The Romantics of Villa Diodati

in the episode description. But of course the best possible support is just listening to the podcast, and you don't need to do any of that. In April eighteen fifteen, the word world bore witness to one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in human history when Mount Tambora, centered on the Indonesian island Sumbawa, erupted. It's sent debris, gas and lava to decimate the surrounding area, cloaking the island

inhabitants in a two day long darkness. Tsunamis were triggered across the Java Sea and oceans of ash tore through forest and grassland. An estimated ten thousand people were killed instantly. Tambora's impact was felt far and wide. By the next year, a massive dust cloud had formed in the atmosphere, which climate scientists now believe was partially responsible for a great chill that swept across the northern Hemisphere. It led to

crop failure and famine, unrest, and migration. The period became known as the Year without a Summer, with Europe covered in fog and frost even through the typically warmer months. Take a description of the weather in Geneva, Switzerland, on May seventeen. Quote. The spring, as the inhabitants informed us, was unusually late, and indeed the cold was excessive. As we ascended the mountains, the same clouds which rained on us in the valleys poured forth large flakes of snow,

thick and fast. The sun occasionally shone through these showers and illuminated the magnificent ravines of the mountains, whose gigantic pines were some laden with snow, some wreathed round by the lines of scattered and lingering vapor. Others darted their dark spires into the sunny sky, brilliantly clear and azure. These are the words of the young Merry woolstone Craft Odwin as she documented her journey to Geneva alongside her soon to be husband, the poet Percy Shelley, their four

month old son William, and Mary's stepsister Claire Claremont. Also finding his way to Geneva was Claire's former flame, Lord Byron, England's most scandalous celebrity of the moment, whose trip to the country was less a vacation and more of an escape from the increasingly scornful public eye. Traveling with Byron was his personal physician, John Polidori, who had literary aspirations

of his own. Shelley and Byron were already fans of each other's work, so when the two parties crossed paths at the hands of a still love sick Claire, who was the one who casually suggested Geneva in the first place, it seemed only natural that they would rent accommodations near each other. The Shelley crew, not particularly well off, n did a modest house called the Maison Chapuis, located just below a rather lavish mansion rented by Byron Villa Diodati.

For days on end, the unseasonable reign was relentless, and the entire group was forced to spend much of their time together inside the villa. Their nights were spent discussing literary projects and debating philosophy. One of their favorite topics was whether or not human corpses could be reanimated. Mary later described herself as a devout but nearly silent listener of those debates between the men. At some point, Byron proposed a competition to pass the time. Everyone was to

try to come up with their own ghost story. From a contest among a reigned in a group of romantics, two new Gothic horror genres were born from the ashes of Tambora Row Monsters. I'm Dani Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. First things first, let's establish the players at Villa Diodati that summer. Let's start with George Byron. Where we meet George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron. Byron in our story, is not a particularly high point in his life.

Close friends would say that he was leaving England of his own volition. According to the Baron John Kim Hobhouse quote, there was not the slightest necessity, even in appearance for his going abroad. Those who weren't close friends would tell a very different tale. The eighteen twelve publication of his poem Child Harald's Pilgrimage made Byron a nearly instant literary celebrity. He was the darling of London society, a fixture at their parties and in the hearts and minds of women.

He was incredibly vain, likely fueled by his insecurities about his clubbed right foot, and he acted as incredibly vain men do. Despite his fame and title, Byron was not born well off. His father, the former British officer nicknamed mad Jack. Byron, had only married his mother for her money, and he squandered it all away quite quickly. Mad Jack then abandoned his wife and young son to fend for themselves.

After his uncle died without an air, Byron inherited his minor title of baron and all that came with it. But it was Byron's poetry that truly allowed him to gain access to society. A reputation came with his status mad,

bad and dangerous to know. In the words of Caroline Lamb, noble Blood alumnus and one of Byron's most famous ex lovers, or take the words of writer Amelia Opie, another one of the women that Byron charmed, quote such a voice as the devil tempted Eve with you feared its fascination the moment you heard it. At this point, however, the gossip surrounding Byron went beyond hedonism and womanizing. Byron's January of eighteen fifteen marriage to Caroline Lamb's cousin Annabella was

doomed from the start. Feeling trapped in monogamy, he began to act out as Caroline predicted Byron quote would never be able to pull with a woman who went to church, punctually, understood statistics, and had a bad figure within his circle. He became less secretive of past homosexual affairs and spoken innuendoes as to the nature of his relationship with his half sister Augusta. Just a year after they were wed, Annabella took the couple's infant daughter, Ada to her parents

