Ariel: Shelley in Italy

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), who with Byron and Keats is part of the trinity of major English romantic poets, achieved not only distinction in his craft but notoriety in his controversial behavior, disordered personal relationships, and strong opinions into a short life. And like Byron, he spent his final years in Italy. And like Keats, he died there, drowning in the Gulf of Lerici, just off the Ligurian-Tuscan Coast, at the age of 30.Matthew Arnold, the 19th century poet and ranking literary critic, summed up Shelley’s poetry and life as that of “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.” Historian Paul Johnson, while admiring the beauty and imaginative creations of Shelley’s poetry, believed that Shelley’s social-intellectual philosophy, with its single-minded criticism of materialism and its concern for the self, made him ruthless, cruel, and heartless. Ideas became paramount for him, and he put an ideal “humanity” above the frailties of real human beings with disastrous results. American philosopher George Santayana was also critical of the glaring faults in Shelley’s character, and while admitting that he was a poetical genius, wrote that Shelley was “impervious to experience… Being incapable of understanding reality, he reveled in creating world after world in idea…”Young Percy was born into an ancient and comfortable family and attended Eton, a premier “public” school, where he became interested in science, shunned the aristocratic sport of rowing (he never learned to swim - which would prove a fatal shortcoming), and excelled in Latin and Philosophy. His unconventional attitudes and individualism made him the butt of jokes and taunts from his fellow students, who called him “Mad Shelley,” although one friend he made at Eton, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, remained faithful to him throughout his life and after his death wrote his first biography.In 1808, Shelley fell in love with a cousin, Harriet Grove, by all accounts a beautiful girl. The relationship was serious, but the two saw each other infrequently and in 1811, after several years of correspondence, she was betrothed to another man. Shelley for a while was crushed and contemplated suicide, or so he said in a letter to Hogg.Having finished at Eton, in 1810 Shelley began his university studies at Oxford. He continued to be interested in science (one of his scientific experiments just about blew up his dormitory room. He also continued his philosophical studies (Voltaire, Rousseau Condorcet, Spinoza, and Goodwin), perfected his Latin, learned ancient Greek, and started writing Latin poetry. His philosophical outlook at the time was summed up in a letter he wrote to a schoolmistress, “…I am not an aristocrat or any ‘crat’ at all, but vehemently long for the time when man may dare to live in accordance with nature, reason, in consequence with virtue.”He wrote with Hogg a booklet, The Necessity of Atheism, arguing that neither history and reason nor our senses shows us that God exists. Published anonymously, the booklet was put on sale and Shelley mailed copies to many prominent personalities. A university investigation ensued, and both he and Hogg were expelled. Shelley’s father was appalled at his son’s behavior and beliefs and for a time cut his allowance; he later relented and agreed to give him £200 a year.At about the same time, 1811, Shelley had met one of his sister’s school mates, 16-year-old Harriett Westbrook, who became enthralled with Shelley’s unconventionality and fell in love with him. Shelley believed that her father, a retired tavern owner, was too strict with her and decided to “save” Harriet and the two. Her sister, Eliza Westbrook, then thirty years old, soon joined Harriet and the three and a servant named Dan Hill lived together for a while. Another young woman, Elizabeth Hitchiner, also lived in the household, but it is believed that she was there solely because of her political sympathies for Shelleys’ ideas. Dan Hill ended up in jail, arrested for putting up radical posters for his master, and was abandoned by Shelley, who fled rather than paying a fine for his servant. Meantime, Sir Timothy had again stopped his son’s allowance and would not even allow Percy to enter his home, upset at his son’s unseemly elopement.In 1812, Shelley, fired by the cry for social justice in William Goodwin’s Political Justice, embarked on a campaign of espousing social causes in England and in Ireland. Consequently, during the next four years, he and Harriett kept moving from place to place and lived in penury, engaging in illegal political activities, always a step ahead of both the authorities and creditors. Always short to funds, Shelley kept borrowing money, frequently on the promise to repay out of the inheritance coming to him when his father died, or from his own estate when he passed away.Shelley completed the long poem Queen Mab, in which