Keats-Shelley Journal Feature: Nicholas Stanley-Price and Anna Mercer

This post is the seventh in a series presenting blog publications from the authors featured in the latest volume of the Keats-Shelley Journal, Volume LXV. In these short pieces, authors reflect on their recent work and dialogue with other scholars in the discipline. Below is a summary/response submitted by Nicholas Stanley-Price and Anna Mercer addressing Stanley-Price's article 'Shelley's Grave Revisited'. This series is curated by Lindsey Seatter, for the Keats-Shelley Association of America Communications Team.Author: Nicholas Stanley-PriceThe grave in Rome of Percy Bysshe Shelley immediately became a place of pilgrimage, as it still is today. The evidence of the cemetery’s own records, of visitors’ accounts during the nineteenth century, and of artists’ depictions of the grave contrasts markedly with the little attention paid it in scholarly studies of the poet.Shelley’s ashes, delivered to Rome after closure of the Old Cemetery where John Keats lay, were buried instead in the recently opened New Cemetery, following a funeral held on January 21, 1823. Six weeks later Edward Trelawny, outraged at the poet’s resting-place 'in a heap with five or six common vagabonds' had his remains transferred to 'the only interesting place', a nearby niche in the city-wall. Cemetery records allow us to identify Trelawny’s 'vagabonds' as members of the British landed gentry and a German painter. Moreover, they document how Shelley’s grave acquired a certain sanctity, in that the cemetery custodians kept its immediate vicinity free of other graves. In due course, only relatives of the sculptor William Wetmore Story managed to secure plots near the poet whom they so admired. Trelawny had ‘reserved’ for Mary Shelley the plot next to her husband but in 1844 it was used for a monument to a young Englishman. I argue that Mary Shelley, while visiting Rome the previous year, must have agreed to forfeit her 'reservation'.The many writers who visited the grave in the nineteenth century included Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Herman Melville and George Gissing who simply recorded their presence there, and others, such as Grace Greenwood, George Eliot and Henry James, who wrote movingly of their overwhelming emotions. The cypress trees planted by Trelawny feature in several artists’ depictions of the cemetery, as do the flowers and acanthus plants growing around Shelley’s plain slab.Despite, or because of, the sanctity accorded the spot, the centenary in 1892 of Shelley’s birth provoked controversy. The British Embassy intervened to prevent Onslow Ford’s sculpture of the drowned poet’s body being installed on his grave; and a dispute among Italian admirers of Shelley led eventually to the violent removal of a bronze wreath that had been installed there. By the centenary of his death in 1922 passions had subsided, the cemetery enjoyed legal protection, and a ceremony of local dignitaries solemnly marked the occasion.Respondent: Anna MercerNicholas Stanley-Price's article presents a history of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (d. 1822) grave and other aspects of the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome. Stanley-Price’s meticulous tracing of the grave's background, from when it was placed in what was the new side of the cemetery, to its 'hallowed status' today, is a fascinating tribute to Shelley's resting place, and includes careful research on the neighbouring graves too. It is poignant that Stanley-Price begins by explaining that Shelley himself had proclaimed the collection of graves that stood in the shadow of the Pyramid of Cestius 'the most beautiful and solemn cemetery' that he had ever beheld.Why was Shelley not buried close to his son William, interred in the original cemetery in 1819? William’s grave lies not far from the grave of John Keats (d. 1821). Protestant burials were halted in the old cemetery, and Shelley is to be found in the new cemetery despite Joseph Severn’s attempts to ensure an exception would be made for the poet. In 1823 the arrival of Edward John Trelawny leads to drama, or at least a typically dramatic reaction – Trelawny claims Shelley has been 'mingled in a heap with five or six common vagabonds'. As Stanley-Price explains, this was hardly the case. We learn of the others laid to rest, and how Shelley’s grave in the new cemetery was actually set apart from the other burials that occurred at a similar time.In the twentieth century, applications for nearby plots were overwhelming: 'By the 1930s, repeated requests for a burial plot near Shelley’s were jeopardizing its sanctity'. The director opposed inserting any new graves. Many admirers sought to be buried near the Romantic poets in Rome, and it is interesting that Shelley’s placement in the new cemetery meant that some achieved this – in contrast, one could not be buried near Keats’s grave.The space next to Shelley was offered to Mary Shelley by Trelawny. The question is raised as to why Mary did not take this plot. She returned to Rome and the cemetery in the 1840s for the first time since William’s death in 1819. Did Mary 'deliberately omit from her memoir an experience that was too painful to mention in print? Or did neither she nor Percy [her son] actually visit the two graves?'. There is the suggestion that the Trelawny problem may be the cause of her reticence, along with her grief and perhaps a longing to avoid painful memories.Later nineteenth century visitors to Shelley’s grave commented on its simplicity, and George Eliot described 'a spot that touched me deeply'. Henry James reflected: 'nothing could be more impenetrably tranquil'. As we learn of the grave during the centenaries of Shelley’s birth (1892) and death (1922), we also celebrate the involvement of the KSMA. When founded in 1909 the association pledged to maintain and protect the grave of Shelley, and those of Keats, Trelawny, and Severn. Now both corners where these Romantics lay continue to be cared for, providing a tranquil spot for many visitors on a literary pilgrimage. Stanley-Price’s article in the Keats-Shelley Journal is a celebration of the history of the monument to Shelley – a history fraught with changes and tension. The conclusion, reminding us of the KSMA’s commitment, indicates that now we can celebrate the sanctity of the spot for many years to come.