literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that belles-lettres 7 scholars frequently possess. [When I say this, it is by no means intended to imply, that his intercourse with the writers of established fame is not consider- able, or that he is not profoundly skilled in their beauties. One consequence however of his avocations from literature is, that] ® the favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfec- tion. Milton, Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention.® The’ nearest rival of Homer, I believe; if Homer can-have-a rival, is “Jean Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau’s conception of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortive- ness” of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all® our little attempts at improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon con- tempt and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of genius. This 1s a power that comes complete at once from fi belles-lettres] miscellaneous.
8 One consequence...is, that] Of consequence Ist ed. ® Milton, Shakespear...attention del. 11 believe del. 2 abortiveness] futility. 3 all del.
59 MEMOIRS the hands of the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search, in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she went into it.
But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary, and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it was im- possible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned. Not- withstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man-of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. What she ex- perienced in this respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed 60 MEMOIRS MEMOIRS to impose upon her; but she made light of any difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex, but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct. There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an oppo- site sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It was her maxim, ‘that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not the senses the imagination.” In other words, that whatever related to the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed. —There is no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of personal intercourse 61 MEMOIRS and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.* In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in George-street, to a large ® and commodious apartment in Store street, Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had always scrupulously observed, a certain degree of elegance, and those temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.
It was in the month of November in the same year (1791),® that the writer of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it relates.?. He dined with her at a friend’s, together with Mr. Thomas Paine and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had never before conversed.
The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had barely looked into her Answer os she experienced...to herself. see Passages Re- writen.
5 large and del. ° (1791), del.
* the person to whom it relates] her who is the subject of it 62 MEMOIRS to Burke, and been displeased, as literary men are § apt to be, with a few offenses against grammar and other minute points of com- position. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and a very ® great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine, in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks, the conversation lay principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired in a very blameable degree,1 the practice of seeing every thing? on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a plentiful hand, where circum- stances were in any respect? doubtful. I, on the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtues. We ventilated 4 in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained from some indi- viduals an ardent admiration, while the greater number have treated them with 8 literary men are] men of leisure and reading are too.
® very del. 1in a very blameable degree del.
2 seeing every thing] looking.
3in any respect] perhaps only. 4 ventilated] discussed. 63 MEMOIRS extreme moral severity. Mary was at last provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We discussed * some questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it. We touched upon ® all topics, without treating forcibly and connectedly upon ” any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of my blame, to yield to her the praise of a person of active and independent thinking. On-her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered as justice.
We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but madea very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.
In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she continued to re- side for upwards of two years. One of her principal inducements to this step, related, I believe)? to: Mr. Fuselix< She had-atenrr considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had originally expected from 5 discussed] touched upon. 6 touched upon] mentioned. 7 upon] of, 64 — bh 7 MEMOIRS it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she should ® have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union. She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind; and, for that purpose, determiried to seek a new climate, and mingle in different scenes.
It is singular, that during her residence in Store-street, which lasted more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed upon the sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind her a single paper, that can, with any ® certainty, be assigned to have had this destination.
8 should] would. ® any del.
M.W. 65 E CHAPTER Vil 1792-1795 Tue original plan of Mary, respecting her © residence in France, had no precise limit? in _ the article of duration; the single purpose — she had in view being that of an endeavour | to heal her distempered mind. She did not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to some friends who saw her ~ immediately before her departure, she spoke & pLecly, of an absence of six weeks. e It is not to be wondered at, that her excur- _ ama did not originally seem to produce the © effects she had expected from it. She was — in a land of strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of receiving and communicating ideas with ~ facility in the language of the country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had been invited, but the master _ of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded only with servants. The gloominess? of her mind communicated 1 Jimit] limits 1st ed. 2 gloominess] gloom. 66 MEMOIRS its own colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it is, as she justly remarked,* tinged with the saturnine temper which at that time pervaded her mind.
Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in Paris. She re- newed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in Paris. Another person, of whom Mary always spoke ¢ in terms of ardent commendation, both for the excel- lence o! his disposition and the force of his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. It is almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquainted with the majority of the leaders in the French revolution. [Her country, combined with her known political sentiments, recommended her; and the celebrity of her writings had prepared the way for her personal reception. | But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time, was that of Mr.
3 remarked] remarks Ist ed.
£ of whom Mary always spoke] whom Mary always spoke of, tst ed. 67 MEMOIRS Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits were mercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. With Mrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate ® than with her husband.
