Letters on Sweden, Norway and Denmark | Page 6

day been conceded. They
are certainly not revolutionary in the opinion of the world that has
become a hundred years older since the book was written.
At this the Mary Wollstonecraft had moved to rooms in Store Street,
Bedford Square. She was fascinated by Fuseli the painter, and he was a
married man. She felt herself to be too strongly drawn towards him,
and she went to Paris at the close of the year 1792, to break the spell.
She felt lonely and sad, and was not the happier for being in a mansion
lent to her, from which the owner was away, and in which she lived
surrounded by his servants. Strong womanly instincts were astir within
her, and they were not all wise folk who had been drawn around her by
her generous enthusiasm for the new hopes of the world, that made it
then, as Wordsworth felt, a very heaven to the young.
Four months after she had gone to Paris, Mary Wollstonecraft met at
the house of a merchant, with whose wife she had become intimate, an

American named Gilbert Imlay. He won her affections. That was in
April, 1793. He had no means, and she had home embarrassments, for
which she was unwilling that he should become in any way responsible.
A part of the new dream in some minds then was of a love too pure to
need or bear the bondage of authority. The mere forced union of
marriage ties implied, it was said, a distrust of fidelity. When Gilbert
Imlay would have married Mary Wollstonecraft, she herself refused to
bind him; she would keep him legally exempt from her responsibilities
towards the father, sisters, brothers, whom she was supporting. She
took his name and called herself his wife, when the French Convention,
indignant at the conduct of the British Government, issue a decree from
the effects of which she would escape as the wife of a citizen of the
United States. But she did not marry. She witnessed many of the
horrors that came of the loosened passions of an untaught populace. A
child was born to her--a girl whom she named after the dead friend of
her own girlhood. And then she found that she had leant upon a reed.
She was neglected; and was at last forsaken. Having sent her to London,
Imlay there visited her, to explain himself away. She resolved on
suicide, and in dissuading her from that he gave her hope again. He
needed somebody who had good judgment, and who cared for his
interests, to represent him in some business affairs in Norway. She
undertook to act for him, and set out on the voyage only a week after
she had determined to destroy herself.
The interest of this book which describes her travel is quickened by a
knowledge of the heart-sorrow that underlies it all. Gilbert Imlay had
promised to meet her upon her return, and go with her to Switzerland.
But the letters she had from him in Sweden and Norway were cold, and
she came back to find that she was wholly forsaken for an actress from
a strolling company of players. Then she went up the river to drown
herself. She paced the road at Putney on an October night, in 1795, in
heavy rain, until her clothes were drenched, that she might sink more
surely, and then threw herself from the top of Putney Bridge.
She was rescued, and lived on with deadened spirit. In 1796 these
"Letters from Sweden and Norway" were published. Early in 1797 she
was married to William Godwin. On the 10th of September in the same
year, at the age of thirty-eight, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died, after
the birth of the daughter who lived to become the wife of Shelley. The

mother also would have lived, if a womanly feeling, in itself to be
respected, had not led her also to unwise departure from the customs of
the world. Peace be to her memory. None but kind thoughts can dwell
upon the life of this too faithful disciple of Rousseau.
H. M.

LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A SHORT RESIDENCE IN
SWEDEN, NORWAY, AND DENMARK.

LETTER I.

Eleven days of weariness on board a vessel not intended for the
accommodation of passengers have so exhausted my spirits, to say
nothing of the other causes, with which you are already sufficiently
acquainted, that it is with some difficulty I adhere to my determination
of giving you my observations, as I travel through new scenes, whilst
warmed with the impression they have made on me.
The captain, as I mentioned to you, promised to put me on shore at
Arendall or Gothenburg in his way to Elsineur, but contrary winds
obliged us to pass both places during the night.