‘It may, however,’ he says of her book, ‘be admitted that her frankness on some subjects is little less than astounding, and that matters are discussed which are rarely named even among members of the same sex, far less printed for both.... Yet for extreme plain speaking, there was much reason and excuse. The times were coarser than ours, the days were not so far distant when the scenes were possible and the dangers real which Richardson’s novels portray.’
Readers may infer from these admissions (by a biographer who would fain have us think Mary Wollstonecraft an angel) that the plain speaking to which Kegan Paul refers is extremely plain. Mr. Kegan Paul’s admissions on these points are significant of much more than he says, to the disadvantage of the angelic Mary. Significant also are the commonplaces with which he palliates what he is constrained to acknowledge. From these commonplaces one might imagine gentlewomen of George the Third’s time were so tainted with prevailing coarseness, as to be incapable of thinking and writing like gentlewomen. Sufficient evidence to the contrary may be found in the writings of Catharine Macaulay, Hester Chapone, Sophia Lee, Harriet Lee, Ann Radcliffe, Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, Frances Burney, Lætitia Barbauld. Madame D’Arblay could exhibit the want of refinement, noticeable in the vulgar of her time, without ceasing to write like a woman of refinement. Though Elizabeth Inchbald lived in the same cliques as Mary Wollstonecraft, her pages are innocent of the ‘plain speaking’ that revolts the reader of The Rights of Woman and the Letters to Imlay. The simple fact is that, though her worst failing was aggravated by the society she kept, Mary Wollstonecraft sometimes wrote coarsely because she sometimes thought coarsely.
It is not surprising that at the close of 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft went to Paris, the capital to which all Englishmen and Englishwomen of revolutionary sentiment had for some time been looking with keen interest and enthusiastic hopefulness. ‘Well up’ in contemporary French politics, the woman, who had translated the pamphlets of French politicians into English, and was known in Paris as their translator, naturally wished to see the people who had engaged so much of her thought, and to pass a few weeks in the capital where, without having seen it, she was no stranger. The Rights of Woman had been translated into French and praised by Parisian reviewers. It was sold on the boulevards and at the bookstalls on the quays, as a companion-book to The Rights of Man. At Paris she would be welcomed as a celebrity, honoured as one of the very few Englishwomen, clever and brave enough to be revolutionary,—the only Englishwoman who had at present rendered the Revolution good service with her pen. In the reception accorded so recently to Thomas Paine, by the garrison and municipality of Calais, and by the National Convention at Paris, she saw the honour and enthusiasm with which she would be welcomed at the port and the capital. Even though they forbore to plant the tricolour in her bonnet, the people of the department of Calais would hail her on landing as the friend and fellow-worker of Tom Paine, whom they had so lately chosen to represent them in the National Convention. At Paris she would receive the homage due to her literary success, and be welcomed as a daughter of ‘the Revolution.’
In the spring of ’92 she and the Fuselis had planned a six weeks’ trip to Paris. Through incidents, of which enough has been already said, this plan for a summer’s trip came to nothing. It remained for Mary Wollstonecraft to relinquish her scheme of going to Paris, to make it with other companions, or to go to France by herself. To relinquish the scheme she could not; for the course of events made her more and more desirous to go to Paris. Possibly she tried and failed to find other companions of the voyage. Anyhow she started for France alone on the 8th of December, 1792, going thither alone, and arriving at the capital, in the midst of the series of exciting incidents that closed with the King’s execution.
Going thither openly and in her own name (a name of notoriety in Paris), she made her abode first under the roof of Madame Fillietaz, née Bregantz, a lady in whose school at Putney, Eliza Wollstonecraft (Mrs. Bishop), and Everina Wollstonecraft, had been assistant-governesses. Thus suitably placed in the house of her sisters’ former employer, she remained there for awhile, working hard at the language in whose accent she was greatly deficient. On getting a sufficient command of the French tongue, she went into Parisian society, and was so engrossed by its excitements that, instead of staying for only a few weeks, she remained at Paris for months, staying over February, though she had received ample warning that, if she would return to England, she should leave France promptly, before the declaration of war. Safe for the moment alike from danger, and the dread of it, Mary stayed on, congratulating herself on being the eye-witness of events of which she meant to be the historian. Entering France for a brief stay she remained in the country for two years and four months.
Going much into the world, she made the acquaintance (during the spring of 1793, if not earlier) of Captain Gilbert Imlay, citizen of the United States of America,—a handsome, clever gentleman of war, letters, and commerce; a soldier who had led his company in the struggle for American Independence; an author who had produced in a series of excellent letters a Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America; a smart adventurer, who had come to Europe to act for the sale of land in America, and push his way to fortune in commercial enterprise. With a smooth and plausible tongue, Captain Imlay made a favourable impression on Mary, who (now grown into an almost handsome woman) found no difficulty in making a similar impression on him. In the course of their sentimental conversations on love and marriage, it struck both of them that it would be well for them to enjoy the former without assuming the fetters of the latter. It was enough for the handsome American that Mary returned his passion. As she consented to love him, and give him all he required, it was not for him to dictate the terms on which he would accept her kindness. As she had conscientious and philosophic objections to marriage, he was too gallant to draw her into an estate so repugnant to her sense of right. They loved one another. Mutual love was a sufficient sanction for the fulfilment of its own desire. As they loved one another, it was better for them to do so on terms, that would leave them at liberty to retire from one another when their mutual love, ‘the most evanescent of all human passions’ (vide Rights of Woman) should have perished. They agreed to dote on one another, not in lawful wedlock, but in Free Love.
