Keats-Shelley Memorial House

20/04/2021

#RomanticFacts

In April 1818 the Shelleys arrived in Northern Italy. They stayed in Milan for the whole month of April and visited the nearby area including Lake Como. In a letter that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to his friend Thomas Love Peacock #OnThisDay in 1818, he described the beauty of the lake and the nature surrounding it:

"Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also."

As we read this we could not help but think of another famous description of the lake from the famous Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, a contemporary of Shelley, whose famous novel "The Betrothed" begins as follows:

"That branch of the lake of Como, which extends towards the south, is enclosed by two unbroken chains of mountains, which, as they advance and recede, diversify its shores with numerous bays and inlets. Suddenly the lake contracts itself, and takes the course and form of a river, between a promontory on the right, and a wide open shore on the opposite side. The bridge which there joins the two banks seems to render this transformation more sensible to the eye, and marks the point where the lake ends, and the Adda again begins—soon to resume the name of the lake, where the banks receding afresh, allow the water to extend and spread itself in new gulfs and bays."

Image: William Miller, View of Lake Como surrounded by mountains, boats at left before building with tower, figures laying out sheets to dry on beach in foreground; proof frontispiece to Jenning's "Landscape Annual" for 1830; Etching and engraving on chine collé, British Museum

#RomanticFacts

In April 1818 the Shelleys arrived in Northern Italy. They stayed in Milan for the whole month of April and visited the nearby area including Lake Como. In a letter that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to his friend Thomas Love Peacock #OnThisDay in 1818, he described the beauty of the lake and the nature surrounding it:

"Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also."

As we read this we could not help but think of another famous description of the lake from the famous Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, a contemporary of Shelley, whose famous novel "The Betrothed" begins as follows:

"That branch of the lake of Como, which extends towards the south, is enclosed by two unbroken chains of mountains, which, as they advance and recede, diversify its shores with numerous bays and inlets. Suddenly the lake contracts itself, and takes the course and form of a river, between a promontory on the right, and a wide open shore on the opposite side. The bridge which there joins the two banks seems to render this transformation more sensible to the eye, and marks the point where the lake ends, and the Adda again begins—soon to resume the name of the lake, where the banks receding afresh, allow the water to extend and spread itself in new gulfs and bays."

Image: William Miller, View of Lake Como surrounded by mountains, boats at left before building with tower, figures laying out sheets to dry on beach in foreground; proof frontispiece to Jenning's "Landscape Annual" for 1830; Etching and engraving on chine collé, British Museum

19/04/2021

In the spring of 1817 Lord Byron travelled to Rome and stayed at Piazza di Spagna 66 just opposite the Keats-Shelley House, as attested by a letter sent to him by his publisher John Murray to this address. On the left you can see a picture of the building we shot from the Severn room inside our museum.

Byron wouldn't have seen the famous 'infiorata,' pictured on the right, which only started in 1930s and is carried on every year - except for last year when we were in lockdown - but we are sure he would have loved the azaleas in bloom on the Spanish Steps.

#Byron200

19/04/2021

#OnThisDay #Byron200

On this day in 1824, Byron died from rheumatic fever in Missolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to support the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule.

He was deeply mourned in England and became a hero in Greece. His body was embalmed and brought back to England, but the clergy refused to bury him at Westminster Abbey due to his "questionable morality". He was buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. 145 years after his death a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.

Something of Byron’s own spirit is captured in Canto IV of Childe Harold:

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire [.]

#OnThisDay #Byron200

On this day in 1824, Byron died from rheumatic fever in Missolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to support the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule.

He was deeply mourned in England and became a hero in Greece. His body was embalmed and brought back to England, but the clergy refused to bury him at Westminster Abbey due to his "questionable morality". He was buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. 145 years after his death a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.

Something of Byron’s own spirit is captured in Canto IV of Childe Harold:

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire [.]