the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) is depicted as “a slave even to the basest appetites.” (He indeed was!) The poem was printed but circulated only privately, often with the title page cut out, to hide the name of the author and the printer, as its public knowledge may have landed him in jail.In June 1813, Shelley became a father when Harriet gave birth to a baby girl, Ianthe Shelley (1813-76), followed in November 1814 by a boy, Charles Shelley (1814-26). The relationship, despite the fact that the couple had married, was already in trouble as Shelley started frequenting a circle of ultra radicals, paying scant attention to the needs of Harriet and the infants. Mad with his parents for not disbursing more money to him, he accused his mother, in writing, of having an affair with his sister’s fiancée and tried to suborn his sisters against the parents, blackmailing them to give him money.At the time he was also taking lessons in Italian poetry from a woman named Cornelia Turner, but perhaps more than just lessons… French-born Cornelia Turner real name was Cornelia Chastel de Boinville. Her father, Jean Baptiste Chastel de Boinville, an aide de camp to the Marquis of La Fayette and a friend of the tragic poet Andre` Chenier, died prisoner in Russia during the Napoleonic retreat. Cornelia had moved to England temporarily staying at her mother’s estate (Harriet Collins Boinville, whose ancestors owned plantations in Saint Vincent in the West Indies) when in 1812, she met and married lawyer Thomas Turner. Shelley stayed with her and her mother at Boinville House, while Mr. Turner was in London. At first he was alleged to be taking Italian lessons from Mrs. Boinville, but soon he was spending considerable time alone with Cornelia, raising many eyebrows. Shelley was showing himself to be a poetical genius with an evil streak, preaching morality and the brotherhood of man in the abstract, but being cruel and heartless in his personal relationships and familial duties.In July 1814, he told his wife, then expecting Charles, that he had fallen in love with Mary Goodwin and was planning to leave her and go to continental Europe with Mary and her half sister, Claire Clairmont. Shortly after, changing his mind on the details, he invited Harriet to join him, Mary, and Claire, and live all together “as friends.” Harriet refused to join this weird ménage` a trois; he became angry and when she sought legal help, he was furious. He then started to threaten her, while at the same time bombarding her with requests for money, clothes, and scientific instruments for his experiments. Harriet however fought back and Shelley was denied custody of the children, who became wards of the courts. While she was financially comfortable, as her father had given her an annuity, her life, despite her older sister’s help and kindness, had been unsettled by the ordeal. Shelley and his partisans later alleged that Harriet had taken lovers, that she was having an affair with an army officer named Smith, and that she was in an advanced state of pregnancy when she wrote Shelley a letter hinting suicide. Harriet, then 21, disappeared on November 9 and her body was found in the Serpentine Lake in London’s Hyde Park on December 10, 1816. She was pregnant, probably with Shelley's third child. The suicide note she left read: “My dear Bysshe, I could never refuse you and if you had never left me I might have lived.”To justify himself for his abominable behavior, Shelley wrote to his new paramour, Mary Goodwin, that Harriet had become a prostitute, lived with a certain Smith and had killed herself when he had left her; in this, he said, Harriet’s sister, who would thus be the sole heir to their sickly father, encouraged her! This was a lie, since in 1822 Eliza Westbrook went on to marry Robert Farthing Beauchamp, a wealthy former bank clerk who had inherited a fortune from one of the banks’ clients.Harriett’s may not have been the sole suicide for which Shelley may have been partly responsible. In 1812, while still married to Harriet Westbrook, spending time with Cornelia Turner and courting Mary Goodwin, he had made a play for another of William Goodwin’s stepdaughters, Fanny Imlay. She fell in love with him but he was very infatuated then with Mary Goodwin, and had also become the occasional sexual partner of another of her stepsisters, Claire Clairmont. On October 8, 1816 Fanny Imlay Goodwin committed suicide by taking an overdose of opium in a room she had rented at a rooming house in the resort town of Swansea. Some evidence indicates that Shelley may have courted Fanny as early as December 1812, as he was writing to her saying, “ …I venture to intrude myself upon your attention.” He may later have indeed seduced her, and in 1817 he wrote a poem about her:

To Fanny GodwinHer voice did quiver as we parted,Yet knew I not that heart was brokenFrom which it came, and I departedHeeding not the words then spoken.Misery--O Misery,This world is all too wide for thee.

Shelley, who was already well acquainted with William Goodwin and was in fact his philosophical pupil, entered the scene in earnest in May 1814, when he was 21 and Mary Goodwin was 16. The two courted in St. Pancras Churchyard by the tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft, while Mary Goodwin stepsister, Claire Jane Clairmont, stayed at a discreet distance. By June 26, they had engaged in a relationship (the first time apparently they had sex in the churchyard) and by July 6 Shelley told her father that he was planning to take Mary abroad with him. Goodwin’s reaction was not pleasant and he tried to keep the two lovebirds apart. In vain!Claire Clairmont, who had facilitated the affair, played go-in-between to keep the lovers in touch and the three fled together to the European continent, heading for Switzerland.Money was a problem. As usual, Shelley was broke and could only manage to get a £60 loan. They bought an old donkey to carry their luggage, but the donkey was at the end of its rope; they then exchanged it for a mule. Shelley sprained his leg and rode the mule, while the two young women walked. When they reached Switzerland, they only had £28 left and they decided to return home, crossing the channel back to England on credit. In London, Shelley had the gall to pressure his wife, Harriet, to give him £20 (which she did) to pay for the ship’s passage, which they had charged!As Goodwin refused to see or help them, the three lived together and Shelley likely engaged in a relationship with Claire, also proposing to Mary Godwin that she take up with his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg. She considered, but refused. By then, Mary was also pregnant, but the baby was born premature and died at two weeks of age.As psychological pressures on the trio were building, Claire left the household in May 1815. Shelley’s financial worries also lessened when his father agreed to give him £1000 a year, and Mary became pregnant again.Away from the Shelley’s ménage, Claire Clairmont, as we have seen, pursued George Byron and succeeded in seducing him. Now, through her, Byron and the Shelley became friends and all decided to move abroad to Switzerland. Mary had also had a new baby, whom they named William, after her father, hoping to reconcile with him; this child was to die at the age of four in Rome.In mid May 1816, Shelley, Mary Goodwin, Claire Clairmont, and baby William, arrived in Geneva. Byron arrived about ten days later, with Doctor John Polidori in tow, and the two groups rented separate villas on the shores of the lake, but socialized daily, and Byron and Shelley engaged in long philosophical disquisitions on such topics as “The Nature and the Principle of Life”. Sometime they went sailing in the lake and in June, Shelley had a close call. A sudden storm imperiled and just about capsized their small boat, and the two poets stripped and were ready to jump in the water. As Shelley could not swim, Byron told him to take hold of an oar and he would try to drag him ashore. Fortunately, however, this did not become necessary since the storm subsided.One night during the early winter, when the inclement weather kept them inside, after reading German ghost stories Byron suggested that they each write a scary story. Mary Goodwin developed the idea of writing a book on the subject and she finished it in May 1817. The book, written when she was 18, was Frankenstein.In Geneva, Claire Clairmont had resumed her relationship with Byron and became pregnant. Personal dynamics within the group resulted in damaging gossip in the lakeside community and rumors started to circulate that the poets and the women were engaging in group-sex. To avoid unpleasant repercussions, they decided to leave and in late August, Shelley, Mary, and Claire decided to return to England, while Byron and Polidori left for Italy.From September 1816 to March 1818, Shelley lived in England. As we have already seen, during this period, Fanny Imlay and Harriet Westbrook, his wife, committed suicide and, even though he was the sole surviving parent the laws denied custody of his children by Harriet. On December 30, 1816, less than a month from the discovery of Harriet’s body, Shelley and Mary Goodwin married and reconciled with Mary’s father, William Goodwin. Claire Clairmont also gave birth to Byron’s daughter, Allegra, and in September 1817, Mary Shelley delivered another baby girl, Clara.In March 1818, Shelley, his wife Mary, child William, baby Clara, Claire Clairmont, and baby Allegra again left