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XIX. Notes on Gilbert Imlay, Early American Writer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Oliver Farrar Emerson
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Extract

In Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Sweden, Norway and Denmark (London, 1796) is a passage connecting two other interesting people, and not hitherto noticed so far as I find. It reads:

This house [where she was living in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg] was particularly recommended to me by an acquaintance of your's, the author of the American Farmer's Letters. I generally dine in company with him, and the gentlemen whom I have already mentioned is often diverted by our declamations against commerce, when we compare notes respecting the characteristics of the hamburgers.1

The passage indicates not only that Mary Wollstonecraft had met in her travels the French-American Crèvecceur, the Hector St. John of the Letters of an American Farmer (1782), but that Crèvecceur and Gilbert Imlay had an acquaintanceship not hitherto suspected. This and other matters concerning Imlay seem to warrant some further notes on his life and works.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1924 , pp. 406 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

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References

1 The “gentleman already mentioned” was a French refugee, “a president of one of the ci-devant parliaments” of France, who was then keeping “an ordinary in the french style” in Altona, his wife assisting, as their only means of livelihood. The passage quoted above and these references are on p. 254 of the Letters. Mary Wollstonecraft goes on to quote Crèvecceur of the “Farmer's Letters” as follows: “Why, madam,” said he to me one day, “you will not meet a man who has a calf to his leg; body and soul are equally shrivelled up by a thirst of gain. There is nothing generous even in their youthful passions; profit is their only stimulus, and calculations the sole employment of their faculties; unless we except some gross animal gratifications which, snatched at spare moments, tend still more to debase the character, because, though touched by his tricking wand, they have all the arts without the wit of the wing-footed god.”

Mary was in greater sympathy with this sentiment, because, as shown by several of her letters, she had begun to attribute Imlay's growing coldness to his absorption in business. In quoting the Letters I have followed Mary Wollstonecraft's spelling.

2 St. Jean de Crèvecœur, by Julia Post Mitchell, pp. 284-9. Hamburg, which had been a Danish city until 1768, had begun its great commercial development in 1783 when it began trade with America. In 1795, after the French occupation of Holland and the Prussian peace of April 5, its commerce was further enlarged by Dutch and French trade.

3 Of Mme. La Fayette Mary Wollstonecraft writes: “Madame La Fayette left Altona the day I arrived, to endeavour at Vienna to obtain the enlargement of her husband, or permission to share his prison. She lived in a lodging up two pair of stairs, without a servant, her two daughters cheerfully assisting.” Mme. La Fayette was not to succeed in her primary purpose, even with the assistance of America. La Fayette was not freed until the peace of Campo Formio, Oct. 17, 1797, when Napoleon asked for his release.

Mme. La Fayette had set out from Dunkerque Sept. 5 on a small American ship, and reached Hamburg on Sept. 13, according to Robert de Crèvecceur, Saint John de Crèvecœur sa vie et ses ouvrages, p. 208. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Imlay from Hamburg Sept. 25 (Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft by Ingpen, p. 149), but may have reached that place some few days earlier.

4 Mitchell, p. 18.

5 This paper was completed in the summer of 1922 and the Secretary of the Mod. Lang. Ass'n notified that it would be offered for the December meeting. Only when the program of the Central Division appeared was it known to me that Professor R. L. Rusk of Indiana University had also been working on Imlay. Immediate correspondence with him showed that probably our papers were on sufficiently different lines, so that both might reasonably be printed. That proved true on seeing Professor Rusk's paper which has appeared in the Indiana University Studies vol. x, under the title “The Adventures of Gilbert Imlay.” I am especially indebted to that paper for certain details in the life of Imlay, and for them have given proper credit to Professor Rusk. Where, however, we had hit upon the same facts, it has seemed better to leave them in this paper as they were first presented.

6 Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 491-4. This document will be discussed later, but it may be noted here that Townsend (Kentuckians in History and Literature) places it in 1793. Rusk shows that 1793 is correct (p. 19, footnote 68), and that fits somewhat better with Otto's being in the French Foreign Office, since he did not reach France until December, 1792.

