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Shelley visited Livorno in April 1818,
when he, Mary, Claire, three children, and
two female servants—Amelia (Milly)
Shields and Louise (Elise)
Duvillard—left London for the
continent . The party reached Milan 4
April, visited the Italian lakes, sent
Allegra and Elise to Byron on 28 April, and
visited Livorno (Leghorn) in May, where
they stayed in the house of John and Maria
Gisborne while the Gisbornes were in
England .
In June 1819, following the death of
William ("Willmouse") Shelley in Rome, the
Shelleys fled back to Livorno and stayed at
the Villa Valsovano. Mary was deep in
depression over the loss of her second
child within a year (her daughter Clara had
died in September of 1818). Shelley,
attempting to lose himself in work, wrote
The Cenci during that summer.
They would also return to Livorno in
1820, and stay with the Gisbornes once
more. Shelley wrote his “Letter to
Maria Gisborne” at that time.
Shelley's final visit, however, remains
the most tragic. On 1 July 1822, Shelley
and Williams sailed from Lerici to Livorno
to meet the Hunts. The two sailed back to
Lerici on 8 July, and disappeared. On 19
July, Trelawny identified their bodies, one
near Via Reggio and the other three miles
down the shore at Lericcio.
Livorno was perhaps the most frustrating
of the Italian sites that we explored. Our
attempts to communicate in English, college
French, and execrable Italian were
fruitless; no one could direct us to the
Villa Valsovano or the Gisbournes' Casa
Ricci. A day spent wandering through the
hills of Montenero yielded little except
the (admittedly magnificent) views Shelley
would have had overlooking Livorno.
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| We did, however, enjoy one small victory
when we accidentally stumbled upon Byron's
magnificent (and well-hidden) Villa Dupuy,
now a private home. From the top of
Montenero, one takes the small descending
road on the left (not the Via Byron) for
roughly a half mile. A bumpy, nondescript
dirt road on the left—the first one
encounters after leaving the town—leads
to the still-elegant villa and its exquisite
views of the surrounding countryside. One may
quibble with Byron's morals, but the man
certainly knew how to live. |
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UPDATE! Recently, Susan Milford typed
"valsovano" into her search engine and one
of the sites that came up was
www.oldandsold.com/articles08/tuscany-11.shtml.
This early-twentieth century article
locates the Villa Valsovano site "at the
end of the Via del Fagiano, just within the
Municipal wall: in Shelley's day it was far
outside the town." According to the
anonymous author, the villa was still
standing, although the porch at the top was
no longer glassed in. Milford found that
the Via del Fagiano does exist on MSN maps:
the road is a turn-off from the road
leading from Livorno to Montenero.
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