“I will have the honour to dine with you. You ask me whether I can get you four orders. I do not know, but I do not think the thing impossible. How do you do?”
And Mary’s: “Fanny is delighted with the thought of dining with you. But I wish you to eat your meat first, and let her come up with the pudding. I shall probably knock at your door on my way to Opie’s; but should I not find you, let me request you not to be too late this evening. Do not give Fanny butter with her pudding.” This note is dated April 20, 1797, and probably fixes the time when Mary was sitting for her portrait to Opie.
On the whole, Godwin and Mary lived happily together, with very occasional clouds, mainly due to her over-sensitive nature, and his confirmed bachelor habits.
Although both were opposed to matrimony on principle, they were married at Old St. Pancras Church on March 29, 1797, the clerk of the church being witness. Godwin does not mention the event in his carefully registered diary. The reason for the marriage was that Mary was about to become a mother, and it was for the sake of the child that they deemed it prudent to go through the ceremony. But it was not made public at once, chiefly for fear that Johnson should cease to help Mary. Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, two of Godwin’s admirers, were so upset at the announcement of his marriage that they shed tears.
An interesting description of Mary at this time is given in Southey’s letter to Cottle, quoted above, dated March 13, 1797. He says, “Of all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display—an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.”
Mary busied herself with literary work; otherwise her short married life was uneventful. Godwin made a journey with his friend Basil Montagu to Staffordshire from June 3 to 20, and the correspondence between husband and wife during this time, which Mr. Paul prints, is most delightful reading, and shows how entirely in sympathy they were.
From a photo by Emery, Walker after the picture by Opie
(probably painted in April, 1797) in the National Portrait Gallery.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
This picture passed from Godwin’s hands on his death to his grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. It was afterwards bequeathed to the nation by his widow, Lady Shelley. It was engraved by Heath (Jan. 1, 1798) for Godwin’s memoir of his wife. An engraving of it also appeared in the Lady’s Magazine, from which the frontispiece to this book was made, and a mezzotint by W. T. Annis was published in 1802. Mrs. Merritt also made an etching of the picture for Mr. Paul’s edition of the “Letters to Imlay.”