday I was
compelled to doubt whether I should have ever been here at all. In coming down
a hill, one mile on this side Sevenoaks, one of the horses nearest the carriage
set up a desperate kicking, and broke the splinter bar in two, and we were
detained above an hour, while we sent to Sevenoaks for a mechanic to come and
repair it as well as he could.
“This loss, however, of an hour, or an hour and a
half, decided the before doubtful question that I must take something by way of
dinner on the road, if I intended to have any. We stopped for that purpose at
Tunbridge Wells, which place I once visited before, in the year 1773,
fifty-five years ago.
“I found the little trio of this family looking out
for me, and we speedily sat down to a comfortable dish of tea at No. 6 Meadow
Cottages, and afterwards walked upon the Marine
Parade, which immediately overlooks the sea. . . . .
“Mary
yesterday received here her first letter from Trelawney, who desires her to come to town immediately; but she
has written an answer, telling him he must come here. How the contest will end
I know not. . . .
“I see but little comparatively to admire here,
though we have the finest weather in the world. The shore is at best but the
counterpart of Bognor, which had the advantage with me of coming first, about
fifteen years ago, when I visited Mr
Hayley and the Isle of Wight, and when I sojourned one night at
Bognor, when the harvest moon was at full, and I sat viewing it quivering on
the sea at twelve o’clock at night, with all the best company of the
place.
“Mary desires
me to give her best love to you, and to express her earnest wishes that the
travellers may arrive safe.
“How is Anne Burroughes? How is
her mistress? Dead, I am afraid, with fatigue and cares. . . . .”
William Godwin to Washington Irving.
“Oct. 1829.
“My Dear Sir.—It is seven
years—I am afraid I might say nine—since I had the pleasure to see you. In that
period I have gone through many vicissitudes. In the spring of 1825 I was a
bankrupt. That event was three years in concoction before it came to maturity,
and I passed through considerable wretchedness. In the interval I heard of your
being in London, and wished much for the pleasure of seeing you. But I said: ‘He, like the world, his ready visit pays Where fortunes smiles: the wretched he forsakes.’
“I was, however, wrong. Your visit to the capital of
England was, I believe, remarkably short. Since my bankruptcy my life has been
comparatively tranquil. I reside here in an obscure nook, and preserve my
health and, I believe, my intellects entire. . . . . Now, at seventy-three years of age, I have
had the audacity to undertake another novel. . . . . Mr Colburn has purchased from me the right of
publishing it in England. But I am informed that where an author has a name in
odour with the public, something may be made of pecuniary advantage, by
contriving that his work should be published at the same time in America. . . .
. Might I presume on your good-will, so far as to request that you would have
the goodness to suggest to me any mode that your experience might point out to
you, by which this advantage might be secured. . . . . I remain, etc.
“W.
Godwin.”
Washington Irving to William Godwin.
“3 Chandos St., Cavendish Sq., Oct. 14, 1829.
“My Dear Sir.—I have just
received your note of the 12th inst., and read with great concern the gloomy
account it gives of the troubles and vicissitudes through which you have
passed. The reverse in your circumstances, my dear sir, can have no other
effect on me than to awaken a deeper interest in your welfare, and a stronger
desire to be of service to you. Any aid that I can render in promoting the
publication of your proposed work in America, you may command to the utmost. I
rejoice to find that you are about to come forth again in that department of
literature in which you first delighted me, and in which you have been so
eminently successful. I see nothing of audacity in the undertaking. Recollect
the age of Chaucer when he wrote his
immortal tales. If you can furnish me with a manuscript copy of the earlier
part of the work, and supply the subsequent part in sheets as struck off, so as
to give some bookseller in America the decided start of his competitors, I
think it highly probable I can get something for it to repay you for your
trouble. A novel is a kind of work that the booksellers now always bid for the
most eagerly, and the fame of your former productions in this line will ensure
an offer. If the MS. or printed sheets are sent under cover to me from time to
time, as they are ready, at the American Legation, I will forward them with the
despatches, free of expense, and I have a literary agent in America who will
negociate with the booksellers to the best advantage, free of charge, so that
the experiment will cost you nothing. I would have called immediately on you to
talk over this matter, but at this moment I am not as formerly my own master,
and am in all the bustle of official arrangements, etc. The moment I can
command a little leisure I will call on you, and I am sure that, in the
interim, you will attribute the delay of my visit to the right cause.
“With kind remembrances to Mrs Godwin, I am, dear sir, very faithfully
yours,
Washington Irving.”
One new acquaintance was made in 1830, the last of the long series of
younger friends. This was Edward Bulwer, known better
to this generation as the late Lord Lytton, who came in the vigour of
his youthful power and growing fame to sit at the feet of the writer of “Caleb Williams.” He was introduced to
Godwin by Lady
Caroline Lamb in the following letter:—
Lady C. Lamb to William Godwin.
“My Dear Sir,—My brother,
William Ponsonby, is so much
delighted with the two books you left with me, and I am so enchanted with the
letter of advice to the young American, that we both request you to send us a
list of all your publications for the use of young people. Send also to S.
James’ Square, Hon. William Ponsonby, ‘The Advice to the American,’
‘A Roman
History,’ and ‘The Pantheon.’ I forget my
brother’s number, but it is next door to the Duke of St. Alban’s.
“Mr Bulwer
Lytton, a very young man and an enthusiast, wishes to be
introduced to you. He is taking his degree at Cambridge; on his return pray let
me make him acquainted with you. I shall claim your promise of coming to
Brocket; would your daughter or son accompany you? Hobhouse came to me last night; how strange it is I love
Lord Byron so much now in my old age, in
despite of all he is said
to have said, that I also love Hobhouse because he so
warmly takes his part. Pray write to me, for you see your advice has had some
effect. I have been studying your little books with an ardour and a pleasure
which would surprise you. There is a brevity which suits my want of attention,
a depth of thought which catches at once, and does not puzzle my understanding,
a simplicity and kindness which captivates and arouses every good feeling, and
a clearness which assists those who are deficient, as I am, in memory. I am
delighted. So are my brothers; the few men who are about me are all eager to
get your books; but what has vexed me is that the two children and four young
women to whom I endeavoured to read them, did not choose to attend. How I like
the beautiful little preface to the ‘History of Rome;’ oh, that I
were twelve! quite good and quite well, to be your pupil. ‘I’d drudge like Selden day and night, And in the endless labour die.’
“After all, what is the use of anything here below,
but to be enlightened, and to try to make others happy? From this day I will
endeavour to conquer all my violence, all my passions; but you are destined to
be my master. The only thing that checks my ardour is this:
“For what purpose, for whom should I endeavour to
grow wise?
“What is the use of anything? What is the end of
life? When we die, what difference is there here, between a black beetle and
me?
“Oh, that I might, with the feelings I yet possess,
without one vain, one ambitious motive, at least feel that I was in the way of
truth, and that I was of use to others.
“The only thoughts that ever can make me lose my
senses are these:
“A want of knowledge as to what is really true.
“A certainty that I am useless.
“A fear that I am worthless.
“A belief that all is vanity and vexation of
spirit, and that there is nothing new under the sun.
“The only prayer I ever say beside the
sinner’s, and the only life I shall ever leave
written by myself of myself is, that I have done those things which I ought not
to have done, and have left undone those that I ought to have done.
C. L.”
The correspondence with Mr Bulwer
requires no elucidation, but a remarkable paper in Godwin’s writing seems to throw some light on one of the intellectual
consequences of this intimacy.
Godwin had intended to write a romance on the story
of “Eugene Aram,” and drew up the
following notes on the subject. They are undated, but from the character of the writing,
the correspondence of paper on which they are written with that Godwin
was then using, and the packet in which it was folded, it is evident that they belong to
the years 1828-30.
“Petition to the King on behalf of Eugene Aram, never presented.
Born, 1704. Newby, 1717-18. Studies Mathematics. Belles Lettres, 1721. Keeps School at Netherdale. Marries. Knaresborough. Hebrew, Latin and Greek, 1732. London, 1744. Botany, Arabic, Celtic. Clark murdered, Feb. 1745. Apprehended, 1758. Tried, Aug. 3, 1759. Confesses, Aug. 4.Grand Magazine, Vol. III., 85-6. Newgate Calendar, Annual Register. Houseman, evidence. Netherdale, Shelton near Newby. Rippon, Newby, Knaresborough. Letter in Grand Magazine written
after conviction.
“Let there be an Act of Pt. that, after
a lapse of ten years, whoever shall be found to have spent that period blamelessly, and
in labours conducive to the welfare of mankind, shall be absolved.
“No man shall die respecting whom it can reasonably be
concluded that if his life were spared, it would be spent blamelessly, honourably, and
usefully.
