EBBCircleapp © Julia Bolton Holloway
ELIZABETH
BARRETT BROWNING AND HER FLORENCE CIRCLE
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning eloped at forty with her fellow poet and
husband, Robert Browning, coming to Florence where she lived and
wrote splendid poetry, her Casa Guidi Windows an eye
witness to Italy's Risorgimento, her feminist epic, Aurora
Leigh, longer
than the Odyssey, and her political Poems
before Congress. She had learned classical Greek and
Biblical Hebrew as a child, reading Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Apuleius, Plutarch, and used these in her poems but not
pedantically, instead breathing new life into them.
There's not a
crime
But takes it
proper change out still in crime,
If once rung
on the counter of this world;
Let sinners
look to it. (Aurora Leigh III.869-72)
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every
common bush afire with God. (VII.821-2)
I . . . beheld his heaven
As blue as Aaron's priestly robe appeared
To Aaron when he took it off to die. (IX.252-5)
And blow all
class-walls level as Jericho's. (IX.932)
Of her
two heroines, Aurora Leigh is based on her friend Margaret
Fuller who had drowned with her illegitimate baby Angelo and the
baby's Italian father in the shipwreck of the 'Elizabeth', and
Marian Erle, who is herself, with spaniel ringlets, and whom she
has as a poor abandoned illiterate gypsy child. Robert, who
wrote of husbands murdering their wives, tended to control her
and her money, lying to her in saying that the Gabinetto
Vieusseux, where she could have read the European newspapers,
forbade women to enter, disparaging her poetry after Aurora
Leigh, and blocking her socializing while increasing her
dosages of laudanum, which eventually killed her. But at least
their elopement gave her fifteen more years of the greatest
creativity, and the birth of their beloved son, Pen, whom she
dressed like herself, as her male and healthy alter ego, instead
of being a woman ill with tuberculosis, addicted from childhood
to laudanum, and controlled first by her father, then by her
husband. She joyously describes Pen at the end of Casa Guidi
Windows, standing in the sunlight.
She loathed her family's owning of slaves on the Jamaican
plantation, Cinnamon Hill, and when she was in Pisa on their
honeymoon and already pregnant, though she would lose that
child, wrote the impassioned Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's
Point. In Florence she would see Hiram Power's 'Greek
Slave' in his studio before his exhibiting it at the centre of
the 1861 Cristal Palace Exhibition in London, and she wrote a
magnificent sonnet to it against slavery. Both she and Robert
were part Black and he part Jewish for which she greatly loved
him though he denied his heritage in his quest to be acceptable
in snobby English society, her family being from Jamaica, his
from St Kitts in the Caribbean. It was the family slave, Treppy,
who paid for the printing of twenty-year-old Elizabeth's poem, Essay
on Mind. One can see in Michele Gordigiani's portrait of
her, painted in his studio across the street in Piazzale
Donatello, that she is not a blue-eyed, blonde-haired English
woman.
She, like her Jamaican forbears, was a Dissenter, protesting
against the State Church of England, having her child instead be
baptized in the Swiss Evangelical Church by Pastor Droise so
that it was fitting that she is now forever in the Protestant
Cemetery they owned. Robert arranged that that burial be in an
obscure corner and carried out by the Church of England priest,
Frederick Lord Leighton protesting against this and arranging
for her body to be exhumed and placed more conspicuously under a
tomb of his design, with her portrait and her name. Robert's
friend Count Cottrell, who already had bilked the Barrett family
slave Treppy out of all her money to Elizabeth's great distress,
had the portrait of Leighton's drawing changed to one the total
opposite of her, and just the initial, E.B.B., with Robert's
approval, so no one can find her tomb. Alas, he was jealous of
her then greater fame.
As we visit the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her
circle in this oval of a cemetery, so shaped like the mind,
the brain, with its two hemispheres, we first pass by the
library housing books about her and the Anglo-Florentines of
her circle. On our right behind Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb we
see that for
F48/ GIOVAN PIETRO VIEUSSEUX/
SVIZZERA/
PX/ A GIAMPIETRO VIEUSSEUX/ NATO IN
ONEGLIA DI FAMIGLIA GINEVRINA/ IL XXVIIII DI
SETTEMBRE MDCCLXXVIIII/ MANCATO IN FIRENZE IL
XXVIII D'APRILE MDCCCLXIII/ GLI AMICI ED
ESTIMATORI/ DEI MOLTI SUOI MERITI VERSO LA
CIVILTA' ITALIANA/ POSERO QUESTO MONUMENTO/
Then, on
our right, behind the tomb of the poet Arthur
Hugh Clough, is that of the Swiss Giampiero
Vieusseux, the founder of the library where
persons like John Ruskin, Fyodor Dosteivsky and
Robert Browning, and also women though not
Elizabeth, could read the foreign newspapers
despite the Austrians and the Grand Duke's
censorship of the Press.
Next we take the path on our left with its view of the
Duomo. At
its end under the mimosa tree we find the cemetery's second
great English poet and also the great friend of Elizabeth
Barrett and Robert Browning, the irascible but wonderful
Walter Savage Landor
A29/ WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR/ ENGLAND/ IN MEMORY
OF/ WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR/ BORN 30th OF JANUARY 1775/
DIED 17th OF SEPTEMBER 1864/ AND THOU HIS FLORENCE
TO THY TRUST/ RECEIVE AND KEEP/ KEEP SAFE HIS
DEDICATED DUST/ HIS SACRED SLEEP/ SO SHALL THY
LOVERS COME FROM FAR/ MIX WITH THY NAME/ MORNING
STAR WITH EVENING STAR/ HIS FAULTLESS FAME/ A.G.
SWINBURNE/
Walter Savage
Landor
Landor Celebration, 2007
Daniel Willard Fiske's photographs at Cornell of
the Villa Landor in San Domenico
He was a contemporary of
Keats, Shelley and Byron, but who outlived them into the
Victorian period. An essay on him, possibly written by himself,
had appeared in Hengist Horne's collection, a New Spirit of
the Age. His wife hated him, threw him out of their villa
in San Domenico, Fiesole, now the School of Music, so that the
Brownings had to arrange lodgings for him with their dismissed
servant, Lily Wilson, and she paid so little for his burial and
tomb that it had to be replaced in 1945, with Swinburne's
epitaph on it.
By the
edge of the hill, now in Sector B, we see a tomb with a cross
lying on a garland of sculpted flowers.
B42/
ISABELLA BLAGDEN/ ENGLAND/INDIA?/ ISABELLA
BLAGDEN/ BORN . . . DIED . . .
1873/ THY WILL BE DONE . . .
Florence from Bellosguardo, Hebrew Cemetery to left,
beneath
wall
Isa
Blagden
Lord Lytton, Viceroy of
India Countess of Lytton
Isa Blagden, the
Browning's great friend and indeed the friend of everyone in the
Anglo-Florentine circle, usually lived in Bellosguardo with its
magnificent view overlooking Florence that Elizabeth would place
in Aurora Leigh. In John Brett's
painting of Bellosguardo for Aurora Leigh you can
just glimpse the Jewish Cemetery nestled against the wall
to the left.
Isa saved the life of
Robert Lytton, the poet who became the first Viceroy of India,
but he could not marry her according to stuffy English social
conventions as she was part East Indian and part Jewish. Instead
he married a proper English girl Edith Villiers. He wrote a poem to Isa called Lucile
and she wrote a novel to him called Agnes Tremorne,
and I wish someone would write a book about them both. They
were present at EBB's funeral, and Isa then cared for the
twelve-year-old Pen mourning his mother's death until his
father dragged him off to England. She was part of the
Swedenborgian/Spiritualist circle Robert detested.
B80/ FRANCES (MILTON) TROLLOPE/ ENGLAND/ FRANCESCAE
TROLLOPE/ QUOD MORTALE FUIT/ HIC IACET/ . . . /
MEMORIA/ NULLUM MARMOR QUAERIT/ APUD STAPLETON/ IN AGRO
SOMERSET ANGLORUM/ A.D. 1780 NATA/ FLORENTIAE/ TUMULUM
A.D.1863/ NACTA EST
Auguste
Hervieu
Villino
Trollope
Then we have Frances Trollope and her daughter-in-law Theodosia
Trollope, whose father's tomb is also nearby. On
28 December 1827, the ship 'Edward' had set sail from the Port
of London for the Port of New Orleans. On board were Frances
Trollope, 40, Cecilia Trollope, 12, Emily Trollope, 10, Henry
Trollope, 14, all English, Frances Wright, 28, American, and
August Hervieu, 23, French. Frances Wright, associated with
Lafayette, had invited the Trollopes to Nashoba where she had
a settlement for the education of Negro slaves. Auguste
Hervieu, a brilliant young artist, was the children's tutor
and companion. With them also were Hester Rust and William
Abbott, their servants. Often Hervieu had to sell his art to
feed and house them all. Elizabeth was jealous of
Frances and wrote scathingly of her in her essay in New
Spirit of the Age, perhaps because of Fanny writing of a
heroine suiciding on laudanum when disinherited in Louisiana on
account of one drop of Black blood. Frances, the mother of
Anthony, wrote prolific travel books, like The Domestic
Manners of the Americans, and also the novel against
slavery, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, another against
children's employment in mines and factories, Michael
Armstrong Factory Boy, and another against clerical abuse,
The Vicar of Wrexhill. She is like Jane Austen and of her
generation, but writing with vinegar and a heart of gold, her
villains modelled on Henry Fielding's anti-heroes. In her
American travels before Victoria was on the throne, up the
Mississippi to Cincinnati Ohio, she witnessed racism against
Blacks first hand, and worked with a young part Native-American,
Hiram Powers, producing Dante's Commedia in waxworks on
that frontier town. He would also come to Florence and
eventually be buried near her. Her
son's autobiography, What I Remember (London, 1887),
is a window on cosmopolitan Florence.
B85/ THEODOSIA (GARROW)
TROLLOPE/ ENGLAND/
THEODOSIAE
TROLLOPE/ T. ADOLFI TROLLOPE
CONIUGIS/ QUOD MORTALE FUIT/ HIC
IACET/ OBITUM EIUS FLEVERUNT OMNES/
QUANTUM AUTEM FIERI MERUIT/ VIR
EUGUI SCRIPTORES/ SCIT SOLUS/ JOSEFE
GARROW ARMr FILIA/ APUD TORQEY IN
AGRORUM DEVON ANGLORUM NATA/
FLORENTIAE NOMEN AGENS LUSTRUM/ AD
PLURES DIVINAE . . ./ MENSES APRILES
A.D. 1865
Villino Trollope,
Thomas,
Fanny,
The day 13 April 1865/ died in this house/ Theodosia
Garrovv-Trollope/
Bice, Theodosia
who wrote in English with an Italian spirit/
of the struggle and the triumph of Liberty
Her
daughter-in-law Theodosia Garrow Trollope is like
Isa Blagden, from an exotic background, her
father, Joseph Garrow, the son of an Indian
princess, her mother a Jewess, she herself
passionately writing for Italy's Risorgimento. She
had already known Elizabeth Barrett Browning when
they were young and convalescing with tuberculosis
at the seaside town of Torquay, where their doctor
forbade either of them paper and ink for writing,
carrying these out of their rooms, before EBB was
brought in a couch with a thousand springs to
Wimpole Street to be sealed into her sickroom
there. Theodosia's daughter Bice would also be
cared for by Isa Blagden along with Pen when
Theodosia died young. NDNB
entries for Theodosia Trollope,
James Archibald Stuart-Wortley,
whose grandson married first
Theodosia's daughter, Bice, then
Millais' daughter, Caroline. See Garrow,
Trollope, Shinner, Fisher
entries and the Villino Trollope
photograph below, on which is
placed this plaque. Thomas
Adolphus Trollope composes the
Latin on his mother's, on
his wife's father's, and
on his wife's tombs.
Theodosia's
father, Joseph, is buried beneath a now-replaced tomb behind the
three great Irish ones.