It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792,° that she entered into that species of? connection for which her heart secretly panted,® from which the tran- quillity and the sorrows of the immediately succeeding years of her life were solely de- rived.® The person with whom it was formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy? to attempt to suppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation of Mary has reached), was Mr. Gilbert Imlay,? native of the United States of North America.
The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr. Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions he then excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that, for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentiment however speedily gave place to one of greater kindness.
5 acquaintance was more intimate] intercourse was greater. 8 in December, 1792 del. 7 species of del. 8 for which her heart secretly panted del.
® from which the tranquillity...derived.] and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate tranquillity and cheer- fulness over her manners, 1st ed.
1 delicacy] forbearance in this place.
2 Mr. Imlay] this person. 68 Rpt nanrs ‘ - dl ft MEMOIRS Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she * had determined upon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy. But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probably the intercourse that now originated * between her and Mr. Imlay,° that [finally] changed her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, a village three miles from Paris. Her habitation here was a solitary house in the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants ® than herself and the gardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of a domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed. The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she could not without the greatest difficulty obtain [of him] when she had any person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she con- ceived, and for the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution,* into which, as she observes, are ” incorporated most of the observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written with more sobriety and cheerfulness 3 him, she] Mr. Imlay, Mary.
4 that now originated] which now occurred.
5 between her and Mr. Imlay del.
6 inhabitants] inhabitant. 7 as she observes, are] she * No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been found among the papers of the author. 6 ale Pos eere MEMOIRS than the tone in which they had been com- menced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old® host in vain endeavoured to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders that had been committed there.
In the commencement of the attachment she now formed, Mary ® had neither confident nor adviser. She always conceived it to be a gross breach of delicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, an affair of the heart...The origin of the connection was about the middle of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for four months. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred that induced her to declare it. The French conventidpyexas- perated at the conduct of the British govern- ment, particularly in the affair of Toulon, formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article of which the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till the period of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr. Imlay, who, at the time their connection was formed, had.
no property whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family embarrass- 8 old del.
°In the commencement...now formed, Mary] The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, tsi ed. 1 She always conceived...of the heart.] Delicacy, she thought, required the making an intercourse of this sort sacred and confidential.
70 MEMOIRS ments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. She how- ever considered their engagement as of the most sacred? nature; and they had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon as they should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the mode they desired. The decree however? that I have just mentioned, made it necessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Mary should take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of their connection [(formed, on her part at least, with no capri- cious or fickle design)], she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a certificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native of that country.
Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris.
Mary was now‘ arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding years, her reégson had pointed out to her as affording _the most substantial prospect of happiness.
She had been tossed and agitated by the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of childhood. The temper of her father had 2 sacred] inviolable. 3 The decree however] Meanwhile the decree. 4 was now] now thought herself.
71 MEMOIRS early given to her mind a severe cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her mother, and the still more ® afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself, had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny, had en- countered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father’s fortune. In this affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally, when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her.
Some persons may be inclined to observe, 5 still more del. 72 oh F GG j + Sica die Aipetesi i ¢ MEMOIRS that the evils here enumerated, are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. But evils take their rank less from their own nature, than from the temper of the mind that suffers them. Upon a man of a hard and insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often 7 fall pointless and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who, from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are _ continually prompted to look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall, immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness, the same hope, and the same ® gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we not unfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite and delicious ® sensi- bility, whose minds seem almost of too fine? a texture to encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in this respect a female Werter.
She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to take refuge in the bosom? of a chosen friend. Let it not however be imagined, that she brought a ° less from...suffers them.] more from the temper of the mind that suffers them, than from their abstract nature. Ist ed.: 7 often del. 8 the same del. 9 delicious] refined. 1 fine] delicate. * bosom] attachment. 73 MEMOIRS heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its happiest age.? She was playful, full of con- fidence, kindness and sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with uni- versal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost every one that beheld it.
Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual 4 affection, which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like hers was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of Mr. Imlay’s “ tenderness and worth had twisted him closely round her heart; ’’ and she “ indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported.”
3 She was like a serpent...its happiest age. del. 4 individual del.
74 wht’ MEMOIRS This was ‘‘ talking a new language to her; ”’ but “conscious that she was not a parasite- plant,” she was willing to encourage and foster the luxuriances of affection.® 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.
