# Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885)/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII.
WILLIAM GODWIN.
William Godwin was one of those with whom Mary renewed her acquaintance. The impression they now made on each other was very different from that which they had received in the days when she was still known as Mrs. Wollstonecraft. Since he was no less famous than she, and since it was his good fortune to make the last year of her life happy, and by his love to compensate her for her first wretched experience, a brief sketch of his life, his character, and his work is here necessary. It is only by knowing what manner of man he was, and what standard of conduct he deduced from his philosophy, that his relations to her can be fairly understood.
William Godwin, the seventh child of thirteen, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was born March 3, 1756, at Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire. He came on both sides of respectable middle-class families. His father's father and brother had both been clergymen, the one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the Church of ​England, and whose "creed was so puritanical that he considered the fondling of a cat a profanation of the Lord's day." Mrs. Godwin in her earlier years was gay, too much so for the wife of a minister, some people thought, but after her husband's death she joined a Methodistical sect, and her piety in the end grew into fanaticism. A Miss Godwin, a cousin, who lived with the family, had perhaps the greatest influence over William Godwin when he was a mere child. She was not without literary culture, and through her he learnt something of books. But her religious principles were severely Calvinistic, and these she impressed upon him at the same time.
His first school-mistress was an old woman, who was concerned chiefly with his soul, and who gave him, before he had completed his eighth year, an intimate knowledge of the Bible. The inevitable consequence of this training was that religion became his first thought. Thanks to his cousin, however, and to his natural cleverness and ambition, he was saved from bigotry by his interest in wider subjects, though they were for many years secondary considerations. From an early age he had, as he says of himself, developed an insatiable curiosity and love of distinction. One of his later tutors was Mr. Samuel Newton, an Independent minister and a follower of Sandeman, "a celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine out of a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." Godwin remained some years with him, and was so far influenced by his doctrines, that when, later, he sought admission into Homerton Academy, a Dissenting institution, he was refused, ​because he seemed to the authorities to show signs of Sandemanianism. But he had no difficulty in entering Hoxton College; and here, in his twenty-third year, he finished his religious and secular education. During these years his leading inspiration had been a thirst after knowledge and truth.
This was in 1778. Upon leaving college he began his career as minister, but he was never very successful, and before long his religious views were much modified. His search for truth led him in a direction in which he had least expected to go. In 1781, when he was fulfilling the duties of his profession at Stowmarket, he began to read the French philosophers, and by them his faith in Christianity was seriously shaken. 1783 was the last year in which he appeared in the pulpit. He gave up the office and returned to London, where he supported himself by writing. In the course of a short time he dropped the title of Reverend and emancipated himself entirely from his old religious associations.
His first literary work was the Life of Lord Chatham, and this was followed by a defence of the Coalition of 1783. He then obtained regular employment on the English Review, published by Murray in Fleet Street, wrote several novels, and became a contributor to the Political Herald. He was entirely dependent upon his writings, which fact accounts for the variety displayed in them. His chief interest was, however, in politics. He was a Radical of the most pronounced type, and his articles soon attracted the attention of the Whigs. His services to that party were considered so valuable that when the above-mentioned paper perished, Fox, through Sheridan, proposed to Godwin that he should ​edit it, the whole expense to be paid from a fund set aside for just such purposes. But Godwin declined. By accepting he would have sacrificed his independence and have become their mouthpiece, and he was not willing to sell himself. He seems at one time to have been ambitious to be a Member of Parliament, and records with evident satisfaction Sheridan's remark to him: "You ought to be in Parliament." But his integrity again proved a stumbling-block. He could not reconcile himself to the subterfuges which Whigs as well as Tories silently countenanced. Honesty was his dominant quality quite as much as it was Mary's. He was unfit to take an active part in politics; his sphere of work was speculative.
