The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Defense of Harriet Shelley by Mark
Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: In Defense of Harriet Shelley

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Last Updated: February 15, 2009
Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3171]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY***

Produced by David Widger

IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

by Mark Twain

I

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of
them to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water
of ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living
on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of
Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.
I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and
that that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive
honor by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter.
This was all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the
proofs of it were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted
in the girls' colleges of America and its view taught in their literary
classes.

In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country
have arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes
unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one
may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then,
I address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic
historical fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning
it may interest them.

First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several
ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites
anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly
popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire
a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two
sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is
provided as a prize for the winner in the