Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/159

Rh childhood, she sailed for Sweden, with Fanny and a maid as her only companions. Her Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Demnark, with the more personal passages omitted, were published in a volume by themselves shortly after her return to England. Notice of them will find a more appropriate place in another chapter. All that is necessary here is the very portion which was then suppressed, but which Godwin later included with the Letters to Imlay. The northern trip had at least this good result. It strengthened her physically. She was so weak when she first arrived in Sweden that the day she landed she fell fainting to the ground as she walked to her carriage. For a while everything fatigued her. The bustle of the people around her seemed "flat, dull, and unprofitable." The civilities by which she was overwhelmed, and the endeavours of the people she met to amuse her, were fatiguing. Nothing, for a while, could lighten her deadly weight of sorrow. But by degrees, as her letters show, she improved. Pure air, long walks, and rides on horseback, rowing and bathing, and days in the country had their beneficial effect, and she wrote to Imlay on July 4th, "The rosy fingers of health already streak my cheeks; and I have seen a physical life in my eyes, after I have been climbing the rocks, that resembled the fond, credulous hopes of youth."

But even a sound body cannot heal a broken heart. Mary could not throw off her troubles in a day. She after a time tried to distract her mind by entering into the amusements she had at first scorned, but it was often in vain. There was a change for the better, however, in her mental state; for though her grief was not completely cured, she at least voluntarily sought to recover her emotional equilibrium.