SD2459. Unidentified Correspondent The Critic
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 289–290.
[Florence]
[2 July 1861]
It was announced that the funeral rites [of Mrs. Browning] might be attended by all friends and admirers, and many Italians and English, Protestants and Catholics, of both sexes, proved eager to accept the mournful invitation by assembling before the funeral arrived, yesterday evening, in the cemetery, outside the Aorta Pint. A more beautiful place of sepulture could not be imagined; like that for the Protestants in Rome, this also is bounded on one side by the ancient city walls, while beyond expands a landscape of smiling loveliness, the luxurious Arno Valley, bestrewn with villages and pleasant country houses, with its amphitheatre of gracefully outlines mountains among whose forms the height and towers of Frisole rise nobly conspicuous. The burial-ground belongs to the Swiss, and occupies a rising ground laid out like a wooded garden, with a cluster of cypresses at the highest level, its terminating point; and in the centre, at the convergences of the alleys, a pillar surmounted by a white marble cross, raised, as the epigraph tells us, by the King of Prussia in 1858, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” &c., being the text inscribed (in French) above this recording line. Among shrubs and flowering plants stand numerous monuments, simple, and mostly in good taste, numerous monuments, simple, and mostly in good taste, surrounded by the cross or an urn, and with epitaphs in which the English predominates, though many languages appear, almost all association some text from Scripture with the name of the dead. Shortly before sunset arrived the convoy, with the last remains of her whose resting-place will assuredly consecrate this spot into one for the pilgrimage and reverence of future ages; a large garland of white flowers and a laurel wreath lay on the plain, unpretending hearse now driven up to the entrance on the high road; here the coffin was removed to be placed within the gateway-lodge, where the English clergyman commenced the service from the Anglican Liturgy, and at this moment a numerous group stood, many deeply affected, not a few with tears, around the bier of that gloriously=gifted woman. Among those I noticed Francisco dall’ Oregaro, one of Italy’s first living poets; Mr. Storey, the well-known American sculptor and writer; Mr. Anthony [sic, for T.A.] Trollope; and, supported by the last two, the widowed husband, whose presence at such a time surprised me, for he was evidently prostrated by grief to the last degree. Scarce able, it seemed, to stand, and bewildered as one lost in an overwhelming dream, poor Mr. Browning looked indeed as if a blight had passed over his existence from which there could be no earthly healing. Followed by these mourners, the coffin was then carried up the central avenue to the freshly-dug grave, prepared for only one tenant near that cross and its pillar; and during the remainder of the rite, here performed over the open burial-place, I could observe the sorrowful self-possession of that group of chief mourners, the widower just able to control himself from an outburst of feeling, and his and her child, a fine boy of sweetly-intelligent countenance, showing amidst his emotion a self-command beyond his years. He reminded me of his mother, in feature and expression, as he stood bareheaded, with long wavy hair, that child of illustrious parentage; and there stood an accomplished lady, Miss Blagdon, the bosom friend of the deceased, whose sorrow seemed scarce less than that of her nearest and dearest. I looked into the still open grave after the sublime service had closed, and the chief mourners had slowly passed away, and there saw the coffin of the great poetess, the white-rose wreath at the feet, the laurel crown at the head, the newly scattered dust on the sable cover, the name and date of death; while the line recording her age was hidden, being alone legible on the inscription partially concealed by that crown appropriately laid with the remains, just about to be for ever covered by earth—wreath, and garland, and dead. Close to her grave grows (I was struck by this coincidence) a young laurel tree, besides other flowering plants, the cross gleams from a background of cypress foliage above, and around her lie the dead of almost all lands where her language is spoken, this, too, amidst a scene that might be taken as the abstract of Italy in its fairest aspects, and close to the city where assuredly is the worthiest centre of its civilisation. “O narato l’altissimo poeta’—the line from Dante on his monument at Santa Croce—suggested itself to her as the appropriate epitaph, whatever memorial is henceforth to mark this spot; and with the quotation I turned away—consoled by the thought how bright and worthy of herself was her career throughout—to leave the Italian grave of Elizabeth Browning.
Text: The Morning Post, 2 November 1861, p. 2.
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