home in Leicestershire. A few short weeks later, Annabella's father, Sir Ralph Milbank, wrote to Byron to formally request a separation. After that, rumors that have been contained within the In the Know literary circle began to spread across the city. The flames of these wildfires were in some part fueled by Caroline herself, who famously wanted to see her ex lover burn marital violence, adultery, incest, sodomy. Byron's public image

was becoming truly dangerous to know. Writing from London to Leicestershire, Augusta rather awkwardly informed her half sister in law of quote reports abroad of a nature too horrible to repeat. Every other sinks into nothing besides this most horrid one. In the same letter, Augusta quotes Byron's response to the rumors, or rather one of the rumors, quote even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruined to a man from which he can never recover. So which

rumor was Byron referencing. It's worth noting at this point that many historians believe the incest rumors to be true, and that Elizabeth Madura Lee, Augusta's third daughter is still likely thought to be Byron's. Despite its taboo, incest was not a criminal offense in England at this point, so it's actually more likely that it was the sodomy accusations that ultimately dissuaded Byron from protesting his role in the

divorce proceedings in court. Whether you believe Hobhouse that Byron was simply heading out for vacation, or whether you're more inclined to believe the considerable evidence pointing to the contrary, the fact is that in April Byron left England, never to return. He ordered a carriage modeled after Napoleon's, which had been famously captured as the general fled Waterloo just the year before Byron's exile. It's not hard to imagine

why Byron identified with Napoleon's indulgence and tragedy. As Byron once told a friend, quote with me, there is, as Napoleon said, but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous. Byron's traveling companion was his newly certified physician, twenty year

old John Polidori. It's unknown why exactly Byron invited Polidori, despite protests from Hobhouse, but there are several good guesses as to why the doctor accepted, one being the offer of quote no less than a sum of five pounds for an account of Byron's forthcoming tour from Byron's publisher, John Murray. Also on their way to Geneva, of course, were Mary and Percy Shelley. Mary wasn't technically a Shelley

at this point. While the couple had eloped nearly two years earlier, they wouldn't wed until December eighteen sixteen, after Percy's first wife ultimately committed suicide. Yes, when the famous lovers met, the twenty one year old Percy was already married to another sixteen year old girl, Harriet, with whom he had fathered a child. Percy was a great fan of Mary's father, William Godwin, and he would join the

family for dinner, eventually visiting nearly every day. Percy's anti Christian and pro free love views had drawn him to Godwin's famously antarctic works. At this point, young Percy had been kicked out of Oxford for his atheism and disowned by his wealthy father. He was living up to his childhood nickname Mad Shelley, given to him by bullies at Eton College for his head in the clouds attitude, his refusal to adhere to hazing traditions, and his sometimes violent

bouts of anger. Shelley even claims his own father once tried to have him admitted to a madhouse in Godwin, Percy sought both a mentor and a surrogate parent. Though Percy and Mary had actually met once before, uneventfully in eighteen twelves. When Percy came around again two years later, Mary was immediately smitten with his poems, his politics, and his quote wild intellectual, unearthly looks, as Percy's friend Thomas

Jefferson Hogg had described them. Neither Godwin nor Mary's stepmother approved of the Omans, so Percy and Mary would often sneak off together, namely to a local churchyard, St. Pancras Old Church. The churchyard was Mary's favorite spot, her retreat, where she spent an obsessive amount of time seeking peace and a connection with one woman buried there, her mother, the famous writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The Elder. Mary was one of the most prominent writers of her time and one

of the most radical. Her seventeen two treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Women is often considered the first English language feminist text. By the time Mary Wollstonecraft met Godwin, a fellow radical, she already had a daughter, Fanny, born from an affair with an American businessman. When Mary and Godwin got together and Mary became pregnant for the second time, they agreed that marriage would be best for the children, despite neither of them believing in the practice. Baby Mary

was born healthy, but her mother suffered complications. It was ultimately the result of unhygienic medical practices that Mary Wolstoncraft would not live to raise her daughter. She died of a bacterial infection just eleven days after giving birth. Though Godwin did not resent the baby Mary for the death of his wife, she grew up knowing that she was somehow responsible for her mother's absence. Still, Godwin kept his

late wife's presence in Mary's life. A portrait of her was hung above the stairs, where young Mary saw it every day, and her father would frequently take her to visit her mother's grave site at the same church where the late Mary and Godwin had been married not too long before. It's said that young Mary learned how to write her own name from tracing the engraving on her mother's headstone. In the words of literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert,