B108/ JOSEPH GARROW/
INDIA/ HIC JACET
IOSEPHUS GARROW/ ARMr/ DE BRADDONS IN AGRO DEVON/ APUD INDOS
NATUS/ A.D. 1789/ FLORENTIAN DENATUS/ A.D. 1857
Joseph
Garrow, Joseph [or, less likely, Sir William]
Garrow, Eleanor, his aunt
Thomas
Adolphus Trollope, What I Remember, II.150-159: The
little boy was born to the Indian Civil Servant's wife,
Sultana, who was said to be an Indian princess. Joseph Garrow
senior left his son Joseph £5,000, the interest to be used for
his education ‘which I desire may be as good as he is capable
of receiving in Europe’. He left his sister Eleanora Garrow
£2,000 and a further £1,000 on condition that she ‘takes care
of and attends to the education’ of his son. Eleanora
certainly seems to have been Joseph’s affectionate aunt, and
in her will, proved in July 1805, she left him £1,000 in 4%
stock, to be given to him when he was 21. She also left £1,000
and some silver items to John Wright, her father’s nephew who
was at Caius College, Cambridge, ‘in expectation he will
continue as far as lies in his power to be a kind Friend to
the dear Son of my late worthy Brother Joseph’. John Wright
was in his early 30s and was about to take deacon’s orders.
Joseph Garrow translated, The early life of Dante
Alighieri, which he published with the Italian and
English on facing pages. It was printed in Florence by Felix
Le Monnier in 1846. Times Literary Supplement
17/5/1920, remarked 'but it is a curious footnote to the
literary annals of Anglo-India which proves that the son of an
Indian mother lived to translate Dante and to move in a circle
where the Brownings and Landor were the greater lights'.
JLMaquay, Diaries 13/11/1857 'old Garrow wretched man died on
Tuesday paralytic stroke.' Theodosia's half sister and the family servant
are buried in Sector C, giving us five Trollopes in all in the
English Cemetery.
As we go farther up the cemetery in its B Sector on our
right we find a cluster of tombs, one urgently needing repair,
of the circle of Swedenborgians and Spiritualists, from whom EBB
sought consolation but whom Robert utterly despised. Among them
we see a tiny but very beautiful tomb with a swag of flowers on
it, for the child, Florence Oldham, sculpted by Hiram Powers.
These Swedenborgians/Spiritualists,
included Isa Blagden and Elizabeth Barrett Browning but also
B97/ HUGH MACDONELL/ SCOTLAND/
CANADA/
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF HUGH MACDONELL ESQ DIED AT
FLORENCE ON THE 3RD JUNE 1847
His daughter,
Ida MacDonell Ulrich Kleinkauf, later marries
Augusto Conte y Lerdo de Tejada.
whose tomb is within a wrought iron
enclosure, together with his son-law and a baby. JLMaquay,
Diaries 5/6/1847 'Saturday Attended the funeral of
Mr Hugh MacDonell this morning at 6, fine weather and a
large attendance. Bank & home for the remainder of the
day.' Webbs note that he was a young
Jacobite exile, who emigrated
to America with his father and uncles, 1773, moving
to Canada after US Independence, returning to
England, 1804, becoming Consul at Algiers,
1813-1820, marrying in 1815 as second wife Ida
Louise Ullic, daughter of Danish Consul. In 1816 he
was arrested, tortured and enslaved by the Dey of
Algiers, leading to the bombardment by Lord Exmouth,
the father of A112 ADMIRAL
THE HON. FLEETWOOD BROUGHTON REYNOLDS PELLEW
who is buried in Sector
A. Their
daughter Ida married the Austrian B96/ FREDERICK ADOLPH KLEINKAUF,
an officer in the Emperor's army, during the
Austrian occupation of Tuscany, their baby daughter,
named Ida in turn, dying six hours after her birth.
Thus the name 'Ida' is shared
through three generations. Another
daughter, B135/ LOUISE CATHERINE ADELAIDE
(MACDONELL) CUMBERLAND, born in
Algiers, buried near by, who is noted as having as parents
Hugh and Ida MacDonell. While yet another daughter,
Emily became the wife of the Marquis d'Aguado, one
of the richest men in Spain, and was a lady in
waiting to the Empress Eugenie of France. Their
father bought the Oltrarno ex-convent, the
Casa Annalena, and he appointed the Polish princes
Poniatowski and the Marchese Luigi Torrigiani as
guardians for his minor children, while his wife would
marry the Duc de Talleyrand, Tallyrand's nephew,
following his death.
