Tom Clarke's Grave: Kensal Green Cemetery #4

'TOM

CLARKE

writer

7 NOVEMBER 1918

14 JANUARY 1993'

One of the pleasures of wandering around cemeteries is that you often make interesting discoveries. I'd never heard of Tom Clarke, but I took this shot in case he proved interesting. As it happens, he wrote for television. Now, I know virtually nothing about television, although my knowledge of it far exceeds my interest in it. All the same, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh did some great things with this medium, and this guy was obviously around in the days before Big Brother took over people's consciousness, so maybe he's interesting?

It would certainly seem so from this article – by Richard Eyre – in the Independent:

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Obituary: Tom Clarke

Catherine Gore's and Julia Pardoe's Graves: Kensal Green Cemetery #3

Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1799–1867), née Moody, was born in Retford, Nottinghamshire. She wrote a great number of books, about 70 between 1824 and 1861, and was a novelist of the 'silver fork school', or 'fashionable novel', a genre of which Theodore Edward Hook was the most successful writer, and which thrived between about 1825 and 1850.  In his essay 'The Dandy School', William Hazlitt dismisses them as pandering to 'the admiration of the folly, caprice, insolence, and affectation of a certain class'. Thackeray satirizes these novels, and M. W. Rosa, in The Silver-Fork School (1936), claims that the genre's greatest achievement is Thackeray's Vanity Fair!

This end of the sarcophagus mentions Gore's husband Charles Arthur Gore. Catherine Gore is self-effacingly called 'Mrs Arthur Gore' in the link to her novel below, and was also known as plain 'Mrs Gore'.

The grave of Julia Pardoe (1806–62), Catherine Gore's friend, is just a few paces away, although the stone has fallen and the inscription is illegible. Pardoe came from Beverley, Yorkshire, wrote historical books and had a strong knowledge of Turkey and France. There are links to her The Life of Marie de Medicis trilogy below.

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Theresa Marchmont; or, the Maid of Honour, by Mrs. Charles Gore
The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Julia Pardoe
The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Julia Pardoe
The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3), by Julia Pardoe

William Makepeace Thackeray's Grave: Kensal Green Cemetery #2

'WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
BORN JULY 18th 1811,
DIED DECEMBER 24th 1863.
ANNE CARMICHAEL-SMYTH,
DIED DECEMBER 18th 1864, AGED 72,
HIS MOTHER BY HER FIRST MARRIAGE.'

Wipidedia gives an interesting paragraph about Thackeray's death:

'His health worsened during the 1850s and he was plagued by a recurring stricture of the urethra that laid him up for days at a time. He also felt he had lost much of his creative impetus. He worsened matters by over-eating and drinking and avoiding exercise, though he enjoyed horseback riding (he kept a horse). He could not break his addiction to spicy peppers, further ruining his digestion. On 23 December 1863, after returning from dining out and before dressing for bed, Thackeray suffered a stroke and was found dead in his bed in the morning. His death at the age of fifty-two was entirely unexpected, and shocked his family, friends, and reading public. An estimated 7000 people attended his funeral at Kensington Gardens. He was buried on 29 December at Kensal Green Cemetery, and a memorial bust sculpted by Marochetti can be found in Westminster Abbey.'

This impressive monument is by Puyenbroach. It contains the painter François Simonau, his step-daughter Emma Soyer, and her husband the famous chef Alexis Benoit Soyer (of 'Soyer's Magic Stove'), on whom Thackeray based Mirobolant in Pendennis.

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Savannah, Georgia: William Thackeray: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #23

Richard Parkes Bonington's Grave: Kensal Green Cemetery, London #1

'RICHARD

PARKES

BONINGTON

25 Octr 1802 – 23  Sepr 1828

HIS SUN WENT DOWN

ERE IT WAS DAY'

Richard Parkes Bonington was a painter of landscapes and historical scenes who moved to France with his family at the age of 14, and died of tuberculosis at 25 in England. His remains were moved from Pentonville to Kensal Green in 1837.

The house where Bonington lived in Arnold, Nottinghamshire.

'IN THIS HOUSE WAS BORN

26 OCTOBER 1802

RICHARD PARKES

BONINGTON

ARTIST'

The plaque was unveiled in the 1920s. In Arnold there is also a school and a theatre named after Bonington.

