The grave of Mary Scott Hogarth (1819–37), a girl much loved by her brother-in-law Charles Dickens. Dickens's hated mother-in-law Georgina is also buried here, as is his father-in-law, the music critic George Hogarth (1783–1870), who wrote for the Daily News and the Illustrated London News.
Terence (Mervyn) Rattigan (1911–79), author of such famous plays as French without Tears and Separate Tables, and the screenplays The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version, was cremated in Bermuda and his remains were deposited here.
George Grossmith (1847–1912) is most noted for writing Diary of a Nobody (1894) with his brother Weedon.
Jane Loudon (1807–58), née Webb, anonymously wrote an early science fiction novel called The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), which mentions air flight, telegraph, and a steam mower among other things. She met her husband through the novel, although he initially thought it was the work of a man. She later wrote books on gardening and botany and did editorial work.
Her husband John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843), a landscape gardener and horticultural writer, is buried next to her. The written works he was most noted for are Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822) and the Gardener's Magazine, started in 1826.
Harriet Marian Stephen (1840–75), the youngest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray and the first wife of Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), who was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and the father of Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).
Sir William Molesworth (1810–55), who edited Thomas Hobbes's Works (1839–45) and began the London Review.
John Leech (1817–64), a cartoonist most remembered for his contributions to Punch, but who also illustrated some of Dickens's work. A nineteenth century absurdist.
'IN MEMORY OF
JOSEPH RICHARDSON
FORMERLY OF
UNDERSKIDDAW, KESWISK, CUMBERLAND
THE INVENTOR OF
THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ROCK, BELL AND STEEL BAND
DIED 8TH. APRIL 1855, AGED 65'
Richardson invented the 'rock harmonium' which made music by striking pieces of Skiddaw slate. But only his son is buried here.
'IN MEMORY OF
JEAN FRANCOIS GRAVELET BLONDIN
WHO DIED AT NIAGARA HOUSE EALING
22ND FEBRUARY 1897
IN HIS 73RD YEAR'
Émile Blondin was a tight-rope walker who first crossed the Niagara Falls in 1859, and followed this up by crossing them with different handicaps: blindfold, carrying a man, on stilts, and making an omelette in the middle. His real name was Jean-François Gravelet.
His wife Charlotte died in 1888.
John St John Long (1798–1834) was a successful quack specializing in the treatment of consumption, rheumatism and various other illnesses, and was convicted three times, and once acquitted, for the manslaughter of his patients. He wrote a book called A Critical Exposure of the Ignorance and Malpractice of Certain Practitioners in Their Theory and Treatment of Disease, although he wouldn't take his own medicine and died of consumption.
The Irish composer William Vincent Wallace (1812–65), who was also an enthusiastic traveller, and is said to have been 'nearly murdered by savages in New Zealand'.
I came upon this gem quite by chance, as I knew nothing about him. Below I copy his Wikipedia entry:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
As before, I owe much of the above information to the invaluable 107-page A4 guidebook available through the cemetery website: Paths of Glory – or – A Select Alphabetical and Biographical List, Illustrated with Line Drawings of Their Monuments, of Persons of Note Commemorated at the Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green (London: The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, 1997).
Posts
