In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious Part 5

"To John Palmer, died 1781, aged 61 years."

In another selection from Wilmington the winged hour-gla.s.s may be read as the flight of time, the cloud is probably the future life, and the bones below convey their customary moral.

FIG. 47.--AT WILMINGTON.

"To Ann Parsons, died Nov. 3, 1777, aged 60 years."

Sometimes, but not often, will be found engraved on a stone the suggestive fancy of an axe laid at the foot of a tree, or some metaphorical figure to the same intent. An instance occurs at Lewisham in which the idea is conveyed by the pick and shovel under a flourishing palm.

FIG. 48.--AT LEWISHAM.

"To Thomas Lambert, died Nov. 25, 1781, aged 59 years."

A symbol so simple and yet so significant as this is scarcely to be surpa.s.sed. One almost in the same category is the following, a small anaglyph in Bunhill Fields Burial-ground, London.

FIG. 49.--AT BUNHILL FIELDS, LONDON.

"To Elizabeth Sharp, who died Oct. 20, 1752, aged 31 years."

It is easy to read in this ill.u.s.tration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. But Bunhill Fields and similar places in and near London and other great towns have taught me the law to which I have already referred--the law that the picture-tombstone was country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions of life in or near the centres of civilization.

There are exceptions, perhaps many, to this ruling, as there are exceptions to every other. For instance, a stone at the grave of a Royal Artillery Officer in Woolwich Churchyard combines the emblems of his earthly calling with those of his celestial aspirations in a medley arrangement not unusual in rural scenes, but hardly to be reconciled with the education and refinement of a large garrison and school of military science which Woolwich was in 1760. This must be set down as one of the exceptions which prove the rule.

FIG. 50.--AT WOOLWICH.

"To Lieut. Thomas Sanders, late of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, who died March 1760, aged 60 (?) years."

There is a more recent case in which the same idea is pourtrayed in somewhat different fashion on a headstone in the obsolete graveyard of St. Oswald, near the Barracks at York. It is dedicated to John Kay, a private in the Royal Scots Greys, who died July 9, 1833, aged 34 years.

But, on the whole, it may be accepted as an axiom that originality has shunned the town churchyards, and the absence of curious varieties of the gravestone among the well-sown acres of Bunhill Fields and such-like places of the period at which they were by comparison so abundant in less considered localities admits of a simple explanation.

In the eighteenth century town and country were much more divided than they are now. London and the rural districts were not on their present level. Taste in art and in the ordinary affairs of life was being cultivated in town; it was not even encouraged in the country.

Education and refinement were not thought to be desirable accomplishments in a rustic population, but dwellers in cities had been for generations improving their manners, and thus it was that no such provincial vulgarity as a decorated tombstone could be tolerated in the choice metropolis.

The clergy were always the masters in such matters, and their influence is seen in many places, even in the villages, in keeping the churchyard free from ridicule; but, broadly speaking, there is no doubt that the rectors and vicars in London and other large cities began quite a hundred years earlier than those of the villages that control and supervision over the carving and inscriptions on the tombstone which is now the almost universal rule. It was unquestionably the adoption of this practice by the country parson, late in the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth century, that put an end in rural places to the "period" of ill.u.s.trated epitaphs which had long gone out of fashion, or, more likely, had never come into being, among the busier hives of humanity.

A rare variety of the cloud-and-angel series, which are so frequent, is seen in Longfield Churchyard on the Maidstone Road. Trumpets of the speaking or musical order are frequently introduced to typify the summons to resurrection, but here we have the listener pourtrayed by the introduction of an ear-trumpet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50. WOOLWICH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51. LONGFIELD.]

FIG. 51.--AT LONGFIELD.

"To Mary Davidge, died 1772, aged 69 years."

Allegorical gravestones of recent date, that is of the time which we call the present day, are very seldom seen, and such as there are do not come within the scope of this work. There is one in West Wickham Churchyard devoted to a chorister, and sculptured with a representation of the church organ-pipes. Memorials to deceased Freemasons are perhaps the most frequent of late carvings, as in the sketch from Lydd in the Romney Marsh district.

FIG. 52.--AT LYDD.

"To John Finn, died June 9th, 1813, aged 30 years."

Occasionally, too, some plain device appears on even a modern headstone, such as the following, which is one of the few I have from the London area. The graves of the same half-century may be searched without finding many carvings more ambitious than this.

FIG. 53.--AT ST. JAMES'S, BERMONDSEY.

"To Charles Thomas Henry Evans, died 1849."

Churchyards beside the Upper Thames are nearly all prolific in old gravestones, the riparian settlements having been well populated during the favourable period. This is especially the case at Richmond and Twickenham, but of the great number of eighteenth-century stones in both churchyards there are few very remarkable. Richmond has a rare specimen of the _full-relief_ skull. The death's head has on either side of it the head of an angel in half-relief. The stone is a double one, and I have never met its fellow.

FIG. 54.--AT RICHMOND.

"To Annie Smedley (?), died 1711, aged 90 years."

As companions to this I present a pair of dwarf stones with full-relief heads of seraphs and cherubs--an agreeable change--from the same county.

FIG. 55.--AT RIPLEY.

"To Sarah wife of Henry Bower, died 1741.

To Henry Bower, died March 23rd, 1758."

The Rector of the parish pa.s.sed as I was sketching these interesting objects, and was surprised to find that he had anything so unusual in his churchyard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52. LYDD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53. BERMONDSEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 54. RICHMOND.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 55. RIPLEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 56. COBHAM.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 57. BARNES.]

CHAPTER IV.

PROFESSIONAL GRAVESTONES.

It is more than likely that somewhere will be found a pictorial accompaniment to the verse which has been often used as an epitaph for a village blacksmith. I have met with the lines in two or three versions, of which the following, copied in the churchyard at Aberystwith, appears to be the most complete:

"My sledge and hammer lie reclined; My bellows too have lost their wind; My fire extinct, my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid.

My coal is spent, my iron's gone; My nails are drove, my worck is done."