the playwright Thomas Holcroft on 10th September 1797, the very evening of her death: ‘My wife is now dead. She died this morning at eight o’clock…I firmly believe that there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again. When you come to town, look at me, talk to me, but do not – if you can help it – exhort me, or console me.’
Another of Godwin’s friends, Elizabeth Fenwick wrote two days later to Mary’s younger sister, Evarina Wollstonecraft, in Dublin. ‘I was with [Mary] at the time of her delivery, and with very little intermission until the moment of her death. Every skillful effort that medical knowledge of the highest class could make, was exerted to save her. It is not possible to describe the unremitting and devoted attentions of her husband…No woman was ever more happy in marriage than Mrs Godwin. Whoever endured more anguish than Mr Godwin endures? Her description of him, in the very last moments of her recollection was, “He is the kindest, best man in the world.”’
Mrs Fenwick added thoughtfully, and perhaps tactfully: ‘I know of no consolation for myself, but in remembering how happy she had lately been, and how much she was admired, and almost idolized, by some of the most eminent and best of human beings.’
To take advantage of this surge of interest and sympathy across the literary world, Wollstonecraft’s life-long friend and publisher, Joseph Johnson, proposed to Godwin an immediate edition of her most recent writings. This was to include most notably her long, but unfinished, novel Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman, which had a strong autobiographical subtext. It was a shrewd idea, to provide a fictional follow-up to Mary’s most famous work of five years previously, The Rights of Woman. The two titles cleverly called attention to each other: ‘The Rights’ reinforced by ‘The Wrongs’.
Though unfinished, The Wrongs of Woman: A Fragment in Two Volumes contained a celebration of true Romantic friendships, and a blistering attack on conventional marriage. The narrator Maria’s husband has committed her to a lunatic asylum, having first brought her to court on a (false) charge of adultery. The judge’s summary of Maria’s case, which comes where the manuscript breaks off, ironically encapsulates many of the male prejudices that Mary Wollstonecraft had fought against all her life.
The judge, in summing up the evidence, alluded to the fallacy of letting women plead their feelings, as an excuse for the violation of the marriage-vow. For his part, he had always determined to oppose all innovation, and the new-fangled notions that encroached on the good old rules of conduct. We did not want French principles in public or private life – and, if women were allowed to plead their feelings, as an excuse or palliation of infidelity, it was opening a flood-gate for immorality. What virtuous women thought of her feelings? – it was her duty to love and obey the man chosen by her parents and relations…
Johnson also suggested that Godwin should include some biographical materials. The idea for a short memorial essay by Mary’s husband was mooted, as was the convention in such circumstances; and possibly a small selection from her letters.
Battling against his grief, Godwin determined do justice to his wife by editing her Posthumous Works. Immediately after the funeral on 15 September, he moved into Mary’s own study at No.9 Polygon, surrounded himself with all her books and papers, and hung her portrait by John Opie above his desk for inspiration. He hired a housekeeper, Louisa Jones, to look after the two children who were now his responsibility: the little motherless baby Mary (the future Mary Shelley); and four-year old Fanny, who was Wollstonecraft’s earlier love-child by an American, Gilbert Imlay.
Both as a father and as an author, he regarded himself as fulfilling a sacred trust, and wrote: ‘It has always appeared to me, that to give the public some account of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent on survivors…The justice which is thus done to the illustrious dead, converts into the fairest source of animation and encouragement to those who would follow them in the same career.’ (Preface)
2
Godwin immersed himself in papers and memories for the next three months, and writing at speed, soon found that the short essay was expanding into a full Life. He turned all his cool, scholarly methods on the supremely emotional task in hand. He reread all Mary’s printed works, sorted her unpublished manuscripts, and established a precise chronology of her life from birth. He dated and meticulously numbered the 160 letters they had exchanged. He interviewed her friends in London like Johnson, and wrote to others abroad, like Hugh Skeys in Ireland. He sent diplomatic messages to Mary’s estranged sister, Evarina Wollstonecraft in Dublin, requesting family letters and reminiscences. He assembled his own journal notes of their intimate conversations, and lovingly reconstructed others, such as the long September day spent walking round the garden where she had grown up near Barking, in Essex. Here Mary had suddenly begun reminiscing about her childhood.
Godwin recalled the moment tenderly, but with characteristic exactitude: ‘In September 1796, I accompanied my wife in a visit to this spot. No person reviewed with great sensibility, the scenes of her childhood. We found the house uninhabited, and the garden in a wild and ruinous state. She renewed her acquaintance with the market-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we found crowded with activity.’ (Chapter 1)
Godwin determined to tell each phase of her short but turbulent life with astonishing openness. This was a decision that stemmed directly from the philosophy of rational enquiry and sincerity enshrined in Political Justice. He would use a plain, narrative style and a frank, psychological appraisal of Mary’s character and temperament. He would avoid no episode, however controversial.
He would write about the cruelty of her father (still living); the strange passionate friendship with Fanny Blood; the overbearing demands of Mary’s siblings; her endless struggles for financial independence; her writer’s blocks and difficulties with authorship; her enigmatic relationship with the painter Henry Fuseli; her passionate affair with the American Gilbert Imlay in Paris; her illegitimate child Fanny; her two suicide attempts; and finally their own love-affair in London, and Mary’s agonizing death. This would be a revolutionary kind of intimate biography it would tell the truth about the human condition, and particularly the truth about women’s lives.
As the biography expanded, Godwin’s contacts and advisors began to grow increasingly uneasy. Evarina Wollstonecraft wrote anxiously from Dublin, expressing reservations. She had been delighted at her clever elder sister’s literary success, and been helped financially by it. But it now emerged that she had quarreled with Mary after her Paris adventures, and disapproved of the marriage to Godwin. She had not been properly consulted by Godwin, and feared personal disclosures and publicity. In a letter of 24 November 1797, she abruptly refused to lend Godwin any of the family correspondence, and informed him that a detailed biographical notice would be premature. She implied that it would damage her (and her sister Elizabeth’s) future prospects as governesses.
When Eliza and I first learnt your intention of publishing immediately my sister Mary’s Life, we concluded that you only meant a sketch…We thought your application to us rather premature, and had no intention of satisfying your demands till we found that [Hugh] Skeys had proffered our assistance without our knowledge…At a future date we would willingly have given whatever information was necessary; and even now we would not have shrunk from the task, however anxious we may be to avoid reviving the recollections it would raise, or loath to fall into the pain of thoughts it must lead to, did we suppose it possible to accomplish the work you have undertaken in the time you specify.
Evarina concluded that a detailed Life was highly undesirable, and that it was impossible for Godwin to be ‘even tolerably accurate’ without her help. On reflection, Godwin decided to ignore these family objections. He judged them to be inspired partly by sibling jealousy, partly by the sisters’ desire to
