[SHELLEY (PERCY BYSSHE)] FILICAJA (VINCENZO DA)

Poesie toscane, 2 vol., INSCRIBED BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY TO CLAIRE CLAIRMONT, Venice, Vitarelli, 1812

Footnotes

INSCRIBED BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY TO CLAIRE CLAIRMONT - HIS WIFE'S STEPSISTER AND THE MOTHER OF BYRON'S CHILD. It was Claire who brought Percy and Mary Shelley to Byron in Lake Geneva, in the famous summer of 1816. Books with Shelley presentation inscriptions are exceptionally rare, the present example embodying his intense connection to one of the two most important women in his life.

Clara Clairmont (1798-1879), known as Claire, was the illegitimate child of Mary Jane de Vial, calling herself Mrs Clairmont, and Sir John Lethbridge. When Mary Clairmont married William Godwin in 1801, Claire became the stepsister of his daughter Mary.

Several years later, in 1814, Claire accompanied Mary in her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley to the continent. After Claire returned to England she initiated, in March or April 1816, a liaison with Lord Byron. "She introduced Mary Godwin to Byron and then arranged to draw Shelley and Mary Godwin to Byron's neighbourhood on Lake Geneva in that summer, where Shelley and Byron began their lifelong literary relationship and Mary Godwin began Frankenstein. During this summer Claire Clairmont discovered that she was pregnant by Byron. The Shelley party returned on 8 September to England, where Claire Clairmont gave birth on 12 January 1817 to Clara Allegra (1817–1822)...

"In March 1818 the Shelley party set out for Italy, and Claire Clairmont allowed Allegra to be taken to Byron in Venice, with the understanding that the child should not be separated long from one or the other of her parents" (ODNB). A scandal about another baby, born in Naples to unclear parentage, led to Byron placing Allegra out of Claire's reach in the convent of Bagnacavallo where, as her mother had predicted, she died, on 19 April 1822. Shelley himself would die at sea in a storm later that year, on 8 July.

The nature of Shelley's relationship with Claire has long been debated. Certainly, the poem he wrote for her in 1817, 'To Constantia Singing', burns with longing:

    My heart is quivering like a flame:
    As morning dew that in the sun dies,
    I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

It is likely that the present volumes were a present for Claire's twenty-third birthday on 27 April 1821. Their author, Vincenzo da Filicaja (1642-1707), was a lyric poet beloved by Shelley and his circle. Poesie toscane was particularly suitable for Claire, who had made Florence her home. Filicaja's most famous sonnet, included in the present collection, is perhaps 'Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte', translated and included by Byron in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' ("Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast / The fatal gift of beauty"), whilst Mary Shelley included a brief biography of de Filicaja in her Italian and Spanish Lives.

We have traced only 9 books with Shelley's presentation inscriptions, of which at least 6 are in institutions:

1. Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) "Thos Medwin - / a present from / one of the authors", probably Shelley but conceivably his sister and co-author Elizabeth; NYPL.
2. Queen Mab (1813) to "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, P.B.S."; Sotheby's, August 1879; Brayton Ives; Huntington Library.
3. A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813) "To John Grove Esq.r / from the author"; NYPL.
4. Alastor (1816) "To Mr. [Edward] Hookham / with the Author's Compts"; Christie's New York, 18 November 1988, lot 315; present location unknown.
5. Laon and Cythna (1818) "From the Author"; Christie's New York, 15 December 2005, lot 525; present location unknown.
6. Cenci (1819) to "J[ohn]. Taaffe Esqr"; NYPL.
7. Adonais (1821) "To my dear friend Leigh Hunt / PBS"; Christie's New York, 9 October 2001, lot 106; present location unknown.
8. Adonais (1821) to Thomas Love Peacock; BL.
9. Adonais (1821) to Sir Charles Hyde; Huntington Library.

- To which we can now add a tenth, Claremont's Poesie toscane.

Provenance: Claire Clairmont (1798-1879); William Francis Spencer Ponsonby, 1st Baron De Mauley (1787-1855), arms on covers. Ponsonby's sister, the novelist Lady Caroline Lamb, also had a love affair with Byron, famously describing him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"; his son Ashley Ponsonby (1831-1898); his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, 4-8 May 1897, lot 319, sold to "Ridler" (presumably William Ridler, London bookseller, fl. 1877-1904); Henry Beckles Willson (1869-1942), Canadian historian and journalist.