Highgate Cemetery

The Victorians had created Highgate Cemetery as a theatre of mourning, a stage set of eternal repose. [From Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.]

I recently read and reviewed Audrey Niffeneggar’s novel Her Fearful Symmetry and learned about Highgate Cemetery, in which significant parts of the narrative are set. I had also read Falling Angels by Tracey Chevalier, also set in the Cemetery. So, on the spur of the moment, I made a decision to take the train and then the Underground to Highgate, north of London, to see the Cemetery. In this blog I want to share some of what I saw, partly denoted by text from the novels, from the Cemetery website and from a booklet entitled In Highgate Cemetery, published by The Friends of Highgate Cemetery and sold on site. The Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FOHC) are a charitable group now caring for the Cemetery.

“Not even the Queen may go around unaccompanied,” the chair of the Friends is quoted as saying.

Highgate Cemetery is not open to the public except for subscribed tours and I was not certain I could even get to take one, and that the cemetery would be closed to me otherwise because I do not have family buried there. The week-day tours were booked ten days in advance, but I had noticed that Saturday tours were on a first-come-first-served basis. I arrived 30 minutes before the first tour, and lucked into finding that one of the volunteer guides, Neil, had come to the cemetery early, and offered to let the eight of us in the queue get a head start with a much smaller group than usual.

Two Tudor style mortuary chapels were built when the cemetery opened, topped with wooden turrets and a central bell tower. It is quite unusual for an Anglican Chapel to be connected to a Dissenters’ Chapel. (The Non-Conformist chapel was used when the deceased was not a member of the Church of England.)

-From Her Fearful Symmetry:

The hearse glided up the Cuttings Path and disappeared from sight. The Noblin Mausoleum was just past Comfort’s Corners, near the middle of the cemetery; the mourners would walk up the narrow, tree-root-riddled Colonnade Path and meet the hearse there. People parked their cars in front of the semicircular Colonnade, which divided the courtyard from the cemetery, extricated themselves and stood looking about, taking in the chapels (once famously described as ‘Undertaker’s Gothic’), the iron gates, the War Memorial, the statue of Fortune staring blank-eyed under the pewter sky. Marijke thought of all the funerals that had passed through the gates of Highgate. The Victorians’ black carriages pulled by ostrich-plumed horses, with professional mourners and inexpressive mutes, had given way to this motley collection of autos, umbrellas and subdued friends. Marijke suddenly saw the cemetery as an old theatre: the play was still running, but the costumes and hairstyles had been updated.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century London faced a crisis. Inadequate burial space along with high mortality rates resulted in a lack of room for the dead. Graveyards and burial grounds were created between shops, houses and taverns - anywhere there was space. On occasions, undertakers dressed as clergy and performed unauthorized and illegal funerals. Bodies were wrapped in cheap material and buried amongst other human remains in graves sometimes just a few feet deep. Quicklime was thrown over the body to help decomposition, so that within a few months the grave could be used again. The stench from these disease-ridden burial places was terrible. They were overcrowded, uncared for and neglected.

Part of the problem was that in the early 1800s London had a population of just 1 million. Within a few decades the population had increased to 2.3 million and was still rising. By the 1830s the population of London had virtually doubled and the authorities realized that provision would have to be made for the increasing numbers of deaths and to that end Parliament passed an act that saw the creation of seven new private cemeteries. These cemeteries were Kensal Green (1833), West Norwood (1836), Highgate (1839), Abney Park (1840), Brompton (1840), Nunhead (1840) and Tower Hamlets (1841).

Just over three and a half thousand pounds was paid for seventeen acres of land that had been the grounds of the Ashurst Estate, descending the steep hillside from Highgate Village, north of the City. Over the next three years the cemetery was landscaped to brilliant effect by landscape architect David Ramsey with exotic formal planting which was complimented by stunning and unique architecture by Stephen Geary and James Bunning. It was this combination that was to secure Highgate as the capital’s principal cemetery.