7 Saint John de Crèvecœur sa vie et ses ouvrages, p. 173.

8 This passage and this interesting relationship were missed by Miss Mitchell in her excellent Columbia dissertation on Crèvecœur, and by Moncure Conway in his Life of Paine.

9 Life of Thomas Paine ii, 66. Living with Paine in what appears to have been a joint house-keeping arrangement were a young English friend by the name of Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Christie, Mr. Choppin, M. Laborde, and probably the American Mr. Shapworth. Earlier Paine had lived at White's Hotel, and he still kept an office there.

10 Crèvecœur sa vie, p. 177.

11 Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, p. 134, gives February for this journey; Ingpen, Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, p. 35, gives March, which apparently corresponds with the dates of letters. The discrepancy is unimportant from our point of view.

12 Contrary to this usual belief, Miss Mitchell thinks the “Mr. F. B.” of Crèvecœur's Letters was William Seton, as first proposed by Mme.de Barberey in Elizabeth Seton i, 61; see Miss Mitchell's discussion on p. 90 of St. Jean de Crèvecœur. The French edition of 1784, Lettres d'un cultivateur américain, bears the addition to the title “écrites à W. S., écuyer,” and this is extended in the edition of 1787 to “écrites à W. S.—on, Esq.” Crèvecœur's friend William Seton was in England between 1770 to 1781, the period covered by the letters of the first edition. For Imlay's evident imitation, the fact of a real correspondent is unimportant.

13 Townsend's later Kentucky in American Letters (1913) adds nothing regarding Imlay to his previous book.

14 Garnett's interest in the matter was due to his having written the article on Imlay for the Dict. of Nat. Biog. In the Athenœum article he gives the epitaph, which has since disappeared according to Professor Rusk's informant, as “Here was intered (sic) the perishable remains of Gilbert Imlay, Esq.; who was born Feb. 8, 1758, and expired on the 20 Novr., 1828.” The parish register statement, as reproduced by Professor Rusk, leads: “M. Gilbert Imlay fut enterré le vingt quatrième jour de Novembre mil cent vingt huit, âgé de 74 ans.”

In his article on Imlay in the DNB. Garnett had suggested Imlay's probable return to America in later life, but Townsend, who had failed to notice the Athenœum reference, states that examination of New York and Philadelphia papers, the Gentleman's Magazine and Notes and Queries, between 1795 and 1830 had developed no note of Imlay's death. Such investigation tends to confirm the idea that it was the American Gilbert Imlay who died at St. Brelade.

15 Noted by Rusk in correction of Townsend, who had wrongly supposed the name of Gilbert's grandmother was Mary, and that, “dying in 1754, she had referred to him in her will.”

16 Heitman's Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army (Apr. 1775—Dec. 1783). Imlay is also called “Lieutenant, Militia” in Stryker's Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War, but is not mentioned by Ellis in his History of Monmouth County, N. J. (1885), although Imlay was born and reared in that county. Col. David Forman, under whom Imlay served, rose to be Brigadier General in the Continental Army after the reorganization of the New Jersey forces in 1778.

17 This record was furnished me by the Adjutant General of New Jersey, who added that no further record of Imlay's connection with the New Jersey forces in the Revolutionary War was known.

18 Adventures of Gilbert Imlay, footnote 7.

19 For the latter part of the sentence see Adventures of Gilbert Imlay, footnote 6. One can not help having a suspicion, however, that Imlay's promotion to a captaincy may have been self-determined.

20 H. Marshall, History of Kentucky i, 122, 149. May is said to have been appointed surveyor in May 1780 when Jefferson Co., one of the three original counties of Kentucky, was formed. He reached Kentucky from Virginia in November, 1782, according to L. Collins, History of Kentucky ii, 368. Cox's Station, as it is now spelled, is now in Nelson, not Jefferson Co. With May was associated Col. Thomas Marshall, father of John Marshall later Chief Justice of the United States. Col. Marshall was appointed surveyor of Fayette Co. Nov. 1, 1780—See Beveridge, John Marshall I, 11, 96n., 117n., 169-70.

