'English' Cemetery and its Library, Florence

AN APPEAL FOR "HOPE"

2011-09-02T09:42:00.003+02:00

For Italy’s 150th celebration of her Unity in 1861, let us raise funds for the restoration and cleaning of the highly visible but now begrimed statue by Odoardo Fantacchiotti of Hope in Florence’s Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery.

Italy for centuries had been divided and ground under the heels of other Powers, finally winning her freedom from them at the Risorgimento, helped largely by foreign supporters, many of whom, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, are buried here. Among the ‘English’ Cemetery’s burials are many who worked against the oppression of nations, against slavery, against the labour of children in mines and factories, against the abuse of women. Another of our burials is of Nadezhda, who came to Florence at 14 from Nubia, a black slave, and who died in her thirties, her name from her baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church meaning ‘Hope’, her monument in marble already having been cleaned.

This allegory of ‘Hope’ on the tomb of Reginald Routh in marble, also can be restored in a symbolic Risorgimento, Renaissance, Resurrection, in our own moment in time through a donation, small or large, which will be gratefully received.

ODOARDO FANTACCHIOTTI

Colleague of Hiram Powers, Odoardo Fantacchiotti sculpted this outstanding but now neglected monument in 1860 for Samuel Reginald Routh, whose wealthy friends paid for it by subscription.

The restoration is being carried out by CNR “Nello Carrara” under Salvatore Siano in the EU, Regione Toscana project, TEMART, with the assistance of Alberto Casciani of Meridiana Restauri.

Donations specifically for this restoration will be gratefully received by the “Aureo Anello” Association formed to support the Mediatheca “Fioretta Mazzei”and the “English” Cemetery, CRF, Ag. 5, IBAN IT51Z0616002805000024705C00 or to PayPal at http://www.florin.ms/pp.html

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the PayPal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Custodian, 'English' Cemetery
President, Aureo Anello

THE FLORENTINE GONFALONE

2011-07-01T06:54:00.027+02:00

Florence's Gonfalonieri who carry her great lilied banner, the 'Gonfalone' of Justice, and trumpet fanfares at civic celebrations in Florence.

JBH, Signor Gerardo Kraft, Pastore Mario Marziale

Professoressa Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, Professor Leopoldo Stefanutti

Gabriella, JBH, Scott Lewis, Katerine Gaja, Elena Capolino

It was a magnificent day, thanks to everyone, the Comune of Florence, our special visitors, Eugenio Giani, President of the Consigilio of Florence, Mary Ellen Countryman, the American Consul, Scott Lewis, President of the Browning Society and of the Friends of Casa Guidi, Michael Meredith of Eton, former President of the Browning Society, Gerardo Kraft, President of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church, Edgar Kraft, the Swiss Consul, Sara Milne, Director of the British Institute, Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, President of the Asociatia 'Agrustic Somnacuni'. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was accorded the same honours as is Dante Alighieri by the City of Florence!

Scott Lewis, President of the Browning Society, Dr. and Mrs. Bill (Kay) Turney from Waco, Andrew Sinclair from London, and others, at the tomb of EBB

EBB's tomb by Lord Leighton, newly cleaned by Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu

Gonfalonieri

JBH, Eugenio Giani, Presidente of Florence's Consigilio, and Gonfalonieri

The great wreath of the City of Florence was laid at her tomb to the fanfare of trumpets by the Gonfalonieri, two smaller wreaths by the Browning Society with white roses, by the Friends of Casa Guidi with white lilies, all of which replicated the wreaths at her funeral 150 years ago. The many guests could browse the offerings of the Book Fair to raise funds for the restoration of Odoardo Fantacchiotti's statue of 'La Speranza', enjoy the refreshments offered by the Swiss Church, and view the exhibition of books associated with EBB and her circle of friends, particularly of those who attended her funeral, the Hiram Powers family, the William Wetmore Story family, Kate Field, Isa Blagden, Robert Lytton, the Cottrells, etc.

Gonfalonieri

Katerine Gaja

Mark Roberts, Katerine Gaja

JBH and Eugenio Giani, Presidente del Consiglio di Firenze

I gave two guided tours, the first in English, the second in Italian, in which I spoke of our anti-slavery Abolitionists, how Frances Trollope wrote the first anti-slavery novel, Richard Hildreth, the second, both buried with us, Harriet Beecher Stowe copying them with Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was immediately translated into Romanian and that this freed the Roma from their slavery which lasted from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, longer than were Blacks enslaved in the Americas, and how it is the Romanian Roma who have restored this Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery, where English, Swiss, Americans, Russians, Romanians, Poles, Hungarians, Scandinavians and many others, Protestant, Orthodox and now Catholic, lie peacefully side by side. A vision of the future.

Gonfalonieri at EBB's Tomb. In the background to the left top one can see how filthy the beautiful statue by Odoardo Fantacchiotti of 'Hope', 'Speranza', now is. Click on photo to enlarge. CNR came that very afternoon to start work on her restoration and cleaning.

JBH, Eugenio Giani

Eugenio Giani, JBH

Silence at the Tomb, Scott Lewis, JBH, Gerardo Kraft, Dott. Giulio Todescan, Mario Marziale, Leopoldo Stefanutti

Gonfalonieri

Gonfalonieri with Aurelia Bartholini, Katerine Gaja to the left.

Marziale, JBH, Giani, Kraft

I also spoke of the need to raise funds for the restoration of Odoardo Fantacchiotti's very beautiful but now very dirty 'La Speranza', as an allegory for Florence, for Europe, for the world. For this purpose I gave my publications and limited edition productions for the 'Book Fair', which raised €300 of the needed €10,000. Other donations we seek, roses, especially standard roses as there once had been an avenue of these on both sides of the main path, and other plants with non-invasive roots that do well in Florentine sunlight and soil.

Gonfalonieri, Tomb of Thomas Southwood Smith.

Book Fair, Grazia Gobbi Sica, Giovanna Innocenti

We shared Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows in English and Italian, for I found on the Web in a Roman bookshop an 1851 translation into Italian which we have now republished it with facing page, English and Italian, in the same way we publish her Sonnets from the Portuguese, William Morris type, handbound with our marbled paper.

Gonfalonieri have gone off for a cooling drink, leaving their gear behind them

Mark Roberts, Scott Lewis

Marchesa Antonia Lanza D'Ajeta, right

Michael Meredith of Eton College, right

Michael Meredith, Dr. and Mrs. Bill (Kay) Turney, Elena Capolino between them, Andrew Sinclair, Scott Lewis

Photographs, courtesy of Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, President, Asociatia 'Agrustic Somnacuni - Inel de Aur'

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the PayPal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Custodian, 'English' Cemetery
President, Aureo Anello

AND ANOTHER CELEBRATION

2011-06-05T14:58:00.021+02:00

On June 29, 2011, the 150th anniversary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's death on 29 June 1861, we shall gather together in Florence's 'English' Cemetery to celebrate her poetry and her use of her art against injustice, against slavery, and against the oppression of nations, of women, of children. At the same time it is the 150th anniversary of the Unity of Italy, of Italy's rebirth as a nation, formerly ground under the heels of Austria, Spain, France, and the Pope. EBB wrote to her friend Isa Blagden in a letter found by Thomas Adolphus Trollope of her 'passion for essential truth (as apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks, inconvenient to personal peace'.

EBB died at Casa Guidi while mourning the 6 June 1861 death of Camillo Benso Cavour, the architect of Italy's Unity, and, Robert tells us, speaking of the red, white and green colours of the Italian and Hungarian flags. The portraits of both EBB and Cavour had been painted by Michele Gordigiani in his studio across the street from EBB's tomb, designed by Frederic Lord Leighton with the broken slave shackle on the harp of Exodus.

First at 10.00 a.m., there will be a laying of laurel wreaths at the tomb, then at 11.00 a.m. a gathering of women poets from across Italy will pay tribute to her.

Present will be members of the British Institute, the Browning Society, the Friends of Casa Guidi, and the Armstrong-Browning Library of Baylor University, Texas. All are welcome to this event celebrating Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her friends past, present and future, and her love of Italy which forged a golden ring, an 'Aureo Anello' between Italy and the English-speaking world.
It was actually on 1 July 2011 that she was buried here, Robert, their son Pen, Isa Blagden, the Storys, the Powers, the Trollopes, Kate Field and Robert Lytton (the poet Owen Meredith who became Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India and who wrote Lucile about Isa, while Isa wrote Agnes Tremorne about him), being present. They forgot to send a carriage for Walter Savage Landor. The Anglican funeral service she did not want (she had Pen baptized in the Swiss church which still owns the so-called 'English' Cemetery) was described as being very badly done. Lord Leighton then designed the tomb but it was much altered by the Italian sculptor Francesco Giovanozzi to Leighton's fury,

We shall share Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows in English and Italian, for I found on the Web in a Roman bookshop an 1851 translation into Italian which we have now republished it with facing page, English and Italian, in the same way we publish her Sonnets from the Portuguese, William Morris type, handbound with our marbled paper.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the PayPal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Custodian, 'English' Cemetery
President, Aureo Anello

YOU ARE INVITED TO A CELEBRATION

2011-04-15T14:09:00.011+02:00

OF FLORENCE'S ENGLISH CEMETERY, SATURDAY 23 APRIL, AT 4:00 P.M.

We shall share the beauty of the irises, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows in English and Italian, and cucumber sandwiches. We are inviting all the Consuls and all the Assessors.
For CGW I found on the Web in a Roman bookshop an 1851 translation into Italian which shall be arriving here next week, and plan to republish it with facing page, English and Italian, in the same way we already publish her Sonnets from the Portuguese, William Morris type, handbound with our marbled paper.

In this way we shall be celebrating the Resurrection, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, and also the splendid work restoring the garden and the tombs carried out by Romanian Roma families whom we teach the Alphabet.
This Spring is particularly lovely with the newly cleaned tombs and first the daffodils

then the irises

FROM GRAVES TO CRADLES

2010-12-19T16:16:00.003+01:00

In the midst of this great snow storm have been preparing the

fifteen minute invited presentation to the European Economic and Social Committee, 14 January. You can see it at http://www.ringofgold.eu/Brussels.ppt and http://www.ringofgold.eu/Brussels.html. It's titled 'From Graves to Cradles' and is on Roma training, education and integration, our splendid gardeners and restorers of this 'English' Cemetery.

A blessed Christmas from Florence whose Santa Maria del Fiore Duomo is no longer of red brick but seems like Michelangelo's St Peter's Dome of white Carrara marble.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Custodian, 'English' Cemetery
President, Aureo Anello

SCRIPTURAL INSCRIPTIONS IN FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2010-12-03T22:08:00.001+01:00

We say the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery is an archive in marble. It is also the Bible incised in stone. Passages in Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Rumantsch, French, German and English, generally being the King James Bible in English, the Lutheran Bible in German, the Calvinist Bible in French. In this time period Italian Catholics were forbidden the Bible in the vernacular, that only changing with Vatican II. Some of our burials, such as that of Rosa Madiai, are of persons imprisoned for their use of the Bible in Italian in the nineteenth century. The German Biblical passages are often those set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The great central column, surmounted by the San Giovanni Cross of lilies and roses set up by Pietro Bazzanti in honour of the visit of the King of Prussia, states in French 'Je suis la Résurrection et la vie, Celui qui croit en moi vivra, Quand même il seroit mort. St Jean XI.25. Fréderic Guillaume, Roi de Prussia, MDCCCLVIII'.

//=How many times a particular scriptural verse is used on the various tombs

Genesis 24.31 Blessed of the Lord /

Numbers 6.24-26 The Lord bless thee and keep thee, The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace /

II Samuel 10.12 It is the Lord. Let him do that which seemeth him good /, 12.23, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me /, in Italian /

Job 1.21, The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord /////////, in Italian ///, in French /, 3.17 There the weary be at rest /, 19.25, I know that my Redeemer liveth //, Ich weiss dass mein erloeser lebet, in German /, 23.11 Meis pei s'ha artignu vta seis fastizis, eu ha salva sia via, e non sun giunghi da quella, in Rumantsch /, 29.11 When the ear heard her, then it blessed her, and when the eye saw her it gave witness to her /, 30.16 in Italian /

Psalms 3.4 I cried unto the Lord and he heard me /, 5.1 /, 16.11 In Thy presence is fullness of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures evermore /, 23.1 The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still water /, Il Signore è mio pastore, nulla mi mancherà, in Italian /, 26.4, 31.5 Into Thy hand I commit my spirit, Thou hast redemmed me, O Lord God of Truth /, 34.19 Le juste a des maux en grand nombre, mais l'Eternel le delivre de tous /, 34.41 I sought the Lord and he heard me /, 36.9 With Thee is the fountain of life, In Thy light shall we see light /, 38.15 For in Thee, O Lord, do I hope, Thou wilt hear, O Lord, My God /, 49.15 God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave /, 62.5 My soul, wait thou only upon God, in Italian //, 62.7 Quoiqu'il en soit il est mon rocher, ma deliverance e ma haute retrait, je ne serait point ebranle /, 73.26 My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever /, 116.5 L'eternel est pitoyable et notre Dieu fait misericorde, in French, 116.15 Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of his saints /, in Italian /, 117.2 For his mercy endures forever, in French /, 120.1 I cried unto the Lord and he heard me /, 121.7 The Lord shall keep thee from all evil, Yea it is even He that shall keep thy soul /, 126.5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy /, 130.5, in French /, 145.2, I will bless Thy holy name, O Giod, forever and ever /, 172.2 He giveth his beloved sleep /

Proverbs 31.28 Her children arise up and call her blessed //

Song of Solomon 8.6-7 Love is strong as death; Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it

Isaiah 32.17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness quietness, assurance for ever /, 40.11 He shall gather the lambs with his arms and carry them in his bosom //, 43.1 Ne crains point car je t'ai rachete, in French, 43.2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and also the floods they shall not overflow thee /, 60.20 Deine sonne wird, nicht mehr untergehen noch dein mond den schein verlieren denn der Herr wird dein ewiges licht, in German /, 60.24 We must, through much tribulation, enter the Kingdom of God /

Jeremiah 31.3 The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee /

Daniel 7.14, Thine is the Power and the Glory /

Malachi 3.17 And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.

Matthew 5.5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth /, 5.6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, in French /, 5.7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy/, 5.8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ////////, in German /, 5.9 Selig sind die Reines Herzens sind denn sie werden Gott shauen, in German /, in French /, in Italian /, 6.10 Thy will be done //////, 6.13 Thine is the Power and the Glory /, 9.13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sarifice: for I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance /, 9.24 in French /, She is not dead but sleepeth ///////, in French /, in Italian /, 11.26 Even so Father for it seemed good in Thy sight //, 11.28 Come unto me all ye that are heavily laden //, in French //, in German /, 12.43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father /, 14.27 It is I, be not afraid /, in French /, 18.2 Jesus called a little child unto him /, 19.14 Suffer little children /, in Italian /, Of such is the kingdom of heaven ///, 25.13, Watch therefore for ye know neither the day not the hour wherein the Son of man cometh /, Veillez donc car vous ne savez ne le jour ne l'heure ou le fils de l'homme viendra, in French //, 25.21 Well done, thou good and faithful servant //, 25.24 Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you /, 26.42 Thy will be done /////, 27.63 Resurgam, in Latin /

Mark 5.39 in French /, She is not dead but sleepeth ////////, in French /, in Italian /, 10.14 Suffer the little children, in Italian //, 10.50 And he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus /,

Luke 1.46 L'anima mia magnifica il Signore e lo spirito mio festeggia in Dio mio salvatore /, 8.52 She is not dead but sleepeth /////////, in French //, in Italian /, 11.2 Thy will be done /////, 18.16 Suffer the little children come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God //, in Italian /, 20.36 Neither can they die anymore, for they are equal unto the angels and are the children of God being the children of the Resurrection /, 23.50 He was a good man and a just /

John 5.24 is passed from death unto life /, 6.37 He that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out /, 10.28 I give them eternal life /, 11.23 Thy brother shall rise again /, 11.25-26 I am the Resurrection and the Life - saith the Lord - He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live /, in Italian //, in French ///, 11.35 Jesus wept /, 13.7 Vous ne savez maintenant ce ve je fais mais vous la saurez apres, in French /, 14.2 Nella casa del Padre mio vi sono molte stanza, /, 14.3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there may ye be also /, 14.6 I am the way, the truth and the life /, in Italian /, 14.27 My peace I give unto you /, 17.11 & 22 That they may be one / 27.3 Haec est vita aeterna ut te cognoscant solum verum Deum et quem tu misisti Jesum Christum, in Latin /,

Romans 6.23 The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord /, 11.33 O profondeur des richesses et de la sagesse et de la connoissance de Dieu que ses jugements sont inpenetrables et que ses voies son incomprehensible, in French /,12.10 [Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another]

I Cor 15.19 If in his life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable /, 15.44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body /, 15.53 This corruption must put on incorruption //, 15.56 Oh Death, where is thy sting, Oh grave where is thy victory? //, 15.57 Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory ///

II Cor 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ theFather of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforteth them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted /, 12.9 My strength is made perfect in weakness /

Ephesians 2.4 Charitatem dilexit, in Latin /, 2.8 Vous êtes sauvés par grace, par la foi et cela ne vient pas de vous, c'est un don de Dieu, in French /, 2.13 But now in Christ Jesus who sometime were far off /

Galatians 5.22 The fruit of the Spirit /, 6.14 in Italian /

Philippians 1.21 To me to die is gain /, Car Christ est ma vie, et la mort m'est un gain, in French //

Colossians 3.3-4 We are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God /

I Thessalonians 4.13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hoped for if we believe that Jesus dioed and rose again even so /, 4.14 Them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him /////, in French /

II Timothy 4.8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day, and not to me only but unto all them that also that love his appearing /, 4.11-12 J'ai combattu le bon combat j'ai fini ma course, j'ai gardé la foi,. Au reste, la couronne de justice m'est reservée, in French //

Titus 2.13 Looking for the blessed hope /

Philemon 16 Not now as a servant but above a servant a brother beloved /

Hebrews 4.9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God /, 6.19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast /, 12.2 Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith //, 13.5 Fear not, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee /, 13.8 Gesu Cristo è l'istesso ieri, oggi, ed in eterno, in Italian /, 13.14 Nous n'avons point ici bas de cité permanente mais nous cherchons celle qui est a venir, in French /

I Peter 4.12 Beloved think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you /, 4.13 But rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when his glory shall be revealed ye may be glad also with exceeding joy /, 5.7 Umiliatevi gettando sopra lui tutta la vostra sollecitudine perciocché egli ha cura di voi, in Italian /

James 1.22 But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves /

I John 1.7 The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin /, 2.17 in Italian /, 4.10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us /, 4.16 God is Love /, He that dwelleth in Love, dwelleth in God and God in him /, 4.18 Perfect love casteth out fear /

Revelation/Apocalypse 1.5-6 Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever /, 7.14 These are they which come out of the great tribulation /, 7.17 L'agneau qui est au milieu du trone les paitra et les conduira aux sources d'eaux vives et Dieu essuiera toute larme de leurs yeux /, 14.13 Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them /////////////, in German /, in Italian /, in French //, 22.5 And there shall be no night there /

A BARREL ORGAN IN PIAZZA BECCARIA

2010-11-20T16:13:00.002+01:00

I so wanted to share this hauntingly beautiful Romany music with everyone. It is played on a barrel organ in Piazza Beccaria in Florence. I have finally succeeded with bicycle, laptop and microphone in rcording it. And here it is
http://www.ringofgold.eu/gypsy.mp3

A THOUSAND DAFFODILS

2010-11-10T20:36:00.003+01:00

In the post came a thousand daffodils, sent by an English Garden Tour organizer. And this morning we have planted all of them in Florence's Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery. Some on graves, some on the little lawns between the graves. Breteanu, Mihai, Gheorghi and I braved thunder showers and worked together, raking leaves, planting bulbs. Roma work best in groups like this, the young twins Mihai and Gheorghi (who are now such good alphabet students, this Sunday even rapidly learning the computer keyboard), working with the older Breteanu and instinctively doing everything right, with great energy and joy. When I pay Breteanu for his garden work he takes the euro bills and rubs his beard with them with such a twinkle in his eye. It was a glorious day. And will be a glorious Spring in Florence.
This is part of our 'From Graves to Cradles' project with Roma, its 'work/study' aspect. And everyone who visits exclaims about how well-maintained the English Cemetery now is. People remember it as formerly abandoned, put to weed killer, grey, broken, ugly. And I explain it is the work of the Rom that has now made it so beautiful. I so wish my Italian friends would take on this splendid team of workers, a gardener and his two boys. They can do anything. And so well.
You can find out more about our Roma project at http://www.ringofgold.eu and more about the 'English' Cemetery at http://www.florin.ms. We are now nominated for UNESCO's Memory of the World Register and we are also included in the Council of Europe's Cultural Cemetery Route through ASCE, Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe. Google UNESCO Memory of the World and ASCE to find us!

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

LEARNING TO WRITE, LEARNING TO READ

2010-10-25T05:59:00.002+02:00

LEARNING TO WRITE, LEARNING TO READ

Explosion! A sixteen-year-old who could not even write his name is now joying in copying the Latin on the plaques in the Santissima Annunziata, the English on the plaques in the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery. Our Alphabetization School works! He read out to me the other day a poster on 'Santa Umilta'. I was in tears for she is the saint for whom I have named my Umilta website. Illiterate, she dictated marvellous sermons of most profound theology to her nuns. Yesterday he was reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's stanza on Lily Cottrell. EBB, in Aurora Leigh, has a heroine, Marian Erle, teach herself to read and write out of books thrown away in the rubbish.

Mihai is from Romania, a Roma, a gypsy, his family too poor for them to afford his schooling, who beg in the streets, their miserable shacks in Osmannoro bulldozed by the police, and who are forced to sleep at night in the open in the streets in groups of no more than three.

They come each Sunday after Mass, sitting under the great column and cross at the centre of the Cemetery, learning their letters and how to write their names, teaching each other in Romanes, the letters being the Romanian ones, having painted laptop blackboards for white chalk out of left-over library shelving. They get sandwiches of blessed bread and ground chicken livers and apples and water and used clothing. Sometimes as many as twelve of them, all ages, both genders. It's so easy to do and yet no church, no government seems to see this is a need for beggars in the street to rise up out of their poverty. It costs so little. It can achieve so much.

We are using the ideas of Lancaster, Montessori, Piaget, Freire and Don Lorenzo Milani. They work! When I ask them which language they are happiest in they say Romanes. It is from Sanskrit, from India, it is their language, in the home, in the family. Excellent linguists we find classes being in a mixture of Romanes, Romanian, Italian and English. And now Latin, too! With laughter and with self-worth.

TERENCE THROUGH TIME

2010-10-14T11:46:00.006+02:00

Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.

Terence was a freed slave from Africa, his full name Terentius Publius Afer, who wrote the most wonderful plays in which women, slaves and sons come out on top, in such pure Latin that he gave Cicero the concept of 'Humanitas', our 'Humanities'. The above line, meaning 'I am a man; therefore I consider nothing of humankind alien to me', was placed by Montaigne on his study ceiling in Bordeaux. I have placed an essay on the playwright, http://www.umilta.net/GodsPlenty.html, on the web site on Terence, http://www.umilta.net/terence.html. Look also at http://www.umilta.net/tormentors.html which gives the Latin text of his Heautontimuremos with miniatures and woodblock engravings of the scenes, as well as medieval plays written by women and men influenced by him.

Terence's Theatre
This is fitting for this library in a cemetery where we have a black slave from Nubia, Nadezhda, who came to Florence at 14, being baptized in a Russian Orthodox family, and also, with hers, the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances Trollope, Richard Hildreth, Hiram Powers, who wrote and sculpted against slavery.
Even our Roma, who restore this Cemetery, were slaves from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, only being freed when Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was translated into Romanian. And she was copying the anti-slavery novels already published by Frances Trollope, Jonathan Jefferson Whitelaw, and Richard Hidlreth, The White Slave.

A slave village (Shatra) in Romania, 1850s
We no longer need to sign the UNESCO Petition which has been delivered to Paris for the UNESCO Memory of the World Register's nomination. But we would appreciate any donation for the restoration and maintenance of this beautiful place, so filled with the world's memories. In particular are sought donations towards our alphabetization school for our skilled, but illiterate, Roma workers.

NARCISSI FROM SISSINGHURST

2010-09-11T08:43:00.012+02:00

The irises which are Florence's purple lily

This title sounds almost like a line from an Edith Sitwell poem! It announces a gift to us of narcissi thalia from the Sissinghurst Castle garden and we are very grateful. In the Spring I shall post photographs of these elegant flowers amongst our tombs. As a child growing up in Sussex I went once, on a birthday, to Sissinghurst Castle. And learned of Vita Sackville-West's work in creating it, the great lime tree walk, so much else. Then my mother gave me a copy of her poem, The Land, when I was in exile in Mendocino County and I wrote to Vita of that nostalgia, she replying with commenting on the beauty of the Sequoia Redwoods. I treasured Virginia Woolf's Orlando, the Julia Margaret Cameron photographs, the various novels I acquired by Vita. My last is a copy printed by the Hogarth Press of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. On my office door at Princeton I used to have a picture of Vita in her book-lined tower room at Sissinghurst. Thus, especially with books and tombs, we link our memories, the past for the future.

For the garden of Florence's 'English' Cemetery is created from gifts from so many, bulbs in the Spring, roses, lavendar and pomegranates, these last by our poets' graves, for the Summer, plumbago for late Summer, papyri all year round except when engulfed in snow. We invite you, too, to contribute with plants with non-invasive roots. And we joy, too, in the wild poppiesthat returned after we stopped the dreadful weedkilling chemicals used in the past.

And now all our tombs lacking their letters in lead have been repaired, thanks to the careful, painstaking work by Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu and Cristi Mihai, Roma from Romania. The Roma are also our excellent gardeners. Already they had conserved all our Victorian cast and wrought ironwork with scraping away all the rust and applying two coats of anti-rust, two coats of gray enamel. They are skilled in everything except that schooling is too costly for them in Romania so many lack the alphabet. Therefore we hold alphabet school on Sundays after Mass under the great cross in the centre of the Cemetery. In this photograph you can see Daniel painting the letters on the later Landor tombs while Lupascu Copalea and Breateanu Bancuta look on, Breateanu thus learning his letters, Lupascu, who had some schooling under Communism, being one of our teachers. School is held in the Romany language with the Romanian alphabet. The Roma tell me they are happiest in their ancient Sanskrit home and family language and learn best in it. But they are brilliant linguists, quickly learning also Italian and English. Thus our school, run by them, uses ideas of Madame Montesorri, Don Lorenzo Milani and Paulo Friere. What a gift it could be if churches taught the beggars at their doors the alphabet! Charity a school.

Breteanu Bancuta Lupascu Copalea Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu at the Landor Tombs

Breateanu Bancuta Julia Holloway Lupascu Copalea

We no longer need to sign the UNESCO Petition which has been delivered to Paris for the UNESCO Memory of the World Register's nomination. But we would appreciate any donation for the restoration and maintenance of this beautiful place, so filled with the world's memories.

FROM ANOTHER BLOG

2010-08-07T20:08:00.010+02:00

A landmark en passant (Part II)
Sunday, June 6, 2010 - 6:18 PM | posted by Joelle Edwards

More than 120 years after its 1877 closure, the ‘English Cemetery’ of Florence had fallen into a derelict state. Tombstones were unstable and cypresses were falling.

Permission for a restoration project was officially granted in 1997, when the city of Florence also approved 500 new loculi (burial plots) for ashes or small caskets of bones. The cemetery re-opened, albeit in a state of disrepair.

Since 2000, Julia Bolton Holloway, a renowned scholar and custodian of Florence’s English Cemetery, has fought to keep the gates open and restore the original charm of a place described in the nineteenth century as ‘a most beautiful garden.’ Over the past 10 years, she has supported the site through difficult times, rescuing it from ruin and threats of permanent closure. Founding the Aureo Anello Association, she launched a campaign to save the cemetery, and with the support of worldwide admirers of the cemetery, the Friends of the Cemetery was born, and members set to work on a long-overdue restoration.

Reading - in the rain - inscriptions about water from the Bible that Holman Hunt sculpted on his wife's tomb. [This tomb now carefully cleaned.]

One of Holloway’s first challenges was to convince the Swiss owners that keeping the cemetery open would be economically viable, so she began to gather requests to purchase lots. She also paid for handrails at the main entrance staircase and for the restoration of several tombs. Because she could not personally support the restoration, she began to seek donations. To do that, raising awareness is paramount.

Julia at English Cemetery in Florence...To put the cemetery ‘on the map,’ Holloway has used not only her contagious enthusiasm for the site and her powers of persuasion, but also her skills as a scholar. In 2005, she created a Wikipedia entry and an Internet blog to support the Emergency Appeal for restoration of the Cemetery. The oversight committee is impressive: in addition to film director Franco Zeffirelli (Tea with Mussolini), members include the Brontë Society, Browning Society, Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain, Trollope Society, Gabinetto Vieusseux Centro Romantico, Regione Toscana, British Consul General and Gerardo Kraft, president of the Swiss Reformed Evangelical Church (which bought the land for the cemetery in 1827)

The projects on Holloway’s to-do list include repairing tombstones; preserving the nineteenth-century ironwork and gates; creating a park facility; stabilising the bases of tombs; repairing the north wall; laying new pathways to enable visitors to reach more graves safely; and replanting the gardens with shallow-rooted native and non-invasive plants.

[Of that list the following now are done: many tombstones conserved; all the ironwork conserved; all the lead letters that had gone missing now replaced; bases of tombs stabilized except for three; new pathways created; the garden replanted - though we could do with donations of more non-invasive root plants like bulbs, lavender, etc. JBH]

To continue to raise awareness about the cemetery, Holloway has invited groups to stage events there. On May 23, for example, a group of second-year theatre students from the Tedavi Production Company performed E. L. Masters’ Spoon River Anthology amidst the graves, reciting epitaph monologues as the public walked between them. All donations went to the Emergency Appeal.