The unparalleled elevation overlooking London, with its highest point being 375’ above sea level, along with unique architecture, meant that the wealthy were encouraged to invest.

On Monday 20th May 1839 the London Cemetery at Highgate was dedicated to St James by the Right Reverend Charles James Bloomfield, Lord Bishop of London. 15 acres were consecrated for the use of the Church of England and 2 acres set aside for the Dissenters.

Highgate became a great success, attracting a varied clientele and soon becoming one of the capital’s most fashionable cemeteries. In 1854 the London Cemetery Company was doing so well that the cemetery was extended by a further 20 acres on the other side of its Swains Lane site.

By the turn of the century the desire for great elaborate funerals was waning and families began to choose less ostentatious memorials than in previous decades. At the outbreak of the Great War, many of the cemetery’s gardeners and grounds men were called up to fight. Despite this diminished workforce, the grounds continued to be smart in appearance, held under the strict authority of the superintendent.

Although some wealthy families continued to purchase rights of burial during the 1930s, Highgate Cemetery was passing into a long, slow, terminal decline. Greater and greater numbers of graves became abandoned and maintenance became minimal. The chapels were closed in 1956. In 1960 the London Cemetery Company, facing bankruptcy, was absorbed into the larger United Cemetery Company, which struggled to keep the cemetery afloat until funds ran out in 1975.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry:

“In 1975 the Western side was padlocked and essentially abandoned to Satanists, nutters, vandals, Johnny Rotten—“

“Who’s he?” one of the young Japanese men wanted to know.

“Lead singer of the Sex Pistols, used to live nearby, in Finchley Park. Right, so you may have noticed that the neighbourhood surrounding this cemetery is a bit posh, and the neighbours got alarmed about the grave-desecrating and the wrong element hanging round. A group of local people got together and bought Highgate Cemetery for fifty quid. Then they went about trying to put it right again. And they invented what they call ‘Managed Neglect’, which means just what it sounds like: they didn’t try to make it all tidy and imitate what the Victorians had done. They work things in such a way that you see what time and nature have made of the place, but they don’t let it go so far that it gets dangerous. It’s a museum, in a sense, but it’s also a working Christian burial ground.”

The other author associated with Highgate is the American novelist Tracey Chevalier, who set her novel Falling Angels in the historical period just after the death of Queen Victoria. According to a writer for the Sunday Times, “Before embarking on her novel, determined to get to know the place thoroughly, Chevalier volunteered with the Friends first as a gardener, helping to tame the wilderness that is Highgate’s keynote, and then became a tour guide.”

Many memorials tell you something about the person’s occupation – one of the most famous being that of James Selby (1842-1888), the celebrated coachman. He achieved fame in July 1888 when he did the coach trip to London and Brighton and back in less than eight hours, winning a bet struck earlier that year at Ascot Races (reportedly for an impressive £1000). His memorial records:

This monument was erected to the memory of James W. Selby, the noted whip and proprietor of the Old Times coach, as a mark of esteem by his many coaching friends.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry.

One of the guides is showing visitors the graves: “This grave belongs to James William Selby, who was, in his day, a famous coachman. He was fond of driving fast and in all weathers. The whip and horn signify his profession; the inverted horseshoes tell us that his luck has run out. In 1888 Selby accepted a wager to drive from London to Brighton in less than eight hours. He made it in seven hours and fifty minutes, suing seven teams of horses. He won a thousand pounds, but died five months later. We speculate that his winnings might have been used to buy this very handsome memorial.”

There are about 169,000 persons buried in Highgate, in 52,500 graves, mausoleums, catacombs, etc. This tomb is fascinating. Built by a man for hisentire family, the first burial came very quickly. Her casket was the first to be lowered into the 25-foot deep crypt under the slab. But she is the only one in there. Her husband remarried and raised a large family, but all are buried elsewhere, leaving the first wife alone. (Although, as the guide pointed out, her in-laws are buried opposite her on the other side of the path.)