18/04/2021

#TodayInLetters #RomanticFacts

This year in Italy we are celebrating the 700th anniversary of Dante's death. Dante and his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, greatly influenced the works of the English Romantics. John Keats found inspiration in the Fifth Canto of the Inferno for the composition of his sonnet 'A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo And Francesca'. Keats describes the Fifth Canto and the dream inspired by it in a letter to his brother George which he wrote #onthisday in 1819:

The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more—it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age—and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm—even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it—there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it—O that I could dream it every night—

17/04/2021

#KeatsShelley200 #KS200 #Shelley200

#OnThisDay in 1821 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a letter to Lord Byron, copied below, in which he talks about Allegra, Byron's illegitimate daughter from a relationship with Mary Shelley's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who will die just a year later at the age of five. Shelley concludes the letter with a note on Keats whom he recently discovered to have died in Rome seven weeks earlier. It is at around this same time that Shelley starts working on Adonais, the pastoral elegy dedicated to Keats.

"My dear Lord Byron
On my return from a tour in this neighbourhood, I find your letter, which has therefore remained unanswered. I think I mentioned to you before that I never see any of Claire’s letters to you. I can easily believe, however, that they are sufficiently provoking, and that her views respecting Allegra are unreasonable. Mary, no less than myself, is perfectly convinced of your conduct towards Allegra having been most irreproachable, and we entirely agree in the necessity, under existing circumstances, of the placing her in a convent near to yourself. I think you ought to consider Claire’s opposition to this, if she makes any, as the result of a misguided maternal affection, which is to be pitied, while we condemn. I have not shown her your letter. Surely it is better to avoid causes of irritation, though the only ill-effect should be to torment the person who feels it. I need not say what pleasure it would give me to hear from you on this, or any other subject. Mary unites with me also in expressions of the greatest interest for Allegra; and if circumstances should ever occur, to induce you to change your present plans respecting her, she intreats you to believe that she is most anxious to shew it. I see by the papers that you have published a tragedy on the subject of which you spoke when I saw you at Venice. I have not yet seen it, though I am most anxious to observe this new phasis of your power. The last work of yours I have seen is “Don Juan”, in the poetical parts of which you seem to have equalled the finest passages in your former poems; except the curse in “Manfred”, the stanzas in Chillon in the 3rd, and the address to Ocean, in the 4th Canto of “Childe Harold”. You have now arrived about at the age at which those eternal poets, of whom we have authentic accounts, have even begun their supreme poems; – considering all their others, however transcendent, as the steps, scaffolding, the exercise which may sustain and conduct them to their great work. If you are inferior to these, it is not in genius, but industry and resolution. Oh, that you would subdue yourself to the great task of building up a poem containing within itself the germs of a permanent relation to the present, and to all succeeding ages! Young Keats, whose “Hyperion” showed so great a promise, died lately at Rome from the consequences of breaking a blood-vessel, in paroxysms of despair at the contemptuous attack on his book in the Quarterly Review.
Adieu.
Mary unites with me in best regards.

#KeatsShelley200 #KS200 #Shelley200

#OnThisDay in 1821 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a letter to Lord Byron, copied below, in which he talks about Allegra, Byron's illegitimate daughter from a relationship with Mary Shelley's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who will die just a year later at the age of five. Shelley concludes the letter with a note on Keats whom he recently discovered to have died in Rome seven weeks earlier. It is at around this same time that Shelley starts working on Adonais, the pastoral elegy dedicated to Keats.

"My dear Lord Byron
On my return from a tour in this neighbourhood, I find your letter, which has therefore remained unanswered. I think I mentioned to you before that I never see any of Claire’s letters to you. I can easily believe, however, that they are sufficiently provoking, and that her views respecting Allegra are unreasonable. Mary, no less than myself, is perfectly convinced of your conduct towards Allegra having been most irreproachable, and we entirely agree in the necessity, under existing circumstances, of the placing her in a convent near to yourself. I think you ought to consider Claire’s opposition to this, if she makes any, as the result of a misguided maternal affection, which is to be pitied, while we condemn. I have not shown her your letter. Surely it is better to avoid causes of irritation, though the only ill-effect should be to torment the person who feels it. I need not say what pleasure it would give me to hear from you on this, or any other subject. Mary unites with me also in expressions of the greatest interest for Allegra; and if circumstances should ever occur, to induce you to change your present plans respecting her, she intreats you to believe that she is most anxious to shew it. I see by the papers that you have published a tragedy on the subject of which you spoke when I saw you at Venice. I have not yet seen it, though I am most anxious to observe this new phasis of your power. The last work of yours I have seen is “Don Juan”, in the poetical parts of which you seem to have equalled the finest passages in your former poems; except the curse in “Manfred”, the stanzas in Chillon in the 3rd, and the address to Ocean, in the 4th Canto of “Childe Harold”. You have now arrived about at the age at which those eternal poets, of whom we have authentic accounts, have even begun their supreme poems; – considering all their others, however transcendent, as the steps, scaffolding, the exercise which may sustain and conduct them to their great work. If you are inferior to these, it is not in genius, but industry and resolution. Oh, that you would subdue yourself to the great task of building up a poem containing within itself the germs of a permanent relation to the present, and to all succeeding ages! Young Keats, whose “Hyperion” showed so great a promise, died lately at Rome from the consequences of breaking a blood-vessel, in paroxysms of despair at the contemptuous attack on his book in the Quarterly Review.
Adieu.
Mary unites with me in best regards.