Mr. Kegan Paul takes two different and quite irreconcilable views of Mary’s action in this business. In the first place, he insists that she determined to associate herself with handsome Gilbert Imlay, because she disapproved of lawful marriage. ‘She ran counter,’ Mr. Kegan Paul says, in the Memoir, p. v., ‘to the customs of society, yet not wantonly or lightly, but with forethought, in order to carry out a moral theory gravely and religiously adopted.’ Further on, p. xxxviii., Mr. Kegan Paul says, ‘Her view was that a common affection was marriage, and that the marriage-tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die.’ Hence Mr. Kegan Paul’s readers are in the first place required to believe that Mary acted on and from religious principle in this business, and to honour her for so acting on and from principle, although ‘she yet made the grand mistake of supposing that it is possible for one woman to undo the consecrated custom of ages; to set herself in opposition to the course of society, and not be crushed by it.’ In the second place, and almost in the same breath, Mr. Kegan Paul declares that religious principle was not Mary’s motive in this affair; but that she went into Free Love with Imlay, because a legal marriage could not have been readily effected between him and her, as she was the subject of a sovereign with whom France was at war; and that she would probably have insisted on being lawfully married—i.e. would have acted against her principles—if that course had at the same time been practicable and safe. It is obvious that if she acted on and from principle, Mary Wollstonecraft did not go to Imlay’s arms in Free Love, merely because the way by lawful marriage was for the moment blocked; and that if she would have married him if she could, she is not to be commended for sacrificing herself in this matter on the shrine of religious principle. It is too much to require us at the same moment to admire her for acting courageously from principle, and at the same moment to believe she would have acted against her principle, had there been no legal impediment to the latter course. Mr. Kegan Paul should have seated himself on one stool or the other. He is undergoing the proverbial punishment of the man who tries to sit between two stools.
What are Mr. Kegan Paul’s grounds for saying that a legal marriage with Imlay was certainly difficult, apparently impossible, to Mary Wollstonecraft in Paris, in the spring of 1793? His grounds for this quite erroneous opinion are (1) that she was a British subject; (2) that England and France were at war; (3) that her position as a British subject was full of danger; (4) that even if a marriage with Imlay was possible to her, she could not have made it without declaring her nationality to the civil officer; (5) that in Madame de Stael’s novel of Corinne, Lord Nelvil could not marry Madame d’Arbigny, because to marry her he would have had to declare himself to the civil officer. In answer to these considerations, it is enough to say (1) that, though she was a British subject, Mary Wollstonecraft, as the child and favourer of revolution, and a famous writer, enjoying the friendship of Thomas Paine, and other powerful members of the National Convention, was in the spring of 1793 exempt from the perils and inconveniences pertaining to ordinary British subjects living at that time in Paris; (2) that, even had her position been perilous, it would not have been rendered more so by the declarations requisite for a marriage, as so celebrated an Englishwoman, living openly in Paris, was already well known to the civil functionaries; (3) that the case of the English nobleman in Madame de Stael’s novel does not apply to circumstances of the Englishwoman in Paris,—Mary being a woman already known to the civil officer, and a woman, whose nationality would, on the moment of marriage, merge in the nationality of her husband, and remain therein during coverture. Mr. Kegan Paul is wrong alike in his facts and his law. Though she was at war with England, France was in cordial alliance with the United States of America; and the citizen of those States could have married Mary Wollstonecraft almost as easily in Paris as he could have married her in New York. Mr. Kegan Paul’s hypothesis that Mary might have found it difficult and perilous to marry Imlay is a mere fancy, arising from misconceptions.
Further, Mr. Kegan Paul would have us believe that one of Mary Wollstonecraft’s reasons for making a contract of Free Love with Gilbert Imlay was that she might have the security that would pertain to her from appearing to be the American gentleman’s wife. The answer to this is, that instead of giving her the position and appearance of being his wife, the contract of Free Love (on its becoming known to her friends in France) only gave her the position and appearance of being his mistress; that her friends in France never regarded her as Imlay’s wife; and that no security (in the sense suggested by Mr. Kegan Paul) either came, or could be expected to come, to her from her notorious position, though, to palliate her action to her sisters, she used language in some letters that would countenance a different opinion. Events moved rapidly in France. Before the end of the year Thomas Paine had been turned out of the Convention and was in prison, whence he had reason for thinking he would be sent to the guillotine. Secure enough for the moment in the spring of 1793, Mary Wollstonecraft’s position became perilous some months later; and there is abundant evidence that when her position became uneasy, and even hazardous, her relations with Imlay neither gave her security, nor diminished her sense of insecurity.
Mr. Kegan Paul assures the gentle matrons and the young gentlewomen of England that from the commencement of her association in Free Love with Imlay, Mary Wollstonecraft was his wife! In his biography of William Godwin, Mr. Kegan Paul says of her position towards Imlay, and her letters to him:—