Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822
emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing
sea and sky; he heeded not the boat."
CHAPTER 7.
LAST DAYS.
The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and
early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging
for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. 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. It
consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing
boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided
into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been
white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought
the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about
it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to
be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room
of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other;
the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another.
Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon;
and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when
Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris
naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever
Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the
dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected
apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny.
Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no
easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's
laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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