Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/221

Rh a crowd in front of the house. Mrs. Godwin heard the lady's shrieks and the shouts of the crowd that a man was throwing his wife out of the window, and the next day Mrs. Godwin died. What became of that miscreant and his wife I never knew.

There may have been some foundation for this story. An ill-tempered husband may have had lodgings in the same house; but it is extremely doubtful that his ill-temper had so fatal an effect on Mary. Godwin would certainly have recorded the fact had it been true, for his Memoir gives the minutest details of his wife's illness. The very day on which Mr. Reveley says Mary was out of danger was that on which Godwin was asking her for final instructions about her children, so sure were the physicians that her end was near. Mr. Reveley was very young at the time. His observations were not written until he was quite an old man. It would not be unlikely, then, that his memory played him false in this particular.

Mary was thirty-eight years of age, in the full prime of her powers. Her best work probably remained to be done; for her talents, like her beauty, were late in maturing. Her style had already greatly improved since she first began to write. Constant communication with Godwin would no doubt have developed her intellect, and the calm created by her more happy circumstances would have lessened her pessimistic tendencies. Moreover, life, just as she lost it, promised to be brighter than it had ever been before. Godwin's after career shows that he would not have proved unworthy of her love. Domestic pleasures were as dear to her as intellectual pursuits. In her own house, surrounded by husband and children, she would have been not only a great but a happy woman. It is at least a satisfaction