Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. In eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: a young British man visited London on grim business. He
Speaker 2: had just finished burying his mother and now he had
Speaker 2: the unenviable task of going through her estate. He was
Speaker 2: emptying her desk drawer when he found a small black
Speaker 2: object wrapped in paper. When he realized what it was,
Speaker 2: he almost dropped it. It was his father's burned and
Speaker 2: blackened heart. The story of how the heart was wound
Speaker 2: up in that desk begins in eighteen fourteen with one
Speaker 2: of the most quintessentially Gothic love affairs in history. It
Speaker 2: centered on two star crossed lovers. Mary was the sixteen
Speaker 2: year old daughter of a broke novelist. Percy was a
Speaker 2: young poet who hung around Mary's house, always trying to
Speaker 2: get her father to look at his writing. He was
Speaker 2: also twenty one and married with a child on the way.
Speaker 2: Despite the obstacles, Mary and Percy were instantly drawn to
Speaker 2: one another. They soon began a torrid affair, meeting in
Speaker 2: secret by her mother's gravestone. Eventually, they decided to make
Speaker 2: their love public, revealing it to Mary's father and Percy's wife.
Speaker 2: Neither family took the news very well, and Percy was
Speaker 2: forbidden from seeing Mary ever again, but the young lovers
Speaker 2: refused to accept defeat. They fled home and spent months
Speaker 2: traveling abroad in Europe. When they returned, Mary was pregnant. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the child was born premature and died only a few
Speaker 2: days later. Mary's grief was made worse when news of
Speaker 2: her affair spread. She and Percy were ostracized by London society.
Speaker 2: The scandal soon became so overwhelming the couple decided to
Speaker 2: flee England again, despite being out of money. It wasn't
Speaker 2: long before another tragedy struck. Two years into the affair,
Speaker 2: Percy's wife, Harriet, was found floating in London's Serpentine River,
Speaker 2: having taken her own life. Mary was riddled with guilt
Speaker 2: over Harriet's death, but it solved a lot of her
Speaker 2: problems too. She and Percy were married only two weeks later,
Speaker 2: finally putting an end to the gossip. They were now
Speaker 2: free to live more or less as they pleased, but
Speaker 2: still preferred to avoid London, where they felt unwelcome for
Speaker 2: so long. They traveled, often staying in the Italian countryside
Speaker 2: with Percy's wealthy author friends. Meanwhile, Percy and Mary's relationship
Speaker 2: continued to face obstacles. They lost two more children to illness,
Speaker 2: leaving Mary deeply depressed. Percy sought solace outside their marriage.
Speaker 2: He fathered a child with another woman in eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: and may have had a separate, ongoing relationship with Mary's
Speaker 2: stepsister Claire. Despite Percy's infidelity, Mary's love was steadfast. While
Speaker 2: they went through periods of estrangement, she always returned to
Speaker 2: him eventually, at least until eighteen twenty two. On July
Speaker 2: eighth of that year, Percy was sailing off the coast
Speaker 2: of Italy when he was caught in a storm. The
Speaker 2: boat capsized and twenty nine year old Percy drowned. His
Speaker 2: body washed up on shore, where it was found ten
Speaker 2: days later. Because it was in the water so long,
Speaker 2: there were concerns that the body might carry bacteria. It
Speaker 2: was cremated on the beach and the remains were taken
Speaker 2: to Rome for burial. At least most of the remains
Speaker 2: were buried there. For some reason, Percy's heart survived the cremation.
Speaker 2: This is hard to explain, but it could have been
Speaker 2: caused by the heart calcifying due to an earlier.
Speaker 1: Bouts of tuberculosis. For Mary, though, it was proof that
Speaker 1: her husband's romantic spirit persisted beyond the grave. She brought
Speaker 1: the organ home, wrapped it in one of Percy's poems,
Speaker 1: and placed it in the top drawer of her right,
Speaker 1: where it stayed until her death. It's a little spooky
Speaker 1: to think of her sitting at that desk writing away
Speaker 1: while her husband's calcified heart lay mere inches away. Maybe
Speaker 1: it inspired her because her writing captured both romance and horror.
Speaker 1: Mary was, of course Mary Shelley, best known as the
Speaker 1: author of the novel Frankenstein. Her husband was Percy Biss Shelley,
Speaker 1: a famous romantic poet. The strange fate of Percy's heart
Speaker 1: is both an unsettling footnote to their torrid relationship and
Speaker 1: a romantic symbol of all they endured after everything they'd
Speaker 1: been through scandal, infidelity, and even death, their love still burned.
Speaker 1: When a person dies, we remember them in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. We hold a funeral so that we can
Speaker 1: bid them goodbye one last time. We might hold a
Speaker 1: candlelight vigil or donate money in their honor as well.