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Kelly Reichardt directed  this movie and co-scripted it with Jon Raymond based on Raymond's short story 'Train Choir'. Reichardt says the seeds for the film came after Katrina, when there was talk of why people let their lives get precarious. She was also inspired by neo-realist German and Italian movies, as they seemed to be appropriate for dealing with life in contemporary America.

Michelle Williams plays Wendy, a young woman caught in the poverty of post-industrial Indiana who decides to leave the Midwest for a perceived better life in Alaska. She takes her beloved dog Lucy with her in her beat-up auto, sleeping in it on the way to save her precious little money, and gets as far as Portland, Oregon, where her car breaks down and she's plunged into a hopeless situation.

She's steals dog food from a supermarket, gets arrested by the police and returns to find Lucy has disappeared. She gets help using the cell phone of a sympathetic security guard (whose casual remark about mill closure is perhaps the only overt social comment in the whole 80 minutes) to call the dog pound, and puts up photocopies of Lucy, asking for assistance in finding her. But when she does find her in a new home she's already realized, there being no chance of repairing the car short of stumping up the few thousand dollars that she doesn't have, that she can't afford to look after her dog and must move on to Alaska alone.

Wendy and Lucy quietly dominate this deeply moving film and Will Oldham (or Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) – who also stars in Reichardt's Old Joy (2006) – provides the music.

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WENDY AND LUCY Q&A: Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams

Charles Dickens and Characters in Marylebone Road, London

'WHILE LIVING IN A HOUSE ON THIS SITE
CHARLES DICKENS
WROTE SIX OF HIS PRINCIPAL WORKS,
CHARACTERS FROM WHICH APPEAR
IN THIS SCULPTURED PANEL'

This sculpture is on an outside wall of Ferguson House, 15 Marylebone Road, formerly No 1 Devonshire Terrace, where Dickens lived from 1839 to 1851. The characters represented near Dickens' head – clockwise, concluding with the pair to our immediate right of Dickens – are Ebenezer Scrooge with Marley's ghost as a doorknocker (A Christmas Carol); Barnaby Rudge with his pet raven Grip (Barnaby Rudge); Little Nell Trent and her grandfather (The Old Curiosity Shop); Mrs Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit); David Copperfield and Mr Micawber (David Copperfield); and Paul Dombey and his daughter Florence (Dombey and Son).

This arresting plaque is the work of Estcourt James Clack (1906–73), who sculpted it in 1960.

Two more of my posts on Dickens are linked below.

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Charles's Dickens's birthplace in Portsmouth
Charles's Dickens's inspiration for Oliver Twist?

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill House, near Twickenham

Strawberry Hill House is close to Twickenham and more than twelve miles from the crazy turmoil of the tourist-clogged parts of central London. This was the summer villa of the writer, politician and collector Horace Walpole (1717–97), who in 1747 discovered the site and began transforming a very modest property into a neo-gothic building, in so doing being a forerunner of a highly influential revival. The restoration is considerably impressive.

It took him from the late 1740s until 1776 to complete his project.

This is the entrance to the house that became a tourist attraction even in Walpole's lifetime, and later the style would be termed 'Strawberry Hill gothic'. Walpole had his own ('Strawberry Hill') press here, and in 1784 published a description of the property and its history, along with a detailed description of his collection of pictures, sculptures, furniture, etc.

'HORACE

WALPOLE

1717–1797

MAN OF LETTERS

LIVED HERE'

The staircase in the hall. Richard Bentley designed the balustrade.

An antelope holding a shield crouches at each corner.

The lantern is a copy of the original.

The chimney in the Great Parlour, or the dining-room, designed by Bentley.

And an example of the stained glass windows tops in the Great Parlour.

In another window a cobbler whistles to a caged bird.

The Library, whose books were sold in 1842, and which are now in the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University.

The gothic arches at the top which swing on hinges.

A detail of the ceiling that Walpole conceived, Bentley sketched, and Clermont painted.

The Holbein Chamber, where Walpole displayed his collection of Holbein drawings.

Again, the chimney is by Bentley, largely inspired by Archbishop Warham's tomb in Canterbury.

Leaving the Holbein Chamber, the first glimpse of the Gallery is the fan vaulting, inspired by Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey.

The Gallery was Walpole's principal entertaining room, and is 56 feet long, 17 feet high, and 13 feet wide excluding the recesses.

The chimney piece is by John Chute and Thomas Pitt.

The Round Room seen from the Gallery.

The windows of the Round Room.

