Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
"Her appearance," says Mr Hunt, "might have reminded an English spectator of Chaucer's heroine: Madame Guiccioli, who was at that time about twenty, was handsome and lady-like, with an agreeable manner, and a voice not partaking too much of the Italian fervour to be gentle.
On February 8 Shelley started, with Williams, to seek for houses in the neighbourhood of Spezzia; the idea being that the Shelleys, the Williamses, Trelawny and Captain Roberts, Byron, Countess Guiccioli and her brother, should all spend the summer there, although Mary feared the party would be too large for unity.
The celebrity of Lord Byron's attachment would certainly make her a very desirable acquaintance were she much less pretty than she really is, and I am told her drawing-room is thronged with lovers of all nations contending for a preference which, having once been given, should be buried, I think, for ever. A little later he has himself been introduced to the Guiccioli, and he describes an interview which he has had with her, when the conversation turned upon her friendship with Shelley.
The palace was certainly pleasanter than his gloomy house in the Strada di Porta Sisi, and the society of the Countess Guiccioli was rather a stimulus than otherwise to his literary activity.
The result upon these particulars was not just; all Lord Byron's Italian servants were banished from Pisa; and with them the father and brother of the Guiccioli, who had no concern whatever in the affair.
There is no reverse about him, however, and he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw. Then the conversation turned upon Byron, and Willis asked if Lady Blessington had known La Guiccioli. 'No; we were at Pisa when they were together, she replied. 'But though Lord Blessington had the greatest curiosity to see her, Lord Byron would never permit it.
That the character of Myrrha was also drawn from life, and that the Guiccioli was the model, I have no doubt.
A little later, on occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish against his daughter Ada seeing his portrait. In March he sat, along with La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini.
The Guiccioli was to him a Myrrha, but the Carbonari were around, and in the controversy, in which Sardanapalus is engaged, between the obligations of his royalty and his inclinations for pleasure, we have a vivid insight of the cogitation of the poet, whether to take a part in the hazardous activity which they were preparing, or to remain in the seclusion and festal repose of which he was then in possession.
Near by is the house where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records. The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron; and, I should judge, hold his memory in something like affection. The Palace Guiccioli, in which he subsequently resided, is in another part of the town. He spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferred it to any place in Italy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking