Mount Auburn Cemetery

“ She died in New York on 6 Oct. 1867, and was buried in Mount Auburn cemetery, Boston. Pleasing in face and figure, she was a moderate and rather statuesque actress, with a musical voice and some tragic capacity marred by a tendency to declamation. ”

“ Next to Mount Auburn, the cemetery in New-Haven is the most beautifully picturesque of any in this country. In Maine there is but one, the burial-place in Brunswick, deserving of notice. Its snow-white monuments glance here and there in bold relief among the dark melancholy pines which overshadow it, casting a funereal gloom among its deep recesses, particularly appropriate to the sacred character of the spot. ”

“ The very air has temptation in it when they see the windows full of pretty things and think of their wives and their children and [56] their old friends. Even misers relax a little then, and a famous statesman, who was somewhat close-fisted in his day, is reported to have given his young coloured servant twenty-five cents on Christmas Eve, telling him to go out to Mount Auburn Cemetery and see where the great men of New England lie buried. ”

“ When I entered the gateway, I was struck with surprise and admiration. Though destitute of trees, the cemetery is certainly more deserving, from its peculiarly novel and unique appearance, of the attention of strangers, than (with the exception of that at New-Haven, and Mount Auburn,) any other in the United States. From the entrance to the opposite side through the centre of the grave-yard, a broad avenue or street extends nearly an eighth of a mile in length; and on either side of this are innumerable isolated tombs, of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions, built above ground. ”

“ A similar inscription is upon the tomb of Spurzheim, in the cemetery of Mount Auburn, near Boston. To me, this seems to be taking too high a ground for him: though you, who are a phrenologist confirmed, may not think so. Possibly, you are right. Contemporary celebrity is no measure of posthumous fame. ”

“ CEMETERY OF MOUNT AUBURN.
This picturesque and beautiful burial-place occupies a grove, formerly an academic and sylvan retreat for the students of Harvard College, near by. It is about five miles from Boston, and presents naturally a most agreeable mixture of hill, valley, and water, forming altogether the beau-ideal of a site for the purpose to which it is at present devoted.
If we are not mistaken, the people of the United States owe the most creditable and delicate taste, newly awakened throughout the country on the subject of sepulture, to one of their most distinguished poets, the Rev. ”

“ Each aids the work by giving it a check.
Christian and Jew, they carry out a plan;
For, though of different faith, each is in heart a man."
[175]
CHAPTER XX. INTEREST IN MOUNT AUBURN.—REV. DR. SHARP.—LETTER FROM BISHOP McILVAINE.—LETTER FROM JUDGE STORY.
After the establishment of the cemetery at Mount Auburn, Mr. Lawrence had taken a deep interest in its progress, as well as in every plan for its gradual improvement and embellishment. In connection with his brothers, he had purchased a large space, which had been enclosed by a permanent granite wall and iron railing. ”

“ Mount Auburn has verdant slopes, and deep wild dells, and lakes shaded by forest-trees of great size and beauty; and so silent is it, far removed from the din of cities, that it seems as if a single footstep would disturb the sleep of the dead. Here the neglectfulness and dreariness of the outer aspect of the grave are completely done away with, and the dead lie peacefully under ground carpeted with flowers, and shaded by trees. ”

“ In his long pathway through life, from his cradle to the place where we had now laid him, he had come, a man indeed in intellect and achievement, but, in guileless simplicity, a child. Dark would have been the hour, if, when we closed the door of the tomb upon his perishing mortality, we had believed that our friend was there.
It is contemplated to erect a monument, by subscription, to Mr. Fessenden's memory. It is right that he should be thus honored. Mount Auburn will long remain a desert, barren of consecrated marbles, if worth like his be yielded to oblivion. ”

“ Greenwood has the greater monumental variety, attributable, perhaps (more than to design) , to the motley population of New York; the proprietors of each tomb, or grave, carrying out their national ideas of sepulture. This is an advantage. Mount Auburn sometimes wearies the eye with its monumental monotony. Mount Auburn, too, had (for he long since laid down in its lovely shade) , a gray-haired old gate-keeper, courteous and dignified: “a man of sorrows,” whose bald, uncovered head, many will remember, who have stood waiting at the portal to bear in their dead. ”

“ With a reasonable economy of space, a lot of the common area, at Mount Auburn, or Forest Hills, will suffice, for the occasion of a family of ordinary size, for several generations. In re-opening one of these graves, for a second or third interment, the operative should never approach nearer than one foot to the coffin beneath. The careless manner, in which bones are sometimes spaded up, by grave-diggers, results from their want of precise knowledge of previous inhumations. Common sense indicates the propriety of keeping a regular, topographical account of every interment. ”

“ The love of the beautiful then was quite undeveloped in social life; the dead reposed by roadside burial-grounds, the broken stone walls of which scarcely sheltered the sod which covered them. Now all is changed in those haunts of my childhood, and perchance costly monuments in Mount Auburn have risen on the sites of my moss-covered thrones. ”

“ In the tombs—which, as I have stated, is the most offensive and mischievous mode of burial. I have already alluded to some instances of traffic, connected with certain tombs, in the Chapel yard. If some plan be not adopted, a new line of business will spring up, in which the members of my profession will figure, to some extent: many of the present owners of tombs will sell out, and move their dead to Mount Auburn, or Forest Hills; and the city tombs will be crammed with as many corpses, as they can hold, by their speculating proprietors. ”