The chimney piece was inspired by Edward the Confessor's tomb in Westminster Abbey.

The Tribune held Walpole's most precious treasures, and its ceiling takes its inspiration from the chapter house at York.

Walpole thought that the yellow glass gave the room 'a golden gloom'.

The Great North Bedchamber was merely for show.

Walpole's Beauty Room is now called the Discovery Room, where different ages of the house can be seen.

Here, for instance, we can see the original black and yellow of the chimney piece.

Lady Waldegrave was a 19th century owner of Strawberry Hill House, and this is just a brief glimpse of her bell system.

Finally, it's obviously, er, a folly to look at a garden when the grass is sodden, so I contented myself with a photo of Walpole's (recreated) shell bench and made my way on.

The link below is to more detailed information from Richmond Libraries' Local Studies Collection.
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Horace Walpole (1717–97) and Strawberry Hill

Street Art, East London

This superb crane in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, was drawn by the Belgian artist Roa, who is noted for his animal subjects. The Gentle Author – author of Spitalfields Life – saw Roa as he was painting this from a motorized cherry picker. Initially, Roa had intended to depict a heron, but on learning that the crane is a bird sacred to Bengalis he decided to change it.

This shot brings out more of the detail of the work.

Unfortunately, only the top part of Roa's work here, in the Foundry parking lot, Old Street, can be seen from ground level.

And I note a report that his squirrel on the corner of Club Row and Redchurch Street has been attacked by vandals.

Hanbury Street is a rich site for street art. Ben Slow's mural shows a member of the extreme right-wing English Defence League and an Islamic extremist. He intended it as a challenge to others and himself, to show two sides of evil. The two people represent intolerance, racism, and hate. Slow was encouraged by the essentially positive response his work received.

A Pleasure Unknown, on Hanbury Street again, shows a girl wearing a tee shirt of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album cover, and was painted by Fin DAC, who describes himself as a painter who 'ignores the accepted visual language of street art', and terms it 'Urban Aesthetics' after the 19th century art movement.

At the top (Liverpool Street) end of Middlesex Street or Petticoat Lane is a mural whose subject (the alphabet) is perhaps more recognizable than most, as it's by Ben Eine, who also painted the alphabet on shop shutters further down Middlesex Street. Eine also gained considerable interest when David Cameron gave Barack Obama Eine's painting Twenty First Century City in 2010.

More examples of the four artists' work can be seen by clicking on the links below.

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Roa
Ben Slow
Fin DAC
Ben Eine

John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, and William Blake in Bunhill Fields, London

Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in the borough of Islington is between Bunhill Row to the west, Featherstone Street to the north, and City Road to the east, which is the entrance shown in the above photo. Pevsner called this 'the most celebrated Nonconformist burial ground in England', and it is certainly very unusual that the graves of three famous and major figures of literature can be found within such close proximity.

This monument to John Bunyan (1628–88) is from the 19th century.

'JOHN BUNYAN,

AUTHOR OF THE

PILGRIMS PROGRESS

OBT. 31ST AUGT. 1688,

ÆT. 60.'

An engraving of Pilgrim on the monument.

On the other side of the path, just several paces away, are two more monuments:

This obelisk marks the grave of Daniel Defoe.

'DANIEL DE-FOE.

BORN 1661,

DIED 1731,

AUTHOR OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE.'

'THIS MONUMENT IS THE RESULT OF AN APPEAL

IN THE "CHRISTIAN WORLD" NEWSPAPER

TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF ENGLAND, FOR FUNDS

TO PLACE A SUITABLE MEMORIAL UPON THE GRAVE

OF

DANIEL DE-FOE.

IT REPRESENTS THE UNITED CONTRIBUTIONS

OF SEVENTEEN HUNDRED PERSONS.

SEPR. 1870.'

And right next to Defoe's grave is this monument.

'NEAR BY LIE THE REMAINS OF

THE POET-PAINTER

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757 –– 1827

AND OF HIS WIFE

CATHERINE SOPHIA

1762 –– 1831'

Blake's grave is in fact about 60 feet away from this memorial stone: originally Blake's grave was unmarked, although in 1927, to commemorate the centenary of his death, this stone was placed over his grave. However, the stone was moved here in 1965 when the lawns were created. The Friends of William Blake are now petitioning for a stone to be erected over his grave, and the extremely detailed seven-page link below describes exactly where it is.

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How To Find William Blake's Grave