ebbtomb

It was fortunate indeed that I was saved from the addition to my annoyances which I should have had to bear had my journey been to Florence. Leighton writes to me that nothing can be more impudently bad than the execution of his designs - there has been no pretence at imitating some of them - and the four (sic., for six) capitals of the columns will have to be sawn off and carved afresh, - also two of the medallions have to be cut out and replaced - as infamous: while the third 'though indeed detestable is not quite irremediable". The Profile is "less slovenly than the rest", though open to many objections - "the hair, with that designing of which I took great pains, is entirely different: the fellow had the coolness to say that he thought I had probably done the thing hastily without nature, and that he had put up a plait, and done the thing afresh himself (if you could see it!) - also, in the ear, "ho cercato di migliorare!" he added that he had obtained from Cavalier Mathas [architect of the façade of Santa Croce] and Count Cottrell the sanction to improve these parts of the work - let us hope there is no truth in this. Cottrell says he saw all the criticism I make, himself - but that he thought it better to leave them to me to make, as the mischief was irremediable"- On the contrary, Cottrell wrote to me that it was "extremely well-executed", - and as he paid up the last instalment, though not due till the work was really erected, I have no sort of remedy. Don't say one word about this - I won't have any wrangling over - literally - the grave.

On it there are no lines from her poems. There is not even her name, just the initials 'E+B+B'. Nor is there her birth date, just the death date 'OB+1861+'. However, it seems from sketches in the Royal Academy's Library that Andrew Potter has so kindly sent me that Leighton conceived it not as a classical sarcophagus so much as a medieval pilgrim tomb with space under it for pilgrims to enter, like that of Edward the Confessor's Tomb in Westminster Abbey. An aside: When Elizabeth was preparing herself for the elopement with Robert, she dared to go outside, to take walks, and on one of them visited Westminster Abbey and its Poets' Croner where her husband would come to be buried. This is how she described it, 31 July, 1846:

How grand - how solemn! Time itself seemed turned to stone there! . . . we stood where the poets were laid - oh, it is very fine - better than Laureateships and pensions. Do you remember what is written on Spenser's monument - 'Here lyeth, in expectation of the second coming of Jesus Christ, . . Edmond Spenser, having given proof of his divine spirit in his poems'.

We find that Leighton had intended a more true portrait on the tomb as he originally conceived it, these drawings being supplied by the Leighton House Museum from those in the Victoria and Albert Museum, (he even shows a togaed Robert approaching it!),

Two photographs by Longworth Powers conserved in the Gabinetto Vieusseux show first the marble base only, then the whole tomb. It took four years to construct.

As it became later, before the thefts of the vase and the plaque, which were not original to the tomb's design.

In an earlier paper, I lamented the lack of the major symbol Elizabeth and Robert shared in their poetry on her tomb, that of the pomegranate. It ws my hope, if we could restore and landscape the 'English' Cemetery, that we would plant a pomegranate beside it. This dott. Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina did, planting three pomegranates beside our three great poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor and Arthur Hugh Clough. In the winter they go dead, in the spring, delicate green leaves appear, in the summer scarlet blossoms, in the fall the splendid rich red fruit. We had already rectified the lack of her name with a stele by the tomb.

One can still see here the need for restoration work. The pillars were crumbling into powder. These are now consolidated.

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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