CIMITERO DEGLI INGLESI E MEDIATECA FIORETTA MAZZEI

Piazzale Donatello 38, Florence
Weekdays only: Monday, 9-noon;
Tuesday to Friday, 3pm-6pm (summer) 2pm- 5pm (winter)

The effort to save the ‘Overseas Poets Corner,’ as poet laureate Andrew Motion once called it, includes not only Hollway’s tireless work but also the contributions of private donors, along with the cemetery’s earnings as a burial site. Some friends adopt a tomb and pay to maintain its garden. No gift is too small, Holloway notes. (Contribute to the restoration of the English Cemetery with the PayPal link on the Aureo Anello Association website: http://www.florin.ms/aureoanello.html.)
In addition to monetary donations, Holloway, requests plants: roses, plumbago, daffodil bulbs and any English flowers with non-invasive roots.

See also the following:

Cemetery website and register:
http://www.florin.ms/cemetery.html

Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Cemetery,_Florence

Library website: http://www.florin.ms/biblioteca.html

Cemetery blog for latest news: http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

See Part I of the article in I-Florence.com:
http://www.i-florence.com/artsculturemuseums/a-landmark-en-passant/

See also Part I published in: TheFlorentine.net

(Article by Joëlle Edwards, Florence, London)

Joëlle Edwards is an English event and wedding planner, working in exclusive venues across Italy. She recently moved to Florence from London after having lived and worked in Switzerland, Palermo and Barcelona. She’d like to sing like Fiorella Mannoia, write like Andrea Camilleri, dance like Ginger Rogers and cook like zia Anna Maria! You can reach her at ciao@joellemarie.co.uk.

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

2010-08-07T19:59:00.000+02:00

The New York Review of Books
Visiting Elizabeth Barrett Browning
December 18, 2008
by Robert F. Ober Jr.
E-mail Single Page Share More by Robert F. Ober Jr.

To the Editors:

Readers might be interested to know that Florence’s English cemetery, where Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried, gladly welcomes visitors. While the cemetery could benefit from an infusion of funds (many tombs, some of which date from shortly after its opening in 1828, have weathered poorly), an Anglican nun, Julia Bolton Holloway, unselfishly cares for its grounds and continues to collect, in its gatehouse, books relating to the notables—including Americans—buried there. (Ms. Holloway is an EBB scholar, having edited, with her late father, the 1995 Penguin Classics edition of the poet’s works.) The cemetery is somewhat off the touristic track (non-Catholics could not be buried within Florence’s now-vanished walls), but is still a mere quarter-hour ride from the Duomo, at Piazzale Donatello, 38. More information can be found at www.florin.ms or directly from Ms. Holloway: holloway.julia@tiscali.it.

Robert F. Ober Jr.
Sharon, Connecticut

AN OPEN LETTER TO WYCLEF JEAN

2010-08-06T17:22:00.013+02:00

Although Wyclef Jean was not allowed to run for President of Haiti he had the right idea, on the need for literacy for his people.

HAITI AND ROMANIA: SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Haiti and Romania seem far apart yet are not. One is black, the other white. But in Romania, as in Haiti, much of the population were enslaved, in Romania these being the Roma, the 'gypsies' who had come from India a thousand years ago with their ancestral skills. The duration of enslavement of the Roma to nobles and monasteries was from the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century when Uncle Tom's Cabin was translated into Romanian. In both countries the slaves, even when freed, were denied decent housing, work with dignity, education. The two far-apart countries run a very close parallel to each other.

These are suggestions for Wyclef Jean, learned from the Roma of Romania begging in the streets of Florence.

I. The most important unit is the family.

II. Be sure that each family can have land to build on and on which to grow food.

III. Immediately import tents, wood house kits, and other earthquake-proof building materials not available within the country for Haitian families. Create work building these as well as Buckminster Fuller domes for schools and hospitals.
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IV. Make sure that each family can conserve water with drainpipes and cisterns.

V. China now fabricates inexpensive solar kits that can run a light and recharge telephones and even a small laptop. Give each family independence from centralized power.

VI. Pay the older more infirm members of families who do know how to read and write to teach all those who do not.

VII. Have the families create their textbooks, publishing these on the Web with their drawings that can be downloaded for use. Have these textbooks share information on how to build houses, how to conserve water, how to grow food, how to prevent illness. Have teaching be in their dialect paired with globally dominant languages using colour-coded bilingual/multilingual texts. See http://www.ringofgold.eu/Romany.html, http://www.ringofgold.eu/roofs.html, http://www.ringofgold.eu/panourisolare.html, http://www.ringofgold.eu/doctorvisit.html

VIII. In the midst of the earthquake, despite their poverty, Haitians were beautifully dressed. Encourage local dressmakers to produce clothing in cottage industries so they can care, at the same time, for the children, rather than working in factories, 50% being for fellow Haitians, 50% for export.

I & II are true for Haiti and the Roma.

III, IV, V, VI, VIII are needful for Haiti and for the Roma.

Always combine work and study. Education, especially of women, is the cheapest and best investment a nation can make towards its development and well-being. At the same time the education in the home of building, farming, sewing and other skills needs equal respect and is of equal value to the formal education acquired in schools.

Our project for the Roma in Romania, submitted to the 'Decade of Roma Inclusion' of the Open Society Institute in Budapest, is called 'Home Building, Home Schooling,' and is suggested as the foundation for obtaining work in the European Union of which the Romanian Roma are citizens. It uses the concepts of Pestalozzi, Montessori, Fanon, Freire and Milani. Switzerland was a poor country which became rich through educating its citizens.

AN INTENSE WEEK

2010-05-23T06:04:00.021+02:00

It has been an intense week. Already on the preceding Wednesday, 12 May, had been a UNESCO conference on Traditional Knowledge. At which the mayors of the local comunes were speaking of the need to repair Tuscany's dry walls, her terraces, many destroyed in the heavy rains of the 1966 Flood, and of needing money for this. But no one knows any longer how to build dry walls or wants to work that hard. And I suggested the Roma, who have rebuilt our dry walls expertly, the whole family working together, the women holding babies in their arms telling the men where to place the stones, the brothers and husbands throwing the stones to each other and catching them, and putting them in place, and the very long wall they built in two hours having held the hill now for nine years.
Then Thursday through Saturday the European Union's Commission's European Social Fund meeting at the Ospedale degli Innocenti on Social Exclusion and Education. Again I got to speak of the Roma from Romania and the 'English' Cemetery and how excellent their work is. And how important it is to give them literacy. To my amazement one Commission member, Irini Pari, placed me on her blog.http://www.eesc.europa.eu/organisation/vicepresidents/pari/blog/template_archives_cat.asp?cat=19
And on Friday at 3:30 p.m. was the UNESCO Memory of the World Exhibition at Santa Croce. So I was madly cycling between the two and there I met Joie Springer, who will be coming here today to see the 'English' Cemetery. And one of the Memory of the World treasures was the 1840 Waitangi Treaty with the New Zealand Maori chiefs and the white settlers. Now Peter Neville and his wife came to this 'English' Cemetery in a pouring rainstorm and Peter, who is Maori, recited his genealogy back to the signer of the 1840 Waitangi Treaty and to the Maori settler from Polynesia!
http://www.umilta.net/Maori1.mp3
Then, Saturday afternoon, was the awarding of prizes by the Arciconfraternita della Misericordia in photography and poetry. I didn't expect my photographs to win because they are too controversial though absolutely the theme of diversity. One was called Osmannoro Poverty, the other Osmannoro Bellezza. Since the time they were taken and submitted the police had bulldozed Margarita's shack at Osmannoro built from materials no one else wanted and she and her family, including Printsu below, were having to sleep in the streets in groups of no more than three. And it was the bitterest winter we have experienced in years.
Margarita is to the left and she is our excellent gardener. She also sewed her skirt herself. When she smiles she is beautiful.

Povertà

Bellezza
Now the Misericordia has a most beautiful but abandoned cemetery next door to ours. I am suggesting to them our workers. They could restore the splendid nineteenth funerary carriages in black and white. Our cemeteries with that of San Miniato a Monte could become together Florence's Père Lachaise.
We seek funds to pay these people to garden, and do other work restoring the 'English' Cemetery so they can repair their roofs, school their children, learn the alphabet. They already have wonderful skills as blacksmiths, stonemasons, carpenters, gardeners.
The Roma babies are wrapped up in fasces like those on the Ospedale degli Innocenti and almost never cry, from feeling so secure, so loved. This is Printsu whose parents are working here to find the money for his hospital care in Romania. He is anemic from lack of milk. The stress caused his mother not to have enough. His parents, who are all of eighteen, are sleeping under the loggia of the Innocenti at night. I have been teaching them to write their names and the alphabet so they can become members of our association and work in the Cemetery. They go home on Tuesday to be with their baby.

2010-04-29T15:05:00.013+02:00

SLIDE SHOW OF IRISES

This morning was so beautiful I got out the humungous antiquarian digital camera to photograph it all and have made a slide show for you of our glorious irises in bloom.
These are Florence's lilies. Then a young artist was inspired to paint them. So I photographed him, too, painting them.
You can find all this, in more detail, with more photographs and which are larger, at http://www.florin.ms/irises.ppt.
After the irises will be roses and lavender and plumbago. The irises are thanks to Nicholas Dakin-Elliot, Head Gardener of New York University's Villa La Pietra.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery and its gardening you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

2010-03-25T13:49:00.006+01:00

UNESCO, MEMORY OF THE WORLD

NOMINATION APPLICATION

'FROM GRAVES TO CRADLES'

FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY, ITS ARCHIVE, ITS MEDIATHECA,

ITS RESEARCH, ITS RESTORATION

A piazza in Florence, a cemetery on a hill with its tall cypresses, perhaps once an Etruscan tomb, now strangely set in the midst of swirling modern traffic, through whose gates visitors step into a different past. An archive, a library, in situ, with the documents and also with the books by and about the persons buried here: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Frances Trollope, Southwood Smith, Arthur Hugh Clough, Jean Pierre Vieusseux, Hiram Powers, Theodore Parker, Richard Hildreth, the sister of Henry Adams, the wife of Holman Hunt, the daughter of Arnold Bőcklin, the son of Ferenc Pulszky, the governess of the Tsar of Russia, the son of William IV of England, twelve participants of the Peninsula and Waterloo battles against Napoleon, many friends of Florence Nightingale, whose tombs the ex-slave Frederick Douglass visited. A place filled with memory, for Florence, for Italy, for Europe, for the world. A place dense with meaning, a burning glass of history, for Civil Rights, for the Aboliton of Slavery, for the rights of nations (among them Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary), to be freed from foreign oppression, for the rights of women, for the rights of children, for health and welfare, a place for poets and sculptors, a place for writers and artists. In its oval are multiple languages, a United Nations in a city square, peaceably altogether, the archives in French and Italian, the tombstones they document in Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Cyrillic and fraktura alphabets and in most European languages, including Rumantsch. A cemetery celebrated in Arnold Bőcklin's 'Island of the Dead' and in Sergei Rachmaninoff's music to the same. Nobles and commoners lying with slaves, serfs and servants, all walks of life, the Swiss owners burying pauper travellers for free. In the nineteenth century a beautiful garden, now being restored in the twenty-first, after years of abandonment and neglect, from research in Victorian diaries and guidebooks and from old photographs and paintings. A place whose intent was, is and will continue to be the 'Memory of the World'.

The Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery as it was from 1827 to the late 1860's. At the Risorgimento Giuseppe Poggi re-designed Florence, briefly Italy's capital, with Parisian boulevards, tearing down the medieval walls built by Arnolfo di Cambio and Michelangelo Buonarotti to do so. The 'English' Cemetery had nestled against the outside of the medieval wall by the Porta a' Pinti Gate. It still has the two stemma of the lily and the cross Arnolfo sculpted.

The Cemetery with its Gatehouse, housing the library and archive, as they are now. The tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the large sarcophagus on six colums to be seen in the centre on this side of the central path. The large building behind the Cemetery is the studio of Michele Gordigiani, who painted the two portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning which are now in London's National Portrait Gallery. Francesca Gordigiani, his descendant, still lives in his studio. We recommend you call up Google Earth and ask it for 'Piazzale Donatello, Florence', to see a further aerial view of the Cemetery and Gatehouse.

To call up each section of this file click on the following:

I. The Swiss Archives

Receipt for burial of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

II. The Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery

III. Florence in Sepia

IV. Florence's Flood, 1966

V. The Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei'

VI. The Florin Website

VII. 'The City and the Book'
International Conferences in Florence

VIII. The Romanian Roma Restorers

IX. Julia Bolton Holloway, Custodian, Vita

We don't need to sign the petition anymore. It went off in the post to UNESCO this morning with 6000 signatures. Thanks!

AND NOW FOR THE CEMETERY'S LIBRARY

2009-10-31T11:39:00.007+01:00

The Cemetery's Library, called the Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei', is both very beautiful and very useful. We particularly seek books by and about the persons buried here to be part of the Cemetery's archive, which also contains meticulous hand-written registers in French on the funerals and burials. It is here we help Roma learn the alphabet and create books in their three languages, Romany, Romanian, Italian and a fourth, my English, and with their fine but perspective-less drawings.

Our rule for the library is that to be a member one gives it a book a year or contributes in some way to the library and the cemetery or both. And the rule works splendidly, the books pouring in, the Roma building bookshelves along with their wooden rocking cradles here, plants arriving for the garden and much more.
I once was a member of a theological library in London, Sion College, alas, now dead as a dodo, but which had a wonderful rule, that they could send books to country scholar priests and immured scholar nuns by post. I continue that rule, our catalogue being posted on the web (at http://www.florin.ms/biblioteca.html)and monks and priests from all over the world send books and borrow books. Packages of theological, contemplative books arrive from as far away as Malaysia, some, bought in the bazaar, needing our restoration from book-worm!
Let me tell you of one book. It is the Summula Patristica ad usum alumnorum clerique indigene, printed in Hongkong in 1949. It contains the Church Fathers and Mothers, beginning with Acta Martyrum which includes that of Saints Pepertua and Felicity and continues through Saints Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose, all in Latin. Among its pages I found a quarter of a page, part of a letter asking the Charterhouse monks to please pay their bills, on the other a list of their books they were publishing to attempt to pay those bills. I smiled, for their situation is so much like mine, where we publish books we create ourselves, EBB's sonnets from the Portuguese, Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love, to attempt to pay the bills for the restoration of the tombs in this cemetery. We live in an economy of reciprocity, a sort of food chain of money. If a link breaks then work cannot be done, hunger results.
This far-travelled book is not unlike the regimental spoon we write about in the Cemetery website, http://www.florin.ms/yelverton.html It's a tangible artifact with a long long story, both journeying in time and space. Just like our tombs, our books have splendid stories they can tell us.

LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

2008-11-08T14:01:00.012+01:00

This is my letter to the President of the United States of America, which I also wish to share with you:

Dear President Obama,

When you come to Italy, when you come to Florence, I particularly invite you to a world monument against the practice of slavery. Frederick Douglass came here to the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence to pay respects to Theodore Parker who had preached courageously against slavery. Buried here as well are Frances Trollope and Richard Hildreth who wrote the first and second anti-slavery novels, copied next by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Likewise Hiram Powers and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she writing an impassioned sonnet against slavery and serfdom in America and Russia for his statue the 'Greek Slave' exhibited at the very center of the 1851 London Crystal Palace Exhibition. For this reason Lord Frederick Leighton had a broken slave shackle sculpted on EBB's tomb to celebrate her love of freedom. Also buried here is Nadezhda, who came at 14, a black Nubian slave, to Florence, dying here in her thirties. She was baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name meaning 'Hope', her story being told on her tomb in Cyrillic.

Near our Cemetery is Piazza Beccaria, named after Cesare Beccaria who wrote against capital punishment as cruel and barbaric, unworthy of civilization, his book influencing the Grand Duke of Tuscany to abolish executions, 30 November 1786, that had formerly taken place in that square, Russia soon following suit.

I lectured on the 80 American burials in our 'English' Cemetery at Little Rock a year ago and was so deeply moved by their Civil Rights exhibition, then still in the small gas station by the school, far more moved than I was by the acres of marble of the Clinton Library. I organized our fifth international conference, 'The City and the Book V', on our 80 Americans in this Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery this past October, our most eloquent speaker being the art historian Marilyn Richardson.

We are restoring this world monument in Piazzale Donatello with the help of Roma families from Romania. The Roma had been slaves of the monasteries in Romania from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Victims of the Holocaust, they received no reparations. Their Indo-European language, Romany, goes unrecognized by the European Union, of which they are citizens yet the Union's largest and poorest minority. Our project combines education and work, and a major part of it is creating their wooden rocking cradles together. The funds they earn from their restoration of the nineteenth-century garden of the cemetery and conserving the ironwork of the tombs, seen in the midst of all Florentine traffic, then goes to build and repair their homes in Romania, which next allows them to work legally there, instead of begging in Florentine streets. This because I listened to the women who told me their dreams were for roofs that did not have holes letting in the snow and rain and for education for their children. Together we are creating a Dictionary in four languages, Romany, Romanian, Italian and English, and with their drawings, that can be used by these families and others in home schooling. Many are illiterate, particularly the women, their poverty being currently too great for them to pay the incidental expenses for their children's schooling, heating, books, clothes, etc. I found most of our families, when I visited them in Romania, live twelve to one windowless room, next to the horse's stall, a recipe for illnesses like tuberculosis. We call our project 'From Graves to Cradles'.

Hiram Powers' statue 'America', sculpted here in Florence, was not accepted by Congress because he had her trampling on slave shackles. It's a magnificent work. Much more lovely than the French-built Statue of Liberty, and truly American. Visit the Smithsonian's Musem of American Art with your daughters to see it. Marilyn Richardson can also tell you her story about how she discovered Edmonia Lewis' powerful ‘Cleopatra’ in Chicago and had it come to the Smithsonian.

You are very warmly welcome here,

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway, Ph.D.
President, Aureo Anello
Director, Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei'
http://www.umilta.net
http://www.florin.ms
http://www.ringofgold.eu
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

We are now at 1535 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 4321 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5856 signatures. We should be very grateful for your signature, too, and those of your family.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

BOOKS, BOOKS, AND MORE BOOKS

2008-10-24T12:01:00.030+02:00

WHOLE BOOKS, WHOLESOME BOOKS:
MORE 'FROM GRAVES TO CRADLES'

Books are Books of the Dead, are Books of Life. We have joyously been working in this 'English' Cemetery with a Roma family with their writing of a book in four languages. You can read it on-line at http://www.umilta.net/Romany.html. And with their building their cradle for their coming child while also conserving all the beautiful iron work in this 'English' Cemetery.

Daniel Dumitrescu and Vandana Culea making their cradle for their baby who will be called Gabriela.

And this is the new cradle:

Then I went to Romania, where I found they lived twelve to one room next to the horse's stall. They are now building their house in a flower-filled meadow I also saw when there.

Today they have sent pictures of Gabriela as she now is

and of the house-building.

Only its roof is lacking.

Look at the courage of the grandmother. How empowering she is. Can we help with this most essential part by paying Daniel to do further restoration in the Cemetery? Pray that this be allowed.

Two of Christopher Alexander's beautiful volumes, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, have been lent to me. He is saying much the same. that the hut on water in the Mekong Delta of a poor family has more beauty and utility than has a cold modern architect's fantasy. Look him up on the web. I like his story, teaching at Berkeley he has retired to Sussex; it's rather like mine.

Our library is the Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei'. I think you will see why when you read her little book: http://www.umilta.net/bluegreen.html

Fai attenzione alle persone e alla natura:
E` molto più importante che leggere un libro.

Paying attention to people and nature
Is far more important than reading a book.

Creating a book from beginning to end. That is what I have always done. And now more than ever. All my many published books have been researched, written, typeset and many of them even hand-bound by myself. I think it is important teaching even very small children the art of the book. I used to bring wooden blocks and show children how the letters came out backward/forwards when they were inked and pressed on paper. Then let them do paintings and collages and tell me their stories which I typed up so they could place them with their drawings. These three and four-year olds, knowing their own stories, then could read them to their mothers and fathers! I used to so want such programs for the Head Start schools. Which instead said: 'No, we can't do that. We must keep these children away from books. They must first learn socializing skills. So deprived they are'. Not understanding their very teachers were enforcing deprivation and illiteracy. All you need for a young girl to become a writer, a scholar, is a library she can explore. She doesn't need schooling apart from that.
Think of Christine de Pizan, of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of Mary Somerville. Mary, with no university education, only six months of schooling in an iron cage to straighten her back, discovered two planets, wrote scientific books that were used as text books at the University of Cambridge, and taught Ada Lovelace mathematics, who then with Charles Babbage invented the computer, she suggesting to him using the Jacquard loom cards with holes punched in them and the binomial theorem.

We have a friend born in the Mugello, where Giotto was born. He comes many Sundays and recites Dante's Cantos, many by heart, while we record him, our Roma families often listening, too, while looking at Botticelli's drawings for the poem. He is better than Robert Benigni! Most recently, our American scholars at the conference on the City and the Book V found his performance the most moving of their stay in Florence. You can find him at http://www.florin.ms. and the conference Proceedings at http://www.florin.ms/CBV.html

Now that lovely design on Gabriela's cradle. It comes from the house in the midst of a garden in Rome of the Cardinal Bessarione. I fell in love with it when I first saw it, at 21, with my first baby, Robin, in my arms. I sketched it then in situ, and many times afterwards from memory, when that lovely house was shut up and abandoned. A Paradise to which I always yearned to return. The Cardinal at the 1439 Council of Florence reconciled Greece and Rome, the Orthodox with the Catholic, though for so brief a while, bringing so many Greek classics into the Latin West. Why I paint the design on the cradles of Roma babies, whose ancestors had already reached Romania by that date and become themselves such devout Orthodox Christians, though never accepted by either Church, indeed being the slaves of Romanian monasteries from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The design is everything William Morris and Christopher Alexander espouse, the use of natural forms, here the pomegranate of poets, of natural colour, of spheres, not harsh man-made, machine-made boxes.

There are wrong books and right books. Wrong books are for power and against people, David Ricardo and Milton Friedman's laissez-faire economics that caused Ireland's genocide and our present disasters, Machiavelli's Prince and Dean Swift's Modest Proposal, written sarcastically but taken straight, leading again to corporate greed and the Irish genocide of the Potato Famine. Behind these the figures of the Medici. Before them and again under Savonarola Florence was a Republic where Christ was King and where beauty reigned, skilled crafts being prized and the entry into government by the people, of the people, for the people, of great creative energy. Recall those early rooms in the Uffizi filled with saints and gold leaf, not the later ones filled with the Medici, bitumen backgrounds, pornography. About self, not the whole; about greed, not the charity of the Misericordia, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Buon'uomini di San Martino; about power, not prosperity; about lust, not love.

There are right books. Most of the Bible, certainly Isaiah, the Gospels. The Egyptian Book of the Dead describing how loving married couples shall have a garden they will tend and reap if they have been kind to their slaves and done no ill, but individuals who have been for themselves, who have murdered or stolen or worse. shall be devoured by a monster. The Koran where it speaks of Mary's Annunciation and of how good Jews obeying the Torah, good Christians obeying the Gospels, good Moslems obeying the Koran, shall be saved. And Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love.

My Bibles. Their covers had broken off from their much travelling. I took them to my book-binding maestro, Enrico Giannini, whose family have been binding books for five generations, and who has taught me and my Roma families how to marble paper, how to bind books. Together we discussed how best to save them and all the genealogical notes I had written on the end-papers for my children, about my family in Ireland, my family in England, my family in Portugal and Holland, my husband's slave-owning family in America. I told Enrico the story of how my sandals had become too old, too odorous, in Dallas. How I went to a shoe store and was so ashamed that the salesman was Black and knelt before me placing new sandals on my feet. And I apologized, explaining I hated changing old shoes for new, the old so comfortable but far too smelly. And he agreed. It's just like that with his Bibles, he said. When he completely knows his way around them their covers are falling off and he must buy new ones. Leather-covered Bibles, leather sandals, Christ's feet. And now Enrico has telephoned and they are ready. So I cycle across the beautiful Ponte Santa Trinita and come to his workshop and they are splendid. I have the money to pay for the work. No, he says. But what he would like are two packets of Irish moss for marbling paper. The Carageen moss coming to me in packets, because in Ireland it is for human consumption, for breakfast, and not expensive, and these packets always arrive exactly when they are needed from a great Irish scholar in Cork, Maire Herbert. Who had come to the first and second City and Book conferences in Florence we organized, giving marvellous papers at them.

Medieval monasteries, obeying Benedict's Rule, knew that for physical, mental and spiritual health a balance was needed, of work, study, prayer, the use of the body, the mind and the soul. Our modern education, forgetting this, now has the young rebelling with the ugliest graffiti even on the beautiful convent where St Therese of Lisieux stayed as a young child in Florence. Perhaps because there is no healthful recreation. We recall the beauty of her sister's photography, the play-acting they did of Therese as Joan of Arc, and the loveliness of her theology written by one so young. This is what our library is about in this cemetery, a place where we weed and garden with Roma families, build with them cradles for their babies, share with them Dante and Botticelli, and where photographs of them are honoured on its walls and they are welcomed. In seven years they have stolen nothing. The dry walling has been repaired, the cast and wrought iron conserved, the garden planted and weeded, and soon -- we hope -- the tombs cleaned. The first family came to us with the mother, who is illiterate, singing this as her lullaby to her baby and which I recorded seven years ago: http://www.umilta.net/alleluiawhole.mp3 [cut and paste this in the URL line to listen, then reduce that page and return to this one). And now over seven years our Aureo Anello Association has made possible first the buying of a house for this family, the re-building of a flood-destroyed house for another family, the rebuilding of a roof of a third family headed by a widow and the sending of her 18-year old adopted son who was first in his class the one year he had had in school to study in a six month program for his diploma, and now the building of this house by our fourth family, these extended families each living in one room, around twelve people. We have done this through listening to the women begging in Florence's streets, learning their greatest need is the roof over their family in Romania to be intact, and then the education of their children. A cemetery restored. Fifty Romanian Roma of all ages - many lacking schooling - helped to become European Citizens. Done through a library in a cemetery. 'From Graves to Cradles'. Of which we have now built ten. Nine of them with babies in them. The tenth for our library. Flouting Heloise and Abelard!

Blessings,

Julia Bolton Holloway
President Aureo Anello Association Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei' and Friends of the 'English' Cemetery
P.le Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE
ITALY

We are now at 1498 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 4190 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5688 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

APPELLO/APPEAL

2008-05-03T04:44:00.017+02:00

We have together created so much beauty in the English Cemetery. Take a walk with us amongst our purple irises - which are Florence's lily.

The main avenue of which the right side is about to be destroyed.

Newly restored tomb to the right was placed by Mary Somerville for her husband William. She discovered two planets, taught mathematics to Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who, with Charles Babbage, invented the computer.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Leighton copying the iris which is Florence's lily for the tomb motif. Left side of central avenue.

August Mannerheim, Finland. Top left of central avenue.

James Lorimer Graham, American Consul, top right of central avenue.

Southwood Smith, beginning of left avenue.

Left avenue

Ann Susanna Horner. Left of central avenue.

Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb and the last standard rose left of an avenue of these on right of central avenue.

But all this is now about to be destroyed. In January the Cemetery will be shut down, the digging will start and concrete loculi for the burial of ashes placed everywhere. Can you write a letter to the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church to be copied to the Belle Arti which judicates concerning historical monuments, saying that the 500 modern concrete loculi amongst the 700 historic tombs that remain of the 1400 burials here will destroy the atmosphere of the place. Explain that you understand the Swiss need the funding for the Cemetery these loculi for the burial of ashes would give but that they need to be placed with sensitivity for the historic and artistic importance of this place. Request that the work be carried out first on one side, then on the other, allowing the Cemetery to still be visitable. Request also that the 42 loculi planned along the right side of the avenue blocking access to Arthur Hugh Clough's grave and destroying the symmetry of the very beautiful central avenue be placed elsewhere in the Cemetery. Specify also that the tomb slabs for the new graves be simple and in marble, so as not to clash with the historic monuments. Send the letters to this address in e-mails or by post and I will deliver them to the Swiss Church which owns the Cemetery and to the Belle Arti.

Yours sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
President, Aureo Anello Association Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei' and Friends of the 'English' Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

We are now at 1482 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 4150 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5632 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

CEMENT AND FLOWERS

2008-04-01T13:50:00.012+02:00

Wild irises (Florence's purple lilies) planted by the tombs

This morning I woke up remembering a story Rose had written. Rose was an abandoned gypsy child taken to an orphanage in England by her mother because her father could not control his drinking in their poverty. This is part of her story she wrote for me, for us, in my convent. In which she described, after a successful career as army cook, buying a house. The previous owner had been a woman dying of cancer and angry with the world and unable to tend her garden. She ordered it covered over with cement. Rose and her children now set to work with pickaxes, removing that layer, at night taking hunks of concrete to the skip illegally, and finally restoring the once-lost, murdered garden. Rose died of cancer before she could see her book published on the web and in print. But she left for us seeds of words and seeds of flowers, a book and a garden.

Camus in his Notebooks says we are free to stoke the crematoria at Auschwitz or to nurse lepers in Africa. We are also free to cover the earth with concrete, purchase and drive gas-guzzlers - or to plant gardens. Those who do the first in these series will do their best to cover gardens with cement, those in the second part will be lugging hunks of concrete secretly in the night! But we just might between us save or restore some gardens, heal some ravaged bodies and minds and souls and ourselves have peace of mind and great joy.

And this is now happening here! For years this Cemetery has been put to weed killer and four years ago almost all its nineteenth-century plants rooted out - to save money. It looked so gray and dead. Finally I persuaded the Swiss to stop the weed-killing, visitors have been giving us bulbs, lavender, rosemary, strawberry plants, box, myrtle, pomegranate and rose bushes, and master gardeners have been giving us advice and help. Not only this, my weeders of stinging nettles and dandelions are gypsy families and we have now won the right to establish a training center here for them, an apprenticeship, where they can learn gardening, stone masonry, blacksmithing, sewing, book-binding, paper marbling, reading and writing, so they can work to repair their houses in Romania and send their children there to school. I love our Rom families. They don't really need training, already knowing how to build dry walls expertly, how to carpenter (the women!), how to sew (the men!), how to tell weeds from flowers, before you even tell them. But no one will give them work anywhere. This will be our breakthrough. Because of the television broadcast on Easter Day (you can find it in the middle of the video that you can call up by Googling 'tg1 speciale silenzio Dio' and then its archive) people are now finding the funds for this program from foundations. We are writing proposals explaining how they work in families, not as individuals. And the women work better almost than the men. In our seven years of them here nothing has been stolen. We are calling our project 'From Graves to Cradles', for we even make their beautiful traditional rocking cradles - which are immediately put to use with their babies in them!

