True Human Oddities - Shelley's Decaying Heart

The heart is a strange organ - the term used in so many ways in poetry as well as prose to describe something much more than a body part that pumps blood to other parts of the body. What, though, would inspire people (other than the deranged which I will save for another tale) to remove a body part and to preserve it? After all, even though we use terms for body parts in many ways, this does not often extend to reality. We might say, for example, 'I love you from the bottom of my heart' as opposed to 'I love you from the bottom of my pancreas." Or, we might say that we are wracking our brains for an answer though we are not likely to have literally opened our skullcaps and begun to plow through the contents with a trowel. Yet, hearts continue to hold a strange significance for us.

The heart is not a particularly pretty thing when displayed in full glory. In modern society, we rarely use even animal body parts unless they have some aesthetic value such as game-trophies or leather. Sure- a candy heart or a supposedly-heart shaped ornament might adorn our wall. Other body parts are sometimes used decoratively, such as crystal skulls. But a real heart is a bloody mass of tissue that really holds little value as a part of standard decor.

This all makes the next true story of human oddity all the more strange, for it is a story of real people who at least attempted to preserve a real heart for reasons that perhaps only they know.

Percy Bysshe Shelly was a well-known poet of the English Romantic period. He was born in 1792 and died in 1822. He married twice, he had some close friends such as John Keats and Lord Byron. Keats died young in 1821 and Shelley commemorated him by writing the poem Adonais. Like many writers, his work became more well-known after his death and it is said that he made little money from his writings during his life. This beautiful poem became a loved piece of writing by many of his close friends and family. His first wife was Harriet Westbrook and he married her when he was only 19. His girl was only 16 years of age and they eloped to Scotland to marry. Shelley did not find much happiness in marriage and when he met the daughter of William Godwin, he fell in love and ran away with Mary Godwin. They were soon poor and in trouble, and returned to England from their whirlwind of travels. Shelley's first wife Harriet was abandoned and alone and drowned herself in London. Shelley then married Mary Godwin and courts awarded custody of his children to foster parents. It is said that the newly wed Mary Shelley loved her husband very much in spite of his awful treatment of his first wife and his nomadic lifestyle to that point. The Shelleys settled in Buckingham-shire near another friend, Thomas Love Peacock.

Shelley owned a schooner which was supposedly named Don Juan as a compliment to his friend Byron. The boat had been custom-built for Shelley and their was some concern about its structural integrity. Shelley re-named his boat the Ariel which upset Byron. Shelley claimed to have nightmares and hallucinations in which he saw Allegra, Byron's deceased daughter, rising from the waves to call to him. This tortured him due to his own first wife's suicide by drowning. On July 1 of 1822 Shelley sailed to meet with friends and confer about a new magazine project. On July 8 they sailed on although a storm was coming. That was the last record of Percy Bysshe Shelley alive. The boat was apparently forced under the water due to high winds. No bodies were found at first, and this could have been the end of the story. Of course, there were many rumors that circulated. Some said that it was not an accident but sabotage of some kind. Others said that Shelley himself had been suicidal. Whatever the case, a man named Captain Edward John Trelawny had formed and intense attachment to the poet and he decided that he would find the body of his friend -- and that he did. All of the bodies were washed up on different parts of the shore and Trelawny saw to it that Shelley's body was recovered.

Quarantine regulations enforced that the body must be cremated where it was found. The man had a local blacksmith construct a portable crematorium which he used to cremate Shelley right where his body was found. According to Trelawney's memoirs the corpse fell open during the cremation and the heart was exposed. He claimed that the skull, jaw, and some bones were also preserved - but that it was shocking to find the heart intact. Trelawney claimed to have snatched the heart from the furnace, burning his hand in the process. There is some confusion about what may have happened to the charred and mummifying heart between this time and the time when Mary Shelley was able to gain possession, but she did gain possession of a drying piece of organ. She wrote of keeping the organ near her at all times.

After Mary's death in 1855, a crumbling bit of human remains was found in her desk. It was buried with the remains of her only son, Percy Florence Shelley, in the vault he had built for himself and his mother.

Of course, there has always been some doubt as to whether the bit of decaying organ that was retrieved was actually the heart, though there has been little doubt that it was indeed a piece of Percy Bysshe Shelly's body.
An article published in the New York Time in 1885 stated that it was highly unlikely for a hollow organ such as the heart to remain through cremation, and that it was more likely the liver which and been preserved. The liver is known to endure for some time during a cremation and Trelawny was not a trained anatomist.

In the long run- does it really matter? Whether heart or liver, it meant something very special to those who retrieved it and mostly to Mary Shelley herself. It meant something to her for reasons we cannot altogether known. Certainly, due to her love for her husband. And, it remains unknown whether her treasured prize of a human body part led in part to her writing of Frankenstein and her thoughts of using the parts of a dead person to bring back some spark of life.