Highgate Cemetery (West) #5: Jacob Bronowski

'JACOB BRONOWSKI
1908–1974

RITA BRONOWSKI
1917–2010'

 

Polymath Jacob Bronowski is perhaps best remembered for his BBC TV series of 1973, The Ascent of Man, and the book of the same name, the title an obvious allusion to Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871).

Highgate Cemetery (West) #4: Frederick Tennyson

'SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
FREDERICK TENNYSON,
POET AND SCHOLAR,
BORN AT LOUTH, LINCOLNSHIRE,
JUNE 15th 1807,
DIED AT KENSINGTON, LONDON,
FEBRUARY 26 th 1898,
IN HIS 91st YEAR.
ERECTED BY HIS ELDEST SON
JULIUS GEORGE TENNYSON,
IN TOKEN OF AFFECTION.'

 

Frederick Tennyson was an elder brother of Alfred who was temporarily expelled from Cambridge University for refusing to accept punishment for not attending chapel. He lived in Florence for twenty years and was heavily influenced by Swedenborg.

Highgate Cemetery (West) #3: Beryl Bainbridge

'BERYL
BAINBRIDGE
DBE
1932–2010
WRITER
LOVED AND MISSED'

Highgate Cemetery (West) #2: Ellen Wood

Ellen Wood (1814–87), who used to write under the self-effacing name of Mrs Henry Wood, is best known for her novel East Lynne (1861). She lived with her husband and family in France for twenty years, returning on the failure of her husband's business. In London, she supported her family on the profits of her many novels.

Below is a link to many of her works:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Ellen Wood novels

Highgate Cemetery (West) #1: Radclyffe Hall

Unfortunately, admission to West Cemetery is by guided tour only, which means that you're at the mercy of the guide, and that (at least on the occasion when I went this August) could well mean that you'll be subjected to the predictable: the 'menagerist' George Wombwell, the boxer Tom Sayers, etc. If the guide isn't interested in literature, as ours obviously wasn't – then there'll not even be a mention of Christina Rossetti, let alone Radclyffe Hall or Ellen Wood. Which isn't good enough for me, so it was fortunate that I'd done some online research before, and had worked out that we'd be passing by the last two authors at least. In the end, I was surprised to find the number of graves I did find – but in spite of, rather than because of – the guide. 

The Egyptian Avenue, leading on to the Circle of Lebanon.

 

 

 

Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) is probably most well known for her 'lesbian' novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), which was the subject of a court case. She lived with the singer Mabel Veronica Batten from her husband's death until Batten's own death in 1916.

'RADCLYFFE HALL

1943

...AND, IF GOD CHOOSE,

I SHALL BUT LOVE THEE BETTER

AFTER DEATH.

UNA.'

 

Batten's cousin Una Troubridge (1887–1963) was a sculptor and translator (notably of Colette) who lived with Hall from 1917.

Highgate Cemetery #19: Bert Jansch

'BERT

JANSCH

3. 11. 43 – 5. 10. 2011

REST IN PEACE'

 

Obviously, unfinished business.

Highgate Cemetery #18: Patrick Caulfield

The grave of the artist Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005), which is simple but direct, a far cry from the rather stupid 'passed away', 'sleeping', 'gone to Jesus', etc, euphemisms of former times: the man is

 

D

   E

      A

         D

 

So let this message be transparent.

Highgate Cemetery #17: Pat Kavanagh

'PAT KAVANAGH

1940–2008

Literary Agent

 

Wife of

Julian Barnes'

Highgate Cemetery #16: Jeremy Beadle

'JEREMY BEADLE MBE
APR. 12th 1948 – JAN. 30th 2008
WRITER PRESENTER CURATOR OF ODDITIES

Ask My Friends'

 

I really like the books.

Highgate Cemetery #15: Malcolm McLaren

'MM

 

MALCOLM ROBERT ANDREW

McLAREN

 

1946 – 2010

 

'Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success'

 

East map lists Malcolm McLaren as an 'Impresario, rock-artist, clothes designer and boutique owner'. Yes, fine, but I'm sure that for the majority of the people who come here it's mainly about the Sex Pistols: 'God save the queen, the fascist régime', etc. Whatever happened to that wonderful rebellious spirit? Death mask:

 

Highgate Cemetery #14: William Henry Monk

I can't find an image of William Henry Monk's grave online, so I must assume that for the moment this is the only one.  It may well be that that is because this grave is quite a distance from many of the other noted ones, and even then it isn't easy to find. Monk was a hymn writer, and is most remembered for 'Eventide' and 'Abide with Me'.

Highgate Cemetery #13: Edward Truelove

'IN MEMORY OF
EDWARD TRUELOVE
PUBLISHER.
BORN OCTOBER 29TH 1809,
DIED APRIL 21ST 1899,
IN HIS NINETIETH YEAR.

