I will be at the barrier a little after ten o’clock to-morrow.
Yours,
——
The reason for this step was probably the fact that it was not safe for her to continue in Paris alone and unprotected. The robbers in the woods at Neuilly might be laughed at; but the red-capped citoyens and citoyennes, drunk from the first draught of aristocratic blood, were no old man’s dangers. The peril of the English in the city increased with every new development of the struggle; but Americans were looked upon as stanch brother citizens, and a man who had fought for the American Republic was esteemed as the friend and honored guest of the French Republic. As Imlay’s wife, Mary’s safety would therefore be assured. The murderous greed of the people, to break out in September in the Law of the Suspect, was already felt in August, and at the end of that month she sought protection under Imlay’s roof, and shielded herself by his name.
She could not at once judge of the manner in which this expedient would be received. It was impossible to hold any communication with England. For eighteen months after her letter to Mr. Johnson, not a word from her reached her friends at home. As for those in Paris, so intense was the great human tragedy of which they were the witnesses, that they probably forgot to gossip about each other. The crimes and horrors that stared them in the face were so appalling that desire to seek out imaginary ones in their neighbors was lost. As far as can be known from Mary’s letters, her connection with Imlay did not take from her the position she had held in the English colony. No door was closed against her; no scandal was spread about her. The truth is, these people must have understood her difficulties as well as she did. They knew the impossibility of a legal ceremony and the importance in her case of an immediate union; and understanding this, they seem to have considered her Imlay’s wife. At least the rumors which months afterwards came to her sisters treated her marriage as a certainty. Charles Wollstonecraft, now settled in Philadelphia, wrote on June 16, 1794, to Eliza, a year after Mary and Imlay had begun their joint life: “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.” The same report had found its way to Mr. Johnson, and through him again to Mrs. Bishop. It was hard to doubt its truth, and yet Mrs. Bishop knew as well as, if not better than, any one Mary’s views about marriage. She had, happily for herself, reaped the benefit of them. In her surprise she sent Charles’s letter to Everina, accompanied by her own reflections upon the startling news. These are a curious testimony to the strength of Mary’s objections to matrimony. Eliza’s petty envy of her greater sister is still apparent in this letter. It is dated August 15:—
“... 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?”
The only record of Mary’s connection with Imlay, which lasted for about two years, are the letters which she wrote to him while he was away from her, his absences being frequent and long. Fortunately, these letters have been preserved. They were published by Godwin almost immediately after her death, and were republished in 1879 by C. Kegan Paul. “They are,” says Godwin, “the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe.” She was thirty-five when she met Imlay. Her passion for him was strong with the strength of full womanhood, nor had it been weakened by the flirtations in which so many women fritter away whatever deep feeling they may have originally possessed. She was no coquette, as she told him many times. She could not have concealed her love in order to play upon that of the man to whom she gave it. What she felt for him she showed him with no reservation or affectation of feminine delicacy. She despised such false sentiments. The consequence is, that her letters contain the unreserved expression of her feelings. Those written before she had cause to doubt her lover are full of wifely devotion and tenderness; those written from the time she was forced to question his sincerity, through the gradual realization of his faithlessness, until the bitter end, are the most pathetic and heart-rending that have ever been given to the world. They are the cry of a human soul in its death-agony, and are the more tragic because they belong to real life and not to fiction. The sorrows of the Heros, Guineveres, and Francescas of romance are not greater than hers were. Their grief was separation from lovers who still loved them. Hers was the loss of the love of a man for whom her passion had not ceased, and the admission of the unworthiness of him whom she had chosen as worthy above all others. Who will deny that her fate was the more cruel?
She in her letters tells her story better than any one else could do it for her. Therefore, as far as it is possible, it will be repeated here in her own words.
Imlay’s love was to Mary what the kiss of the Prince was to the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale. It awakened her heart to happiness, leading her into that new world which is the old. Hitherto the love which had been her portion was that which she had sought
“... in the pity of other’s woe,
In the gentle relief of another’s care.”