21 Marshall as above, i, 163. W. R. Shepherd, “Wilkinson and the Beginning of the Spanish Conspiracy,” Amer. Hist. Rev. ix, 490, says the year was 1783.

22 The letter is in the Emmett Collection in the New York Public Library, and is published by Townsend. Imlay may have gone to Kentucky with Wilkinson.

23 Marshall i, 163.

24 Townsend, p. 15. Gen. Henry Lee had settled Lee's Station, Mason Co. Kentucky, in 1785, according to Collins (Hist. of Kent. ii, 20) who also says Gen. Lee was a surveyor. Ordinary biographies of Lee do not note this residence in Kentucky, but there was ample time for it between his resignation from the army on account of ill-health, after the surrender of Yorktown, and his marriage in Virginia in 1786.

25 At the close of the Revolutionary War Kentucky felt that Virginia was not doing enough to protect the western territory from the Indians, or to give it proper local government. Between 1784 and 1790 Kentuckians held nine conventions, demanding separation from Virginia and even from the United States. Later Kentucky resented the delay in admitting her to the union as a state, and especially the plan of Secretary Jay to surrender to Spain for twenty-five years the navigation rights on the lower Mississippi.

26 Lord Dorchester, governor of Canada, sent a copy to England; F. J. Turner, Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 651. In Report of Amer. Hist. Ass'n (1896) i, 932, George Rogers Clark, conqueror of the Illinois country, is suggested as the probable author of the Memoir, since Clark then felt his services had not been properly appreciated or paid for. Brissot, in his Nouveau Voyage Letter xliv, New Travels p. 479-80, says of the possibility of the western country breaking off from the rest of the United States: “and this probability of a rupture, they say, is strengthened by some endeavours of the English in Canada to attach the Western settlers to the English government.” This he presumably learned in his travels of 1788.

27 Turner, “Diplomatic Contest for the Mississippi Valley,” Atlantic Monthly xciii, 684.

28 Turner, “Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley,” Amer. Hist. Rev. x, 256, the quotation from a letter of Stephen Cottrell to W. W. Grenville (Amer. Hist. Rev. viii, 88 ff.).

29 Turner, Atlantic Monthly article, p. 685.

30 An English translation, New Travels in the United States, was published in London late in 1792, since it was not reviewed in the Monthly Rev. until Jan. 1793.

31 Archives des Affaires étrangères, Espagne, vol. 634, fol. 202; reprinted in Report of Amer. Hist. Ass'n (1896) i, 953 ff.

32 Archives des Affaires étrangères, Louisiane et Florides, 1792 à 1803, vol. 7, doct. 1; reprinted in Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 491-4.

33 Crèvecœur sa vie p. 173; Mitchell, p. 284.

34 The Committee to which Imlay refers is one clearly in prospect, though apparently not appointed until 1793. See later reference to it.

35 Archives des Affaires étrangères, Espagne, vol. 634, fol. 201. Turner, “Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas,” Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 660. This Plan, as Professor Turner points out, refers to having tried to interest the “ancien Government” in the venture, that is the government before the Revolution, and says it is the fruit of research extending over five years. Five years would carry back to 1787 or 1788 when Wilkinson and Clark were interested in some such project, so that this Plan may have reference to the one proposed to the French minister in Washington in 1787, perhaps by Clark as already noted. The author refers to Gen. Wilkinson, Tardiveau (brother of the commander at Kaskaskia), and Brakenridge (perhaps John Breckenridge who is said to have moved to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1793, but may have been there earlier)—all of Kentucky—and Love of Cumberland. Paine's answer to O'Fallon was carried to America by Minister Genet, showing interesting relation of the Americans in Paris to the scheme. On learning of Genet's appointment, too, Clark at once wrote to him; see the Clark-Genet correspondence in Report of Amer. Hist. Ass'n (1896) i, 967 ff. Genet's instructions were made out Dec. 10, 1792, supplemented Jan. 17, 1793, and he sailed the last week in February, reaching Charleston after much delay on April 8. France declared war on Spain in March. Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality, Apr. 22, 1793, put an end to the project so far as Americans were concerned. Collins (Hist. of Kent. ii, 140) says: “When Genet, the French minister, undertook to raise and organize a force in Kentucky for a secret expedition against the Spanish possessions on the Mississippi, George Rogers Clark accepted a commission as major general in the armies of France to conduct the enterprise. But, before the project was put in execution, a counter revolution occurred in France, Genet was recalled, and Clark's commission annulled.”

