Dear Sir - Tell Mr. Hobhouse that I wrote to him a few days ago from Ferrara. - It will therefore be idle in him or you to wait for any further answers or returns of proofs from Venice - as I have directed that no English letters be sent after me...
I hope, whoever may survive me and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-Ground at the Lido... I trust they won't think of "pickling and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall." I am sure my Bones would not rest in an English grave - or my Clay mix with the earth of that Country...
I am sure my Bones would not rest in an English grave - or my Clay mix with the earth of that Country: - I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcase back to your soil - I would not even feed your worms - if I could help it...
.. I never hear anything of Ada - the little Electra of my Mycenae - the moral Clytemnestra is not very communicative of her tidings - but there will come a day of reckoning - even if I should not live to see it...
P.S. - Here as in Greece they strew flowers on the tombs - I saw a quantity of rose-leaves and entire roses scattered over the Graves at Ferrara - It has the most pleasing effect you can imagine...
June 1819
Sources Used:
The Flesh is Frail Byron's Letters and Journals Volume 6 Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1976)
The Place of Interest:
Byron is interred in the Byron family vault in the chancel of the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Photographed by the Polite Tourist on April 19 2011
