File:Heroines of Genoa and the Rivieras (1911) (14783165583).jpg

Identifier: heroinesofgenoa00stal (find matches)
Title: Heroines of Genoa and the Rivieras
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Staley, Edgcumbe, b. 1845
Subjects: Women -- Italy Genoa Genoa (Italy) -- History Riviera (Italy)
Publisher: London : T. W. Laurie
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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hings and places. Porto Venere, for example,was, m the Renascence, a great shipping centre;now little more than a name, for La Spezia hasstepped into the shoes of Venus, and her port isthe arsenal of Mars. The island of Palmariasuggests, by its name, a higher destiny than thatof serving, as it does, for a penal settlement andfor a penitentiary. Byrons ghost hovers overthe strait, for, did he not swim hence from SanTerenzo, six miles across the gulf, and, in theso-called Byrons Grotto write The Corsair making love the while to simple smugglersdaughters in and out of caves and case ? Allthe poets loved Italian women in the past; nodoubt such as there are now do so still ! Lerici—almost absorbed by the spreadingarms of La Spezia—cradle of warriors, was onlylately the home of poets : Villa Maccarani wasLord Byrons home—Villa Magni, Shelleys.Peace, beauty and repose were in the atmosphereof the old-world town, slumbering in its wealthof ambrosial gardens, looked on reprovingly by 312
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Riviera Romances the Romanesque church and the Norman castle.Tears sprang copiously from the eyes of sorrowingpeasant women, gathering kelp, who discovered,on 22nd July 1822, two battered corpses, castup by the turbulent sea at Bocca Lerici—theywere John Williams and Percy Bysshe Shelley,shipwrecked off the coast. By the law of Tus-cany, which was observed beyond the frontier,all bodies cast ashore were burned, as a precau-tion against plague. Accordingly the twocorpses, which had been rudely buried beneaththe shingle, were cremated, beneath the full glareof an August sun. Captain John Trelawny andLeigh Hunt directed the burning, with incense,wine, salt and oil, the accompaniments of theGreek crematory observances. When the pyrehad cooled they gathered fragments of thejaws and skulls and, strange to relate, Shelleysheart entire. These relics were consigned tothe hallowed soil of the Protestant cemeteryin Rome. Shelley loved Lerici, and there he made hispoetry— The Triumph of Life,

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