Our Cemetery is now filled with flowers, lavender and rose petal sachets are perfuming the library, and there is great joy everywhere. The Rom and I are planting shoots in pots under plastic - what the Italians call a 'vivaio', a nursery garden. Costs nothing. It is so much better to produce than to consume, so much better to build a hospital, a school, a library, a garden. And to keep on doing so. A great conspiracy of peace, of healing, of learning, of nurturing in the world.

Florence's Cathedral seen from the 'English' Cemetery

We are now at 1488 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 4134 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5572 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

'The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world'

FLORENCE AND THE AMERICANS: CALL FOR PAPERS

2007-11-29T09:24:00.001+01:00

FLORENCE'S CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCES

THE CITY AND THE BOOK V:

FLORENCE AND THE AMERICANS

CALL FOR PAPERS. (PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS CALL AMONG FELLOW SCHOLARS)

Eighty Americans are or were buried in Florence's Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery, 1827-1877. This fifth City and Book conference will concentrate on these and on other American writers and artists present in Florence in the nineteenth century and on Anglo-Florentine writers closely associated with them. We have papers on Hiram Powers, Louisa (Adams) Kuhn and Henry Adams, James Lorimer Graham, Richard Hildreth, Margaret Fuller, Kate Field and Lilian Whiting. We seek papers on Theodore Parker, Joel Hart, Amasa Hewins, Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Henry James and others.

The Proceedings will be published on the Web immediately following the Saturday, 11 October 2008, City and Book V Conference. The list of American burials in Florence's Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery can be found at http://www.florin.ms/americantombs.html

We are now at 1435 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 4067 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5502 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery, particularly its American tombs, you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
President, Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE SAVAGE LANDORS AND FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2007-10-13T04:17:00.000+02:00

Cimitero ‘degli Inglesi’, 13 Ottobre 2007
The Savage Landor Family and the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery

Musica: Canone di Pachelbel

Flauto, Clarissa Bencini; Flauto e ottavino, Laura Manescalchi

Lettori: Julia Bolton Holloway, Presidente, Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei; Maria Grazia Beverini Dal Santo, Presidente, Lyceum Club e Fondazione il Fiore

I. Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor loved gardens. Both Walter Savage Landor and Elizabeth Barrett Browning loved poetry and loved gardens. Seven years ago here all was dead, grey, ugly, from weed-killer. The more I read and the more I listened I learned that this so-called ‘English’ Cemetery had been a famous and most lovely garden. In Ireland once I saw a poetry garden. This hill can again become such a garden for poets and for ourselves. Now, thanks to Katherine Goldsmith of The Ecologist and to Dott. Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina of the Giardino Torrigiani, the wild strawberries have returned, the box hedge is restored and three pomegranates grace our three famous poets’ graves. In a sense gardens and poems are human constructs married to nature, not violating her but seeking instead to heal and woo her into loveliness, into gracefulness, into fruitfulness.

Walter Savage Landor amava i giardini. Walter Savage Landor ed Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ambedue poeti, amavano la poesia e i giardini. Sette anni fa questo luogo appariva spoglio, brullo, brutto per il continuo utilizzo di sostanze diserbanti. Da numerosi diari e documenti apprendiamo che questo Cimitero detto ‘degli Inglesi” era un famoso e bellissimo giardino. In Irlanda ho potuto ammirare un giardino della poesia, e questa collinetta potrebbe trasformarsi in uno splendido parco dei poeti per tutti noi. Ora grazie alla generosità di Katherine Goldsmith, moglie del fondatore ed editore di The Ecologist, e grazie al Dott. Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina del Giardino Torrigiani, sono state create delle siepi di bosso e sono stati piantati tre piccoli melograni che adornano i sepolcri dei nostri illustri poeti, cominciano anche a spuntare le piantine di fragole di bosco così come un tempo. In un certo senso i giardini e la poesia sono creazione dell’uomo intimamente legati alla natura, non la violano ma cercano invece di sanarla e corteggiarla per esaltarne la bellezza, la fecondità e la grazia.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) is the poets’ poet, beloved by the Shelleys and the Brownings. He was impetuous, generous and difficult, a Romantic writer who had outlived that famous poetic generation of Keats, Shelley and Byron. He was born in Warwick, educated at Rugby and Trinity, and published Gebir at twenty-three, then again in 1803 in both English and in Latin. The idea for the Arabian tale of Gebir, set in Egypt, came from a book Rose Aylmer, the daughter of Lord Aylmer, had lent him. Gebir was Shelley’s favourite poem. It was also admired by Southey. In 1799 the young and beloved Rose Aylmer sailed for Bengal with her aunt, Lady Russell, dying there of cholera.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), il poeta dei poeti, fu molto amato dai Shelley e dai Browning. Di temperamento impetuoso, spirito ribelle ma al contempo generoso, poeta romantico che sopravvisse all’illustre generazione di Keats, Shelley e Byron. Nasce a Warwick e compie gli studi alla Rugby School e al Trinity College. Pubblica ventitreenne il poema epico Gebir, che ripubblica poi nuovamente nel 1803 in inglese e in latino. L’idea per il racconto arabo di Gebir gli derivò da un libro avuto in prestito da Rose Aylmer, figlia di Lord Aylmer. Gebir fu il poema più amato da Shelley e grandemente apprezzato da Robert Southey. Nel 1799 la giovane e amata Rose Aylmer compie un viaggio con la zia Lady Russell in Bengala e muore lì di colera.

Fighting at his own expense in Spain against Napoleon provided Savage Landor material for Count Julian. In 1811 he met Julia Thuillier, the daughter of a bankrupt Swiss banker, at a dance in Bath and immediately married her. They came to Florence in 1821, following a time in Wales. Here he acquired the Villa Gherardesca in San Domenico, now the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and began the Imaginary Conversations. In his poetry he is feminist, especially his Pericles and Aspasia. But in 1835 he separated from his wife and children, though writing poems to his daughter Julia and his son Arnold. There is a lovely portrait by Trajan Wallis of Julia and her daughter and son. Trajan Wallis also erected the tomb for his father, likewise a painter, here. Walter Savage Landor returned to Florence in 1858 only to be rejected by his family, the Brownings befriending him in his last years from their love for his poetry. The young American Kate Field adored him. Algernon Charles Swinburne visited him admiringly, then wrote the epitaph quoted on his humble grave. It is his widow Julia Savage Landor’s statue by the Sicilian Michele Auteri Pomar that we saw on the tomb of their eldest son, Arnold Savage Landor, though she is buried in the Allori Cemetery. Present with us today are the widow of Dr John Landor, Professor Mary Landor, and the descendants of Julia’s Julia’s Julia, the Conti Negroni Bentivoglio of Modena and Vercelli.

Now at the statue’s base

lie the remains of the great poet’s son Walter Savage Landor II, the grandson, A. Henry Savage Landor, and Dr John Landor, likewise a descendant, the poet’s family reconciled within this ‘English’ Cemetery’s beautiful oval.

Per il dramma in versi Count Julian (Conte Julian) trasse ispirazione dalla sua esperienza in Spagna dove combattè con le sue proprie risorse contro Napoleone. Nel 1811 conosce ad un ballo Julia Thuillier, figlia di un banchiere svizzero finito in bancarotta e subito la sposa. Essi giungono a Firenze nel 1821, dopo un periodo trascorso in Galles. A San Domenico di Fiesole acquista la Villa Gherardesca, ora Scuola di Musica di Fiesole ed inizia a scrivere Imaginary Conversations (Conversazioni immaginarie). Nella sua poesia si rivela un poeta femminista, in particolare ciò si coglie nel suo Pericles and Aspasia (Pericle e Aspasia). Separatosi dalla moglie e dai figli nel 1835 continua tuttavia a scrivere poesie che dedica ed invia alla figlia Julia e al figlio Arnold. Un bellissimo dipinto ad olio, opera di Trajan Wallis, ritrae Julia Savage Landor con la figlia Julia ed il figlio Arnold. Il padre di Trajan Wallis, anch’egli pittore, ha trovato sepoltura in questo cimitero. Walter Savage Landor ritornò a Firenze nel 1858 ma subì il rifiuto da parte della sua famiglia. I Browning che amarono profondamente la sua poesia e a lui furono legati da profonda amicizia lo soccorsero negli ultimi difficili anni della sua vita. Algernon Charles Swinburne pieno di ammirazione giunse a Firenze in visita e scrisse per lui il bellissimo epitaffio che oggi possiamo leggere sulla sua umile tomba. Sulla tomba di Arnold Savage Landor, figlio primogenito del poeta, anch’egli qui sepolto, ammiriamo la statua della madre Julia Savage Landor, opera dello scultore palermitano Michele Auteri Pomar, ma Julia Savage Landor riposa al Cimitero ‘agli Allori’. Siamo lieti della presenza a questa cerimonia di numerosi discendenti di Walter Savage Landor e Julia Savage Landor. Ai piedi di questo monumento riposano ora il secondogenito di Walter Savage Landor, che porta il suo stesso nome, il nipote A. Henry Savage Landor e il Dottor John Landor. La famiglia del poeta è qui riconciliata nell’ovale del bellissimo Cimitero ‘degli Inglesi’.

Musica: Adagio dalla VI Sonata del Pastor Fido di Vivaldi

This passage in Gebir where the sea-nymph offers a reward was admired by all, especially the poet Shelley.

But I have sinuous shells, of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave;
Shake one and it awakens, then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean there.

Il passo in Gebir dove la nereide offre in dono delle conchiglie al pastore Tamar è un passo da tutti ammirato, in particolare da Shelley.

Ho conchiglie a spirale, dal cuore
di perla, imbevute del bagliore di luce
Nel portico del palazzo del sole, dove staccata dal giogo
La ruota del suo cocchio
Riposa a metà nell’onda;
Scuoti una conchiglia e si desta, avvicina
I lucenti suoi bordi al sollecito tuo orecchio,
Ricorda essa le auguste sue dimore,
E come l’oceano mormora.

Walter Savage Landor strongly defended the Florentine couple who became Protestant, Francesco and Rosa Madiai, writing his last Imaginary Conversation about their imprisonment. Their crime, reading the Bible in Italian. Rosa Madiai is buried beside the tomb of Arnold Savage Landor.

Walter Savage Landor difese con forza Francesco e Rosa Madiai che si convertirono al protestantesimo e scrisse di loro e della loro condanna al carcere nella sua ultima Imaginary Conversation. Il loro crimine fu quello di aver letto la Bibbia in italiano. Rosa Madiai riposa accanto al sepolcro di Arnold Savage Landor.

Walter Savage Landor’s quatrains are exquisite.

In 1909 the lines of his poem on Rose Aylmer were placed on her tomb in Calcutta.

Ah what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

Le quartine di Walter Savage Landor sono mirabili.

Nel 1909 i versi che il poeta compose nel 1799 per la sua musa Rose Aylmer sono stati posti come epitaffio sulla tomba di lei a Calcutta.

Ah, a cosa serve la razza imperiale,
La divina forma!
Ogni virtù e grazia!
Tutto ciò era in te, Rose Aylmer.
Questi occhi che ti vegliano, Rose Aylmer,
Possono piangerti ma non vederti.
Una notte consacro a te
Di memorie e sospiri.

And this one my favourite:

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is there is not a word of fear.

E questa quartina è la mia favorita.

Aleggia su di me la morte, bisbiglia lieve
Non so cosa al mio orecchio:
Della sua lingua straniera tutto ciò che so
E’ che non c’è una parola di paura.

Musica: Sarabanda di J. S. Bach

II. The Writers: Their Books, Their Tombs

We celebrate today 180 years of the existence of this cemetery and its first burial, of the fifteen year old son of the Swiss Pastor, Jean David Marc Gonin. Signor Gerardo Kraft, President of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church, will carry to his tomb his portrait, sent to us by the family’s descendants in Paris. Piero Bazzanti has made him as if eighteen on his tomb, the portrait by Solomon Counis, also buried here, makes him as if twenty-two.

II. Gli scrittori: i loro libri, i loro sepolcri

Oggi ricordiamo e celebriamo anche il 180° anniversario dell’istituzione del Cimitero Porta a’ Pinti detto “degli Inglesi”. Jean David Marc Gonin, primogenito quindicenne del Pastore svizzero Jean Pierre Gonin, fu il primo a trovare sepoltura in questo cimitero. La sua tomba fu eseguita nella bottega di Piero Bazzanti. Il Signor Gerardo Kraft, Presidente della Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, porterà alla sua tomba una foto del ritratto di lui, dono dei discendenti che vivono a Parigi. Il monumento di Piero Bazzanti lo rappresenta diciottenne, il ritratto di lui ventiduenne è opera di Solomon Counis. Anch’egli riposa in questo cimitero.

Tombs and paintings, poems and books, outlast our mortal bodies, carrying memories that converse with the future, across centuries. They tell stories. They are the Greek Anthology, they are Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology, but giving the story of Florence and her foreigners, rather than of St Louis and her Americans, of Athens and her citizens and slaves.

Le tombe e i libri sopravvivono a noi fatti di involucro mortale, sono memoria che conversa con il tempo futuro lungo i secoli. Sono l’Antologia palatina, sono l’Antologia di Spoon River. Gli epitaffi raccontano la storia di Firenze e degli stranieri che nell’Ottocento elessero l’amata città a loro dimora.

To honour our poets, our writers, we now will bring their books to their tombs. I will hand to persons books who will at the end of this discourse carry them to the respective tombs, reading there the title page of one of them and perhaps a selection, next bringing them to the back room of the library where we will place them in display cases for all to see.

Per rendere omaggio ad alcuni degli scrittori che qui hanno trovato sepoltura consegno ad alcuni di voi dei volumi da porre sui loro sepolcri. Ognuno di voi leggerà il frontespizio di uno dei libri di ciascun autore.

Musica: Danza ungherese di Brahms

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

On Walter Savage Landor’s newly-restored tomb are written Swinburne’s lines:

La tomba di Walter Savage Landor è stata recentemente restaurata. Swinburne compose il suo epitaffio.

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/

IN MEMORIA DI WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR NATO IL 30 GENNAIO 1775 MORTO IL 17 SETTEMBRE 1864 – E TU LA SUA FIRENZE CURA, ACCOGLI, SERBA LA SUA DONATA POLVERE, IL SUO SACRO SONNO. DA LONTANO GIUNGANO I TUOI AMANTI PER CONFONDERSI CON IL NOME TUO, FIRENZE, E LA PURA FAMA DI LUI COSI’ COME LA STELLA DEL MATTINO CON LA STELLA DEL VESPRO. A. C. SWINBURNE

Count General Negroni Bentivoglio, descendant of Walter Savage Landor, will carry the books to his tomb. Pastore Mario Marziale, of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church, instead, will carry the volume with the Imaginary Conversation about Rosa Madiai to her tomb. The Madiai’s imprisonment was because, as Italians, they were forbidden to read the Bible. In this Protestant Cemetery countless tombs quote from the Bible in many alphabets and numerous languages. This is the place of the Book and of Freedom.

Il Conte Generale Negroni Bentivoglio, discendente della famiglia Savage Landor, porrà i suoi libri sulla sua tomba. Il Pastore Mario Marziale della Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, porrà sulla tomba di Rosa Madiai uno dei volumi di Imaginary Conversations. I Madiai subirono l’umiliazione della condanna e del carcere perché come italiani era loro proibito leggere la Bibbia. In questo Cimitero Protestante innumerevoli iscrizioni sepolcrali citano passi tratti dalla Bibbia in molti alfabeti e diverse lingue. E’ un luogo della memoria, del Libro dei libri, e della libertà.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tomb, however, lacks her name, her birth date, her poetry, her portrait, only giving her initials, her death date, and the sculptor’s name who executed the similarly anonymous design of Frederic Lord Leighton. Leighton insisted on a broken slave shackle being placed on the tomb to honour Elizabeth’s poetry against slavery.

Sulla tomba di Elizabeth Barrett Browning manca il suo nome, manca la data di nascita e la sua effige. Possiamo leggere solo le sue iniziali EBB, la data di morte, e il nome dello scultore che esegui il sarcofago su disegno di Frederic Lord Leighton, anch’egli anonimo. Leighton volle sulla tomba della poetessa una catena spezzata in omaggio alla sua poesia che porta il segno del suo grande disprezzo per ogni forma di schiavitù.

E.B.B./ OB.1861.// FRANCESCO GIOVANNOZZI FECE.

Maria Grazia Beverini Del Santo, President of the Lyceum Club and of the Fondazione il Fiore, will carry to Elizabeth’s newly-restored tomb her books, especially the Sonnets from the Portuguese translated into countless other languages, and her epic poem in nine books, Aurora Leigh.

Io porterò i suoi libri sul suo sepolcro restaurato nel 2006, in particolare i suoi Sonnets from the Portuguese che sono stati tradotti in un’infinità di lingue, ed il suo poema epico in nove libri Aurora Leigh.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

Our third great poet is Arthur Hugh Clough whose poetry was published posthumously by his wife, Blanche, Florence Nightingale’s cousin, and his sister, Anne Jemima Clough, who founded Newnham College. Like Walter Savage Landor he had gone to Rugby School, Matthew Arnold composing Thyrsis for his epitaph. At Oxford Clough attended Balliol, winning the Oriel College Fellowship.

Il nostro terzo illustre poeta è Arthur Hugh Clough. La sua opera poetica è stata pubblicata postuma dalla moglie, Blanche, cugina di Florence Nightingale, e dalla sorella, Anne Jemima Clough, fondatrice del Newnham College. Così come Walter Savage Landor compì gli studi alla Rugby School. Matthew Arnold compose l’elegia Thyrsis in memoria dell’amico. Ad Oxford frequentò il Balliol College, e fu Fellow dell’Oriel College.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH/ SOMETIME FELLOVV/ OF ORIEL COLLEGE OXFORD/ DIED AT FLORENCE/ NOVEMBER 13 MDCCCLXI/ AGED 42/ THE LAST FAREVVELL OF/ HIS SORROVVING VVIFE AND SISTER/

Mark Roberts of the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute of Florence will carry the volume of his poems to his tomb. It came to us as a gift from Walter Savage Landor’s Warwick. The tomb was restored last year by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze to celebrate European Heritage, because the design of the winged globe on the tomb, desired by Blanche Clough, was taken from Champollion’s book on Egypt and Nubia owned by the Marchese Torrigiani.

Mark Roberts della Harold Acton Library del British Institute di Firenze porrà sulla sua tomba il volume delle sue poesie, dono della Walter Savage Landor Society di Warwick. La tomba è stata restaurata lo scorso anno dal Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze in occasione delle Giornate Europee del patrimonio. Il disegno del motivo egizio del disco solare alato che compare sulla tomba è stato tratto per volere di Blanche Clough dal volume di Champollion sull’Egitto e sulla Nubia posseduto dal Marchese Torrigiani.

ISA BLAGDEN

A great friend of Walter Savage Landor and of the Brownings was Isa Blagden of Bellosguardo. She, too, was a poet. And she and the poet Owen Meredith wrote books about each other, she a novel, he a poem, Owen Meredith being the pen-name for Lord Lytton, Viceroy of Indian.

Isa Blagden grande amica di Walter Savage Landor e dei Browning ospitò molti degli stranieri che giungevano a Firenze nella Villa Brichieri a Bellosguardo. Anche Isa Blagden fu poeta. Ella e il poeta Owen Meredith scrissero libri sul loro amore, Isa Blagden una autobiografia romanzata, Agnes Tremorne, e Owen Meredith un poema, Lucile, su di lei. Owen Meredith, pseudonimo di Lord Lytton, fu Vicerè delle Indie.

ISABELLA [Cross on Flower Garland] BLAGDEN/ BORN . . . DIED . . . 1873/ THY WILL BE DONE . . ./

Corinna Gestri will carry her volume of poems to her tomb.

Corinna Gestri porrà il volume delle sue poesie sul sepolcro.

POEMS/ BY THE LATE/ ISA BLAGDEN/ WITH A MEMOIR/ WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS/ EDINBURGH AND LONDON/ MDCCCLXXIII

FRANCES TROLLOPE

Frances Trollope was a writer of novels and of travels, and of the first anti-slave novel, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, a book no longer in print but better than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Not far from her tomb and that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the tomb of Nadezhda, who came at 14, a Black slave from Nubia, and whose story is told on her tomb in Cyrillic.

Frances Trollope autrice di romanzi e di letteratura di viaggio. Suo è il primo romanzo contro la schiavitù Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, un libro ormai fuori stampa ma più degno di nota di Uncle Tom’s Cabin (La Capanna di Zio Tom) di Harriet Beecher Stow. Non lontano dalla sua tomba e dal sarcofago di Elizabeth Barrett Browning troviamo la tomba di Nadezhda, una schiava nera che giunse a Firenze dalla Nubia a quattordici anni d’età. La sua storia è narrata in cirillico sul basamento della bellissima croce russa.

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

Debora Spini of Syracuse University will carry her anti-slavery novel, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, to her tomb.

Debora Spini della Syracuse University porrà il romanzo Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw sulla sua tomba.

THEODOSIA TROLLOPE

Theodosia Garrow Trollope, Frances’ daughter-in-law, and like Isa, part Jewish, part East Indian, wrote poetry, essays, translations.

Theodosia Garrow Trollope, nuora di Frances Trollope, e come Isa Blagden, in parte ebrea, e in parte le sue origini sono da ricercare nelle Indie Orientali, scrisse poesia, saggi, e tradusse dall’italiano in inglese.

/ THEODOSIAE TROLLOPE/ T. ADOLFI TROLLOPE CONIUGIS/ QUOD MORTALE FUIT/ HIC IACET/ OBITUM EIUS FLEVERUNT OMNES/ QUANTUM AUTEM FERRI MERUIT/ VIR EUGUI SCRIPTORES/ SCIT SOLUS/ JOSEFE GARROW ARMr FILIA/ APUD TORQEW IN AGRORUM DEVON ANGLORUM NATA/ FLORENTIAE NOMEN AGENS LUSTRUM/ AD PLURES DIVINAE . . ./ MENSES APRILES A.D. 1865/

Lacking any of her books Alyson Price will take to her tomb her husband Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s autobiography, What I Remember - where he remembers her.

Non abbiamo alcun volume dei suoi libri e Alyson Price le renderà omaggio ponendo sulla sua tomba l’autobiografia What I Remember del marito Thomas Adolphus Trollope, dove egli la ricorda.

MARY SOMERVILLE

A great woman writer of science, Mary Somerville, buried her husband William here, and in her honour we have just now restored his tomb.

Grande scrittrice di testi scientifici, brillante astronoma e matematica, Mary Somerville, diede qui sepoltura al marito, William. Per rendere omaggio a lei è stato restaurato il bellissimo sepolcro del marito.

WILLIAM SOMERVILLE/ ELDEST SON OF THE HISTORIAN OF QUEEN ANNE/ BORN AT MINTO ROXBURGHSHIRE/ 22 APRIL 1771/ DIED AT FLORENCE 15 JUNE 1860/ GOD WILL REDEEM MY LIFE FROM/ THE POWER OF THE GRAVE 49 PSALM/

Mary Somerville herself is buried in Naples beneath a fine statue of her by the then twenty-year-old Calabrian Francesco Jerace. She had discovered two planets and taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, mathematics. Ada, then, with Charles Babbage, invented the computer, she suggesting to him the use of Jacquard loom cards with holes punched in them and the binomial theorem.

Mary Somerville ha trovato invece sepoltura a Napoli sotto la statua che la rappresenta, opera giovanile dello scultore calabrese Francesco Jerace. Mary Somerville scoprì due pianeti ed insegnò matematica ad Ada Lovelace, figlia di Lord Byron. Successivamente Ada e Charles Babbage idearono il computer. Fu lei a suggerire l’utilizzo delle schede perforate del telaio Jacquard e del sistema numerico binario.

Lyn Newton from Scotland will carry two of her many books to her husband’s grave.

Lyn Newton, scozzese, per rendere a lei omaggio porrà due dei suoi numerosi libri sulla tomba del marito.

ON/ THE CONNEXION/ OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES/ BY MARY SOMERVILLE/ FOURTH EDITION/ LONDON:/ JOHN MURRAY, ALBERMARLE STREET/ MDCCCXXXVI

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, From Early Life to Old Age,/ OF/ MARY SOMERVILLE,/ WITH SELECTIONS FROM HER CORRESPONDENCE,/ BY HER DAUGHTER,/ MARTHA SOMERVILLE/ BOSTON:/ ROBERTS BROTHERS,/ 1874

MARY YOUNG

Another woman writer, this time of religious history, buried here, is Mary Young.

Ha qui inoltre trovato sepoltura Mary Young, anch’essa scrittrice, autrice della biografia su Aonio Paleario, umanista e riformatore religioso.

HOLD [Anchor] FAST/ TO THE MEMORY OF/ MARY YOUNG/ DAUGHTER OF THE LATE/ JOHN STROTHER ANCRUM OF ROXBURGH/ AND WIDOW OF THE REV. ROBERT YOUNG DD MINISTER OF THE/ SCOTS CHURCH LONDON WALL/ ENDOWED WITH SUPERIOR AND REFINED INTELLECT/ FIRM CHARACTER AND ARDENT AFFECTIONS/ SHE WAS BY GOD'S GRACE ENABLED TO SPEND HER WHOLE LIFE IN HIS SERVICE/ AND IN SE. . E . .ING EFFORTS FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS/ HER FAITH WAS SIMPLE AND UNWAVERING/ SUPPORTED BY THIS FAITH AND CHEERED BY THE HOPE OF GLORY/ SHE ENDURED WITH FORTITUDE THE DECAY OF HER EARTHLY/ TABERNACLE AND JOYFULLY WELCOMED THE SUMMONS/ WHICH CALLED HER HENCE/ ON THE 27 DAY OF SEP 1867/ AGED 77/ AMEN. SO LET IT BE [Books and Palms]/

Il monumento reca anche un’iscrizione sepolcrale in italiano.
On the other side.

/ QUI RIPOSANO LE SPOGLIE MORTALI/ DI / MARIA YOUNG/ VISSE MOLTI ANNI IN ITALIA/ RACCOLSE NEGLI ARCHIVI NOTIZIE STORICHE/ CON CUI COMPOSE UN LIBRO ASSAI STIMATO/ LA VITA DI AONIO PALEARIO E I SUOI TEMPI/ DIMORO’ LONGAMENTE IN PISA DOVE EDIFICO’/ UNA CHIESA EVANGELICA E UNA SCUOLA/ SOCCORSE SEMPRE I POVERI AMO’ LO STUDIO E SI/ . . SE PER IL RISORGIMENTO DELLA LIBERTA’ ITALIANA/ MORIVA IN FIRENZE ALL'ETA’ DI 77 ANNI/ IL 27 SETTEMBRE 1867/ FRA LE BRACCIA DELLA INCONSOLABILE FIGLIA/ ALLA SUA CARA MEMORIA CONSACRONO QUESTA PIETRA/ CARLO E ROBINIA MATTEUCCI/

D.D. Ramsden will carry to her tomb a volume of the book she wrote.

D.D. Ramsden porrà sulla sua tomba un solo volume di questa opera.

THE LIFE AND TIMES/ OF/ AONIO PALEARIO/ OR A HISTORY OF/ THE ITALIAN REFORMERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY/ PRESENTED BY ORIGINAL LETTERS AND UNEDITED DOCUMENTS/ BY M. YOUNG/ “Their blood is shed/ In confirmation of the noblest claim,/ Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,/ to walk with God, to be divinely free,/ To soar, and to anticipate the skies”/ COWPER’S/ Task./ LONDON/ BELL AND DALDU, 186 FLEET STREET./ 1860

THOMAS SOUTHWOOD SMITH

Southwood Smith with Lord Ashley, who became the Earl of Shaftsbury, wrote against slavery and against the abuse of women and children in mines and factories, their Report changing England’s laws.

Southwood Smith e Lord Ashley, poi Conte di Shaftsbury, nei loro scritti si espressero fermamente contro la schiavitù e lo sfruttamento delle donne e dei bambini nelle fabbriche e nelle miniere. Il loro lavoro fu determinante e portò ad una riforma delle leggi in Inghilterra.

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 labour was distinguished as a Benefactor of Mankind/ Born at Martock, Somersetshire/ 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 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/
aa a

Elizabeth Barrett Browning with Richard Horne wrote a essay on them both in New Spirit of the Age which Giorgio Nencetti will carry to the tomb.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning e Richard Horne scrissero un saggio su di loro in The New Spirit of the Age. Per rendere omaggio a tutti loro porteremo questo volume alla sua tomba.

ROBERT DAVIDSOHN
Robert Davidsohn, from Gdansk and Jewish, is the great historian of medieval Florence.

Robert Davidsohn, tedesco di Danzica ed ebreo, è il grande storico della Firenze medievale.

COMM. DOTT. PROF./ ROBERT DAVIDSOHN/ 26.4.1853-17.9.1937/

ROBERT DAVIDSOHN/ STORIA DI FIRENZE/ SANSONI – FIRENZE/ 1977

Alba Antuono of the Biblioteca Comunale will carry his volumes of the Storia di Firenze to his tomb.
Alba Antuono della Biblioteca Comunale porrà i suoi volumi sulla Storia di Firenze sulla sua tomba,

Laura Micol Fisher will carry Shakespeare’s Plays to her great grandparents’ tomb for they are Shakespeare’s ‘last’ descendants.
Laura Micol Fisher porra il volume delle Opere di William Shakespeare sulla tomba dei suoi bisnonni, gli ultimi discendenti di Shakespeare.

ARNOLD HENRY SAVAGE LANDOR

And Arnold Henry Savage Landor is the Florentine-born writer, painter, explorer and inventor grandson of Walter Savage Landor. We ask Piero Fusi to carry his book, Everywhere to Henry Savage Landor’s new grave and read there its title page.

A. Henry Savage Landor, primogenito di Charles Savage Landor, e nipote del poeta Walter Savage Landor, nacque a Firenze. Dotato scrittore, pittore, esploratore, ideatore. Piero Fusi porrà il volume della sua opera autobiografica Everywhere sulla sua nuova tomba, e li leggerà il frontespizio del libro.

