Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell, alias Mrs Mason (1773–1835)
Nicoletta Caputo (University of Pisa)
Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell, was an Irish noblewoman who, after separating from her husband and seven children in 1805, settled in Pisa in 1814 with her new partner, George William Tighe. They took the name of Mr and Mrs Mason and went to live in Casa Silva, in Via Mala Gonella (for some the current Via Sancasciani, for others the adjacent Via Pietro Gori, Curreli 2007, p. 320). Mrs Mason was a personality of considerable importance in the local cultural and social panorama, as confirmed by the fact that she and her partner attended the elegant vigils and dance evenings of what was the main social institution of the city: the Casino dei Nobili (Panajia 1996, pp. 209-13). In October 1827, she even refounded and hosted in her new home in Via San Lorenzo the “Accademia dei Lunatici” (Ricci and Panajia 1997, pp. 321-26, and Curreli 1997, pp. 105-120), whose meetings were joined by Giacomo Leopardi during his stay in Pisa (from 9 November 1827 to 9 June 1828).
Mrs Mason was the first to welcome the Shelleys when they arrived in the city, along with Claire, in January 1820, and the three were the only English people to be admitted into her Pisan entourage. The woman was variously connected to the Shelley family, as Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had been her governess in 1786, albeit just for one year. Wollstonecraft had drawn inspiration from her for her children’s work, Original Stories from Real Life (1788), in which the fictional projection of the author, governess of two restless girls, is called, precisely, Mrs Mason. Then, in 1808, Margaret King Moore had published her Stories of Old Daniel, Or, Tales of Wonder and Delight – a very successful volume that enjoyed many subsequent editions – with the Juvenile Library, the publishing house that Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, had founded with his second wife. In 1820, Godwin’s Juvenile Library published, again, Mrs Mason’s Continuation of the Stories of Old Daniel: Or Tales of Wonder and Delight, which was inspired, as the subtitle informs us, by her travels: Containing narratives of foreign countries and manners, and designed as an introduction to the study of voyages, travels, and history in general.
The Shelleys had met Mrs Mason a few months before settling in Pisa, and precisely on 30 September 1819, when, on their way from Livorno to Florence, they stopped in the city and introduced themselves to the woman with a letter from Godwin (M. Shelley 1987, p. 298). It was she who then found the Shelleys a house on the Lungarno (Casa Frassi), a task that was not particularly arduous, since, as Mrs. Mason explained in a letter to Mary, the unusually harsh winter had drastically reduced the number of foreigners in Pisa – English families, in particular, had dropped from thirty-five to five – and many apartments were available, at lower prices than the previous year (McAleer 1958, p. 140). This cultured and unconventional Irish lady was their only acquaintance during the early days of the Shelleys’ stay in the city, and they met almost daily.
Mrs Mason’s company was much appreciated by Percy, as we learn from a letter that he wrote to Leigh Hunt on 5 April 1820:
We see no one but an Irish lady and her husband, who are settled here. She is everything that is amiable and wise, and he is very agreeable. […] some lady of 45, very unprejudiced and philosophical, who has entered deeply into the best and selectest spirit of the age; with enchanting manners. (P. B. Shelley 1964, p. 110)
With this “amiable, wise, unprejudiced and philosophical” lady, Shelley could even discuss the Irish question, a subject in which he had been deeply interested in the past, for he had written three pamphlets on the topic and, from February to April 1812, he had also stayed with his first wife Harriet Westbrook in Dublin to support the cause of Catholic emancipation in Ireland in person. Several years earlier, Lady Mount Cashell had likewise published, anonymously, three pamphlets against the union between Great Britain and Ireland, which was then consummated in 1800: A Few Words in Favour of Ireland (1799), A Hint to the Inhabitants of Ireland (1799) and Reply to a Ministerial Pamphlet (1800). According to Percy’s not always reliable cousin, Thomas Medwin, it was she who inspired the poet for “The Sensitive Plant”, a poem from 1820 (Medwin 1913, p. 265). As for Mary, it was to the first of Mr and Mrs Mason’s two daughters, Laurette Tighe, that the writer dedicated the children’s novelette Maurice or the Fisher’s Cot in August 1820.
