There is another passage in the letters, to be remembered in connexion with the foregoing evidence that, instead of considering herself a wife in the world’s eyes, she could not even consider herself a wife in Imlay’s eyes. ‘Finding,’ she wrote to him from Paris on 1st January, 1794, ‘that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ——s, simply that I was with child: and let them stare! and ——, and ——, nay, all the world may know it for aught I care! Yet I wish to avoid ——’s coarse jokes.’ Had she been a wife in the eyes of society (as Mr. Kegan Paul insists she was), the ladies would not have stared, would have seen no cause to stare, on the announcement of the matter, with which Mary caused them to open their eyes with astonishment. Had she been regarded as a wife by her Parisian friends, she would have had no cause to fear coarse jests about her health. It is clear the woman, who could not venture to style herself ‘his wife’ even to Imlay, had not ventured to style herself his wife to her Parisian friends.
Now-a-days the less scrupulous of our Free Lovers make so free with the queen’s English as to style themselves husband or wife, and declare themselves married people, without having gone through any form of marriage. Speaking deliberately, Mr. Kegan Paul says they have a right to do so, the word wife being in his opinion strictly applicable to a female Free Lover. Speaking deliberately, I say they have no right to apply to a woman, who is not lawfully married, a familiar title assigned by social rule and law of language, as a description of their legal estate, to women who are lawfully married; or, on the other hand, to apply the correlative title to men who are not lawfully married. I say they have no right to change at their will the signification of familiar English words, so as to bring them into accordance with their notions touching the relations of the sexes.
In the dictionaries of the English language ‘husband’ is defined as ‘a man contracted or joined to a woman by marriage;’ ‘wife’ is defined as ‘a woman who is united to a man in the lawful bonds of wedlock;’ and ‘marriage’ is defined as ‘the legal union of a man and woman for life.’ The world accepts these definitions, acts upon them, and will, I trust, continue to act upon them. Speaking deliberately, I say (Mr. Kegan Paul notwithstanding) that persons who use these words for the misdescription of Free Lovers, with an intention to deceive their hearers, are guilty of falsehood. I say this deliberately, though Marian Evans (noble creature though she was, and exemplary in all matters, apart from her miserable association with George Henry Lewes) used to speak and write of him as her ‘husband.’ Possibly Marian Evans did not so misdescribe her relation to George Lewes with an intention to deceive. I have no evidence that she ever so misdescribed herself and Lewes to any person, without having reason to think the person cognizant of the facts of the case. And I do know that to certain gentlewomen, she was honourably communicative on the matter, so that they might not associate with her, under a misapprehension respecting her domestic position. But her conduct cannot affect the obligation of Free Lovers to be truthful. Having the courage of their opinions, they should tell the world openly what they are. They might style themselves ‘bosom-friends,’ or call themselves ‘free husbands and free wives.’ But they have no right to call themselves ‘husbands’ and ‘wives.’ Out of respect for themselves and their principles they should refrain from the ordinary untruthful practice of ‘kept mistresses’ and their keepers.
Ninety years since the woman (who according to Mr. Kegan Paul considered herself a wife in the eyes of God and man) did not presume to style herself Imlay’s wife even to her own sisters. All she could do was to speak of herself truthfully as living in France under his ‘protection,’ when on 10th March, 1794, she wrote from Havre to her sister Everina, ‘If any of the many letters I have written have come to your hands or Eliza’s, you know I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, &c.;’—words committed to paper, when she was within a few weeks of giving birth to her illegitimate child. To her own sister Mary Wollstonecraft described herself as a woman living under ‘protection.’ Mr. Kegan Paul published the letter in which she thus describes herself; and yet he says she considered herself as wife in the eyes of her fellow-creatures.
It has been already remarked that Mary Wollstonecraft had an unhappy temper. Even by Mr. Kegan Paul it is admitted that his angelical Mary was ‘excitable and hasty-tempered, apt to exaggerate trifles, sensitive to magnify inattention into slights, and slights into studied insults.’ Put into plain terms this is an admission that she was a violent-tempered and bad-tempered woman. She was no woman to live happily with a man, either as wife or Free Lover. Even before their first brief term of cohabitation, she had tried Imlay by her caprice and pettishness. In the letter (of August, 1793), in which she anticipates the delight of ‘beginning almost to live together’ with him, she says:—
‘Cherish me with that dignified tenderness, which I have only found in you; and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling, that has sometimes given you pain. Yes, I will be good, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state which rendered life a burden almost too heavy to be borne.’
Let the reader consider these words. In Letter vi. (a genuine love-letter), dated from Paris to Imlay at Havre, she writes: ‘No; I have thy honest countenance before me—Pop—relaxed by tenderness; a little—little wounded by my whims.’ In Letter xi., of January, 1794, she entreats, ‘with eyes overflowing with tears and in the humblest attitude,’ to be pardoned for worrying her admirer with unreasonable epistles to which he has replied in a ‘kind and rational letter;’—adding, ‘It is time for me to grow more reasonable, a few more of these caprices of sensibility would destroy me.’ In the same month she writes to him:—
‘Yesterday, my love, I could not open your letter for some time; and, though it was not half as severe as I merited, it threw me into such a fit of trembling, as seriously alarmed me.... One thing you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me almost a duty to stifle them when I imagine that I am treated with coldness.’
The letters abound with similar evidence that, quarrelling from an early date of their association, they went on quarrelling and making it up, till they grew heartily sick of one another, and saw little of one another. At the most, be it observed, the whole period of their association (from their first introduction to one another till their final parting) did not exceed two years and ten months, and at the fullest computation they did not spend more than twelve months of this time in one another’s society. Whilst Mary was at Paris, Imlay was for months together at Havre, or other places, away from her. For the greater part of her stay at Havre, he was at Paris. Soon after her return to Paris, he went off to London. Running from England to France to see her for a short time, he returned by himself to England. Soon after her return to England, she went off with her child and nurse in the summer of 1795, for her trip to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
I am no apologist for Imlay. In a memoir I wrote of Mary Wollstonecraft twenty-eight years since, I called him ‘a pitiful scamp;’ and though I may doubt whether I should have spoken of him quite so disdainfully, I am still disposed to think him a mean-spirited, though clever, creature. The evidence respecting his character and ways of life is far from complete. Hitherto only one side has been told of the story of his relations with Mary Wollstonecraft; her side of the story, dressed and redressed by her friends and admirers. From the insufficient evidence, he appears to have differed morally in no important respect or degree from the ordinary run of the men, who used to be styled men of the world, men of pleasure, and men of gallantry. Whilst it is certain that Mary Wollstonecraft entered the association with no confidence that it would last ‘for ever,’ there is no reason to suppose that he entered it with any desire for its permanence. Whilst it is certain that the faults of her temper were largely accountable for the unhappiness of the association, it is fair to assume there were corresponding faults of temper on his side. If he was not qualified to make any woman happy for long, Mary Wollstonecraft was not a woman to live happily with any man for any long time. There can be no question they were an ill-assorted couple; but with any man Mary would have been unhappily matched. It is not wonderful that Imlay had not been associated for many months with the woman, who worried him incessantly with her temper, before he began to think of withdrawing from the association.