In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious | Page 8

and Hope are hardly to be misunderstood, but the large box in the background is not quite certain of correct interpretation.
FIG. 40.--AT HENDON.
"To Ludwig August Leakfield, Esq., died Nov. 22, 1810, aged 48 years."
The following is rougher in form, but seems to have suffered from the weather. It needs no explanation.
FIG. 41.--AT EAST WICKHAM.
"To Thomas Vere of Woolwich, shipwright, died 10th August, 1789."
The two next subjects are to be found in many variations. The angel with the cross in each case may represent salvation proclaimed.
FIG. 42.--AT SNARGATE.
"To Edward Wood, died Sept. 1779, aged 50 years."
FIG. 43.--AT EAST HAM.
"To Mr Richard Wright, died July 28, 1781, aged 39 years."
The winged scroll in Fig. 44 is unfolded to display, we may suppose, a register of good and holy deeds done in an extended life. The scythes and the reversed torches may be taken at their usual significance, which is death. This is copied from a stone in the churchyard of Wilmington by Dartford Heath.
[Illustration: FIG. 44. WILMINGTON.]
[Illustration: FIG. 45. WANSTEAD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 46. SOUTHFLEET.]
[Illustration: FIG. 47. WILMINGTON.]
[Illustration: FIG. 48. LEWISHAM.]
[Illustration: FIG. 49. BUNHILL FIELDS.]
FIG. 44.--AT WILMINGTON.
"To Richard Barman, died 1793, aged 71 years."
More elegant testimony is paid by the figure of a winged urn in Wanstead Old Churchyard, the flame which burns above indicating, it would seem, that though the body be reduced to ashes, the soul survives.
FIG. 45.--AT WANSTEAD.
"To William Cleverly, died 1780, aged 40 years."
Eternity is usually, as we have seen, represented by an endless ring--often as a serpent. It is so in the Southfleet sketch, in which appear the two horns of the archangels, and the living torch, with some other objects which are not quite clearly defined.
FIG. 46.--AT SOUTHFLEET.
"To John Palmer, died 1781, aged 61 years."
In another selection from Wilmington the winged hour-glass 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 surpassed. 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 illustration 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