He was the foremost among the devoted adherents in England of Rousseau, Helvetius, and the other Frenchmen of their school. He was one of the "French Revolutionists," so called because of their sympathy with the French apostles of liberty and equality; and at their meetings he met such men as Price, Holcroft, Earl Stanhope, Horne Tooke, Geddes, all of whom considered themselves fortunate in having his co-operation. Thomas Paine was one of his intimate acquaintances; and the Rights of Man was submitted to him, to receive his somewhat qualified praise, before it was published. He was one of the leading spirits in developing the Radicalism of his time, and thus in preparing the way for that of the present day; and the influence of his writings over men of his and the next generation was enormous. Indeed, it can hardly now be measured, since much which he wrote, being unsigned and published in papers and periodicals, has been lost.
He was always on the alert in political matters, ​ready to seize every opportunity to do good and to promote the cause of freedom. He was, in a word, one of that large army of pilgrims whose ambition is to "make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight." In 1791 he wrote an anonymous letter to Fox, in which he explained at once the two leading doctrines of his philosophy: the necessity of change, and the equal importance of moderation in effecting it. His political creed was, paradoxical as this may seem, the outcome of his religious education. He had long since given up the actual faith in which he was born and trained; after going through successive stages of Sandemanianism, Deism, and Socinianism, he had, in 1787, become a "complete unbeliever"; but he never entirely outlived its influence. This was of a twofold nature. It taught him to question the sanctity of established institutions, and it crushed in him, even if it did not wholly eradicate, strong passion and emotional demonstration. No man in England was as thorough a Radical as he; after he ceased to be a religious, he became a political and social dissenter. In his zeal for the liberty of humanity, he contended for nothing less than the destruction of all human laws. French Republicans demanded the simplest possible form of Government. But Godwin, outstripping them, declared there should be none whatsoever. "It may seem strange," Mrs. Shelley writes, "that anyone should, in the sincerity of his heart, believe that no vice could exist with perfect freedom, but my father did; it was the very basis of his system, the very key-stone of the arch of justice, by which he desired to knit together the whole human family."
His ultra-radicalism led him to some new and ​startling conclusions, and these he set before the public in his Political Justice, the first book he published under his own name. It appeared in 1793, and immediately created a great sensation. It must be ranked as one of the principal factors in the development o£ English thought. A short explanation of the doctrines embodied in it will throw important light on his subsequent relations to Mary, as well as on his own character. The foundation of the arguments he advances in this book is his belief in the efficacy of reason in the individual as a guide to conduct. He thought that, if each human being were free to act as he chose, he would be sure to act for the best; for, according to him, instincts do not exist. He makes no allowance for the influence of the past in forming the present, ignoring the laws of heredity. A man's nature is formed by the character of his surroundings. Virtue and vice are the result not of innate tendencies, but of external circumstances. When these are perfected, evil will necessarily disappear from the world. He had so successfully subordinated his own emotions, that in his philosophical system he calmly ignores passion as a mainspring of human activity. This is exemplified by the rule he lays down for the regulation of a man's conduct to his fellow-beings. He must always measure their respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if the individuals concerned be his near relations. Supposing, for example, he had to choose between saving the life of a Fénelon and that of a chambermaid, he must select the former because of his superior talents, even though the latter should be his mother or his wife. Affections are to be forgotten in the calculations of reason. Godwin's ​faith in the supremacy of the intellect was not lessened because he was forced to admit that men often do not act reasonably. This is, he explains, because they are without knowledge of the absolute truth. Show them what is true or right, and all, even the most abandoned criminal, will give up what is false or wrong. He boldly advanced the substitution of an appeal to reason for punishment in the treatment of criminals, and this at a time when such a doctrine was considered treason. He declared that any article of property justly belongs to those who most want it, "or to whom the possession of it will be most beneficial." But his objection to the marriage law seemed the most glaringly immoral part of his philosophy. He assailed theoretically an institution for which Mary Wollstonecraft had practically shown her disapprobation. His reasoning in this regard is curious, and reveals the little importance he attached to passion. He disapproved of the marriage tie because he thought that two people who are bound together by it are not at liberty to follow the dictates of their own minds, and hence are not acting in accordance with pure reason. Free love, or a system of voluntary divorce, would be less immoral; because in either of these cases men and women would be self-ruled, and therefore could be relied upon to do what is right.
