Livorno, Villa Valsovano (English Version)
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Introduction:
Mary and Percy Shelley came to Italy on March 30, 1818, and, after spending a month in Milan, arrived in Leghorn on May 9. Here, Mary made contact with Maria Gisborne, who was a great friend of her father, the philosopher William Godwin (who would also have liked to marry her after the death of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft), and had known her as a child. During this first visit, the Shelleys did not rent a residence, but stayed in hotels. After a very short stop at the Aquila Nera hotel, in the seventeenth-century Palazzo Ginori, on the Venezia canals, in Via del Porticciolo n° 354 (Fig. 1), they took lodgings at the Hotel Croce di Malta, in Via Ferdinanda (the current Via Grande) n° 45 (Fig. 2). Mary’s first impression of the city certainly cannot be defined as positive. On the very day of her arrival, in her diary she called it “A stupid town” (M. Shelley, Journals, 1: 209), and a few days later, in a letter, she declared her intention to leave it soon because it was too noisy (“This town is a noisy mercantile one and we intend soon to quit it”, M. Shelley, Letters, 1: 67). Despite this, the couple stayed there until June 11, when they moved to Bagni di Lucca, in a house that Percy had rented.
The Shelley returned to Leghorn the following year, on June 17, 1819, only ten days after the death of their son William from malaria, in Rome. The Hotel Croce di Malta was closed for renovation (it would not reopen until October), and they again took up residence at the Aquila Nera. This hotel, which, like the Croce di Malta, was destroyed in the bombings of 1943 (Figg. 3-4), was located at the beginning of the current Via della Venezia, near the church of San Ferdinando Re, known as Church of the Crocetta, and the Ponte Lungo (Fig. 5), now Ponte di Venezia. After a week, however, on June 23, the Shelleys left the noisy port area to move to a mansion located on a farm in Via Valsovano, where, changing their initial plans to go to Florence for a few months, they remained until September 30 (Fig. 6). Now Via Valsovano bears the name of Via del Fagiano, but the Villa is accessed from Via Filippo Venuti 23 (Fig. 7).
This new residence was the ideal refuge for Percy. As he wrote in a letter (Percy’s letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 6 July 1819), his physical and mental condition was improving, and from Villa Valsovano he could see the sea with its islands Gorgona, Capraia, Elba and Corsica on one side, and the Apennines on the other. In the quiet of the Leghorn countryside, he finished Prometheus Unbound and composed a large part of The Cenci, of which he had 250 copies printed in Leghorn, which he then sent to London (“Note on The Cenci”). For Mary, however, as we learn from her letters, this was a period of intense anguish. In the space of a year, she had seen two of her children die at an early age: the loss of William, three years old, had in fact been preceded by that of Clara, just one year old, who had died of dysentery in Venice in September 1818. The painful memory of her missing children gave her no respite, and, judging by what she wrote in a letter to Marianne Hunt, it would seem that only the sounds of the Leghorn countryside were able to distract her (Mary’s letter to Marianne Hunt, 28 August 1819). At Villa Valsovano, Mary wrote (from 4 August to 14 September) Mathilda, a novelette that, due to the subject considered to be indecent, did not find a publisher at the time, and was published only in 1959.
The third and last stay of the Shelleys in Leghorn was in 1820. This time they spent there almost two months (from 15 June to 5 August) and stayed at the house of their friends Maria and John Gisborne, who had gone to London (“Note on the Poems of 1820”). The Shelleys were in Leghorn to consult with the lawyer Francesco del Rosso about the blackmail attempt by Paolo Foggi, a servant whom the Shelleys had hired on their arrival in Tuscany in May 1818, had followed them to Naples the following year, and was spreading defamatory rumors about them, asserting that a mysterious baby girl, who was born while they were in the Neapolitan city and the Shelleys had registered as their daughter, under the name of Elena Adelaide Shelley, was actually the daughter of Percy and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. The Gisborne home, Casa Ricci, which has also been destroyed, was a rustic building that was probably located at 59 Viale Guglielmo Marconi, where the Children’s Hospital of the “Holy Family” had its first headquarters in 1880. The house was not far from Villa Valsovano, which the Shelleys had presumably chosen the previous year precisely to be close to their friends, with whom they met daily, as we learn from Mary’s diaries and from the letters (Percy’s letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 24 August 1819). During his last stay in Leghorn, Percy Shelley completed Ode to Liberty, which aimed to celebrate the liberal revolution that had broken out in Spain in January, wrote the poetical epistle to Maria Gisborne, who had also given him Spanish lessons the previous year, and composed his famous ode To a Skylark.
