On this day, 24 May the deaths of; David I King of Scots (1153), famed beauty Jane Leveson-Gower Hyde (1725), Scottish golfer and four-time Open Champion Old Tom Morris (1908), bluesman and The King of the Slide Guitar Elmore James (1963), and Duke Ellington (1974).
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On this day in 1975, musician, songwriter, and bandleader of the Texas Playboys; co-founder of Western Swing, the King of Western Swing, Bob Wills died in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 70 from a stroke. Born James Robert Wills on a farm near Kosse, Texas on 6 March 1905. Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around the South and West until he formed the Texas Playboys in 1934 with Wills on fiddle, Tommy Duncan on piano and vocals, rhythm guitarist June Whalin, tenor banjoist Johnnie Lee Wills (his brother), and Kermit Whalin, who played steel guitar and bass, later adding Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar, pianist Al Stricklin, drummer Smokey Dacus, and a horn section that expanded the band’s sound. Wills favored jazz-like arrangements and the band found national popularity into the 1940s with such hits as “Steel Guitar Rag”, “New San Antonio Rose”, “Smoke on the Water”, “Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima”, and “New Spanish Two Step”. In 1950, he had two top ten hits, “Ida Red Likes the Boogie” and “Faded Love”. The Country Music Hall of Fame inducted Wills in 1968 and the Texas State Legislature honored him for his contribution to American music. In 1972, Wills accepted a citation from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in Nashville. He was recording an album with Merle Haggard in 1973 when a stroke left him comatose until his death in 1975. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Wills and the Texas Playboys in 1999. I love to hear Bob holler. The Final Footprint – Wills is interred in Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His grave is marked by a flat bronze on granite marker.
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On this day in 1987, singer and actress Dalida, committed suicide by overdosing on barbiturates, in Paris. She left behind a note which read, “La vie m’est insupportable… Pardonnez-moi.” (“Life has become unbearable for me… Forgive me.”) Born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti on 17 January 1933 in Cairo, Egypt. Her family was from Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy, but lived in Egypt, where Dalida’s father, Pietro Gigliotti, was first violinist (primo violino) at the Cairo Opera House. Dalida performed and recorded in more than 10 languages including: French, Arabic, Italian, Greek, German, English, Japanese, Hebrew, Dutch and Spanish. She received 55 gold records and was the first singer to receive a diamond record. Renowned for the changes she brought to the French and global music industry with her powerful and colourful performances, she is today still remembered by fans throughout the world. A 30-year career (she debuted in 1956 and recorded her last album in 1986, a few months before her death) and her death led to an iconic image as a tragic diva. My favorite songs sung by Dalida include; “Bambino”, “Gondolier”, “Tu Me Donnes”, and “Parole Parole”. The Final Footprint – Dalida was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris. Other notable final footprints at Montmartre include composer Hector Berlioz, artist Edgar Degas, author Alexandre Dumas, fils, poet Théophile Gautier and composer Jacques Offenbach.
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On this day in 1472, Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer, polymath, Renaissance man, Leon Battista Alberti died in Rome at the age of 68. Born in Genoa on 14 February 1404. Although he is often characterized as an “architect” exclusively, as art historian James Beck has observed, “to single out one of Leon Battista’s ‘fields’ over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti’s extensive explorations in the fine arts.” Alberti’s life was described in Giorgio Vasari‘s Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori or ‘Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects’.
On this day in 1566, La Belle Cordière, (The Beautiful Ropemaker), French poet of the Renaissance, Louise Labé died in Parcieux-en-Dombes, France at the age of about 44. Born in 1520 or 1522 in Lyon. Her Œuvres include two prose works and poetry. Her poetry consists of three elegies in the style of the Heroides of Ovid, and twenty-four sonnets that draw on the traditions of Neoplatonism and Petrarchism. The Debat, the most popular of her works in the sixteenth century, inspired one of the fables of Jean de la Fontaine. The sonnets, remarkable for their frank eroticism, have been her most famous works following the early modern period. The Final Footprint – La Belle Cordière was interred on her country property close to Parcieux-en-Dombes, outside Lyon.
On this day in 1595, Italian poet Torquato Tasso died at the convent of Sant’Onofrio in Rome at the age of 51. Born in Sorrento, Kingdon of Naples on 11 March 1544. Perhaps best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem. He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 19th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.
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On this day in 1882, English poet, illustrator, painter and translator Dante Gabriel Rossetti died on Easter Sunday at the country house of a friend in Birchington-on-Sea, England, of Brights Disease at the age of 53. Born Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti on 12 May 1828 in London. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Rossetti’s art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti’s work; he frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister.
Rossetti’s personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and Jane Morris.
The Final Footprint – Rossetti is interred in the churchyard of All Saints in Birchington-on-Sea, under a tombstone designed by fellow artist, Ford Madox Brown.
