The Books: The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, ‘In Defense of Harriet Shelley’

On the essays shelf:

The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain

Mark Twain read Edward Dowden’s biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley and this magnificent gigantic article was the result. It is a devastating critique. I haven’t even read Dowden’s book, and I don’t need to after reading Twain’s words. He destroys Dowden’s theories and conjectures. Destroys them. And he does so methodically, and point by point. He takes Dowden’s words and then carefully, sentence by sentence, tears them apart. I’ve always loved a good literary dust-up and this is a great one.

Twain makes clear his intentions in the title of the essay. Shelley’s abandoned first wife, Harriet, needs a defense attorney, especially after Dowden’s book, and Twain steps into the courtroom to take the job.

Harriet Shelley’s story is tragic, and unfortunately the tragedy is sometimes lost in the glamorous life and many loves of her famous husband. But she was definitely a casualty along the way (literally and emotionally). She had married Shelley impulsively when she was 16 years old. She threw herself into his crazy life. She had been raised well, meaning she was educated, and things were expected of her (more than just being a wife and mother). But she clearly married the wrong guy! She and Shelley had a baby and soon after that he began drifting away from her, and he was obviously unfaithful, and she had an infant daughter, and her husband was MIA. They would reconcile, he would return, she became pregnant again, had a son, and then, lightning/thunder, Shelley met Mary Godwin and ran off with her. The rest is history. Harriet Shelley’s life is part of that history, but a sad footnote really. She is “important” because she was married to Shelley, and had two children by him. She is “important” because she was the first wife of a famous man. But he abandoned her, with two children to care for, babies, and she was near destitute. She clearly had a lover of some kind at that late point, and became pregnant again, although now she was not protected by the institution of marriage. She drowned herself. She was only 21 years old.

That’s what happens when you marry one of the Romantics.

So! There are the facts. Mark Twain read the biography of Shelley and had all kinds of problems with Dowden’s approach. There was way too much guessing going on. It’s an issue with biographies. I have it myself. If you read a biography and you find the author using phrases a lot like “must have been” “probably was” or “one can assume”, put the fucking book down and pick up a better one. The author is GUESSING. Another issue with biographies is if the author feels too strongly about one particular aspect of the person he is writing about. Now, this is going to happen with biographies. A biographer immerses himself in the life of the person, and will have extremely strong feelings and opinions, and will choose what to highlight, what to leave out. But you have to be subtle about it. You can’t bash us over the head. It makes you sound nervous and uncertain, as though you are afraid of the other interpretations that might be out there, and you want to DEMAND that we see it your way. Morton Cohen’s notorious biography of Lewis Carroll is a good example. He clearly loves Carroll, and that’s not a problem, you had better love the subject you devote your entire life to, but he ends up sounding DEFENSIVE in the book. Cohen knows there are certain aspects of Carroll that are troubling, and so he defends him, and there are times when I got embarrassed for him. Look, yes, there are troubling aspects to any great life – hell, to any life at all – I get that there are some squicky details here but just present the squicky details and move on. I don’t care if Lewis Carroll murdered puppies in his spare time, nothing could make me NOT love Alice in Wonderland. Morton Cohen sounds NERVOUS in the book, in other words. So, that’s obviously an example of how NOT to go with biographies.

Do your research and present that research. Do it in the best prose possible. Put things into context for us. Help us see your subject. Help us understand. But there will be some things you cannot understand. Leave it alone.

In the case of Harriet Shelley, Mark Twain’s beef is that Dowden goes about assassinating her character, using gossip and quotes from people known to be hostile to Harriet. And then makes these conclusions, in throwaway lines like “Harriet was happy”. That one line is a huge red flag to Mark Twain and he goes after it. First of all, how do you know? Second of all, why are you telling us this? Twain gets the sense that Dowden is up to no good, that his motives are not pure. In order to keep Shelley on his pedestal, Harriet must be destroyed. Shelley’s abandonment of his wife and children must be made somehow to be Harriet’s fault. Harriet was a drip. Harriet wouldn’t have sex with him anymore. Harriet was still breastfeeding, there’s a whole controversy about a wet-nurse, and Mark Twain goes after that as well. The portrait he paints is crushing.

Also, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than Dowden’s argument: that Harriet was “happy’ – until she became a big fat bore and Shelley just HAD to leave. Twain sees that there was a woman who had designs on Shelley at this time, who set herself up as the beautiful fluttering alternative to that exhausted wife at home, who invited him to hang out at her house with her family, who basically seduced him when he was low. How on earth is this Harriet’s fault?

Here’s one section of this enormous piece.

The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain, ‘In Defense of Harriet Shelley’, by Mark Twain

Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution? No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless, disinterested, impartial urge on the bench. He holds up his judicial scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false weights in.

Shelley’s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage. I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heaven offense? Was it unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by and by, this girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses down the bottomless well of her father’s debts, but this impartial judge finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money – necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way – to pay her father’s debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant’s lap a sum which cost him – for he borrowed it at ruinous rates – from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin’s papa, the supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary’s strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode in her own private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, “by one of the best makers in Bond Street,” yet the good judge makes not even a passing comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet Shelley as being far-fetched and frivolous.

Shelley’s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, secondly, because Harriet’s studies “had dwindled away to nothing, Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them.” At what time was this? It was when Harriet “had fully recovered from the fatigue of her first effort of maternity … and was now in full force, vigor, and effect.” Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June. It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect; this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another woman, isn’t he likely to lose interest in his wife’s studies for that reason, and is not his wife’s interest in her studies likely to languish for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a mutual intellectual interest of two years’ standing is coincident with Shelley’s re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that person’s society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the indictment against Harriet.

Shelley’s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, thirdly, because Harriet’s walks with Hogg commonly led to some fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation; I only ask why the dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself – merely, I mean, to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran away with Harriet’s husband was the shopper. There are several occasions where she interested herself with shopping – among them being walks which ended at the bonnet-shop – yet in none of these cases does she get a word of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find easement for her mind, her child having died.

Shelley’s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet-nurse was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which broke up his wife’s studies and destroyed his personal interest in them. Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley’s wife could do would have been satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed. Harriet’s jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now. Shelley’s conscience was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley needed excuses for his altered attitude toward his wife; Providence pitied him and sent the wet nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something to find fault with.

Shelley’s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation which was being performed upon her child, and, “to the astonishment of the operator,” who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his operation, she betrayed “not the smallest sign of emotion.” The author of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander. He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, “We may not infer from this that Harriet did not feel” – why put it in, then? – “but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and insensible.” Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them. “Those about her” are reduced to one person – her husband. Who reports the circumstance? It is Hogg. perhaps he was there – we do not know. But if he was, he still got his information at second hand, as it was the operator who noticed Harriet’s lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. “Among those who were about her” was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, not callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the oats of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons – the baby. I wish we had the baby’s testimony. and yet if we had it it would not do us any good – a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious “if” or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.

The biographer says of Harriet, “If words of tender affection and motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her first-born child.” That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands proved – and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader a chance to infer that there isn’t any extant evidence but words, and that he doesn’t take much stock in them. How seldom he shows his hand! He is always lurking behind a non-committal “if” or something of that kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband’s first great sin – but it is in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details. His insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of microscopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is white, and prove it to any one’s eye – and yet that lake was blue and you can swear it. This book is blue – with slander in solution.