Introduction

Summary

The cemetery Saint Veran in Avignon, France is a twenty minute walk outside the walls of the old city, a short distance from the palace of the fourteenth century popes and the river Rhone. Toward the back of the cemetery, inauspiciously nestled among the markers and mausoleums, stands a sepulchre of flawless white Carrara marble – the only one in sight without a trace of religious symbolism. It was here that John Stuart Mill buried his wife of seven years, Harriet Taylor Mill, after she succumbed to what Mill called “the family disease” – tuberculosis – in November, 1858. There is an old legend that the cottage Mill purchased after her death, overlooked the cemetery and that Mill could look upon Harriet’s grave from his window. The legend is, as the cemetery caretaker described to me, “finely formed, but not fully true.” The cottage was actually about a ten minute walk from the cemetery.