36 Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 503, as reprinted from the Archives.

37 Ibid. p. 505. The project was actively pressed during these months. Late in 1792 a Committee was suggested for the expedition, to be headed by the Americans Joel Barlow and Stephen Sayre and the Frenchmen Beaupoil and Lyonnet, that is presumably Pierre Lyonnet and perhaps Martial-Louis de Beaupoil de Sainte Aulaire. Toward spring (the endorsement is “vers Mars 1793”) Pierre Lyonnet presented Considérations sur la Louisiane, and followed them by additional Considérations. These references and documents art. reprinted in the Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 494-503. On March 4 Sayre, Pereyrat, and Beaupoil made similar proposals (Report of Amer. Hist. Ass'n, 1896, i, 954-7). Even as late in the year as Nov. 23 Joel Barlow and a certain M. Leavenworth offered a plan for taking Louisiana without expense to France (sans couter rien à la nation), as indicated by the document reprinted in Amer. Hist. Rev. iii, 508. It is worth noting that this plan provides for free navigation of the Mississippi, doubtless intended to placate the citizens of the United States.

Joel Barlow had gone to Paris in May 1788 as agent for the unfortunate Scioto Land Co. Going to London he joined the Society for Constitutional Information to which Paine and several Americans belonged, and wrote the Address of that Society to the French National Assembly. In September he was made a citizen of France by the Convention, and went to Paris in November to escape arrest in England. In March 1793 he was planning to return to America when a Col. Hitchborne, as his biographer Todd tells us, (p. 111) made him “an advantageous offer.” Whether this had anything to do with Louisiana I do not know, for he was to be engaged in business for the next three years, but at least the Louisiana matter was one of his ventures.

38 Except for the reference to Imlay's Mémoire, which they wrongly refer to 1793, biographers of Imlay and Mary Wollstonecraft have wholly missed these important relations, as they had that of Imlay to Crèvecœur. For Mary's acquaintance with Barlow, see Godwin's Diary entry late in 1792: “Tea at Barlow's with Jardine, Stuart, Wollstencraft [so he always spelled the name in these early years], and Holcroft.”—Kegan Paul's Godwin i, 71.

39 Memoirs p. 103. This and the previous page also tell of her renewing acquaintance with Helen Maria Williams, Paine, and the Christies.

40 Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin i, 70.

41 Conway's Life of Paine i, 321.

42 “You must not go home, or you will be a dead man,” said Blake, and hurried him off to Dover by a roundabout way.—Gilchrist's Life of Blake p. 94. At Dover Paine escaped the English officers by about twenty minutes.

43 The Dict. of Nat. Biog. says 1888, but Godwin's Diary shows he was a frequent visitor at her house during that year and the next, for it records having had “tea with Holcroft at Miss Williams's” Nov. 17, 1789 (Kegan Paul's Godwin i, 63). The Gent. Mag. (xcviii, i, 373) says she visited Paris in 1888, which probably accounts for the error.

44 The DNB. refers to it without citing any authority, as Ingpen also. Godwin makes no reference to anything of the sort.

45 It is worth noting that Wordsworth, on going to France in Nov. 1790, had taken a letter to Miss Williams, then supposed to be at Orleans whither he was going. He visited her in Paris on his continental tour of 1820. For both facts see Harper's Life of Wordsworth i, 146. Nor is it without relation to the loosening of moral restraints in Revolutionary France that even Wordsworth, in the winter of 1790-91, formed a free union with Marie Vallon, who gave birth to their child in the following December.—Harper, Wordsworth's French Daughter.