Gallery
Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), Tate Britain, London
The Tune of the Seven Towers (1857), watercolour, Tate Britain
How Sir Galahad. Sir Bors, and Sir Percival were fed with the Sanc Grael; But Sir Percival’s Sister Died Along the Way (1864), watercolour, Tate Britain
Found (1865–1869, unfinished), Delaware Art Museum
The Blessed Damozel (model: Alexa Wilding)
Lady Lilith (1867), Metropolitan Museum of Art (model: Fanny Cornforth)
Lady Lilith (1868), Delaware Art Museum (Fanny Cornforth, overpainted at Kelsmcott 1872–73 with the face of Alexa Wilding)
Beata Beatrix (1864–1870), Tate Britain (model: Elizabeth Siddal)
Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) (1868), oil on canvas, Kelmscott Manor
Pia de’ Tolomei (1868–1880), Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence (model: Jane Morris)
Proserpine (1874) (model: Jane Morris)
A Vision of Fiammetta (1878), one of Rossetti’s last paintings, now in the collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber (model: Marie Spartali Stillman)
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1848), pen and sepia with some pencil
Drawing of Elizabeth Siddal reading (1854)
Hamlet and Ophelia (1858), pen and ink drawing
Drawing of Annie Miller (1860)
Portrait of Marie Spartali Stillman (1869)
Drawing of Fanny Cornforth, graphite on paper (1869)
The Roseleaf (Portrait of Jane Morris) (1870), graphite on wove paper
The Maids of Elphen-Mere, Rossetti’s first published woodcut illustration (1855)
King Arthur and the Weeping Queens, one of two illustrations by Rossetti for Edward Moxon’s illustrated edition of Tennyson’s Poems (1857)
Golden Head by Golden Head, illustration for Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
Sir Tristram and la Belle Ysoude drink the potion, stained glass panel by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., design by Rossetti (1862–63)
Death of a Wombat (1869)
William Morris reading to Jane Morris while she takes the waters at Bad Ems (1869)
Mrs. Morris and the Wombat (1869)
On this day in 1909, English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne died at The Pines, 11 Putney Hill, Putney, London at the age of 72. Born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837. He devised the poetic form called the roundel, a variation of the French Rondeau form. In addition, he wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909. Author H. P. Lovecraft considered that Swinburne was “the only real poet in either England or America after the death of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.” The Final Footprint – Swinburne was buried at St. Boniface Church, Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight.
On this day in 1979, Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic Nino Rota died at the age of 67 in Rome. Born Giovanni Rota Rinaldi on 3 December 1911 in Milan, Italy. Perhaps best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli. He will forever be remembered for his film scores for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola‘s Godfather trilogy, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974). The Final Footprint - Rota shares a simple gravesite with his mother Ernesta, his brother Luigi, and his cousins Maria and Titina. The gravesite is at Cimitero Verano (http://www.cimitericapitolini.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=46) in Rome. The entrance near the gravesite is Portonaccio. There is a marble grave marker which lists the names of those interred. Special thanks to Nina Rota, Mr. Rota’s daughter, for her assistance. For more on Nino Rota visit his website – http://www.ninorota.com/.
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On this day in 1941, English writer, one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself. She was 59 years-old. Born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate in London. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), with its famous dictum, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Stephen was married to writer Leonard Woolf (10 August, 1912 – 28 March 1941 her death). The couple apparently shared a close bond. In 1937, Woolf wrote in her diary: “Love-making—after 25 years can’t bear to be separate … you see it is enormous pleasure being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete.” In 1922 she met the writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson. After a tentative start, they began a sexual relationship. In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando, a fantastical biography in which the eponymous hero’s life spans three centuries and both sexes. Nigel Nicolson, Sackville-West’s son, wrote “The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her“. After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf’s death. Michael Cunningham‘s 1998 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours focused on three generations of women affected by Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway. In 2002, a film version of the novel was released starring Nicole Kidman as Woolf, a role for which she won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress. The film also starred Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep and featured an award-winning score by American composer Philip Glass. Susan Sellers‘ novel Vanessa and Virginia (2008) explores the close sibling relationship between Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. The Final Footprint – Woolf was cremated and her cremated remains were interred under an elm in the garden of Monk’s House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.
In her last note to her husband she wrote:
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
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On this day in 1963, poet, novelist and short story writer and Pulitzer Price winner, Sylvia Plath died from self inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning in the kitchen of her flat at 23 Fitzroy Road, near Primrose Hill, London. Born on 27 October 1932, in the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections: The Colossus and Other Poems (for which she would be awarded the Pulitzer posthumously in 1982) and Ariel. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. Plath was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes (1956 – 1963 her death). During the marriage, Hughes began having an affair with Assia Wevill who would commit suicide, six years after Plath died. In 2009, Nicholas Hughes, the son of Plath and Hughes, commited suicide. Plath was portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Hughes was portrayed by Daniel Craig in the 2003 film Sylvia. 
The Final Footprint – Plath is interred in the parish churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle, in Heptonstall, England. Plath’s gravestone bears the inscription that Hughes chose for her: “Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
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On this day in 1851, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Shelley died in Chester Square, London, at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, on 30 August 1797. The Final Footprint – According to her daughter-in-law, Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy (her son) and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be “dreadful”, chose to bury her instead at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. In order to fulfil Mary Shelley’s wishes, Percy and Jane had the coffins of Mary Shelley’s parents exhumed and buried with her. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley’s death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children’s hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.
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On this day in 1995, American philanthropist, the wife of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and the mother of nine children, among them United States President John F. Kennedy, United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and United States Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy, granted the title of Countess by Pope Pius XII, Rose Kennedy died from complications from pneumonia at the age of 104 in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Born Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald on 22 July 1890 in the North End neighborhood of Boston. The Final Footprint – Kennedy is interred in the Kennedy family estate in Holyhood Cemetery, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
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On this day in 1947, The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short‘s body was found in the Leimert Park district of Los Angeles, the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Short acquired the nickname posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful. Short’s unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects, along with several books and film adaptations of the story. Born Elizabeth Short on 29 July 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Final Footprint - Short was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