EVERYWHERE/ THE MEMOIRS OF AN EXPLORER/ By A. HENRY SAVAGE-LANDOR/ ILLUSTRATED/ T.FISHER UNWIN LTD/ LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE// I DEDICATE THIS BOOK/ TO MY SISTER/ ELFRIDA/ 1924

JOHN LANDOR

While Mary Gibbons Landor will carry the book by her husband, Dr John Landor, to his new grave in this Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery and read there its title page.

Mary Gibbons Landor porrà un testo del marito, Dr John Landor, sulla sua tomba e leggerà poi il frontespizio.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s first line to Aurora Leigh is from the Bible. It states ‘Of writing many books there is no end’.

Il poema epico Aurora Leigh di Elizabeth Barrett Browning si apre con queste parole bibliche ‘Di scriver libri non si vedrà mai la fine’.

Musica: Aria dal Flauto Magic

ORAL HISTORY, CYBER HISTORY

2007-09-28T12:43:00.000+02:00

The Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence has embarked on what is not so much an oral history project as a cyber one. Because we have put the catalogue of the tombs on the web, to be found at http://www.florin.ms/cemetery1.html through http://www.florin.ms/cemetery4.html, the descendants of those buried here find us from as far away as Africa and Australia, visiting us, sending further archival materials, and funding the restoration of their tombs.

Our very first tomb is very beautiful, very romantic, very sad, of the young fifteen year old son, Jean David Marc Gonin, of the Swiss Pastor, Jean Pierre Gonin. The Cemetery lists three members of this family:

^* ANTOINE GONIN/ SVIZZERA/ Gonin/ Antonio/ Giovanni/ Svizzera/ Firenze/ 15 Febbraio/ 1872/ Anni 54/ 1199/ Antoine Gonin, Genève, Suisse, fils de Jean Gonin, et de Louise, née Lafond/ Antoine Gonin/ D25I

^*° JEAN DAVID MARC GONIN / SVIZZERA/ Gonin/ Giovanni/ Giovanni/ Svizzera/ Firenze/ 17 Gennaio/ 1828/ / 1/ JEAN DAVID MARC GONIN/ NE A GENEVE LE 28 AVRIL 1812/ MORT A FLORENCE LE 17 JANVIER 1828/ JEUNE ET . . . D'AVENIR/ DONT LA TOMBE SOUARIT DANS . . . /N° 1/
N° 1 Le dix neuf Janvier, mil-huit-cent-vingt huit John Gonin
fils de Jean Gonin Président de Consistoire et de Louise
née Lafond, né . . .
mort à Florence, le dix sept Janvier, mil huit cent vingt huit
a reçu les honneures del la Sepulture en présence de Louis Wolf,
Giacomo Bizenzi, Louis Recordon et de plusieurs autres membres
du Consistoire . --- . En foi de quoi j'ai signé
Auguste Colomb Pasteur~
D25I/ Sculptor: Pietro Bazzanti: signature: P.BAZZANTI.F

Portrait of Jean David Marc Gonin painted 1834 by Salomon Guillaume Counis, as if at 22, instead of only 15, owned by descendants in Paris

^* JEAN PIERRE GONIN/ SVIZZERA/ Gonin/ Giovanni/ Pietro/ Svizzera/ Pignone/ 13 Luglio/ 1854/ Anni 71/ 544 / Jean Gonin, Genève, domicilié a Pignone près Florence, ancien negociant, agé de 72 ans, fils de Pierre Gonin/ Jean Pierre Gonin/ D25I

JEAN PIERRE GONIN (1783-1854). Of Huguenot origin, his grandfather was a French pastor and was martyred, his father grew up in exile in the Waldensian valleys, and he himself was born in Geneva, but came to Florence as a young man to engage in industry. His home was the clandestine meeting place for the Protestant group that in 1826 requested permission of the Grand Ducal government to open a chapel. A convinced Calvinist, he was the energetic and devoted president of the Consistory of the Evangelical Reformed Church, from 1827-1846. One of his children, Jean Marc (1812-1828), was the first person to be buried in the cemetery: two other sons Constantino and Antonio [Antoine] were long active in every initiative in favour of the Evangelical community.

Two other tombs with extant portraits of interest are those of Sarah McCalmont (http://www.florin.ms/cemetery3.html) and Mary Spencer Stanhope (http://www.florin.ms/cemetery4.html), in the latter case her father likewise painting her as the age she would have been had she lived. We believe that this can be a model for other cemeteries to follow and we are applying to the European Union for funds to train young people in gardening, stone restoration and webweaving to carry out this work in England, Iceland and Romania, sharing our European culture.

We are now at 1388 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3664 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 5052 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE WORLD COMES TO FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2007-07-20T08:32:00.002+02:00

Yesterday a couple from Brazil came, their print-out from the Cemetery website in hand, to see the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Already, we have made a point of collecting the Sonnets from the Portuguese in many languages, for EBB herself had initially sought to disguise her authorship of them, when Robert decided they should be published, as 'Sonnets from the Bosnian'. So I brought out my IPod and Rodrigo Araes Caldas Farias read Sonnet II. Here it is, PortuguesII in an mp3 file for you to hear. And here you can listen to all the Sonnets being read in English, EBBI (with first the sonnet to Hiram Powers' Greek Slave, Hiram Powers being also buried here), EBBII, EBBIII, EBBIV.

Our Belgian scholar, Nic Peeters, working on John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, who sculpted his daughter Mary's tomb which is here, was ecstatic at the beauty of the Sonnet read by that voice, in that language.

I am now reading texts by and about Walter Savage Landor in preparation for our celebration in October of this poet. Hear Gebir I and Gebir II. We have now created a website dedicated to WSL. Already, we have restored his tomb and Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina has had pomegranates planted by it,
,
by EBB's and by Arthur Hugh Clough's.

On the Giardino Torrigiani click here to see this magical garden in Florence, on the other side of the Arno, from which many of our plants had come in the nineteenth century. And imagine to yourself, Isa Blagden, Walter Savage Landor, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, young Pen, all walking there under the coolness of its trees.

That was in July. It is now August 8, a day when the rain has been non-stop and I have been cleaning out drains clogged with cypress needles, and our only visitors a couple from New Zealand, he a Maori and descended from a Maori chief who signed the treaty with the White men. I mentioned to Peter Neville about the names of the Polynesians coming over in boats and he said he knew his genealogy and could recite it in Maori. So out came the IPod again and we recorded this account. Then, with the incessant rain, he gave us a poem by a Maori friend. He described him as a character, keeping his hearing aids in his pocket. Peter and I both wear hearing aids. Peter Neville also walks with a red and white cane. How honoured Florence is with our visitors.

In October our Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery shall be 180 years old and we are celebrating, celebrating all those buried here, but in particular the members of the Savage Landor family, as we have already celebrated EBB and Arthur Hugh Clough, having restored their tombs last year. A son and a grandson of Walter Savage Landor, also named Walter Savage Landor, and A. Henry Savage Landor, are no longer allowed to rest in peace in their family chapel in the Porte Sante Cemetery at San Miniato, so we are bringing them here to lay their bones at the feet of their statue of their mother and grandmother, Julia Savage Landor. Likewise another Landor descendant will have his ashes laid here. I should be most grateful for help with the funds for the following, a hand-cast bell at 200 euro to place on the wall inside the Cemetery to ring when closing it, funds to pay for mounting this and the two tondos of portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning made by Amalia Ciardi Duprè, and funds to help with buying the plot for the Landor son and grandson's remains by Julia Savage Landor's statue.

We are now at 1383 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3572 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 4955 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found here), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

NEW/OLD TECHNOLOGIES

2007-06-15T08:33:00.000+02:00

I have sought for years to combine sound and sight in webweaving (for writing is our older technology, recording sound as sight). Now this use of sound is possible with an IPod and MP3 files. So I have been reading the work of our English Cemetery's great poet laureate, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and will next read those of her two companions and rivals, Walter Savage Landor and Arthur Hugh Clough, also buried here. The Elizabeth Barrett Browning readings are at

http://www.florin.ms/EBB1.mp3
for her sonnet on 'Hiram Powers' Greek Slave' (Hiram Powers is also buried here) and the Sonnets from the Portuguese
http://www.florin.ms/EBB2.mp3
http://www.florin.ms/EBB3.mp3
http://www.florin.ms/EBB4.mp3
and at
http://www.florin.ms/EBB5.mp3
for The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point.
Her poetry about Florence is discussed and given in these files:
http://www.florin.ms/EBBFlor1.mp3
http://www.florin.ms/EBBFlor2.mp3
http://www.florin.ms/EBBFlor3.mp3.
I recommend listening to these with the essay at http://www.florin.ms/ebbflor1.html, etc., with texts and images. I plan next to record her sprightly Lady Geraldine's Courtship, in which she had proposed to Robert, and the nine-book epic/novel, Aurora Leigh.
Enjoy.

We are now at 1366 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3471 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 4837 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

HOW TO CATALOGUE A CEMETERY: CASE STUDY OF FLORENCE'S SWISS-OWNED, SO-CALLED 'ENGLISH', MONUMENTAL CEMETERY

2007-06-06T14:54:00.000+02:00

Seven years ago I became Custodian of the Porta a' Pinti Cemetery, the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery, in Florence. The Swiss had bought the land for it outside the Porta a' Pinti Gate from the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1827. You can find it in Google Earth at Piazzale Donatello, Florence, Italy. It had been subject to neglect for more than a century following its 1877 closure caused by Giuseppe Poggi's destruction of the medieval city wall.

When I first came on the job I was asked to catalogue the tombs. All I then had was an alphabetical Register of burials drawn up in 1877. There was no map to the tombs. So I located them and transcribed their inscriptions. Of the more than 1,400 burials between 1827-1877 there are now less than a thousand extant tombs. After a year I was joined by an Italian woman scholar, and together we translate into our mother tongues this material, including those of the Proceedings of a City and Book international conference we organized with the Gabinetto Vieusseux on the Cemetery in 2004, publishing these on the Web at http://www.florin.ms/gimel.html.

Beginning with the alphabetical register I drew up a list on the Web, repeating its useful taxonomy. This is the format written on the flyleaf, the subsequent pages being cut down to render this visible and the columns entered accordingly, in Italian, by hand:

Cognome/ Nome/ Paternità / Patria/ Data della Morte/ Età/ Tomba

Because these are in Italian, English-speaking scholars searching the whereabouts of Hugh James Rose, the clergyman who initiated the Oxford Movement, could not find him. I did. He is listed as 'Ugo Giacomo Rose' and he is buried in a fine marble 'Scipio' tomb. So I took to giving the correct national form of the name in RED CAPITALS at the beginning of each entry, followed immediately by the nation of provenance in BLUE CAPITALS, and augmented the information in the Register.

Russian scholars assisted us with our Russian burials, consulting records in St Petersburg and at the Orthodox Church in Florence. An English scholar consulted the London Guildhall Library and Foreign Office records of English persons buried here. While the Swiss originally listed Poles as Russians, I separate them. I do the same with the English, giving whether they are Scots, Irish, Welsh, or Australian. The independent Swiss and Americans did not have a church that did double duty as a Civil Service organ of their governments so we lack double record keeping for their burials.

To these I have added the following further information, creating a key:

Key to Codes Used in Alphabetical Register:
V=damaged by vandalism to be repaired; ^=needing to be photographed; * =register and tomb checked against each other; ° =living descendants, relatives, researchers; § =further documentation in cemetery archives;/ BOLD CAPS, IN RED=FIRST NAME, (MAIDEN NAME), SURNAME/ IN BLUE=COUNTRY/COUNTRIES/;/normal type=1877 alphabetical register entry ending with tomb number, written in Italian/ 1844-1871/; additional information from 'Eglise Evangelique-Reformé de Florence Régistre des Morts', 2 vols, written in French/; / /=additional information, including codes GL=London Guildhall Library, PRO=Public Record Office, FO=Foreign Office, kindly supplied by Anthony Webb researching the English in Tuscany; Maquay Diaries=John Leland Maquay, Jr, Diaries, information kindly supplied by Alyson Price, Archivist, Harold Acton Library, Florence; Talalay=Michail Talalay, 'Tombe dei Russi nel Cimitero detto "degli Inglesi"', con l'assistenza di Gino Chelazzi, RC in Talalay=Registro del Cimitero, St Petersburg MKF in Talalay=Metrickesie Knigi Florencii, Libri parrochiali di Firenze, Chiesa Ortodossa; DND, NDNB, Dictionary of National Biography, New Dictionary of National Biography; Freeman=James A. Freeman, 'The Protestant Cemetery in Florence and Anglo-American Attitudes toward Italy, Marker 10 (1993), 219-243; Henderson=Philip Henderson, Lucca, has further information concerning family backgrounds/ [ ]=description of tomb]; BOLD (CAPS EXCEPT WHERE INSCRIPTION USES lowercase)=INSCRIPTION ON TOMB/; A1A, etc. coordinates indicating tomb position in cemetery/ tomb sculptor, signature of sculptor on tomb.

During the next few years more registers came to light. (It had been said they had been lost in the 1966 Flood when I had inquired concerning them.) These earlier and contemporaneous registers were being written out in French, and meticulously gave the mother's maiden name, the canton of birth, and the occupation of the one being buried. So we enter all three forms of the names, in English, in Italian, in French, to aid in retrieval. We remind Anglo-Saxon users that in Italy wives are known by their maiden, not married names.

Last of all, we received the Belle Arti records telling us which sculptor created which tomb. The sculptors of our tombs, two of whom, Americans, came to be buried with us, number amongst the most famous of the nineteenth century. I have written a separate essay on these sculptors at http://www.florin.ms/sculptors.html.

Essential for this work is a good digital camera, a computer, and a website, as well as files for the incoming information concerning the burials of different nationalities from descendants and scholars, again a taxonomy, this time geographical, ours consisting of folders on the English, the Swiss, the Russian (Russian and Polish), the American, the Continental (French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian), and the Australian burials.

This research is ongoing. The entire catalogue is now placed on the web in four files at http://www.florin.ms/cemetery1.html, etc. to http://www.florin.ms/cemetery4.html. Descendants from as far away as Australia and Africa then find their ancestors. Daily, I get e-mails with further information and/or queries, many having found these entries through searching with Google. Sometimes photographs taken in 1960 can arrive from Australia enabling us to replace lost inscriptions from tombs that are now vandalized. Or fine portraits are sent to us of those buried here for our archives. UNESCO's conference on information technology and museums suggested I also weblog, which I do at http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com. What we now have is a global and interactive oral history project using the latest information technology centred on one small but famous historic cemetery in Florence. Our taxonomies tend to use the alphabet, itself an 'IT' (Information Technology) invention from millennia ago, and geographical space, as well as enabling genealogical and biographical research in time. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has praised this work as most useful to them. We have the Swiss historian Jacques Augustin Galiffe and his family buried here and he with Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi pioneered the study of archives for genealogical writing and history, to be followed in turn by Robert Davidsohn, also buried here, whose monumental Storia di Firenze, based on archival work is magnificent. Also, Mary Somerville buried her husband William here, and she, with no university education, had discovered two planets, her books on science being used as textbooks at Cambridge University, and she taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, mathematics. Ada Lovelace, in turn, assisted Charles Babbage in inventing the computer, she suggesting to him the use of Jacquard loom cards with holes punched in them and the binomial theorem, of using zeros and ones.

Because so many of our burials are of famous writers, in particular, women as well as men, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Frances Trollope, Theodosia Trollope, Isa Blagden, Richard Hildreth, we also have a library which includes their writings and research concerning the Abolition of Slavery, a concern they deeply shared. We have as well six participants in the Battle of Waterloo and many friends of Florence Nightingale. We even have the tomb of the former Black slave who came to Florence at 14 from Nubia and was baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name 'Speranza, 'Hope', her story told on the marble in Cyrillic letters. We key the tombs in the catalogue of the cemetery to the books in the library's on-line catalogue and vice versa. Likewise, we have catalogued the remaining plants (the Cemetery had all been put to weedkiller), and we plan the cemetery's restoration as the beautiful garden it once was, restoring it from old photographs, Victorian travel book accounts, diaries and oral information: http://www.florin.ms/landscape.html.

For a cemetery is a library, an archive, written on marble. Having already edited the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (our most famous burial) for Penguin, I now use this Cemetery and its archive as primary material to teach myself and others such ancient and modern archival skills necessary to learn how to make these dead bones, as in Ezekiel, come back to life for our visitors, and virtually on the web. The catalogue, the taxonomy, is to assist in finding them. Each tomb has a human story that can now be unlocked, told and shared with all.

Let me give you one. One day two cousins came, seeking the tomb of their ancestress. She had died in childbirth, as so many women did in the nineteenth century. Likewise their babies. So I asked about the baby. 'Oh he's our ancestor, too', they explained, telling how Sarah McCalmont's Anglican clergyman husband had brought the motherless bairn and its wetnurse home to England, at one point in France pushing the carriage up a hill. Pietro Bazzanti would have been paid handsomely for this tomb with its many inscribed letters. I asked whether there was a portrait of her. And here she is, straight out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel.

*°§SARAH McCALMONT/ ENGLAND / Calmont/ Sara/ / Inghilterra/ Firenze/ 24 Agosto/ 1836/ Anni 27/ 140/ GL23773/4 N° 49, Rev Knapp/ [°=Christopher Stuart Rawlins, Bristol, England], Extant Portrait/ See Calmont/ [On urn] JESUS WEPT [On square column's four sides] BENEATH IS DEPOSITED ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF/ SARAH/ THE BELOVED WIFE OF T. RD THOMAS MCCALMONT/ OF WIMBOURNE MINSTER DORSET/ DIED AT FLORENCE/ IN CHILDBIRTH/ AUGUST 24TH 1836/ AGED 28 YEARS/ BUT I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU TO BE IGNORANT, BRETHREN, / CONCERNING THEM WHICH ARE ASLEEP THAT YE SORROW / NOT EVEN AS OTHERS/ WHICH HAVE NO HOPE FOR/ IF WE BELIEVE THAT JESUS DIED AND ROSE AGAIN EVEN SO/ THEM ALSO WHICH SLEEP IN JESUS WILL GOD BRING/ WITH HIM 1 THESS IV.13/ AND THEY SHALL BE MINE, SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS/ IN THE DAY WHEN I MAKE UP MY JEWELS. MAL 3.17 / BLESSED BE GOD EVEN THE FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS/ CHRIST THE FATHER OF MERCIES AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT WHO COMFORT/ETH US IN ALL OUR TRIBU/LATION THAT WE MAY BE ABLE TO COMFORT THEM/ WHICH ARE IN ANY TROUBLE BY THE COMFORT WHERE/WITH WE OURSELVES ARE COMFORTED OF GOD. 2 COR 1.3// [Indistinct]// IT IS THE LORD LET HIM/ DO THAT WHICH SEEMETH HIM/ GOOD II SAM 1O.12/ THE LORD GAVE AND THE/ LORD HATH TAKEN AWAY/ BLESSED BE THE NAME OF/ THE LORD JOB 1.21/ A10T(162)/ Sculptor: Pietro Bazzanti, Signature: P.BAZZANTI.F

Sarah McCalmont

Next, I was able to bring a Swiss scholar, writing a biography of the surviving son, together with the two cousins in England who are his descandants. Often so we find we can join lost branches of families, including those in France with those in Australia of a half-Italian, half English family, or of a Swiss family with members in Sweden and those in Florence.

In this way, too, we involve numerous persons, descendants and scholars, and associations: the Browning Society, Trollope Society, Walter Savage Landor Society, Historic Gardens Foundation, Waterloo Society, Friends of Leighton House Museum, Somerville College, Oriel College, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, ASCE (Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe), Association for Gravestone Studies, etc., globally in the challenge of finding funds for the very beautiful but ruined cemetery's much-needed restoration.

On taxonomies may I recommend this Google video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2159021324062223592&q=type%3Agoogle+engEDU

This is the talk I gave yesterday in Italian for ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione), the Comune di Roma, and ASCE (Association for Significant Cemeteries in Europe), in the Auditorium Ara Pacis.

We are now at 1357 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3360 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 4717 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

HOPE/SPERANZA

2007-05-04T18:34:00.000+02:00

Today, 4 May 2007, has been a perfect day for gardening, wet, damp, moist, beautiful. the blackbirds have been singing their hearts out with with their beautiful clear song. And our gardeners came at 7:00 a.m. to trim our laurel hedges back to prevent their roots from damaging tombs.

Today, 4 May 2007, Dr Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina has had his gardeners plant a climbing rose on Mrs Stisted's tomb, the one shaped like a four poster bed in wrought iron (I am longing to see what it does),

a white rose on the tomb of Anna Susanna Lloyd Horner (which originally had such a white rose from the Giardino Torrigiani),

and pomegranates by the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Walter Savage Landor

and Arthur Hugh Clough.

The tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough have already been restored. Tomorrow, Alberto Casciani of Meridiana Restauri comes to restore that of Walter Savage Landor and that of Mary Somerville's husband William Somerville, as well as to make moulds of Lord Leightons roundels of harps, Hebrew, Greek, Christian, the Hebrew harp with a broken slave shackle, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb for the Leighton House Museum http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/LeightonHouseMuseum/general/ in London. We chose the Somerville tomb to honour Mary Somerville, who discovered two planets and who taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, mathematics, Ada, then, with Charles Babbage, inventing the computer.

Torrigiani's gardeners have also planted gardenias and hydrangeas in the terra cotta pots we have bought to go along the paths as in the ancient Brogi photograph of the Cemetery. We have proclaimed war on our fragrant laurel as the roots were damaging the tombs, the leaves their marble. These will be replaced with pomegranates, with myrtle, and with box.

Today, 4 May 2007, I discovered that the still fecund red rose by Elizabeth's tomb was planted by 'Professor Knight of Edinburgh'. I looked him up on the web. He came here in 1905, when he had retired from teaching moral philosophy, and his profound interest in women's education. A History of the English Church in Florence tells us:

"Many are the pilgrimages made to her grave, as the custode of the cemetery can tell, and only a few months ago Professor Knight of Edinburgh caused a rose tree to be planted there, and an enamelled plaque to be suspended to the iron railing which surrounds the grave, inscribed with these words: IN MEMORY OF/ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING/ PLANTED BY PROFESSOR KNIGHT/ MARCH 1905/ ROSES SHALL BLOOM, NOR WANT BEHOLDERS,/ SPRUNG FROM THE DUST WHERE OUR OWN FLESH MOULDERS".

We have also planted eighteen lavender bushes along the brow of the hill, to form a hedge against its precipice. These given to us by the wife of a Scotsman whose ashes were buried there to the keening of his son in kilt and sporan on bagpipes. While delicate wildflowers, especially scarlet poppies, are everywhere, including by the tomb for an adolescent whose father had placed on it a sculpture of the Grim Reaper scything through poppies and lilies.

Here seen between the tombs of Fanny and Theodosia Trollope

Here the detail of the scythe swathing through poppies and lilies.

In August we will graft roses and myrtles and separate the wild irises, as well as the oleander, having one myrtle and one oleander left of the original nineteenth-century stock before everything was rooted out or put to weed-killer. Cherry trees, like laurel bushes we must banish, as their roots destroy tombs. But we should so love the small dogwood bushes, such as grow in Quincy, Illinois, with their delicate blooms. Also bulbs of different kinds of lilies, to go by the tombs on which they are sculpted. And more roses.

Dottor Vieri Torrigiani's website is at
http://www.giardinotorrigiani.it/. With Italian websites remember to click on the central image to enter. You will find a lovely account, but all in Italian, of their ancestral garden and its tower as a lung for the city of Florence, and of sending his gardeners out and about the city on bicycles!

This evening our blackbirds are still singing! Sometimes, too, we hear an owl, and also cuckoos. As well as the church bells of a convent near-by. All allowing us to forget that we live on an island in the midst of Florence's arterial traffic. Now we, too, can become a lung for the city of Florence providing her not with carbon dioxide and other noxious fumes but with oxygen, and sweet-smelling lavender and roses.

We are now at 1353 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3312 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 4665 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, for the hand-bound limited edition books or for the sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands' or tondos with their portraits (Amalia Ciardi Duprè's sculpture can also be found at http://www.florin.ms/amaliadupre.html), or some or all of these.

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT, MADE GLORIOUS SPRING . . .

2007-03-18T14:56:00.000+01:00

Once our Cemetery was like this:

Then it was put to weed killer and most of the nineteenth-century plants ripped out. I have pleaded, in English and in Italian, that we restore it to the garden it had been. We no longer apply weed-killer. Instead I and friends weed out its stinging nettles, wearing rubber gloves to do so. And we have planted bulbs. Given to us in memory of an aunt whose ashes were sent to New Zealand, so that she also be remembered in Florence, the city of flowers.

The hyacinths and narcissi perfume the entire graveyard.

A Canadian grave. Her family used to send money each year for the upkeep of its little garden.

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope sculpted this for his daughter, with daffodils on the marble cross. These real daffodils are in full bloom beside it as they had been in the nineteenth century.

Beside it is the ark sculpted as if floated on waves by the other Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt, for his wife Fanny who died following childbirth. These two tombs are next to Lord Leighton's for Elizabeth Barrett Browning. All three of great beauty.

Franco Zeffirelli used this tomb for that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Tea with Mussolini. The red and white tape is to indicate that the Cemetery is in danger, likewise its visitors, until we can get it stabilized and restored.

Flowers by the tombs of Southwood Smith and a Swiss self-taught artist.

The young children of Pastor Dalgas are buried here. So we have planted two hyacinths for them.

This is Russian Row, with many of its tombstones in Cyrillic.

The gold and scarlet are tulips.

This is the tomb of the Rev. Charles Crossman.

One young person used to sing the Beatles' song 'Strawberry Fields For Ever'. It is written on his gravestone. So we have planted strawberries on it, knowing that once there were wild strawberries growing on them. These came yesterday, from Vallombrosa.

This month many more plants will be brought here, this time from the Giardino Torrigiani which supplied the original plants in the nineteenth century and so they will be from the same stock.

We are now at 1341 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 3130 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 4471 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

INFORMATION HIGHWAY TO FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2006-12-21T05:16:00.000+01:00

Do you remember we used to call the Web, the World Wide Web, the 'Information Highway'? These are the signposts to the web essays on Florence's English Cemetery. Click on the URLs beneath the pictures to learn more:

Tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
http://www.florin.ms/ebbflor1.html
http://www.florin.ms/ebbdeath.html

Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
http://www.umilta.net/biblioteca.html

Arnolfo di Cambio's stemma for Florence from the Porta a'Pinti
http://www.florin.ms/prontintervento.html

Amalia Ciardi DuPrè, Beatrice and Dante

http://www.florin.ms/ceramic.html

http://www.florin.ms/landscape.html

http://www.florin.ms/cimitero.html

LA CITTA` E IL LIBRO III
ELOQUENZA SILENZIOSA:
VOCI DEL RICORDO INCISE NEL
CIMITERO 'DEGLI INGLESI',
CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE
3-5 GIUGNO 2004

THE CITY AND THE BOOK III
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
'MARBLE SILENCE, WORDS ON STONE:
FLORENCE'S' ENGLISH CEMETERY',
GABINETTO VIEUSSEUX AND
'ENGLISH CEMETERY', FLORENCE
3-4 JUNE 2004
http://www.florin.ms/gimel.html

Odoardo Fantacchiotti
http://www.florin.ms/sculptors.html

Motivi egizi nel Cimitero 'degli Inglesi'/ Egyptian Motives in the English Cemetery
http://www.florin.ms/egyptian.html

We are now at 1317 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1970 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 3287 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

TITLE PAGES/ TOMB INSCRIPTIONS

2006-11-02T14:10:00.000+01:00

The other day a fine book arrived from England, a study by Christopher Webb Smith of South Africa. Christopher Webb Smith was in the Bengal Civil Service, lived next in South Africa, and then came to Florence for an active retirement, carefully painting all the great works of art in the Pitti, a work which is now lost. But his South Africa volume survives, is published and is lovely.

This copy came smelling rather of English dampness so we took it out to his tomb as we usually do with our books reuniting them to their authors buried here, reading together title page and tomb inscription. And we decided to leave it sunning on his tomb for the next few hours. And all our visitors came saying - and marvelling - 'There's a book on a tomb!' So we explained to them our tradition.

Then I found on the web that Gozzini's, an antiquarian book shop just down via Ricasoli from San Marco, was selling a copy of Mary Somerville's work. So off I went on my bicycle to get it. The Italian translation published in 1861 had already been sold. So instead they gave me for the same price the English original. Now Mary Somerville, unable to attend university or gain a degree, taught herself algebra, discovered a planet, was a member of the Royal Society, taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, mathematics, Ada in turn with Charles Babbage inventing the computer, as Ada suggested to him the use of Jacquard loom cards, IBM punch cards. Mary buried her husband William Somerville here, being buried herself in Naples with a magnificent tomb raised by her daughters, showing her full size. This is a children's version of her life on the web. We took Mary Somerville's book to her husband's grave, reading both title page and tomb inscription. Perhaps someday we can visit her tomb in Naples, with its fine realistic sculpture by the Calabrian Francesco Jerace of Mary as she had been in her nineties, still writing books used as texts by students at Cambridge University.

Browsing on the web looking for the image of Mary Somerville's tomb in Naples by the twenty-year-old sculptor, Francesco Jerace from Calabria whom Martha Somerville commissioned to do the work, I suddenly did a double take. For another sculpture by Jerace of his parents showed his mother as just like Anne Susanna Horner, buried here in a tomb with a portrait medallion, the same hand, the same veil, almost the same face. The Horner family is fascinating, Leonard Horner translating Pasquale Villari's book on Savonarola, his two daughters, Susan and Joanna writing a fine guidebook to Florence which we give on the florin website, and Susan also keeping a diary, now in the Harold Acton Library of Florence's British Institute. Excitedly I told my friend, Alyson Price, of the find. Then apologised. It wasn't possible. Jerace was only ten years old when Mrs Horner died. No problem, Alyson e-mailed back, for by the time the tomb was commissioned, likely by the Horner's friend, Martha Somerville, he had turned twenty!