Documents:
- Percy’s letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 6 July 1819 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 99-100)
We have changed our design of going to Florence immediately, & are now established for three months in a little country house, in a pretty verdant scene near Livorno.
I have a study here in a tower something like Scythrop’s – where I am just beginning to recover the faculties of reading & writing. My health, whenever no Libecchio blows, improves. – From my tower I see the sea with its islands, Gorgona, Capria, Elba & Corsica, on one side, & the Apennines on the other.
- M. Shelley, “Note on The Cenci. By the Editor” (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 258-59)
We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child, who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss. Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was situated in the midst ofa podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath ourwindows, during the heats of a very hot season, and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: - nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
At the top of the house, there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed but glazed; this Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became waterspouts, that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward, and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of The Cenci.
My dear Marianne
We are very dull at Leghorn and I can therefore write nothing to amuse you – We live in a little country house at the end of a green lane, surrounded by a podère these podère are just the things Hunt would like – they are like our kitchen gardens with the difference only that the beautiful fertility of this country gives them – a large bed of cabbages is very unpicturesque in England – but here the furrows are alternated with rows of grapes festooned on their supporters – it is filled with olive, fig and peachtrees and the hedges are of myrtle which have just ceased to flower – their flower has the sweetest faint smell in the world like some delicious spice – green grassy walks lead you through the vines – the people are always busy – and it [is] is pleasant to see three or four of them transform in one day a bed of Indian corn to one of celery – they work this hot weather in their shirts or smock frocks (but their breasts are bare) their brown legs nearly the colour only with a rich tinge of red in it with the earth they turn up – They sing not very melodiously but very loud – Rossini’s music – Mi rivedrai, ti rivedrò and they are accompanied by the cicala a kind of little beetle that makes a noise with its tail as loud as Johnny can sing – they live on trees and three or four together are enough to deafen you – It is to the cicala that Anacreon has addressed an ode which they call to a grasshopper in the English translations.
- “Note on the Poems of 1820”, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 279)
In the spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. – It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the sky-lark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. He addressed the letter to Mrs. Gisborne from this house, which was hers; he had made his study of the workshop of her son, who was an engineer. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of my father in the younger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from her frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind, after a life of considerable adversity. As a favourite friend of my father we had sought her with eagerness, and the most open and cordial friendship was established between us.
- Percy’s letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 24 August 1819 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 114)
My employments are these, I awaken usually at seven read half an hour, then get up, breakfast. After breakfast ascend my tower, and read or write until two. Then we dine – after dinner I read Dante with Mary, gossip a little, eat grapes & figs, sometimes walk, though seldom; and at half past five pay a visit to Mrs. Gisborne who reads Spanish with me until near seven. We then come for Mary & stroll about till suppertime. Mrs. Gisborne is a sufficiently amiable & very accomplished woman she is δημοκρατικη & αθεη [democratic and atheistic] – how far she may be ϕιλαυθρωπη [philanthropic] I don’t know for she is the antipodes of enthusiasm. Her husband a man with little thin lips receding forehead & a prodigious nose is an excessive bore.
Illustrations:
Fig. 1. The Aquila Nera hotel in a postcard from around 1850, before it moved to the D’Azeglio canals in 1856, where the Palazzo dell’Aquila Nera is still located. Luigi Dattari managed the hotel from 1846.