B98/ MAJOR FRANCIS CHARLES GREGORIE/ ENGLAND/ MA FRANCES
CHARLES C. GRE . . LATE CAPTAIN 13 LIGHT DRAGOONS,
DIED OCTOBER 16, 1858
'GREGORIE, Charles (or Gregory) Lt 4
Aug 1808. Captain. 72nd Highland Regiment. 15 Sep
1808. Captain 6th Dragoon Guards 10 May 1810. Captain
13th Light Dragoons 20 Jun 1811. Served in the
Peninsula with 13th Light Dragoons from Sep 1811 - Jan
1814. Present at Arroyo dos Molinos, Vittoria,
Nivelle, Nive and Garris. Awarded the Military General
Service medal for Vittoria, Nivelle and Nive. Also
served at Waterloo. Left the regiment by 1818'.
Waterloo Committee: Listed in Charles Dalton, Waterloo
Roll Call, p. 78. Mentioned by Thomas Adolphus
Trollope, What I Remember, and Sophia Peabody
Hawthorne, Notes in Italy, and in the
Cemetery's Alphabetical Register as Major with
spelling of Gregorie, the first two stating he was at
Waterloo, while Nathaniel Hawthorne, Italian
Notebooks, mentions this Waterloo
veteran as living at Bellosquardo in the Villa
Columbaia, a former convent, with his family. He was actually unmarried,
living with somewhat distant relatives,
the Crossmans, for which see Rev George
Brickdale Crossman, B32.
The
tombs of
B42/
ISABELLA
BLAGDEN,
B98/ MAJOR
FRANCIS CHARLES GREGORIE,
B99/
REVD
GEORGE BRICKDALE CROSSMAN,
B32/ HIRAM
POWERS,
B103/ ELEANOR
AUGUSTA TULK, as spiritualists and
Swedenborgians, are clustered together
near that of Nadezhda, the Nubian/ Russian
former slave.
B103/ ELEANOR AUGUSTA TULK/ ENGLAND/ ELEANOR
AUGUSTA TULK/ AND HE, CASTING AWAY HIS GARMENT/ ROSE
AND CAME TO JESUS/ S. MARK X 50/ THE LORD BLESS AND
KEEP THEE/ THE LORD MAKES HIS FACE SHINE UPON THEE AND
BE/ GRACIOUS UNTO THEE; THE LORD LIFT UP HIS/
COUNTENANCE UPON THEE AND GIVE THEE/ PEACE
NDNB
entry for her father, Charles Augustus Tulk,
prominent Swedenborgian, who stayed with the
family in Florence, was friends with the
Brownings, discussing Coleridge, Blake and
Beethoven with them. She is mother to Sophia
Augusta (Tulk) Cottrell and to B102A/
GEORGIANA CLEMENTINA (TULK) SLOPER.
B99/ REVD GEORGE BRICKDALE CROSSMAN/ IRELAND/ SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF THE REVD GEORGE BRICKDALE CROSSMAN
DIED THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY 1854 AGED 62 HE IS NOT
DEAD BUT SLEEPETH
GenForum: George Brickdale Crossman matriculated at
Magdalen College in 1812 at the age of twenty one, MA,
ordained in 1814, according to the Clergy of the Church
of England database. He succeeded his father as rector
of Blagdon in Somerset in 1815 but seems to have
resigned the benefice four years later. What I would
really like to know about him is the name - that is,
surname - of his wife Anne. They turn up living in
Florence in the 1840s and 1850s - the Rev George died
there on 7 February 1854. They had had two daughters,
Anne and Georgina, and for years had lived at
Bellosguardo overlooking Florence with a Major Charles
Gregorie who was certainly some kind of relative. But
was he Mrs Crossman's brother, as has been suggested by
some Browning scholars? I think not, but I'd love to
know what her maiden name was [it was Oakes].' JLMaquay,
Diaries 28/2/1854 'Yesterday after Bank went up to the
Colombaia having heard of the sudden death of poor
Crossman who died sudenly between 9 and 10 a.m. Saw
Georgina Baker.' Ann Crossman buys plot next to her
husband but is not buried here, last recorded in Italy
in subscription book at Bagni di Lucca, 1863.
