On leaving Genoa I repaired to Spezia, chiefly with a view of
accomplishing a sentimental pilgrimage, which I, in fact, achieved, in
the most agreeable conditions. The Gulf of Spezia is now the
headquarters of the Italian fleet, and there were several big
iron-plated frigates riding at anchor in front of the town. The streets
were filled with lads in blue flannel, who were receiving instruction at
a school-ship in the harbour, and in the evening--there was a brilliant
moon--the little breakwater which stretched out into the Mediterranean
offered a promenade to the naval functionaries. But this fact is, from
the tourist's point of view, of little account, for since it has become
prosperous Spezia has grown ugly. The place is filled with long, dull
stretches of dead wall and great raw expanses of artificial land. It
wears that look of monstrous, of more than Occidental, newness which
distinguishes all the creations of the young Italian state. Nor did I
find any great compensation in an immense new inn, which has lately been
deposited by the edge of the sea, in anticipation of a _passeggiata_
which is to come that way some five years hence, the region being in the
meantime of the most primitive formation. The inn was filled with grave
English people, who looked respectable and bored, and there was of
course a Church of England service in the gaudily-frescoed parlour.
Neither was it the drive to Porto Venere that chiefly pleased me--a
drive among vines and olives--over the hills and beside the sea, to a
queer little crumbling village on a headland, as sweetly desolate and
superannuated as the name it bears. There is a ruined church near the
village, which occupies the site (according to tradition) of an ancient
temple of Venus; and if Venus ever revisits her desecrated shrines she
must sometimes pause a moment in that sunny stillness, and listen to the
murmur of the tideless sea at the base of the narrow promontory. If
Venus sometimes comes there, Apollo surely does as much; for close to
the temple is a gateway, surmounted by an inscription in Italian and
English, which admits you to a curious (and it must be confessed rather
cockneyfied) cave among the rocks. It was here, says the inscription,
that the great Byron, swimmer and poet, "defied the waves of the
Ligurian sea." The fact is interesting, though not supremely so; for
Byron was always defying something, and if a slab had been put up
whenever this performance came off, these commemorative tablets would
be, in many parts of Europe, as thick as milestones. No; the great merit
of Spezia, to my eye, is that I engaged a boat there of a lovely October
afternoon, and had myself rowed across the gulf--it took about an hour
and a half--to the little bay of Lerici, which opens out of it. This bay
of Lerici is charming; the bosky gray-green hills close it in, and on
either side of the entrance, perched upon a bold headland, a wonderful
old crumbling castle keeps ineffectual guard. The place is classic for
all English travellers, for in the middle of the curving shore is the
now desolate little villa in which Shelley spent the last months of his
short life. He was living at Lerici when he started on that short
southern cruise from which he never returned. The house he occupied is
strangely shabby, and as sad as you may choose to find it. It stands
directly upon the beach, with scarred and battered walls, and a loggia
of several arches opening upon a little terrace with a rugged parapet,
which, when the wind blows, must be drenched with the salt spray. The
place is very lonely--all overwearied with sun and breeze and
brine--very close to nature, as it was Shelley's passion to be. I can
fancy a great lyric poet sitting on the terrace, of a warm evening, far
from England, in the early years of the century. In that place, and with
his genius, he would, as a matter of course, have heard in the voice of
nature a sweetness which only the lyric movement could translate. It is
a place where an English-speaking traveller may very honestly be
sentimental and feel moved, himself, to lyric utterance. But I must
content myself with saying in halting prose that I remember few episodes
of Italian travel more sympathetic, as they have it here, than that
perfect autumn afternoon; the half-hour's station on the little battered
terrace of the villa; the climb to the singularly picturesque old castle
that hangs above Lerici; the meditative lounge, in the fading light, on
the vine-decked platform that looked out toward the sunset and the
darkening mountains, and, far below, upon the quiet sea, beyond which
the pale-faced villa stared up at the brightening moon.