ABSTRACT
Lucy Malthus died on 23 May 1825, while staying with one of her maternal aunts, Lucy Taunton, at the rectory at Ashley in Hampshire. She was seventeen years old. Like so many young people of her period, she went into what was called a rapid decline: she died painlessly and quickly from tuberculosis, probably after being in bed for about three weeks. Her uncle Robert Cropp Taunton, who had married her parents, buried Lucy on Saturday 28 May. Her grave is near the hedge of the east side of the burial ground of the tiny parish church of Ashley. The church was built during the reign of Henry I, and there seems to have been little restoration after the fifteenth century; the only ‘modern’ addition is a small red-brick porch which was put up in 1701. In spring the whole miniature rural scene must still be very much as it was on that sad day, with the Hampshire countryside at its most beautiful, the trees in their fresh green, the scent of lilac everywhere.
