upper lip of the aristocrat, or the stoical acceptance of the peasant. With the new class came the concept of the family as an affectionate unit. The notion of childhood was born, with offspring becoming lovable in their own right, rather than treated as miniature adults, spawned to continue the family line. With affection, inevitably, came bereavement, and the need for consolation in the form of some lasting memorial, something more than a simple stone. And burial need no longer take place in a mere churchyard.
The new middle class demanded a permanent memorial for their dead. One of the most influential books of the time was Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (1786), a massive two-volume survey of England’s celebrated graves. This work, which combines a gazetteer with sombre reflection, was introduced by its author as: ‘a mixture of private mixed with public life; a subject in which my countrymen have been anticipated by their neighbours’. 12 At its most extreme, this fashion took the form of a craze for mausolea, such as Vanbrugh’s for Castle Howard in Yorkshire, which made such a terrific impression on the gothic novelist Horace Walpole that he observed it ‘would tempt one to be buried alive!’ 13
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) had, like Wren, deplored burial in churches, and demanded that cemeteries be provided on the outskirts of towns. Vanbrugh had been inspired by a trip to the Colonies. In Calcutta, he visited the South Park Street Cemetery, where the English employees of the East India Company were buried. Both the design of the cemetery, with its Mogul tombs, and the layout of the new city that was to become the capital of British power in India, had impressed him. The craze soon caught on, with elaborate mausolea becoming a standard feature of the great English country houses. Rather than be buried in the family vault, the aristocracy found it infinitely more stylish to be interred in these temple-like constructions, among the rolling acres landscaped bysuch luminaries as Capability Brown to represent the Classical paradise of the Elysian fields.
By the mid-eighteenth century, another new attitude was emerging, one which encouraged reflection on death as a spiritual exercise and a valid form of artistic expression. The experts on Victorian death, James Stevens Curl and Chris Brooks, have described this tendency as, respectively, ‘the cult of sepulchral melancholy’ and ‘graveyard gothic’. Melancholia had always been a consistent strain in the English character, as evidenced by the enduring popularity of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a treatise on depression written by Robert Burton, a saturnine Oxford don rumoured to have hanged himself on completion of the work. But ‘graveyard gothic’ or ‘the cult of sepulchral melancholy’ focused specifically on death and bereavement. 14
In its most benign manifestation, this fascination with death took the form of Gray’s Elegy (1751), a meditation inspired by a traditional country churchyard. By modern standards the sentiments might appear self-indulgent, but such gentle melancholy was a legitimate poetic form. It was also, essentially, Romantic. Here was the author, describing his own feelings and inviting the reader to emote with him, at the prospect of his own death, and that of the reader’s. Gone was the pragmatic acceptance of the peasant. To quote Ariès, the attitude had changed from Et moriemur– and we shall all die to la mort de soi –one’s own death–and la mort de toi– the death of the other, whose loss and memory inspired a new cult of tombstones, cemeteries and a romantic attitude towards death. 15
The poet Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742) took as its theme the death of Narcissa, a pseudonym for his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Lee. Elizabeth was already terminally ill when she married Henry Temple in 1735. By the following autumn, Young and his wife accompanied the couple to the French Riviera, where it was thought the
The new middle class demanded a permanent memorial for their dead. One of the most influential books of the time was Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (1786), a massive two-volume survey of England’s celebrated graves. This work, which combines a gazetteer with sombre reflection, was introduced by its author as: ‘a mixture of private mixed with public life; a subject in which my countrymen have been anticipated by their neighbours’. 12 At its most extreme, this fashion took the form of a craze for mausolea, such as Vanbrugh’s for Castle Howard in Yorkshire, which made such a terrific impression on the gothic novelist Horace Walpole that he observed it ‘would tempt one to be buried alive!’ 13
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) had, like Wren, deplored burial in churches, and demanded that cemeteries be provided on the outskirts of towns. Vanbrugh had been inspired by a trip to the Colonies. In Calcutta, he visited the South Park Street Cemetery, where the English employees of the East India Company were buried. Both the design of the cemetery, with its Mogul tombs, and the layout of the new city that was to become the capital of British power in India, had impressed him. The craze soon caught on, with elaborate mausolea becoming a standard feature of the great English country houses. Rather than be buried in the family vault, the aristocracy found it infinitely more stylish to be interred in these temple-like constructions, among the rolling acres landscaped bysuch luminaries as Capability Brown to represent the Classical paradise of the Elysian fields.
By the mid-eighteenth century, another new attitude was emerging, one which encouraged reflection on death as a spiritual exercise and a valid form of artistic expression. The experts on Victorian death, James Stevens Curl and Chris Brooks, have described this tendency as, respectively, ‘the cult of sepulchral melancholy’ and ‘graveyard gothic’. Melancholia had always been a consistent strain in the English character, as evidenced by the enduring popularity of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a treatise on depression written by Robert Burton, a saturnine Oxford don rumoured to have hanged himself on completion of the work. But ‘graveyard gothic’ or ‘the cult of sepulchral melancholy’ focused specifically on death and bereavement. 14
In its most benign manifestation, this fascination with death took the form of Gray’s Elegy (1751), a meditation inspired by a traditional country churchyard. By modern standards the sentiments might appear self-indulgent, but such gentle melancholy was a legitimate poetic form. It was also, essentially, Romantic. Here was the author, describing his own feelings and inviting the reader to emote with him, at the prospect of his own death, and that of the reader’s. Gone was the pragmatic acceptance of the peasant. To quote Ariès, the attitude had changed from Et moriemur– and we shall all die to la mort de soi –one’s own death–and la mort de toi– the death of the other, whose loss and memory inspired a new cult of tombstones, cemeteries and a romantic attitude towards death. 15
The poet Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742) took as its theme the death of Narcissa, a pseudonym for his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Lee. Elizabeth was already terminally ill when she married Henry Temple in 1735. By the following autumn, Young and his wife accompanied the couple to the French Riviera, where it was thought the
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