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Updated: July 29, 2025
He moved his twelve galleys from Genoa to Lerici, on the east coast of the Gulf of Spezzia, and when Barbezieux arrived he sarcastically told him to take the galleys. Barbezieux had no better fortune than his predecessor, the Vicomte de Tours, and retired discomfited and boiling over with rage to report matters to the King.
DEAR SIR, The season being far advanced, and the weather growing boisterous, I made but a short stay at Florence, and set out for Pisa, with full resolution to take the nearest road to Lerici, where we proposed to hire a felucca for Genoa. I had a great desire to see Leghorn and Lucca; but the dread of a winter's voyage by sea in an open boat effectually restrained my curiosity.
It was decided that the summer of 1822 should be spent with the Williamses, and after some search a house just capable of holding both families was found near Lerici, on the east side of the Bay of Spezzia. It was a lonely, wind-swept place, with its feet in the waves. The natives were half-savage; there was no furniture, and no facility for getting provisions. The omens opened badly.
The beautiful bay which lies between Porto Venere and Lerici behind the line of islands, that are really fortifications, is, in spite of every violation, a spectacle of extraordinary beauty, and in the old days not so long ago, after all when the woods came down to the sea, and Spezia was a tiny village, less even than Lerici is to-day, it must have been one of the loveliest and quietest places in the world.
If ever shadow of future ill darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery.
I never shall forget a white squall in the Mediterranean, for all this splendour. It was sunset: they returned home. No news yet from Lerici. Lady Annabel grew uneasy again. The pensive and melancholy hour encouraged gloom; but Venetia, who was sanguine, encouraged her mother. 'Suppose they were not Englishmen in the boat, said Lady Annabel. 'It is impossible, mother.
He reached Lerici on 28th April, writing, immediately on his arrival, to Mary in Spezia. April 28, 1822.
If you leave the steamer at San Terenzo, you may walk along a sort of seawall, built out of the cliff and boulders of the shore, round more than one little promontory, to Lerici, whose castle seems to guard the Tuscan sea.
From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's life divides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent at Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, on the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates or recording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of the first and longer period in general.
Leaving Spezia overnight, I had slept at Lerici, and, waking in the earliest still dawn, I had set out over the hills, hoping to cross the Macra before breakfast. In this tremulous and joyful hour, full of the profound gravity of youth hesitating on the threshold of life, the day rose out of the sea; so, a lily opening in a garden while we sleep transfigures it with its joy.
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