Vindication (36 page)

These three questions are interrelated, but the fourth and most important stands alone. No one asks why Wollstonecraft's last destination was Hamburg. Why did she not sail back to England from Copenhagen? It was a long, wearisome journey from Copenhagen to Hamburg in those days (becalmed as she was on the stagnant water of the Little Belt, with Fanny crying for food), and she was, by then, in a bad way. For two hundred
years, the love-drama has acted as a partial blind, obscuring a further purpose: a switch from business to do with the ship (in Scandinavia) to the business of the silver. ‘Cast off' as she was by Imlay's refusal to join her, business alone could have taken her to Hamburg, where she entered into enquiries with reluctance. She had to talk to sharks whose dealings she reported ‘fully' in statements to Imlay that were not allowed to survive. The only certain fact is that she could not find the ‘information' Imlay needed. There was something to do with the silver that Imlay did not know, and needed to know–conceivably a source of the ‘knavery'. Hamburg was Europe's spy capital, called by her Irish friend Rowan an ‘emporium of mischief', for the spies were a venal lot. Carriers of cargoes swarmed through dark ‘lanes' (the
Gängeviertel
) around the port with its thicket of sailing ships and barges anchored along the mighty river. Ships brought epidemics along with trade, and twisted phantoms begged outside the Pesthof, the fever hospital. Mary's concentrated investigations allowed no time for the cultured inhabitants of Hamburg. Detection led her into the over-stuffed homes of merchants or forced her, possibly, to penetrate the murkier ‘lanes'. Her hatred of Hamburg is projected on its commerce in general, in the same way as her hatred of Risør had been projected on its landscape: in both places she came too close for comfort to the ‘crooked business' at the core of this mystery.

This is a Conradian tale. Barlow, as Imlay's business partner, and Coleman, the American mate, emerge and fade. At times, they hover into view as pivotal figures. Mostly, they vanish off-stage while the court lights up a single figure, a captain who blunders from story to story, tricky, impertinent–but not, in the end, a proven criminal. Imlay's side claimed that the Ellefsens bribed witnesses to tell false stories. But what if those witnesses were telling the truth? Could Ellefsen himself have told the truth, or some part of the truth, when he claimed the ship as his?

At this distance in time, it may be impossible to solve a case unsolved in its day, but two things are worth noting. The historian Gunnar Molden, listening, as it were, in Norwegian, had the impression that Ellefsen's was not entirely a guilty voice. This, in itself, has no status as evidence, but Molden has also dispelled the legend that Ellefsen, disgraced at home,
went into exile. In fact, he went to live on Gjessoy, an island at the mouth of Arendal; married Marie; had five children (one named Margrethe) whose descendants live in Arendal today; and pursued the captain's life he would have lived had there been no silver. The silver existed, of course, but not in Ellefsen's pocket. He did not retire; he did not, in other words, get rich. Imlay, on the other hand, did benefit. New evidence shows that he did gain £1000 from his ‘goods', a bit less than a third of the silver's value. Huge as this amount was in the eighteenth century, it could explain Imlay's need to know more of what happened to the other two-thirds of the silver.

 

To open up the mystery we must start not with Captain Ellefsen, but the unidentified man whom Mary advised Imlay
not
to visit in Paris on 20 August 1794 because what he had done was too wrong, literally, for words. Who was he? There is no proof, but one person does fit the case at every point: a man who visited Paris just then and whose wife's intimate correspondence with Mary Wollstonecraft came just then to an end. Another way of approaching the mystery is to ask who benefited. Who got rich in 1794–5? Not Ellefsen. Only one person emerged from that stillest of winters with a fortune, and that person was of course Joel Barlow.

Imagine Barlow, quick-eyed as ever, spotting an opportunity in Hamburg: some unforeseen chance to dispose of silver. This seems too good to be missed. A man with his Scioto history will not be afraid to seize the initiative. It's likely to have been a high-handed change of plan that Mary Wollstonecraft calls ‘knavery' in her letter sent soon after she saw the silver ship out to sea; but what part of it is ‘folly'–a judgement she adds to ‘knavery' a month later, at the end of September?