Then we come on the left hand side to a
simple but massive tomb in an iron railing of Hiram Powers, for which his son copied the one his father
sculpted for three other children of the Powers, who are
buried in Sector E:
B32/
HIRAM POWERS/ AMERICA/ HIRAM POWERS/
DIED JUNE 27TH 1873/ AGED 68/
Contemporary
Photograph in the Diary of Susan Horner, 1861-1862. See entries
for Horner and Zileri family members.
Greek
Slave
Last of her
Tribe
America
Hiram Powers, also a Swedenborgian, became Professor of
Sculpture at Florence's Accademia di Belle Arti. Sophia Peabody
Hawthorne describes him teaching her that one must not sculpt
eyes as perfectly round, which makes them seem blind, but
instead with a slight protruberance, that gives them expression,
which he learned himself from direct observation, not from
formal teaching. Elizabeth adored him, especially for his works
against slavery and racism, his 'Greek Slave', his 'Last of her
Tribe', his 'America', this last rejected by Congress because
she is trampling on slave chains, but which is more beautiful
than the Statue of Liberty.
Elizabeth wrote this sonnet on his Greek Slave, she saw in his
studio and which you can hear read if you click on WhiteSilence:
They say Ideal Beauty cannot enter
The
house of anguish. On the threshold stands
An
alien Image with the shackled hands,
Called
the Greek Slave: as if the sculptor meant her,
(That
passionless perfection which he lent her,
Shadowed,
not darkened, where the sill expands)
To,
so, confront men’s crimes in different lands,
With
man’s ideal sense. Pierce to the centre,
Art’s
fiery finger! - and break up erelong
The
serfdom of this world! Appeal, fair stone,
From
God’s pure heights of beauty, against man’s wrong!
Catch
up in thy divine face, not alone
East
griefs but west, - and strike and shame the strong,
By
thunders of white silence, overthrown!
Close by is the tomb of the Black Nubian slave
B58/
KALIMA NADEZHDA DE
SANTIS/ NUBIA/RUSSIA/
Kalima,
born in Nubia, a black slave, was brought to Florence in
1827 when she was 14, her freedom purchased by Rosellini's
uncle of the Champollion and Rosellini Expedition, who was
baptised 'Nadezhda', 'Hope', in a Russian Orthodox family,
and who died a lady in Florence. Her tomb with the
only Orthodox cross in the cemetery, the Swiss forbidding any
cross other than the plain Latin one. The Russian Orthodox
cross has the third and slanting bar to signify the salvation
of the Good Thief, the damnation of the Bad Thief, at the
Crucifixion. The inscription in Cyrillic telling her story is
near that of B32/
HIRAM POWERS,
American,
and part Native American, sculptor of the 'Greek Slave', and
also near that of B93/ HOPE
HAYWARD, 'OUR
HOPE', while in Sector E we have the great statue of
Hope by Odoardo Fantacchiotti, E25/ SAMUEL
REGINALD ROUTH. Nadezhda exemplifies the spirit of the Cemetery,
the Abolition of Slavery, the ending of young children's
employment in mines and factories, the freeing of women, the
freeing of nations.
A very similar story is manifested
with F53/
HENRIETTA MARIA
HAY, whose
Greek mother, Kalitza Psaraki, captured by
Ottoman Turks in the Greek War of
Independence, was purchased in Alexandria's
slave market by the Scots Egyptologist, Robert
Hay, and whom he married on Malta in 1828. Nubian Kalima's death at 38 occurs in the year
of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, in the centre of
which was Hiram Powers' 'Greek Slave'.
Rosellini and Champollion Expedition to Egypt and Nubiabrought
to Florence in Champollion and Rosellini's expedition to
Florence and Nubia funded by the Grand Duke, whose freedom was
bought by Rosellini's uncle and who was baptised with the name
'Nadezhda', meaning Hope, in a Russian Orthodox family, her
epitaph written in beautiful pre-Revolution Cyrillic on the
marble Orthodox cross' base. While we also have, in Sector F,
the tomb of Henrietta Mary Hay, the daughter of a Greek Slave,
who was purchased by a Scottish Egyptologist in the slave market
on Crete, who then married his purchase.
