Rambles in Germany and Italy

From the Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century, Italy was divided into many small duchies and city-states, some of which were autonomous and some of which were controlled by Austria, France, Spain, or the Papacy.

[6] Feeling ill, Shelley rested at a spa in Baden-Baden; she had wracking pains in her head and "convulsive shudders", symptoms of the meningioma that would eventually kill her.

[13] The group visited Liège, Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz, Frankfurt, Kissingen, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Salzburg, the Tyrol, Innsbruck, Riva, Verona, Venice, Florence, and Rome.

As Sunstein writes, "once started on Rambles, she worked fast and with pleasure, but her head and nerves were bad at times, and her eyes got so weak and inflamed that she wrote only until noon.

[37] All three parts are epistolary and cover a wide range of topics: "these include personal narratives of the difficulty of a journey, on her varying health, her budgetary constraint; comments on whether [John] Murray's guide-book advice as to hotels, routes or sights was reliable; her subjective responses to the pictures, statues, cities and landscapes she has seen; reports on her occupations and those of her companions; historical disquisitions on such topics as the Tyrolean struggle against Napoleon, or the origins of the Carbonari; and authoritative analysis of the present and future state of Italian literature.

"[38] In twelve conversational letters written in the first person, Mary Shelley charts her travels through Europe during 1840 and her reflections on accommodations, scenery, peasants, economic relationships between the classes, art, literature, and memories of her 1814 and 1816 journeys (recorded in History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)).

There I left the mortal remains of those beloved—my husband and my children, whose loss changed my whole existence, substituting, for happy peace and the interchange of deep-rooted affections, years of desolate solitude, and a hard struggle with the world; which only now, as my son is growing up, is brightening into a better day.

Strange and indescribable emotions invaded me; recollections, long forgotten, arose fresh and strong by mere force of association, produced by those objects being presented to my eye, inspiring a mixture of pleasure and pain, almost amounting to agony.

But to adorn that home with recollections; to fly abroad from the hive, like a bee, and return laden with the sweets of travel—scenes, which haunt the eye—wild adventures, that enliven the imagination—knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging, deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel.

[42]Briefly passing through a quick succession of German cities by railway, carriage, and boat, the group arrives at Kissingen, where they decide to remain for a month for Shelley to "take the cure" at the bath.

After leaving Kissingen, the group travels through the area around Weimar, seeing sights associated with Martin Luther and the writers Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe.

Through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Continental travel was considered educational: young, aristocratic gentlemen completed their studies by learning European languages abroad and visiting foreign courts.

[44] In the early seventeenth century, however, the emphasis shifted from classical learning to a focus on gaining experience in the real world, such as knowledge of topography, history, and culture.

[45] The Grand Tour was celebrated as educational travel when it involved exchanging scientific information with the intellectual elite, learning about other cultures, and preparing for leadership.

However, it was condemned as trivial when the tourist simply purchased curio collectibles, acquired a "superficial social polish", and pursued fleeting sexual relationships.

[45] During the Napoleonic Wars, the Continent was closed to British travellers and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals such as Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, who scorned its aristocratic associations.

[45] Young Romantic writers criticised its lack of spontaneity; they celebrated Madame de Staёl's novel Corinne (1807), which depicts proper travel as "immediate, sensitive, and above all [an] enthusiastic experience".

By 1848, Murray had published 60 such works, which "emphasised comprehensiveness, presenting numerous possible itineraries and including information on geology, history, and art galleries".

While Murray's guidebooks, for example, were generally apolitical, Shelley argues in the preface to Rambles that the uniqueness of her work is in its portrayal of the Italian people from "a political point of view".

[54] Unlike Augustus Bozzi Granville's The Spas of Germany (1837), which exudes a Victorian respect for order, political authority, and careful documentation, Shelley focuses on her own reactions to these experiences.

Wollstonecraft is described as asking "men's questions" when she is curious about her surroundings and both Lady Morgan's and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's travel narratives received hostile reviews because they discussed political issues.

[62] Shelley's stated aim in Rambles is to raise awareness of the political situation in Italy and to convince readers to aid the revolutionaries in their fight for independence.

[64] On a general level, she articulates an "opposition to monarchical government, disapproval of class distinction, abhorrence of slavery and war and their concomitant cruelties" similar to that in her historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830).

[74] In writing about the Italian situation, Shelley is also advocating a general liberal agenda of rights for the working and middle classes, which had been crushed by the Reign of Terror and Napoleon.