England for Italy. Upon arrival in Milan, Shelley contacted Byron in Venice. Byron, who did not wish to further his entanglement with Claire, requested that her nurse bring Allegra to him. Shelley complied and the infant Allegra lived in the unsettled world of Byron’s Venice palace until Byron convinced the British consul to take Allegra in his household and care for her. When Claire Clairmont and Shelley found out that Byron had shuffled responsibility for his daughter to a third party, Shelley went to Venice to check on Allegra; Mary and her two children followed later and, during the trip, the one-year-old baby Clara Shelley, who had become sick, died.In November 1818, the Shelley visited Rome for a week and then moved on to Naples where they lived by the bay, on the Riviera di Chiaia, not far from the current location of the American Consulate General. To forget their sorrow, they played tourists, visiting Pompeii and seeing other sights.In February 1819, while in Naples, Shelley registered with the authorities the birth of a baby girl, allegedly born in Naples on December 27, 1818. He claimed that the baby, Elena Adelaide Shelley, was his child from a woman named Marina Padurin. Could it be the name he wished to give was Mary Godwin and the civil registrar official wrote it incorrectly? Subsequently rumors had it that Elena was Claire Clairmont’s child either by Shelley or by Byron, although Mary Godwin denied that Claire had given birth to a child in Naples. In all probability, the child was either a foundling Shelley had adopted to assuage his wife’s sorrow at the death of baby Clara, or the child of Elise, a long time nursemaid in the Shelley household. In fact Elise was in an advanced state of pregnancy when the Shelley arrived in Naples and she hurriedly married another of Shelley’s household servants, Paolo Foggi, in mid-January 1819. Paolo Foggi however could not have fathered the baby, as he had not met Elise until the fall of 1818. Was the child born of Elise by Shelley? By Byron, whom Elise had met in Venice? By another unknown man? It is still an unsolved mystery.The known facts, however, are that later Elise Foggi and her husband Paolo tried to extort money from Shelley, claiming that he had committed criminal forgery when he had registered the child in Naples as that of Marina Padurin and that Shelley took the threat seriously enough to hire a good lawyer.When the Shelley departed Naples for Rome at February’s end, inexplicably baby Elena was left in foster care in Naples, and she died on June 10, 1820, at about seventeen months of age. Back in Rome, grief kept pursuing them and little William died in June 1819.The Shelleys next moved north living in Livorno and then near Pisa, where they mainly resided until Shelley’s death in 1822.In Pisa, Shelley who was now getting tired of Mary, fell in love with a local girl, Emilia Teresa Viviani, who was the daughter of the Governor of Pisa and had been confined to the Convent of St Anna until her parents arranged her marriage. This remained a platonic love, but his poetic imagination was stirred and he wrote the love poem Epipsychidion. Probably he also continued his affair with Claire, who had moved back with them until, in the summer of 1821, she left and went to live in Florence.In November 1821, Byron and his lover Countess Teresa Guiccioli arrived in Pisa from Ravenna, and Edward Williams with his “wife” Jane, joined the social group. Edward E. Williams and his “wife” Jane Williams began to live with the Shelley. Edward William had been born in India and was an officer in the East India Army when he run away with the wife of a fellow officer, Jane Johnson, nee Cleveland. The two never married but Jane started calling herself Mrs. Williams. Thomas Medwin, a cousin of Shelley, who was also a poet and biographer and who eventually settled in Florence for many years, had introduced the Williams to Shelley.Edward J. Trelawny, a friend of Williams, also reached Pisa in January 1822 and became a close friend of Mary Shelley. Trelawny was quite a character. He had joined the British Navy at a very tender age and traveled as a sailor all over the world. He had then deserted in India and joined with some cutthroat pirates in the waters of Malaysia and Indonesia. Subsequently, he married in Madagascar but when his wife drowned, he returned to England, married again and fathered two children. Soon he divorced and took off for Italy where he became a friend of Shelley and Byron and proposed marriage to Claire Clairmont, who still in