Mary Hays, 30 Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, to William Godwin, 25 Chalton Street, Somers Town, Friday evening, 20 November 1795.1
No 30 – Kirby Street Hatton Garden.
I think, yes! I do think that you refine too much, & that many centuries must elapse ere some of your opinions will afford a proper foundation for practice. What ever capacities may exist, or may possibly be generated, in the human mind, it is certainly at present very imperfect, we must therefore be content to take the bad with the good, &, in chusing our situation be only careful to observe on which side the balance inclines! So far, perhaps, you will agree with me, & will suspect that I have in my head the subject of our last discussion. You were not contending, I
imagine, for the spirit of monastic institutions, neither I suppose would you deny,
that the being who is constituted of sense & intellect may feel the voice
of nature too strong, to be silenced by artificial precepts. – When we shall have
arrived at that state of perfection as to be all mind, or, to stand in no need
of law or restraint, your principles will not admit of dispute: but, ’till then, every
violation of the institutions of the country in which we reside (I, at present,
wave the moral consideration of the subject) must expose us to great &
various civil inconveniencies, of which I have observed shocking & inhuman instances. This is an argument
which we certainly cannot feel with an equal degree of force, because society
has, in these respects, made most unjust, tyrannical, & barbarous, sexual
distinctions: distinctions which, if
they were not tragical in their consequences, wou’d be contemptible &
ridiculous. So “Convince a man against his will And he’s of the same opinion still.”8 May we not, then I again ask, by endeavoring to do too much, in a given period, defeat our own purposes & effect the less? But to return to the subject
from which I have been digressing (which is merely interesting to me as a speculation, for my plans of this nature – plans, which I confess I have
meditated Your observation respecting constant, domestic, intercourse, tho’ somewhat exaggerated, has some general truth in it, yet, a mind regulated by reason ought to have no ill humours to vent, but I see no particular objection against separate cells provided the parties are independent of each other, can dispense with certain fashionable arrangement, & agree in thinking it the most eligible. You, as a philosopher, it may be, lay less stress on domestic establishments, order, & management, than most other men: to say truth, the expensive style of living, which, in the present age, is conceived necessary on these occasions, has militated powerfully against the freedom, the virtue, & the happiness of mankind. I dont know whether sudden transitions are allowable in epistolary writing, be that as it may, I find them often very convenient. I thank you for reassuring me respecting the estimation you have form’d of my character, I now begin to reckon, with more certainty, upon your esteem, my vanity often leads me to be diffident of myself in the same degree that I am avaricious of the respect of others. Some calumniators of Mr Godwin say ‘that he flatters women,’ but I will not think that a philosophic reformer can expect to improve one half of the human race, by wil<->^fully^ assisting in the degradation of the other. Accept, also, my
acknowledgements for the encouragement you have given me to prosecute my
projected work! I had made a beginning, but having I ought not to ask to see you frequently for, beside its being unreasonable, my intellects will be soon exhausted, but while yours appear to me to be inexhaustible I cannot help making the requisition, I can sincerely say you have greatly benefited me, my present way of life, also, accords more with my disposition, I am more employ’d, more amused, & more chearful. I was glad you mentioned Mr Draper,14 because it gave me an opportunity of obliging you. I have much, in my disposition (excuse me) of the vice of gratitude. I wrote immediately to Mr D, who will meet you with pleasure in the vacation, at present every moment of his time is occupied. Mr D has raised himself in society, has a strong & a clear head, much scientific knowledge, & many good qualities, but he wants delicacy of taste & feeling. – you smile! – There are, likewise, some very glaring inconsistencies in his conduct: he is, besides, the most unqualified admirer of himself, & as little apt to allow merit in others, as any person I know, not that he is of a destructive or splenetic temper, far from it, but his sense of admiration is absorbed in the contemplation of his own acquirements, oweing in some measure, perhaps, to his having risen very superior to those who were originally his equals & having had but few opportunities of comparing himself with his superiors. I have know[n] him long, but I have not discover’d in him those social qualities of the heart (notwithstanding all he says of having been in love) which please me. He had communicated knowledge to me, which I consider as the first & highest of all gifts, & I was disposed to feel grateful, but not a single advance has he ever made in friendly cordiality, & his manners were as frigid the fiftieth time of meeting as the first: he boasts of stoicism, his sinews are of brass & his nerves of iron: the only time I ever heard him speak of being at all moved, was in accidentally hearing the miserable groans & cries of a soldier suffering under execrable martial discipline, &, even, this he minutely described – a description that harrowed up my soul – with an unaltered voice & gesture. I am almost ashamed of the length of my letter, but I will not add to it by apologies – Remember, you are to bring Mr Holcroft to visit me, let it be to drink tea,15 & favor me with a line of information that I may preserve myself disengaged, tho’ I wou’d not wish you to suppose that because you found me in company when you last favor’d me with a call that I am generally engaged in an afternoon,16 for, I do assure you, this is by no means the case. I shall always be glad to see you, at any time that best suits you, but, I confess, I feel most disposed for conversation towards evening. My eyes and hand are quite wearied, I fear my writing will be scarcely legible, it is time I relieved both you & myself – Farewell! Mary Hays.