“Aram, schoolmaster:
Clark, shoemaker: Houseman, flax-dresser:
Terry, publican—Clark, just
married—Aram’s confession not authenticated. G. M., 1759,
Aug.—Houseman burned in effigy, ditto—execution, ditto—had
divided the blood vessels of his left arm, could not support the weight of his body to
the place. York newspaper.
“Cut the veins of his arm a little above the elbow and the
wist, but missed the artery. Pub. advt. Trial, Friday, Aug. 3. Execution, Aug. 8-14: last
week a riot. Public adver.
These notes are in form and arrangement precisely like the drafts which
Godwin made and left behind him of other books,
both those which were afterwards completed, and others only planned. And it is more than
probable that, finding how unlikely it became that he should himself write the Romance he
had projected, he gave his subject and material to his younger and more vigorous friend. It
seems clear that Lord Lytton, in his earlier style, is
the direct intellectual descendant of the writer of “Caleb Williams” and “St. Leon.”
E. L. Bulwer to William Godwin.
“April 1, 1830.
“My Dear Sir,—In an
article in the N. M.
Magazine, called the ‘Lounger,’ you will see the few
observations I have made on your book. My desire was, not to praise it,
so much as to tempt others to read it. I should have
said much more, had I not heard there was to be a review by some other person
in the same number. I perceive that there is one. You will forgive the
frankness with which I have said I differ from you on some points, and you will
smile at the freedom with which the disciple of one
school talks of the ‘errors’ of the master
of another.
“I am happy to hear on all sides the praises and
increasing popularity of your book, ‘Cloudesley.’ Bentley told me it was selling surprisingly
well, and I hear in another quarter that the sale has already far surpassed
that of ‘Mandeville.’
“I trust you will find all this true, and with great
respect and increased admiration, believe me, my dear Sir, very sincerely
yours,
“E. L.
Bulwer.”
William Godwin to E. L. Bulwer.
“May 13, 1830.
“I have this moment finished the perusal of
‘Paul
Clifford.’ I know that you are not so wrapped up in
self-confidence as not to feel a real pleasure in the approbation of others.
And I regard it as a duty not to withhold my approbation when I am morally
certain that it will be received as it is intended.
“There are parts of the book that I read with
transport. There are many parts so divinely written that my first impulse was
to throw my implements of writing in the fire, and to wish that I could consign
all that I have published in the province of fiction to the same pyre. But this
would be a useless sacrifice: and superior as I feel you to be in whatever
kindles the finest emotions of the heart, I may yet preserve my peace, so far
as relates to the mechanism of a story. This is but little, and does not
satisfy my self-love, but I am capable of a sentiment that teaches me to
rejoice in the triumph of others, without subjecting me to the mean and painful
drawback of envy.
“I am bound to add that the penetration and
acuteness you display are not inferior to the delicacy.”
E. L. Bulwer to William Godwin.
“Hertford St., May 25, 1830.
“My DearMr Godwin,—You must
know that I am too glad to go with you, not to take your day and hour, and too
desirous to encourage you to wish for a second excursion, not to desire that at
least the day and hour you select should be exactly to your own inclination. I
am going this week to search for a small lodging in the country, as an
occasional retirement, and I think the best plan will be that I should first
find one, and then you and I should go down there for a day, and return in the
evening. This we may do next week, when I will write to you again.—Believe me
most truly and respectfully yours,
E. L. Bulwer.”
William Godwin to E. L. Bulwer.
“Sep. 16, 1830.
“My Dear Sir,—I remember
a recorded speech of Lord Chatham at the
appointment of the Rockingham administration in 1765, in which he says,
‘Confidence is a plant of slow growth in aged bosoms.’
Allow me to apply that maxim to myself.
“I have known you but a short time. I know you as
the author of ‘Pelham,’ a man of eminent talents, and devoted, as it seemed to
me, to the habits of high life. I heard from your lips occasionally high
sentiments of philosophy and philanthropy. I was to determine as I could which
of these two features formed the basis of your character.
“I now avow myself your convert. Your advertisement
in this morning’s paper is a pledge for your future character. You have
passed the Rubicon. You must go forward, or you must go back for ever
disgraced. I know your abilities, and I therefore augur a career of rectitude
and honour.
“With respect to the acquaintance I shall have with
you, I can dispense with that. If in these portentous times you engage yourself
with your powers of mind for the real interests of mankind, that is everything.
I am but the dust of the balance.
“And yet, shall I own? The slowness you manifested
in cultivating my acquaintance was one of the circumstances that weighed with
me to your disadvantage. But I am nothing. Run the race you chalk out for
yourself in this paper of yours, and I am more than satisfied.
“Allow me, however, to add something in allusion to
our last conversation. It must be of the highest importance to an eminent
character which side he embraces in the great question of self-love and
benevolence. I tolerate and talk, and think with much good-humour towards the
man who embraces the wrong side here, as I tolerate a Calvinist or a Jew. But
in the public cause he labours with a mill-stone about his neck. No, not
exactly that; but he is like a swimmer who has the use only of his left hand.
Inexpressibly must he be disadvantaged in the career of virtue who adheres to a
creed which tells him, if there be meaning in words, that there is no such
thing as virtue.”
E. L. Bulwer to William Godwin.
“Bognor, Sep. 17, 1830.
“My Dear Sir,—I am
greatly obliged and pleased by your letter, and I am unexpectedly rejoiced that
my address to the people of Southwark should produce one effect—an increase of
your good opinion. You surprise and grieve me, however, by thinking so ill of
my judgment as to imagine me slow in seeking your acquaintance. The fact is,
that you a little misconceive my character. I am in ordinary life so very
reserved and domiciliated a person, that to court anybody’s good opinion
as I have done yours is an event in my usual quietude of habit.
“With respect to the Utilitarian—not
‘self-love’ system of morals, all I can say is that I am convinced,
if I commit a blunder it is in words, not things. I understand by the system
that Benevolence may be made a passion, that it is the rule and square of all
morality; that virtue loses not one atom of its value, or one charm from its
loveliness. If I err, I repeat, it is in words only. But my doctrine is not
very bigotedly embraced. And your
essay has in two points let a little scepticism into a rent in my devotion.
“My advice, or rather opinion, such as it may be, is
always most heartily at your service, and you will flatter and gratify me by
any desire for it.
“I am living here very quietly: and doing, what
think you? writing poetry. After that, it may be superfluous to tell you that
Bognor is much resorted to by insane people.—Ever and most truly yours,
E. Lytton Bulwer.”
The following letters refer to the novel of “Deloraine” and the “Lives of the Necromancers,” and are
inserted, not only as giving a touching picture of the old philosopher, but a no less
touching one of Walter Scott at his own herculean task,
yet steering up-hillward with all his old heart and hope.
William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.
“July 22, 1830.
“——As you mean to quit Southend this day
seven-night, I do not think it likely that I shall avail myself of your kind
invitation, though I am deeply sensible of the obligation I owe you in it,
since by giving it you shew your indulgence to a decrepit, superannuated old
fellow, while you are good enough to praise things to yourself in false
colours, and convert what would really be a pain into the image and
superscription of a pleasure.
“I called yesterday on Bentley, and found him, as usual, not at home. I left a note,
saying that I will call again on Saturday, whether to see him or not I know
not. I am miserable under the weight of this uncertainty, feeling myself able
and willing to do everything, and do it well, and nobody disposed to give me
the requisite encouragement. If I can agree with these tyrants in Burlington
Street for £300, £400, or £500 for a novel, and to be subsisted by them while I
write it, I probably shall not starve for a fortnight
to come. But they will take no step to bring the thing to a point, and I may go
thither one, two, or three times, and catch them if I can. I have no contention
with them which is the nobler party, they or I; but this dancing attendance
wears my spirits and destroys my tranquillity. ‘Hands have I, but I
handle not: I have feet, but I walk not: neither is there any breath in my
nostrils.’ Meanwhile my life wears away, and ‘there is
no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither I
go.” But indeed I am wrong in talking of that; for I write now,
not for marble to be placed on my remains, but for bread to put into my mouth.
In that sense, therefore, every day of which they rob me is of moment, since
every day brings its cravings to be supplied.’”
William Godwin to Sir Walter Scott.
“Feb. 17, 1831.
“My Dear Sir.—I have
never experienced anything from you but the greatest kindness, on the few
occasions in which I have been so fortunate as to be thrown into your society,
or have taken the liberty to obtrude myself on your attention. This is the
reason of the trouble I am now giving. . . . .
“In fourteen days from the date of this letter, I
shall have completed the 75th year of my age. Before the expiration of those
fourteen days a volume will have been published of my writing, entitled
‘Thoughts on
Man, etc.,’ which, if I am not mistaken, will display the marks of
as youthful and energetic a mind as were ever to be found in the books I have
written, in what are called the full vigour of my life and constitution. I am,
however, the prodigal who so often serves to point the moral of a tale. I have
spent what I had, and have nothing left.