love with Byron, declined to join her fate to his.By now Shelley had started to spent time with Jane “Williams”. Jane played the guitar, sung well, and was extremely attractive. He became infatuated with her and wrote several poems praising her.For the summer, the Shelley rented Villa Magni in the village of San Terenzo, near La Spezia, and moved there from Pisa on April 26. The large villa, which had been built in the 16th century as a monastery, had been turned into a private residence. It was somewhat dilapidated, and stood isolated on the edge of the sea surrounded by woods below the looming mountains. It was a wild place that must have appealed to Shelley’s romantic nature, some three miles from the village and accessible only by sea or by a dirt path which crossed a torrent.The Williams moved in with the Shelley at Villa Magna in May. Mary, who was again with child and having a difficult pregnancy, became aware of her husband’s sexual interest in Jane and the marriage suffered serious strains. Depressed, at one point, she wrote, “I wish I could break my chains and leave this dungeon.”Only one of her children, Percy Florence Shelley, who had been born in Florence in November 1819, a few months after William’s death, had survived. Now in June 1822, the latest pregnancy was a disaster: she had a miscarriage and nearly died of bleeding until Shelley was able to stop it by having her bathe in a tub full of ice. But the marriage was at an end and Shelley wrote on June 18, “…I like Jane more and more…Mary does not (understand me).”Both Byron and Shelley had had sailing boats built in Genoa by Captain John Charles (Dan) Gawen-Roberts and the two had argued when Byron, at Trelawny’s suggestion, had wanted Shelley to name his boat Don Juan, after one of Byron’s long poems. Shelley instead named it Ariel, but Byron had insisted that the name Don Juan be painted on one of the large sails. The dispute over the name of Shelley’s boat had left the two annoyed with each other. Byron had named his craft Bolivar, after the South American liberator.Despite the fact that he was no salt water sailor - and, as we've seen, could not even swim - Shelley was a speed fiend and had Captain Roberts modify the 24-foot open-decked downsized American schooner to make it faster by extending the bowsprit and the prow, having a false stern added, and installing additional sails. These changes had certainly added speed to the craft but may have thrown the delicate balance between hull and sail out of kilter and making the vessel less than seaworthy in windy conditions and heavy seas. To prevent the vessel from capsizing when running with full sails, two to three and half tons of iron ore had been put as ballast on the bottom of the hull. The weight provided a certain amount of stability but made the craft’s water line too low.Shelley had extensive sailing experience in rivers or lakes such as the Thames, the Rhine, and Lake Geneva. His overconfidence was great and he believed he could handle the boat, despite the fact that he had had previous close calls three times: on the Rhine in 1814, on Lake Geneva in 1816, and in the Pisan Canal in 1821.The vessel had been delivered to him as originally constructed on May 16, 1822 by three British sailors, one of whom, the 18 years old Charles Vivian, remained behind working for Shelley as a boat boy. During the balance of that month, Shelley had sailed it constantly near Livorno with Edward Williams and Vivian. The refitting to make it faster had taken place between June 15 and June 28 and thus by the time Shelley sailed away with the craft on July 1, three days later, he had lacked the opportunity to assess properly its handling and seaworthiness in rough seas.On July 1 1822, learning by letter that his friend, poet Leigh Hunt, and his family had finally arrived in Genoa and were proceeding to Livorno, Shelley, Williams and Vivian sailed from Lerici to Livorno, a seven hours journey, to meet and greet them. They did so, accompanied them overland to Pisa, where the Hunt family took residence with Byron, and then returned to Livorno. Trelawny and Byron were also with the group on the Byron’s yacht Bolivar and at the last minute, before sailing back to Villa Magna on the Ariel, Shelley had borrowed fifty pounds from Byron.The Ariel with Shelley, Williams, and Vivian started on its last trip in the early afternoon of July 8 bound for Lerici, a 45 miles trip, which they hoped would bring them home before dark. Byron and Trelawny did not have the Bolivar papers in order and were