And this is his sculpture representing his Calabria:

As we can see, Mrs Horner's tomb with its sculpture by Jerace is in great need of restoration. The pietra serena base has fallen apart and the marble it supports is at risk. We have now restored Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb, thanks in part to Tony Moulton Barrett, finding in our files that Moulton Barretts in the past have also seen to its cleaning. We have restored Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, thanks to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, because of its design taken from the Marchese Torrigiani's copy of Champollion and Rosellini's book of their Expedition to Egypt and Nubia, the year following this Cemetery's founding, both aided by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We have repaired Isaac Lumley's tomb, thanks to the kindness of Joanna Lumley. Jean Pierre Vieusseux's tomb has been restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, and likewise Holman Hunt's tomb, sculpted by himself, for his wife Fanny. While Iris Fromm, a woman master stonemason, came from Bavaria and in two weeks repaired 28 of the most scandalously broken tombs. Now we await the restoring of Fanny and Theodosia Trollope's matching tombs with Thomas Adolphus Trollope's Latin inscriptions to his mother, his wife, and the tomb of cantankerous, marvellous Walter Savage Landor, as well as the tombs of the Checcucci family whose vandalized tombs and inscriptions we restore with the help of their family members, as far away as Australia.

In 2007 shall be the 180th anniversary of the 'English' Cemetery and I am plotting a ceremony where we bring their books to their tombs, EBB's, Isa Blagden's, Theodore Parker's and many more. Meanwhile someone has given 150 euro worth of daffodil bulbs, as a memorial to her aunt whose ashes have now gone from Florence to New Zealand. We shall be planting these this Sunday. Because I know of such daffodils planted 100 years ago in an English churchyard by the graves of two Anglican Sisters, which still propagate themselves as a marvellous carpet of gold each Spring. Our irises will need dividing and replanting in August as they too are propagating their kind. These the true purple Florentine lily that grow wild in these parts. Particularly I want a pomegranate by Elizabeth's tomb as both she and Robert wrote of them.

Talking of which our 'Egyptian Motives in the English Cemetery' event and ongoing (through May) exhibition in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale certainly taught us that tombs must have portraits and names for the 'Ba', the 'psyche', the Soul, to return. EBB's name in her family and by Robert was 'Ba'. We have now given her name by her tomb not merely the E.B.B. placed there. And Amalia Ciardi Duprè is sculpting two tondos, one of Elizabeth, the other of Robert, from the Gordigiani portraits, to go on the Gatehouse wall facing the tombs, so she shall also have her portrait here. Would some kind benefactor be willing to gift these to the 'English' Cemetery?

We are now at 1269 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1800 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 3069 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

SUCCESS

2006-09-24T05:35:00.000+02:00

It was a perfect day. Masses of preparation, of course, rather overwhelmingly so, the making of many cucumber sandwiches, constant rehearsals. But worth it. Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina had built the bath for the lotus flowers and brought the papyrus beforehand.

Then, in the morning at the National Archeological Museum, we simply didn't have enough chairs because so many people came and I saw everyone scurrying to bring in every chair from every office, even tall stools. The American and British Consuls were there, and the Directors of the Laurentian Library and the Riccardian Library. I was nervous about my talk in Italian but it was praised. I discussed the Diary entry by Susan Horner where she tells of drawing the winged figure of the Divinity, the sun disk, out of Champollion's book, borrowed for the purpose from the Marchese Torrigiani, for Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb.

The Exhibition of the photographs of Egyptian motives on the tombs, especially this one, created by dottoressa Cristina Guidotti, is splendid and will be continuing for many months. This is the museum that has half the treasures from Champollion's and Rosellini's 1828 Expedition to Egypt and Nubia (the Louvre having the other half), and this great painting on their stairs

Rosellini and Champollion in Egypt, 1828, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Firenze

Then, in the afternoon, we had the reading from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations from Apuleius - for which see http:://www.florin.ms/apuleius.html by Grazia Santoni and myself

where we dressed her as the Psyche in John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's painting of Psyche and Charon

Again, as Grazia and I stood beside the great column with its cross, given by Frederick William of Prussia, and which proclaims, 'Je suis la Vie et la Resurrection', we saw crowds of people coming up the hill, as if they would never end.

In the midst of the Cupid and Psyche story I explained how many of our tombs were related to the movement against slavery in the nineteenth century and also how many important American Consuls were buried here. This is what I said, gesturing to the tombs in question, as if the Cemetery were a great book in which we could read not just Florentine, but world, history shaped by these women and men:

"When Lord Leighton designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb he put on the lyre for the Greco-Roman world the two faces of the god Pan from the statue in the Giardino Torrigiani. The other two medallions give the Hebrew harp of David with a broken slave shackle on it for freedom from Egyptian and Babylonian bondage and the Christian harp with the cross, these representing Europe’s rich multiculturalism. But also the tragedy of nineteenth-century slavery, the serfs in Russia, the blacks in America. Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett’s family for generations owned slaves in Jamaica. In this cemetery are the tombs of Fanny Trollope, English, and Richard Hildreth, American, who wrote the first anti-slavery novels, paving the way for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Beside the tomb of Richard Hildreth, American Consul in Trieste, is that of his fellow Unitarian, the great American preacher against slavery, Theodore Parker. Another American Consul has his large tomb here, the bibliophile James Lorimer Graham, who hosted Claire Clairmont, half sister of Mary Shelley, mother of Lord Byron’s child Allegra, and the subject of Henry James’ Aspern Papers. There are as well the tombs of Nadezhda, the black slave who came from Nubia to Florence at 14, being baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name ‘Hope’, and near her, that of a third American (and part Native American), Consul Hiram Powers, who sculpted ‘America’ and ‘The Last of Her Tribe’ and ‘The Greek Slave’, this last exhibited at the centre of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 and about whom Elizabeth had written this sonnet against slavery.

‘Hiram Power's "Greek Slave"’

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!

The webpage on the 'English' Cemetery is titled 'Thunders of White Silence, from this poem and from this sculpture.

I should have mentioned that Frederick Douglass came straight from the railroad station in Florence to stand before Theodore Parker's grave, as well.

We thank so many people for this day: Paolo Bitossi, Paolo Coccheri, Assunta D'Aloi, Nora Dempsey, American Consul General, ExpoMeeting, Katherine Goldsmith, dott.ssa Cristina Guidotti, Edgar Kraft, Swiss Consul, Soprintendente Fulvia Lo Schiavo, Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Alison Pryce, Grazia Santoni, Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina, and Giuseppe Venturini, who is conserving Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, and many others.

Do come and visit. Or at least virtually. For you can zoom in on the 'English Cemetery Florence' by simply typing in those words, then clicking on the place, in Google Earth. And consider contributing to the gardening, turning this back into the Paradise it once was. One person present wrote a cheque for 2000 euro with which we can begin this project, working with the Giardino Torrigiani which had supplied so many of the nineteenth-century plants that had been here. Am suggesting we begin with a pomegranate by Elizabeth's tomb, with roses on the wrought iron arches over the children's tombs (too many babies dying in the Victorian period), with myrtle on the tombs that had them, like the one that Mary Somerville had planted on her husband's grave, with lavender hedges. And meanwhile we are propagating the papyrus you see above. The Torrigiani people showed us how, placing the star frond face down in water so it sprouts roots.

We are now at 1244 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1700 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2944 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming. Just 66 to go for the 3000 we should like to present to UNESCO!

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE NATIONAL ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM, THE ENGLISH CEMETERY AND EGYPTOLOGY

2006-09-17T14:12:00.000+02:00

Dear Friends of Florence's English Cemetery,

First, let me invite you to zoom in on the 'English Cemetery Florence' by simply typing in those words, then clicking on the place, in Google Earth. Or use the Russian version which interestingly combines a more primitive form of Google Earth with the Wikipedia: http://www.wikimapia.org.

Second, let me invite you here this coming Saturday, 23 September. At 11:00 a.m., I shall be speaking at the National Archeological Museum near by, and then at 4:00 p.m., we shall be reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations of Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche in English and in Italian. If you cannot physically be present you can at least virtually be here at http://www.florin.ms/apuleius.html

For the Archeological Museum has chosen to celebrate us for European Heritage week in Florence and we are most grateful. Their Egyptologist, dott.ssa Guidotti, has selected the Egyptian motifs on our Gatehouse and on our tombs, creating of these an exhibition in the museum, called 'Hope in Life Beyond Death'. This because we were founded at the same time as the Grand Duke funded Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini's Expedition to Egypt and Nubia - which started the Liberty craze with lotus and papyrus. Vieri Torrigiani will bring lotus and papyrus to decorate the Cemetery for the event and the Archeological Museum is at this moment restoring Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb for it, for the design on Clough's tomb was traced directly from Champollion's volume borrowed from the nineteenth-century Marchese Torrigiani for that purpose.

Rosellini and Champollion in Egypt, 1828, Museo Archeologico, Firenze

They have sent out three thousand invitations with their logo of the Etruscan Chimaera, and the Consuls will be present as well.

And for the story of Cupid and Psyche - It is to be found embedded in The Golden Ass, a marvellous Latin romance about a man changed into a donkey by magic, who cannot change back again to being human until he eats roses - a kind of Pinocchio story. Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated excerpts from its story within a story during Robert's courtship of her and because she had been asked for these verses to illustrate a now mostly lost series of sculpted gems of the subject that had been commissioned by the Prince Poniatowski. The Ashmolean Museum is currently studying all aspects of these gems, whether lost or found. The catalogue published on them had some of the earliest photography done in daguerrotype. And John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, the Pre-Raphaelite artist who sculpted his daughter's tomb next to Elizabeth's, also painted her as Psyche with Charon. Grazia, our actress reading Apuleius' story in Italian, will be dressed like her.

And now, as Terence's manuscripts end, 'FELICITER'.

This evening Vieri Torrigiani came with a great bath for the lotus (water lilies) and all of us were finding the stones to place around it, the grey green stones that had once been in the Ghibelline towers of pride, then torn down to build the Guelf walls of common defence built by Arnolfo di Cambio before Florence's defeat at the 1260 Battle of Montaperti, then rebuilt by Michelangelo against the Medici in the Renaissance. Saturday morning Vieri will be bringing the lotus and papyri. Assunta and I both of us, independently of each other, thought of him as Pan and the bath as Pan's river bank! Meanwhile we have been rehearsing and re-rehearsing our readings up by the great cross, beneath the words - in French - about being the Life and the Resurrection from John. All the programmes are now printed, and the handout, the tablecloths washed and ironed, the windows washed, but we have the cucumber sandwiches still to make.

We are now at 1218 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1419 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2633 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE TORRIGIANI GARDEN, THE ENGLISH CEMETERY

2006-07-21T12:41:00.000+02:00

Do you remember as a child reading Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows? The story in it of Mole's House, underground, with a dank garden, with white marble statues of Queen Victoria and pagan gods nestled amongst the greenery?

That was what this morning was like. People become members of our library by giving it a book. Instead, often, whole libraries are given. In one such collective gift I found a tattered photocopy of a Victorian guidebook to the Torrigiani Garden in Florence. Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning would visit that garden, and so would Frederic Leighton. Isa Blagden and Frederic Tennyson, the Poet Laureate's brother, actually stayed there. And it was there Elizabeth saw the statue of the pagan god Pan with his panpipes, amidst bamboo cane, that became the figure in one of her last poems, 'A Musical Instrument', and that Leighton engraved for its publication in The Cornhill Magazine. Greeks called this game played by poets and artists with each others' media, ecphrasis. Here we combine music, art, poetry.

And there I was, in a very ecphratic moment, reading to Dottor Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina, the first verse of her poem about his family's statue of Pan in their presence:

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out from the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of man
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
. . .

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, -
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Great excitement. I went straight from the Garden, shown me by Doctor Torrigiani Malaspina, to the Museo Archeologico and to the Sovrintendenza Archeologica Toscana to tell them of this garden, filled with statues of Isis, sphinxes, an Egyptian tomb, and a hermitage where a plaque told us 'Mary Anne Chichester' had lived, who is buried here in a fine classical tomb. And realized while cycling down Florentine streets that the two profile faces on Lord Leighton's classical harp on EBB's tomb are the two sides of the god Pan's face in the Torrigiani garden, rather than of Tragedy and Comedy as I had formerly thought. For he had made that fine engraving for her poem that last year of her life, then designed her tomb. And hidden among the three harps, Greek, Hebrew, Christian, also the god Pan with one side of his face distorted, from playing panpipes, the other serene.

For more on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Lord Leighton see http://www.florin.ms/ebbdeath.html

The United Nations Society of Writers described their celebration of EBB: 'On Friday, 27 January 2006, UNSW held its 10th annual salon. 67 Poets and essayists from the United Nations Office in Geneva, some of them members of PEN International read their oeuvres in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian -- even Arabic, Vietnamese and Dutch. We celebrated the centennial of the birth of Samuel Beckett and the bicentennial of the birth of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose "Sonnets from the Portuguese" seduced not just her husband Robert Browning!'

And from Japan: 2006 年３月号 CDオープニング・ナレーション(track 1）Hello, everyone. To begin, as always, we'd like to thank you for purchasing this issue of CNN English Express. For our celebrity born in the month of March, we go a bit back in history to shed some light on the life of one of the English-speaking world's most celebrated poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Famed above all for penning the immortal lines, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," Elizabeth was born in England on March 6, 1806. So this year marks the bicentennial anniversary of her birth. She developed an interest in poetry as a young girl, and by the age of 12, she was already composing her first epic poem. But more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a little while. First, it's time for us to get started on this month's lesson.
shed light on: ～を照らす、～に光をあてる／celebrated: 有名な、著名な／poet: 詩人／（be）famed for: ～で有名である／above all: とりわけ、何よりも／pen: ～をペンで書く／immortal: 不朽の、不滅の／lines: 詩／thee: ≪古語≫ なんじを／count: ～を数える／mark: ～を祝う、記念する／bicentennial: 二百年記念の／anniversary: 記念日／develop an interest in: ～に興味を持つ／compose: （小説・詩などを）書く／epic poem: 叙事詩／in a little while: まもなく、すぐ

We are now at 1210 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1238 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2448 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE LAUREL WREATH ON THE TOMB

2006-07-04T06:50:00.000+02:00

It was a wonderful day. The Comune officially laid the wreath on the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning which is no longer crumbling away and covered with dirt but instead, pristine, in its Carrara marble and lead. Over a hundred people came and if we had kept to the earlier date there would have been at least two hundred.

Now that we have restored our most famous tomb we must turn to our next most famous tombs, Arthur Hugh Clough, Walter Savage Landor and Fanny and Theodosia Trollope's, all of them part of the Anglo-Florentine circle about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We shall start with Arthur Hugh Clough's in readiness for the event on September 23, when the Museo Archeologico and the Soprintendenza di Beni archeologici celebrate the influence of Champollion and Rosellini's 1828 Expedition to Egypt and Nubia's on the English Cemetery. Following the September event, we shall be planning another on the Savage Landors, for we shall be bringing the remains of several other family members to lie beside those of Walter Savage Landor. Henry Savage Landor, his grandson, born in Florence, was a traveller, a fine painter, and an inventor. We have permission from the Comune for the burial of ashes and remains, after over a century of the Cemetery being closed. And Franco Zeffirelli is saying we must get the Comune to turn this back into the garden it once was, where mothers could bring their children to play, with wild strawberries growing on the tombs, as he remembers it being.

This is my talk, in Italian, at the ceremony:

Discorso Cerimonia

E’ una grande gioia come Presidente dell’Aureo Anello Associazione, rivolgere il benvenuto a tutti voi a questo incontro che celebra il bicentenario della nascita di Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Desidero esprimere la mia gratitudine al Comune di Firenze che, nell’ambito delle celebrazioni promosse dalla nostra associazione per ricordare questo bicentenario, ha voluto con questa cerimonia rendere omaggio all’illustre poetessa, quasi “poeta laureato”.

Oggi è anche un giorno significativo per la Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera che celebra il 180° anniversario della sua costituzione, 3 luglio 1826, e il 179° anniversario dell’acquisizione dal demanio granducale del terreno sul quale il cimitero sorge. Anche se inglesi, per loro desiderio, l’amatissimo figlio di Elizabeth Barrett e Robert Browning, riceveva il battesimo nella Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera; e in quella chiesa ella prendeva anche parte alle funzioni del loro culto.

Sono lieta anche di ricordare oggi il 6° anniversario della costituzione della Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei dell’Aureo Anello, di cui si diviene soci donando annualmente un libro.

Varcare il cancello di questo luogo è compiere un tuffo a ritroso nel tempo, ma i secoli passati come messaggeri di storia e di vita parlano al presente e al futuro.

Il Cimitero Porta a’ Pinti detto “degli Inglesi” sorgeva in prossimità della cinta muraria in corrispondenza dell’apertura della Porta a’ Pinti. Dante e Beatrice passavano per questa porta, sulla quale campeggiavano le insegne della Croce del Popolo e del Giglio di Firenze di Arnolfo di Cambio, che furono in seguito poste dal Poggi sul muro di cinta interno all’entrata nord del cimitero ai lati di una nicchia, ora in stato di degrado. Nei muri a secco del cimitero osserviamo le pietre di colore grigio-verde, quelle pietre che furono utilizzate prima per edificare le torri dei ghibellini, e dopo dai guelfi per la loro cinta muraria. Ha qui giustamente trovato sepoltura il grande medievista Robert Davidsohn. Nella nostra Biblioteca per due anni abbiamo condiviso un ciclo di letture e della Commedia e della Vita nuova.

Un cimitero monumentale ecumenico e internazionale, le cui iscrizioni sono in diverse lingue, greco, russo, romancio, danese, tedesco, francese, inglese, italiano, e in diversi alfabeti, alfabeto ebraico, alfabeto cirillico, fractura, e alfabeto latino. Attivo fino al 1877, luogo di sepoltura per le illustri personalità che presero parte alla vita culturale della Firenze ottocentesca, è un archivio della memoria, della storia della città e d’Italia.

In occasione della sepoltura qui del coreografo russo Evgen Polyakov, il Comune di Firenze concedeva nel 1996 l’autorizzazione ad accogliere urne cinerarie, senza escludere ora alcuna confessione religiosa.

“L’Isola dei morti” è ora un luogo in stato di abbandono, anche se suggestivo: molti monumenti sono a rischio di crollo, ed il percorso di visita è limitato ai viali; è pericoloso infatti camminare fra le tombe. La futura costituzione di una Fondazione ha l’intento di raccogliere fondi per il recupero paesaggistico della collinetta unitamente al suo consolidamento, e per la conservazione dei monumenti. Ciascuno può partecipare a questo progetto: firmando la petizione, divenendo socio della Biblioteca e degli Amici del Cimitero, facendo donazioni per i libri e gli CD dell’Aureo Anello, adottando una tomba, o anche scegliendo questo luogo come ultima dimora terrena.

Alberto Casciani della Meridiana Restauri e la sua assistente Anna Simi hanno eseguito il restauro del sarcofago di Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Nella conferenza che terrò mercoledì pomeriggio 5 luglio, ore 18.00, all’Harold Acton Library illustrerò i disegni preparatori realizzati per il sarcofago da Lord Leighton, allievo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze e poi Presidente della Royal Academy of Art. I disegni attestano chiaramente i cambiamenti tra l'idea iniziale di Leighton che voleva celebrare Elizabeth Barrett Browning e la scultura finita di Francesco Giovannozzo dove ella è quasi anonima.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning nacque il 6 marzo 1806 in Inghilterra e trovò sepoltura nel cimitero “degli Inglesi” il 1° luglio 1861. Quel giorno a rendere l’ultimo saluto alla poetessa, oltre al marito Robert Browning e al figlioletto, chiamato affettuosamente Pen, erano presenti Francesco Dall’Ongaro, che tradusse in italiano la sua poesia patriottica, il futuro Lord Lytton, che diverrà Vicerè dell’India, Isa Blagden, Kate Field, i Trollope, i Powers, gli Story; mancava Walter Savage Landor, forse fu dimenticato di mandare una carrozza per lui.

Una seconda corona d’alloro è stata posta stamattina sulla facciata di Casa Guidi, l’amata dimora dei Browning in via Maggio, dove due lapidi già ricordano la poetessa, una con i versi di Niccolò Tommaseo:

Qui scrisse e morì
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Che in cuore di donna conciliava
Scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta
E fece del suo verso Aureo Anello
Fra Italia e Inghilterra.
Pone questa lapide
Firenze grata
1861

l’altra, apposta per deliberazione del Comune nel 1916, con le parole tratte dal suo poema politico Casa Guidi Windows (Le finestre di Casa Guidi):

Ho udito ier sera un fanciullino che cantava
Passando sotto le finestre di Casa Guidi lungo la chiesa
‘O bella libertà, O bella!’

Il Comune di Firenze deponendo una corona d’alloro sulla tomba di Elizabeth rende omaggio alla più illustre degli anglo-fiorentini, la donna e la poetessa, che nel suo ardore di libertà attraverso la poesia, fu paladina audace nella denuncia di ogni forma di schiavitù. Scrisse per le donne, contro lo sfruttamento dei bambini, contro l’oppressione dei popoli, condividendo le aspirazioni di libertà e giustizia dell’Italia risorgimentale. Amò profondamente Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, Apuleio, Eschilo e Omero, la Bibbia in greco ed ebraico.

Molti hanno espresso il loro rammarico di non poter essere oggi qui presenti, tra loro, Carlo Principe di Galles, il Poeta laureato Andrew Motion, il Cardinale Ennio Antonelli, il Vescovo ausiliare Claudio Maniago, il Vescovo suffraganeo Anglicano David Hamid, il Presidente della International Emily Dickinson Society Gudrun Grabher, la poetessa Bruna Dell’Agnese, traduttrice di Elizabeth Barrett Browning in italiano, e altri. Ringrazio di cuore della loro presenza: Michael Meredith, Bibliotecario dell’Eton College, Presidente della Browning Society e membro del Consiglio direttivo degli Amici di Casa Guidi, Bruno Santi Soprintendente per il Patrimonio storico artistico ed etnoantropologico, Deborah Dunne in rappresentanza del Console britannico, Tom Marks per il museo Keats Shelley House e il Cimitero Acattolico di Roma e Franca Gollini della Brontë Society italiana. Un benvenuto a tutti voi.

We are now at 1182 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1119 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2301 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

FLORENTINE LAURELS FOR ENGLAND'S ALMOST POET LAUREATE

2006-06-17T15:04:00.000+02:00

On Monday 3 July 2006 the City of Florence will give two laurel wreaths, one to put on the Barrett Brownings' Casa Guidi in via Maggio, the other that they will formally lay on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's newly and beautifully restored tomb by Lord Leighton here in this Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery.

We invite you to come to the 'English' Cemetery for this ceremony at 6:00 p.m. In this way we pay honour to the great poetess, remembering her in the 200th year of her birth.

Then, on 5 July, at the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute on Lungarno Giucciardini, 9, we shall be reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows from 3:00 p.m. to 5: p.m., followed by a visit to Casa Guidi in Via Maggio, Piazza San Felice, where it was written;

then, at 6:00 p.m., a lecture by myself on 'An Old Yellow Book: The Documents in the Case, The Death and Burial of Elizabeth Barrett Browning'. Again, all are welcome.

We invite you to adopt a tomb, research it, seek funds for its restoration, create a garden for it. We seek lavender, rosemary, oleanders, myrtles, irises, daffodils and roses to plant on the tombs. We invite you to share in our gardening, dead-heading the roses, making pot-pourri, having time for contemplation amongst the tombs and the books of this cemetery, this library.

We are now at 1165 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1004 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2169 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

THE OLD YELLOW BOOK/ THE RING AND THE BOOK

2006-05-18T18:14:00.000+02:00

Today has been dedicated to book-binding. I had earlier bought on the web a facsimile of the 'Old Yellow Book', in a shabby cheap cover, the collection of legal documents concerning a murder Robert Browning had bought in the Piazza San Lorenzo and broguht home to Casa Guidi, flinging it up in the air and catching it again by the great mirror, Elizabeth begging that he not obsess with it. It would become the quarry from which he created his magnum opus, The Ring and the Book.

He describes it as bound in old yellow vellum. Today, dashing across Florence on my bicycle, I bought fake vellum, pergamene falsa. But my maestro Enrico Giannini felt we should either use leather or true vellum. And he brought out two pieces. We were just able to cut the cover out of the smaller piece, observing all the rules. Leather is glued, vellum is more often sewn or only its edges glued. We did the latter. A tourist guide and two tourists came so we interrupted our work to marble paper for them. They examined an old ornate 1966 Flood-ruined book. And Enrico told them his price for restoring it is high and that he offered to its owner to teach him how to do it himself. Indeed, studying under Enrico Giannini is a great asset for all book lovers, librarians, restorers.

In the photograph you can see The Old Yellow Book and the 'Clasped Hands', Robert and Elizabeth's Marriage Certificate with Elizabeth Wilson's signature as witness, Elizabeth's portrait frontispiece to Aurora Leigh and Robert's portrait frontispiece painted by their son Pen, where Robert holds The Old Yellow Book in his hands.

Then back home to finish gluing the end papers and the covers on both The Old Yellow Book and my much-loved Sarum Breviary or Hours of Prayer, tiny with thin India paper, gold leaf edged rubricated pages to which I attached blue and green ribbon bookmarks, and green headbands and our blue marbled paper, a breviary that had been once an Anglican bishop's, who had taken it with him to India and to Africa and who gave it when I was librarian of my Anglican convent in Sussex, and that I use when travelling as the Roman one is large and heavy.

Have also been scouting Casa Guidi for the Comune, the city government of Florence, which will give two laurel wreaths 1 July, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's burial date, one to Casa Guidi where she lived, wrote, gave birth, and breathed her last, the other for her tomb here in the 'English' Cemetery. The Comune needed to know if there were a hook. I found a lamppost beneath which it can hang beside the door of Pino Marletta, Antiquario, and he consents and asks me for copies of EBB's books, and showed me his marvelous tools and supplies for restoring seventeenth through nineteenth century Italian furniture. I love crossing over to Oltrarno, 'across the Arno', where the artigiani, the skilled craftspeople have their botteghe, their workshops, and where one can see them carefully applying gold leaf, true not false gold leaf they buy in little handsewn booklets from the mesticherie, the hardware, ironmonger shops. And where I buy it too for painting halos to Madonnas and for the tooled letters on books I bind. One can take book-binding courses from Enrico Giannini - and also spend time looking in shop windows and learning by seeing how to gold leaf and bind books and so much else.

Profound thanks to all the 2000 and more of you who signed the petition to UNESCO. We are forming the Foundation and shall soon be able to request funds for the Cemetery's much-needed restoration from organizations and persons. And almost more than money what we love are people, descendants, who send us information and portraits of their ancestors buried here. This came three days ago and she is seventy, an American, and very lovely.
^*§ ELIZA (CALLAHAN) DOANE/ AMERICA/ Doane (Greene) nata Callahan/ Elisa/ Giovanni/ America/ Firenze/ 10 Novembre/ 1859/ Anni 70/ 686/ Elisa Greene Doane, l'Amerique, Boston, rentiere, fille de Capitain John Callahan, veuve de John Doane/ GL23777/1 N° 274, Death 10/11, Burial 14/11, Rev O'Neill/ SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS ELIZA DOANE WHO WAS BORN/ IN BOSTON USA DEPARTED THIS LIFE/ NOVEMBER 10 1859 AT THE VILLA CAPPONI/ AGED 70/ BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART/ FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD/ . . . MATTHEW . . . / THIS TABLET IS PLACED BY HER LOVING CHILDREN/ B14N

Eliza Doane circa 1858

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association towards saving the 'English' Cemetery in Florence you can by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

BOOKS AND THE ENGLISH CEMETERY, EGYPTOLOGY AND THE 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2006-03-28T12:06:00.000+02:00

Thank you everybody! We are now at 2042 signatures on our petition, in house, 1001, and web, 1041, to present to UNESCO, asking 'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site'.

This Cemetery more and more becomes a living place. I was walking up its path with Assunta, realizing this as we went to check for the tombs of a Welsh couple, complete with bees and butterflies, amidst the tall purple flowering irises, for which see below. Then as we walked into the Cemetery a second time today to bring a just-arrived book to its tomb, a pleasing ritual we practice. In this case Henry Edward Napier, R.N.'s Florentine History from the Earliest Authentic Records to the Accession of Ferdinand the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the first volume of six. We have now done this for so many of our tombs, Isa Blagden's Poems to her tomb, Fanny Trollope's numerous books to hers, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh complete with portrait to hers, Arthur Hugh Clough's books to his, Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations to his, Mary Young's study of Aonio Paleario, Theodore Parker's biography, books on Hiram Powers' sculpture and on that of Joel Hart to theirs. We read the books' title pages and the tomb inscriptions out aloud, combining our library and this Cemetery. We are profoundly grateful to all the donors of these books, many of them fine first editions, which you can see exhibited here when you visit us. (By the way, if anyone has a spare copy of Dearest Isa, the letters of Robert Browning to Isa Blagden, we should be most grateful.)

The tombs by these irises which are Florence's famous lilies after which she is named 'Florentia', are by the tombs of the historian Robert Davidsohn and that of the Trollope's faithful maid, Elizabeth Shinner.

