I was surprised by the size of La Spezia, I wrote in my journal on
Friday, April 23, 1999. In the Shelleys’ Italian days (1820s) the area was
small, undeveloped—fishing and other Mediterranean-related enterprises were the
occupation of most people. Five kilometers away –a swift train ride—were San
Terenzo and Lerici, the latter the once-tiny place where the Shelleys had
rented a summer place—the Casa Magni—which stood—and stands—right near the
shore.
It is a lovely small village, I wrote of San Terenzo/Lerici, and a bay with deep blue water and a new
promenade that protects the house from the sea. In the Shelleys’ time the
sea was right at their lower doors,
where boats were stored. I wandered around the little town on a gorgeous,
cloudless day, taking pictures and easily finding the Casa Magni, still
absolutely recognizable from the 1820s. On the house now there are plaques declaring
its significance in English literary history—and on the waterfront is the
Shelley Bar, which I photographed but did not enter. (Now, of course, I wish I
had.)
In the summer of 1822 Mary
Shelley was not at all happy about her life. She would suffer a
life-threatening miscarriage in mid-June, and Bysshe’s insistence that she sit
in tub of ice (which took hours to acquire from San Terenzo) probably saved her
life by slowing, then stopping the bleeding. Her hope was at one of its lowest
ebbs. She had buried two children in recent years—and now this. And Bysshe was
spending all day frolicking with Byron and Trelawny—or out on his boat with
Edward and Jane Williams, flirting wildly with Jane. Oh, and stepsister Claire
Clairmont was there, as well. In a beautiful spot she nonetheless felt as if
she had sunk into hell.
Mary’s journal entries are brief—mentions
of what she was reading and studying (Homer, Virgil) with only the vaguest note
about her physical problems: I am ill most
of this time. Ill & then convalescent.[1]
Meanwhile, things were about to
get more complicated. Their friend
Leigh Hunt was arriving. Shelly, Byron, and the others had resolved to start a
journal, The Liberal, which Hunt, a
poet and essayist but also the only journalist among them, had agreed to edit.
But with him he brought his wife, Marianne, and their six children (they would
have four more), children who were—to be generous—rather … active. And
generally uncontrolled. Mary dreaded the day when they would all pack
themselves into the Casa Magni, a place she already found unpleasantly public.
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| Casa Magni--back then |
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