Mary's only real mother was a tombstone. As young Mary grew up, the grave became her place of solace, increasingly so after her father remarried. She would carry piles of books from her home and spend the day reading with her mother. Mary frequently reread her mother's own work, absorbing

her knowledge, searching for it. In herself quote, I conceived it to be the duty of every rational creature to attend to its offspring, Wollstonecraft had written in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in While wolf Stonecraft was not able to attend to her own daughter, Mary would recreate her presence as best she could. Bringing Percy to the grave, then, was the ultimate vulnerability, the ultimate invitation into her prior of it world. On Sunday, June fourteen, Mary brought Percy

to the grave and declared her love. He reciprocated, and it's notoriously believed that they consummated the relationship then and there in the graveyard, an inspiration to future Goths everywhere. While the story seems almost too Gothic to be true, we can assume that they did in fact sleep together for the first time that day in the graveyard or elsewhere, as Percy refers to the day in his journal entries as his true birthday. The couple eloped later that summer,

to the disapproval of Godwin. He still opposed marriage despite his own and was concerned with Percy's increasing debt. Though he didn't outright disown Mary, the relationship between father and daughter became distant and cold after Mary love for France with her new quote unquote husband. When the couple ran out of money, a then pregnant Mary asked her father for assistance, he denied her. In February of eighteen fifteen, Mary gave birth prematurely to a daughter, who would die

within a month. Mary was plunged into a deep depression and would consider herself haunted by the baby for years. Nonetheless, in January of the next year, she gave birth to a son and named him William, after her father. That summer, at the urging of her step sister Claire, the Shelleys decided to follow Lord Byron on a trip to Geneva. Of note is the fact that Claire was pregnant with a child rumored at the time to actually be Percy's.

There's no actual evidence of an affair between Claire and Percy, and we now know that the child in fact belonged to another free loving poet Lord Byron Lake Geneva was an ideal spot for a romantic poet. It was surrounded by vineyards and hugged by the silhouettes of the Alps snowy peaks in the distance. The crescent moon shaped body of water is the largest and deepest in Central Europe. Mary described it lavishly in her travel journal as quote

blue as the heavens, which it reflects. During summers when there hasn't been recent volcanic activity, the lake is warm enough to swim in. Situated on top of a hill, overlooking those heavenly depths and the stretching vineyards is the stately salmon pink Villa Diodati. The villa still stands today, its exterior largely unchanged from the time of the group's day,

from its teel shuttered windows to its expansive balcony. The privately owned it's still a habit for literary tourists to try to catch a glimpse of the mansion from nearby walking ways. This is a tradition that began in eighteen sixteen, when hotels started to charge English tourists to spy on the villa from telescopes across the lake. That's how famous

Byron and his friends were at the time. It said that people would sail by in boats hoping to peek at the women's underwear on the washing lines, or see anything to confirm that the villa was as debaucherous as it was in their imaginations. It was even deemed a quote league of incest at the time. Those words often

attributed to the prominent poet Robert Southey. There's no actual evidence for the nightly orgies that were rumored to be happening there, and there was even an outright denial from Byron. Quote so much for scoundrels southeast story of incest. Neither was there any promiscuous intercourse whatever. Both are an invention of the execrable villain Southey, whom I will term so

publicly as he deserves end quote. Still, the group's entangled web of romantic and platonic connections to one another, combined with the presence of the eager voyeurs across the lake, would soon contribute to an environment of claustrophobia. Lest we forget, thanks to the weather, they were quite literally confined to the house. It proved a wet ungenial summer and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house Mary

would later describe. She recounted that during these periods, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others, the nature of the principle of life and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated to ground Byron and Percy's wild imaginations was the medical knowledge of Polidori, who's due for a proper introduction in our story. Now.

John Polidori had never intended to study medicine, but his father forced him to follow the track he envisioned for his son, and he had enrolled him in the University of Edinburgh to study the science. Though John never stood up to his father, he resented his rigidity, which likely played a part in his hatred for both medicine and school. Over the course of his reluctant education, Polidori discovered a passion for literature. Still, he dutifully finished his schooling and

became a doctor at age twenty. At the time, however, in order to practice in London, a doctor had to be at least twenty six. It was during this waiting period that Polidori took the job of Byron's physician, which was offered thanks to a connection of his father. Their relationship was doomed from the start, each man self obsessed in his own way, but only one with the prestige to back it up and the current need for an

emotional punching bag. At one of Byron's last dinners with friends in England, Polidori had asked his new employer if he could read a bit of a play he had written. Byron agreed, if only to have the opportunity to play the role of mean girl and skewer Polidori's efforts for the laughter of the table. In another exchange, the doctor had asked the poet, what is there accepting writing poetry that I cannot do better than you? Byron Calmlier replied, first,