told by the harbormaster to remain in port, while Captain Roberts, who was also staying behind, watched the Ariel disappear on the horizon through his binoculars. The Ariel and its occupants never arrived back at Casa Magni since the boat was caught in a sudden storm and probably sank in the early evening.Apparently, Shelley had been advised that a storm was brewing but had ignored the warning and at least one account claims that an Italian vessel had wanted to take them aboard but Shelley had refused help. Trelawny, who later kept writing about the accident and frequently changed his story, stated in 1875 that right after the Ariel left port, two feluccas followed them out of the harbor and when they returned to port they had with them some of spars from the Ariel. This led him to believe that the crew of one or both of the feluccas had rammed the Ariel on the open seas to steal the money Byron had lent to Shelley.Other conspiracy theorists believe that Shelley may have been murdered for political reasons, but the evidence for these versions is at best fragmentary. When the Ariel was finally found and salvaged under the direction of Captain Roberts two months later, it was noted that the starboard timber was broken, the gunwale was shoved inward, and the bowsprit was also broken, signs of a collision with a larger vessel. Yet, the money was also found on the Ariel, together with books, assorted papers, and some wine Shelley had purchased to give away as a present.On July 19, the bodies of Williams and Shelley washed ashore near Viareggio, now a beach resort, but then a small fishing village with a post stop on the “Via Reggio”, the “Royal Road.” Vivian's body was recovered on July 30. Natives, who found the bodies, apparently in advanced stage of decomposition, buried them covered with lime in the beach sand, where, since local law prohibited exhumation for fear of the spread of disease, they were to remain. The enterprising Edward John Trelawny, deputized by Mary Shelley, however, secured official permission to dig up the bodies of Shelley and Williams as long as they were burned on the beach right away.Williams was thus cremated on August 15; Shelley, in whose coat pockets were found a volume of Sophocles’s plays and one of John Keats’s poetry, was burned on a pyre the following day in the presence of Hunt, Byron, and Trelawny. Trelawny, singeing his hand, claimed to have retrieved Shelley’s heart from the flames, and Hunt subsequently gave it to Mary Shelley. It may, however, have been Shelley’s liver. As science informs us, this is the last body organ destroyed by fire.Shelley’s ashes collected by Trelawny were then transported to Rome for burial In the Protestant Cemetery. When Shelley had been in Rome he had visited this cemetery and had written, “It might make one half in love with death to be buried in such a sweet a place as this”.Since burial in the cemetery required special permission, the ashes were kept for a while in the cellar of the office of a British consular official until permission for burial was granted and he could locate an Anglican minister willing to conduct the burial service for an avowed atheist. The ashes were then buried in the new section of the cemetery, but Trelawny, who returned to Rome shortly after the burial, disliked the spot, purchased a new one in a better location and had the ashes reburied where they are now. Trewlawny had also purchased a spot for himself next to the poet and has a blank marble stone erected to be carved following his burial there.It was also decided that the remains of Shelley’s infant son William, who had died in Rome and was also buried in the cemetery, should be exhumed and reburied next to the father. Joseph Severn, the English painter who had come to Rome with poet John Keats, was tasked with this and he related that when the infant grave was dug, they found the remains of a person about five and half feet tall, rather than those of an infant. The grave was then closed and the remains of little William were never found. Thus, the stone with his name next to his father is a commemorative tablet, not a grave.Trelawny selected the wording to be carved in the marble slab above the spot where Shelley’s ashes were inhumed. They were taken from Shakespeare The Tempest:

Nothing of him that doth fadeBut doth suffer a sea of changeInto something rich and strange.AndCOR CORDIUM(Heart of Hearts)____Luciano Mangiafico is a retired U.S. diplomat who served, among many postings abroad, as consul in Milan and Consul General in Palermo.