Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876

by Various

UNVEILING KEATS'S MEDALLION.

I have just returned from a little ceremony of which I think that the readers of these pages will be pleased to have some permanent record—the uncovering of the medallion portrait of Keats, which Mr. Warrington Wood, the well-known sculptor, has generously given for the purpose of adorning his tomb. I have recorded in a previous number of this Magazine the steps which were taken last year for putting the poet's celebrated grave and gravestone in a proper state of repair, and the singular circumstances that showed how on both sides of the Atlantic a similar thought had with truly curious simultaneousness occurred to the lovers of the poet's memory. The very striking scene which took place to-day marked the completion of the purposes which were then inaugurated.

A printed notice had invited all English and Americans in Rome, interested in the subject, to attend at the English cemetery at three o'clock, the day having been fixed by the fact that it was the anniversary of the day of Keats's death. It was also, as it happened, the second day of our boisterous and rollicking Carnival, and those who attended had to absent themselves from the attractions of the Corso. Nevertheless, the gathering was a large one, and the contrast between the scene passing in that remote and quiet corner of old Rome under the cypresses and in the shade of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and that which was at the same time being enacted in the Corso, was about as great as can well be conceived. We had it all to ourselves. With the exception of the coachmen, who remained lazily dozing on the boxes of the carriages which had brought us from the living Rome of to-day to this far-away spot, there was not a soul on the ground save English and Americans.

It must be quite needless to remind those who have ever seen it of the features of that most poetically suggestive spot, and I can hardly hope to enable any who have not seen it to form an adequate idea of its exceeding beauty. It is just within the city wall, niched in an angle of it, in the immediate vicinity of the Porta San Sebastiano, but it is difficult to imagine that one is within the limits of a great city; and it was especially so when the noise and racket of a city in Carnival time had just been left behind one. But the fact is, that large tracts of space, utterly uninhabited and unoccupied save by scattered masses of the ruins of ancient Rome, lie between the inhabited parts of the modern city and this far corner. The most marked characteristic of the spot is its perfect quietude. The ivy-grown city-wall, a group of fine cypresses, a few stone-pines with their lovely velvet-like verdure, the gray old pyramid of Caius Cestius immediately behind the cemetery, and a glimpse of the dreamy-looking Alban Hills on the farther side of the Campagna, make up a landscape which no artistic eye can rest on without being deeply penetrated by the charm of it. February as it was, the day might have been deemed a summer day anywhere to the northward of the Alps. It was the very perfection of weather—warm, genial, still, and breathing the sweet breath of a thousand wild flowers. The violets which abundantly covered the grave were in full blossom, even as they had bloomed beneath those old walls when the sight of them there had induced the poet, prescient of his coming end, to wish that he might sleep his long sleep beneath them.

When we had all taken our places, and a eucalyptus plant, sent for the purpose by Mr. Marsh, the American minister, had been planted on the turf just behind the grave, the sheet which covered the medallion was withdrawn, and a murmur of pleasure and admiration ran through the crowd as they looked on the strikingly characteristic and individualized presentment of the young poet's very remarkable and striking features. I had seen the medallion before, and was therefore at liberty to watch the effect which it produced on others; and I was struck by the evidences in the faces of those around me that it spoke very clearly to the hearts and imaginations of the spectators.

General Sir Vincent Eyre, who had chiefly undertaken the trouble of directing all that had been done for putting the gravestone into perfect repair, adorning it with flowers and plants, and putting up the medallion, was on the ground together with Miss Clarke, who had been entrusted with a similar labor of love from America, and who had co-operated "heart and hand," as Sir Vincent said, with him throughout the whole business. As soon as the pleased murmur of the crowd had subsided he stepped in front of the persons assembled and gave a succinct account of what had been done, and a narrative of the singular coincidence which had led to our co-heirs in the legacy bequeathed to us by the poet being co-operators in the work. He concluded a very neat and appropriate address by stating that the subscriptions sent in for the restoration of the grave had left a sum of about sixty pounds sterling in his hands, and that he proposed that this should be augmented by about as much more, which would suffice to place a bust of the poet in Westminster Abbey. The proposal met with the warm approval of the assembly, and it was determined that Dr. Stanley, the dean of Westminster, should at once be communicated with on the subject.

An interesting and affecting letter from Mr. Severn, the loving and faithful friend of Keats, was read by Sir Vincent Eyre with much feeling. It contained a few simple words to the effect that the writer would much have wished to be present on the occasion of the unveiling of the medallion, but that he feared to be overcome by the pathos of the circumstances, strong emotions not being easily borne at the age of eighty-two years. There were many moistened eyes in the assembly as Sir Vincent read the communication from the poet's venerable friend and survivor.

T.A.T.