Another little little trip was completed last Monday. I visited Southampton, Bournemouth and Portsmouth. In Southampton the grave of Edward Sothern was easily found. He was the original Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin, a play performed by the cast of Laura Keene in the USA. Sothern played the part over and over again and at a certain moment he even bought the copyrights. In Bournemouth Mary Shelley's tomb was the main attraction. Just within a year I collected Byron, Shelley and Mary! In Portsmouth Charles Dickens was born and the grave of mistress Ellen Ternan was shown us by a kind gentleman at the cemetery who was to host a Dickens grave walk later that afternoon.
There was even time to travel to Minstead, not far from Southampton in New Forest. There, at the quiet All Saints' Churchyard the simple grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is located. His remains were transferred there in 1955 and he was buried in a corner of the cemetery since he was a spiritualist, not a Christian. Naturally, all these tombs will appear on the site over time.