I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point, and thirdly I can give you a damned good thrashing. If you're feeling for Polidori right now, keep in mind that at least all of that would probably provide him good material later on, back to the villa, during one of those indoor stretches, the group began to read pieces from Phantasmagoriana, a French anthology of German ghost stories. It was this

collection that gave Byron his famous idea. We will each write a ghost story, he said, as Mary later recounted, Namely excluded from each was Claire, who cared less about writing and more about a certain writer. While the contest was a fun way to pass the time, it was also a desperately needed distraction from the growing tensions mounting in the house. Claire was determined to make the trip worthwhile to resume her affair with Byron. Despite his initial resistance,

Claire got what she came for. I never loved her, nor pretended to love her, Byron wrote, But a man is a man, and if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours, there is but what way? Classic Byron. Some sources report that Polydori became infatuated with Mary, who remained devoted to Percy and rejected his advances. As the doctor would recount, Mary instead saw Polidori as a brother. Percy, meanwhile,

was described as falling into a depression. He struggled with mental illness from a young age, and the claustrophobic environment was beginning to weigh on his psyche. For example, one dark and stormy evening, Byron read verses from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Christo Bel, in which a supernatural creature is disguising itself as a woman named Geraldine in order to

trick the titular character. One particularly relevant section reads, behold her bosom and half her side, hideous, deformed, and pale of hu A site to dream of, not to tell, and she is to sleep by Christo Bell. Percy fled from the room screaming in a fit of fantasy. As Byron described it, it was only when Pola Doory threw water in Percy's face and gave him ether, the anesthetic

of the time, that he calmed down. They say Percy had been haunted by visions of a monstrous woman whom some accounts describe as Mary with eyes instead of nipples on her breasts. Clearly inspired enough, the guests began to write and share their ghost stories. Byron and Percy went first, both presenting the beginnings of works that they would never finish. Percy story, which Mary remembered to have been inspired by

his childhood is now completely lost Byron's story. The fragment of a novel, however, can still be read in full. His story centered on a young man traveling in Turkey with an old her companion, the wealthy aristocratic Augustus Darville. The elder's health declines rapidly, and while the to rest in a Turkish cemetery, Darville asks his companion to tell no One of his impending death. The old man gives the younger a ring and asks him to perform a

ceremony with it, before turning black and instantly disintegrating. The end, the doctor hadn't managed to come up with anything worthwhile. Yet Mary, later recalled poor Polodori, had some terrible idea about a skull headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a keyhole. Mary, for her part, early on, was struck with a serious case of writer's block. I was asked each morning and each evening, I was forced

to reply with a mortifying negative. She wrote. Her devout but nearly silent listening to the scientific debates of the men would soon pay off, though, having made its way into her subconscious. One conversation in particular had the greatest impact. They talked of the experiment of Dr Darwin, who preserved a piece of Vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means, it began to move with voluntary motion. Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated. Galvanism had given token

of such things. Perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endowed with vital warmth. These images and ideas embedded themselves in her mind and birthed perhaps the most famous dream of all time. As Mary wrote, night waned upon this talk. When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. I saw, with shut

eyes but acute mental vision. I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts, kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, showed signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. By her account, it was right then and there, after opening her eyes in terror, that Mary Shelley began to draft Frankenstein. She recounts, I returned to my ghost story,

my tiresome, unlucky ghost story, I have found it. What terrified me will terrify others. And I need only describe the specter which is haunted my midnight pillow on the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words. That night, Mary Shelley read a passage to the group that began. It

was on a dreary night of November. As Frankenstein developed from ghost story to novel, Villa Diodotti remained in its DNA even beyond Victor Frankenstein's Geneva family origins and the number of scenes that take place at Lake Geneva itself. The year without a summer feels present in her descriptions of the natural world that Victor and his creature experience.

One of the very first sentences of the novel reads, this breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspired by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try, in vain to be persuaded that the poll is the seat of frost and desolation. It ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight the novel's protagonist, Victor Frankenstein's own

scientific interest from watching a storm as a child. In Frankenstein, the natural world is as fear inspiring as it is awe inspiring. It's a perspective that feels timely given Mary writing in the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster. While many have come to the conclusion that Mary identifies with Victor the scientist, the circumstances surrounding that summer way heavily in favor of Mary actually identifying more with the monster.

