BYRON: THE LAST PHASE
PART I
| ‘... Le cose ti fien conte, Quando noi fermerem li nostri passi Sulla trista riviera d’ Acheronte.’ Inferno, Canto III., 76-78. |
CHAPTER I
‘A large disagreeable city, almost without inhabitants’—such was the poet Shelley’s description of Pisa in 1821. The Arno was yellow and muddy, the streets were empty, and there was altogether an air of poverty and wretchedness in the town. The convicts, who were very numerous, worked in the streets in gangs, cleaning and sweeping them. They were dressed in red, and were chained together by the leg in pairs. All day long one heard the slow clanking of their chains, and the rumbling of the carts they were forced to drag from place to place like so many beasts of burden. A spectator could not but be struck by the appearance of helpless misery stamped on their yellow cheeks and emaciated forms.
On the Lung’ Arno Mediceo, east of the Ponte di Mezzo, stands the Palazzo Lanfranchi, which is supposed to have been built by Michael Angelo. Here, on November 2, 1821, Lord Byron arrived, with his servants, his horses, his monkey, bulldog, mastiff, cats, peafowl, hens, and other live stock, which he had brought with him from Ravenna. In another quarter of the city resided Count Rugiero Gamba, his son Pietro, and his daughter Countess Teresa Guiccioli. On the other side of the Arno, nearly opposite to Byron’s residence, lived the poet Shelley, with his wife and their friends Edward and Jane Williams.
In the middle of November, Captain Thomas Medwin, a relative of Shelley’s, arrived at Pisa; and on January 14, 1822, came Edward John Trelawny, who was destined to play so important a part in the last scenes of the lives of both Shelley and Byron.
Byron was at this time in his thirty-third year. Medwin thus describes his personal appearance: