CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
Miss Aylmer went to Calcutta, to her aunt, Lady Russell, the wife of Sir Henry Russell, one of the judges of the Supreme Court; and it was in their house in Chowringhee, the house which gave its name to Russell Street, to which the grounds extended at the back, that she died. The event was announced in the Calcutta Gazette in the following terms:—
"On Sunday last, at the house of her uncle, Sir Henry Russell, in the bloom of youth, and possession of every accomplishment that could gladden and embellish life, deplored by her relatives and regretted by a society of which she was the brightest ornament, the Honourable Miss Aylmer"
Before Rose Aylmer left England for India, she had met Walter Savage Landor, and had inspired in him a romantic tenderness which breathes in the melodious lines he wrote on receiving the news of her death, and in which her name is enshrined in English poetry.
"Ah! what avails the sceptred race?
Ah ! what the form divine?
What every virtue, every grace?
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee."
Another love romance was closed for ever
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