Mary Wollstonecraft - The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay

Are you very busy?

So you may reckon on its being finished soon, though not before you come home, unless you are detained longer than I now allow myself to believe you will. —

Be that as it may, write to me, my best love, and bid me be patient – kindly – and the expressions of kindness will again beguile the time, as sweetly as they have done to-night. – Tell me also over and over again, that your happiness (and you deserve to be happy!) is closely connected with mine, and I will try to dissipate, as they rise, the fumes of former discontent, that have too often clouded the sunshine, which you have endeavoured to diffuse through my mind. God bless you! Take care of yourself, and remember with tenderness your affectionate

I am going to rest very happy, and you have made me so. – This is the kindest good-night I can utter.

I am glad to find that other people can be unreasonable, as well as myself – for be it known to thee, that I answered thy first letter, the very night it reached me (Sunday), though thou couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day. – There is a full, true, and particular account. —

Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and likewise of a milk-and-water affection, which comes to the same thing, when the temper is governed by a square and compass. – There is nothing picturesque in this straight-lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions.

Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but, it is not to thy money-getting face, though I cannot be seriously displeased with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character. – No; I have thy honest countenance before me – Pop – relaxed by tenderness; a little – little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glistening with sympathy. – Thy lips then feel softer than soft – and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world. – I have not left the hue of love out of the picture – the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye, that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides – I must pause a moment.

Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus? – I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection, when absent, than present; nay, I think that you must love me, for, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish.

You seem to have taken up your abode at Havre. Pray sir! when do you think of coming home? or, to write very considerately, when will business permit you? I shall expect (as the country people say in England) that you will make a power of money to indemnify me for your absence.

Well! but, my love, to the old story – am I to see you this week, or this month? – I do not know what you are about – for, as you did not tell me, I would not ask Mr. – , who is generally pretty communicative.

I long to see Mrs. – ; not to hear from you, so do not give yourself airs, but to get a letter from Mr. – . And I am half angry with you for not informing me whether she had brought one with her or not. – On this score I will cork up some of the kind things that were ready to drop from my pen, which has never been dipt in gall when addressing you; or, will only suffer an exclamation – “The creature!” or a kind look to escape me, when I pass the slippers – which I could not remove from my falle door, though they are not the handsomest of their kind.

Be not too anxious to get money! – for nothing worth having is to be purchased. God bless you.

My best love, your letter to-night was particularly grateful to my heart, depressed by the letters I received by – , for he brought me several, and the parcel of books directed to Mr. – was for me. Mr. – ’s letter was long and very affectionate; but the account he gives me of his own affairs, though he obviously makes the best of them, has vexed me.

A melancholy letter from my sister – has also harrassed my mind – that from my brother would have given me sincere pleasure; but for

There is a spirit of independence in his letter, that will please you; and you shall see it, when we are once more over the fire together. – I think that you would hail him as a brother, with one of your tender looks, when your heart not only gives a lustre to your eye, but a dance of playfulness, that he would meet with a glow half made up of bashfulness, and a desire to please the – where shall I find a word to express the relationship which subsists between us? – Shall I ask the little twitcher? – But I have dropt half the sentence that was to tell you how much he would be inclined to love the man loved by his sister. I have been fancying myself sitting between you, ever since I began to write, and my heart has leaped at the thought! You see how I chat to you.

I did not receive your letter till I came home; and I did not expect it, for the post came in much later than usual. It was a cordial to me – and I wanted one.

Mr. – tells me that he has written again and again. – Love him a little! – It would be a kind of separation, if you did not love those I love.

There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that, if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares.

Though I have just sent a letter off, yet, as captain – offers to take one, I am not willing to let him go without a kind greeting, because trifles of this sort, without having any effect on my mind, damp my spirits: – and you, with all your struggles to be manly, have some of his same sensibility. – Do not bid it begone, for I love to see it striving to master your features; besides, these kind of sympathies are the life of affection: and why, in cultivating our understandings, should we try to dry up these springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to days browned by care!

The books sent to me are such as we may read together; so I shall not look into them till you return; when you shall read, whilst I mend my stockings.

As I have been, you tell me, three days without writing, I ought not to complain of two: yet, as I expected to receive a letter this afternoon, I am hurt; and why should I, by concealing it, affect the heroism I do not feel?

I hate commerce. How differently must – ’s head and heart be organized from mine! You will tell me, that exertions are necessary: I am weary of them! The face of things, public and private, vexes me. The “peace” and clemency which seemed to be dawning a few days ago, disappear again. “I am fallen,” as Milton said, “on evil days;” for I really believe that Europe will be in a state of convulsion, during half a century at least. Life is but a labour of patience: it is always rolling a great stone up a hill; for, before a person can find a resting-place, imagining it is lodged, down it comes again, and all the work is to be done over anew!