A further book is Ippolito Rosellini's on the Expedition to Egypt and Nubia he made with Jean-François Champollion. We have now met twice with Florence's Archeological Museum, in particular with their Egyptian expert, and will hold in September 'Il loto e il giglio nel Cimitero degli Inglesi'. This because of the importance of the 'English' Cemetery as charting the Victorian obsession with Egyptology in Florence. Champollion and Rosellini made their Expedition, funded by Napoleon and the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, to Nubia and Egypt in 1828. Our Nadezhda's tomb states that this black Nubian woman came to Florence in 1827, when she would have been 14. So we decided to do a study of the Egyptian motifs in this cemetery inspired by Rosellini's book on Champollion's discoveries. And we should begin with the two columns on either side of the arch of the Gatehouse. These are closed lotus or blue lily flowers. Egyptians believed that the new life would be the open lily and portrayed capitals like them. Our two capitals instead signify death, closure. Arnold Boecklin's painting 'The Island of the Dead' evokes their symmetry.
As we enter we see many tombs, especially of the Rosellini period, filled with such motifs as winged globes or sand-glasses or the ourobouros or the bee, symbols for life's brevity, eternity, royalty, as well as butterflies for the soul from Apuleius' Golden Ass. In particular, the tomb of Arthur Hugh Clough, at his wife and sister's requests, includes the winged globe, taken from Champollion's book, borrowed for this purpose by Susan Horner from Count Torrigiani. We have tombs shaped like Egyptian obelisks, tombs shaped like Egyptian pyramids.
I found myself saying to Assunta amongst our purple blooming irises, which are Florence's lily, that this is one of the nodal places of this world, that we need, like the Aborigines and the Chinese, to honour the ancestors to have good lives ourselves, and remarking how intense this place is with meaning, with meanings, a world treasure.
Tomorrow am speaking on this cemetery at the UNESCO/ASCE (Association for Significant Cemeteries in Europe) in Modena. Will give them the-by-then 2000 signatures of our petition. Not one but two thousand thanks! And we shall have our Fondazione Cimitero Porta a' Pinti detto 'degli Inglesi' within a month.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the Elizabeth Barrett Browning tomb restoration you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

MARCH 25, FLORENCE'S NEW YEAR

2006-03-25T16:28:00.000+01:00

We are now at 971 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 981 signatures in-house from our visitors, a total of 1952 signatures. Keep them coming!

I urge you to look at the discussion between Robyn Williams and Dr Jim Leavesley of Margaret River, Australia, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tuberculosis of the spine and lungs. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1582151.htm

Today, March 25, Florence celebrates its New Year, Dante and others believing that date is the date of the Creation of the World, the Annunciation to Mary and the Crucifixion of Christ, Dante using it for that reason for the dating of his Commedia. So today we gathered in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's favourite Florentine church, the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata in the square of that name beside the Ospedale degli Innocenti with its Della Robbia babies in swaddling bands, with the great silken lilied banner of the Comune, and their trumpeters blowing fanfares, all garbed in Michelangelo's red and white Renaissance garb. Incense, the pontifical Mass, mothers holding their daughters, fathers carrying their sons, all Florence was there. and at its Fair in the Piazza where one can buy local pottery and the 'brigidini' sweets once made by the Brigittine nuns at the Paradiso convent before it was suppressed. I write about the Santissima Annunziata and EBB at http://www.florin.ms/ebbflor2.html. There are two celebrated Marian images at the Santissima, the first of Mary with the Angel at the Annunciation, begun by a monk, finished by an angel, all enshrined in silver,

the second of the Madonna Addolorata which Elizabeth uses so powerfully in Aurora Leigh and which I give here in a watercolour by the young English artist, Jamie Rotherham, who for a time was painting in the same cloister as had Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto.

The day before I telephoned Florence's top stone restorer to begin the process of restoring Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb, a fitting way to begin Florence's New Year! He is at this time restoring Pen's villa La Torre in Antella. Now we must raise the funds for him to conserve the tombs of her circle of friends also in this 'English' Cemetery in the heart of Florence within sight of the Duomo's great dome, Walter Savage Landor, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, Arthur Hugh Clough, Isa Blagden, Hiram Powers. We hear that the Friends of Casa Guidi at the same time are having the tombs of Pen and Sarianne Browning in the newer Swiss Cemetery at the Allori outside of Florence restored as well. We shall also be raising the funds, from individuals and from organizations, to restore this eroding hill and to landscape it as it had been in the nineteenth century, with roses, myrtle, lavender, Florence's purple irises that are her lily, and wild strawberries - which can also be given in kind. Imagine driving from England by way of Provence and buying their lavender plants, the very deep fragrant purple ones, for this piazzale in Florence. Recall, too, that in having one's ashes buried here, which is allowed now to all, will enable the 'English' Cemetery's restoration and continuation, as well as that of its Library on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her circle.

Also, before we cycled off to the Santissima, Romano Romoli telephoned me from the Casa dei Tessuti in via dei Pecori by the Duomo and Giotto's Bell Tower. Would I bring over images and books of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for his window, just as I had earlier brought over books from this library on Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri. Thus we are turning shops into Florentine museums - since the Florentine museums have turned into shops! Let me invite you into his shop for it is a marvel, gorgeous stuffs, a seven-hundred year old wooden loom from Siena for weaving silk and gold cloth and so much else and where you can really hear the Tuscan Italian that Dante and Elizabeth knew, http://www.florin.ms/casatessuti.html. Which we have now done with our 'Clasped Hands' by Amalia Ciardi Duprè and our handbound limited edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets and Ballad. And my apologies for having Romano Romoli's stockinged feet in the picture:

This is excellent preparation, right in the heart of the city, for our Florentine celebration of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 200th Anniversary that we shall hold on July 5 with a visit to Casa Guidi, a lecture at the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute, overlooking the Arno (which Elizabeth describes as a silver arrow shooting its way through the city),

and a visit to the English Cemetery. She so belongs to this city, linking with a golden ring her language and theirs, English and Italian.

EBB, Michele Gordigiani, 1858

The following associations and individuals are on the Honour Committee of the Emergency Appeal for the restoration of the Swiss-owned 'Cimitero Porta a' Pinti', known as the 'English' Cemetery in Florence:

Sir James Ackroyd, England
Alliance of Literary Societies, England
Amici dei Musei Fiorentini, Florence
Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, America
Anthony Astbury, The Greville Press, England
Association for Gravestone Studies, America
Association for Significant Cemeteries in Europe (ASCE)
Jeffrey Begeal, America
Clive Britton, Florence
The Brontë Society, England
The Browning Society, England
Dame Fiona Caldicott, Somerville College, Oxford, England
Carolyn Carpenter, America
Diane Lutz Chaplin, Florence
Timothy Chaplin, Florence
Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence
Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Florence
Luciana Cuppo Csaki
Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco, Comune di Firenze, Florence
Dame Judi Dench, England
Juliana Dresvina, England/Russia
The English-Speaking Union, America
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Florence
Joan Freed, Canada
Gabinetto Vieusseux ‘Centro Romantico’, Florence
Bernardo Francesco Gianni, O.S.B. Oliv., Florence
Horace W. Gibson, Florence
The Hawthorne Society, America
Philip Henderson, Lucca
Maire Herbert, Ireland
Robert Heylmun, Florence
Historic Gardens Foundation, England
Julia Bolton Holloway, Florence
Peter Auldjo Jamieson, England
Gerardo Kraft, Florence
The Landor Society, England
Denis Looney, America
Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Florence
Lapo Mazzei, Firenze
Michael Meredith, Eton College, England
Tony Moulton Barrett, England
Sir Derek Morris, Provost, Oriel College, England
Priscilla Morss Bayard, Florence
Henry Moss-Blundell
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, England
PatrimonioSOS, Italy
Pre-Raphaelite Society, England
Giuliano and Virginia Prezzolini, Florence
Giannozzo Pucci, Florence
Luigi di Quintana Bellini Trinchi Principe di Cagnano, Rome
Regione Toscana, Florence
Robert J. Robertson, America
Romano Romoli, Florence
Jack Sewell, England
Tom Sewell, England
Salvatore Siano, 'Nello Carrara', CNR, Florence
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura, Comune di Firenze, Florence
St Mark's English Church, Florence
Carlo Steinhauslin, Florence
Sir Roy Strong, England
Mikhail Talalay, Russian Academy of Science, Naples
Aeronwy Thomas, England
Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain
The Trollope Society, America
The Trollope Society, England
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Victoria Discussion List, Worldwide
The Victorian Society, England
Waterloo Committee, Patron, Duke of Wellington, England
Anthony and Diana Webb, England
Donald Williamson, America
Mary Williamson, America
Timothy Wilson, Ashmolean Museum, England
Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Italy
Mariella Zoppi, Assessore alla Cultura, Regione Toscana, Florence

Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association towards saving the 'English' Cemetery in Florence you can by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

HER 200TH BIRTHDAY

2006-03-18T08:16:00.000+01:00

We have just celebrated Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 200th anniversary, 6 March 1806. In America, Stephen Prickett and Alison Chapman had organized the Armstrong Browning Library's International Conference, 'This is Living Art' on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In Florence we will celebrate her with a visit to Casa Guidi, a lecture at the British Institute and an event in the 'English' Cemetery. In England there is the exhibition at the British Library, an event will be held in Malvern, and a plaque will be placed at St Marylebone Church in her honour.

I spoke at the Armstrong Browning Library, Waco, Texas, on her burial here in the 'English' Cemetery in Florence and about her now crumbling but very beautiful tomb designed by Lord Leighton. She was only fifty-five, having eloped from Wimpole Street from her Jamaican slave-owning father at forty to marry Robert Browning whose family came from a similar background from St Kitts. During those fifteen years of courtship and marriage, she wrote the Love Letters their son would later publish, the Sonnets from the Portuguese, 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point', Casa Guidi Windows I and II, Aurora Leigh, the sonnet on Hiram Powers' Greek Slave, and Poems Before Congress, which Robert would publish. She had already, in Lady Geraldine's Courtship, prophesied that courtship before even meeting Robert Browning.

If you look carefully at the aerial map of the 'English' Cemetery you can see her tomb at its very centre. Those who visit it see also Florence's Duomo, at present shrouded in scaffolding.

There is something odd about the burial records and about the tomb. We know that Robert gave orders that she be dug up and re-interred in the more showy place from a letter he wrote to Isa Blagden and from the recorded double payment to the Cemetery's gravedigger. Though he never returned to Florence or to his wife's grave. The burial records mistakenly give her date as '45', not the true '55'. The tomb only gives her death date of 1861. She was older than Robert but kept this secret. Likewise, the tomb failed to give her name, only presenting her initials; it failed to give her portrait, substituting for it an idealized figure of Poetry; nor does it give anything of her poetry or of Robert's. Frederic Leighton's design was carried out by Luigi Giovannozzi who also participated in the tomb for the Duchess of Albany erected in Santa Croce. At the conference in Waco I showed that Leighton himself had wanted her portrait medallion on the tomb, and had originally designed it with framed spaces for inscriptions. He shaped it not as a classical sarcophagus but instead as like a medieval saint's tomb, on columns with space underneath for pilgrims to come for healing, as with Edward the Confessor's tomb in Westminster Abbey. He placed on three of its sides harps, one Greek with the masks of Tragedy and Comedy, one Hebrew with a broken slave shackle expressive of EBB's passionate hatred of slavery, and one Christian, with a cross.

Near her tomb are those of Hiram Powers, who sculpted 'The Greek Slave' and of Nadezhda, the Black Nubian slave brought to Florence, likely in the Champollion and Rosselini Expedition funded by Napoleon and the Grand Duke Leopold, her story told in Cyrillic on its base. Also here are the tombs of Theodore Parker and Richard Hildreth who preached and wrote passionately against slavery in America. While those of Isa Blagden and Theodosia Trollope are nearby, themselves past East Indian, part Jewish, and the models for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Miriam in the Marble Faun.

Sadly, during these celebrations her tomb itself has been forgotten and is being allowed to crumble away.

Here we see where acid has entered the marble turning it into plaster of paris so it is crumbling away. This process can be reversed if we can raise the funds speedily enough for this work. We failed initially to raise the 3000 euro necessary to restore it. A similar sum is being spent on a new bronze plaque to Elizabeth in St Marylebone Church, as is just, for previously there was only a plaque to Robert, not her. Similarly Casa Guidi has only a bust to Robert, not to Elizabeth, in its lobby. Even the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery in which her tomb is placed, along with those of Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Isa Blagden, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, Hiram Powers, Theodore Parker and many others, with tomb sculptures by Lord Leighton, William Holman Hunt, Félicie de Fauveau and others, a pantheon abroad of great English writers and artists, is at risk of closure, abandonment, and vandalism for lack of funds for its restoration. This is not likely to be the case with Robert's resting place, Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner!

We also urge your signing the petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
to have the Cemetery remain open, to be restored and to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the Elizabeth Barrett Browning tomb restoration you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

ADOPT A TOMB IN FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

2006-01-26T05:39:00.000+01:00

____
Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

Dear Aureo Anello Member, Friend of the 'English' Cemetery in Florence, and Interested Others,

If you would like to adopt a tomb, to repair and research it, contact us. We should be particularly grateful if the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Fanny and Theodore Trollope and Arthur Hugh Clough were so adopted.

Just yesterday as I was photographing all these tombs for a web essay on tombs to repair, I found that the two tombs at the top back of the cemetery have yellow forsythia profusely in bloom on their wrought iron arch, though it is still winter with ice forming in troughs. (Next, we need to train two roses on the arch over the child's tomb.)

COUNTESS CHARLOTTE SOPHIA GIGLIUCCI/ ENGLAND/ [Coat of Arms]/ CHARLOTTE SOPHIA, MOGLIE DEL CONTE GIOVANNI GIGLIUCCI/ NATA A LIVERPOOL IL 4 AGOSTO 1841/ MORTA A FIRENZE IL 12 FEBBRAIO 1920/ ET LAUDENT EAM IN PORT/ C30M
COUNTESS EDITH MARGARET GIGLIUCCI/ ENGLAND / [Coat of Arms]/ EDITH MARGARET/ MOGLIE DEL CONTE MARIO GIGLIUCCI/ NATA LIVERPOOL IL 26 AGOSTO 1847/ MORTA IN FIRENZE IL 16 NOVEMBRE 1909/ C29M
CONTE GIOVANNI GIGLIUCCI/ ITALIA/ [Coat of Arms]/ CONTE GIOVANNI GIGLIUCCI/ PATRIZIO FERMANO, NATO A FERMO IL 18 NOVEMBRE 1844/ MORTO A FIRENZE IL 6 DICEMBRE 1906/ VIRTUTE ET FIDE BENE QUI LATUI BENE VIXIT/ C30L
CONTE MARIO GIGLIUCCI/ ITALIA/ [Coat of Arms]/ CONTE MARIO GIGLIUCCI/ PATRIZIO FERMANO/ NATO A FERMO IL 19 NOVEMBRE 1847/ MORTO A FIRENZE IL 13 GENNAIO 1937/ RECTE ET SUAVITER/ C29M

These tombs are of an Italian count who married a young lady from Liverpool. Next to them are the tombs of the count's brother, also a count, and his wife, the sister of the lady from Liverpool! They are very lovely but in pietra serena which crumbles and which will need consolidation.

Our most famous tombs are in need of a restoration campaign by the expert Alberto Casciani. They are those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Lord Leighton (for which Aureo Anello has received 300 euro towards its needed 3000 euro and from a Moulton Barrett), Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, Walter Savage Landor and Arthur Hugh Clough.

We have republished on the web a story of 'Ensign Yelverton's Spoon' written by Michael Ayrton.

.

We should like further interactive research carried out on the military regimental and naval figures buried here, and particularly on those who worked with Florence Nightingale and those who fought at Waterloo. We should also like research done on the armourial bearings on the tombs. And on the many Abolitionists against slavery who found burial here. For we are about freedom from tyranny, the right to be remembered. Death is a tyrant, but love overcomes death.

Holman Hunt sculpted his wife's tomb and placed on it the following Biblical quotation: 'Love is strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love neither can the floods drown it'. And he has her sarcophagus, like an arc, floating on waves of marble.
*§ +/ FANNY WAUGH HUNT/ ENGLAND/ (Wough)[Waugh]/ Holman Hunt]/ Fanny/ / Inghilterra/ Firenze/ 20 Dicembre/ 1866/ Anni 33/ 959/ Fanny Wough Hunt, l'Angleterre/ [Freeman, 227-230]/ NDNB entry for Holman Hunt/[Written in Medallions on Coffin with Pelican in its Piety, Lilies, at each End, Floating on Water, on the Waves of the Sea]

WHEN THOU/ PASSEST THRO/ THE WATERS/ I WILL BE WITH THEE/ AND THRO THE FLOODS/ THEY SHALL NOT/ OVERFLOW/ THEE [Isaiah 43.2]
IT IS/ I/ BE NOT AFRAID [Matthew 14.27]
LOVE/ IS STRONG AS/ DEATH/ MANY WATERS CANNOT/ QUENCH LOVE/ NEITHER CAN THE/ FLOODS DROWN/ IT [Song of Solomon 8.6-7]

//[on plaque at base] FANNY/ THE WIFE OF/ W. HOLMAN HUNT/ DIED IN FLORENCE DEC 20 1866/ IN THE FIRST YEAR OF HER MARRIAGE/ Holman Hunt, Sculptor/ E13I

Holman Hunt's wife in Florence modelling for John Keats' Isabella and the Pot of Basil during their honeymoon.

Fanny Holman Hunt, painted by her husband, Holman Hunt, during her pregnancy in Florence. He would marry her sister in order for their child, Cyril Benoni, to be raised. St Mark's English Church in Florence has a chalice and paten given in their memory.

While sculpting his dead wife's tomb in Fiesole, Holman Hunt painted this portrait of a Tuscan girl plaiting straw. In it one can see San Domenico below Fiesole, where Fra Angelico was Prior and where the European University now is housed.

His wife's tomb finished, Holman Hunt went to the Holy Land, painting there by the Dead Sea, 'The Scapegoat'. Holman Hunt's versions of the 'Light of the World' are in St Paul's Cathedral and at Keble College, Oxford.

Indeed so many of our tombs have marble be what it is not, sculpted as delicate lilies, poppies, just as Time's scythe is about to cut them, wooden crosses, including the bark, coiled rope, daffodils, myrtle. Beside which were once planted these flowers and shrubs and which we can plant here again.

Julia Bolton Holloway, Professor Emerita
Director, Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
'English Cemetery', Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 Florence, Italy juliana@tin.it
http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

If you wish to deposit directly into the Emergency Appeal Fund you can do so at the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ag. 30, Viale Petrarca, Firenze, for the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera-Restauro Beni account 849 00 066666, ABI 6160, CAB 2839, Coordinate bancarie B 06160 02839 000066666C00, IBAN IT85B0616002839000066666C00, Swift CRFI IT 3F

Or to Aureo Anello: by cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through Pay Pal:

LORD LEIGHTON, HIRAM POWERS, THE BROWNINGS, ETC.

2006-01-13T05:38:00.000+01:00

____
Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'
____

Dear Aureo Anello Member, Friend of the 'English' Cemetery in Florence, and Interested Others,

Lord Leighton's Florentine Lily,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Tomb

Good news and bad news. The bad news is that the Swiss owners still want to close and abandon the so-called 'English' Cemetery. We have not succeeded in raising the 3000 euro for the restoration work of the tomb for Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Frederic Lord Leighton, apart from 300 euro from a Moulton-Barrett descendant. A great world monument, EBB's tomb, within a great world monument, the 'English' Cemetery in Florence, are both still at risk.

Beside EBB's tomb is that sculpted by Holman Hunt in Fiesole for his wife Fanny who had died in Florence following childbirth.

Here we see where acid has entered the marble turning it into plaster of paris so it is crumbling away. This process can be reversed if we can raise the funds speedily enough for this work.

Lord Leighton has on the third harp at the back of the tomb a broken slave shackle expressive of EBB's passionate hatred of slavery (she was herself the child of a Jamaican slave owner). Many persons buried in this cemetery similarly worked against slavery, including Theodore Parker and Richard Hildreth, their tombs visited by Frederick Douglass, while buried near EBB and Hiram Powers, beneath an Orthodox cross in marble with her story in Cyrillic, is the tomb of Nadezhda, a black Nubian slave who came to Florence at 14 in Champollion and Rosselini's 1828 Expedition.

Lord Leighton studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, one of his teachers being Hiram Powers, an American sculptor buried in this 'English' Cemetery. Leighton won fame first from a huge canvas he painted at 24 of the Procession of Cimabue's Madonna from Borgo Allegri to Santa Maria Novella, which Elizabeth Barrett Browning had already described in poetry in her Casa Guidi Windows, the painting being purchased by Queen Victoria. Leighton was to be President of England's Royal Academy of Art. His sister, Mrs Alexandra Orr Sutherland, became Browning's biographer and the editor of his letters. We are in the process of acquiring copies of Leighton's drawings for this tomb for the Cemetery's library and archive, as well as having acquired significant holdings concerning the writers and artists, poets and sculptors, buried here, through the great generosity of Aureo Anello members.

Hiram Powers' Greek Slave, which was the centrepiece on a turning pedestal at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, whose head is modeled on the Greek wife of the painter Giorgio Mignaty who painted Casa Guidi at Browning's request as it was when EBB died.

While the studio, where Michele Gordigiani's descendants still live, and where he painted the portraits of the Brownings now in the National Portrait Gallery, is across the street from the tombs of the two Mignaty children.

In Italian we speak of such things being 'intrecciate', 'woven together', 'knit together'. This is so much the case with this 'English' Cemetery in Florence where Americans and English came together in a burst of creativity at the time of Italy's Risorgimento. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Miriam in The Marble Faun is a composite of Isa Blagden and Theodosia Garrow Trollope, EBB's friends, both buried here near her, both exotically part East Indian, part Jewish. Though Mrs Walter Savage Landor had herself sculpted in despair on her son Arnold's tomb, her back turned from her husband's burial place, so much of the Cemetery celebrates Hope: in Nadezhda's name, which is 'Speranza' in Italian; in the sculptures of women with anchors, for the pun on 'ancora speme'; in this dream the nineteenth century had of the freeing of nations, Greece, Italy; of slaves, in the British Empire, in America; of the liberation of women and children from bondage, from working in mines and mills. Do we obey Dante's infernal gate's message, 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here', 'Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate', or turn this around into Dante's paradisal joy of a new Florence, peopled, as is this Cemetery, with angels with our Cemetery's view of the dome of of Santa Maria del Fiore?

Sir Franco Zeffirelli had telephoned the Mayor of Florence in August asking that the 'English' Cemetery be saved. And the city of Florence immediately responded, saying this treasure must be saved. Florentines, who used to shun us, now speak of this place as an abandoned 'jewel', 'un gioiello', and for the first time are coming in flocks to visit us, complaining rightly about its neglect and disrepair, delighting in its beauty. Foreigners from all over the world have always steadily visited us since we have been keeping it open to the public.

However, we very much need to raise 3000 euro to save Lord Leighton's tomb for Elizabeth Barrett Browning as its Carrara marble is crumbling into gesso, this being Alberto Casciani's estimate for the work. It is a Florentine and world treasure and should only be restored by the expert most recommended by Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure. We shall also ask that he restore the tombstones of Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope. He can begin work in the Spring if we raise the funds.

Initially we had hoped to have a charitable foundation set up in England for the purpose of raising these funds and we delayed outright requests so that they could be made by it. Instead, we have now formed a committee here in Florence for the 'English' Cemetery Emergency Appeal, with Signor Gerardo Kraft, President of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church which owns the so-called 'English' Cemetery and who is the former Swiss Consul, Clive Britton, who is the Anglo-Florentine concert pianist and Artistic Director of Asolo's Norbert Brainin Foundation, and myself, President of the Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero degli Inglesi. We invite an American participant on this Emergency Appeal Committee as many of our damaged tombs still needing repair because their fallen slabs are too heavy to lift without a crane are of American burials.

Our petition both here in the Cemetery and on the web, that the Cemetery be kept open, be restored and be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is coming close to 2000 signatures from persons all over the world.

We thank all of you who have contributed to Aureo Anello, enabling the Victorian curving hand rails to our steps where before there were none, and the paint with which we restored the formerly rusting wrought iron gates of the Cemetery. We also invite you to consider arranging for the ashes of family members to be buried here as there are 500 places designated for these and this decision will enable the Swiss-owned 'English' Cemetery to become self-sustaining as a living museum for generations. It is our dream to landscape this oval island with its hill as it had been in the nineteenth century, with roses trained on the children's tombs' wrought iron arches, with wild strawberries, myrtle, lavender, irises and oleanders, beneath its tall cypresses.

Yours sincerely,

Julia Bolton Holloway, Professor Emerita
Director, Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
'English Cemetery', Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 Florence, Italy juliana@tin.it
http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

If you wish to deposit directly into the Emergency Appeal Fund you can do so at the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ag. 30, Viale Petrarca, Firenze, for the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera-Restauro Beni account 849 00 066666, ABI 6160, CAB 2839, Coordinate bancarie B 06160 02839 000066666C00, IBAN IT85B0616002839000066666C00, Swift CRFI IT 3F

Or to Aureo Anello: by cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through Pay Pal:

SEASON'S GREETINGS

2005-12-31T14:31:00.000+01:00

All night it snowed, then the next night, and this never happens in Florence, that the snow rests on the ground. I took these pictures from the Gatehouse to share with you:

The object that looks like a fourposter bed in wrought iron to your left is over the tomb of Mrs Stisted, the 'Queen of Lucca'. It almost had white curtains of snow that night!

To your right you can see Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, while on the left beyond the cross is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's.

We are in the midst of forming a Foundation under Italian law to protect the English Cemetery. The Aureo Anello Association will continue for library members and as 'Friends of the Cemetery', but lacks the clout to convince Foundations to take us seriously. We were threatened with closure again a few days ago. Despite this, there has been much generosity, people buying our marbled-paper limited editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets and Ballad and Amalia Ciardi Dupré's 'Clasped Hands' of Robert and Elizabeth, as well as donations to Aureo Anello. We shall need funding from Foundations or the Regione or both to stabilise our hill and wall, but apart from having the expert Alberto Casciani to advise us it may be possible to do much of the tomb restoration on a voluntary basis.

The following associations and individuals are on the Honour Committee of the Emergency Appeal for the restoration of the Swiss-owned 'Cimitero Porta a' Pinti', known as the 'English' Cemetery in Florence:

Sir James Ackroyd, England
Alliance of Literary Societies, England
Amici dei Musei Fiorentini, Firenze
Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, America
Anthony Astbury, The Greville Press, England
Association for Gravestone Studies, America
Jeffrey Begeal, America
Clive Britton, Florence
Brontë Society, England
Browning Society, England
Dame Fiona Caldicott, Principal, Somerville College, Oxford, England
Carolyn Carpenter, America
Timothy Chaplin and Diane Lutz Chaplin, Florence
Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Firenze
Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Firenze
Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco, Comune di Firenze
Dame Judi Dench, England
English-Speaking Union, America
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Firenze
Gabinetto Vieusseux ‘Centro Romantico’, Firenze
Horace W. Gibson, Florence
Philip Henderson, Lucca
Robert Heylmun, Florence
Historic Gardens Foundation, England
Julia Bolton Holloway, Florence
Gerardo Kraft, Firenze
Landor Society, England
Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Florence
Lapo Mazzei, Firenze
Michael Meredith, Eton College, England
Sir Derek Morris, Provost, Oriel College, England
Priscilla Morss Bayard, Florence
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, England
Pre-Raphaelite Society, England
Giannozzo Pucci, Firenze
Luigi di Quintana Bellini Trinchi Principe di Cagnano, Cavaliere di Malta, Roma
Regione Toscana, Firenze
Salvatore Siano, 'Nello Carrara', CNR
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura, Comune di Firenze, Firenze
Carlo Steinhauslin, Firenze
Sir Roy Strong, England
Mikhail Talalay, Russian Academy of Science, Naples
Aeronwy Thomas, England
Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain
Trollope Society, England
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Victorian Society, England
Waterloo Committee, Patron, Duke of Wellington, England
Anthony and Diana Webb, England
Timothy Wilson, Ashmolean Museum, England
Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Italy
Mariella Zoppi, Assessore alla Cultura, Regione Toscana, Firenze

Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a weblog here at
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
and our petition is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

The petition reads:
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

Julia Bolton Holloway, President
Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero 'degli Inglesi'
Director, Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
Member, ASCE (Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe)
'English Cemetery', Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 Florence, Italy juliana@tin.it

If you wish to deposit directly into the Emergency Appeal Fund you can do so at the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ag. 30, Viale Petrarca, Firenze, for the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera-Restauro Beni account 849 00 066666, ABI 6160, CAB 2839, Coordinate bancarie B 06160 02839 000066666C00, IBAN IT85B0616002839000066666C00, Swift CRFI IT 3F

Or to Aureo Anello: by cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through Pay Pal:

PROGRESS!

2005-11-13T14:54:00.000+01:00

Since this summer we have our curving handrails, for which Aureo Anello raised 1000 euro, and which allow all to enter our cemetery.

The Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe has invited us into membership and we have paid them our annual dues, as a 'Friends of a Cemetery' association of 1 euro. See their website, especially their monumental Certosa at Bologna for magnificent nineteenth-century funerary sculpture: http://www.significantcemeteries.net/

How We Write to the English, to the Americans, to the Swiss, to the Russians

2005-10-20T05:30:00.000+02:00

Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a weblog here at
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
and our petition is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

The petition reads:
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

Being international and ecumenical, we find we need to write to each nation which has burials in our Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence. The first essay is to England, followed by the essay to America, then by the essay to Switzerland, then that to Russia.

To England:

I am writing to you because this summer the world-famous and very beautiful 'English' Cemetery in Florence, where Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, friends of Florence Nightingale, participants in the Battle of Waterloo, and many others are buried, was threatened with closure and abandonment. The PreRaphaelites William Holman Hunt sculpted the tomb of his wife Fanny and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope sculpted the tomb of his daughter Mary, that lie beside that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Lord Leighton. Members of the Royal Family found burial here, among them Charlotte, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorn, and a natural son of King William. Mary Somerville, who taught Lord Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace mathematics, and thus being responsible for the IBM computer, buried her husband William here. Sir Franco Zeffirelli filmed Tea with Mussolini here with Dame Judi Dench memorializing Elizabeth Barett Browning. Opponents of slavery are buried here and among the friends of Florence Nightingale here is Thomas Southwood Smith, grandfather of Octavia Hill, and advocate of fresh air and sunlight in the home, recorded so on his tomb in Leigh Hunt's epitaph. His teachings would lead to a lessening of the deaths of women in childbirth and of small children.

The land for the Cemetery had been bought by the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church from the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1827 for the burial of non-Catholics, whose bodies earlier had to be transported to Livorno, and the Swiss Church gave free burial to impoverished English travellers who died here as well as to poor Swiss church members. In 1877 the medieval wall against which it nestled was torn down, it was reshaped as its present oval island and then the so-called 'English' Cemetery was closed and abandoned. For over a hundred and twenty five years the Cemetery has been neglected. But it was for fifty years before that an fragrant garden with roses trained on wrought iron arches, strawberries on the graves, myrtle, laurel and lavender, beneath its great cypress trees. It is our hope to restore it as it was through the careful study of old photographs, paintings, writings and oral history.

