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Introduction:
Mary and Percy Shelley spent two long periods at Casa Prini: from 5 August to 29 October 1820, and from 8 May to 28 October 1821. The plaque on the current site of Monte dei Paschi di Siena commemorating the Shelleys’ stay at the house belonging to the Prini family was discovered in August 1931 (Figg. 1-4).
The Shelleys had arrived in Italy on 30 March 1818 with Claire Clairmont, Mary’s half-sister, and on 26 January 1819 they moved to Pisa, which remained their “winter” residence until Percy’s death. They spent the summer of 1819 in Livorno, while, the following year, on the advice of Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri, the illustrious Pisan doctor who was treating Percy, the couple decided to rent a house in San Giuliano Terme (Baths of San Giuliano), a highly sought-after location, as shown by the high prices of houses for rent (see Percy’s letter to Mary, Sunday 30 July 1820).
Percy’s stay at the Baths was beneficial for his health, and there he composed the ottava rima poem The Witch of Atlas (Link to “Note on the Poems of 1820” /1), Ode to Naples, dedicated to the revolutionary uprisings of the Neapolitan city, and Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant, a satirical tragedy in two acts sparked by the sensation created by the adultery trial of Caroline of Brunswick, the repudiated wife of King George IV. This work was inspired by hearing the grunt of pigs being led to the fair of San Giuliano, as Mary related in her diary and in the note to the 1839 edition (see “Note on Oedypus Tyrannus”). All these works were written in August. Mary, on the other hand, as soon as she arrived at Casa Prini, composed a children’s story, Maurice, or the Fisher’s Cot, dedicated to Lauretta Tighe, daughter of her friend “Mrs. Mason”. Her stay in San Giuliano Terme also afforded the author the chance to visit Lucca and the places associated with the life of Castruccio Castracani, the subject of the novel she would publish in February 1823: Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca.
On 29 October 1820, however, the Shelleys had to leave Casa Prini due to the flooding from the Serchio River, which submerged the village (see “Note on the Poems of 1820” /2) and filled their house with as much as six feet of water. The following year (on 8 May 1821), the Shelleys returned to Casa Prini, and during this second stay Percy also had the opportunity to satisfy his passion for boating: in the previous months he had a little boat built (see “Note on the Poems of 1821”), with which he often travelled between Pisa and San Giuliano Terme along the Fosso del Mulino – which connects the Serchio to the Arno – starting from the current Piazza delle Gondole in Pisa (Fig. 5), and disembarking directly in the garden behind the residence (Fig. 6). These boat trips on the canal inspired the poems The Boat on the Serchio and The Aziola. During this second stay, Percy also composed Adonais, the elegy written on the death of John Keats that was printed in Pisa by Niccolò Capurro’s printing house in July.
In 1823, the family of Margaret Jane King – known as “Mrs. Mason” and also remembered as Lady Mount Cashell, after her first husband, Stephen Moore, Earl of Mount Cashell – spent the summer at Casa Prini. Mrs. Mason and her new partner, George William Tighe, were friends with the Shelleys, and Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had been the woman’s governess for a year.
Documents:
- Percy’s letter to Mary, Sunday 30 July 1820 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 222-24)
My dear Love,
I believe I shall have taken a very pleasant & spacious apartment at the Bagni [di Pisa] for 3 months. It is as all the others are — dear. I shall give 40 or 45 sequins for the 3 months, but as yet I do not know which. I could get others something cheaper & a great deal worse; but if we would write, it is requisite to have space. […]
I have taken the House for 40 sequins for 3 months —a good bargain & a very good house as things go — this is about 13 sequins a-month. Tomorrow I go to look over the inventory;
- “Note on the Poems of 1820” /1, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 278)
We spent the summer at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino—a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the “Witch of Atlas”. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes—wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.
- “Note on Oedypus Tyrannus”, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 191)
In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August, 1820, Shelley “begins ‘Swellfoot the Tyrant’, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano”. This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the “Green Bag” on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his “Ode to Liberty”; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the ‘chorus of frogs’ in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus—and “Swellfoot” was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
- “Note on the Poems of 1820” /2, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 279)
Our stay at the Baths of San Giuliano was shortened by an accident. At the foot of our garden ran the canal that communicated between the Serchio and the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its banks, and, breaking its bounds, this canal also overflowed; all this part of the country is below the level of its rivers, and the consequence was that it was speedily flooded. The rising waters filled the Square of the Baths, in the lower part of which our house was situated. The canal overflowed in the garden behind; the rising waters on either side at last burst open the doors, and, meeting in the house, rose to the height of six feet. It was a picturesque sight at night to see the peasants driving the cattle from the plains below to the hills above the Baths. A fire was kept up to guide them across the ford; and the forms of the men and the animals showed in dark relief against the red glare of the flame, which was reflected again in the waters that filled the Square.
- “Note on the Poems of 1821”, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1839, pp. 301-2)
Shelley’s favourite taste was boating; […] There are no pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating) rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,—a boat of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated on the danger, and could not understand how anyone could take pleasure in an exercise that risked life. ‘Ma va per la vita!’ they exclaimed. I little thought how true their words would prove. […]
Our little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied by any danger, when we removed to the Baths. Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano, four miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the canal; which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full and picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day, multitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening.
