Monday morning, July 3, 1797.
Mrs. Reveley can have no doubt about to-day, so we are to stay at home. I have a design upon you this evening to keep you quite to myself—I hope nobody will call!—and make you read the play.
I was thinking of a favorite song of my poor friend Fanny’s: “In a vacant rainy day, you shall be wholly mine,” etc.
Unless the weather prevents you from taking your accustomed walk, call on me this morning, for I have something to say to you.
But a short period of happiness now remained to them. Mary expected to be confined about the end of August, and she awaited that event with no misgivings. She had been perfectly strong and well when Fanny was born. She considered women’s illness on such occasions due much more to imaginative than to physical causes, and her health through the past few months had been, save for one or two trifling ailments, uncommonly good. There was really no reason for her to fear the consequences. Both she and Godwin looked forward with pleasure to the arrival of their first son, as they hoped the child would prove to be.
She was taken ill early on Wednesday morning, the 30th of August, and sent at once for Mrs. Blenkinsop, matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital. Godwin says that, “influenced by ideas of decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases of danger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity of midwife.” But it seems much more in keeping with her character that the engagement of Mrs. Blenkinsop was due, not so much to motives of decorum as to her desire to uphold women in a sphere of action for which she believed them eminently fitted. Godwin went as usual to his rooms in the Evesham Buildings. Mary specially desired that he should not remain in the house, and to reassure him that all was well, she wrote him several notes during the course of the morning. These have no counterpart in the whole literature of letters. They are, in their way, unique:
Aug. 30, 1797.
I have no doubt of seeing the animal to-day, but must wait for Mrs. Blenkinsop to guess at the hour. I have sent for her. Pray send me the newspaper. I wish I had a novel or some book of sheer amusement to excite curiosity and while away the time. Have you anything of the kind?
Aug. 30, 1797.
Mrs. Blenkinsop tells me that everything is in a fair way, and that there is no fear of the event being put off till another day. Still at present she thinks I shall not immediately be freed from my load. I am very well. Call before dinner-time, unless you receive another message from me.