How sad a thing is human society: yet ... it warms my heart when I find the individuals that compose a population, poor, humble, ignorant, misguided, yet endowed with some of the brightest gifts of our nature, and bearing in their faces the stamp of intelligence and feeling.

In her earlier travels, she had described the Germans as rude and disgusting; in 1842, she wrote to her half-sister Claire Clairmont, "I do dislike the Germans—& never wish to visit Germany again—but I would not put this in print—for the surface is all I know.

[80] In her History of a Six Weeks' Tour, she had paused several times to discuss the effects of war and she does so again with her description of the Hessians in Rambles:[81] When we read of the Hessians in the American war, we have a vague idea that our government called in the aid of foreign mercenaries to subdue the revolved colonies; an act which roused Lord Chatham to exclaim in the House of Peers, "If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms, never—never—never!"

We censure the policy of government, we lament the obstinacy of George III, who, exhausting the English levies, had recourse to 'the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder;' and 'devoted the Americans and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty.'

[91] Connecting these deep feelings to writings by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Thomas Holcroft, she argues that intense emotion and environment are intertwined, contending that maternal grief is sublime.

[96] Separating Shelley's travel memoir from the new guidebooks and handbooks, reviews such as that from the Atlas, praised her "rich fancy, her intense love of nature, and her sensitive apprehension of all that is good, and beautiful and free".

Color photograph of snow-capped mountains in the background with green hills in the foreground
Mary Shelley wrote of the Simplon Pass : "There was a majestic simplicity that inspired awe; the naked bones of a gigantic world were here." [ 1 ]
Giuseppe Mazzini . His thoughts influenced many politicians of a later period, among them Woodrow Wilson , David Lloyd George , Mahatma Gandhi , Golda Meir and Jawaharlal Nehru . [ 2 ]
Color photograph of Percy Shelley's flat, rectangular, marble tombstone, which reads "Percy Bysshe Shelley Cor Cordium Natus IV Aug MDCCXCII [Ob]iit VIII Jul MDCCCXXI[I] Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea change / Into something rich and strange."
Mary Shelley spent time mourning Percy Bysshe Shelley at his tomb in Rome.
Map showing routes of Shelley's European trips. 1840 trip begins in Brighton, proceeds to Dover, crosses the Channel to Calais, proceeds south to Paris, east Metz, north to Coblenz, east to Frankfurt, south to Freiburg, south to Milan, west to Lyons, and north to Paris and Calais. 1842–43 trip begins in Southampton, proceeds to London, crosses the Channel to Antwerp, proceeds southeast to Frankfurt, northeast to Berlin, south to Prague, Salzburg, Padua, Rome, and Naples.
Blue dots and line indicate the 1840 trip; red dots and line indicate the 1842–43 trip; purple dots and line indicate places visited on both trips.
Nativity scene with angels and cherubs in the upper left-hand corner. Light is emanating from the center of the picture, where the Christ child is positioned, creating shadows and light all around the central group of Mary and the shepherds. Joseph and some animals are in the background.
Shelley on Correggio's Nativity : "When, by the drawing down of the blinds, we were left nearly in darkness, the effect on this picture was miraculous. The child lay in living beams, which seemed to emanate from a focus, and spread rays of light around. I could not have believed that any coloured canvas could have shown such glowing radiance." [ 41 ]
Left-looking half-length painted portrait of a woman in the early stages of pregnancy in a white dress
Mary Wollstonecraft 's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark strongly shaped her daughter's Rambles .
Full-length painted portrait of a woman sitting at a table, writing, and leaning on her hand. There are roses on the table, which is covered with a red, velvet cloth. She is wearing a dark green dress, which reveals her bosom. She has short, brown curls.
Lady Morgan 's Italy was one of the political travel narratives that influenced Shelley's.
Painted portrait of a man seated in a chair, wearing a 19th-century suit, with a black jacket, white shirt, and brown trousers. He has short brown hair and is sitting in front of a brown background.
Alessandro Manzoni is one of the Italian writers Shelley praises in her celebration of Italian culture.
Half-length painted portrait of a woman wearing a black dress, sitting on a red sofa. Her dress is off the shoulder, exposing her shoulders. The brush strokes are broad.
Mary Shelley undertook a pilgrimage to visit the sites of her youthful freedom in Italy.
Page reads "Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. By Mrs. Shelley. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street."
Title page from the first edition of Rambles