Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/54

 MARK TWAIN

We do admit that &quot;it is certain that some cause or causes of deep division were in operation.&quot; We would admit it just the same if the grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical work; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or causes.

But guessing is not really necessary. There is evidence attainable evidence from the batch dis credited by the biographer and set out at the back door in his appendix-basket; and yet a court of law would think twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which is placed before the readers of this book as &quot;evi dence,&quot; and so treated by this daring biographer. Among some letters (in the appendix-basket) from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the Godwinian share in the Shelleyan events of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband, agitated and weeping, to implore them to forbid Shelley the house, and prevent his seeing Mary Godwin.

She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs. Turner and paid her such marked attentions Mr. Turner, the husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire.

The biographer finds a technical fault in this: &quot;the Shelley s were in Edinburgh in November.&quot; What of that? The woman is recalling a conversa tion which is more than two months old; besides, she was probably more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its unimportant date.

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