Mrs Mason, however, became particularly attached to Claire Clairmont, who considered the Irish lady her “Minerva”. Actually, the girl’s mother had turned to her when, on 28 July 1814, Claire had left England with her half-sister Mary and Percy Shelley. Mrs Godwin had asked her old acquaintance to protect her daughter in case the group of fugitives had come to Pisa. More specifically, Mrs Mason should have convinced Claire to leave Shelley (McAleer 1958, p. 129). On that occasion, the trio did not reach Italy, but the Irish noblewoman fulfilled her task years later, when the three settled in Pisa, and she was able to encourage the girl to break away from the Shelleys and gain her own independence by seeking work as a governess. In October 1820, she also secured Claire a job in Florence – in the household of Professor Antonio Boiti, physician to Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Lorraine – which the girl, however, left at the end of her month’s trial (McAleer 1958, pp. 153–55). Furthermore, when, after Percy’s death, Claire went to Vienna where her brother Charles lived, Mrs Mason helped her financially and, unbeknown to either her husband or Mary, she wrote twice, unsuccessfully, to Lord Byron (whom she had never met) to ask him to help his late daughter’s mother (McAleer 1958, pp. 173–77).
Finally, as we learn from the letters Mrs Mason wrote to the Shelleys during the months they spent in Florence at the end of 1819, it was she who advised Percy to consult the illustrious Dr. Vaccà for his kidney problems. Once they arrived in Pisa, Shelley and Vaccà developed a friendship, fostered by a strong ideological and value affinity. Mrs Mason herself was very interested in medicine and had opened a dispensary for the poor in Pisa. In 1823, she published a highly successful medical guide, Advice to Young Mothers on the Physical Education of Children, by a Grandmother, which was reprinted many times and translated into several languages. She also translated medical treatises from German and, in 1824, published a two-volume novel, The Sisters of Nansfield: A Tale for Young Women.
Jane Diana King, Margaret King Moore (New York Public Library Digital Collection, Wikimedia Commons)
Works Cited
Curreli, Mario, Una certa Signora Mason. Romantici inglesi a Pisa ai tempi di Leopardi, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 1997.
Curreli, Mario, “Lady Mountcashell alias Madame Mason”, in Leopardi a Pisa, a cura di Fiorenza Ceragioli, Milano, Electa, 1997, pp. 306-320.
McAleer, Edward C., The Sensitive Plant: A Life of Lady Mount Cashell, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1958.
Medwin, Thomas, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Harry Buxton Forman, London, Oxford University Press, 1913.
Panajia, Alessandro, Il Casino dei Nobili. Famiglie illustri, viaggiatori mondanità a Pisa tra Sette e Ottocento, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 1996.
Panajia, Alessandro, “La nuova Accademia dei Lunatici” in Leopardi a Pisa, a cura di Fiorenza Ceragioli, Milano, Electa, 1997, pp. 322-26.
Panajia, Alessandro, “Casino dei Nobili. Storia e microstorie”, in Il Casino dei Nobili, a cura di Fabrizio Sainati e Alessandro Panajia, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2021, pp. 41-72.
Ricci, Fulvia, “La prima Accademia dei Lunatici”, in Leopardi a Pisa, a cura di Fiorenza Ceragioli, Milano, Electa, 1997, p. 321.
Salvetti, Lucia, Il Casino dei nobili di Pisa nei secoli XVIII e XIX, Pisa, Pacini Editore, 1993.
Shelley, Mary, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, ed. Betty T. Bennett, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
Shelley, Mary, The Journals of Mary Shelley, vol. 1: 1814-1822, eds Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, ed. Frederick L. Jones, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964.
Nicoletta Caputo, December 2025
All the English translations from Italian are by the author of the present essay
Ultimo aggiornamento
20.12.2025