Thoughts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-WGaZa ... WL&index=1
Recollections of the last days of Shelley and Byron (1858), by Edward Trelawny, pages 135 to 138:
"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the Poet's grave, but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave.
"In the mean time Byron and Leigh Hung arrived in the carriage, attended by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraji, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check the sacrilege—the work went on silently in the deep and unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Even Byron was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a dull hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had been strewn on it; this, or decomposition, had the effect of staining it of a dark and ghastly indigo colour. Byron asked me to preserve the skull for him; but remembering that he had formerly used one as a drinking-cup, I was determined that Shelley's should not be so profaned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the case of Williams's body, so that the corpse was removed entire into the furnace. I had taken the precaution of having more and larger pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of the day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace, the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a cauldron, for a very long time.
"Byron could not face this scene, he withdrew to the beach and swam off to the "Bolivar." Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage. The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine."
Journal of the History of Medicine (1955), by Arthur M. Z. Norman, page 114:
"The Shelley scholar is aware of Shelley's hypochondriacal troubles; Shelley's unburnable heart suggests a physical basis for some of his complaints. It seems very probable that Shelley suffered from a progressively calcifying heart, which might have caused diffuse symptoms with its increasing weight of calcium and which indeed would have resisted cremation as readily as a skull, a jaw, or fragments of bone. Shelley's heart, epitome of Romanticism, may well have been a heart of stone."
CasaMagni wrote:Unfortunately, Trelawny was such an unreliable witness that we do not know to what degree his account of the cremation is true or not.
Saturn wrote:Ah of course, it was Trelawny, the 19th century Walter Mitty.
I've read and own 'The last days of Shelley and Byron' and that in itself is like a really over the top Hollywood movie.
Hard to trust anything Trelawny said, but I was basing my theory of Shelley's 'heart' from the research in Miranda Seymour's excellent biography of Mary Shelley.
Saturn wrote:Mary was a very rational and scientifically curious, and learned person.
The "Cor Cordium" by A.S. Bicknell.
Reform Club, June, 1885.
Mr. J.C. Jeaffreson in his book 'The Real Shelley' writes: "All the world knows how Shelley's torn and disfigured corpse was reduced to ashes and a few fragments of bone (with the exception of the heart that would not be burnt) on the pyre"; and probably since Trelawny, shortly after the poet's death, reported that "his heart remained entire," his statement has been unhesitatingly accepted. I have, however, reason for thinking that the story does not rest on trustworthy evidence.
When a body is burnt the part which longest resists the action of the fire, after the base of the skull and one or two of the most solid portions of bone, is the liver. The heart, being hollow and smaller, is easily destroyed; but the liver, a moist and solid mass, repels intense heat, and ultimately deposits an ash of pure carbon, which no continued burning or increase of temperature can further change. In the cemetery of Milan, where I have seen human cremations completely carried out in seventy minutes by Signor Venini's reverberatory furnace, the best method known, I also learned that the liver, perhaps from its containing this element of carbon, can endure for a considerable time even that concentrated whirlwind of fire, and remain almost intact after the heart has totally disappeared. Moreover, in Shelley's case the liver would have been saturated with sea-water, and thereby rendered still more incombustible.
It is extremely improbably that Byron, Leigh Hunt, or Trelawny knew enough anatomy to identify accurately the charred substance they took to be the heart, and it is more likely, owning to the thin edge of the liver being consumed, and its size consequently being much reduced, that they mistook the shrunken remains of the one organ for the whole of the other.
From observing the Milanese cremations alluded to I think it barely possible that the human heart is ever capable of withstanding fire for more than a brief period; but since Mr. J.A. Symonds asserts, to my surprise, that Shelley's heart was given by Leigh Hunt to Mrs. Shelley, and is now at Boscombe, the seat of the present baronet, it would be easy for some competent anatomist to determine the question I have raised.
In any case, the hero-worshipping and sentimental tourists who go in crowds to that lovely spot beneath the pyramid of Caius Cestius to mourn over Shelley's untimely fate have been strangely deceived for more than sixty years in believing that beneath the marble graven with the touching words "Cor Cordium" lies the flame-proof heart of their favourite poet.
A.S. Bicknell.
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