“Meantime I am conscious (if I do not greatly
deceive myself) of powers undecayed, which I am most anxious to apply to the
support of my life, and the procuring those slender comforts to which I have
been accustomed. But the trade, or the disposition of the booksellers in
London, is in such a state as to afford me nothing but discouragement. . . . .
“It is commonly said at present that the cabinet
libraries and miscellanies, which are now publishing by several of our
booksellers, swallow up for the time the literature in which they might
otherwise be disposed to engage. It has been my habit to work for myself, and
stand by myself. But at the present moment I doubted of my right to be
difficult, and therefore I have given way in this point. I made a proposal to
Dr Lardner, but after two or three
conferences he frankly informed me that he and his partner had engaged with a
sufficient number of persons of great name, namely yourself, and Messrs
Mackintosh, Moore, Southey, and Campbell,
to fix on their publication a desirable character, and that they had resolved
that the rest of their work should be executed by persons of inferior
importance, to whom they should give lower prices than that to which I should
be justly entitled. I applied to Mr
Murray. I saw Mr Lockhart
for that purpose, and disclosed to him the plan of a volume for the Family
Library, of which he greatly approved, and told me he did not doubt it would be
joyfully accepted. But after a lapse of two or three days he wrote me a note to
say that Mr Murray had declined it. I wrote to Mr Cadell of Edinburgh, from whom I received a
most courteous answer, but informing me that his whole means were engaged for
five years to come, and that he had only been able to strain a point further
for a novel by the author of ‘Marriage,’ and another novel by a
popular author. Thus, my dear sir, with powers perhaps unimpaired, and a will
to exert them, I find myself likely to be laid on the shelf, as a person whose
name has been long enough before the public. . . . .
“The volume I proposed to Murray through Mr
Lockhart, was to be entitled, ‘Lives of the Necromancers, or an
Account of the most Eminent Persons who have claimed for themselves, or to whom
has been imputed by others, the Exercise of Magical Powers.’ I can
scarcely expect you to believe me, though it is true, that I had chosen this
subject without any knowledge of your letters on ‘Demonology,’ which, however,
appeared before my proposal was actually made. I conceived, however, that there
would still be room for my volume, the object of which was to trace the subject biographically, and to endeavour to ascertain
by what steps Roger Bacon, Cornelius Agrippa, and a multitude of other
eminent men came to be seduced into the profession of magic, or to have magical
power imputed to them.
“And now, my dear sir, for the express purpose of
this letter. The temper of the times, or the state of commerce, seems to render
any direct application unavailing. My magic rod, if ever I had one, is grown
powerless with the new-sprung speculators in literary produce; but yours is in
all its energy. Would you undertake the generous task to endeavour to prevail
with Mr Cadell, or with any other
person, to afford me sufficient encouragement to sit down to the novel I have
hinted at, to the volume I have described, or to any other work to which I
might feel myself adequate. . . . You will not, I think, refuse your sympathy
to a person no longer active in his limbs, but who believes himself to be in
the full vigour of his understanding. . . . I have a wife: I need the little
house I live in to hold my books, and my literary accommodations; I cannot live
thus, considerably under £300 a year. My labour perhaps might be worthy of that
reward, and with that I would be content.
“I am, etc.,
W. Godwin.”
Sir Walter Scott to William Godwin.
“Abbotsford, Feb. 24, 1831.
“My dear Sir,—I received
your letter, which is a melancholy one, and I heartily wish it were in my power
to answer it as I might formerly have done. But you know that were I to apply
to any bookseller unconnected with myself to take a work in which he did not
see his immediate profit—and, if he did, my intervention would be useless—he
would naturally expect me in some way or other to become bound to make up the
risk. Now, I have no dealings with any except Cadell, nor can I have, as he has engaged great part of his
fortune in my publication. By the great bankruptcy of Constable in Edinburgh, and Hurst and Robinson in London, some years ago, I lost, I need hardly say,
more than all I was worth. I might have taken a commission of bankruptcy, or I
might by the assistance of
my son and other wealthy friends have made a very easy composition. I always,
however, thought commercial honour was to be preserved as unsullied as
personal, and I resolved to clear off my debt, being upwards of 100,000, part
of it borrowed from me when the principal parties knew bankruptcy was staring
them in the face. I therefore resolved to pay my debts in full, or to die a
martyr to good faith. I have succeeded to a large extent, more than half of the
whole, and I have current stock enough as will in two or three years be
realized, which will cover the whole. But in the meantime I cannot call any
part of a very considerable income my own, or transfer it to any purpose,
however meritorious, save that which it is allocated to pay. Now, you will see
that I can neither involve Cadell by making requests to
him in other gentlemen’s behalf, nor interfere in literary speculations
where I have nothing to engage me but my sincere good-will to the author. It is
therefore I fear out of my power to serve you in the way you propose. As the
sapient NestorPartridge says, Non sum qualis
eram.
“Still, however, I have an easy income, and will
willingly join in any subscription to cover the expense of publication of any
work, not religious or political, which you choose to undertake. Suppose the
price a guinea, I mean I would subscribe for ten copies, for which I should
hold one sufficient. If a hundred, or even fifty gentlemen would subscribe in
the same proportion only to the merit of their own means, the urgency of the
occasion would be in some degree met. I cannot be further useful, for till a
month or two ago I had not a silver spoon which I could call my own, or a book
of my own to read out of a pretty good library, which is now my own once more
by the voluntary relinquishment of the parties concerned. I have been thus
particular in this matter, though not the most pleasant to write about, because
I wish you to understand distinctly the circumstances which leave me not at
liberty to engage in this matter to the extent you wish.
“I am, my dear sir, your very obedient, humble
servant,
“Walter
Scott.”
Jeremy Bentham died in 1832, and Godwin applied to Mrs
Gisborne, formerly Mrs Reveley, for her early
recollections of the philosopher. It does not appear what use he intended to make of them;
he could scarcely, at his advanced age, have contemplated writing a memoir. Mrs
Gisborne’s narrative, though long, is too curious a bit of old
biography and history to be omitted. An interesting account of the intended Panopticon, the
scheme of which was in a degree carried out at Millbank, is to be found in Captain Griffith’s “Memorials of Millbank.”
“I do not remember precisely how long Mr Bentham remained at Constantinople. I
think, certainly, not more than two months. He was a very constant visitor at
my father’s house; but he resided, I think, with a Mr
Humphries, an English resident merchant. There were no inns or
lodging-houses in the city at that time. He was particularly fond of music, and
used to take great delight in accompanying me on the violin. I well remember
that he used to say that I was the only female he had ever met with who could
keep time in playing, and that music without time was to him unbearable.
“We went through together some pieces of Schobert, Schuster, Sterkel,
Eichner, and of other composers most
in vogue at that time, all of which he played at sight and with care. He seemed
to take great pleasure in my society, though I certainly never received from
him any particular mark of attention, which might not have been equally shown
to one of his sex. Indeed, not the slightest idea of any particular partiality,
on his part, ever came across my mind. He was then about 37 years of age, but
he did not look so old. I have also impressed in my memory that I obtained his
commendation for my preference of works in prose to those of poetry, the
reading of which he asserted to be a great misapplication of time.
“I imagine that at that period he was seldom excited
to bring forward or discuss any of those subjects to which he so wholly and so
successfully devoted himself.
“Had any conversations of that nature taken place in
my presence, all traces of the purport of them would most assuredly, even at
this time, not have been obliterated from my memory.
“I cannot positively assert that he brought a letter
of recommendation to my father; but I know that he performed the voyage (from
Smyrna at least) in company with a Mr Henderson, who
presented himself to us with a letter from a Mr Lee, an
English resident merchant at Smyrna, and a particular friend of my
father’s.
“Two young girls, under twenty years of age,
accompanied this Mr Henderson, who was a
very serious man, and very plausible in his manner. They were introduced as
sisters, and his nieces. These ladies, however, were not mentioned in
Mr Lee’s letter, a circumstance not noticed at
the time.
“The elder had, to a certain degree, the manner of a
lady; but those of the younger—and her appearance coincided—were by no means
superior to what might be expected from a poor farmer’s daughter.
Mr Bentham, as I have before said,
was our constant visitor, and at our house he frequently met the
Hendersons. I soon perceived a strong dislike, on the
part of these females, towards Mr Bentham. They took every
opportunity of making unpleasant observations both on his character and
manners. They did their utmost to disparage him in every respect. I was
certainly in no way prejudiced against him by these insidious attacks—on the
contrary, they occasioned me considerable displeasure.
“The object of his detractors was manifestly to make
him appear absurd, ill-natured, mean.
“How far he succeeded in neutralizing the
unfavourable impressions made against him by these slanderous tongues, I cannot
tell—in that. respect my memory fails me; but I know, that to the last, he
continued to stand high, both in the opinion of my father, and in that of all
our common friends.
