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Updated: June 3, 2025
When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of age, in the full prime and vigor of his intellect, and in the height of his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior. She was the cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made her strong. She was strikingly handsome.
That her affection may in the end have developed into a warmer feeling, and that she would have married Fuseli had he been free, is just possible. Allusions in her first letters to Imlay to a late "hapless love," and to trouble, seem to confirm Godwin's statement.
She was thus unable immediately to still the memory of her sorrows. It is touching to see how, now that she could no longer doubt that Imlay was made of common clay, she began to find excuses for him. She represented to herself that it was her misfortune to have met him too late. Had she known him before dissipation had enslaved him, there would have been none of this trouble.
Godwin as a fat little woman in a black velvet dress, bad-tempered and untruthful. "She is a very disgusting woman, and wears green spectacles," said Charles Lamb. These last two were the daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of 'The Rights of Women', the great feminist, who had been Godwin's first wife. Fanny's father was a scamp called Imlay, and Mary was Godwin's child.
I.; but fearing that some fatality might have prevented their reaching you, let me repeat that I have written to you and to Eliza at least half a score of times, pointing out different ways for you to write to me, still have received no answers. I have again and again given you an account of my present situation, and introduced Mr. Imlay to you as a brother you would love and respect.
Her confidence was entire; her love was unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life she gave a loose to all the sensibilities of her nature. Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlay gained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child. Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon as formed, by the circumstance of Mr.
Imlay writes of that region: "Everything here assumes a dignity and splendor I have never seen in any other part of the world. You ascend a considerable distance from the shores of the Ohio, and when you would suppose you had arrived at the summit of a mountain, you find yourself upon an extensive level.
Indeed, in the Letters to Imlay, which appeared after her death, it is not so much the strength and independence of her final attitude which impresses us, as her readiness to forgive, her reluctance to resent his neglect, her affection which could survive so many proofs of the man's unworthiness. The strongest passion in her generous nature was maternal tenderness.
When in 1777 the snows began to melt before the lengthening spring days, the riflemen who guarded the log forts were called on to make head against a series of resolute efforts to drive them from Kentucky. Imlay, p. 55, estimated that from natural increase the population of Kentucky doubled every fifteen years, probably an exaggeration. Hale's "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," p. 251.
Mary, if she married Imlay, would be obliged to proclaim herself a British subject, and would thus be risking imprisonment and perhaps death. Besides, it was very doubtful whether a marriage ceremony performed by the French authorities would be recognized in England as valid. Had she been willing to pass through this perilous ordeal she would have gained nothing.
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