Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn The Art of Memory: Monuments Through Time | Page 5

the Art of Memory
victorian Symbolism
Beginning in the mid-19th century, Victorian symbolism and ornamentation
celebrating family relationships adorned many monuments at Mount Auburn.
Flower arrangements, lambs, sleeping infants, grieving women, and angels
were accompanied by the inscriptions “Father,” “Mother,” “Child.” Growing
sentimentalism led to the idea of the “domestication of death,” based on
universal salvation and family reunion in heaven. Children under the age
of five represented a third of all burials at the Cemetery before the 1850s,
indicative of the high mortality rate of this period.
Photo, Kathleen Fox, 1992
Emily Binney, (1835 – 1839),
Lot 681 Yarrow Path
Although this fragile marble statue has not survived, the
memorial in honor of four-year-old Emily Binney, created by
Henry Dexter, was the earliest monument at Mount Auburn in
the form of a representational figure. John Albee noted in his
remembrance to Dexter that “as a work of art, [the monument]
is faultless.” 5 The touching effigy, carved from a single block
of marble, lay in an open temple with four columns designed
by local carver Alpheus Cary. An inscription on the base of the
sculpture read: “Shed not for her the bitter Tear,/Nor Give
the Heart to Vain Regret,/’Tis but the Casket that Lies
Here–/The Gem that Fled It Sparkles Yet.”
Engraving, Nathaniel Dearborn, Dearborn’s Guide Through
Mount Auburn Cemetery, 1852
Thatcher Magoun, (1775 – 1856),
Lot 1792 Fir Avenue
The family lot of Medford shipbuilding magnate Thatcher
Magoun is graced with a marble sculpture of a mourning
mother and daughter on a high pedestal base. The mother
kneeling protectively over her daughter in a tender embrace
is one of the most evocative depictions of grief found at Mount
Auburn. Guidebooks of the time titled the monument simply,
“Grief.” The beloved statue, erected in the early 1850s, has
been documented in engravings, woodcuts, daguerreotypes,
and stereo views.
Photo, Alice Donaldson, 1991
Fall 2013 | 3