“It was not long before that period that the
Turkish Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and his inefficient and
short-sighted ministers, had been wheedled out of their possession of the
Crimea by the ‘finesse’ and eloquence of the able Russian minister
at the Porte, Momn. de Bulgakow.
“The Empress
Catherine, most eager to promote the successful colonisation of
her newly-acquired territory, had invited a horde of adventurers of all
nations, but chiefly Italians, to transfer themselves thither.
“Among others, Henderson was also enlisted in the service. He had engaged,
together with his nieces, to establish a dairy in the English style. It occurs
to me now for the first time that he might have been brought forward on that
occasion under the auspices of Mr Bentham’s
brother, who was then, I believe, in the Russian military
service. But this is only conjecture. When I last saw Mr Bentham, however, he told me that the
undertaking had turned out badly, and that Henderson had behaved very ill.
“When the time arrived for the departure of these
people for the Crimea, the vessel in which they were to embark happened to lie
at a considerable distance from the spot where they were dwelling, the suburb
of Pera.
“It was determined they should transfer themselves
to it by a short land, rather than by the more circuitous trip by sea, along
the Bosphorus.
“A carriage was hired (a most uncouth vehicle, but
the only one which the city afforded). In this they proceeded to the place of
embarkation, escorted by my father and myself, with a servant on horseback.
“The wife, the owner of a trading vessel, who had
formerly been in my father’s service, had been living, for some years,
under our roof—ostensibly—to supply towards me the care and attention of a
mother.
“At the period of Mr
Bentham’s presence in Constantinople, the husband of the
person, having returned from one of his voyages, was also our inmate.
“On the day of our absence with the
Hendersons, Mr
Bentham paid his usual visit at our house, and was received by
this captain and Mrs Newman. In the course of
conversation, Mr Bentham (who considered that the
Hendersons had now taken their final departure from
Constantinople, and felt himself in consequence no longer bound to keep their
secrets) divulged that the elder niece was no other than
Henderson’s mistress, and that the younger was
an ignorant country girl, merely hired as a servant.
“Their surprise was naturally very great, much
greater I believe than mine would have been; for I had already detected a want
of concordance in what they separately told me at different times, which I
could not account for, but which I by no means liked.
“We did not return home till late in the evening.
We were received at the door by the captain, who could not contain his
laughter, and was in a hurry to attack my father about his extraordinary
civility, and, as it now appeared, his ludicrous knight-errantry.
“My father felt ashamed at having been so easily
taken in by these ignorant impostors; but he consoled himself with the idea
that he had not been their only dupe, since Sir
Robert Ainslie, our British Ambassador (following my
father’s example, I fear), had formally invited them to a dinner-party.
Their awkwardness and want of ease, which they could not modify to this sudden
emergency, were sufficiently manifest; but it was attributed to English
timidity and bashfulness.
“But the ‘nodo’ of this comic drama is
still to be developed; poor Bentham had
made his disclosures most prematurely—our friends were not gone, they had in
fact returned with us (some impediment had occurred with regard to the sailing
of the vessel which appeared likely to occasion a long delay), and we had to
increase the captain’s mirth by declaring that they were even at that
moment again safely housed in their former lodging. The situation of these
people during the remainder of their stay at Constantinople after this little
éclarcissement was, of
course, a very mortifying one. My father had to endure his share also, in the
laughter of Mr Humphries, and that of his other friends
who would not lose so fair an opportunity of amusing themselves at his expense.
We did not see Mr Bentham till the following day, when he
seemed rather confounded by the unlucky dênouement of the affair.
“I have said that there were no lodging-houses at
Constantinople but I remember that the Hendersons were put
in possession of an empty house, in which a few
articles of furniture had been put, just sufficient to serve their immediate
necessities.
“I am now come to the renewal of my acquaintance
with Mr Bentham in the year 1790. It
happened through his application to Mr
Reveley to assist him in the architectural development of his
plans for a ‘Panopticon’ At first he paid us short visits, merely
by furnishing Mr Reveley from time to time with the
necessary instructions for making out his plans; but the ingenuity of the
latter enabling him to raise objections, and to suggest various improvements in
the details, Mr Bentham gradually found it necessary to
devote more and more time to the affair, so that at length he frequently passed
the entire morning at our house, and not to lose time he brought his papers
with him, and occupied himself in writing. It was on this occasion that
observing how much time he lost through the confusion resulting from a want of
order in the management of his papers, I offered my services in classing and
numbering them, which he willingly accepted, and I had thereby the pleasure of
supplying him with any part of his writings at a moment’s notice. Judging
from the manner in which he appreciated my assistance, I am inclined to think
that this kind of facilitation had never before been afforded him. I then
proposed to him that in order to give still more time for the despatch of his
business, he should take his breakfast with us. He readily consented to my
proposal, but upon the condition that I would allow him a separate teapot, that
he might prepare his tea, he said, in his own way. He chose such a teapot as
would contain all the water that was necessary, which was poured in upon the
tea at once. He said that he could not endure the usual mode of proceeding
which produced the first cup of tea strong and the others gradually decreasing
in strength, till the last cup became little better than hot water. Tea-making,
like many other things (particularly the dimensions of the cups), is perhaps
greatly improved since that time. I was even then so well convinced of the
advantage of his method that I have pursued it ever since, more or less
modified, according to circumstances.
“During this intercourse, Mr Reveley once received a note from Mr Bentham, written in an angry tone;
this was owing to the former having used some incautious and perhaps improper
expression in writing to some one concerned in the affair of the Panopticon. It
might have been the engraver, though I can scarcely admit the possibility of
that surmise. Mr Reveley knew himself to be perfectly
innocent of any intentional rudeness or impropriety, he therefore felt himself
much hurt at the severity of Mr Bentham’s reproof. I
can recollect but these very few words of Mr
Bentham’s note—‘I suppose you have left your
orders too with Mr . . .’ (naming a lawyer or barrister employed
by Mr Bentham, who was residing in Red Lion Square). In
fact, Mr Reveley, though a young man of superior talent,
was at that time little accustomed to writing; he was also perhaps not
sufficiently attentive to the established forms of society. It is therefore by
no means improbable that he might have committed some mistake in the use of
language. It occurs to me, also, that there might have been previously some
slight degree of dormant displeasure in the mind of Mr
Bentham against Mr Reveley, excited perhaps
by an habitual, though very innocent levity on the part of the latter, who was
too apt to make jokes in order to excite a laugh, even on subjects which
demanded serious attention. When we were alone, Mr
Bentham’s Panopticon did not altogether escape, and I can
easily imagine that his penetrating glance may have caught a glimpse of this
misplaced mirth. But of this, if it was so, he never took the slightest notice.
I think that this little misunderstanding took place when the business between
them was nearly brought to a conclusion, and it is most pleasing to observe
that it did not prevent Mr Bentham from doing justice to
Mr Reveley’s ability in his printed report or
description of the Panopticon.
“I can also recollect that the sum which the latter
received as a remuneration for his trouble was £10—Mr Reveley’s first professional emolument.
“After this event I never saw Mr Bentham again till my interview with him in
April last. His views with regard to the Panopticon were baffled, and he had no
longer occasion for architectural assistance.
“My situation was also changed. I was no longer in
the enjoyment of that state of ease and quiet in which he found me five years
before when he first visited my father’s house.
“Still under twenty years of age, I was already the
mother of two children and was called upon to bear my part in a very severe
struggle. Our income was but £140 per annum, and the increase brought in by
Mr Reveley’s business was for
several years very slender and uncertain. With these inadequate resources, from
the necessity of maintaining if possible our useful connections, we had to make
a genteel appearance; this we effected not without considerable difficulty, and
by means of constant exertion. A person in such a situation must make great
sacrifices and submit to much self-denial. My mind was concentrated in the
continual efforts which my new situation required.
“I lost sight of the inestimable Bentham, at least I lost sight of him
personally; but still the sentiment—that strong perception of the superior
worth which I had imbibed in my first acquaintance with him—was continually
strengthened by my own spontaneous reflections and by the accounts which were
given to me from time to time of his steady and heroic devotion to the great
cause of truth, humanity, and justice. It was delightful to me to hear his
praises from the mouths of all those whom I most looked up to as
philanthropists and philosophers.”
CHAPTER XII. THE LAST YEARS. 1832—1836.
A great, happily the last great, sorrow fell on Godwin in the autumn of 1832, in the loss of his only son.
He appears to have been a singularly bright, winning, and accomplished man. His nephew,
Sir Percy Shelley, remembers him as “a
very good fellow, who used to take me to the play.” He was much loved by his
friends, and was happy in his marriage. A somewhat stormy youth and chequered career of
various unfinished beginnings had given place to a steady manhood, in which he was friend
and companion to his father, and earned for himself a respectable competence. He was
parliamentary reporter to the Morning Chronicle, a fairly successful draughtsman, and had at the
time of his death finished a novel, “Transfusion,” of considerable power and weird imagination. This was
published by his father after his death, prefaced by a touching and gravely self-restrained
Memoir. William Godwin, the younger, died of cholera
after a short illness, during which his father and mother never left him, and was buried in
the churchyard nearest his home, that attached to the Church of St. John Evangelist,
Waterloo Road.