 

REGARDLESS OF OBLOQUY, SUFFERING AND
WORLDLY LOSS, HE BATTLED BRAVELY THROUGHOUT
A LONG AND TROUBLED LIFE TO MAINTAIN THE RIGHT

OF FREE SPEECH AND FREE THOUGHT.'

 

Edward Truelove was a radical publisher who followed Robert Owen and worked for a year at Owen's utopian community, New Harmony, in Indiana. His first bookshop was in the Strand in 1852, followed by another in Holborn. Although he escaped prosecution for blasphemy (for publishing W. E. Adams's Tyrannicide), he spent four months in prison for publishing Owen's son Robert Dale Owen's Moral Physiology, concerning contraception.

Highgate Cemetery #12: Ernestine Rose

'ERNESTINE L. SUSMOND
POTOWSKI ROSE
WOMENS RIGHTS AND ANTI-SLAVERY ADVOCATE,
FREETHINKER
B. JAN 13 1810 D. AUG 4 1892

 

WILLIAM ELLA ROSE
SILVERSMITH, REFORMER, FREETHINKER
B. 1813 D. JAN 31 1882'

Ernestine Rose (née Polowski) was born in Russian Poland and was sixteen when her mother died and her father married her to a friend of his, although she rebelled, journeyed to the civil court and successfully had the marriage annulled. When she returned home her father had married a girl the same age as her. She left home and travelled to several countries before finding support for her feminist and atheist ideas in England with Robert Owen, who encouraged her to lecture.

Her marriage to William Ella Rose was by a civil magistrate and they emigrated to the US in 1836, where they became American citizens, Ernestine continuing to lecture and meeting opposition because of her atheism. She won the support of, among other people, Susan B. Anthony. The Roses returned to England in 1869.

Ernestine Rose's work is collected in Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader (2008), edited by Paula Doress-Worters.

Highgate Cemetery #11: Richard Titmuss

 

'IN MEMORY OF
RICHARD TITMUSS
1907– 1973
Socialist and humanitarian thinker
AND
KAY TITMUSS
1901 – 1987
Committed wife and welfare worker'

Highgate Cemetery #10: Tom Wakefield

'TOM

WAKEFIELD

WRITER EDUCATOR

MOTHER

1935 – 1996'

 

Oddly, I can find very little online about Tom Wakefield, who is perhaps best known for his openly gay novel Mates (1983). Nevertheless, I give two links below, one from the West Midlands Literary Heritage web site, another from a blogger who personally knew him.

 

On the headstone is a cartoon portrait of Wakefield by David Shelton, who I can only imagine must be the same person who published and illustrated the (very well received) children's novel A Boy and a Bear in a Boat last year.

 

CORRIGENDUM: A comment below from Dave Shelton clarifies that he didn't do the portrait, and he suggests that it was Dave Shenton: yes, I'd mis-read the signature.

 

ADDENDUM 1: In a comment below, Sheila asks why is Tom Wakefield called a mother on his gravestone. That's a question I too would like the answer to. Any takers?

 

ADDENDUM 2: Be sure to read the very interesting comment by Hugh Barney Miller, JP: he actually knew Tom Wakefield, and makes a comment on the 'Mother' note on his headstone.

ADDENDUM 3: Brian Wigginton informs me that Tom Wakefield's cat was a lesbian, which for some reason reminds me of the short story (the name of which I've forgotten) by Rys Davies which mentions two inseparable ganders that the narrator takes sides with.

 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
West Midlands Literary Heritage: Tom Wakefield
Get Mummy's Purse: Tom Wakefield

Highgate Cemetery #9: Karl Marx and comrades

'JENNY VON WESTPHALEN.
THE BELOVED WIFE OF
KARL MARX.
BORN 12TH FEBRUARY 1814.
DIED [2]ND DECEMBER 1881.

AND KARL MARX.
BORN MAY 5TH 1818, DIED MARCH 14TH 1883.

AND HARRY LONGUET.
THEIR GRANDSON
BORN JULY 4TH 1878, DIED MARCH 20TH 1883.

AND HELENA DEMUTH.
BORN JANUARY 1ST 1823. DIED NOVEMBER 1890

AND ELEANOR MARX, DAUGHTER OF KARL MARX
BORN JANUARY 16TH 1856. DIED MARCH 31ST 1898.'

 

Helena Demuth was the family housekeeper and almost certainly had a child by Marx whom Engels (diplomatically) claimed to be his own.

A similar image to this is used on the front page of the new leaflet 'East map' of Highgate Cemetery. Karl Marx's grave is the most popular in the cemetery: in many ways the great man is very much alive.