Five years ago it was re-opened to the public and a library, workshop and exhibition space placed in its Gatehouse. The library is open to readers who give it a book a year and it particularly collects books by and about the persons buried here, scholars frequently using these in their research. The workshop carries out stone restoration, book-binding, paper marbling, replicating nineteenth-century handcrafts in the style of William Morris, and runs apprenticeship programmes in these areas. The exhibition space displays a fine collection of sepia photographs of Florence and first-edition books by and about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, the Trollopes, Anna Jameson, Isa Blagden, Kate Field and others. Each book received is given a book plate with the donor's name, city and date, so donors, as well as the persons buried here, will have their name remembered by others. Cemeteries are archives, data banks, from the past to the future, about human lives. For instance, two cousins came to see their ancestress' tomb and then arranged for its restoration. The curator asked her story. Sarah McCalmont had died in childbirth, but her child had lived and her Church of England clergyman husband had brought this orphan home to England, the baby becoming their ancestor, too. The curator asked for a picture of her. The cousins sent a photograph of a portrait of a young beautiful woman straight out of Jane Austen.

The monuments in marble on pietra serena bases range from the earlier neo-classic, for instance, anachronistic cinerary urns on columns, and often making use of Egyptian hieroglyphs, to the later Victorian realism, particularly shown in the statue of Walter Savage Landor's wife on their son Arnold's grave, as far away from and her back turned to her poet husband's grave, which shows her with wedding ring, bobbled shawl, knit scarf, in utter grief.

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning died, the City of Florence placed a plaque on Casa Guidi, in Via Maggio, where she had lived and wrote, stating she made of her poetry a golden ring, 'un aureo anello', between Italy and England. Robert then used that for the title of his The Ring and the Book. The Associazione Aureo Anello Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' (Golden Ring Association: Library and Workshop Fioretta Mazzei and Friends of the 'English' Cemetery), supports the library, runs international conferences in Florence on 'The City and the Book', and raises fund for the restoration and landscaping of the 'English' Cemetery. Initially an 'English' Cemetery in Florence Foundation was proposed, but the Swiss owners chose to work with the Aureo Anello Association and the City of Florence and the Region of Tuscany governments, within Italian legal frameworks. Donations may be received by the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence or by the Aureo Anello Association and will be used entirely for the Cemetery's restoration.

Our visitors come from every country, our tombs' inscriptions being in many scripts and many languages; for though the English are in the majority, also buried here are Swiss, Russians, Americans, Greeks, Scandinavians and many others, at a time when Florence was a haven for great creativity. While the Americans who found burial here later often had themselves shipped in lead to be buried in the States, amongst the English there is the sense that where we lie is forever England. Partly for this reason the Italians call this oval in the Piazzale Donatello, the 'English' Cemetery. It is an island of Englishness far from home, an English and a world monument, in Florence. Our guest books fill up with signatures from everywhere; likewise the petition that the Cemetery be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Cemetery has an extensive website, cataloguing the tombs and the books, and in this way acquiring further information and materials, descendants writing from Africa, from Australia, from America, from England, adding to the fine archives that are accumulating and ongoing, as well as a weblog and a petition.

The 'English' Cemetery in Florence either has to be abandoned by the Swiss owners or restored and shared by the English and the Swiss as a heritage for all the world. Its present condition is an actual danger to visitors. If it can be restored, with help from the private and international sectors as well as from the city and regional governments in Italy, it can again be opened as a working cemetery for the burial of ashes, though no longer bodies, and in this way become economically viable and also once more a place of great cultural value, to Florence, Italy, England and the world. Like its companion, the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, it is a shrine to poetry and sculpture, to literature and to art, and it is as well a monument to the abolition of slavery and serfdom, and to better world health and hygiene, to our longer lives and greater freedom.

To the United States of America:

This Cemetery in Florence is a way of studying the history in exile of Americans, British, Russians and Swiss. We seek your help in saving this treasure.

The very beautiful Swiss-owned Protestant and Orthodox Cemetery in Florence was first bought from the Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany in 1827. The Cemetery was then closed in 1877, following 50 years of intense use, when the medieval city wall was torn down, following which it could only be used for the burial of ashes, not bodies. Some of the American burials precede its closure, others, of ashes, were later. Quite often, Americans had themselves buried in lead, to be shipped to the States later.

These fifty years were a time of great cultural energy for the Florence of the Risorgimento, briefly the capital of Italy, in which Americans, as well as English and Russians participated fully. Sculptors like Hiram Powers and Joel Tanner Hart came here. Anti-slavery advocates like Theodore Parker and Richard Hildreth came here, there also being buried here the black Nubian Nadezhda (Hope) who came to Florence at 14 with Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosselini's 1828 expedition, funded by the Grand Duke, her story being told on the marble of her tomb in Russian in Cyrillic characters, while Lord Leighton sculpted a broken slave shackle on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb, for her family had been slave owners in Jamaica but which she passionately hated, writing her famous sonnet on Hiram Powers' 'The Greek Slave', the sculpture that had been at the centre of the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition and 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point'.

Among the American Consuls were Hiram Powers and James Lorimer Graham, the latter having his portrait medallion sculpted by Launt Thompson, and who created a fine library and collection of art, which Daniel Willard Fisk, who lived in Walter Savage Landor's Fiesole villa, would in turn follow with his magnificent collection of books on Italian and Icelandic writers, now at Cornell University. Henry Adams' sister, Louise Adams Kuhn, is buried here following her death from tetanus in Bagni di Lucca,
and The Autobiography of Henry Adams describes this in his 'Chaos' chapter.

Not all Americans who visited Florence came to be buried here but these tombs record their friendships: Henry James was to write of Isa Blagden; Nathaniel Hawthorne having written of Isa Blagden and Theodosia Garrow Trollope in his Miriam in The Marble Faun; and Sophia Hawthorne of Hiram Powers and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her Diary; while Margaret Fuller was likewise Elizabeth Barrett Browning's friend, and who becomes the eponymous heroine of Aurora Leigh, complete with the Brook Farm phalanstery in the nine-book epic Elizabeth wrote following Margaret's drowning with her baby and Italian husband off Fire Island, Emerson sending Thoreau to look for their bodies. A photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb by Lord Leighton would be treasured by Emily Dickinson and this and Aurora Leigh be alluded to in her 'The Soul selects her own society' and other poems.

In this pre-1870 postcard photograph one can see the medieval wall as still present, outlining the cross John Roddam Spencer Stanhope sculpted for his daughter's tomb, and the ark William Holman Hunt sculpted for his wife.

Poignantly, many American babies are buried here, Italy being then subject to diseases like malaria, about which Henry James wrote, though several of Florence Nightingale's friends find burial here, including the physician Southwood Smith in a tomb with a medallion sculpted by the American Joel T. Hart, and the epitaph by Leigh Hunt that he advocated 'fresh air and sunlight in the home/ of the rich poor of happier years to come'.

Many Americans and an Englishman have helped make this web essay possible: Jeffrey Begeal, Carolyn Carpenter, Philip Henderson, Robert J. Robertson, Naomi Slipp, Don and Mary Williamson. The Swiss and the English thank them.

To Switzerland:

The very beautiful Swiss-owned Protestant and Orthodox Cemetery in Florence was first bought from the Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany in 1827, then closed in 1877 when the medieval wall was torn down and it became within the city limits of Florence and therefore illegal for burial. Its official name is the Cimitero Porta a' Pinti for that gate had been in what is now Piazzale Donatello. The original cemetery, from 1827-1869, was designed by Carl Reishammer to nestle against the wall at the Porta a Pinti, the Pinti Gate, itself first built by Arnolfo da Cambio, then reconstructed by Michelangelo, gave this appearance.

Later, Giuseppe Poggi incorporated it as an oval island with its tall cypresses within his great viali, now so filled with traffic.

It had this shape when Arnold Böcklin buried his seven month-old daughter Maria in this 'Island of the Dead', the 1860 Gatehouse reflecting the Egyptological studies of Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosselini's Expedition to Egypt and Nubia funded by the Grand Duke in 1828. The painting would inspire the Opus 29 of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The two stemma, with the lily of Florence and the cross of the Guelf party (like the Swiss cross), were removed from the demolished Arnolfo di Cambio and Michelangelo gate and placed on the back wall of the Cemetery. In the nineteenth century the area was an English garden with box hedges, roses trained on the iron arches above the babies' tombs, and rare plants that flowered joyously in the Spring, while family members would plant myrtles and laurels on the tombs of their husbands, wives and children.

The Cemetery is international and ecumenical. Its tombstones have verses from the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, Russian, German, French, Italian, Rumantsch and English and in Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, fraktura and Roman script, this at a time when Catholics were forbidden to read the Bible in their vernacular languages. Today even Catholics may have their ashes buried here and even Catholics, following Vatican II, read the Bible in Italian and other languages. Many babies are buried here and many women who died in childbirth, but friends of Florence Nightingale also found burial here and shared with Henri Dunant the concept of medicine as a human right. So this Cemetery was prophetic of our future, of a greater freedom, of religion, of health.

This Cemetery is filled with the tombs of great writers and artists, and also of ordinary people, Russian serfs, English servants, Swiss pastry cooks, and even the tomb of Nadezdha, a black Nubian slave brought to Florence at 14 with Champollion and Rosselini's 1828 Expedition to Egypt and Nubia, whose story is told in Cyrillic on her very beautiful marble tombstone of a Russian Orthodox cross, for she was baptised into that faith, while other tombs are of individuals who preached, wrote novels and wrote poems against the evil of slavery.

The Swiss were already present in Florence from the second half of the eighteenth century; prior to 1827 they had to be buried in Livorno. The Florentine Evangelical Cemetery's first burial was of Jean David Marc Gonin, whose tomb shows a handsome romantic young man on a column. Following him, its Swiss occupants include Giampietro Vieusseux, who founded the Gabinetto Vieusseux, free from the Grand Duke's censorship, where Robert Browning, Fyodor Dostoievsky and John Ruskin could be readers, but not, for being a woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Jacques Augustin Galiffe, the historian of the school of Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the most world-famous figure buried here, was deeply influenced by the Swiss Madame de Staël (Anne Louise Germaine Necker, baronne de Staël-Holstein), using her Corinne ou Italie for the plot of her nine-book epic Aurora Leigh.

An entire section of the Cemetery houses the tombs of members of the Wital family, one of them having been the Cemetery's Inspector and whose sculpted bust still surveys the surroundings, while his weeping widow and orphan in classical garb, in marble, are shown forever placing a garland on his grave. Other figures also cluster in that top right sector but are as well to be found throughout the Cemetery. Hardworking and devout, they were often pastry makers or involved in straw weaving. They gave free burial to the paupers of their own Evangelical church and also to foreign destitute travellers as an act of charity. Probably the only shameful Swiss figure is Julia Thuillier, the daughter of a bankrupt Swiss banker, and wife of Walter Savage Landor, who threw him out of the Villa in Fiesole he had given them. She is shown magnificently, ostentatiously sculpted in marble weeping on her son's tomb, her back turned to that of her husband's modest tomb beneath a laurel for his splendid poetry at the opposite side of the Cemetery.

Particularly the tomb inscriptions of the Swiss families are in multiple languages, German, French, Italian and Rumantsch. Televisiun Rumantsch came and filmed the Cemetery for several days studying the families from the Grigioni buried here. We had not at that date yet found the Swiss burial records which carefully list in French, written out in a beautiful hand, the canton, the occupation and the mother's maiden name of each burial. One tomb is especially endearing, where the children and grandchildren celebrate their mother and grandmother in that language quoting from the Book of Job. The linguist Noam Chomsky says a language dies if the grandparents and grandchildren cannot speak in it together. Our library within the cemetery collects books by and about the persons buried here. It begins with the Alphabet and the Bible in the original and in modern languages, including one in Rumantsch, and has books in Greek, Latin, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Rumantsch, Icelandic, Irish, Welsh, as well as a large collection on Florence and her art.

We consider this a Florentine monument, a Swiss monument, an English monument, an American monument, a world monument and we seek to have it become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. People writing on it rank it only second to Paris' Père Lachaise. It deserves restoration to its former beauty and to again become world-famous.

To Russia:

Among the guests of the English Cemetery we find first of all the most notable names of the members of the Swiss and English colonies of Florence. However, the story of the Russian colony, whose beginnings go back to the 1820's of the nineteenth century, is linked to this place.

Until the Second Vatican Council Catholics considered the Orthodox Church to be schismatic: in consequence in Italy the Russians did not have the right of burial in Catholic cemeteries. The rules were particularly restrictive regarding burials of non-Catholics in the Papal States.

In the Grand Duchy of Tuscany from the sixteenth century there was a Greek Orthodox cemetery at Livorno regulated by tolerant laws, in matters of faith, of Ferdinand I dei Medici, as for example the Livornian Law of 1552-1553. It was at Livorno, and not at Florence that did not yet have a Protestant cemetery, where were buried Russians who had died at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among these we remember the Russian diplomat N. Korsakov, Pushkin's friend, to whom the poet had dedicated
poignant verses, speaking of his burial 'under the sweet myrtle of Italy', and the Russian ambassador at Rome A. Ja. Italinskij, buried at Livorno with a solemn funeral ceremony.

With the institution of a non-Catholic cemetery at Florence in 1827 the situation changed. Naturally the Russian tended to want to bury their dead in their own country and the English Cemetery sometimes served as a temporary resting place for the body before its being transported to Russia: this for instance was the case with Michail Zaseckij. And with that of Eugenie Jesakoff de Kraft.

In particular the representatives of aristocratic families who had their morturay chapels in Russia preferred to transport their loved ones there. However many of them remained for ever in Italian soil. And if there were no difficulties with the burial, in Catholic cemeteries, for those Russians who had converted to Catholicism, the Orthodox could instead find eternal peace only in cemeteries opened by Protestants.

In the English Cemetery during the period of its fullest activity, there came to be buried in all 50 members of the Russian colony. In large part these were representatives of the higher classes who came to Italy to cure themselves together with their servants: among these last we remember Kasincev, or the Nubian Kalima, baptized Orthodox with her new name 'Nadezhda', 'Hope'.

In the nineteenth century Florence became a major stopping place on the Grand Tour for the European cultural elites, among them the Russians. Many artists established themselves here for a long time: among these for example the painter Zeleznov, whose daughter rests in the Florentine cemetery, or the artist originally from Riga, Edvard Bosse, who settled at Florence with his family.

The vast Russian Empire was the country not only of citizens of Russian origin, concerning whom our register gives witness, but also those of German, Finnish, Polish, Moldavian origins.

The Cemetery closed in 1877, but more than a hundred years afterward it opened its gates again to welcome under the cypresses of the Piazza Donatello the famous Russian choreographer Evgenij Poljakov for whom Italy became a 'second country'.

We thank Mikhail Talalay of the Russian Academy of Science and Gino Chelazzi for this entry and their research on our Russian burials.

Julia Bolton Holloway, President
Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero 'degli Inglesi'
Director, Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
'English Cemetery', Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 Florence, Italy juliana@tin.it

If you wish to deposit directly into the Emergency Appeal Fund you can do so at the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ag. 30, Viale Petrarca, Firenze, for the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera-Restauro Beni account 849 00 066666, ABI 6160, CAB 2839, Coordinate bancarie B 06160 02839 000066666C00, IBAN IT85B0616002839000066666C00, Swift CRFI IT 3F

Or to Aureo Anello through Pay Pal:

WILD STRAWBERRIES

2005-10-06T17:09:00.000+02:00

This blog is to suggest ideas for your participation. Planting ideas and roses and lavender. About suggestions for the 'English' Cemetery so it can again become beautiful. (What we call in England 'putting a bee in one's bonnet'.) As sculpture garden, a poetry garden, that the world could help create in Florence.

We have been talking about our sculptress friend Amalia Ciardi Dupré who has sculpted for the Emergency Appeal the 'Clasped Hands' of Elizabeth and Robert and whose ancestors made the statues of St Zenobius and St Reparata on the Duomo's facade and the statues of St Francis and St Clare in San Rufino in Assisi as well as sculptures of Cain and Abel for the Czar in the Hermitage. There is no statue in Florence to Beatrice. I asked Amalia for a Dante and Beatrice in Paradise that we could place in the niche at the other end of this cemetery which would be seen by all Florence's traffic in the viale. Our sculptress created this model which could be then made life-size for 10,000 euro. (I think Beatrice is putting the bee in Dante's bonnet about writing his poem, the Commedia!) Would someone like to give such a gift to Florence?

In this way we would be linking poetry and sculpture.

There is also a sundial with Robert Browning's lines from Rabbi Ben Ezra, 'Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be', with the winged hourglass seen so often also on our nineteenth-century tombs, influenced by Champollion and Rosselini's expedition to Egypt and Nubia. We could place it on a stone capstan we have so visitors could find it.It is on sale for $34 on the web at
http://www.krupps.com/Sundials/1_PricePromo_29_8_R2560_8_8
Would someone like to give such a gift to Florence?

There are quatrains Walter Savage Landor wrote we could have incised on Carrara marble and placed about the cemetery, again for contemplation. For instance:

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

We already have Elizabeth Barrett Browning's lines from Aurora Leigh and her epitaph for Lily Cottrell incised in Carrara marble with Lord Leighton's lily beside them, given to us by the Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University in the arch of the Gatehouse so readers may pause and read.

One of my dreams is of having a second bell on the wall facing the Cemetery that we could ring when it is time to close the Cemetery, instead of only the one that is rung by people wanting us to open the Cemetery. And which we know was so rung by a descendant in 1945 coming to visit his Sewell ancestors' tombs. Our rival Cemetery has a siren. We only want what will evoke the nineteenth century so that visitors will step back in time to a more hand-crafted era of fine poetry and sculpture and the tenderness of family members to each other, memories of the past to teach the future beauty and wisdom. Why I took out the modern plastic and metal and built the library with wooden bookshelves, Savonarola chairs and damask blue and green curtains, so that one could step into the nineteenth century's appreciation of medieval and Renaissance hand-crafting. The modern traffic can swirl about us but inside there is peace and the great thick walls of the Gatehouse make the library absolutely silent.

Already an American has given us iris bulbs, the purple wild iris that are the true Florence lily, which propagate happily in our cemetery's soil. A Russian gave me money to buy flowers for Evgen Polyakov's tomb and I bought daffodil bulbs and planted these, remembering that my nuns had so planted daffodils over a hundred years ago around the two tombs of their sisters buried in an Sussex graveyard and that these are now flourishing like Wordsworth's 'cloud of daffodils'. (Would someone like to bring a hundred daffodil bulbs from England and plant them here to join our Florentine purple iris/lilies?) And just today I was told by a visitor in her fifties that when she would come here as a five-year-old child with her governess there were delicious wild strawberries growing on the tombs.

Our petition is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

If you wish to deposit directly into the Emergency Appeal Fund you can do so at the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ag. 30, Viale Petrarca, Firenze, for the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera-Restauro Beni account 849 00 066666, ABI 6160, CAB 2839, Coordinate bancarie B 06160 02389 000066666C00, IBAN IT85B06160028390000066666C00, Swift CRFI-IT-3F

A GARDEN OF THE WORLD, A GIFT TO FLORENCE

2005-09-25T06:31:00.000+02:00

In the nineteenth century the Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery, with its tombs of so many world citizens, English, Swiss, Russian, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Scandinavian, American, Australian, was a beautiful garden, with roses and jasmine climbing the wrought iron arches on children's tombs, sweet-smelling lavender, myrtle and rosemary. We would harvest the rose petals and lavender for potpourri, thus earning contributions to our restoration fund. We have begun with planting purple irises, which are Florence's lily, a gift from an American donor, beneath our great cypresses, and will separate these next year so the original bulbs can propagate. Our gardeners have given us four olive trees in pots and compost rubbish to create topsoil. White marble looks best with green. We should be most grateful for donations to this project, either funds or plants themselves, thus giving back to Florence the world's garden she once had.

Lord Leighton's Florentine Lily,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Tomb

The city of Florence has become very interested in our combination of a library with the cemetery and especially in its archives, grreatly appreciating the two exhibitions of sepia photographs and of nineteenth-century books, and are incorporating the catalogues of the library and archive into their system to document this aspect of Florence's history, our international contribution to her.

We have now painted the rusting iron gates at the front and the new, beautifully curving handrails on the steps leading up to them. We welcome you to enter through these gates to visit the Cemetery, where you will step from the twenty-first century with its pollution and roar of traffic, into the nineteenth century with its art, its beauty, its hand-crafted work, its peace, an island in time and in space. We welcome your participation in its restoration.

Benvenuti!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous marble tomb is crumbling and urgently needs restoration. It was designed by Frederic, Lord Leighton, who had studied at Florence's Accademia di Belle Arti and who became President of the Royal Academy of London. Emily Dickinson wrote about it, having treasured a postcard photograph of it. Alberto Casciani of Meridiana Restauri, who studied with Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure, has given us an estimate for its restoration. If there are individuals and organizations interested in participating in this project we should be delighted.

Our petition is at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

INVITATION TO PIAZZALE DONATELLO

2005-09-20T21:45:00.000+02:00

Lord Leighton's Florentine Lily,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Tomb

I invite you to the Swiss-owned so-called `English` Cemetery in Piazzale Donatello, where we have the tombs (habeas corpi) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Isa Blagden, five members of the Trollope household, Fanny, Theodosia Garrow Trollope, Joseph Garrow, Harriet Fisher and Elizabeth Shinner their maid, Hiram Powers, Joel T. Hart, several participants in the Battle of Waterloo, several friends of Florence Nightingale, and many others. We also have a library, with books written by and about these persons and others, and a workshop where we sculpt Elizabeth and Robert`s `Clasped Hands`, bind books by hand, marble paper, etc.

We have two exhibitions in our Gatehouse: one called `Florence in Sepia`, a collection of nineteenth century photographs that were almost burnt in a bonfire by the nuns in my convent, bought by my Mother Foundress in the nineteenth century and taken back to England, illustrating the places written about by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot and Anna Jameson; the other an exhibition of some of our books: Isa Blagden, Poems, 1873; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lady Geraldine's Courtship, n.d; Sonnets from the Portuguese/Portugalske sonety, trans. Hanna Zantovska, 2001; Sonnets and Ballad (including Hiram Powers` `Greek Slave`), 2004; Aurora Leigh, 1866; The Old Yellow Book: Source of Browning's The Ring and the Book, 1908; Joel Hart, Triumphant Woman; Mrs. [Sophia Peabody] Hawthorne, Notes in England and Italy, 1872; Anna Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders as Represented in the Fine Arts, 1891; Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, 1886; Frederic Leighton, engravings for George Eliot, Romola; Mrs Oliphant, The Makers of Florence: Dante, Giotto, Savonarola and their City, 1914; Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1974, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 1836; Vienna and the Austrians, 1838; Thomas Adolphus Trollope, What I Remember, 1887; Lilian Whiting, Kate Field, 1900, A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1902.

We have Anna Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, open to the engraving of Filippino's Vision of the Madonna to St Bernard in the Badia, below the sepia photograph of that same painting, which had been in the Palazzo Strozzi at the same time that we exhibited these photographs in the Gabinetto Vieusseux there. We have as well a portfolio of Lord Leighton's painting of the procession through Borgo Allegri of the Cimabue Madonna, and of his engravings for George Eliot's Romola.

Membership in Aureo Anello (referring to the `golden ring` of Elizabeth Barrett Browning`s verse between Italy and England on the Casa Guidi plaque) is through giving its library a book and these books in the exhibition have been given by members from all over the world. We are open Monday mornings, Tuesday-Friday afternoons and you can ring our bell at other times.

We are in the midst of an Emergency Appeal to prevent the `English` Cemetery from being closed and abandoned. You can read about it here and sign the petition `That the English Cemetery be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site`.

The following associations and individuals are on the Honour Committee of the Emergency Appeal for the restoration of the Swiss-owned 'Cimitero Porta a' Pinti', known as the 'English' Cemetery in Florence:

Sir James Ackroyd, England
Alliance of Literary Societies, England
Amici dei Musei Fiorentini, Firenze
Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, America
Anthony Astbury, The Greville Press, England
Association for Gravestone Studies, America
Jeffrey Begeal, America
Clive Britton, Florence
Brontë Society, England
Browning Society, England
Dame Fiona Caldicott, Principal, Somerville College, Oxford, England
Carolyn Carpenter, America
Timothy Chaplin and Diane Lutz Chaplin, Florence
Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Firenze
Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Firenze
Timothy Collins, England
Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco, Comune di Firenze
Dame Judi Dench, England
English-Speaking Union, America
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Firenze
Gabinetto Vieusseux ‘Centro Romantico’, Firenze
Horace W. Gibson, Florence
Philip Henderson, Lucca
Robert Heylmun, Florence
Historic Gardens Foundation, England
Julia Bolton Holloway, Florence
Gerardo Kraft, Firenze
Landor Society, England
Joanna Lumley, O.B.E.
Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Florence
Lapo Mazzei, Firenze
Michael Meredith, Eton College, England
Sir Derek Morris, Provost, Oriel College, England
Priscilla Morss Bayard, Florence
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, England
Pre-Raphaelite Society, England
Giannozzo Pucci, Firenze
Luigi di Quintana Bellini Trinchi Principe di Cagnano, Cavaliere di Malta, Roma
Regione Toscana, Firenze
Salvatore Siano, 'Nello Carrara', CNR
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura, Comune di Firenze, Firenze
Carlo Steinhauslin, Firenze
Sir Roy Strong, England
Mikhail Talalay, Russian Academy of Science, Naples
Aeronwy Thomas, England
Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain
Trollope Society, England
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Victorian Society, England
Warwickshire Local History Society
Waterloo Committee, Patron, Duke of Wellington, England
Anthony and Diana Webb, England
Timothy Wilson, Ashmolean Museum, England
Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Italy
Mariella Zoppi, Assessore alla Cultura, Regione Toscana, Firenze

WIKIPEDIA: ENGLISH CEMETERY, FLORENCE

2005-09-11T13:06:00.000+02:00

Our petition is at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

Un saggio in italiano sul Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' si trova all'indirizzo http://www.runelfiche.blogspot.com

Lord Leighton's Florentine Lily,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Tomb

For the past few days we have been creating an entry on the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence for the Wikpedia on-line encyclopedia that we can use in the grant-applying process for restoration funds. You are welcome to edit. This is how it now reads:

The English Cemetery is in Piazzale Donatello, Florence, Italy.

In 1827 the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church purchased land outside the medieval wall and gate of Porta a' Pinti from Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany for an international and ecumenical cemetery, Russian and Greek Orthodox burials joining the Protestant ones. Prior to that date non-Catholics and non-Jews who died in Florence could only be buried in Livorno. Carlo Reishammner, as a young architectural student, first landscaped the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery, then Giuseppe Poggi shaped it as its present oval when Florence became capital of Italy, surrounding it with great studios for artists, including that of Michele Gordigiani, who painted the portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Many famous persons were buried here, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (in a tomb designed by Frederic Lord Leighton), Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Fanny Trollope and her daughter-in-law Theodosia Garrow Trollope and three other family members, Isa Blagden, Southwood Smith, Hiram Powers, Joel T. Hart, Fanny, the wife of William Holman Hunt in a tomb he himself sculpted, Mary, the daughter of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope in a tomb he himself sculpted, Louise, sister to Henry Adams, whose dying he describes in his 'Chaos' chapter in The Education of Henry Adams, two children of the Greek painter George Mignaty, whom Robert had paint Casa Guidi as it was when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died there, and Nadezhda De Santis, a black Nubian slave brought to Florence at fourteen from Jean-François Champollion's 1827 expedition to Egypt and Nubia, while the French Royalist exile Félicie de Fauveau sculpted two tombs here.

Giampietro Vieusseux, Swiss, the founder of the Gabinetto Vieusseux of which John Ruskin, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and Robert Browning were readers, is also buried here and likewise the Swiss historian Jacques Augustin Galiffe, who with Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi pioneered genealogical, archival research. Emily Dickinson treasured a photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb and wrote 'The soul selects her own society' about it, using lines also from EBB's Aurora Leigh. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a sonnet on Hiram Powers' sculpture The Greek Slave, which had been at the center of the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Isa Blagden and Theodosia Garrrett Trollope, part East Indian, part Jewish, are models for Miriam in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, while George Mignaty's wife is model for the head of Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. The cemetery is famous, too, as the partial subject of Arnold Boecklin's Island of the Dead, from its burial of his seven-month daughter, Mary. In turn, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff made use of the painting for his Op. 29, The Isle of the Dead. The cemetery itself is a kind of encyclopedia memorializing the creativity of western culture, from America to Russia, from Scandinavia to Nubia, during Italy's Risorgimento.

Of the many Swiss, Russians and Americans buried here, the English graves are the majority as their community in Florence in the nineteenth century was the largest. The tomb inscriptions are in Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, fraktura and Roman scripts, and in many languages, Hebrew, Russian, French, German, Danish, Rumantsch, English, including passages of the Bible in their vernaculars, at that period forbidden to Catholics.

In 1877, the Cemetery had to be closed, the medieval wall having been torn down at the Risorgimento when Florence became capital of Italy, and Code Napoleon, from Roman law, forbidding burials within city limits. At the present day ashes may be interred. Currently, research is being carried out on the burial records in England, Russia and Italy, these being published on the web, the library in the cemetery seeks books written by and about the persons buried here, and an Emergency Appeal is underway to restore the 'English' Cemetery in Florence after 125 years of neglect and abandonment to its former beauty described in Victorian guidebooks and seen in early sepia photographs, particularly those taken by Hiram Powers' son, Longworth Powers, now in the Gabinetto Vieusseux.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Cemetery%2C_Florence"

Categories: Cemeteries in Italy
Wikipedia entries are needed for the following: Isa Blagden, Félicie de Fauveau, Jacques Augustin Galiffe, Michele Gordigiani, Joel Hart, George Mignaty, Giuseppe Poggi, Carlo Reishammer, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, Southwood Smith, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Theodosia Trollope, Giampietro Vieusseux

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous marble tomb is crumbling and urgently needs restoration. It was designed by Frederic, Lord Leighton, who had studied at Florence's Accademia di Belle Arti and who became President of the Royal Academy of London. Emily Dickinson wrote about it, having treasured a postcard photograph of it. Alberto Casciani of Meridiana Restauri, who studied with Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure, has given us an estimate for its restoration. If there are individuals and organizations interested in participating in this project we should be delighted.