Besides, according to his ideal of justice in the matter of property, a man or a woman belongs to whomsoever most needs him or her, irrespective of any relations already formed. It follows naturally that the children born in a community where these ideas are adopted are to be educated by the State, and must not be subjected to rules or discipline, but taught from ​the beginning to regulate their conduct by the light of reason.
It is not surprising that this book made a stir in the political world. None of the Revolutionists had delivered themselves of such ultra-revolutionary sentiments. Men had been accused of high treason for much more moderate views. Perhaps it was their very extravagance that saved him, though he accounted for it in another way. "I have frequently," Mrs. Shelley explains, "heard my father say that Political Justice escaped prosecution from the reason that it appeared in a form too expensive for general acquisition. Pitt observed, when the question was debated in the Privy Council, that 'a three-guinea book could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare.'" Godwin purposely published his work in this expensive form because he knew that by so doing he would keep it from the multitude, whose passions he would have been the last to arouse or to stimulate. He only wished it to be studied by men too enlightened to encourage abrupt innovation. Festina lente was his motto. The success of the book, however, went beyond his expectations and perhaps his intentions. Three editions were issued in as many years. Among the class of readers to whom he immediately appealed, the verdict passed upon it varied. Dr. Priestley thought it very original, and that it would probably prove useful, though its fundamental principles were too pure to be practical. Horne Tooke pronounced it a bad book, calculated to do harm. The Rev. Samuel Newton's vigorous disapproval of it caused a final breach between Godwin and his old tutor. As a rule, the reformers accepted it as the work ​of inspiration, and the Tories condemned it as the outcome of atheism and political rebellion.
His novel, Caleb Williams, established his literary reputation. Its success almost realized Mrs. Inchbald's prediction that "fine ladies, milliners, mantua-makers, and boarding-school girls will love to tremble over it, and that men of taste and judgment will admire the superior talents, the incessant energy of mind you have evinced." He was at this time one of the most conspicuous and most talked-about men in London. He counted among his friends and acquaintances all the distinguished men and women of the day; among whom he was in great demand, notwithstanding the fact that he talked neither much nor well, and that not even the most brilliant conversation could prevent his taking short naps when in company.
He was as cold in his conduct as in his philosophy. He was always methodical in his work. Great as his interest in his subject might be, his ardour was held within bounds. There were no long vigils spent wrestling with thought, or days and weeks passed alone and locked in his study that nothing might interfere with the flow of ideas, unless, as happened occasionally, he was working against time. He wrote from nine till one, and then, when he found his brain confused by this amount of labour, he readily reduced the number of his working hours. Literary composition was undertaken by him with the same placidity with which another man might devote himself to book-keeping.
He was equally uncompromising in his friendships. His feelings towards his friends were always ruled by his sense of justice. He was the first to come forward with substantial help in their hour of need, but he was ​also the first to tell them the truth, even though it might be unpleasant, when he thought it his duty to do so. His unselfishness is shown in his conduct during the famous state trials, in which Holcroft, his most intimate friend, Horne Tooke, and several other highly-prized acquaintances, were accused of high treason. His boldly avowed revolutionary principles made him a marked man, but he did all that was in his power to defend them. He expressed in the columns of the Morning Chronicle his unqualified opinion of the atrocity of the proceedings against them; and throughout the trials he stood by the side of the prisoners, though by so doing he ran the risk of being arrested with them. But if his friends asked his assistance when it did not seem to him that they deserved it, he was as fearless in withholding it. A Jew money-lender, John King by name, at whose house he dined frequently, was arrested on some charge connected with his business. He appealed to Godwin to appear in court and give evidence in his favour; whereupon the latter wrote to him, not only declining, but forcibly explaining that he declined because he could not conscientiously attest to his, the Jew's, moral character. There was no ill-will on his part, and he continued to dine amicably with King. Engrossed as he was with his own work, he could still find time to read a manuscript for Mrs. Inchbald, or a play for Holcroft; but when he did so, he was very plainspoken in pointing out their faults. He incurred the former's displeasure by correcting some grammatical errors in a story she had submitted to him, and he deeply wounded the latter by his unmerciful abuse of the Lawyer. Yet his affection for Holcroft was ​unwavering. The conflicting results to which his honesty sometimes led are strikingly set forth in his relations to Thomas Cooper, a distant cousin, who at one time lived with him as pupil. He studied attentively the boy's character, and did his utmost to treat him gently and kindly; but, on the other hand, he expressed in his presence his opinion of him in language harsh enough to justify his pupil's indignation. It is more than probable that this same frankness was one of the causes of his many quarrels—démêlés, he calls them in his diary—with his most devoted friends. His sincerity, however, invariably triumphed, and these were always mere passing storms.
