Almanac When I Damn Well Feel Like It-The Most Influential Literary Party Ever?
An Italian comic imagines the scene at the Villa Diodati as Mary Shelley begins to unwind her tale of horror.
On June 16, 1816 Lord Byron entertained a few friends at the Swiss home he was renting near the shores of Lake Geneva. He called the house the Villa Diodati after the family that owned it. Locals called it by an older name-the Villa Belle Rive.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron was just twenty-eight years old that year. The handsome young nobleman, characterized by a friend as “half mad and dangerous to know” had arrived in Switzerland after fleeing England and the end of his disastrous marriage to Anne Isabella Milbanke. He abandoned his wife and daughter Ada amid numerous sexual scandals and heavily in debt. He was traveling with his friend and physician John William Polidori, the latest in a series of male lovers taken by the omni-sexual Byron.
While residing in the Villa, Bryon met up with another literary minded young man, Percy Bysshe Shelley then twenty-one years old. Byron might have been sexually attracted to Shelley, to his fiancé Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin-or both. Shelley, like Byron, had abandoned his first wife and daughter and had taken up residence in Switzerland with the daughter of pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the political philosopher and London book dealer William Godwin. In the company of the young couple was Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who coincidentally was one of Byron’s former lovers and was pregnant with his child.
Byron invited the trio to join him and Polidori in the spacious accommodations of the Villa Diodati. Despite the scenic, almost idyllic setting they could hardly enjoy the usual pleasures of an Alpine summer. 1816 was the Year Without Summer which capped off Europe’s last Little Ice Age. A combination of abnormally low solar activity and the earth-girdling ash from several volcanoes, including the mammoth eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia created an abnormally cold summer in the Northern Hemisphere marked by summer snow and frosts and crop failures from New England across Europe.
The circle of friends found themselves confined to the house by almost continuous cold, dreary rain. They entertained themselves with drinking, endless conversation-and perhaps various interesting to speculate upon combinations of sexual dalliance. Among the topics of conversation was the recent work of English philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin who was rumored to have conducted experiments which “re-animated” dead tissue and galvanism-the use of electricity to illicit muscle spasms or movement.
On the especially dismal evening of June 16 the party gathered around a roaring hearth fire. Byron enthralled the group with readings from Fantasmagoriana, a French edition of classic German ghost stories. Bryon then dared the company to come up with equally chilling tales of their own. The next day they reunited. Byron told a fragment of a tale, and others contributed theirs. But Mary returned with a more fleshed out tale of a scientist who inadvertently creates a monster from parts assembled from the dead.
Eighteen year old Mary Shelly would rework her tale into a novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus first published anonymously two years later in London, where it created a sensation. Considered both a Gothic novel and one of the first science fiction works, the book became the cornerstone of whole genre encompassing literature, the theater, the graphic arts, and eventually films and television.
Mary’s book may be the best remembered product of the evening, but it was not the only one. Byron’s contribution was an incomplete tale which became known as Fragment of a Novel in which he incorporated the vampire of Central European folk lore. Byron’s story fragment was eventually published as a postscript to Mazeppa.
Polidori was inspired by Byron’s tale to create his own story. The Vampyre was a short story published in a London magazine in 1819. The vampire in Polidori’s story is an English nobleman, Lord Ruthven obviously modeled on Byron himself. This story is credited as being the first of its kind to bring together all of the elements of what became the popular vampire genre-an aristocratic monster abd heavy sexual subtext,
Not long after the memorable party, the participants drifted apart. Byron was off to Venice and Rome and more scandalous sexual escapades while working on his epic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Claire Clairmont gave birth to Byron’s daughter, Clara Allegra after which he had no more interest in her. He did adore his daughter-but at a distance. He provided for her care and left her a substantial bequest to receive several thousand Pounds at the age of 21 on condition that she not marry an Englishman. The child, however, died at the age of 5.
Byron would achieve literary fame to accompany personal infamy as a libertine. He would avoid England and live mainly in Italy. He remained close to the Shelley’s and even co-founded a short-lived newspaper The Liberal with his fellow poet.
Byron flirted with various causes, including support of the Armenians against the Ottoman Turks. In 1823 he threw his lot in with another nation struggling for independence from Constantinople-Greece. With more than £4000 of his own money, he outfitted a Greek fleet and planned to help lead an assault on the Turkish fortress of Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. But he fell ill and died of an infection in Messolonghi on April 19, 1824. He was celebrated as a national hero of the Greeks and in his heroic death was at last fully embraced in England as well.
By that time Percy Bysshe Shelley was already dead. He had become a famous poet in his own right, but he and Mary suffered the loss of two children in their restless travels through Italy. Shelly drowned while sailing in the Mediterranean off the coast on July 8, 1822.
Mary went on to a much longer life and a career as a novelist and travel writer. She also worked tirelessly to see all of her husband’s unpublished work see the light of day. She returned to England with her surviving son Percy Florence Shelley where she struggled to support herself as a writer and on the meager stipend Shelley’s father reluctantly granted his grandson. She died in London on February 1, 1851 of a brain tumor following extended ill health. She was 53 years old.
Polidori also met an early death. He was dismissed as Byron’s companion and physician later in the summer of 1816 and returned to England. The publication of The Vampyre three years latter became an issue of controversy when the publisher attempted to attribute it to Byron. Despite the attempts of both men, the confusion persisted and interfered with Polidori’s own dreams of literary glory. He published a long allegorical poem The Fall of the Angels anonymously in 1821. Despite being heavily influenced by Byron’s style, the poem was not a success. Shortly after its publication in a deep depression and hounded by creditors, Polidori ingested Prussic acid-cyanide-and died on August 21, 1821. He was not quite twenty-six years old.
Of all of the participants of the party Claire Clairmont had the longest life, if an unhappy one. Shortly after giving birth to daughter Allegra, she surrendered custody to Byron and seldom saw the child again. A few years later, while both Shelley and his wife mourned the loss of their children, Claire either resumed an earlier sexual relationship with Shelley or commenced one after a long flirtation. The result might have been the birth of the child that Shelley registered as his daughter by a “Marina Padurin.” The child, Elena Adelaide was adopted at birth by both Shelley’s, but soon left in the care of others. The child died in foster care in 1821 at about 18 months of age. Mary Shelley denied rumors that the child was Claire’s daughter.
Claire supported herself in Europe as a governess, companion and secretary in Russia and Dresden, Germany before returning to England in 1836 where she earned a modest living as a music teacher. After her mother’s death in 1841 she returned to Europe living first in Paris and later in her beloved Italy. In 1844 she finally received a £12,000 bequest from Shelley after a contentious correspondence with Mary. The money allowed her to live comfortably, if modestly, for the rest of her life. She moved to Florence where she became a figure in the English expatriate community. She amassed and treasured a collection of Shelley memorabilia and clearly regarded the poet as the great love of her life. She died in the Italian city on March 10, 1871 at the age of eighty.