Cor Cordium

Been making a few variations of the same thing and am kinda tempted to get it tattooed cuz intrusive thoughts be circling-

Locks of hair from Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron, next to portraits of them taken from life:

this transcript of a percy shelley letter will remain the funniest thing ever to me because it’s so obvious that whatever happened at byron’s palace was torn out on purpose to protect their reputations

Source: Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Ingpen, vol 2 ——— p.s. the beach convo shelley mentions was turned into his poem julian and maddalo - as this copy mentions in the notes!

Haven’t drawn anything in a long time. Currently down with the flu so have some Geneva Idiots

3 idiots

Forever mourning the fact that Percy and Mary Shelley were trying to talk Lord Byron into living with them, Claire, and their children in 1818 at the famous Villa Pliniani on Lake Como to recreate their summer of 1816 vacation together at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. The plans died a sad death because the Shelleys failed to secure a rental contract & then the whole squad got into a fight because of the Byron/Claire breakup + custody battle... but just think… we literally almost had an intentional sequel to the Diodati/Frankenstein/Vampyre summer… just imagine what could have been…!

source: Percy Shelley’s letters to Lord Byron in 1818 from Complete Works of Shelley: Letters 1812-1818, ed. by Roger Ingpen, via Google Books

source: Percy Shelley’s letters to Lord Byron in 1818 from Complete Works of Shelley: Letters 1812-1818, ed. by Roger Ingpen, via Google Books

source: Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour, via Internet Archive

source: images of the Villa Pliniani on Lake Como taken from Google Images

also i’m now dying at the realization that polidori wasn’t invited (because they all hated him RIP)… remembering this excerpt from mary shelley’s geneva era recollections in thomas moore’s “life of byron” —

meanwhile at the villa diodati on lake geneva in the cold stormy summer of 1816

today in "what the fuck caused op to turn reblogs off"

soo uhhm…would y’all be interested in a geneva squad pirate/merfolk au drawing that I might have already finished or should that one better stay in the drafts??

Any positive interaction with this and I‘ll unleash my cringe upon ye.

The people and a few rats in a trench coat have spoken.

These fetching pirates have come to steal your treasure⚔️⚓️🧜🏻‍♂️

Hope you like it. Drawing Percy with a fishtail certainly felt cathartic <3 Also I had the idea that Byron uses his golden leg splint to store a bedazzled sword in it or sth✨ This whole headcanon came together while I was bored during a lecture and made the tiny doodle in the third pic :’)

tfw an episode of doctor who was a thousand times more historically accurate about the romantic poets than the actual mary shelley (2017) biopic despite having a plot about an alien robot creature trying to kill percy shelley

Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron, Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

Byron certainly had his faults but his friendship with Mary and his respect for her never fails to somewhat redeem him.

He understood her internal anguish when others interpreted her restraint as coldness. He even set her copying tasks to distract and concentrate her thoughts elsewhere. And her boldness? Byron loved it. When she requested preferred content to copy he agreed out of amusement.

It’s fair to say that Byron and the Shelleys’ had rough patches (and the mess with Claire), but the sustained level of kindness & genuine friendship he showed after Percy’s death is significant

I mean, Mary kept a lock of his hair in her dressing case. The only others high enough in her affections for that were Percy, their children, and her mother!!!

Y’all mind if I add this paragraph from the biography by Miranda Seymour for good measure? I stumbled upon this while doing research for a scientific paper I’m currently writing and I might’ve cried <3