The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections

by A. Edward Newton

With the death of Shelley, Godwin’s affairs became desperate. Taking advantage of some defect in the title of the owner of the property which he had leased, he declined for some time to pay any rent, meanwhile carrying on a costly and vexatious lawsuit. Curiously enough, in the end, justice triumphed. Godwin was obliged to pay two years’ arrears of rent and the costs of litigation. Of course, he looked upon this as an extreme hardship, as another indication of the iniquity of the law. But he was now an old man; very little happiness had broken in upon him, and his friends took pity on him. Godwin was most ingenious in stimulating them to efforts on his behalf. A subscription was started under his direction. He probably felt that he knew best how to vary his appeals and make them effective. So much craft one would not have suspected in the old beggar.

One thing he always was—industrious. He finished a wretched novel and at once began a “History of the Commonwealth.” He finished “The Lives of the Necromancers,” and promptly began a novel; but with all his writings he has not left one single phrase with which his name can be associated, or a single thought worth thinking.

It is almost superfluous to say that he had no sense of humor. With his head in the clouds and his feet in his slippers, he mused along.

Hazlitt tells a capital story of him. Godwin was writing a “Life of Chatham,” and applied to his acquaintances to furnish him with anecdotes. Among others, a Mr. Fawcett told him of a striking passage in a speech by Lord Chatham on General Warrants, at the delivery of which he (Mr. Fawcett) had been present. “Every man’s house has been called his castle. And why is it called his castle? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be open to all the elements; the wind may enter it, the rain may enter—but the king cannot enter.”

Fawcett thought that the point was clear enough; but when he came to read the printed volume, he found it thus: “Every man’s house is his castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements; the rain may enter into it, all the winds of heaven may whistle around it, but the king cannot,”—and so forth.

Things were going from bad to worse. Most of his friends were dead or estranged from him. He had made a sad mess of his life and he was very old. Finally, an appeal on his behalf was made to the government, the government against which he had written and talked so much. It took pity on him. Lord Grey conferred on him the post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, whatever that may be, with a residence in New Palace Yard. The office was a sinecure, “the duties performed by menials.” For this exquisite phrase I am indebted to his biographer, C. Kegan Paul. It seems to suggest that a “menial” is one who does his duty. Almost immediately, however, a reformed Parliament abolished the office, and Godwin seemed again in danger; but men of all creeds were now disposed to look kindly on the old man. He was assured of his position for life, and writing to the last, in 1836 he died, at the age of eighty, and was buried by the side of Mary Wollstonecraft in St. Pancras Churchyard.

If there is to be profit as well as pleasure in the study of biography, what lesson can be learned from such a life?

Many years before he died Godwin had written a little essay on “Sepulchres.” It was a proposal for erecting some memorial to the dead on the spot where their remains were interred. Were one asked to suggest a suitable inscription for Godwin’s tomb it might be

HOW NOT TO DO IT.

In the ever-delightful “Angler,” speaking of the operation of baiting a hook with a live frog, Walton finally completes his general instructions with the specific advice to “use him as though you loved him.” In baiting my hook with a dead philosopher I have been unable to accomplish this. I do not love him; few did; he was a cold, hard, self-centred man who did good to none and harm to many. As a husband, father, friend, he was a complete failure. His search for truth was as unavailing as his search for “gratification and happiness.” He is all but forgotten. It is his fate to be remembered chiefly as the husband of the first suffragette.