“I had scarcely finished the above when I received your letter accompanying T. W.’s, which was delayed by an accident till after the regular arrival of the post. I am not sorry to have put down my feelings as they were.”
But even his tenderness is regulated by his philosophy. The lover becomes the philosopher quite unconsciously:—
“One of the pleasures I promised myself in my excursion,” he writes in another letter, “was to increase my value in your estimation, and I am not disappointed. What we possess without intermission, we inevitably hold light; it is a refinement in voluptuousness to submit to voluntary privations. Separation is the image of death, but it is death stripped of all that is most tremendous, and his dart purged of its deadly venom. I always thought Saint Paul’s rule, that we should die daily, an exquisite Epicurean maxim. The practice of it would give to life a double relish.”
Imlay, too, had found absence a stimulus to love, but there was this difference in what at first appears to be a similarity of opinion between himself and Godwin: while the former sought it that he might not tire of Mary, the latter hoped it would keep her from growing tired of him.
Mary’s letters to her husband are full of the tender love which no woman knew how to express as well as she did. They are not as passionate and burning as those to Imlay, but they are sincerely and lovingly affectionate, and reveal an ever increasing devotion and a calmer happiness than that she had derived from her first union. Godwin, fortunately, was able to appreciate them:—
“You cannot imagine,” he tells her on the 10th of June, “how happy your letter made me. No creature expresses, because no creature feels, the tender affections so perfectly as you do; and, after all one’s philosophy, it must be confessed that the knowledge that there is some one that takes an interest in one’s happiness, something like that which each man feels in his own, is extremely gratifying. We love, as it were, to multiply the consciousness of our existence, even at the hazard of what Montague described so pathetically one night upon the New Road, of opening new avenues for pain and misery to attack us.”
The letter to which he refers is probably the following, written two days after his departure:—
It was so kind and considerate in you to write sooner than I expected, that I cannot help hoping you would be disappointed at not receiving a greeting from me on your arrival at Etruria. If your heart was in your mouth, as I felt, just now, at the sight of your hand, you may kiss or shake hands with the letter, and imagine with what affection it was written. If not, stand off, profane one!
I was not quite well the day after you left me; but it is past, and I am well and tranquil, excepting the disturbance produced by Master William’s joy, who took it into his head to frisk a little at being informed of your remembrance. I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie. Men are spoilt by frankness, I believe, yet I must tell you that I love you better than I supposed I did, when I promised to love you forever. And I will add what will gratify your benevolence, if not your heart, that on the whole I may be termed happy. You are a kind, affectionate creature, and I feel it thrilling through my frame, giving and promising pleasure.
Fanny wants to know “what you are gone for,” and endeavors to pronounce Etruria. Poor papa is her word of kindness. She has been turning your letter on all sides, and has promised to play with Bobby till I have finished my answer.