Between the ‘knavery' in mid-August and the ‘folly' of the following month comes the loss of the ship when Ellefsen hands it over to the mate on 20 September. If, at Hamburg or at a Danish-Holstein port along the Elbe–Glückstadt (the stopover for the
Rambler
) or Altona–a substantial part of the treasure is taken off the vessel, Barlow will have to satisfy the captain. Since Barlow is always impecunious until this time, what has he to offer but the ship itself? In such an event, Ellefsen does not sail along the
Norwegian coast because Imlay planned that route for security, but because he is simply on his way home, content with his gains.

Another way to start is with the treasure hidden in the hold. Officially, the silver is to pay for a great shipment of Swedish grain at the end of summer. This is the high-level export deal Barlow would have made with French commissioners. Let's say again that, en route, the ship docks on the Elbe. Its Holsteiner crew is drawn from that region. The Norwegian captain and the American mate–hired by Imlay–are set apart as keepers of the secret, secret sharers amongst an unknowing crew who will remain on board throughout the ship's subsequent adventures. At Hamburg, where Barlow is active as Imlay's agent, he hears of a more lucrative way to dispose of the silver than to purchase grain. Barlow writes to advise Imlay that he has taken matters into his own hands, and devised a new scheme. For this he needs Ellefsen's compliance. Ellefsen's new instruction is to stage a shipwreck on his home coast where shipwrecks are common. This is designed to satisfy French authorities that the silver has been lost with the ship, since the expected grain will fail to appear.

An alternative scenario, with a similar result, might be that Ellefsen departs from Le Havre with secret instructions–unknown to Mary or the mate–to offload the silver, or some part of it, in Arendal. This Ellefsen duly does, sending it on via Danish channels (Ryberg, say, or Flensburg) to the silver centre of Schleswig-Holstein. In such a case, Imlay has to be party to the scheme together with Barlow, and Backman at first irrelevant. This would explain two puzzling facts: Imlay's making no plan with Backman to receive so precious a cargo, and his informing him of the silver only after some part of the plan goes publicly wrong (in October 1794). It's inconceivable that, back in August, Imlay should have sent off treasure to a complete stranger who has no idea what will arrive–and will therefore have no precautions in place. The very casualness of the letter Ellefsen carried from Imlay to Backman, its air of strangers who may contemplate future business, must be a cover for a different, more calculated plan.

Meanwhile, back in Le Havre, Mary Wollstonecraft opens a letter to Imlay, and stumbles on a plan unknown to her. Indignant, she warns
Imlay to have nothing to do with a knave who will be in Paris to discuss the deal in person. I think we can safely assume that Imlay ignores Mary's advice–he's dealt with knaves before. We can't know what is said in Paris but we can guess that he and Barlow come to some private agreement as to how the silver will be handled. When Imlay returns to Le Havre, Mary is still not as fully informed as she believes. For, in her eyes, Imlay remains a victim of ‘folly' when, in late September, she tells him bad news from the ‘knave', probably the failed plan to sink the ship, with consequent damage. Something definitely goes awry at Arendal. The mate's protest, for instance, can't be contained. Coleman has seen too much: seen silver disappear; seen and perhaps stopped the attempt to sink the ship. So, to shut him up and get him off the scene, he's allowed to take the ship to Gothenburg, where he thinks it has to go. Peder Ellefsen is not an accomplished liar; he gets deeper into trouble as he stumbles from story to story.

Then, too, the plan does not allow for a trader of Backman's character. This is a stable family man who has spent his youth in France and married a Frenchwoman. Backman, attached to France and habitually a good citizen, feels responsible for the shipment of grain to starving Paris. His emissary, Waak, bears witness to the ship in Risør–an unsunken ship for which its captain, Ellefsen, must be held to account. So Ellefsen, shaken, makes a private confession to his lawyer, who invokes a law of 19 July 1793 which protects its confidentiality. Norwegian law has been quick to follow the Fifth Amendment to the American Bill of Rights (1791), which protects the accused from self-incrimination. Tantalisingly, Ellefsen's act of confession is noted in surviving records, together with an acknowledgement that it cannot be used as evidence in court. All the same, suspicions about Ellefsen, shaming to Norwegian shipping, reach Norway's rulers in Copenhagen. The shady locus of wrongdoing becomes from this point an international incident–the prestige, wealth and pride of a Norwegian clan versus Swedish insistence on rectitude–played out at influential levels on both sides.

Meanwhile, Coleman's authority is challenged by his Holsteiner crew, who refuse to stay at sea in a leaking ship as fogs and darkness descend and winter storms close in. The ship is sent to the nearest port of Kristiansand. Its illegitimate use of the national flag exercises local officials, who
interrogate Coleman and turn against Ellefsen. The ship lies at anchor through that ice-bound winter; then Backman buys it when the ice breaks up in March. The ship proves almost a wreck, and Imlay finds himself liable for massive repairs that will cost a good deal more than the ship is worth. So, on 4 June, when the ship finally leaves Norway for the repair dock at Strömstad, Imlay is bent on pressing for compensation from the Ellefsens, a course of action Mary Wollstonecraft agrees to pursue in person. Five days later she is hastening north. So far, the criminal case can't convict Peder Ellefsen, but it has not absolved him–an advantage Imlay is quick to seize with a view to an out-of-court settlement. It's always assumed that the compensation Mary seeks is for stolen silver, but she can make a surer case against a captain who has abandoned his command in mid-voyage, with resultant damage. Can it be entirely coincidental that it's after her unsuccessful confrontation with the Ellefsens that Imlay turns cold? Mary is still hopeful of her plea to the Danish Prime Minister, but Imlay foresees he will have to fork out, after all, for the repairs.

While she's far north, Imlay travels to Paris, where he intercepts the flourishing Barlow who returns to Paris in July 1795 and starts investing his gains there. A year later Barlow records that the greater part of his property is ‘now lying in Paris'. In his small leather-bound notebook the single word ‘silver' shines amongst cargoes of soap, alum, candles, tallow, gloves, salt and hides. It's a matter of urgency that Imlay review his business with Barlow because it now appears that Barlow had defrauded him in Hamburg–pocketing a larger share of their mutual gains. Their deal has been secret, and so it would have remained had it not been for a reference to Imlay's visit to Paris amongst Mary Wollstonecraft's pleas to meet her. She refers to the precariousness of what he must ‘settle' in Paris–to her, Imlay still appears in the light of victim. Later, when Godwin obeys Imlay's order to strike out all business dealings in Wollstonecraft's letters, he retains this Paris reference, having no idea of its significance. Once the letters are published, any protest from Imlay would only draw attention to it.

He appears culpable for not meeting Mary as promised, but Mary's negotiations take a month longer than predicted. She had thought to meet Imlay in August, but only reaches Hamburg in September. Imlay is
too active to loll around Paris once his business there is settled, so returns to London–this may be what disappoints Mary in the three letters from him that reach her in Gothenburg on 26 August. The month in Tønsberg held her up–not against her will. Norway and Sweden are healing to Mary, and so long as she is in the company of Backman and Wulfsberg, right and wrong seem clear. But something else has long troubled her: the ‘knavery' that came to her knowledge in August–September 1794; the ‘crooked business' she deplored in December. At the end of September 1795, she finally comes face to face with crookedness. In Risør she preserved her distance from small trickster minds closed off in their rocky fastness; in Hamburg, it's different. Nothing here is small, and crookedness can't be distanced. It's under her skin. She uncovers things in Hamburg she has not expected; evidence, perhaps, that Imlay is less the victim than he has led her to believe. Though the nature of his business has been eliminated from Mary's letters, they seethe with accusation: she speaks ‘
entre nous
' of ‘fraud'. Hamburg sucks her into the slime that gives rise to ‘mushroom fortunes'. It's her private heart of darkness.

 

A day came when Mary had endured enough. It coincided with the arrival of Imlay's ‘unkind' letter on 27 September, refusing her repeated pleas to set out his position on their future.

‘Extraordinary and unnecessary,' he said.

‘I have leant on you for support, and been pierced by a spear,' Mary groaned.

At once, without awaiting further instructions, she boarded a vessel bound for England. The ship sped before the wind. By Sunday 4 October she had landed at Dover with no one to meet her and nowhere to go. She would never again be ‘humbled' by accepting Imlay's support, yet did advise him of her return. He found her lodgings in London, but was, again, distant.

On 10 October Mary pressed his cook, who admitted that Imlay did have a new mistress. Stunned, once again, by confirmation of a half-known truth, Mary went to see for herself the furnished house he had provided for the mistress. There she confronted Imlay's lies.