Supplementary materials for Nancy's presentation on Godwin's Memoirs:
From Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark:
LETTER XIV.
Christiania is a clean, neat
city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which ought to keep pace
with the refining manners of a people—or the outside of the house will disgrace
the inside, giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of
taste. Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than
Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic
sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they were
erected; but size, without grandeur or elegance, has an emphatical stamp of
meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.
The same thought has struck me,
when I have entered the meeting-house of my respected friend, Dr. Price.
I am surprised that the dissenters, who have not laid aside all the pomps and
vanities of life, should imagine a noble pillar, or arch, unhallowed.
Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion; else why
do the beauties of nature, where all that charm them are spread around with a
lavish hand, force even the sorrowing heart to acknowledge that existence is a
blessing? and this acknowledgment is the most sublime homage we can pay to the
Deity.
The argument of convenience is
absurd. Who would labour for wealth, if it were to procure nothing but
conveniences. If we wish to render mankind moral from principle, we must,
I am persuaded, give a greater scope to the enjoyments of the senses by
blending taste with them. This has frequently occurred to me since I have
been in the north, and observed that there sanguine characters always take
refuge in drunkenness after the fire of youth is spent.
But I have flown from
Norway. To go back to the wooden houses; farms constructed with logs, and
even little villages, here erected in the same simple manner, have appeared to
me very picturesque. In the more remote parts I had been particularly
pleased with many cottages situated close to a brook, or bordering on a lake,
with the whole farm contiguous. As the family increases, a little more
land is cultivated; thus the country is obviously enriched by population.
Formerly the farmers might more justly have been termed woodcutters. But
now they find it necessary to spare the woods a little, and this change will be
universally beneficial; for whilst they lived entirely by selling the trees
they felled, they did not pay sufficient attention to husbandry; consequently,
advanced very slowly in agricultural knowledge. Necessity will in future
more and more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be
cultivated, or the farm loses its value; there is no waiting for food till
another generation of pines be grown to maturity.
The people of property are very
careful of their timber; and, rambling through a forest near Tonsberg,
belonging to the Count, I have stopped to admire the appearance of some of the
cottages inhabited by a woodman’s family—a man employed to cut down the wood
necessary for the household and the estate. A little lawn was cleared, on
which several lofty trees were left which nature had grouped, whilst the
encircling firs sported with wild grace. The dwelling was sheltered by
the forest, noble pines spreading their branches over the roof; and before the
door a cow, goat, nag, and children, seemed equally content with their lot; and
if contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best secured by ignorance.
As I have been most delighted
with the country parts of Norway, I was sorry to leave Christiania without
going farther to the north, though the advancing season admonished me to
depart, as well as the calls of business and affection.
June and July are the months to
make a tour through Norway; for then the evenings and nights are the finest I
have ever seen; but towards the middle or latter end of August the clouds begin
to gather, and summer disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of
autumn—even, as it were, slips from your embraces, whilst the satisfied senses
seem to rest in enjoyment.
You will ask, perhaps, why I
wished to go farther northward. Why? not only because the country, from
all I can gather, is most romantic, abounding in forests and lakes, and the air
pure, but I have heard much of the intelligence of the inhabitants, substantial
farmers, who have none of that cunning to contaminate their simplicity, which
displeased me so much in the conduct of the people on the sea coast. A
man who has been detected in any dishonest act can no longer live among
them. He is universally shunned, and shame becomes the severest
punishment.
Such a contempt have they, in
fact, for every species of fraud, that they will not allow the people on the
western coast to be their countrymen; so much do they despise the arts for
which those traders who live on the rocks are notorious.
The description I received of
them carried me back to the fables of the golden age: independence and virtue;
affluence without vice; cultivation of mind, without depravity of heart; with
“ever smiling Liberty;” the nymph of the mountain. I want faith!
My imagination hurries me
forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the disappointments I am
threatened with; but reason drags me back, whispering that the world is still
the world, and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must
occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration and contempt. But this
description, though it seems to have been sketched by a fairy pencil, was given
me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy seldom appears to run away with
him.
A law in Norway, termed the odels right, has lately been
modified, and probably will be abolished as an impediment to commerce.
The heir of an estate had the power of re-purchasing it at the original
purchase money, making allowance for such improvements as were absolutely
necessary, during the space of twenty years. At present ten is the term
allowed for afterthought; and when the regulation was made, all the men of
abilities were invited to give their opinion whether it were better to abrogate
or modify it. It is certainly a convenient and safe way of mortgaging
land; yet the most rational men whom I conversed with on the subject seemed
convinced that the right was more injurious than beneficial to society; still
if it contribute to keep the farms in the farmers’ own hands, I should be sorry
to hear that it were abolished.
The aristocracy in Norway, if
we keep clear of Christiania, is far from being formidable; and it will require
a long the to enable the merchants to attain a sufficient moneyed interest to
induce them to reinforce the upper class at the expense of the yeomanry, with
whom they are usually connected.
England and America owe their
liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undermine the feudal
system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is
still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
Farewell! I must prepare
for my departure.
LETTER XV.
Admiring, as I do, these noble
forests, which seem to bid defiance to time, I looked with pain on the ridge of
rocks that stretched far beyond my eye, formerly crowned with the most
beautiful verdure.
I have often mentioned the
grandeur, but I feel myself unequal to the task of conveying an idea of the
beauty and elegance of the scene when the spiry tops of the pines are loaded
with ripening seed, and the sun gives a glow to their light-green tinge, which
is changing into purple, one tree more or less advanced contrasted with
another. The profusion with which Nature has decked them with pendant
honours, prevents all surprise at seeing in every crevice some sapling
struggling for existence. Vast masses of stone are thus encircled, and
roots torn up by the storms become a shelter for a young generation. The
pine and fir woods, left entirely to Nature, display an endless variety; and
the paths in the woods are not entangled with fallen leaves, which are only
interesting whilst they are fluttering between life and death. The grey
cobweb-like appearance of the aged pines is a much finer image of decay; the
fibres whitening as they lose their moisture, imprisoned life seems to be
stealing away. I cannot tell why, but death, under every form, appears to
me like something getting free to expand in I know not what element—nay, I feel
that this conscious being must be as unfettered, have the wings of thought,
before it can be happy.
Reaching the cascade, or rather
cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul
was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous
dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the
exploring eye produced an equal activity in my mind. My thoughts darted
from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its
misery. Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited were
pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose with renewed dignity above its
cares. Grasping at immortality—it seemed as impossible to stop the
current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent
before me; I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of
life to come.
Please also read the last two letters Wollstonecraft wrote to Imlay on page 152-153 in our Broadview text.
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