As we come to the path and turn right at the corner in Sector C
by the cross erected at the centre of the cemetery for King
Frederick William of Prussia we see the fine obelisk in marble
erected for Thomas Southwood Smith.
C3/ THOMAS SOUTHWOOD SMITH/ ENGLAND/ In Memory of
SOUTHWOOD SMITH, Physician/ who through the
promotion of sanitary/ reform in the principles of
which he was/ the first to discover and through
other/ philanthropic and literary labours was/
distinguished as a benefactor of Mankind/ Born at
Martock, Somersetshire, England/ Dec 21, 1788,
Died at Florence/ Dec 10, 1861// + THEN SHALL THE
RIGHTEOUS SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN IN THE KINGDOM/
OF THEIR FATHER/ MATTHEW XII v.43// [Below
Joel T. Hart's sculpted portrait medallion] /
Ages shall honor, in their hearts enshrined, thee,
SOUTHWOOD SMITH, Physician of Mankind/ Bringer of
Air, Light, Health into the home/ Of the rich Poor
of happier years to come/ Leigh Hunt/
Harper's Monthly engraving
Southwood Smith,
like Walter Savage Landor, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Robert Browning and Frances Trollope, is given an essay, a
long one paired with Lord Ashley, concerning their work
against children in mines and factories. He with Horne asked
Elizabeth to write Cru of the Children and Frances Trollope,
Michael Armstrong Factory Boy, EBB's poem being read in the
House of Lords and effecting legislation forbidding children
to work under the age of twelve. Southwood Smith
raised his granddaughter, Octavia Hill, who shared
his concern for decent housing for the poor,
reflected in Leigh Hunt's epitaph.He
also embalmed his friend Jeremy Bentham, as Bentham wished,
that effigy to preside over the University of London, to
which Robert Browning's dissenting father subscribed, though
which Robert only attended for one day.
The University of London's 'auto-icon'
of Jeremy Bentham, embalmed at his request by
Thomas Southwood Smith, Bentham being the
University's founder.
In 1887, on May 11, Frederick Douglass, the American ex-slave,
visited the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Theodore Parker
and Richard Hildreth to honour their work against slavery,
writing about them in his diary.
Bibliography
Giuliana Artom Treves. The Golden Ring: The
Anglo-Florentines, 1847-1862. London: Longmans, Green,
1956.
'A Book of Slaves', in In Old St James, Jamaica, A Book of
Parish Chronicles. Ed. Joseph Shore and John Stewart.
Kingston, Jamaica: Aston Gardner, 1911. Gift, Tony
Moulton-Barrett.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh
and Other Poems. Ed. John Robert Glorney Bolton and
Julia Bolton Holloway. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
Dennis Looney. Freedom
Readers: The African-American Reception of Dante
Alighieri and the Divine Comedy. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.
Jeanette Marks. The
Family of the Barrett: A Colonial Romance. New
York: MacMillan, 1938.
Virginia Woolf. Flush: A Biography. London: Hogarth
Press, 1933.
FLORIN WEBSITE © JULIA
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BESSARION ||
MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE
ALIGHIERI, SWEET
NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, &
GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN:
WHITE
SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH'
CEMETERY || ELIZABETH
BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER
SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES
TROLLOPE || ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE
IN SEPIA || CITY
AND BOOK CONFERENCE
PROCEEDINGS I, II,
III,
IV,
V,
VI,
VII
|| MEDIATHECA
'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE
AUREO
ANELLO CATALOGUE
|| UMILTA
WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:
ITALIANO,
ENGLISH
|| VITA
New: Dante
vivo || White
Silence
Newest: Abbreviated Virtual
Guide: VirtualGuide.html to
the English Cemetery, in italiano GuidaVirtuale.html
The Stones of Florence StonesofFlorence.html
in italiano, LapidiDantesche.html
Emio Latini, Daniel in the Island of the Dead, https://vimeo.com/139962781
https://once-and-future-classroom.org/the-dante-vivo-project-florence-italy/
Aureo Anello Associazione
