Obituary: Margaret Brown

Margaret Joyce Brown, museum founder, born Forest Hill London 19 April 1909, died Bournemouth 3 December 1992.

IN 1972, on the 150th anniversary of Shelley's death, Margaret Brown, a retired physiotherapist turned travel courier, founded the Shelley Museum at Lerici on the Italian Riviera. It was housed in the whitewashed Casa Magni, the home of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley at the time of his drowning at nearby Viareggio in 1822.

The museum was opened by the Mayor of Lerici, a Shelley enthusiast, who at the ceremony announced that the commune would provide funding. This failed to materialise and when six years later the building's lease was not renewed Margaret Brown managed to secure space in the former home of Shelley's son on the Boscombe cliff-top in Bournemouth. One of the town's removal firms sent a vehicle out to Italy and transported the exhibits free of charge to the old manor house, which was largely occupied by an art college.

Brown moved with her collection and took up residence nearby at a house appropriately called 'Allegra' after Byron's daughter. It was Byron who at the beach cremation had saved Shelley's heart, which eventually passed to the poet's son Percy. He had been at Casa Magni as a child and with his wife kept the shrivelled object at Boscombe for almost 50 years.

The heart is now buried in the town's churchyard alongside the poet's wife Mary, author of Frankenstein, and his feminist mother- in-law Mary Wollstonecraft. Sir Percy Shelley's Boscombe papers form the basis of the Bodleian Library's Shelley archive. Margaret Brown restocked the empty rooms at Boscombe with her Italian Shelley collection, which included Shelley's hair, Allegra's doll, contemporary prints, model boats and an extensive library.

At the museum's reopening in 1979 on British soil, Shelley's descendant Lord Abinger described the collection as 'the first true memorial in Great Britain to Shelley'. It is the only museum devoted to the poet and in recognition of her work Brown was appointed MBE. Bournemouth Council accepted the collection and appointed her 'Honorary Keeper' for life. It seemed that after such success Margaret Brown, now 70, would be able to enjoy her final years receiving the many Shelley students who come from the United States, Japan and, of course, Italy.

This was not to be. On the 10th anniversary of the museum's arrival Bournemouth Council proposed abandoning the Shelley home and instead showing only selected items in the main Russell-Cotes Museum. Brown was powerless, having handed over the exhibits for posterity. However, widespread lobbying resulted in the museum's remaining on the Boscombe site, although many exhibits have gone into storage. The museum is now called 'the Shelley Rooms', which Brown considered a tragic downgrading; it sounded like a tearoom.

She felt that the collection never received proper recognition or promotion. The Queen Mother, who shares Shelley's birthday and is the active patron of the Keats-Shelley Association, recently made an official visit to the town but Brown's suggestion that she should be invited to call at the 'Shelley Rooms' was rejected.

This year, the bicentenary of Shelley's birth, Margaret Brown had to endure seeing her museum left out of the main Europe-wide celebrations. However, she continued to be on duty once a week at Boscombe and two days before her death she was working on plans to restore the house's theatre, which originally had a painted drop of Lerici.

Consolation did come a few months ago from Desmond Hawkins, author of The Love Story of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Harriet Grove (1992), who discovered that Shelley's first love regularly came to Bournemouth during the time of their secret affair. Shelley's heart had been in Bournemouth in early life as in death. To Margaret Brown this was further confirmation that the town was the most suitable location for her collection: whatever the council may think.

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