PROGRESS REPORT

2005-09-03T08:08:00.000+02:00

Un saggio in italiano sul Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' si trova all'indirizzo http://www.runelfiche.blogspot.com

Lord Leighton's Florentine Lily,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Tomb

Earlier we said we were garnering support with the petition, which is doing well and which also reflects our international Swiss-owned 'English' Cemetery in Florence, the signatures coming from all over the world. The Italian newspaper, L'Espresso, expressed amazement that we had so many signatures in so short a time. Because we have two petitions going for UNESCO to have it be a World Heritage Site, we are now only 300 signatures short of the thousand for which our thermometre aimed.

Now it is time to seriously raise funds. Aureo Anello has already given 1000,00 euro for the handrails to help the elderly and infirm access the Cemetery.

If we can keep this Cemetery open and have it be restored, there are people willing to purchase lots, 70 centimetres by 70, for the burial of their ashes. We now have eight such requests. It is Catch 22. They will complete these requests only if the Cemetery is to remain open and to be restored. The Cemetery can only remain open and be restored if we can convince its Swiss owners that it is viable for them economically. For too many years it had been their 'White Elephant'. Why their decision to close and abandon it completely.

We also have the promise of the city and regional governments' participation in the total restoration project if we can also obtain private participation, your participation. It shall be possible to recreate what was once a most beautiful monument in Florence and even to spend eternity here, alongside world-famed writers, artists, doctors, preachers, people who helped end slavery, who helped end diseases, who created immortal poetry.

We have set up a petition at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

HOW AUREO ANELLO WORKS

2005-08-25T11:12:00.000+02:00

For it does. With its 'bottega', its workshop, it is based on the principle of work.

'Clasped Hands' in terra cotta, suggested donation 250;
PayPal button at end of file

Yesterday, I came home with a basket of six pairs of 'Clasped Hands' of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, still warm from the furnace, in terra cotta, made lovingly by Amalia Ciardi Dupré and my granddaughter and Assunta. The 'Clasped Hands' were originally made by the nineteenth-century American woman sculptor Harriet Hosmer. Amalia is the descendant of Giovanni Dupré, the great Florentine nineteenth-century sculptor, who with her great aunt, another Amalia Dupré, made the statues of St Zenobius and St Reparata on the façade of the Duomo.

Carolyn Carpenter of Aureo Anello shared this photograph of the Dupré St Zenobius with us, illustrating Susan and Joanna Horner's Walks in Florence, which you can read in its entirety at http://www.florin.ms/hwalks.html , the enlarged photographs being on the CD 'Florence in Sepia'. We have in our exhibition in our bottega of nineteenth-century photographs of 'Florence in Sepia' even one of the Duomo's façade before the marble and these statues were placed there, a shot taken from the top floor of Orsanmichele,

while on the table, built from the cypress trees in this cemetery in 1860, we have the moulds for making the 'Clasped Hands' in terra cotta and in gesso.

Amalia Ciardi Dupré is off to St Petersburg to see her ancestor's work exhibited there in the Hermitage. This Cemetery being filled with poets and sculptors, poetry and sculpture. All of us working together to save the 'English' Cemetery, for the donations for the 'Clasped Hands' go entirely for the Cemetery's restoration. Need to give a wedding gift? What could be better? Especially if combined with the limited edition handbound Sonnets and Ballad, which include all the Sonnets from the Portuguese in English and in Italian, that Elizabeth shyly gave Robert one morning in Bagni di Lucca, or the CD 'Florence in Sepia'.

People become members of the Friends of the Cemetery by paying annual dues, a minimum of 10 dollars, euro, pounds, or members of the library in the Cemetery by giving it a book a year (or both). We give the donors' names on a plate within the book. We have just acquired, through the great kindness of this same Aureo Anello member, the facsimile of Robert Browning's source for The Ring and the Book, The Old Yellow Book he found one day in San Lorenzo Market and which he brought home to Casa Guidi, Elizabeth not liking its murder mystery where a husband kills his wife. It's a most beautiful edition that will become even more so when properly bound in our bottega next to our library under the guidance of our maestro, Enrico Giannini: http://www.florin.ms/giannini.html

Another book we should dearly love for this library is The Monuments of Egypt and Nubia by Ippolito Rosellini, published by the American University in Cairo Press and findable on the Web. Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini, funded by the Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany, journeyed together in the year this Cemetery was founded, to Egypt and Nubia, and brought back a black slave, Kalinna, whose story is told some years later on her tomb stone here in Cyrillic, that she was baptised in a Russian-Florentine family, 'Nadezhda', Hope. Many of the motifs on our tombs come from Champollion and Rosellini's observations of Egyptian hieroglyphs, including the winged globe on Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, sketched by Susan Horner for his family. The book will make you a member of Aureo Anello! This is a global cemetery, your library. In this way you become a part of Florence.

We have set up a petition at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY, AN ISLAND LINKED TO THE WORLD

2005-08-23T17:53:00.000+02:00

Florence's Swiss-owned 'English' Cemetery is an island linked to the whole world, its English, Swiss, Russian, American and other graves being in so many scripts, so many languages. It has been abandoned for 125 years. It is now time for the world to reclaim it and make it once more beautiful and accessible.
Here is a photograph of Piazzale Donatello.

The tall building in the centre the far side of the cemetery is the studio of Michele Gordigiani who painted the portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, now in London's National Portrait Gallery. Go to the National Portrait Gallery website to find them: http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/. Our library in the Cemetery's Gatehouse, that you see to the right, has books by and about the famous Victorian writers and sculptors buried here. Our on-line catalogue is at http://www.florin.ms/libhe.html. While our catalogue of all the tombs is at http://www.florin.ms/cemetery1.html,etc.

You can join us in saving this monument and be a part of Florence and her beauty.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

Congratulations. We are more than half way there!

2005-08-16T11:37:00.000+02:00

Gentle Reader,

I. We have now more than 500 signatures to our petition, with a goal of 1000, asking UNESCO to consider Florence's English Cemetery as a World Heritage Site to be found and clicked on at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975 and we shall be very grateful for more signatures. (We have the virtual one on the Web, and a real one at the Cemetery, both at more than 250 signatures.) Share this with your friends, your e-mail address book. It is as if we have a thermometer half full/half empty!

II. Next, we shall do this with the funds we raise.

III. And then come and visit Florence, especially the 'English' Cemetery, and see the beauty you will have restored.

Julia Bolton Holloway

Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' [Golden Ring Fioretta Mazzei Library and Workshop and Friends of the 'English' Cemetery Association]

'English' Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE,
ITALY

FLORENCE AND ST PETERSBURG

2005-08-13T13:02:00.000+02:00

The UNESCO Proceedings of the St Petersburg conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), I attended this past May, are on the Web: http://confifap.cpic.ru/conf2005/eng/info/default.html, then click on 'Final Document' in column to left. My own paper is embedded in 'comment' below. It was a splendid conference with participants from all over the world, discussing the need for communication among all the people, rather than only government/commerce ('We the People'), and it particularly spoke to the need of better participation in policy development processes for 'Memory Institutions', such as libraries, archives, museums, universities. Indeed, our Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery, with its English, American, Swiss, Russian tombs, of writers, of sculptors, and countless others, now catalogued on the Web, http://www.florin.ms/cemetery1.html,
etc., with which descendants and scholars interact worldwide; with its parallel library of nineteenth-century books written by and about the people buried here; and with its CD Florence in Sepia, of Florence in nineteenth-century poetry, prose guidebooks and sepia photographs, is a part of the 'World Information Society', a 'Memory Institution' that this conference celebrated.

The UNESCO WSIS also publishes a photo album of the conference in which you can glimpse, in one picture, myself, the sessions held in an imperial palace on the shores of the Baltic: http://confifap.cpic.ru/conf2005/eng/info/default.html, then click on 'Photo Album' in column to left, going to Section «Policies of Cultural and Scientific Heritage Digitization and Preservation» where I am talking about the need to save Florence's 'English' Cemetery, its Library, and their websites, and asking the participants for their advice on how it could become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

And then, following this, I was at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July and went also to visit Saltaire, my great-grandfather's model mill in Yorkshire, for he had travelled every year to Russia and spoke that language fluently, trading in wool and woven cloth. Saltaire, which is very beautiful, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sir James Roberts also bought the Brontë's Haworth Parsonage and gave it to the nation, and endowed a Chair of Russian at Leeds University. But he had started working in Sir Titus Salt's mill at twelve, walking across the Yorkshire Moors barefoot, becoming its manager at eighteen.

Earl Mardle, also at St Petersburg, strongly recommended creating a blog. And we have taken his advice, at http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
And a petition. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975 We shall so appreciate your signatures. And send this, too, to others to sign. We have another petition here, on paper, same words, which is now at signature number 250, that our physical, rather than virtual, visitors sign. So we are close to half of our goal of a thousand signatures.

We hope upon hope we can save the 'English' Cemetery and the Library, which the Swiss want to close. Sir Franco Zeffirelli telephoned Florence's Mayor and seven persons came from his office and assured us of their help if we can also get private help. Newspaper stories have appeared in The Independent, La Nazione, The Florentine, The Grapevine, and the 'Emergency Appeal' is also posted on the Website about Poets' Graves: www.poetsgraves.co.uk
The Independent story has a photograph of Dame Judi Dench hugging the wrong tomb in Tea with Mussolini! I'd never seen the film, so was amused to find this out!

Yesterday, in a freak storm, the top of a large cypress came crashing down on several tombs. Aureo Anello, our cultural association for the cemetery and the library, will pay 300 euro to have the branch cut up and removed. We have also paid 1000 euro to have beautiful Victorian iron railings on the stairs so we are more accessible. And, further, we have disbursed 150 euro for paint for the great wrought iron gates that were rusting away, doing the labour ourselves.

The crisis of the threatened closure is causing everyone in Florence to speak of this place as a 'jewel', and as worth saving, though it has been neglected and abandoned and unappreciated for 125 years. Let's work together to restore it and have it become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in which the English, the Americans, the Swiss, the Russians and countless others can all take pride. Though from the past it is the shape of our future, a peaceful co-existence amidst great beauty.

Petition and Breaking News

2005-07-27T18:36:00.000+02:00

We have set up a petition at

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975

It reads:
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site'

'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

Please sign!

Louise Jury in The Independent and an anonymous writer in The Florentine are writing fine newspaper stories about the need to save the 'English' Cemetery in Florence from being shut down and abandoned.

Yesterday, thanks to Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, and Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Senator, and their appeals to the Mayor of Florence, we were visited by seven members of Florence's municipalty. Emanuele Baldi, a reporter from La Nazione also came and I translate his account which was published this morning, 29 July 2005, in that newspaper:

Piazzale Donatello. The Municipality: 'We will save it'.

THE 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY IS FALLING APART

In common parlance it is the 'English' Cemetery, but the official name is the 'Protestant Cemetery'. The problem, nevertheless, is elsewhere: the beautiful complex which rises in Piazzale Donatello, in the midst of the city's traffic, lately has fallen on hard times.
The Cemetery's hill - constructed in 1827 by the Pinti Gate and owned by the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church - is subject to continual landslides (see the newspaper's photograph), causing the foundations of the ancient tombs to be uprooted, and allowing the entry of water, further compromising the hill's stability. And the trees are suffering, weeds are sprouting and spreading everywhere, the tombs showing decades of neglect.
It is a shame, a crying shame. To save it will require a radical restoration and a sum of money that at the moment will be difficult to raise. But perhaps things are beginning to change. Yesterday, the Minister of Culture for the Municipality of Florence, Simone Siliani, together with experts from the Municipality, visited the monumental complex to see for themselves the problems that had so often been brought to their attention.
A quick tour and an idea: the place could be saved and the Comune, this time, could play a fundamental role. 'Even if', as Siliani immediately added, 'a private property were involved and, according to the law, the work of maintainance of such a heritage was the responsibility of the owner'.
Now, the lament of the Reformed Swiss Church is that it cannot afford such an investment. It is not about repairing two tombs, but of massive involvement to correct the problems of the structure's slippage (we recall the recent roof collapse of the church of San Procolo). And for such a great project we must bring together a consortium, Siliano went on to explain: "We must consider the possibility of a partnership, but it is fundamental that it must involve also private persons' - said the Minister of Culture . 'We can participate as the municipal administration, involving the Superintendent and the Technical Office of the 'Belle Arti', as well as those involved in the environment. In fact, the first thing to do is to shore up the hill. With a cooperative project uniting the skills of all we can achieve this restoration'. A restoration which would indeed be important for this city that seems never to have taken this nineteenth-century jewel seriously. The problems are many, to begin with, the logistics one meets getting there; there is no crosswalk and parking in the area is not abundant. 'Certainly, if we decide to intervene we should consider two objectives, the improving of its cultural tourism and the integration of the Cemetery's Library into the city's documentary system', concluded Siliani. Emanuele Baldi, La Nazione

Two days ago we had met with the Regione Toscana, the government of Tuscany, who explained that they cannot help a private commercial owner, unless he/she consents to work through a non-profit charitable cultural association such as we already are. Yesterday we initially met with the Swiss who own the Cemetery, asking that they allow this project on behalf of the English Cemetery in Florence Foundation and the Associazione Aureo Anello Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del 'Cimitero degli Inglesi' to proceed.

If we can restore the 'English' Cemetery to the garden it once was we know that the Swiss will be able to sell grave plots for interring ashes. At present the Cemetery is too barren and desolate for people to want to do so, despite being so famous.

Susan and Joanna Horner, who had buried their mother here in 1862, described the Protestant Cemetery as it was in 1877:

Near this Piazza (Massimo D'Azeglio) lies the old Protestant Cemetery of Florence, once beyond the Porta Pinti, and under the shelter of the ivy-covered walls, both of which have been included in the recent demolitions. The greater number of the tall old cypresses which crowned the summit of the mound have been cut down, and the picturesque beauty, as well as seclusion of the spot, which were so congenial to the feelings of mourning friends, no longer exist. It is now protected by a neat iron railing, within which have been planted cypresses and various shrubs, which it is to be hoped will, in time, restore some of its former beauty. The mountains of Vallombrosa and Fiesole are not quite shut out by the row of houses rising on all sides, and the order and care bestowed by the municipality, into whose hands it has fallen by purchase, leave no room for complaints. The white marble monuments, to each of which is attached a little garden of roses or other flowers, give a peculiar loveliness to this cemetery, far removed from gloom, and in the spring-time, the remains of the departed seem to repose under a shower of sweet blossoms. Among the monuments raised to those whose names are known to the world, may be mentioned Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Arnold Savage Landor, Mrs. Trollope and her accomplished daughter-in-law, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, and the American divine Theodore Parker'.

The following associations and individuals are on the Honour Committee of the Emergency Appeal for the restoration of the Swiss-owned 'Cimitero Porta a' Pinti', known as the 'English' Cemetery in Florence:

Sir James Ackroyd, England
Alliance of Literary Societies, England
Amici dei Musei Fiorentini, Firenze
Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, America
Anthony Astbury, The Greville Press, England
Association for Gravestone Studies, America
Jeffrey Begeal, America
Clive Britton, Florence
Brontë Society, England
Browning Society, England
Dame Fiona Caldicott, Principal, Somerville College, Oxford, England
Carolyn Carpenter, America
Timothy Chaplin and Diane Lutz Chaplin, Florence
Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Firenze
Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Firenze
Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco, Comune di Firenze
Dame Judi Dench, England
English-Speaking Union, America
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Firenze
Gabinetto Vieusseux ‘Centro Romantico’, Firenze
Horace W. Gibson, Florence
Philip Henderson, Lucca
Robert Heylmun, Florence
Historic Gardens Foundation, England
Julia Bolton Holloway, Florence
Gerardo Kraft, Firenze
Landor Society, England
Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Florence
Lapo Mazzei, Firenze
Michael Meredith, Eton College, England
Sir Derek Morris, Provost, Oriel College, England
Priscilla Morss Bayard, Florence
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, England
Pre-Raphaelite Society, England
Giannozzo Pucci, Firenze
Luigi di Quintana Bellini Trinchi Principe di Cagnano, Cavaliere di Malta, Roma
Regione Toscana, Firenze
Salvatore Siano, 'Nello Carrara', CNR
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura, Comune di Firenze, Firenze
Carlo Steinhauslin, Firenze
Sir Roy Strong, England
Mikhail Talalay, Russian Academy of Science, Naples
Aeronwy Thomas, England
Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain
Trollope Society, England
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Victorian Society, England
Waterloo Committee, Patron, Duke of Wellington, England
Anthony and Diana Webb, England
Timothy Wilson, Ashmolean Museum, England
Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Italy
Mariella Zoppi, Assessore alla Cultura, Regione Toscana, Firenze

'Aureo Anello'/ 'Golden Ring'

2005-07-06T13:51:00.000+02:00

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning died, Italy's government had placed on Casa Guidi a plaque that said she made of her poetry a 'Golden Ring' between Italy and the English-speaking world. The Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' (Golden Ring Association Fioretta Mazzei Library and Workshop and Friends of the English Cemetery), which is formed under Italian law, can receive funds in dollars, pounds and euro to be applied directly to urgent projects such as restoring the great wrought iron gates (we are currently scraping away their rust and painting these ourselves), and such as acquiring lavender and rosemary shrubs for creating hedges to keep people from walking amongst the now-dangerous tombs. We have re-created, thanks to the sculptress Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Harriet Hosmer's 'Clasped Hands' of Elizabeth and Robert Browning. We have also printed in William Morris type and hand bound in our own marbled paper, a limited and numbered edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets and Ballad. These would make excellent wedding gifts, either separately or together. Donations for them will help pay for the 'English' Cemetery's restoration and maintenance.

We are not allowed legally to sell objects, not being commercial, but may receive donations. In exchange we have created a CD, called 'Florence in Sepia' which gives an entire nineteenth-century collection of photographs of Florence in sepia, that we exhibited in the Palazzo Strozzi last June and which are now available for viewing in the original in our Gatehouse, as well as the catalogue of the tombs, Victorian guidebooks of Florence and much else. We have re-created, thanks to Amalia Ciardi Dupré Harriet Hosmer's 'Clasped Hands' of Elizabeth and Robert Browning. We have also edited and printed, in William Morris type, and hand-bound in our own marbled paper, a limited and numbered edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets and Ballad. Either separately or together these would make excellent wedding gifts. Suggested donations for the

'Clasped Hands':

in plaster, 100;

in terra cotta, 250;

for the books, 50;

for the CDs, 10;

in dollars, euros, pounds. Please include an amount to cover postage.

Aureo Anello
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
Cimitero 'degli Inglesi'
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE
ITALY

To see further samples go to
http://www.florin.ms/claspedhands.html

Florence Conference on its English Cemetery, June 2004

2005-06-23T07:56:00.000+02:00

In June 2004, together with the Gabinetto Vieusseux and in the Palazzo Strozzi at the same time as the Botticelli and Filippino Exhibition there, we had held an international conference on Florence's English Cemetery. Nic Peeters and Judy Oberhausen were participants. The papers can be read at http://www.florin.ms/gimel.html etc.

Dear Julia,

I just want to say that Judy Oberhausen and I very much appreciate your work to preserve the ‘English Cemetery’.

The cemetery will always retain an aura of magic for me, because of the strange way that I first came to visit it. It was on a hot Saturday afternoon during the summer of 2003 and I was treating myself to a ramble around Florence after a rather fruitless search for evidence of the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s presence in Florence throughout the last decades of the 19th century. I arrived at the cemetery’s gate completely by coincidence and was immediately tempted to visit the famous tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Then I noticed a small sign on the gate saying that the cemetery was closed on Saturdays. For a reason that is still not completely clear to me, I whispered a little prayer to my favourite painter, Evelyn De Morgan, who was Spencer Stanhope’s niece. As by miracle the gate opened at once to let you and Assunta out. I asked if you could overlook the house-rules just for once and let me take a quick peek at EBB’s tomb. It was very close to EBB’s tomb that I then found the grave of Mary Spencer Stanhope, the painter’s young daughter, designed by himself: my first piece of strong artistic evidence of the artist’s presence in Florence!

The rest of the story you probably remember well. You invited me into your lovely library and after my head had stopped reeling I explained to you the wonderful discovery I had just made. Upon hearing this you asked me to deliver a paper on Mary’s tomb at the international conference you were organising. In June 2004 I gave this presentation together with my regular research/writing partner and pillar of strength Judy Oberhausen of San Mateo in California (another ‘coincidence’: this was where you had lived for years!).

Julia, we both wish you success with your campaign to save the ‘English Cemetery’, which is a treasure trough of information for art history scholars, and if there is anything we can do to support it, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Best wishes,

Nic Peeters

Art historian – Brussels University

For

Judy Oberhausen – Art historian, San Mateo, Ca. & Nic Peeters

Links

2005-06-19T11:31:00.000+02:00

http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/b.htm, etc.
http://www.florin.ms/cemetery.html, etc.

Speech at the English Tea (without Mussolini!) in the 'English' Cemetery, Florence, 14 June 2005

2005-06-10T19:03:00.000+02:00

We are gathered here today at an English Tea to celebrate a neglected Florentine international monument, the Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery. Its land was bought by the Chiesa Evangelica Svizzera, the Swiss Evangelical Church, from the Grand Duke in 1827, the same year that the Grand Duke agreed to fund Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosselini's expedition to Egypt and to Nubia. Visit Florence's Archeological Museum to see what they brought back. In 1877, with the medieval wall and the Porta a’ Pinti torn down by Giuseppe Poggi, the Cemetery itself was re-landscaped into this oval, a gardener installed in this house, itself built in 1860. For a century and a quarter more the small Swiss church in Florence owned and cared for this ‘white elephant’. Five years ago they paid half a million euro towards the repair of the wall built originally by the Comune. Though they were given permission for the burial of ashes, such as Evgeni Polyakov's, the derelict state of the cemetery has not encouraged many such burials. Finally the Swiss committee said ‘enough’. It was recommended it be closed and abandoned.

But we had formed a cultural association, with the aid of Carlo Steinhauslin, first for our library and workshop, the Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, and then to include the Friends of the Cemetery, now named Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero ‘degli Inglesi’, ‘Aureo Anello’ being taken from the plaque on the Brownings’ home, Casa Guidi, in via Maggio, saying that Elizabeth Barrett Browning made of her poetry a golden ring between Italy and the English-speaking world. When the members of the Aureo Anello heard about the closure of the cemetery and the loss of the library and workshop they immediately responded. In particular, we need to restore this cemetery’s Victorian tombs and to landscape it back to the English garden it once had been. We have photographs of the Cemetery as it was with the medieval wall and gate still beside it, taken by Hiram Powers’ son, Longworth Powers, and recently discovered in the Gabinetto Vieusseux. We have Susan and Joanna Horner’s Walks in Florence telling us it was filled with fragrant flowers. With top soil to replace the present weed-killed earth we can again plant lavender and roses and myrtle and laurel and make pot-pourri to give to you.

For it was high time that we English lived up to our part of the name of this place (I was conceived at the League of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, and born at Devonshire Place, Marylebone, where Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived) and that we pay our debt of gratitude to this city that has inspired so many writers who are buried here, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, Isa Blagden, and two Pre-Raphaelite artists who sculpted tombstones here, Holman Hunt’s for his wife Fanny who died in childbirth, and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s for his daughter Mary, both tombs besides Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s. Immediately the Browning Society, the Victoria Society, Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, and Timothy Wilson of the Ashmolean Museum lent their support. We seek to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nor should we forget that we have more than eighty Americans buried here, among them fine sculptors, and Consuls, Hiram Powers having been both, and preachers and writers against slavery, and Louisa, sister to Henry Adams. And we have many Russians, princes and serfs together, buried as Pushkin wrote under the sweet myrtle of Italy.

Many scripts and multiple languages are found here. Many children, many women who died in childbirth, and many friends of Florence Nightinagale lie here. Each tomb has a story to tell, which we have placed on the web, thereby gathering more stories from descendants and scholars world wide. We have the fine sculptures of ‘Speranza’ and ‘Fiducia in Dio’. And most poignantly of all, buried under a most beautiful Orthodox cross in Carrara marble with Cyrillic inscriptions on its base is Nadezda, who was brought here at fourteen, in the year of the Champollion, Rossellini Expedition, from Nubia, a black slave, baptised ‘Speranza’. We can again allow this Cemetery to flourish and be a place of freedom and hope and love and beauty - with your help.

We immediately need to replace the red and white plastic tape with wrought iron posts and chains, while regretting the current dangerous state of the Cemetery. Several tomb stones have fallen, one, of a Polish patriot, right by a group of schoolchildren, so we can no longer permit unaccompanied visitors to walk amongst the tombs. We have books, in particular the limited edition hand bound in marbled paper edition of Elizabeth's Sonnets and Ballad, CDs of Florence in Sepia and other items for sale to benefit the Cemetery, including Linda White Terzani’s Soul Traveller which she can autograph for you. Amalia Ciardi Dupré has re-created Harriet Hosmer’s famous ‘Clasped Hands’ of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning and we can take orders for these. Those of you representing countries of those buried here, Switzerland, America, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Denmark, Holland, Australia, could tell us which Foundations to approach for the restoration of their tombs. However, we cannot begin to collect funds for this historic landmark until the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera in Florence agree not to close and abandon it.

2005-06-03T23:56:00.000+02:00

From Alison Chapman, Browning Circle in Florence scholar, Glasgow, Scotland:

Dear Julia,

I've been meaning to email you in thanks for the 'Florence in Sepia' CD, for which I'm very grateful. What a fabulous resource!

Your appeal about the Cemetery to the Victoria list deeply distressed me. The Cemetery must not be allowed to close. It is a wonderful momument to the vibrant culture of foreigners in Italy, and the artistic, literary and political importance of the 'golden ring' connecting Italy with Britain and other nations. For several years I've been researching the expatriate women poets known to the Brownings in Florence, and their important contributionboth to Risorgimento politics and the British poetical tradition. Two of the most interesting and talented women poets of the Brownings' circle, Theodosia Garrow Trollope and Isa Blagden, rest in the 'English Cemetery', and it would be a disgrace if the achievements they represent were forgotten. The Cemetery is a tribute to many talented men and women who imagined a future for Italy, and the Cemetery itself deserves to be respected and treasured, and given a secure future of its own.

I'm hoping, at Kitty Ledbetter's suggestion, that a presentation and appeal can be made at the Barrett Browning conference next Easter. In the meantime, please let me know if there is anything else I can do to support this worthy campaign.

With all good wishes

Alison

Dr Alison Chapman

Senior Lecturer

Department of English Literature

University of Glasgow

Glasgow G12 8QQ

From Michael Meredith, Browning Scholar, Librarian, Eton College, which co-owns the Brownings' Casa Guidi in Florence with Landmark Trust

Dear Julia,

I was appalled to hear of the impending closure of the English Cemetery, and welcome your initiative in taking action to keep it open. It is such an important cultural landmark in Florence that you deserve strong support.

I should be very happy to be on your Honour Committee, and, once you have decided what action to take, I should like to help in any way I can.

With all best wishes, Yours, As ever, Michael

From UNESCO:

Dear Ms Holloway,

I would like to thank you for your e-mail. I am pleased to transfer it to my colleagues in charge of World Heritage in Europe.

Thank you for your support to the World Heritage Convention.

Yours sincerely,

Nana Thiam

From America

Dear Sister--You're doing a great job in the effort to save the Cemetery. Lovers of English literature would find its loss beyond understanding. Thank you--S. Clemente

From America, again:

Dear Julia,

I wanted to express my support and gratitude for the work you and others are doing for the English Cemetery, which is so valuable on many levels. The site is not like any other, and contains a wealth of cultural and historical information that we cannot not lose.

Because I live as a historic site caretaker (in Connecticut), I understand how hard it is to address many different preservation/interpretation issues at once. Might I suggest that if the friends group finds funds to purchase basic landscaping equipment and supplies, one way to save money is to design a one- or two-week spring landscaping project for volunteers. Volunteer projects of this sort happen all over the world, and there are people out there who would love to spend a week working in the cemetery. Such a preservation project could include lectures and tours and participants might even be charged a nominal fee. There are many possibilities in this arena.

If you would like any assistance in arranging such a volunteer project, please let me know. I would love to help the English Cemetery, in whatever form I can. My Master's paper was on James Jackson Jarves, whose first wife lies in the English Cemetery (he himself lies in Rome). Florence's glorious 19th century history must not die!

Best,

Laura A. Macaluso

English Cemetery: Restoration Campaign

2005-06-03T23:31:00.000+02:00

Dear Julia,
I have updated our record for the English Cemetery as per your request, and have also added a new record for the home page of the 'Florin' site as a whole. Good luck with the restoration campaign!
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. James A. J. Wilson
Humbul Humanities Hub
Oxford University Computing Services, University of Oxford, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN http://www.humbul.ac.uk/

2005-06-03T15:32:00.000+02:00

On Tuesday, 14 June, we shall hold an English Tea in Florence's 'English Cemetery' to launch its Emergency Appeal. We shall read the messages of support sent from interested persons.

Aureo Anello Associazione Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei e Amici del Cimitero ‘degli Inglesi’

We request the honour of your presence at an English Tea to be held in the Swiss-owned, so-called ‘English’ Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello, Tuesday, 14 June, 2005, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. * * * Siamo lieti di invitare la S.V. a un Tè all’inglese nel Cimitero Evangelico Svizzero, detto ‘degli Inglesi’, in Piazzale Donatello, martedì 14 giugno 2005, dalle ore 18.00 alle ore 19.00.

R.S.V.P. 055 582608 http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, 3/5/05, writes:

'The 'English' Cemetery in Florence is a kind of miniature, overseas Poets Corner, and deserves the most profound respect and veneneration. Like thousands of others, I bitterly regret the plans to abandon it, and wholeheartedly support the scheme to save and restore it. This is vital - for poetry in particular, and for civilized values in general.'

The Chairman, The Browning Society, Berry Chevasco, writes:

I do agree most wholeheartedly that the English Cemetery in Florence should not be closed without further consultation and without the careful consideration of other alternative sources of financing. I am sure that there would be widespread dismay amongst both academic specialists and general enthusiasts if such an important historical site were to close. I send the Browning Society's support for your efforts to at least delay this process until all concerned can consider possible solutions. . . . I feel sure that our membership would wish to join in your campaign in any way you feel could be useful.

With best wishes

Berry Chevascvo