Bagni di Lucca, Casa Bertini
Presentation
In the summer of 1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Godwin spent a few weeks at Casa Bertini, also known as Casa Del Chiappa, together with their two children, William and Clara, and Mary's half-sister, Claire Clermont. Arriving on June 11, they settled in the dwelling that Percy had chosen a couple of weeks earlier: as a matter of fact, he had reached Bagni di Lucca from Livorno on May 26th in search of an accommodation for the summer.
Casa Bertini is located in the ancient core of Bagno alla Villa, whose small central square is surrounded by numerous stately homes built from the early 16th century onward. Prominent among them is Casa Bujamonti, where Michel de Montaigne resided twice, between May and September 1581, as recorded in his Journal du voyage en Italie.
Mary was immediately enthusiastic about Casa Bertini, which she described in her letter of the 15th of June to her friend Maria Gisborne as “small but commodious and exceedingly clean.” Freshly painted walls, quite new furniture, and a small garden with an arbour of laurel trees shading from sunshine completed her idyllic picture, only marred by the annoying presence of the landlord, Mr. Del Chiappa, a “perfectly useless” vain man with whom, Mary thought, it was not worth spending time (Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, 15th June 1818). Percy and Mary would coincidentally meet Del Chiappa again in Rome in April 1819.
The days spent in Val di Lima mark a serene interlude in the couple's life, as they enjoy contact with a varied and picturesque nature. Letters penned in Bagni di Lucca record their enthusiasm for such places as Prato Fiorito, where they once rode up together on horseback on June 30th (Percy Shelley to John and Mary Gisborne, 10th July 1818), or the pool in the middle of the woods in which Percy loved to bathe (Percy to Thomas Love Peacock, 25th July 1818), while Mary loved walking in the woods, watching fireflies, and enjoying the silence of the surrounding landscape (Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, 15th June 1818).
Except for walking or horseback riding and the occasional visit to the Casino for the Sunday dance, days were mostly devoted to literary activities, as recorded in Mary's diary, in which she details the reading, often aloud, of Greek classics, Shakespeare, and English poetry, together with Ariosto and Tasso among the Italians. Less fruitful, however, is Shelley's creative vein during this period: as he confesses in his letter to his father-in-law, William Godwin, he wrote little and despaired of “producing anything original” (Percy Shelley to William Godwin, 25th July 1818). Indeed, at Casa Bertini Percy only completed the poem Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue (Preface to Poetical Works,1839), which he had started at Marlow in the summer of 1817. Undoubtedly, his major literary achievement while staying in Val di Lima was the translation of Plato’s Symposium, completed in about ten days. Percy considered this work “one of the most valuable in antiquity”.
He left Bagni di Lucca, together with Claire, on August 17, 1818, bound for Venice, where Claire wished to meet her daughter, Clara Allegra, who had been entrusted to her father, Lord Byron. Mary stayed in Bagni with her children until the end of August and joined her husband at Este on September 5, 1818. The two never returned to Val di Lima.
Documents
Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, Monday 15 June 1818 (in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, p. 72)
[…] our house is small but commodious and exceedingly clean for it has just been painted and the furniture is quite new—we have a small garden and at the end of it is an arbour of laurel trees so thick that the sun does not penetrate it. […] Signor Chiappa we found perfectly useless—he would talk of nothing but himself […] Signor Chiappa is a stupid fellow […]
Percy Shelley to John and Maria Gisborne, Friday 10 July 1818 ((in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, p. 604)
We have ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on the top of the mountains: the road, winding through forests, and over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, affords scenery magnificently fine. I cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though vainly, come and see. I take great delight in watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and the growth of the thunder showers with which the moon is often overshadowed, and which break and fade away towards evening into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away fast; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over the rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the pale summer lightning which is spread out every night, at intervals, over the sky. No doubt Providence has contrived these things, that, when the fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl may see her way home.