Speaker 1: But those who are buried in cemeteries are usually commemorated
Speaker 1: by way of a plaque or tombstone marking their grave site.
Speaker 1: It could be inscribed with the dates of their birth
Speaker 1: and death, or a heartfelt message of peace and love.
Speaker 1: But not Sir George Yardley. His grave was different, and
Speaker 1: for a good reason. George was born in fifteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven in Surrey, England, the son of a merchant tailor
Speaker 1: from London, but rather than enter the family business, he
Speaker 1: took a different route for his life. He joined the military.
Speaker 1: He spent several years at war before seeking new horizons
Speaker 1: quite literally. In sixteen oh nine, George ventured out to
Speaker 1: sea with Sir Thomas Gates and a fleet of ships
Speaker 1: carrying colonists and supplies for an expedition to Jamestown in America.
Speaker 1: Although their trip took a bit longer than expected, a
Speaker 1: nasty storm forced their ship to wreck in Bermuda, and
Speaker 1: it took the crew almost a whole year to build
Speaker 1: two new ships that would take every one to Virginia,
Speaker 1: but they eventually made it. By the time everyone arrived,
Speaker 1: conditions in the colony had grown dire. Many were already
Speaker 1: dead from sickness or a lack of food, or from
Speaker 1: attacks by the local indigenous tribes. But while others took
Speaker 1: to helping the struggling colony, George was given another task.
Speaker 1: He was sent to look for gold and silver in
Speaker 1: the nearby mountain ranges. Years passed, and in sixteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: his hard work and loyalty had earned him the title
Speaker 1: of Deputy Governor of Virginia. Throughout his tenure as both
Speaker 1: Deputy Governor and then as governor, George accomplished quite a lot.
Speaker 1: He secured peace treaties with the Chickahamane Native Americans, formed
Speaker 1: a local governing body, cultivated land with other farmers, and
Speaker 1: encouraged the construction of a new college. He also married
Speaker 1: a woman named Temperance Flowerdew. She had arrived in Jamestown
Speaker 1: the year before her would be husband, and the couple
Speaker 1: had three children together, Elizabeth, Abigail and their youngest A
Speaker 1: son named Francis. But not everything George did was good
Speaker 1: or wholesome. He oversaw the introduction of the slave trade
Speaker 1: to Virginia when a ship carrying dozens of enslaved Africans
Speaker 1: landed on its shores. The governor then chose to own
Speaker 1: a number of enslaved persons himself, putting them to work
Speaker 1: on his private plantation. Sir George Yeardley did not live long.
Speaker 1: He died in sixteen twenty seven, when he was roughly
Speaker 1: forty years of age. His body was laid to rest
Speaker 1: in Jamestown and adorned with a large grave marker made
Speaker 1: of polished black limestone. It was a significant grave too,
Speaker 1: likely of some great expense, given that had to be quarried, cut,
Speaker 1: and imported from Europe. The stone featured a carving of
Speaker 1: a knight in armor, to its left a curly symbol
Speaker 1: that resembled a backwards question mark, and to the right
Speaker 1: the imprint of a shield. When first installed that his grave,
Speaker 1: these carvings would have been covered by brass overlays, each
Speaker 1: with intricate details, but record of who the stone had
Speaker 1: belonged to had been lost for four centuries, leading many
Speaker 1: to speculate as to who the owner might have been,
Speaker 1: while in September of twenty twenty four we finally got
Speaker 1: our answer. Researchers determined that Sir George Yardley had in
Speaker 1: fact been the original recipient of the gravestone following his
Speaker 1: death and burial in Jamestown. But they didn't obtain this
Speaker 1: information by testing his remains for traces of DNA. There
Speaker 1: was none to test after such a long period of time. Instead,
Speaker 1: they poured through documents and records dating back to the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. Figuring the shape on the stone was a knight,
Speaker 1: they looked at all deceased Englishmen from the sixteen twenties
Speaker 1: who had been knighted, and this led them straight to Yardley.
Speaker 1: As for the stone itself, the researchers were also able
Speaker 1: to find out that it was over three hundred million
Speaker 1: years old and had come from either Ireland or Belgium.
Speaker 1: It would have been very expensive and chosen by Yardley
Speaker 1: or someone close to him in order to show off
Speaker 1: just how rich he really was. But there's something else
Speaker 1: about Sir George, a fact that sets him apart from
Speaker 1: all others in both Jamestown and the rest of America.
Speaker 1: His grave is so old. It's believed to be the
Speaker 1: first in the country ever to be marked with a gravestune,
Speaker 1: and that fact, well, it kind of rocks. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.