In the summer of 1816, poet Lord Byron rented a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It rained
for days. Byron was running out of ways to entertain his guests: fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; Shelley's wife, Mary; and Mary's half-sister, Claire, who had had an affair with Byron and was now pregnant with his child.
"We will each write a ghost story," Lord Byron suggested. Only Shelley's wife took the suggestion seriously. She went to her room and began writing. THAT is how Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
This delightful anecdote proves that although popular tourist attractions are enjoyable, it's sometimes the offbeat attractions that are more memorable. For Marty and me, this was especially true when we vacationed in Rome. We had visited the popular attractions and were ready to discover the unusual or lesser known.
Overlooking the Eternal City's world-famous Spanish Steps, there is a four-story yellow house that was built in 1725. This is now the Keats-Shelley House because two rooms on the second floor became English poet John Keats' home from late 1820 until his death in early 1821 at the age of 26. The house, now a museum and library, preserves the memory of Keats and fellow poet Shelley, both of whom lived and died in Italy.
The Frankenstein anecdote is one of many morsels of trivia that are revealed inside the Keats-Shelley House. I admit that I knew nothing about either poet, nor did I have any great interest in their poems or those of other poets of the Romantic Age (1789-1837), but this house-museum's guided and self-guided tours provides a window into the lives and passions of Keats, Shelley and Lord Byron, and I found it fascinating.
In 1816, Keats wrote his first great poem, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." In 1819, he wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In 1820, Keats and his caregiver-friend Joseph Severn left England for Rome. Keats was now near death from Tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his mother and brother.
In the Severn Room, there are portraits of Keats and his brothers that Severn painted, along with portraits of Keats' fiancée, Fanny Brawne and Romantic poets Leigh Hunt and William Wordsworth. A life mask of Keats and first editions of his poems are on display.
Keats spent his final days in bed, his only diversion being a window view of the Spanish Steps and Bernini's boat-shaped Barcaccia fountain. The circa 1820 walnut "boat bed" in the Keats Room is a replica of the one Keats slept in. Keats' death mask rests near this bed.
Devastated by Keats' death, Shelley wrote the great elegy, Adonais. He had already been acclaimed for his Prometheus Unbound. Percy Shelley's death was also premature and tragic. He drowned in 1822 at age 30 when his boat was caught in a storm near Livorno. He and Keats are buried in Rome's Protestant Cemetery.
Lord Byron's life story is more amusing. True, he died from a fever in 1824 when he was only 36, but beyond his fame for penning Childe Harold and Don Juan, Lord Byron was a notorious womanizer. I would describe him as a "pretty boy." Who knows how many of his illegitimate children were running around while spouting poetry?
The Salon in the Keats-Shelley House contains priceless artifacts: first editions, manuscripts, drawings, a sonnet about Keats handwritten by Oscar Wilde, an essay handwritten by Walt Whitman, a mask that Lord Byron wore to a Venetian Carnival and a letter written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who obviously adored Keats.
When I asked the curator, Catherine Payling, why she feels the house is important - especially for people who were never into poetry -- she had a simple but insightful answer: "This is a place of pilgrimage. Some people come here knowing that. Some people leave here knowing that."
Roberta Sandler is an award-winning writer/author. Her newest book is A Brief Guide to Florida's Monuments and Memorials, published by University Press of Florida. She and her husband live in Wellington, FL.
Editor's note: The Happy Traveler has been named the 2009 Best Online Travel Blog by the Society of American Travel Writers' Atlantic-Caribbean Chapter. Over 155 entries were judged by the faculty of the Journalism Department at the University of North Carolina. Congratulations to Roberta and Martin.