Fig. 2. Antonio Piemontesi, Map of Livorno (Print of 1791-1799), with highlighted the streets where the two hotels were located
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Livorno_map_of_the_town_(1790)_by_Antonio_Piemontesi_01.jpg)
_by_Antonio_Piemontesi_01.jpg){kind=link}
Fig. 3. The Church of San Ferdinando Re after the 1943 bombings (https://lavecchialivorno.blogspot.com/p/foto-depoca-stradario-di-livorno.html)
Fig. 4. Via Grande after the 1943 bombings (https://lavecchialivorno.blogspot.com/p/foto-depoca-stradario-di-livorno.html)
Fig. 5. Giuseppe Maria Terreni, Ponte Lungo, Print of 1785 ca. (https://lavecchialivorno.blogspot.com/p/foto-depoca-stradario-di-livorno.html)
_by_Michele_Tausch.jpg)
Fig. 6. Michele Tausch, Map of Livorno (1814). The Shelleys’ podere was on the lower part, on the right, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Livorno_map_of_the_town_(1814)_by_Michele_Tausch_01.jpg
_by_Michele_Tausch_01.jpg){kind=link}
Fig. 7. Villa Valsovano today
Texts:
IV.i.114-36
CENCI [Kneeling.
God!
Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
This particle of my divided being;
Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil
Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
If, nursed by thy selectest dew of love,
Such virtues blossom in her as should make
The peace of life, I pray thee, for my sake,
As thou the common God and Father art
Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
Poison, until she be encrusted round
With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew,
Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
To loathèd lameness! All-beholding sun,
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
With thine own blinding beams!
IV.i.135-49
BEATRICE
And yet, if you arrest me,
You are the judge and executioner
Of that which is the life of life: the breath
Of accusation kills an innocent name,
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life
Which is a mask without it. ’Tis most false
That I am guilty of foul parricide;
Although I must rejoice, for justest cause,
That other hands have sent my father’s soul
To ask the mercy he denied to me.
Now leave us free: stain not a noble house
With vague surmises of rejected crime;
Add to our sufferings and your own neglect
No heavier sum: let them have been enough:
Leave us the wreck we have.
CHAPTER I
It is only four o’clock, but it is winter and the sun has already set: there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground. I live in a lone cottage on a solitary, wide heath: no voice of life reaches me. I see the desolate plain covered with white, save a few black patches that the noonday sun has made at the top of those sharp pointed hillocks from which the snow, sliding as it fell, lay thinner than on the plain ground: a few birds are pecking at the hard ice that covers the pools — for the frost has been of long continuance.
I am in a strange state of mind. I am alone – quite alone – in the world – the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I know that I am about to die and I feel happy – joyous –. I feel my pulse; it beats fast: I place my thin hand on my cheek; it burns: there is a slight, quick spirit within me which is now emitting its last sparks. I shall never see the snows of another winter — I do believe that I shall never again feel the vivifying warmth of another summer sun; and it is in this persuasion that I begin to write my tragic history. Perhaps a history such as mine had better die with me, but a feeling that I cannot define leads me on and I am too weak both in body and mind to resist the slightest impulse. While life was strong within me I thought indeed that there was a sacred horror in my tale that rendered it unfit for utterance, and now about to die I pollute its mystic terrors. It is as the wood of the Eumenides none but the dying may enter; and Oedipus is about to die.
What am I writing? – I must collect my thoughts. I do not know that any will peruse these pages except you, my friend, who will receive them at my death. I do not address them to you alone because
it will give me pleasure to dwell upon our friendship in a way that would be needless if you alone read what I shall write. I shall relate my tale therefore as if I wrote for strangers.
Leghorn, July 1, 1820
The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.
[…]
And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content—
I sit, and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound,
I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean—and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast—the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain—
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
O’er the unquiet world—while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken Sun,
O’er which clouds are brightning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
[…]
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou Scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then – as I am listening now.
Bibliography:
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Vivoli, Giuseppe, Annali di Livorno, voll. 3 e 4, Livorno, Giulio Sardi, 1844 e 1846.
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Record by:
Nicoletta Caputo
Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica
University of Pisa
(March 2025)
Ultimo aggiornamento
03.04.2025