Libeccio at last had swept the sky clear. The gulf was ridged with
foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into green, tawny wastes.
But overhead there flew the softest clouds, all silvery, dispersed in
flocks. It is the day for pilgrimage to what was Shelley's home.
After following the shore a little way, the road to Lerici breaks into
the low hills which part La Spezzia from Sarzana. The soil is red, and
overgrown with arbutus and pinaster, like the country around Cannes.
Through the scattered trees it winds gently upwards, with frequent views
across the gulf, and then descends into a land rich with olives--a
genuine Riviera landscape, where the mountain-slopes are hoary, and
spikelets of innumerable light-flashing leaves twinkle against a blue
sea, misty-deep. The walls here are not unfrequently adorned with
bas-reliefs of Carrara marble--saints and madonnas very delicately
wrought, as though they were love-labours of sculptors who had passed a
summer on this shore. San Terenzio is soon discovered low upon the sands
to the right, nestling under little cliffs; and then the high-built
castle of Lerici comes in sight, looking across the bay to Porto
Venere--one Aphrodite calling to the other, with the foam between. The
village is piled around its cove with tall and picturesquely-coloured
houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just beneath the castle.
There is one point of the descending carriage road where all this
gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive branches, swaying,
wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back from
their grey leaves. Here _Erycina ridens_ is at home. And, as we stayed
to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women from the bay
below--barefooted, straight as willow wands, with burnished copper bowls
upon their heads. These women have the port of goddesses, deep-bosomed,
with the length of thigh and springing ankles that betoken strength no
less than elasticity and grace. The hair of some of them was golden,
rippling in little curls around brown brows and glowing eyes. Pale lilac
blent with orange on their dress, and coral beads hung from their ears.
At Lerici we took a boat and pushed into the rolling breakers. Christian
now felt the movement of the sea for the first time. This was rather a
rude trial, for the grey-maned monsters played, as it seemed, at will
with our cockle-shell, tumbling in dolphin curves to reach the shore.
Our boatmen knew all about Shelley and the Casa Magni. It is not at
Lerici, but close to San Terenzio, upon the south side of the village.
Looking across the bay from the molo, one could clearly see its square
white mass, tiled roof, and terrace built on rude arcades with a broad
orange awning. Trelawny's description hardly prepares one for so
considerable a place. I think the English exiles of that period must
have been exacting if the Casa Magni seemed to them no better than a
bathing-house.
We left our boat at the jetty, and walked through some gardens to the
villa. There we were kindly entertained by the present occupiers, who,
when I asked them whether such visits as ours were not a great
annoyance, gently but feelingly replied: "It is not so bad now as it
used to be." The English gentleman who rents the Casa Magni has known
it uninterruptedly since Shelley's death, and has used it for
_villeggiatura_ during the last thirty years. We found him in the
central sitting-room, which readers of Trelawny's _Recollections_ have
so often pictured to themselves. The large oval table, the settees round
the walls, and some of the pictures are still unchanged. As we sat
talking, I laughed to think of that luncheon party, when Shelley lost
his clothes, and came naked, dripping with sea-water, into the room,
protected by the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And then I
wondered where they found him on the night when he stood screaming in
his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with its question,
"_Siete soddisfatto?_"
There were great ilexes behind the house in Shelley's time, which have
been cut down, and near these he is said to have sat and written the
_Triumph of Life_. Some new houses, too, have been built between the
villa and the town; otherwise the place is unaltered. Only an awning has
been added to protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on this
terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The sea was
fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did when the Don Juan
disappeared.
From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive woods, attended
by a memory which toned the almost overpowering beauty of the place to
sadness.