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Updated: June 3, 2025
With eyes overflowing with tears, and in the humblest attitude, I entreat you. Do not turn from me, for indeed I love you fondly, and have been very wretched since the night I was so cruelly hurt by thinking that you had no confidence in me." As it continued impossible for Imlay to leave Havre, it was arranged that Mary should join him there. She could not go at once on account of her health.
Later he was able to pension Harriet, who, being of a morbid disposition, ended her life by drowning not, it may be said, because of grief for Shelley. It has been told that Fanny Imlay, Mary's sister, likewise committed suicide because Shelley did not care for her, but this has also been disproved.
Here it may be said that, though Imlay declared that a certain sum should be settled upon the latter, not a cent of it was ever paid. This is Mary's last letter to him: LONDON, December, 1795. You must do as you please with respect to the child. I could wish that it might be done soon, that my name may be no more mentioned to you. It is now finished.
Imlay in London became more absorbed in his immediate affairs, a fact which he could not conceal in his letters; and Mary realized that compared to business she was of little or no importance to him. She expostulated earnestly with him on the folly of allowing money cares and ambitions to preoccupy him.
On this clever, pretty and mercurial daughter all her partiality was lavished; and the unhappy girl, pampered by a philistine mother in a revolutionary atmosphere, was at the age of seventeen seduced by Byron, and became the mother of the fairy child, Allegra. The second Mrs. Godwin was the stepmother of convention, and treated both Fanny Imlay and Mary Godwin with consistent unkindness.
As far as can be known from Mary's letters, her connection with Imlay did not take from her the position she had held in the English colony. No door was closed against her; no scandal was spread about her. The truth is, these people must have understood her difficulties as well as she did.
Imlay assured her that his present was merely a casual, sensual connection; and, of course, fostered in her mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him. With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind.
It may be added, however, that in her love-letters to Imlay she wrote: "I have ever declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long separated."
Mary indeed had, till now, retained the name of Imlay which had first been assumed from necessity in France; but its being retained thus long, was purely from the aukwardness that attends the introduction of a change, and not from an apprehension of consequences of this sort.
Later he was able to pension Harriet, who, being of a morbid disposition, ended her life by drowning not, it may be said, because of grief for Shelley. It has been told that Fanny Imlay, Mary's sister, likewise committed suicide because Shelley did not care for her, but this has also been disproved.
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