Sophia Stacey

Sophia Stacey (1791–1874) was a friend of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, to whom he dedicated the Ode which begins:

Thou art fair, and few are fairer,
Of the nymphs of earth or ocean,
They are robes that fit the wearer -
Those soft limbs of thine whose motion,
Ever falls and shifts and glances
As the life within them dances''. The full version can be found in any complete collection of the poet's works.

Born in Maidstone, the county town of Kent, to a prosperous local businessman and sometime mayor, Sophia lost both her parents quite young and spent three years of her youth living with a Mr and Mrs Charles Parker. Mrs Parker was Shelley's aunt but there is no record Sophia had ever met him before this time. Apparently an attractive and musical girl with some fortune, she did not marry young. All portraits of her show very strong eyes. She was also slightly older than the poet; many writers have assumed she was quite young.

In 1819 she set out on a grand tour of Europe with an older companion, Corbet Parry-Jones (to be described by Mary Shelley as 'an ignorant little Welshwoman'). In November they reached Florence where the Shelleys were living. They called on him at his pensione on the Via Valfonde. Striking a rapport, the two women moved into the same pensione. Mary Shelley was heavily pregnant and soon after their arrival gave birth to a son. Sophia is credited with suggesting he be named after his natal city: Percy Florence Shelley. (The following year an English girl born in the same city was also named after it and so, from Florence Nightingale, it became an established English girl's name.) Over about two months the poet showed Sophia around the city while she would play the harp and sing his verses. There is no evidence of the relationship becoming more than platonic. He wrote and gave her the Ode.

Shortly after Christmas, Sophia and Corbet left Florence. At the parting Shelley gave Sophia a notebook with a number of verses inside. They went to Rome where Sophia received a lengthy letter from Mary with the Ode to a Faded Violet inscribed on the back by Shelley. They never met again; he drowned two years later.

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