“ I cannot find words with which to express my sense of your unexpected and considerate kindness, in providing so beautiful a resting-place in Mount Auburn for me and my loved ones. It is soothing to me to anticipate that my grave will be so near your own. May the Almighty, in his infinite mercy, grant, that, when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall awake, we may both rise together, to be forever with the Lord! ”

“ Beautiful Mount Auburn! beautiful when summer's warm breath distills spicy odors from thousand flowers, trembling with countless dewy diamonds; beautiful when the hushed whisper passes through its tall treetops, as weeping trains of mourners wind slowly with their dead beneath them. ”

“ I say birth-place, for true life is not stamped on the spot where our eyes first open, but our mind-birth comes from the varied associations of childhood, and therefore may I trace to the wild influences of nature, particularly to those of sweet Auburn, now the Cambridge Cemetery, the formation of whatever I may possess of the poetical temperament. ”

“ The desolate mother, the bereaved brother, the forlorn child, the despairing husband, all breathe their complaint, with more or less of selfishness or of tenderness; but there is no light from the future shining over the place. In Mount Auburn, on the contrary, there is nothing else. A visiter from a strange planet, ignorant of mortality, would take this place to be the sanctum of creation. Every step teems with the promise of life. Beauty is about to "spring up out of ashes, and life out of the dust;" and Humanity seems to be waiting, with acclamations ready on its lips, for the new birth. ”

“ They have already learned that something is to be thrown aside. The idea of Death is in them, or not far off. But, were they to choose a symbol for him, it would be the butterfly soaring upward, or the bright angel beckoning them aloft, or the child asleep, with soft dreams visible through her transparent purity.
Such a Child, in whitest marble, they have found among the monuments of Mount Auburn.
“Sweetest Eve,” observes Adam, while hand in hand they contemplate this beautiful object, “yonder sun has left us, and the whole world is fading from our sight. ”

“ A few days after Ware's duplicity became known in Atlanta, the traditional belief that colored people in the South always give cemeteries a wide berth exploded with an impressive bang. Scores of enraged colored residents of the city whose dead had been interred in South View Cemetery, armed with picks, shovels, hoes, rakes—any sort of delving instrument they could find—descended upon the peaceful God's Acre and began a personal investigation of their relatives' graves.
The first grave opened was that of Nancy Joy, one time belle of Auburn Avenue. ”

“ I saw it all—yet the heart would rove,
Borne onward by deep cherish’d love,
And I thought of two dear lonely graves
In the far off West, where the willow waves.
O! beautiful Mount Auburn—where
They bury the loved, the brave, the fair!
Death always chooses the sweetest flowers
When he comes to this living world of ours;
And now he has chosen thee, sweet place!
The loveliest part of the earth’s fair face, [Pg 215]
As a home for those who silent sleep,
Where friends may come, and smile, or weep;
For Death is not always a tyrant king,
Casting a gloom over every thing ”

“ A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore much to the credit of Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood, that his grave was "long celebrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones." I confess that I have but little love for such collections as they have at the Catacombs, Père la Chaise, Mount Auburn, and even this Dunstable grave-yard. ”

“ I could almost fancy, after seeing that Eden for the dead, Mount Auburn, and remembering this affectionate custom, that is one reason why death does not seem a thing to be dreaded or deplored in America, as with us. ”

“ In this respect, as in many others, Paris leads the way for sheer interest in its tombs and sepulchres, at Montmartre and Père la Chaise.
In no other burial-ground in the world—unless it be Mount Auburn, near Boston, where, if the world-wide name and fame of those there buried are not so great as those at Paris, their names are at least as much household words to English-speaking folk, as are those of the old-world resting-place to the French themselves—are to be found so many celebrated names. ”

“ The survivors of the war, escorted by military and civic processions and bands of music, were wont on this occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead comrades, the ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of Edith Bartlett had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family was in the habit of making a visit to Mount Auburn, where he lay. ”

“ Felicite watered their leaves, renewed the gravel, and knelt on the ground in order to till the earth properly. When Madame Aubain was able to visit the cemetery she felt very much relieved and consoled.
Years passed, all alike and marked by no other events than the return of the great church holidays: Easter, Assumption, All Saints’ Day. Household happenings constituted the only data to which in later years they often referred. Thus, in 1825, workmen painted the vestibule; in 1827, a portion of the roof almost killed a man by falling into the yard. ”

“ But in the distance, a mile away, the national flag waving invitingly bids reassurance. At length you stand at the entrance of the cemetery, entering through the strong iron gates of the thick ivy-covered brick wall, 12,782 known and 923 unknown men are buried within.
Many things at once interest you. Walks lead to every part of the grounds. Trees, shrubbery and flowers enhance the natural beauty of the place. Feathered songers of the South chant daily requiems. Each grave is marked by a white marble headstone, on which is generally carved the number, rank, name and state of the dead soldier. ”

“ It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. ”

“ As the use of The Systematic History Fund is restricted to the printing of historical material relating to the period previous to 1850, the Editor has assumed the sole responsibility and charge of adding to the Vital Records of Auburn transcripts of all the inscriptions in the Center and West Burial Grounds, some of which are of later dates than the year above named.
Center Burial Ground. Bailey.
1. In Memory of
Mrs. Elizabeth Bailey,
relict of
Rev. Isaac Bailey,
who died Jan. 5, 1842,
aged 86 years
& 8 mo.
"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." ”