He was passionless even in relations which usually arouse warmth in the most phlegmatic natures. He was a good son and brother, yet so undemonstrative that his manner passed at times for indifference. Though in beliefs and sentiments he had drifted far apart from his mother, he never let this fact interfere with his filial respect and duty; and her long and many letters to him are proofs of his unfailing kindness for her. He was always willing to look out for the welfare of his brothers, two of whom were somewhat disreputable characters, and of his sister Hannah who lived in London. With the latter he was on particularly friendly terms, and saw much of her, yet Mrs. Sothren—the cousin who had been such a help to him in his early years—reproves him for writing of her as "Miss Godwin" instead of "sister," and fears lest this may be a sign that his brotherly affection, once great, had abated.
He seems at one time to have thought that he could provide himself with a wife in the same manner in ​which he managed his other affairs. He imagined that in contracting such a relationship, love was no more indispensable than a heroine was to the interest of a novel. He proposed that his sister Hannah should choose a wife for him: and she, in all seriousness, set about complying with his request. In a spirit as business-like as his, she decided upon a friend, calculated she was sure to meet his requirements, and then sent him a list of her merits, much as one might write a recommendation of a governess or a cook.
Not even her glowing report could kindle the philosophical William into warmth. He waited many months before he called upon the paragon, and when he finally saw her he failed to be enraptured according to Hannah's expectations. "Poor Miss Gay," as the Godwins subsequently called her, never received a second visit.
There must have been, beneath all his coldness, a substratum of warm and strong feeling. He possessed, to a rare degree, the power of making friends and of giving sympathy to his fellow-beings. The man who can command the affection of others, and enter into their emotions, must know how to feel himself. It was for more than his intellect that he was loved by men like Holcroft and Josiah Wedgwood, like Coleridge and Lamb, and that he was sought after by beautiful and clever women. His talents alone would not have won the hearts of young men, and yet he invariably made friends with those who came under his influence. Willis Webb and Thomas Cooper, who, in his earlier London life, lived with him as pupils, not only respected, but loved him, and gave him their confidence. In a later generation, youthful enthusiasts, of whom ​Bulwer and Shelley are the most notable, looked upon Godwin as the chief apostle in the cause of humanity, and, beginning by admiring him as a philosopher, finished by loving him as a man. Those who know him only through his works or by reading his biography, cannot altogether understand how it was that he thus attracted and held the affections of so many men and women. But the truth is that, while Godwin was naturally a man of an uncommonly cold temperament, much of his emotional insensibility was artificially produced by his puritanical training. He was perfectly honest when in his philosophy of life he banished the passions from his calculations. He was so thoroughly schooled in stifling emotion and its expression, that he thought himself incapable of passional excitement, and, reasoning from his own experience, failed to appreciate its importance in shaping the course of human affairs. But it may be that people brought into personal contact with him felt that beneath his passive exterior there was at least the possibility of passion. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to develop this possibility into certainty, and to arouse Godwin to a consciousness of its existence. She revolutionized not only his life, but his social doctrines. Through her he discovered the flaw in his arguments, and then honestly confessed his mistake to the world.
When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of age, in the full prime and vigour of his intellect, and in the height of his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior, and deemed the cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made her strong. She was strikingly handsome. She had, by ​her struggles and sufferings, acquired what she calls in her Rights of Women a physionomie. Even Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, hard as life had gone with them, had never approached the depth of misery which she had fathomed. The eventful meeting took place in the month of January, 1796, shortly after Mary had returned from her travels in the North. Miss Hayes invited Godwin to come to her house one evening when Mary expected to be there. He accepted her invitation without hesitation, but evinced no great eagerness.