Friday evening 11 o clock – Nov 20th – 95.
Address: W Godwin | Somers Town | 25 Chalton Street. Postmark: 21 November 1795, 2 o’clock Afternoon.
Post pd 2d 1 MS MH 0009, Pforzheimer Collection, NYPL; Brooks, Correspondence 407-13. 2 attrocious] MS 3 Lothario, Calista, and Altamont are characters from Nicholas Rowe's tragedy, The Fair Penitent (1703). 4 Gilbert Imlay (1754-1828) was an American writer, businessman, and diplomat who became known in the 1790s for three things: his influential Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America (1792), his novel The Emigrants (1793), and his brief relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft. They met in Paris in 1793 where he was working for the American Embassy and she was reporting on the French Revolution. Their passion appeared mutual at the beginning, but Imlay began to absent himself from Paris, leaving Wollstonecraft alone at the height of the Reign of Terror. She escaped imminent danger by registering at the Embassy as Imlay's wife. She joined him at Havre in 1794, where she gave birth to their daughter, Fanny. Imlay soon left for London and Wollstonecraft returned to Paris. When he did not come for her, she returned to London in April 1794 on her own, only to discover Imlay living with an actress, producing her first attempt at suicide. Between April and October 1795 she traveled in Scandinavia, but upon her return found Imlay living with yet another woman, prompting a second attempt at suicide on the part of Wollstonecraft that October. By December 1795, reconciliation with Imlay looked hopeless (it would officially end the following March), opening the door for the resumption of her acquaintance with Godwin through the assistance of Mary Hays. 5 See Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 1, scene 2, l. 76. 6 See Plato's Phaedo, taken from Socrates last words to Crito that he (Socrates) owed a cock to Asclepius. 7 The Gorgon was a mythological female figure who hair was composed of living snakes and whose visage was so terrible as to turn to stone any who looked directly into her face. 8 Though often quoted in the form Hays uses above, the lines probably owe their origin to Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Part 3, canto III, ll. 547-48. 9 ennumerated] MS 10 Reference taken from Rousseau's Emile. 11 The "microscopic eye" is taken from Pope's Essay on Man, Epistle 1, ll. 193-94; Brobdingnagians are the people on whose island Gulliver lands in Book II of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. 12 See Brooke's Emily Montague, 4.71. 13
raphsody] MS 14 Rev. William Draper (see above, Worthington to Hays, 17 January 1794). 15 Godwin will call on Hays on 25 November, and they have tea together in Kirby Street on 2 December, this time with Holcroft and Stephen Weaver Browne, at which time they “talk of causes, etc.” 16 Godwin writes that among the “company” at their previous meeting were "miss Hayes, w. Hills etc.” This would be Mary Hays and her younger sister, Elizabeth, and their older sister, Sarah Hays Hills (1756-1836), a Calvinistic Baptist turned Independent who most might well have remembered Godwin the Dissenter (he had once been an Independent minister) but who would not have found appealing conversations with Godwin the Sceptic. |
MARY HAYS: LIFE, WRITINGS, AND CORRESPONDENCE > MARY HAYS CORRESPONDENCE > 1790-1799 > 1795 >