The poverty which Godwin had
feared was not his fate. In April 1833, Lord Grey, on
the urgent request of many friends, amongst whom Mackintosh, before his death in 1832, had been very
earnest, conferred on Godwin the post of Yeoman Usher of the
Exchequer, with residence in New. Palace Yard. The office, which was in fact a sinecure,
the nominal duties of which were of necessity wholly performed by menials, was abolished
among the retrenchments on which a reformed Parliament insisted; and, soon after his
appointment, there was for some time a danger, or there seemed to
Godwin a danger, that he might be once more homeless and poor, for
he had accepted the office subject to such changes as might be deemed afterwards desirable.
But men of all political creeds were now kindly disposed to the patriarch of philosophical
radicalism, the old literary lion. The Duke of
Wellington and Lord Melbourne alike
exerted themselves for him, and each assured him that no change in his position should be
made.
The old friends were gone. Charles
Lamb, almost the last, died at Edmonton, on December 27, 1834. There had
been a slight coolness, the cause of which is not apparent, between them, but Rickman intervened, and invited both to meet at a dinner
given by him at the Bell at Edmonton, “where,” in
Rickman’s words, “Mrs
Gilpin once dined or meant to dine.” The dinner took place on
July 19, 1833, and the old cordiality was happily restored. To Godwin,
Edmonton had more sacred associations than of Mrs
Gilpin; there is no record that he had before visited the early home of
Mary Wollstonecraft.
And at his age he made few new friends, though even to the last he
retained the power of attracting the young and of sympathizing with them. The record of one
such acquaint-ance is preserved only in the
letters which follow, but the correspondence is worth preserving, since it does honour to
both the writers.
W. Cooke to William Godwin.
“Lisson Grove, Dec. 5, 1834.
“I take up my pen to address this to you, sir, at the
earnest, dying request of a dearly beloved, whose respect and admiration of you
was as deep as it was lasting. I believe one of the last requests he made to
Mrs Godwin before he left London
was, should you be attacked with any dangerous illness, that she should be so
kind as to inform him of it; for that wheresoever he was, or whatsoever might
be his employ, he would most assuredly hasten to your bed-side, to render all
the assistance in his power, and if it should be fatal, to observe how you
would conduct yourself in such an extremity, and how you would die. These also
are the very things he has requested me to inform you concerning himself, and
to this I hasten.
“Rather more than three months ago, soon after his
return from the Isle of Wight, he was attacked with an alarming illness. . . .
Debility and emaciation still proceeded, and on the 23d ultimo he expired. He
retained all his powers of mind unimpaired to the last.
“About two months before he died, he said he felt a
great want of something to console him under his sufferings, and requested me
to ask a particular friend of his (a Unitarian minister) to lend him some
books. Amongst these was ‘Channing’s Sermons.’ . . . He soon after requested
me to read him one of the Gospels. . . . After this, one morning early, he sent
his wife for me, saying he had somewhat to communicate; when he said,
‘Father, I am fully convinced that Jesus Christ is very God: I can
adore and worship him with all the powers and faculties of my
soul.’ He said much more to the same purport, and at different times.
. . . Perhaps a more surprising change from infidelity to assured faith never occurred. . . . He ardently wished that all should be
made acquainted with it who knew his former principles. . . . I hope, sir, that
you will excuse the inadequate manner in which I have attempted to comply with
the request of a dying son, and take it as a memorial of his respect, and the
best wishes of “Sir, yours very respectfully,
William Cooke.
“The widow desires to be kindly remembered to
Mrs Godwin.”
William Godwin to W. Cooke.
“Dec. 16, 1834.
“Sir,—I beg to acknowledge
my obligations to you for the letter with which you favoured me last week. I do
most sincerely condole with you on the death of your son, who had many good
qualities that awakened my esteem. I know how fervently you were attached to
him, and, considering all things, am almost glad that he died in a manner that
could best afford you consolation under the afflicting dispensation that has
taken from your age its greatest comfort.
“As to my own creed, to which you refer, that is a
totally different thing. It has been deeply reflected on, and has been at least
the fruit of as much patient and honest research as your own. I am now in my
seventy-ninth year, and am not likely to alter in a matter of so much moment.
We must be contented with different results, and should entertain charity for
each other. If I am in error, I am in the hands of God, and I humbly trust that
he will see the integrity and honesty of my enquiries.
“I am, sir, with much respect, very sincerely yours,
“William
Godwin.”
“The Lives of the
Necromancers” still occupied Godwin
during the summer of his removal to Palace Yard. The book is not greatly interesting, but a
letter from Ramohun Roy, in answer to. enquiries, will
serve to show that even at Godwin’s advanced age his habit of patient and painstaking
enquiry had not left him.
The writer, a learned Hindoo, a Brahmin, was ambassador in England from
the Court of Delhi, and died near Bristol during the month following that in which his
letter was written. He became a Christian, according to the Unitarian phase of that
religion. His mastery of English was remarkable, shown not only by such letters, but also
by religious and political tracts, and translations from the sacred books of India.
Ramohun Roy to William Godwin.
“Bedford Square, August 10, 1833.
“The term Magi is most probably derived from Majas (worshippers of fire) or from Moogh, almost synonymous to the former term. The founder of this
religion in Persia was Zoroaster. He
extended his doctrine in all the provinces of Persia, and some parts of India.
He and almost all the celebrated Magi were supposed to have performed wonderful
miracles. The Mantua (or text) implies certain passages
of the Vedas, and also certain sentences, by means of which impostors pretend
to heal diseases, to banish evil spirits, and bring lions, serpents, and other
fierce and venomous animals to subjection. In fact, in India, Persia, and
almost all the countries of Asia, the inhabitants are still deluded by
pretended magicians, astrologers, etc. Almost all the celebrated kings, sages,
and devotees are mentioned in every historical work as being possessed of
supernatural power.
“Pari signifies a female
spirit in the human form, and is very nearly synonymous to the English term
fairy, signifying male and female spirits. Deeoo (or Dives) is synonymous to Demons, and Jin is an Arabic word, signifying a kind of superior being, morally
responsible for their actions, and possessed of almost all the powers that an
angel is possessed of. The difference between the Jins and the Deeoos is, that among
the yins, like men, righteous as well as wicked persons can be found. In fact,
in the various parts of Asia, in proportion to the ignorance of the people, a
belief in necromancy, etc., is prevalent.”
The letter of Godwin’s New
York correspondent will be read with deep sympathy by many an author even now on this side
of the water; but its special interest for us also lies in the fact that we have one more
glimpse of Tom Cooper, whose fortunes had been
through life much what they were at its outset.
John Howard Payne to William
Godwin.
“New York, Nov. 30, 1833.
“My DearMr Godwin,—I have
written a letter or two which I have reason to believe you never saw: but I
presume those detailing the shufflings and ill-treatment of the booksellers on
the subject of your novel, must have reached you. I hope you are satisfied I did everything
in my power to secure you some advantage from this work. But I am now convinced
that, unless for some party purpose, it is impossible to create a more liberal
spirit in reference to literary matters here, than the law enables me to
command: and in your case the law gave all the power out of your hands.
Competition, if it could have been kindled, might have given some power to the
possessor of the earliest copy, but I laboured in vain to create such a spirit;
and after great efforts, and one or two long journeys, was obliged quietly to
let a paltry edition appear, and endure to be laughed at for my philippics
against the powerful booksellers, who for a hope of disreputable profit, could
stoop to so much meanness.
“I have only a moment to spare for the purpose of
asking your civilities to a friend of mine—Mr
Rand, an artist . . . He has been kind enough to promise me your
portrait, if you will so far oblige me as to sit for it. I know this is asking
much, but I shall prize the favour
in proportion to the sacrifice. I feel persuaded that Mr
Rand will produce such a picture as will deserve to be prized;
and a good likeness of you I should deem invaluable. . . .
“Thomas Cooper
has been obliged to appeal to public sympathy for his family. The people came
forward very handsomely. At Philadelphia they had a benefit which yielded 2500
dols., and one was lately given in New York, amounting to 4500 dols.—I am,
&c.,
“John Howard
Payne.”
We may well suppose that Mrs Stanhope
may have considered an autograph letter was, in fact, a sufficient contribution to her
album. She may have considered he was not unlike that one of her own sex, who,
“whispering she would ne’er consent, consented.”
William Godwin to Mrs L. Stanhope.
“Jan. 30, 1834.