The Family Tomb of General Sir Loftus Otway. He was a Commander in the Peninsular War.

The guide told us repeatedly that every symbol on a grave carries significance. Note the inverted cannons as chain posts. At one time, the mausoleum ceiling had windows into which visitors could look in on the coffins below. These have been replaced by slabs of stone.

Off the pathway, opposite the grave of Elizabeth Jackson, the first burial in Highgate, in 1839, is the Pyramid, called in the old days The Sugar Loaf. Many of the symbols, even in the High Anglican Section, have pagan origins, such as the Egyptian pyramid.

Many of the newer tombstones are a far cry from the Victorian taste, such as this stone for the artist Nicki Price, who died in 2009.

The Egyptian Avenue

In the very heart of the grounds was created the grandest and most eccentric structure, an avenue of vaults on either side of a passageway entered through a great arch. It was created in the Egyptian style which was so in vogue following the discovery of the Valley of the Kings. The pathway is variously called The Avenue of Death or Street of the Dead.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry. Robert is giving a tour of the cemetery:

Robert loved the drama of the Egyptian Avenue; it looked like a stage set for Aida.

“Highgate Cemetery, in addition to being a Christian Burial ground, was a business venture. In order to make it the most desirable address for the eminent Victorian dead, it needed what every posh neighbourhood needs: amenities. In the late 1830s, when Highgate opened, all things Egyptian were quite popular, and so we have here the Egyptian Avenue. The entrance is based on a tomb at Luxor. It was originally coloured, and the Avenue itself was not so dark and gloomy. It was open to the sky, and there were none of the trees that lean over it now . . .”

It is purported that this was the favourite area of Sir John Betjeman, who once wrote that Highgate Cemetery was a “Victorian Valhalla.” Another literary figure, John Galsworthy, is said to have sat on an old green folding chair beside the family monument when writing part of the Forsyte Saga. Our guide also pointed out an unmarked vault in which he said that a Londoner had his mistress buried there: he had a secret in life and a secret in the cemetery.

These vaults were fitted with shelves for 12 coffins. According to our guide, the Egyptian Avenue was first mocked as a feature in a Christian cemetery, but after Queen Victoria approved of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment on the Thames, the vaults became sought-after burial locations.

“Of course, people still had to be buried. Cemeteries like Highgate had plenty of funerals. But people spent less on them, and on the monuments—which were usually bought at the mason’s yard run by the cemetery. With less income, staff had to be laid off, and the others were concentrated on the business of burying. Trees and ivy slowly strangled the prized landscape design; burrowing roots toppled monuments. All this took time, but those cemeteries, once boastful displays of wealth and status, are now overgrown stone junkyards, with the odd jewel shining through the ivy.” (Tracey Chevalier, website for Falling Angels.)

The avenue led into the Circle of Lebanon, built in the same style. This circle was created by earth being excavated around an ancient Cedar of Lebanon, a legacy of the Ashurst Estate and used to great effect by the cemetery’s designers. The Cedar is probably 300 years old, but according to our guide, the excavation of the Circle cut off the tree’s roots, and that that stunted its growth, leaving it as a sort of bonsai tree.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry. Robert continues his tour spiel:

“We are standing in the Circle of Lebanon. This was the most coveted address in the cemetery. It gets its name from the enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree you see up there above the Mausoleums. The tree is approximately three hundred years old now, but even when Highgate Cemetery was founded it would have been impressive. The land was originally part of the estate of the Bishop of London, and when they came to make the Circle they cut down around the tree; it stands on what was originally level ground. Imagine trying to shift all that earth with 1830s equipment. The inner circle was made first, and it proved so popular that the outer circle was begun twenty years later. You can see the changing tastes in architecture, from Egyptian to Gothic.”

A scene from the 2009 film Dorian Grey was filmed on this stairwell at the Lebanon Circle.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry:

Robert stared at the graves across the path, which were dangerously tilted. One had trees growing on both sides; they had lifted the monument slightly off its base so that it levitated an inch or so in the air. As Robert watched, a fox trotted through the ivy that choked the graves behind the ones on the main path. The fox saw him, paused for a moment and disappeared into the undergrowth. Robert heard other foxes howling to each other, some close by, some off in deeper parts of the cemetery.