Illustrations:
Fig. 1 - Unveiling of the plaque on Casa Prini, 2 August 1931
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=903351451793807&set=pcb.903351628460456
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Figg. 2 and 3 - Posters announcing the unveiling of the plaque on Casa Prini
Figg. 3 and 4 - Ceremony for the unveiling of the plaque on Casa Prini, 2 August 1931
Fig. 5 - The Fosso del Mulino in Piazza delle Gondole (Pisa) with the mill wheel still visible,
https://ilpopolopisano.it/1402-le-gondole-ieri-oggi
Fig. 6 - Casa Prini garden with the Fosso del Mulino
Texts:
- Percy Shelley, The Witch of Atlas, 1820
To Mary (On Her Objecting to the Following Poem,
Upon the Score of its Containing No Human Interest)
I.
How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
XXVIII.
This lady never slept, but lay in trance
All night within the fountain--as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance:
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
Like fire-flies--and withal did ever keep
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet and folded palm.
XXXVIII.
And down the streams which clove those mountains vast
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace past;
By many a star-surrounded pyramid
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
XXXIX
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest-tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell
When earth over her face night’s mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky
- Percy Shelley, Ode to Naples, 1820
(Antistrophe II beta)
Florence! beneath the Sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower, for Freedom’s expectation ––
From eyes of quenchless hope
Rome tears the priestly cope
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration!
Eager again to run
From a sublime station
For the high prize lost on Philippi’s shore. ––
As then Hope, truth, and Justice did avail
So now may Fraud and Wrong! All hail.
(Epode II beta)
Great Spirit, deepest Love !
Which rulest and dost move
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
Who spreadest heaven around it,
Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor,
Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command
The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison
From the Earth's bosom chill;
- Percy Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; or Swellfoot the Tyrant, 1820
Chorus of Swine.
I have heard your Laureate sing,
That pity was a royal thing;
Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch
The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.
[…]
Minotaur.
I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest
Of all Europa’s taurine progeny—
I am the old traditional man bull;
And from my ancestors having been Ionian,
I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,
Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say,
My name’s John Bull; I am a famous hunter,
And can leap any gate in all Boeotia,
Even the palings of the royal park,
Or double ditch about the new inclosures;
And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
At least till you have hunted down your game,
I will not throw you.
- Mary Shelley, Maurice, or the Fisher’s Cot. A Tale, 1820
One Sunday afternoon in the month of September, a traveller entered the town of Torquay, a seaport on the southern coast of Devonshire. The afternoon was pleasant and warm, and the waves of the sea, slightly agitated by a breeze, sparkled under the sun. The streets of the town were empty, for the inhabitants after having been to church were dining during the interval between the services: so the traveller walked on through the meaner streets of the town, to the semicircle of houses that surrounds the harbour; and then he paused at the door of a neat-looking inn. The traveller was a man about forty-five years of age; he was remarkably erect in his person; alert and even graceful in his walk; his hair was black and curly, although a little fallen from his temples; he was handsome, but somewhat sun-burnt, and when he smiled he looked so good-tempered and kind that you could not see him without loving him. In dress and manner he had the appearance of one who had seen better days, but who was now poor; and he seemed serious, though not depressed by poverty. His clothes were coarse and covered with dust; he was on foot, and had a wallet buckled on his back.
- Percy Shelley, The Boat on The Serchio, 1821
[ …] The Serchio, twisting forth
Between the marble barriers which it clove
At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm
The wave that died the death which lovers love
Living in what it sought … as if this spasm
Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling,
But the clear stream in full enthusiasm
Pours itself on the plain, until wandering,
Down one clear path of effluence chrystalline
Sends its clear waves, that they may fling
At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine,
Then, through the pestilential deserts wild
Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted fir,
Rushed.
- Percy Shelley, The Aziola, 1821
“Do you not hear the Aziola cry?
Methinks she must be nigh,"
Said Mary, as we sate
In dusk, ere the stars were lit, or candles brought;
And I, who thought
This Aziola was some tedious woman,
Asked, “Who is Aziola?” How elate
I felt to know that it was nothing human,
No mockery of myself to fear and hate!
And Mary saw my soul,
And laughed and said, “ Disquiet yourself not,
’Tis nothing but a little downy owl. "
Bibliography:
Curreli, Mario, Una certa Signora Mason. Romantici inglesi a Pisa ai tempi di Leopardi, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 1997.
Curreli, Mario, “Scrittori inglesi ai Bagni di San Giuliano”, in A. Sonetti (a cura di), Passar le acque. Il sistema termale pisano, Pontedera (PI), Bandecchi & Vivaldi [2004], pp. 19-30.
Di Maio, Sergio, “Gli inglesi a’ Bagni: la presenza di Percy Bysshe e Mary Shelley a San Giuliano Terme”, in AA.VV. (a cura di), Percy Bysshe Shelley in contesto. Tra filosofia, storia e letteratura, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2023, pp. 81-86.
Shelley, Mary, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. B. T. Bennett, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, 3 vols.
Shelley, Mary, The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844, eds P. R. Feldman and D. Scott-Kilvert, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, 2 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. M. Shelley, London, Edward Moxon, [1839].
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. F. L. Jones, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964, 2 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Opere poetiche, a cura di F. Rognoni, Milano, Mondadori, 2018.
Ultimo aggiornamento
17.10.2024