“Fanny is delighted with the thought of dining with you. But I wish you to eat your meat first, and let her come up with the pudding. I shall probably knock at your door in my way to Opie’s; but should I not find you, let me request you not to be too late this evening. Do not give Fanny butter with her pudding.”
“Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitory pleasures,” Godwin asserts in referring to the months of their married life. Mary never let her work come to a standstill. Idleness was a failing unknown to her, nor had marriage, as has been seen, lessened the necessity of industry. Indeed, it was now especially important that she should exert her powers of working to the utmost, which is probably the reason that little remains to show as product of this period. Reviewing and translating were still more profitable, because more certain, than original writing; and her notes to Godwin prove by their allusions that Johnson continued to keep her supplied with employment of this kind. She had several larger schemes afoot, for the accomplishment of which nothing was wanting but time. She proposed, among other things, to write a series of letters on the management of infants. This was a subject to which in earlier years she had given much attention, and her experience with her own child had been a practical confirmation of conclusions then formed. This was to have been followed by another series of books for the instruction of children. The latter project was really the older of the two. Her remarks on education in the “Rights of Women” make it a matter of regret that she did not live to carry it out. But her chief literary enterprise during the last year of her life was her story of “Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman.” Her interest in it as an almost personal narrative, and her desire to make it a really good novel, were so great that she wrote and rewrote parts of it many times. She devoted more hours to it than would be supposed possible, judging from the rapidity with which her other books were produced.
But, however busy she might be, she was always at leisure to do good. Business was never an excuse for her to decline the offices of humanity. Everina was her guest during this year, and at a time, too, when it was particularly inconvenient for her to have visitors. Her kindness also revealed itself in many minor ways. When she had to choose between her own pleasure and that of others, she was sure to decide in their favor. A proof of her readiness to sacrifice herself in small matters is contained in the following note, written to Godwin:—
Saturday morning, May 21, 1797.
... Montague called on me this morning, that is, breakfasted with me, and invited me to go with him and the Wedgwoods into the country to-morrow and return the next day. As I love the country, and think, with a poor mad woman I know, that there is God or something very consolatory in the air, I should without hesitation have accepted the invitation, but for my engagement with your sister. To her even I should have made an apology, could I have seen her, or rather have stated that the circumstance would not occur again. As it is, I am afraid of wounding her feelings, because an engagement often becomes important in proportion as it has been anticipated. I began to write to ask your opinion respecting the propriety of sending to her, and feel as I write that I had better conquer my desire of contemplating unsophisticated nature, than give her a moment’s pain.
CHAPTER XIV.
LAST MONTHS: DEATH.
1797.
During the month of June of this year, Godwin made a pleasure trip into Staffordshire with Basil Montague. The two friends went in a carriage, staying over night at the houses of different acquaintances, and were absent for a little more than a fortnight. Godwin, while away, made his usual concise entries in his diary, but to his wife he wrote long and detailed accounts of his travels. The guide-book style of his letters is somewhat redeemed by occasional outbursts of tenderness, pleasant to read as evidences that he could give Mary the demonstrations of affection which to her were so indispensable. By his playful messages to little Fanny and his interest in his unborn child, it can be seen that, despite his bachelor habits, domestic life had become very dear to him. Fatigue and social engagements could not make him forget his promise to bring the former a mug. “Tell her” [that is, Fanny], he writes, “I have not forgotten her little mug, and that I shall choose her a very pretty one.” And again, “Tell Fanny I have chosen a mug for her, and another for Lucas. There is an F. on hers and an L. on his, shaped in an island of flowers of green and orange-tawny alternately.” He warns Mary to be careful of herself, assuring her that he remembers at all times the condition of her health, and wishes he could hear from moment to moment how she feels. He and Montague, riding out early in the morning, recall the important fact that it is the very hour at which “little Fanny is going to plungity-plunge.” When Mary’s letters are accidentally detained he is as worried and hurt as she would be under similar circumstances. From Etruria he writes:—
“Another evening and no letter. This is scarcely kind. I reminded you in time that it would be impossible to write to me after Saturday, though it is not improbable you may not see me before the Saturday following. What am I to think? How many possible accidents will the anxiety of affection present to one’s thoughts! Not serious ones, I hope; in that case I trust I should have heard. But headaches, but sickness of the heart, a general loathing of life and of me. Do not give place to this worst of diseases! The least I can think is that you recollect me with less tenderness and impatience than I reflect on you. There is a general sadness in the sky; the clouds are shutting around me and seem depressed with moisture; everything turns the soul to melancholy. Guess what my feelings are when the most soothing and consolatory thought that occurs is a temporary remission and oblivion in your affections.