46 Memoirs p. 104.

47 Her first letter from Paris, to her sister Everina, was of Dec. 24, 1792, and is given in Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin i, 208.

48 She was supporting her father in the main, as she was to do until her death.—Godwin's Memoirs pp. 68-70.

49 Memoirs, p. 108. Gouverneur Morris was the American minister to France at this time. (1792-94.)

50 Godwin adds (Memoirs p. 115), “probably to superintend the shipping of goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other person or persons.” As we shall see later Imlay was involved with a Peter Ellison of Gothenburg, Sweden, soon after, and then or later connected with Mr. Thomas Christie in London. Whether either of these is the person or persons referred to probably can not now be determined.

51 Godwin says (Memoirs p. 117), “she determined in January 1794 to join him at Havre,” as is true enough; but when he adds, “from January to September Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together with great harmony at Havre,” he is not quite accurate. As shown by her Letters, Mary did not set out for Havre until Thursday, Feb. 6.

52 Godwin says September (Memoirs, p. 117), but Mary wrote him three letters from Havre in August (Love Letters, Ingpen, pp. 37-45).

53 In Nov., 1794, Imlay had written Mary's sister Mrs. Bishop, speaking of “my dear Mary” and saying: “As to your sister's visiting England, I do not think she will previous to the peace, and perhaps not immediately after such an event.” (Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin i, 217). For comparison with her Love Letters we may note this high praise of Imlay about this time in a letter of Mar. 10 to her sister Everina: “You know that I am safe through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, who joins to uncommon tenderness of heart and quickness of feeling a soundness of understanding and reasonableness of temper rarely to be met with. Having also been brought up in the interior parts of America, he is the most natural unaffected creature”—Ibid. i, 218.

54 Memoirs p. 102. The letter giving virtual power of attorney to Mary was dated May 19, 1795, and calls her “Mary Imlay my best friend and wife,” and again “Mrs. Imlay.” The business involved a Peter Ellison (Ellyson), against whom a suit had been already instituted by Elias Bachman as Gothenburg agent for Imlay, Ellison having caused “accumulated losses and damages” “in consequence of the said Ellison's disobedience of my injunctions,” as Imlay wrote. “Messrs. Myburg & Co.,” Copenhagen, are also mentioned as having “a cargo of goods” which Mary was to dispose of as best she could. The letter, witnessed by J. Samuriel, is in Kegan Paul's Godwin i, 227-8.

Godwin is wrong in saying Mary “passed about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April to the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for her” (Memoirs pp. 124-5), since her letters show she was in London for only about a month. Imlay's business in Sweden and Norway was probably connected with the war trade which the Scandinavian countries, then neutral as in the late war, were finding very profitable.

For Count Slabrendorf, or Slaberndorf, search has been made for me in the Royal Library at Stockholm by Miss Ingrid Kobro, a librarian in Kristiania. The Royal Library reports that nothing was found of that name or of any other similar to it, and thinks the name can not be Swedish.

55 The letters above are in Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin i, 222-3. The “first prospect” of the letter of Apr. 27 may possibly be to rewards Imlay hoped for from the carrying out of the Louisiana scheme.

56 Ingpen's knowledge of the book, like that of Garnett already mentioned, was dependent upon the British Museum copy, which consists of the first only of three volumes. I have used a perfect copy from the Library of the University of Illinois.

57 The Emigrants i, 174.

58 Ibid. iii, 145, 181.

59 A Vindication of the Rights of Women, edited by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, p. xxxi; compare also pp. xxxv, 79-80, 87, 278.

60 Letter of Nov. 13, 1793.

61 Letters of Dec. 14 and 22 respectively.

62 Wm. Haller, Early Life of Robert Southey, p. 122.

63 Cottle's Reminiscences of Cohridge and Southey, p. 299. The talking into shape was on a walking trip at the beginning of the long vacation, Sou they, Burnett, Coleridge, and J. Hucks setting off together, the last two finally proceeding into Wales. Curiously enough J. Hucks, in Pedestrian Tour through North Wales, makes no reference to the scheme, or indeed to Coleridge in any direct way.

