A meeting of minds

The marriage of John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill produced some of the 19th-century's most influential ideas. They continue to resonate today, finds Eileen Reid

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On September 8, 2022, en route from Nice to Avignon, my family and I took the spectacular coastal road. Avignon itself is a maze of quaint medieval streets and squares that radiate from its historic centre, once the seat of Popes. Outside the old city walls, on Avenue Stuart Mill, is the 19th-century cemetery of Saint-Véran. With no one to be seen, we strolled the paths lined with sculpted tomb-stones. In a cemetery with more than 12,000 graves, we couldn't locate the tomb of the radical intellectual giants of liberalism: John Stuart Mill (1806-73) and his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill (1807-58). We separated to quicken the task. Exasperated with fruitless searching, I answered my phone’s sudden, piercing jangle. Stunned, my words reverberated across the cemetery to the others: ‘The Queen is dead.’ I stood transfixed. For right there was the shared grave of John and Harriet and, in that moment, merged the essence of Englishness: liberalism and royalty.