17/04/2021

#KSHCollection #OnThisDay

Today we'd like to share with you this curiosity which was donated to the Keats-Shelley House in 2020 by Stephen Clifford-Wilson. It's a charming autograph quotation from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound in the hand of Italian revolutionary nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini. The autograph is signed ‘Joseph Mazzini’ and dated 17 April 1851, London.

An Italian politician and journalist, Mazzini was a passionate advocate for Italian unification and independence and was imprisoned in Italy for being a member of the secret society of the Carbonari, whose ranks included Lord Byron and whose cause excited P. B. Shelley. In 1831, following his release from prison, Mazzini fled first to Switzerland before seeking exile from 1837 in London, which became his second homeland.

Besides being a political activist Mazzini was a philosopher and an intellectual. He was also a lover of literature, particularly Romantic poetry. He read Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and even wrote several essays in which he praised Byron's works. In 1832 he wrote an essay in which his ideas bear resemblance to those expressed by Shelley in 'A Defence of Poetry':

'Poetry is stirred in all things; it is the ray of light that shines upon every object, it is the power of harmony that lies dormant in the harp, until touched by an awakening hand. Every human heart has an element of poetry in it, if touched by the breath of generous passions.'

Mazzini never had the pleasure of meeting Shelley or Byron, although both poets were connected with early Italian revolutionary nationalism while living in Italy. However, during his London exile he eventually met with Mary Shelley and Anne Isabella Milbanke, Lord Byron's widow.

It's clear that Mazzini was an admirer of Shelley and felt him to be a kindred spirit but the question remains as to why he would quote from Prometheus Unbound and sign it this way. Could it have been a gift from him to a lover in England?

#KSHCollection #OnThisDay

Today we'd like to share with you this curiosity which was donated to the Keats-Shelley House in 2020 by Stephen Clifford-Wilson. It's a charming autograph quotation from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound in the hand of Italian revolutionary nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini. The autograph is signed ‘Joseph Mazzini’ and dated 17 April 1851, London.

An Italian politician and journalist, Mazzini was a passionate advocate for Italian unification and independence and was imprisoned in Italy for being a member of the secret society of the Carbonari, whose ranks included Lord Byron and whose cause excited P. B. Shelley. In 1831, following his release from prison, Mazzini fled first to Switzerland before seeking exile from 1837 in London, which became his second homeland.

Besides being a political activist Mazzini was a philosopher and an intellectual. He was also a lover of literature, particularly Romantic poetry. He read Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and even wrote several essays in which he praised Byron's works. In 1832 he wrote an essay in which his ideas bear resemblance to those expressed by Shelley in 'A Defence of Poetry':

'Poetry is stirred in all things; it is the ray of light that shines upon every object, it is the power of harmony that lies dormant in the harp, until touched by an awakening hand. Every human heart has an element of poetry in it, if touched by the breath of generous passions.'

Mazzini never had the pleasure of meeting Shelley or Byron, although both poets were connected with early Italian revolutionary nationalism while living in Italy. However, during his London exile he eventually met with Mary Shelley and Anne Isabella Milbanke, Lord Byron's widow.

It's clear that Mazzini was an admirer of Shelley and felt him to be a kindred spirit but the question remains as to why he would quote from Prometheus Unbound and sign it this way. Could it have been a gift from him to a lover in England?