et Shelley's honor--by authority of
random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose
very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her
part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical
tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from
a person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this
sorry rubbish with the name of "evidence."

Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person
professing to know is offered among this precious "evidence."

1. "Shelley believed" so and so.

2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shelley told Mary Godwin so and
so, and Mary told her.

3. "Shelley said" so and so--and later "admitted over and over again
that he had been in error."

4. The unspeakable Godwin "wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so
"from unquestionable authority"--name not furnished.

How-any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave
of a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless
fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in
his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade
anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do
anything but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing.

The charge insinuated by these odious slanders is one of the most
difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has
a right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead,
unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also
prove it to be true. There is no justification for the abomination of
putting this stuff in the book.

Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing
evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source
that entitles it to a hearing.

On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the
people who knew her best. Peacock says:

"I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most
decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as
true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such
conduct are held most in honor."

Thornton Hunt, who had picked and published slight flaws in Harriet's
character, says, as regards this alleged large one:

"There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal
against her be