An historic property on the shore of Lake Geneva associated with the lives of Percy and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron is offered for sale for €2.7 million. A plaque on the house declares that Mary Shelley wrote some pages of Frankenstein there in April of 1816. Short of the known facts that Mary did not start Frankenstein until after June of 1816, and did not arrive in Geneva from Paris until May of 1816, the house is surely connected to the travels of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.

​The now custom designed four bedroom home with beautiful lake views of the Jura Mountains is located in Nernier, Haute Savoie France, on the southern shore of Lac Leman and dates back to 1739. In Percy Shelley’s journals, he reports that on his boating trip with Lord Byron as his companion to circumnavigate the lake while Mary remained with Claire in the house they had rented, one of their first stops was at Nernier. Percy had noted that Polidori was unable to join them on their trip, due to an ankle sprain. The trip continued to the Chateau Chillon on the Swiss side, which inspired Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon.

The present house at the time in 1816 was an auberge guest inn for travelers around the lake. It has been reconstructed into a modern four bedroom single family home on upper and lower floors, which had been owned for many years by a French family, who have decided to sell, now that children have grown and moved away.

The property is situated on the harbor’s edge in the little medieval village of Nernier, about twelve miles from the Cologny neighborhood where the Villa Diodati is to be found, and across the lake from the Chateau Coppet, where Shelley and Byron visited Madame DeStael. The house can be reached by road from Geneva along the lake, or a ferry crosses the lake from Nyon on the Swiss northern shore to Yvoire on the French south shore. The winter ski resort of Portes du Soleil is an hour’s drive away.

The house is described by the real estate listing with Leggett Prestige as having an entrance hall on the ground floor with an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area and a balcony with idyllic views across the lake. The first floor has an office area and lounge with a fireplace and another balcony. The second floor has a landing with a built-in double closet and two bedrooms, one with its own balcony.

At the time of Shelley and Byron’s stay there he described it in rather a different frame:

“Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the village of Nerni. After looking at our lodgings, which were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by the side of the lake. It was beautiful to see the vast expanse of these purple and misty waters broken by the craggy islets near to its slant beached margin. There were many fish sporting in the lake, and multitudes were collected close to the rocks to catch the flies which inhabited them.

On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside the lake, looking at some children who were playing at a game like ninepins. The children here appeared in an extraordinary way deformed and diseased. Most of them were crooked, and with enlarged throats; but one little boy had such exquisite grace in his mien and motions, as I never before saw equaled in a child. His countenance was beautiful for the expression with which it overflowed. There was a mixture of pride and gentleness in his eyes and lips, the indications of sensibility, which his education will probably pervert to misery or seduce to crime; but there was more of gentleness than of pride, and it seemed that the pride was tamed from its original wildness by the habitual exercise of milder feelings.

My companion (Byron) gave him a piece of money, which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then with an unembarrassed air turned to his play. The imagination surely could not forbear to breathe into the most inanimate forms some likeness of its own visions, on such a serene and glowing evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside the calm lake that bore us hither.

On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion of their former disconsolate appearance. They reminded my companion of Greece: it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds. The influence of the recollections excited by this circumstance on our conversation gradually faded, and I retired to rest with no unpleasant sensations, thinking of our journey tomorrow, and of the pleasure of recounting the little adventures of it when we return.”

I’m sure the beds have much improved, and if you’re got a couple a million handy and looking for a beautiful location to live in France with a literary history, this might be a golden opportunity.

Photos Courtesy Leggett Prestige BNPS

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