“The partiality we conceived for each other,” he explains, “was in that mode which I have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.... It was friendship melting into love.”
CHAPTER XIII.
LIFE WITH GODWIN: MARRIAGE.
1796-1797.
Godwin and Mary did not at once marry. The former, in his “Political Justice,” had frankly confessed to the world that he thought the existing institution of marriage an evil. Mary had by her conduct avowed her agreement with him. But their views in this connection having already been fully stated need not be repeated. In omitting to seek legal sanction to their union both were acting in perfect accord with their standard of morality. Judged according to their motives, neither can be accused of wrong-doing. Pure in their own eyes, they deserve to be so in the world’s esteem. Their mistake consisted in their disregard of the fact that, to preserve social order in the community, sacrifices are required from the individual. They forgot—as Godwin, who was opposed to sudden change, should not have forgotten—that laws made for men in general cannot be arbitrarily altered to suit each man in particular.
Godwin, strange to say, was ruled in this matter not only by principle, but by sentiment. For the first time his emotions were stirred, and he really loved. He was more awed by his passion than a more susceptible man would have been. It seemed to him too sacred to flaunt before the public. “Nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it,” he says in the story of their love, “or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it has arrived at its climax.” Mary was anxious to conceal, at least for a time, their new relationship. She was not ashamed of it, for never, even when her actions seem most daring, did she swerve from her ideas of right and wrong. But though, as a rule, people had blinded themselves to the truth, some bitter things had been said about her life with Imlay, and some friends had found it their duty to be unkind. All that was unpleasant she had of course heard. One is always sure to hear the evil spoken of one. A second offence against social decrees would assuredly call forth redoubled discussion and increased vituperation. The misery caused by her late experience was still vivid in her memory. She was no less sensitive than she had been then, and she shrank from a second scandal. She dreaded the world’s harshness, much as a Tennyson might that of critics whom he knows to be immeasurably his inferiors.
The great change in their relations made little difference in their way of living. Their determination to keep it secret would have been sufficient to prevent any domestic innovations in the establishment of either. But, in addition to this, Godwin had certain theories upon the subject. Because his love was the outcome of strong feeling and not of calm discussion, his reliance upon reason, as the regulator of his actions, did not cease. The habits of a life-time could not be so easily broken. If he had not governed love in its growth, he at least ruled its expression. It was necessary to decide upon a course of conduct for the two lives now made one. At this juncture he was again the placid philosopher. It had occurred to him, probably in the days when Hannah Godwin was wife-hunting for him, or later, when Amelia Alderson met with his good-will, that if husband and wife live on too intimate and familiar terms, the chances are they will tire of each other very soon. When the charm of novelty and uncertainty is removed, there is danger of satiety. Whereas, if domestic pleasures can be combined with a little of the formality which exists previous to marriage, all the advantages of the married state are secured, while the monotony that too often kills passion is avoided. Since he and Mary were to be really, if not legally, man and wife, the time had come to test the truth of these ideas. The plan he proposed was that they should be as independent of each other as they had hitherto been, that the time spent together should not in any way be restricted or regulated by stated hours, and that, in their amusements and social intercourse, each should continue wholly free.
Mary readily acquiesced, though such a suggestion would probably never have originated with her. Her heart was too large and warm for doubts, where love was concerned. She was the very opposite of Godwin in this respect. She had the poetic rather than the philosophic temperament, and when she loved it was with an intensity that made analysis of her feelings and their possible results out of the question. It is true that in her “Rights of Women” she had shown that passion must inevitably lose its first ardor, and that love between man and wife must in the course of time become either friendship or indifference. But while she had reasoned dispassionately in an abstract treatise, she had not been equally temperate in the direction of her own affairs. Her love for Imlay had not passed into the second stage, but his had deteriorated into indifference very quickly. Godwin was, as she well knew, in every way unlike Imlay. That she felt perfect confidence in him is seen by her willingness to live with him. But still, sure as she was of his innate uprightness, when he suggested to her means by which to insure the continuance of his love, she was only too glad to adopt them. She had learned, if not to be prudent herself, at least to comply with the prudence of others.
It would not be well perhaps for every one to follow their plan of life, but with them it succeeded admirably. Godwin remained in his lodgings, Mary in hers. He continued his old routine of work, made his usual round of visits, and went by himself, as of yore, to the theatre, and to the dinners and suppers of his friends. Mary pursued uninterruptedly her studies and writings, conducted her domestic concerns in the same way, and sought her amusements singly, sometimes meeting Godwin quite unexpectedly at the play or in private houses. His visits to her were as irregular in point of time as they had previously been, and when one wanted to make sure of the other for a certain hour or at a certain place, a regular engagement had to be made. The thoroughness with which they maintained their independence is illustrated by the following note which Mary sent to Godwin one morning, about a month before their marriage:—
“Did I not see you, friend Godwin, at the theatre last night? I thought I met a smile, but you went out without looking around.”