“Dear Madam.—I am fully
sensible of the compliment you pay me in requesting a contribution from my pen
to your album, but my principal sensation on the occasion is pain in refusing
you. Quin, the actor, after retiring from
the stage, was accustomed annually to play Falstaff for the benefit of his old friend, Ryan. But at length, being applied to once
more, and having lost several of his teeth, he answered that he fervently
desired for Ryan all manner of good, ‘but, by God,
he would not whistle Falstaff for any
man.’ So I, who am as clumsy as an elephant, must reply in this case,
that I greet you with my utmost good wishes, but will not attempt a hornpipe
even for Mrs L. Stanhope.—Believe me, dear
Madam, most sincerely yours,
W. Godwin.”
Godwin ceased his career as author with “The Lives of the
Necromancers,” but his pen was still active, and his brain still vigorous. In quite the last years of his life he retouched,
in some cases re-wrote, and in others wrote for the first time, a series of essays, which
he designed to call “The Genius of Christianity
Unveiled,” and to this refers the last letter to his wife remaining among his
papers. Mrs Godwin was absent on her short annual excursion to Southend. The work, which
was to have been prepared for publication by Mrs
Shelley after her father’s death, was withheld for various reasons
till three years since, when it was published under the more modest title, more truly
descriptive, of “Essays, hitherto
unpublished.”
William Godwin to Mrs Godwin.
“Aug. 30, 1834.
“My health is better. I have had no return of the
sick feeling which obstinately pursued me for three weeks after my journey to
Harrow. I have written at my manuscript for four days, a little at a time, and
feeling as if I were too old to do much. But it cheers me. . . .
“Mrs Shelley
dined with me on Friday 22d, and I with her the following Monday. She spent the
evening with me yesterday. We should meet oftener, but I rather decline going
to her evenings. The evenings are now dark, and the walk across the park at a
late hour is anything but pleasant. . . .
“I am afraid to say how much I wish to see you, lest
you should call me selfish. Do, however, stay longer, if you think it will do
you good. I have still £50, the produce of the ‘Necromancers.’”
His last word on politics is contained in a letter to Mr
Cross, given below; his last words on religion in the Essays published since
his death. The letter, though of an
earlier date, seems in place here. He was true to himself, consistent and unwavering.
William Godwin to W. Cross.
Jan. 31, 1831.
. . . “I am extremely sorry that any silence on my
part should have been the cause of giving you pain. . . . I have been all my
life accustomed to regard man as everything, ‘the most excellent and
noble creature of the world,’ and property as comparatively mere
dross and dirt. I was sorry, therefore, to see you count the value of a man by
pounds, shillings, and pence. I remember a plan of Mr H. Tooke on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, which was
to give every man a right to as many votes for a representative as he was able
and willing to purchase at a stipulated price. I do not know whether he was in
jest or earnest, and I dare say you never saw his plan. Yours is better than
his because yours does not depend so much on whim as his did. . . .
“I am a republican because I am a philanthropist.
That form of society, perhaps, is the best which shall make individual man feel
most generous and most noble. As poor Dr
Watts says, ‘The mind’s the standard of the
man.’
“With regard to the revolution which occurred in
France in July last, it appears to me that the leaders did well in the points
you specify. You say that your voluntary association would have proved strong
enough to resist all the force that combined Europe could have brought against
them. Be it so: yet the despots of Europe would not have thought so. And to
prevent a war is much better than to finish a war with victory to the just
cause. I am glad, therefore, that the leaders said to Europe, ‘We will
have a king as we have had before. Be not alarmed: we will set no example
of anarchy and the dissolution of government to the people over whom you
reign.’ I moreover rejoice in the generous magnanimity and
forbearance the leaders have displayed, so much the reverse of the Revolution
of 1789. I finally rejoice in the energy that has saved the lives of the
ministers of Charles X.”
Though his mind was thus vigorous, his body was showing signs of decay.
The occasional maladies from which he had suffered for many years, giddiness, faintings,
and numbness in his limbs, occurred at more frequent periods; the entries in the Diary on
given days that he felt quite well are evidence added to the record of maladies that on
other days he was aware that “age with stealing steps had clawed him in her
clutch.” Yet it is possible the habit of minute introspection, extending to
his bodily condition, led him to dwell on some matters of which even less healthy men might
have thought less; and, on the whole, it was a singularly vigorous old age. To the last
years, even to the last days of his life, his habits were the same as they had been forty
years before. Reading of the most varied kind, but by preference the Classics and Italian
literature, occupied his mornings, visits from and to friends his afternoons. He still
dined out and attended the theatre, and even so late as Thursday, March 24, 1836, he went
to the Opera to hear Zampa.
He was aware, however, that the end could not be far distant, and
contemplated it with the same philosophical calm which had characterized him through life.
On August 21, 1834, he had written some reflections on the diaries he had kept for so many
years, on a loose sheet of paper, that he might place it regularly and with method in its
true position whenever he felt that the last entry in the Diary, as it lay open on his desk
was made. He ended vol. xxxii. of this on the Saturday, March 26, 1836, with these words:— “Malfy, fin. Call on Hudson, Trelawny calls, cough, snow.” and then on the
inside of the cover pasted the sheet which had so long waited for its place. It is as
follows:—
“August 21, 1834.
“With what facility have I marked these pages with
the stamp of rolling weeks and months and years—all uniform, all blank! What a
strange power is this! It sees through a long vista of time, and it sees
nothing. All this at present is mere abstraction, symbols, not realities.
Nothing is actually seen: the whole is ciphers, conventional marks, imaginary
boundaries of unimagined things. Here is neither joy nor sorrow, pleasure nor
pain. Yet when the time shall truly come, and the revolving year shall bring
the day, what portentous events may stamp the page! what anguish, what horror,
or by possibility what joy, what Godlike elevation of soul! Here are fevers,
and excruciating pains ‘in their sacred secundine asleep.’
Here may be the saddest reverses, destitution and despair, detrusion and hunger
and nakedness, without a place wherein to lay our head, wearisome days and
endless nights in dark and unendurable monotony, variety of wretchedness; yet
of all one gloomy hue; slumbers without sleep, waking without excitation,
dreams all heterogeneous and perplexed, with nothing distinct and defined,
distracted without the occasional bursts and energy of distraction. And these
pages look now all fair, innocent, and uniform. I have put down eighty years
and twenty-three days, and I might put down one hundred and sixty years. But in
which of these pages shall the pen which purposes to record, drop from my hands
for ever, never again to be resumed? I shall set down the memoranda of one day,
with the full expectation of resuming my task on the next, or my fingers may
refuse their functions in the act of forming a letter, and leave the word never
by the writer to be completed.
“Everything under the sun is uncertain. No provision
can be a sufficient security against adverse and unexpected fortune, least of
all to him who has not a stipulated income bound to him by the forms and
ordinances of society. This, as age and feebleness of body and mind advances,
is an appalling consideration, ‘a man cannot tell what shall
be,’ to what straits he may be driven, what trials and privations and
destitution and struggles and griefs may be reserved for him.”
It was with no faltering hand, but yet with a prophetic feeling, that
the end had come, that Godwin finished his last
Diary note-book. On Sunday, March 27th, the illness of which he had complained the day
before increased, and his cold became feverish. The pen had “dropped from his hand
for ever,” and after ten days of gradual and peaceful decay, he died on
Thursday, April 7th, 1836.
He was buried by the side of Mary
Wollstonecraft, in Old St Pancras Churchyard, which even then had not
entirely ceased to be a quiet nook, where Shelley
had met Mary Godwin under the willow which shadowed
her mother’s grave. The tide of London was soon to desecrate and deform into hideous
desolation a spot full of so many memories; two Railways run below and through Old St
Pancras graveyard.
But when it became needful to disturb the bones of the dead for the sake
of the living, Mary Shelley had passed away, and was
resting in Bournemouth churchyard, the burial-place nearest to the home of her only
surviving child. In order that parents and daughter might rest together, the remains of
Godwin and Mary
Wollstonecraft were transferred to the same spot by their grandson, in whose house, enshrined in a silver urn, are
the ashes of his father. It is Shelley’s heart
alone, “cor cordium,” that the Roman grave contains.
Clerical intolerance uttered some protests against the inscription on the grave, where
stand recorded the works by which each who lies there is best known, though it is difficult
to see why words which were innocent in St Pancras’ churchyard were harmful
elsewhere. But kinder and wiser counsels prevailed, and on a sunny bank, sloping to the
west, among the rose-twined crosses of many who have
died in more orthodox beliefs, rest those who at least might each of them have said
“Write me, as one that loves his fellow-men.” William Godwin,
Author of “Political Justice.”Born, March 3rd,
1756; Died, April 7th, 1836.Aged 80 years.Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin,Author of a Vindication of the “Rights of
Women.”Born, April 21th,
1759; Died, Sepr. 10, 1797.Their remains were removed hither from the Churchyard of St
Pancras,London, a.d. 1851.Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley,Daughter of Willm.
& Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Widow of the latePercy Bysshe Shelley.Born, 30 Augt. 1797;
Died, 1st Feby. 1851.
INDEX. Akers, Mr Robert, Godwin’s school master, I., 9. Allegra, Byron’s daughter, II., 247, 248. —— Death of, II., 280. “Annual Register,” I., 21, 100. “Answer to Malthus,” II., 248, 260, 271. “Antonio,” a Tragedy, II., I, 26, 37-55. Arnot, John, I., 313, 339; II., 18. —— Letters from, I., 313, 315, 316, 319, 340, 341; II., 27, 28, 30, 31. Bage, Mr, I., 262. Baldwin, Edward (Pseudonym of William Godwin), II., 131. —— Fables, II., 131. Ballantyne, James, Letter from, I., 351. Baxter, Mr and Miss, II., 90, 214. Bell, Dr James, I., 351. Bentham, Jeremy, II., 314-320. Bishop, Mrs, I., 164, 195. ——Letters from, I., 196, 198, 205, 211, 212, 216, 223, 225. Blake, William, I., 193. Blood, Fanny, I., 164, 173. —— Letter from, I., 171. —— George, I., 165, 195. Boaden, “Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald,” 74. Brunton, Miss, I., 78. Bulwer, E. L. (See Lytton, Lord). Butler, Bishop, I., 4. Byron, Lord, II., 247-8. “Caleb Williams,” I., 78, 89, 116. Canning, George, I., 25. Carlisle, Sir Anthony, I., 274; II., 109. “Cave of Fancy,” I., 193. Chalmers, George. I., 70. “Chatham, Lord, Life of,” I., 102. “Chaucer, Life of,” II., 58, 64, 71, 96. “Christianity, Genius of, Unveiled,” II., 327. Clairmont, Charles, II., 108, 166, 181, 254. —— Letters from, II., 168, 186. —— Jane, II., 108, 213, 217, 280. Clairmont, Mrs [sec M. J. Godwin). Clarke, Dr Samuel, I., 4. “Cloudesley,” a Novel, II., 292. Coleridge, Hartley, II., 3. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, I., 17, 119, 354. —— Letters from, II., 1-3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 77, 79, 81, 83, 92, 222, 224. “Commonwealth of England, History of,” II., 291. Constable, Archibald, II., 181-192. Cooke, William, Letter from, II., 323. Cooper, Thomas, I., 35-39, 41, II., 326. —— Letters from, I., 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 143. 144, 145,
152, 153. Cotton, Mrs, I., 279. Coventry Fair, I., 266. Curran, John Philpot, I., 363, 369; II., 5. —— Letter from, I., 363. “Damon and Delia,” a Novel, I., 20, 100. “Delia Crusca,” I., 78. “Deloraine,” a Novel, II., 292. D’Israeli, Isaac, Letter from, II., 294. “Doddridge’s Family Expositor,” I., 4. “Don Quixote,” II., 178. Dyson, George, I., 17, 47. 71. “Elements of Morality,” I., 194. “English Review,” I., 20. “Enquirer, The,” I., 292. “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,” I., 66, 70. —— Publication of, I., 77, 103. Eton College, Religious Services at, I., 202. —— in, 1787, I., 181. “Eugene Aram,” II., 304. Fairley, Mr Thomas, II., 181, 190, 191, 192. “Faulkener,” a Tragedy, II., 122, 162. Fawcet, the Rev. Joseph, I., 17, 18. Fenwick, Mrs, I., 282. —— Letter from, I., 282. “Fleetwood,” a Novel, II., 122, 144. Fordyce, Dr, Sermons, I., 203. Fox, Charles James, II., 152. —— Character of, II., 152. French Refugees, I., 212. ——Revolution, I., 61. Fuseli, Henry, R.A., I., 205, 206. —— Knowles’ Life of, I., 207; II., 297. Gay, Miss, I. 23, 31, 32. Gerrald, Joseph, I., 78. ——Trial of, I., 123. Gisborne, Mr, I., 339. —— Mrs (See Mrs Reveley). Godwin, Edward, I., 3. Godwin, Fanny, I., 216, 229, 246. —— Death of, II., 239-244. Godwin, Hannah, I., 22, 71. —— Letters from, I., 30, 32, II., 14a —— Death of, II., 253. Godwin, Hull, I., 55. —— Letter from, II., 146. Godwin, John, I., 5. Godwin, Mary. (See Shelley, Mary.) Godwin, M. J. (Mrs Clairmont), II., 57, 108, 187, 188, 189. Godwin, Mrs, Sen., I., 6, 21, 269. —— Letters from, I., 55, 56, 160, 236, 325. 352. 353; II., 32, 33, 59, 91, 99, 127,
135, 136, 169. Godwin, William,— Birth, I., 2. Ancestors, I., 3-5. Early training, I., 7-9. „ Religious views, I., 10. College life, I., 14. A Dissenting Minister, I., 16. Change of views, I., 19. “Italian Letters,” I., 21. “Annual Register,” writes for, I., 21. “English Review,” „ I., 20. “Political Herald,” „ I., 24. A Private Tutor, I., 32. Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 76, 79, 80. Political enthusiasm, I., 117. On Horne Tooke’s Trial, I., 118. Intimacy with Mary Wollstonecraft, I., 232. Marriage, I., 234. Mrs Shelley’s Notes on Marriage, I., 161, 238. Visit to Ireland, I., 363. Quarrel with Dr Parr, I., 374. “Antonio,” II., I. Second Marriage, II., 89. Misunderstanding with Friends, II., 101. Entrance into Business, II., 129. In business as a bookseller, II., 157. Failing health, II., 172. Consults Dr Ash, II., 173. “Lives of the Phillips,” II., 177. Tour in Scotland, II., 231, 237. Pecuniary troubles, II., 275, 282. Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, II., 321. Old age, II., 329. Death, II., 331. Diaries, I., 60, 61, 64, 65, 68, 71, 72, 80, 119, 330; II.,
89, 122, 172, 201, 209-211, 216, 231-234. Godwin, William, Letters to— Arnot, John, I., 317. Ash, Dr, II., 173. Bulwer, E. L , II., 306, 307. Carlisle, Sir Anthony, I., 285. Cole, William, II., 118. Coleridge, II., 4. Cooke, William, II., 324. Cooper, Thomas, I., 39. Cotton, Mrs, I., 280. Godwin, William, Letters to- Cross, W., II., 329. Dyson, I., 48. Fairley, II., 190-192. Gerrald, I., 125. Godwin, Hull, II., 139, 145, 246. Godwin, Mrs (M. J.), II., 98, 120, 137, 146, 147, 150, 170,
171, 180, 182-185, 189-90, 211, 228, 234-236, 249-252, 254-256, 259, 296, 299, 327. Holcroft, Thos., I., 53, 275, 345, 349; II., 21, 72. Holcroft, Mrs, II., 176. Inchbald, Mrs, I., 276, 278. Irving, Washington, II., 300. Kemble, J. P., II., 44, 67. King, John, I., 155. Knowles, Mr, II. 298. Lamb, Charles, II., 163. Lamb, Lady Caroline, II., 266, 283. Lee, Miss, I., 298, 300, 302, 304, 308, 310. Lens, Sergeant, II., 286. Marshal, I., 364-374; II., 159, 160. “Morning Chronicle,” I., 121. Newton, The Rev. Samuel, I., 83. Parr, The Rev. Dr, I., 375, 377, 378. Patrickson, II., 193-8. Phillips, R., II., 70. Raine, Dr, II., 166. Reveley, Mrs, I., 333 335. 33°. Rosser, II., 263, 264. Ritson, Joseph, II., 63. Scott, Sir Walter, II., 310. Shelley, II., 203, 206, 207. Shelley, Mrs, II., 269, 270, 277, 278, 281, 289, 299, 309. Sheridan, II., 65. Stanhope, Mrs L., II., 327. Tuthil, I., 284. Wallace, W., II., 268. Wedgwood, Josiah, II., 238. ——Thomas, I., 235, 312; II., 123. Wollstonecraft, Mary, I., 244, 245, 248, 251, 255, 258, 261,
