The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume 1 (of 2) — A Reader’s Guide

They had already met once, before Mary's sojourn in France, but at this first interview neither was impressed by the other. Since her return to London he had shunned her because she was too much talked about in society. Imagining her to be obtrusively "strong-minded" and deficient in delicacy, he was too strongly prejudiced against her even to read her books. But by degrees he was won over. He saw her warmth of heart, her generous temper, her vigour of intellect; he saw too that she had suffered. Such susceptibility as he had was fanned into warmth. His critical acumen could not but detect her rare quality and worth, although the keen sense of humour and Irish charm which fascinated others may, with him, have told against her for a time. But the nervous vanity which formed his closest link with ordinary human nature must have been flattered by the growing preference of one so widely admired, and whom he discovered to be even more deserving of admiration and esteem than the world knew. As to her, accustomed as she was to homage, she may have felt that for the first time she was justly appreciated, and to her wounded and smarting susceptibilities this balm of appreciation must have been immeasurable. Her first freshness of feeling had been wasted on a love which proved to have been one-sided and which had recoiled on itself. To love and be loved again was the beginning of a new life for her. And so it came about that the coldest of men and the warmest of women found their happiness in each other. Thus drawn together, the discipline afforded to her nature by the rudest realities of life, to his by the severities of study, had been such as to promise a growing and a lasting companionship and affection.

In the short memoir of his wife, prefixed by Godwin to his published collection of her letters, he has given his own account, a touching one, of the growth and recognition of their love.

The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest and most refined style of love. 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 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....

There was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love.

They did not, however, marry at once. Godwin's opinion of marriage, looked on as indissoluble, was that it was "a law, and the worst of all laws." In accordance with this view, the ceremony did not take place till their union had lasted some months, and when it did, it was regarded by Godwin in the light of a distinct concession. He expresses himself most decisively on this point in a letter to his friend, Mr. Wedgwood of Etruria (printed by Mr. Kegan Paul in his memoirs of Godwin), announcing his marriage, which had actually taken place a month before, but had been kept secret.

Some persons have found an inconsistency between my practice in this instance and my doctrines. But I cannot see it. The doctrine of my _Political Justice_ is, that an attachment in some degree permanent between two persons of opposite sexes is right, but that marriage, as practised in European countries, is wrong. I still adhere to that opinion. Nothing but a regard for the happiness of the individual, which I have no right to ignore, could have induced me to submit to an institution which I wish to see abolished, and which I would recommend to my fellow-men never to practise but with the greatest caution. Having done what I thought was necessary for the peace and respectability of the individual, I hold myself no otherwise bound than I was before the ceremony took place.

It is certain that he did not repent his concession. But their wedded happiness was of short duration. On 30th August 1797 a little girl was born to them.