“The Swedes pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and ceremonies. So far indeed from entering immediately into your character, and making you feel instantly at your ease, like the well-bred French, their over-acted civility is a continual restraint on all your actions. The sort of superiority which a fortune gives when there is no superiority of education, excepting what consists in the observance of senseless forms, has a contrary effect than what is intended; so that I could not help reckoning the peasantry the politest people of Sweden, who, only aiming at pleasing you, never think of being admired for their behavior.”
Mary found the condition of the Norwegians somewhat better. The lower classes were freer, more industrious, and more opulent. She describes their inns as comfortable, whereas those of the Swedes had not been even inhabitable. The upper classes, though, like the Swedes, over-fond of the pleasures of the table, narrow in their range of ideas, and wholly without imagination, at least gave some signs of better days in their dawning interest in culture. She writes:—
“The Norwegians appear to me a sensible, shrewd people, with little scientific knowledge, and still less taste for literature; but they are arriving at the epoch which precedes the introduction of the arts and sciences.
“Most of the towns are seaports, and seaports are not favorable to improvement. The captains acquire a little superficial knowledge by travelling, which their indefatigable attention to the making of money prevents their digesting; and the fortune that they thus laboriously acquire is spent, as it usually is in towns of this description, in show and good living. They love their country, but have not much public spirit. Their exertions are, generally speaking, only for their families; which I conceive will always be the case, till politics, becoming a subject of discussion, enlarges the heart by opening the understanding. The French Revolution will have this effect. They sing at present, with great glee, many republican songs, and seem earnestly to wish that the republic may stand; yet they appear very much attached to their prince royal; and, as far as rumor can give an idea of character, he appears to merit their attachment.”
She remained in Copenhagen and Hamburg but a short time. Imlay’s unkindness and indecision had, by the time she reached Holland, so increased her melancholy that the good effect of the bracing northern air was partially destroyed. She lost her interest in the novelty of her surroundings, and as she says in one of her last letters, stayed much at home. But her perceptive faculties were not wholly deadened. She notes with her usual precision the indolence and dulness of the Danes, and the unwavering devotion of the Hamburgers to commerce, and describes the towns of Hamburg and Copenhagen with graphic force. These descriptions are well worth reading.
It was always impossible for Mary not to reflect and moralize upon what passed around her. She not only wanted to examine and record phenomena and events, but to discover a reason for their existence. She invariably sought for the primal causes and the final results of the facts in which she was interested. The civilization of the northern countries through which she travelled, so different from the culture of England and France, gave her ample food for thought. The reflections it aroused found their way into her letters. Some of them are really remarkable, as for example, the following:—
“Arriving at Sleswick, the residence of Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel, the sight of the soldiers recalled all the unpleasing ideas of German despotism, which imperceptibly vanished as I advanced into the country. I viewed, with a mixture of pity and horror, these beings training to be sold to slaughter, or be slaughtered, and fell into reflections on an old opinion of mine, that it is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away! Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert, that it is not men, but man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame; war and the ‘thousand ills which flesh is heir to’ mow them down in shoals, whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsy existence, introducing not less sure, though slower decay.”
Had Mary Wollstonecraft lived in the present time, she too would have written hymns to Man. This is another of the many strange instances in her writings of the resemblance between theories which she evolved for herself and those of modern philosophers. She lived a century too soon.
The “Letters” were published in the same year, 1796, in Wilmington, Delaware. A few years later, extracts from them, translated into Portuguese, together with a brief sketch of their author, were published in Lisbon, while a German edition appeared in Hamburg and Altona. The book is now not so well known as it deserves to be. Mary’s descriptions of the physical characteristics of Norway and Sweden are equal to any written by more recent English travellers to Scandinavia; and her account of the people is valuable as an unprejudiced record of the manners and customs existing among them towards the end of the eighteenth century. But though so little known, it is still true that, as her self-appointed defender said in 1803, “Letters so replete with correctness of remark, delicacy of feeling, and pathos of expression, will cease to exist only with the language in which they were written.”
Shortly after her death, Godwin published in four volumes all Mary’s unprinted writings, unfinished as well as finished. This collection, which is called simply “Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” may most appropriately be noticed here in connection with the more complete productions of her last years.