The meeting was more propitious than their first, some few years earlier, had been. Godwin had, with others, heard her sad story, and felt sorry for her, and perhaps admired her for her bold, practical application of his principles. This was better than the positive dislike with which she had once inspired him. But still his feeling for her was negative. He would probably never have made an effort to see her again. What Mary thought of him has not been recorded. But she must have been favourably impressed, for when she came back to London from her trip to Berkshire, she called upon him in his lodgings in Somer's Town. He, in the meantime, had read her Letters from Norway, and they had given him a higher respect for her talents. The inaccuracies and the roughness of style which had displeased him in her earlier works had disappeared. There was no fault to be found with the book, but much to be said in its praise. Once she had pleased him intellectually, he began to discover her other attractions, and to enjoy being with her. Her conversation, instead of wearying him, as it once had, interested him. He no longer thought her ​forward and conceited, but succumbed to her personal charms.
Godwin now began to see her frequently. She had established herself in rooms in Cumming Street, Pentonville, where she was very near him. They met often at the houses of Miss Hayes, Mr. Johnson, and other mutual friends. Her interests and tastes were the same as his; and this fact he recognized more fully as time went on. It is probably because his thoughts were so much with her, that the work he accomplished during this year was comparatively small. None of the other women he knew and admired had made him act spontaneously and forget to reason out his conduct as she did. He really had, at one time, thought of making Amelia Alderson his wife; but this, for some unrecorded reason, proving an impossibility, he calmly dismissed the suggestion from his mind and continued the friend he had been before. Had Mrs. Reveley been single he might have allowed himself to love her, as he did later, when he was a widower and she a widow. But so long as her husband was alive, and he knew he had no right to do so, he, with perfect equanimity, regulated his affection to suit the circumstances. But he never reasoned either for or against his love for Mary Wollstonecraft. It sprang from his heart, and it had grown into a strong passion before he had paused to deliberate as to its advisability.
As for Mary, Godwin's friendship, coming just when it did, was an inestimable service. Never in all her life had she needed sympathy as she did then. She was virtually alone. Her friends were kind, but their kindness could not quite take the place of the ​individual love she craved. Imlay had given it to her for a while, and her short-lived happiness with him made her present loneliness seem more unendurable. Her separation from him really dated back to the time when she left Havre. Her affection for him had been destroyed sooner than she thought, because she had struggled bravely to retain it for the sake of her child. The gaiety and many distractions of London life could not drown her heart's wretchedness. It was through Godwin that she became reconciled to England, to life, and to herself. He revived her enthusiasm and renewed her interest in work and in mankind; but above all he gave her that special devotion without which she but half lived. In the restlessness that followed her loss of Imlay's love, she had resolved to make the tour of Italy or Switzerland. Therefore, when she had returned to London, expecting it to be but a temporary resting-place, she had taken furnished lodgings. "Now, however," as Godwin says in his Memoirs, "she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her mind." She moved to other rooms in the extremity of Somer's Town, and filled them with the furniture she had used in Store Street in the first days of her prosperity, and which had since been packed away. The unpacking of this furniture was with her what the removal of widows' weeds is with other women. Her first love had perished; but from it rose another, stronger and better; just as the ripening of autumn's fruits follows the withering of spring's blossoms. She mastered the harvest-secret, learning the value of that death which yields higher fruition.
​In July, Godwin left London and spent the month in Norfolk. Absence from Mary made him realize more than he had hitherto done that she had become indispensable to his happiness. She was constantly in his thoughts. The more he meditated upon her, the more he appreciated her. There was less pleasure in his excursion than in the meeting with her which followed it. They were both glad to be together again; nor did they hesitate to make their gladness evident. At the end of three weeks they had confessed to each other that they could no longer live apart. Henceforward their lines must be cast in the same places. Godwin's story of their courtship is eloquent in its simplicity. It is almost impossible to believe that it was written by the author of Political Justice. He explains:—
The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. . . . It was friendship melting into love.