Percy Shelley to Thomas Love Peacock, Saturday 25 July 1818 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, p. 606)
In the middle of the day, I bathe in a pool or fountain, formed in the middle of the forests by a torrent. It is surrounded on all sides by precipitous rocks, and the waterfall of the stream which forms it falls into it on one side with perpetual dashing. Close to it, on the top of the rocks, are alders, and above the great chestnut trees, whose long and pointed leaves pierce the deep blue sky in strong relief. The water of this pool, which, to venture an unrythmical paraphrase, is “sixteen feet long and ten feet wide”, is as transparent as the air, so that the stones and sand at the bottom seem, as it were, trembling in the light of noonday. It is exceedingly cold also. My custom [is] to undress, and sit on the rocks, reading Herodotus, until the perspiration has subsided, and then to leap from the edge of the rock into this fountain—a practice in the hot weather excessively refreshing. This torrent is composed, as it were, of a succession of pools and waterfalls, up which I sometimes amuse myself by climbing when I bathe, and receiving the spray over all my body, whilst I clamber up the moist crags with difficulty.
- Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, Monday 15 June 1818 (in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, p. 72)
When I came here I felt the silence as a return to something very delightful from which I had been long absent. We live here in the midst of a beautiful scene and I wish that I had the imagination and expressions of [a] poet to describe it as it deserves and to fill all with an ardent desire to visit it—We are surrounded by mountains covered with thick chestnut woods—they are peaked and picturesque and sometimes you see peeping above them the bare summit of a distant Appenine[.] vines are cultivated on the foot of the mountains—The walks in the woods are delightful; for I like nothing so much as to be surrounded by the foliage of trees only peeping now and then through the leafy screen on the scene about me—You can either walk by the side of the river or on commodious paths cut in the mountains, & for ramblers the woods are intersected with narrow paths in every direction […] we see the fireflies in an evening—somewhat dimmed by the brightness of the moon.
- Percy Shelley to William Godwin, Saturday 25 July 1818 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, p. 609)
I have been constantly occupied in literature, but have written little—except some translations from Plato, in which I exercised myself, in the despair of producing anything original. The “Symposium” of Plato, seems to me one of the most valuable pieces of all antiquity; whether we consider the intrinsic merit of the composition, or the light which it throws on the inmost state of manners and opinions among the ancient Greeks. I have occupied myself in translating this, and it has excited me to attempt an Essay upon the cause of some differences in sentiment between the Ancient and Moderns, with respect to the subject of the dialogue.
"Rosalind and Helen," and "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," I found among his papers by chance; and with some difficulty urged him to complete them (I, p. xi).
Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the Baths of Lucca. Thence Shelley visited Venice, and circumstances rendering it eligible that we should remain a few weeks in the neighbourhood of that city, he accepted the offer of Lord Byron, who lent him the use of a villa he rented near Este; and he sent for his family from Lucca to join him (III, p. 160).
Illustrations:
Evangelina Whipple, A Famous Corner of Tuscany, London, Jarrods, 1928, p. 184.
References
Burlamacchi, Maurizio, Le antiche case del Bagno alla Villa in terra di Lucca, Firenze, Seeber, 1969.
Cherubini, Marcello e Vittorio Landucci (a cura di), L’esperienza di Michel de Montaigne ai Bagni della Villa, Bagni di Lucca, Fondazione Michel de Montaigne, 2011.
Shelley, Mary (ed.), The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, London, Moxon, 1839, 4 vols.
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, ed. M. Shelley, London, Moxon, 1839, 4 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. R. Ingpen, London, Bell and Sons , 1914, 2 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. R. Ingpen and W.E. Peck, London, Bell, 1965, 10 vols.
Whipple, Evangelina, A Famous Corner of Tuscany, London, Jarrods, 1928.
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Author:
Roberta Ferrari
Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics
University of Pisa
Ultimo aggiornamento
02.04.2025