64 New Series viii, 740; republished in Biographia Epistolaris i, 44.

65 Thomas Poole and his Friends i, 96 ff. The correct date of the letter is Sept. 20, as noted by G. McL. Harper in his Life of William Wordsworth i, 290.

66 The idea of a dissoluble marriage contract almost certainly belongs to Coleridge not only from his first mention of it, but because of the circumstances of his life at this time. Southey was already engaged to Edith Flicker, and not likely to be thinking of breaking marriage bonds. Coleridge was as yet unattached, the thought of Mary Evans still agitating, and betrothal to Sarah Fricker still unthought of. Before the latter event, had come the acquaintance with Poole, and the communication to him of the details of Pantisocracy.

67 Thomas Poole and his Friends i, 96 ff.

68 Life of Southey i, 218-9. Dykes Campbell (p. xxii of the Poetical Works of Coleridge) apparently quotes from this letter, but makes the description of the Susquehanna read, “from its excessive beauty and its security from hostile Indians and bisons,” the last words implied but not a part of the quotation. From the next quotation Haller suggests the “young man” may have been one of Wm. Cooper's agents, but it seems to me more likely he was an Englishman who had been in America.

69 Biographia Epistolaris i, 45, where it is part of the letter written to Heath, but not so printed in the Monthly Repository. It may be noted also that Imlay praises the beauty of the Susqehanna, as in The Emigrants i, 44, 80.

70 Imlay's work did not come within the scope of Moses Coit Tyler's admirable History of American Literature, but neither of his books is mentioned in Duyckinck's Cyclopœdia of American Literature, by Wendell, Trent, or Cairns, or in the recent and elaborate Cambridge History of American Literature. In the latter Imlay's name is once mentioned, but only incidentally. His novel The Emigrants is not mentioned in Carl Van Doren's American Novel, as it had not been in that writer's article on American Fiction in the Cambridge History.

71 The second edition (1793) had the same title page up to “By G. Imlay,” before which was inserted:

To which are added/ The/ Discovery, Settlement,/ and/ Present State of Kentucky/ and/ An Essay towards the Topography, and Natural/ History of/ that Important Country/ by John Filson/ to which is added/ I The Adventures of Col Daniel Boon [with description]/ II The Minutes of the Piankeshaw Council [etc]/ III An Account of the Indian Nations [etc]/ By George Imlay/ (who is then described as in the first edition) Illustrated [etc]/ (with the reference to the place and printer.

The printing of the name as “George Imlay” would indicate that the author, who was in Paris as has been shown, could not have seen the proof, and perhaps may not have been responsible for the additions to the book.

The third London edition of the Topographical Description, issued in 1797 when Imlay was in that city, has his name correctly Gilbert. Reprints of the work were made in Dublin and New York in 1793, the latter following the enlarged London edition of that year. Debrett was a Whig publisher, at a time when politics played a large part in the publishing business.

72 This was James Rumsey, who disputed with John Fitch of Connecticut the priority in steam navigation. The latter had launched a steamboat on the Delaware in 1786 and obtained rights in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Brissot (Nouveau Voyage chap. xiv, New Travels p. 235) tells of having seen the experiment Sept. 1, 1788.

73 The reference is doubtless to Calonne, French minister of finance before Necker, who was charged with misappropriation of funds, was finally dismissed, and went over to England where he was favorably received by Pitt and the court, after the Revolution, as representative of the royalist faction. See J. H. Rose's William Pitt, p. 545 especially for the French complaint of his favorable reception in England.

For the suggestion of Calonne I am indebted to Prof. H. E. Bourne of our University. He also called my attention to the valuable articles in the Amer. Hist. Rev., and to the Report of the Amer. Hist. Ass'n already mentioned.

74 Vol. viii of the enlarged Review, pp. 390-401.

75 Vol. ix, pp. 468-9.