[It might be considered as a trite remark, if I were to observe here, that the highest pleasures of human life are nearly connected with its bitterest sorrows, and that the being who restlessly aspires to superior gratifica- tions, has some reason to fear, lest his refine- ment should be a precursor to anguish and repentance. Influenced by this anticipation, there are persons who resolutely circumscribe themselves within the sphere of a rigid and miserable separation from others, that they may be independent of their injustice or folly. But this is a sordid policy. The mistake of Mary in this instance is easy of detection. She did not give full play to her judgment in this most important choice of life. She was too much under the influence of the melancholy and disappointment which had driven her from her native land; and, gratified with the first gleam of promised relief, she ventured not to examine with too curious a research into the soundness of her expectation. The least that can be said of the connection that she now formed, is, that it was a very unequal 5 Her conception of...of affection. del. ® Her love was unbounded del.
i MEMOIRS one. In years the parties were a match for each other; in every other point they were ill fitted for so entire an intimacy.| Soon after the time to which my narrative has reached,’ her attachment to Mr. Imlay ° gained a new link, by [her] 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’s entering into * business, urged, as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being a favourable crisis in French affairs for commercial specula- tions. The pursuits in which he was engaged,’ led him in the month of September to Havre de Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend the shipping of goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other person or persons. Mary remained in the capital.
The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial. Domestic affec- tions constituted the object upon which her heart was fixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay ‘‘ did not attach those tender emotions round the idea of home, which, every time they recurred, dimmed her * to which my narrative has reached] I am now speaking of 1st ed.
* her attachment to Mr. Imlay] the attachment of Mary. ® Their establishment] The establishment she had formed. lup del. ° formed] entered on. 3 entering into] engaging in. ‘in which he was engaged] into which he entered.
/ = MEMOIRS eyes with moisture.’ She had expected his return from week to week, and from month to month; but a succession of business still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time the sanguinary character which the government of France began every day [more decidedly] to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the first months of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one day to enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the Place de Louis Quinze), when an execution, attended with some peculiar ageravations, had just taken place, and the blood of® the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement. The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while a prudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hasten and hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, the anguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Vergniaud, and the twenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had ever experienced.
Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined, in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her, though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing cruelties of Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, rather than the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated.
From January to September, Mr. Imlay and 5 of] from.
LE MEMOIRS Mary lived together, with great harmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, was born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of the dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from her memory.
In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port of London. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, he endeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take up her abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence, the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was re- moved. Mr. Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and it proved the most fatiguing journey ® she ever made; the carriage, in which she travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havre and Paris.
This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had removed to Havre, was represented [by him] as an absence that was to have a short duration. In two months he was once? again to join her in Paris. It proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung ® journey del.? once del.
78 > rr ‘ MEMOIRS upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and elasticity of her character.
The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one advantage.
It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring hope.
Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred unhappy passion? ® Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment, without suffer- ing some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has fixed all ® its esteem. Mary had struggled San ill-starred unhappy passion] a passion, at once ill- assorted, and unpromising.
® fixed all] placed.
79 MEMOIRS to entertain a favourable opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind, in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. [Wounded affection, wounded pride, all those principles which hold most absolute empire in the purest and loftiest minds, urged her to still further experiments to recover her influence, and to a still more poignant desperation, long after reason would have directed her to desist, and resolutely .= Te call off her mind from thoughts of so hopeless ~ and fatal a description.] Mr. Imlay undertook to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion. Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment.
that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a-friendship and attachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and, ‘‘like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe.* ”’ * A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particular gratification,! was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become a fugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and in whom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging to her, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart.
' from whose society at this time Mary derived particular gratification] whom Mary saw frequently about this time. 80 CHAPTER VIII 1795-1796 In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to do so by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her in the journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements for her departure. But, notwithstanding these favour- able appearances, she came to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all the un- certainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestions of hope.
The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified. Mr. Imlay had already formed another connection; as it is said, with a young actress from a strolling company of players. His attentions therefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had but little of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetrating glance.t He ascribed it to pressure of busi- ness, and some pecuniary embarrassments which, at that time, pressed upon? him; it 1 penetrating glance del.
2 pressed upon] occurred to Ist ed. M.W. 81 MEMOIRS was of little consequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, though she strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever.
It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortification than Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the six- teenth of April to the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for her. She had come over to England, a country for * which she, at this time, expressed ‘‘a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror,’ in search of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogether escaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatience which Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When she saw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable of forming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after an interval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of this sort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on such occasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in# the emotions of an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedily blasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay was cold and embarrassed. Discussions (‘‘ explanations ”’ they were called) followed; cruel explanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart already overwhelmed in grief! They had