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Updated: July 29, 2025
It is impossible to visit Pisa without recalling touching memories of the unfortunate and gifted poet who passed the last few years of his stormy life here, and only left it in the summer of 1823 for the Casa Magni, on the wild sea coast between Lerici and San Terenzio. It was from here that the Don Juan set out on its fatal trip to Leghorn one July morning never to return.
Meantime, the question of the drawing-room was "Are you going to Spezzia?" and by the 7th so great a pilgrimage of tourists experts, idlers, cinematographers, special correspondents, ministers of state, Yankees, officers, social stars had flocked to the scene, that accommodation failed in the town and surrounding hill-country, from Le Grazie on the west, to Lerici on the east of the Gulf.
Williams, united in constructing a boat of a peculiar build, a very fast sailer, but difficult to manage. On the 8th of July, 1822, Shelley and his friend Williams sailed from Leghorn for Lerici, on the Bay of Spezia, near which lay his home for the time. A sudden squall came on, and their boat disappeared.
They pitched upon a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which "looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in.
I again hired two calesses for Lerici, proposing to lie at Sarzana, three miles short of that place, where we were told we should find comfortable lodging, and to embark next day without halting.
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.
Having here provided myself with letters of credit for Florence and Rome, I hired the same boat which had brought us hither, to carry us forward to Lerici, which is a small town about half way between Genoa and Leghorn, where travellers, who are tired of the sea, take post-chaises to continue their route by land to Pisa and Florence.
'I feel assured he will, said Venetia; 'and perhaps ere long they will all three be here again. Joy! joy! 'They must never go in that boat again, said Lady Annabel. 'Oh! they never will, dearest mother, if you ask them not, said Venetia. 'We will send to Lerici, said Lady Annabel. 'Instantly, said Venetia; 'but I dare say they already sent us a messenger.
The moonlight fell, with racing cloud-shadows, upon sea and hills, the lights of Lerici, the great fanali at the entrance of the gulf, and Francesco's upturned handsome face.
Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as a visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober lines in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offered by the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logical application of political principles to questions of public economy.
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