IN THE MEMORY of George Wombwell (Menagerist) 1777-1850, and his favourite lion, Nero. The lion was originally pure white marble and attracted lots of attention in the cemetery. Wombwell had founded Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie in 1810, having begun with two boa constrictors, and eventually exhibited elephants, giraffes, a gorilla, kangaroo, leopards, six lions (including Nero), llamas, monkeys, panthers, a rhino, and more. He was invited to exhibit thrice before Queen Victoria. All of this in the days before zoos in Britain.

The Terrace Catacombs are immediately below or behind St. Michael’s Church. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge is buried under the name in St Michael’s.) Built in the Gothic style, the catacombs were completed in 1842 with an impressive 80 yard frontage, with room for a total of 825-840 people. Extensive repair work has taken place and is still ongoing. We went inside to see the dimly lit long passageway, both sides of which are niches called loculi into which coffins were inserted and name panels or stele subsequently added. According to the official booklet, “When light filtered through the glass roundels set into the asphalt roof above, the freshly lime-washed walls once gave a measure of reassuring brightness to the reposeful dignity of this habitation of the dead.” Today it is far from bright, not white-washed for years, but with the help of a large flashlight, the guide was able to show us part of the catacombs. In several cases we were able to look closely at the ends of perfectly intact caskets, still showing the original brassware. Part of the passageway was blocked because a part of the catacombs had collapsed at some time, and the guide said the caskets were crushed and bones were visible. To preserve dignity we were not shown this section, nor were we allowed to take any photos. It seems the current restoration will make possible the use of the catacombs again, as there are over 100 unused loculi.

“That blasted cemetery. I never liked it. To be fair, it is not the fault of the place itself, which has a lugubrious charm, with its banks of graves stacked on top of one another—granite headstones, Egyptian obelisks, gothic spires, plinths topped with columns, weeping ladies, angels, and, of course, urns—winding up the hill to the glorious Lebanon Cedar at the top. I am even willing to overlook some of the more preposterous monuments—ostentatious representations of a family’s status. But the sentiments that the place encourages in mourners are too overblown for my taste.” (Kitty Coleman, in Falling Angels.)

-From Her Fearful Symmetry:

Behind the wall, Highgate Cemetery spread before them, vast and chaotic. Because they were on a hill, they might have seen quite far down into the cemetery, but the density of the trees prevented this; the branches were bare, but they formed a latticework that confused the eye. They could see the top of a large mausoleum, and a number of smaller graves. . . . The sun abruptly came out again and the cemetery changed from deep shade and grey to dappled yellow and pale green. The gravestones turned white and seemed to be edged with silver; they hovered, tooth-like amid the ivy. Valentia said, ‘It’s a fairyland.’ She had been nervous about the cemetery. She had imagined smells and vandalism and creepiness. Instead, it was verdant, full of mossy stone and the soft tapping noises of the trees.

The mausoleum of Julius Beer is the largest and most expensive one in Highgate, built by Italian craftsmen for £5,000 in 1878, £1-£2 million today. Although not normally open to visitors, our small group was allowed to look inside. It is a beautiful work of art. The interior is in the Quattrocento style with an exquisite mosaic ceiling, colourful wall tiles, and stained glass windows to let in the light. The ceiling is decorated in gold leaf. The main feature is a beautiful bas-relief sculpture of his daughter Ada, carved by H. H. Armstead, showing a marble angel stooping to kiss eight-year-old Ada. The face of the sculpture is based on the death mask of the child. Julius Beer died in 1880 at age 43, never having seen the carving of his daughter, The family is buried in a vault underneath the building.

The exterior of the tomb is based on that of the Greek King Mausolus of Halicarnassas (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). It was designed by John Oldrid Scott. This mausoleum has recently been restored at a cost of £43,000.