264. Godwin, William, Works of— Answer to Malthus, II., 248. Caleb Williams, I., 78. Chatham, Life of Lord, I., 19, 20. Cloudesley, II., 292. Damon and Delia, I., 20. Deloraine, II., 292. Godwin, William, Works of— Enquirer, The, I., 292. Genius of Christianity Unveiled, II., 327. Herald of Literature, I., 21. History of the Commonwealth of England, II., 291. Imogen, I. 21. Lives of the Necromancers, II. 292. Mandeville, II., 248. Memoirs of Lord Lovat, I., 21. Political Justice, I., 67, 70, 77. St Leon, I., 330. Sketches of History, I., 98. Thoughts on Man, II., 248, 291. Godwin, William, Jun., II., 257, 295. Birth of, II., 90. Letter from, II., 276. Death of, II., 320. Grattan, Henry, I., 369. Havre-Marat, I., 221. Hayes, Miss, I., 282. —— Letter from, I., 282. Hayley, William, II., 188. Hazlitt’s Life of Holcroft, I., 18, 25; II., 174. —— English Grammar, II., 134. —— Letter from, II., 175. “Herald of Literature,” I., 20. “Hermann and Dorothea,” II., 71. Hitcham-House School, I., 33. Holcroft, Thomas, I., 17, 25; II., 17. —— —— Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 25. —— Life of, II., 174. —— Death of, II., 174. —— Death of his Son, I., 63. —— Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 64. —— Letters from, I., 49, 50, 52, 69, 149, 240, 269, 343, 347, 348; II., 17, 18, 22,
23, 25, 26, 109, in, 116, 126. —— Fanny, II., 19. Hull, Mr, I., 3. Holland, Lord, Letters from, II., 161, 162. Imlay, Gilbert, I., 159, 213, 220. —— Letters from, I., 217, 227. “Imogen,” I., 21, 100. Inchbald, Mrs, I., 72, 154, 239. —— Letters from, I., 74, 138, 139, 140, 240, 276, 277, 279, 350; II., 77, 142
Inchbald, Mrs, Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 73. —— Boaden’s Memoir of, I., 74, 140. “Iron Chest, The,” I., 117. Irving, Washington, II., 300. —— Letter from, II., 301. “Italian Letters,” I., 21. Jeffrey, Letter from, II., 252. Johnson, publisher, I., 69, 190, 193. Jones, The Rev. Samuel, I., 3. Jordan, J. S., publisher, I., 69, 70, 71. “Junius’ Letters,” I., 148. Kemble, John Philip, I., 41. —— Letters from, II., 41-43, 47. 49. 66-67, 69. King, John, a Jew money lender, I., 146, 154. King, Letter from, I., 157. Kippis, Rev. Dr, I., 15, 24. Knapp, Mrs, Letter from, II., 145. Knowles’ “Life of Fuseli,” I., 207. Lamb, Charles, I., 362; II., 3. —— Letters from, II., 36, 38, 48, 50, 84, 87, 102, 103, 121, 151, 164, 165, 221,
275. —— Death of, II., 321. Lamb, Lady Caroline, II., 265. —— Letters from, II., 266, 267, 285, 302. Lane, publisher, I., 21. Lauderdale, Lord, I., 149, 154. Lee, Miss Harriet, I., 298. Letter from, I., 307. “Letters from Norway,” I., 228. Louis the XVI., Trial of, I., 210. Lytton, Edward, Lord, II., 302. Letters from, II., 305, 307, 308. Mackintosh, Sir James, I., 71, 154, 328. —— Letters from, I., 328; II., 274, 288. Malthus, Rev. T. R., I., 321. —— Letter from, I., 321. “Mandeville,” a novel, II., 24. Marshal, James, I., 38, 234, 283; II., 53. —— Letter from, I., 90. —— Mrs Shelley’s Note on, I., 46. Merry, Robert, I., 78, 118, 154. Montagu, Basil, I., 149, 247, 254, 265, 274, 283. Morgan, W., Letter from, II., 272. Mountcashel, Lady, I., 182, 364, 369; II., 111. —— Letter from, II., 113. Murray, publisher, I., 21. Necker on Religious Opinions, I., 193. “Necromancers, Lives of the,” II., 292, 324, 327. Newton, The Rev. Samuel, I., 10, 83. —— Letters from, I., 85, 86. Nicholson, William, Letter from, I., 289. Norman, Frederic, I., 19. Opie, Mrs (Miss Alderson), I., 149, 157, 162. —— John R. A., I., 149. —— Mrs, Letters from, I., 158. “Original Stories,” I., 193. Paine, Thomas, I., 69. Palmer’s Trial, I., 175. Panopticon, The, II., 318. Parr, The Rev. Dr, Letters from, I., 136; 378, 386. Parr’s Spital Sermon, I., 377. Patrickson, P., II., 192. —— Letters from, II., 198, 199. —— Death of, II., 200. Payne, John Howard, Letter from, II., 326. “Political Herald,” I., 24. —— Trials, I., 117, 120, 123. —— Mrs Shelley’s Note on, I., 120, 128. Philomath Society, I., 119. Phillips, R., publisher, II., 70. —— Letter from, II., 143. “Phillips, Edward and John, Lives of,”II., 177. Porson, Richard, I., 78. Price, Dr, I., 62. “Priestley’s Institutes,” I., 26. Raine, Dr (Head Master of Charterhouse), Letter from, II., 166. Ramohun Roy, II., 325. Ramohun Roy, Letter from, II., 325. Rees, The Rev. Dr, I., 15, “Reflections on the French Revolution,” I., 69. Reveley, Mrs, I., 81, 162, 239, 362; II., 314. —— Letters from, I., 135; II., 314. —— Mrs Shelley’s Note on, I., 81, 332. —— Mr., I., 332. “Revolutionists, The,” I., 62, 65, 71. “Rights of Man,” The, I., 69. “Woman,” I., 193, 200. Ritson, Joseph, I., 78. —— Letters from, II. , 61, 63. Robinson, publisher, I., 21, 24, (:^%^ 80. —— Mrs, I., 154, 159, II.; 4, 34, 35. —— Letter from, II. , 34. Rosser, Henry Blanch, II. , 261. —— Letters from, II., 262, 273. —— Death of, II., 280. Rowan, Archibald Hamilton, I., 221, 229, 286. Scott, Sir Walter, Letters from, II., 292, 312. Search’s “Light of Nature,” II., 96. Secker, Archbishop, I., 4. Shelley, Harriet, II., 201. —— Death of, II. , 244. Shelley, Mary, birth of, I., 273. —— In Infancy, I., 289, 297. —— Diaries, II., 243. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, II., 192, 201, 250. —— Letters from, II. , 201, 278. —— In Ireland, II., 203. —— First meeting with Godwin, II., 212. —— Marriage to Mary Godwin, II., 245. —— Death of, II., 280. Sheridan, Richard Brindsley Butler, I., 24. Siddons, Mrs, I., 41, 149. —— Mrs Henry, II., 163. “Simple Story,” The, I. (^6, “Sketches of History,” I., 98. Skeys, Hugh, Esq., I., 291, Sothren, Mrs, I. 7, 10, 58, 158, 160. —— Letter from, I., 22. Southey, Robert, I., 234. Spital Sermon, I., 377. Stanhope, Charles, Earl of, I., 62, 65. “St Leon,” I., 330; II., 23,25. Stuart, Dr Gilbert, I., 24. “Tales from Shakespeare,” II., 133. Talleyrand, Monsr., I., 200. “Thoughts on Man,” II., 248. Tooke, John Home, I., 62, 65, 70, 147, 148, 150. —— Letters from, II., 105, 144. —— Trial of, I., 80, 118. “Transfusion,” a Novel, II. , 321. “Treatise on Population,” Malthus, I., 321. Tuthil, Mr Thomas, I., 283. —— Letters from, I., 283, 284. Upton Castle, I., 196. “Valperga,” a Novel, II., 277. Volney, “Ruins of Empires,” I., 349. Wales, Prince of (George IV.), II., 34, 109. Watson, Bishop, I., 21. —— Letter from, I., 66. Watts, Dr Isaac, I., 3. Webb, Willis, I., 32. —— Letters from, I., 33, 34. Wolcot, Dr (Peter Pindar), II., 117,162. —— Letter from, II., 117. Wordsworth, William, Letter from, II., 218 Wedgwood, Thomas, I., 234. —— Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 78. —— Letters from, I., 311; II., 125, 141. —— Family, I., 247, 253, 254, 255, 256. Westminster Election, I., 50, Williams, Helen Maria, I., 63, 208. Wollstonecraft, Mary, I., 70, 154, 158, 162, 213. —— Birth and Parentage, I., 163. —— Writes, “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” I., 200. “Defence
of the Character and Conduct of, I., 206. —— “Posthumous Works of,” I., 209. —— Journey to France, I., 208. —— Voyage to Norway, I., 227. —— Attempted Suicide, I., 229. Wollstonecraft, Mary, Mrs Shelley’s Notes on, I., 231, —— Birth of a Daughter, I., 273. —— Death, I., 275. —— Letters from, I., 166- 171, 173-179, 182-192, 195, 206, 208, 209, 218, 219, 221,
222, 229, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 257, 267, 268, 272, 273. Wollstonecraft, Mary, Funeral, I., 287. —— Religious Faith, I., 281. Wollstonecraft, James, I., 194. —— Everina, I., 163, 194, 19S, 205, 243, 256, 282. —— Charles, I., 197, 206, 216. —— Mr, I., 197. Wynn, Mr, I., 252.