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 hisfamily. He was actually unmarried,
living with somewhat distant relatives, the
Crossmans, for which see Rev George Brickdale
Crossman, B32.
The tombs
ofB42/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.
IN STOCK
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. Edited,
John Robert Glorney Bolton and Julia Bolton Holloway.
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Classics,
1995. xx + 517 pp.
ISBN 0-14-043412-7
IN STOCK Oh Bella Libertà! Le Poesie di Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A cura di Rita Severi e Julia Bolton Holloway. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2022. 290 pp.
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