G. Imlay.
Witness, J. Samuel.
Unfortunately for Mary, she was detained at Hull, from which town she was to set sail, for about a month. She was thus unable immediately to still the memory of her sorrows. It is touching to see how, now that she could no longer doubt that Imlay was made of common clay, she began to find excuses for him. She represented to herself that it was her misfortune to have met him too late. Had she known him before dissipation had enslaved him, there would have been none of this trouble. She was, furthermore, convinced that his natural refinement was not entirely destroyed, and that if he would but make the effort he could overcome his grosser appetites. To this effect she wrote him from Hull:—
“I shall always consider it as one of the most serious misfortunes of my life, that I did not meet you before satiety had rendered your senses so fastidious as almost to close up every tender avenue of sentiment and affection that leads to your sympathetic heart. You have a heart, my friend; yet, hurried away by the impetuosity of inferior feelings, you have sought in vulgar excesses for that gratification which only the heart can bestow.
“The common run of men, I know, with strong health and gross appetites, must have variety to banish ennui, because the imagination never lends its magic wand to convert appetite into love, cemented by according reason. Ah! my friend, you know not the ineffable delight, the exquisite pleasure, which arises from an unison of affection and desire, when the whole soul and senses are abandoned to a lively imagination, that renders every emotion delicate and rapturous. Yes; these are emotions over which satiety has no power, and the recollection of which even disappointment cannot disenchant; but they do not exist without self-denial. These emotions, more or less strong, appear to me to be the distinctive characteristics of genius, the foundation of taste, and of that exquisite relish for the beauties of nature, of which the common herd of eaters and drinkers and child-begetters certainly have no idea. You will smile at an observation that has just occurred to me: I consider those minds as the most strong and original whose imagination acts as the stimulus to their senses.
“Well! you will ask what is the result of all this reasoning. Why, I cannot help thinking that it is possible for you, having great strength of mind, to return to nature and regain a sanity of constitution and purity of feeling which would open your heart to me. I would fain rest there!
“Yet, convinced more than ever of the sincerity and tenderness of my attachment to you, the involuntary hopes which a determination to live has revived are not sufficiently strong to dissipate the cloud that despair has spread over futurity. I have looked at the sea and at my child, hardly daring to own to myself the secret wish that it might become our tomb, and that the heart, still so alive to anguish, might there be quieted by death. At this moment ten thousand complicated sentiments press for utterance, weigh on my heart, and obscure my sight.”
After almost a month of inactivity, the one bright spot in it being a visit to Beverly, the home of her childhood, she sailed for Sweden, with Fanny and a maid as her only companions. Her “Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,” with the more personal passages omitted, were published in a volume by themselves shortly after her return to England. Notice of them will find a more appropriate place in another chapter. All that is necessary here is the very portion which was then suppressed, but which Godwin later included with the “Letters to Imlay.” The northern trip had at least this good result. It strengthened her physically. She was so weak when she first arrived in Sweden that the day she landed she fell fainting to the ground as she walked to her carriage. For a while everything fatigued her. The bustle of the people around her seemed “flat, dull, and unprofitable.” The civilities by which she was overwhelmed, and the endeavors of the people she met to amuse her, were fatiguing. Nothing, for a while, could lighten her deadly weight of sorrow. But by degrees, as her letters show, she improved. Pure air, long walks, and rides on horseback, rowing and bathing, and days in the country had their beneficial effect, and she wrote to Imlay on July 4, “The rosy fingers of health already streak my cheeks; and I have seen a physical life in my eyes, after I have been climbing the rocks, that resembled the fond, credulous hopes of youth.”
But even a sound body cannot heal a broken heart. Mary could not throw off her troubles in a day. She after a time tried to distract her mind by entering into the amusements she had at first scorned, but it was often in vain. “I have endeavored to fly from myself,” she said in one letter, “and launched into all the dissipation possible here, only to feel keener anguish when alone with my child.” There was a change for the better, however, in her mental state, for though her grief was not completely cured, she at least voluntarily sought to recover her emotional equilibrium. Self-examination showed her where her weakness lay, and she resolved to conquer it. With but too much truth, she told Imlay:—
“Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find that to deaden is not to calm the mind. Aiming at tranquillity I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul, almost rooted out what renders it estimable. Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel that imperceptibly feeds hopes which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid; soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch of disappointment.”