Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793-1818

5: An “Exchange of Sympathy,”

144 5 An “Exchange of Sympathy” Mary Wollstonecraft first met William Godwin at a small party in London in November 1791. “The interview was not fortunate,” Godwin later recalled. He had sought an invitation to dinner at a friend’s to meet Thomas Paine, who had recently published The Rights of Man. Godwin had no interest in Wollstonecraft, whose style he found distasteful. Unfortunately, Paine was “no great talker,” and Wollstonecraft was; he therefore “heard her, very frequently ,” when he “wished to hear Paine.” The conversation centered on the characters of famous men and religion. Godwin thought Wollstonecraft eager to criticize, no matter how equivocal the evidence. She saw “every thing on the gloomy side,” whereas he was inclined “to the supposition of generous and manly virtue.” Godwin and Wollstonecraft encountered each other on two or three occasions before she left for France. But they made little “progress towards a cordial acquaintance.”1 Circumstances were very different when the two met at a dinner in London on January 8, 1796, a few months after Wollstonecraft had returned from Hamburg. As before, the conversation did not go well. But, by the end of the month, Godwin had read Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Unlike Wollstonecraft’s previous work, it was “a book calculated to make a man fall in love with its author.” In the following weeks,Godwin and Wollstonecraft saw each other frequently. Because they lived close to each other, they increased their “intimacy . . . by regular, but almost imperceptible degrees.” Godwin retrospectively took 1. William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of The Rights of Woman” (1798), ed. Paula Clemit and Gina Luria Walker (Peterborough, Ont., 2001), 80, 81. AN “EXCHANGE OF SYMPATHY” / 145 pride in their treatment of each other. Neither was aggressive; neither was “the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair.” Like Maria and Henry, they became acquaintances, then friends, and lovers in the natural course of things. When they declared themselves in August, it was an example of “friendship melting into love.” This romance could not have been more different from that of Wollstonecraft and Imlay.2 A deeply wounded Wollstonecraft warned Godwin that she was not optimistic about a new relationship. When she tried to “catch” the roses he said grew “profusely in every path of life,” she “only encounter[ed] the thorns.” Perhaps she must be a “SolitaryWalker.” Rather than seek bliss, they should “extract as much happiness, as we can, out of the various ills of life.” It was imperative that they act in a manly fashion. If he wanted to engage her, he should not “choose the easiest task,” her “perfections”; rather, he should “dwell on [his] own feelings,” give her “a bird’s-eye view of [his] heart.” What Wollstonecraft required was a friend who would always tell her the truth, who would love her, not the idea of love itself. There was no point in even contemplating a close friendship if she could not believe what he told her, if together they could not cultivate understanding.3 Godwin was eager to share his opinions on political and philosophical subjects. Profoundly inexperienced in the realm of intimacy, Godwin had never had a lover.Taking up Wollstonecraft’s challenge, he revealed himself in unprecedented fashion.This couple grasped early on that they were necessary toeach other.Opposites in many ways, they soon discovered a degree of happiness together that they had never known separately. He respected her autonomy, gave her unqualified support, and helped her to maintain her emotional balance; she opened him up, encouraging him to indulge desire, to respect passion as well as reason.Two independent people choosing each other’s company, they fulfilled Wollstonecraft’s vision of rational desire that was something more than the sum of its parts. “A Trembling Sensibility” William Godwin was a delicate man of medium build with a solemn demeanor dominated by large blue eyes and an oversized nose. He had been born in Wisbech, Cambridge, on March 3, 1756, the seventh of thirteen chil2 . Ibid., 95, 103, 104. 3. Mary Wollstonecraft (MW) to William Godwin, [Aug. 17, 1796], in Janet Todd, ed., The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York, 2003), 349, to Mary Hays, [1796], 344, to Godwin, July 1, 1796, 342. 146 / AN “EXCHANGE OF SYMPATHY” dren. Godwin felt neglected by his parents and mistreated...