When the same
friend met Godwin the next day in the street, and was surprised at his
speedy recovery, the philosopher replied that it was only an invention
of his wife. The safe-guard in such cases is often in the quick
apprehension of children themselves, who are frequently saved from the
errors of their elders by their perception of the consequences.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Godwin's influence must have been lessened in
other matters where her feeling for propriety, if with her only from a
conventional and time-serving point of view, might have averted the
fatal consequences which ensued later. Could she have gained the love
and respect of the children instead of making them, as afterwards
expressed by Mary, hate her, her moral precepts would have worked to
more effect. It may have appeared to the girls, who could not
appreciate the self-devotion of Godwin in acting against theories for
the sake of individual justice, that the cause of all their
unhappiness (and doubtless at times they felt it acutely) was owing to
their father not having adhered to his previous anti-matrimonial
opinions, and they were thus prepared to disregard what seemed to them
social prejudices.
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