 

In a far more obscure part of the cemetery is the site where Marx's grave originally lay. The stone reads:

'THEIR REMAINS WERE
REMOVED AND RE-INTERRED
ON 23rd NOVEMBER 1954 AT
THE PLACE NEARBY WHERE
A MONUMENT WAS ERECTED
ON 14th MARCH 1956'

 

Near Marx's grave are those of several people who shared his views of the capitalist world:

 

'CLAUDIA VERA JONES

BORN TRINIDAD 1915.
DIED LONDON 25.12.1964.

 

VALIANT FIGHTER AGAINST RACISM AND
IMPERIALISM WHO DEDICATED HER LIFE
TO THE PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM AND THE
LIBERATION OF HER OWN BLACK PEOPLE.'

 

 'CHRIS HARMAN

 

Revolutionary, Thinker, Activist
1942–2009

 

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.'

 

'PAUL FOOT

 

1937 – 2004

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many – they are few.'

 

The above battle cry is of course the final verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'The Mask of Anarchy', written in response to the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, 1819, in which drunken cavalry slaughtered 15 reformers and injured hundreds more.

 

'DR YUSEF
MOHAMED DADOO
1909–1983

 

CHAIRMAN OF THE
SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY

 

HE DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO THE CAUSE
OF NATIONAL LIBERATION, SOCIALISM
AND WORLD PEACE.'

 

'Eric Hobsbawm

 

Historian

 

1917  – 2012'

 

Some referred to Eric Hobsbawm as 'Neil Kinnock's favourite Marxist', and although Hobsbawm supported Kinnock's reforms of the Labour Party he thought differently about Tony Blair: 'Thatcher in trousers'.

Highgate Cemetery #8: Max Wall

'MAX WALL
1908–1990

I believe that since My life began
the most I've had is just a Talent to
Amuse'

Max Wall was born Maxwell George Lorimer and was the son of the comedy actor Jack Lorimer. His career began in pantomime and he is noted for his performances as 'Professor Wallofski', a character who an influence on John Cleese in his 'Ministry of Silly Walks' sketch. After going through a low period for some years, interest in Wall revived and he played in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1979) and Krapp's Last Tape (1984), Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, and even recorded a version of Ian Dury's 'England's Glory'. He died after falling and fracturing his skull at Simpson's-in-the-Strand restaurant, London.

Highgate Cemetery #7: Michael and Sasha Young

'MICHAEL YOUNG

'Social Visionary
and Innovator
1915–2002

'Never the spirit was born
The spirit shall cease to be never
Never was time it was not
End and beginning are dreams
Birthless and deathless and changeless
Remaineth the spirit forever
Death hath not touched it at all
Dead though the house of it seems.'

The above words, on immortality of the soul, are from The Bhagavad Gita.

Sociologist Young is perhaps most noted for his books Family and Kinship in East London (1957) and Family and Class in a London Suburb (1960) (both with Peter Willmott), and The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958).

 

In 1960 he married Sasha Moorsum.

 

'SASHA YOUNG 1931–1993

 

'Ah the
company of the birds
I loved and cherished on earth
Now freed of flesh we fly
Together a flock of beating wings
I am light as feathery
As gone from gravity we soar
In endless circles'

The writer, artist and sculptor Sasha Young wrote poetry and published two novels – A Lavender Trip (1976) and In the Shadow of the Paradise Tree (1983) – the second of which was inspired by a stay in Nigeria.

Highgate Cemetery #6: Henry Crabbe Robinson

'BENEATH THIS STONE
IS INTERRED THE BODY OF
HENRY CRABBE ROBINSON
BORN MAY 15, 1775, DIED FEBRUARY [?], 1867
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE OF
GOETHE AND WORDSWORTH, WIELAND
AND COLERIDGE, FLAXMAN AND BLAKE,
CLARKSON AND CHARLES LAMB,
HONOURED AND LOVED THE GREAT
AND NOBLE IN THEIR THOUGHTS
AND CHARACTERS.
HIS WARMTH OF HEART AND
GENIAL SYMPATHY EMBRACED ALL
WHOM HE COULD SERVE,
ALL IN WHOM HE FOUND A RESPONSE
TO HIS OWN HEALTHY TASTES.
HIS RELIGION CORRESPONDED TO HIS LIFE,
SEATED IN THE HEART
IT FOUND EXPRESSION IN THE TRUEST
CHRISTIAN BENEVOLENCE.'

Highgate Cemetery #5: George Eliot

George Eliot's prominent obelisk.

 

'OF THOSE IMMORTAL DEAD WHO LIVE AGAIN

IN MINDS MADE BETTER BY THEIR PRESENCE

 

HERE LIES THE BODY

OF

'GEORGE ELIOT',

MARY ANN CROSS.

Born 22. November 1819

Died 22. December 1880'