Norway seemed to Mary Wollstonecraft the country of the greatest individual freedom. The king of Denmark, it is true, was an absolute monarch, but the state of imbecility to which illness had reduced him placed the reins of government into the hands of his son the prince royal and of his wise and moderate minister Count Bernstorff. Under their almost patriarchal authority every man was left to enjoy an almost unlimited amount of freedom. The law was mild, and the lot of those it sentenced to hard labour not unnecessarily hard. She found in Norway no accumulation of property such as existed in Sweden, resulting in the abject poverty of the submerged tenth. Rich merchants were made to divide their personal fortunes among their children; and the distribution of all landed property into small farms,—one of the ideals hesitatingly put forward by Mary in the Rights of Women—produced a degree of equality which was found nowhere else in Europe. The tenants occupied their farms for life, which made them independent. There was every hope that drunkenness, the inherent vice of generations, would before long disappear, giving place to gallantry and refinement of manners; "but the change will not be suddenly produced."
The Norwegians love their country, but they have not yet arrived at that point where an enlarged understanding extends the love they cherish for the land of their birth to the entire human race. They have not much public spirit. However, the French Revolution meets with a great deal of sympathy among the people of Norway, who follow with the most lively interest the successes of the French arms. "So determined were they," says Mary, "to excuse everything, disgracing the struggle of freedom by admitting the tyrant's plea necessity, that I could hardly persuade them that Robespierre was a monster."
Mary hoped that the French Revolution would have the effect of making politics a subject of discussion among them, "enlarging the heart by opening the understanding," and leading to the cultivation of that public spirit the absence of which she regretted.
Although the women of Norway were not much more cultivated than their Swedish sisters, regarding custom and opinion to such an extent that Mary's educational advice was not listened to lest "the town might talk", and on the plea that "they must do as other people did"—yet they compared favourably with the latter in the matter of personal appearance and cheerfulness of disposition. They had rosy complexions, and were pronouncedly fond of dancing. They were very strict in the performance of their religious duties; yet showed the greatest toleration; nor was the Norwegian Sunday remarkable for that stupid dulness which characterises the English Sabbath, the outcome of that fanatical spirit which Mary feared was gaining ground in England.
The same lack of public spirit which Mary commented upon in her description of the national character of the Norwegians, also struck her when observing the manners and customs of the Danes in their capital. There had been a huge fire, destroying a considerable portion of the town, and held by some to be the work of Pitt. It was the general opinion, that the conflagration might have been smothered in the beginning by pulling down several houses before the flames had reached them, to which, however, the inhabitants would not consent. Mary found among the Danes a great many vices. The men led dissolute lives, and utterly neglected their wives, who were reduced to the state of mere house-slaves. Their only interest was love of gain, which, in rendering them over-cautious, sapped their energy. A visit to a theatre showed Mary the state of the dramatic art in Denmark and the gross taste of the audience, and the fact that well-dressed women took their children to witness the execution of a criminal as a favourite kind of entertainment, filled her with unutterable disgust. "And to think that these are the people," she exclaims, "who found fault with the late Queen Matilda's education of her son!" Matilda, it appears, had carried some of Rousseau's principles into effect, which, however, had found no favour at the court.
The ignorance and coarse brutality which she found among the Danes were instrumental in changing Mary's opinions of the French. The Parisian festivals were rendered more interesting by the sobriety of those who took part in them, a Danish merry-making, however, generally degenerated into a drunken bacchanal. "I should have been less severe," she says, "in the remarks I have made on the vanity and depravity of the French, had I travelled towards the north before I visited France."
The antipathy with which she had always regarded the dealings of business was increased by the experience she gained during her stay in Scandinavia. At Gotheburg and at Hamburg the contrast between opulence and penury which the war had called forth filled her with indignation, and at Laurvig, in Norway, the lawyers proved to be all great chicaners. It seemed to her that traffic was necessarily allied with cunning. The gulf which now yawned between her and Imlay was widened by the circumstance that she was unable to feel anything but contempt for what he had made his chief object in life. She was willing to admit that England and America to a certain extent owed their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence, the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank!
Shortly after the final rupture with Imlay Mary renewed her acquaintance with Godwin in the house of their mutual friend Miss Hayes. She took a fancy to him, and in the following month of April called upon him in Somers Town, having herself taken a lodging in Pentonville. In Godwin's Memoirs the description of their friendship, "melting into love" may be found. A temporary separation in July 1796, when Godwin made an excursion into Norfolk, had its effect on the mind of both parties. As Godwin says, it "gave a space for the maturing of inclination," and both realised that each had become indispensable to the other.
They did not at once marry. Godwin, in his Political Justice, had declared himself against marriage, which compels both parties to go on cherishing a relation long after both have discovered their fatal mistake. Moreover, marriage is a contract for life, and binding to both parties; and no rational being can undertake to promise that his opinions will undergo no change in the future. Mary's ideas of marriage we have seen to be different, nor did she change her mind under Godwin's influence. But she had been much and rudely spoken of in connection with Imlay, and she could not resolve to do anything that might revive that painful topic, and therefore agreed to keep their relations a secret from the world.
Mary's pregnancy, however, became their motive for complying with a ceremony to which Godwin in a letter to Mr. Wedgwood, refers as follows: "Nothing but a regard for the happiness of the individual, which I had no right to injure, could have induced me to submit to an institution which I wish to see abolished, and which I would recommend to my fellowmen never to practise but with the greatest caution." The marriage took place at Old St. Pancras Church on March 29th, 1797, but was not declared till the beginning of April. Godwin records with some bitterness that certain of his friends, among whom were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons, from this moment treated him with coldness.