Remember the words of Mary's mother. I conceive it to be the duty of every rational creature to attend to its offspring. Mary's mother had died just days after she was born, and Mary had been all but abandoned by her beloved father because of her relationship with Percy. Like Frankenstein's Monster, Mary had become a lonely, wandering child, abandoned by her creator, Mary, her husband Byron Polidori. All of

them were aching for the attention of their fathers. Perhaps it came up in conversation one night, and Mary had silently agreed to herself. When it came to the conversations that we know took place. Mary's devout listening likely gave her not only source material but character inspiration. Each night, three men, all remembered in part for their egos, discussed reanimation of human life. Mary's character, Victor Frankenstein, who's torn down by his own hubris, is remembered for thinking that

he could play god. Speaking of those men, the second but most famous work to stem from Villa Dia Dotti was written not by Shelley, not by Byron, but by poor Polidori. He was intrigued by that unfinished piece of Byron's, and after the trip finished, he began to flush it out into a short story. Polidori story begins to about the same as Byron's two gentlemen traveling Europe, one dying of a series death and making the other swear not

to speak of it. In this version, however, we see the consequences of that deal, as our protagonist is shocked to find his dead friend alive and well in London and attempting to seduce his sister. There are some changes. Right off the bat, locals tell legends of vampires, and while our protagonist Aubrey doesn't make the connection. Mysterious, seemingly vampire induced deaths take place when his companion, the wealthy,

charming and suave Lord Ruthven, arrives. If you remember the Caroline Lamb episode we did on this podcast, the name Ruthven might ring a bell. Maybe not. It was a very long time ago, you see. It's the same pseudonym Caroline Lamb used for the Heartbreaker mail lead in her novel Glenn Arvin, which was a fictional account of her

affair with Byron. At an early point in Polodori's novel, the vampire Ruthven abandons Aubrey during their travels after seducing an acquaintance's daughter, Polodori often found himself abandoned by Byron in favor of Byron's new preferred companion, Percy Shelley. Ruthven is described as being deadly, pale, and dark haired. He has a compelling voice and is attractive to women whom

he sees as prey. It's not hard to imagine why Polidori saw Byron as a vampire plagued by scandal that was destroying the lives of those around him, treating the woman pregnant with his child as a tempting annoyance and channeling his distress into mocking Polidori. Byron was figuratively sucking the lives out of his friends. The Vampire did not end up being the revenge Polidori had hoped it would be.

It wasn't originally meant to be published at all, merely circulated among peers, but the manuscript ended up in the hands of New Monthly Magazine, where the editor rather presumptuously assumed that it was written by Lord Byron. It was published under the name The Vampire, A Tale by Lord Byron, and while it was eventually amended after Polydori's demand, the resounding success of the publication would mean the story would

forever be connected to Byron. Well. Polidori explained that it was Byron's initial idea to continue his fragment, with the protagonist finding his companion alive upon his return and making love to his sister. Everything else was of his Polydori's own imagination. Still, well into the eighteen nineties, the Vampire was included in collections of Byron's work. Still, it's polar Dory who we have to thank for making the vampire genre what it is today. Vampire fiction existed before Polar DOORI,

but they were grotesque creatures. The byronic Lord Ruthven was dark and seductive, like the vampires we know and love today. There may not have been the Vampire without Byron's fragment, but without the vampire, we wouldn't have Dracula, or Carmela or Twilight. So who won the ghost story contest? No winner was formally declared, but we have to hand the title to the two underdogs who not only created the scariest monsters, but pioneered two literary genres. That's the story

of Villadia Datti. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear more about very important work that was also created during the Year Without a Summer. In eighteen sixteen, the nineteen year old composer Franz Schubert was hard at work. In that year alone. He produced two symphonies, choral music and chamber works that dark and rainy summer when our romantic poets were writing their ghost stories. Schubert had also

been inspired by the weather in a bed in. The Guardian argues that quote, almost all of his songs reflected not only the wandering, wondering and passionate romanticism of the age, but also the coldness and darkness of this mysterious period. I personally recommended Symphony Number four in C. Minor, dubbed the Tragic by Schubert. The composer would soon write Prometheus, of course, by eased down the myth of the titan who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity.

Prometheus had been a prominent figure in art since the early days, but he happened to be of particular importance to the Villa Dear Dotti crew Byron published his epic poem Prometheus in eighteen sixteen. In eighteen twenty, Percy would publish one of his major works, Prometheus Unbound and Lest We Forget Mary. Shelley had actually given Frankenstein a longer title. The full title of the novel was Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart

Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M