Julius Beer was a Jew from Frankfurt born into poverty, but he made his fortune on the London Stock Exchange and owned The Observer newspaper. However, being foreign and Jewish and having earned his wealth, he always felt ostracized by Victorian society. Beer’s revenge was to situate this magnificent mausoleum in a location that blocked the view over London from the promenade above, where the upper class like to stroll and have picnics on Sundays. However, being Jewish, he was not qualified for burial in a High Anglican cemetery, but one source says he converted to the Church of England in the 1880s.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry. Robert is showing the most impressive mausoleum in the cemetery:

“Julius Beer was a German Jew who arrived in London with no money and made his fortune on the Stock Exchange . . . [he] was unable to secure a position in Victorian society, because in addition to being a foreigner and Jewish, he had made his money rather than inheriting it. So he erected this rather large mausoleum where no one could possible miss it. The Beer mausoleum blocks the view if you happen to be promenading on the roof of the Terrace Catacombs, as Victorian ladies liked to do of a Sunday afternoon.”

“Our Granpa worked here too. Same as our Pa and me. Said it’s the nicest cemetery in London. Wouldn’t have wanted to be buried in any of t’others. He had stories to tell us about t’others. Piles of bones everywhere. Bodies buried with just a sack of soil over ‘em. Phew, the smell! And the men snatching bodies in the night. Here he were safe at least safe and sound, with the boundary wall being so high, and the spikes on top.” (Simon Field, the gravedigger’s son in Falling Angels.)

The grave of Edgar Hodges Baily, (1788-1867) from Bristol. Not only did he sculpt the statue of Horatio Nelson atop the column in Trafalgar Square, he also created many other works, including bas reliefs on the Marble Arch. Baily studied at the Royal Academy and was a member of the Royal Society. The grave features an open Bible.

Norman Warne published the highly successful The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter. Around that time she became secretly engaged to him, which caused problems with her parents, who believed such a marriage would be beneath her station, since he was of a lower social class. Warne died before the wedding could take place. Our guide told us that there are records that say that Miss Potter used to come and visit her fiancé’s grave. Apparently, the recent film about Beatrix Potter has the actor stand here and point out Norman Warne’s tombstone.

Joseph Hodgson, President of the College of Physicians, died at age 80, one day after his wife passed away.

The sleeping angel on the grave is considered by many to be the most beautifully sculpted angel in Highgate. (This is not my photo: at this very moment my camera announced a full memory card. I tried to erase old photos as we walked, but ended up taking fewer photos on my camera’s built-in memory.)

"In Ever Loving Memory of Mary, the darling wife of Arthur Nichols. Kindly loved mother of their only son Harold, who fell asleep 7^th May 1909."

In Memory of Mrs. Ann Webb (widow of William Webb, Esq.) Who revered and beloved by her children of three generations departed this life in the sure hope of salvation through Christ August 1^st 1849 in the 102^nd year of her age.

Quite remarkable, considering that the average age of those buried here is about 40!

-From Her Fearful Symmetry.

Robert let his eyes wander. The trees were bare—Christmas was three weeks away—but the cemetery was green. Highgate was full of holly bushes, sprouted from Victorian funeral wreaths. It was festive, if you could manage the mind-flip required to think about Christmas in a cemetery. As he tried to focus on the vicar’s words he heard foxes calling to each other nearby.

I have only a couple of regrets about my visit to Highgate. The tour does not include a visit to the Rossetti graves. I am a huge “fan” of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dante Gabrielle Rossetti is not buried here but in Birchington-on-Sea in Kent, where he died at 53. Buried in Highgate are his father, brother and sister. His wife, Elizabeth, is buried here. She was his model, the beautiful Elizabeth Siddall (about whom I wrote after I visited the Tate Britain and saw Milais’s painting entitled “Ophelia.”) She died of an over-dose of laudanum. Rossetti buried most of his poems with her but later had the grave opened to retrieve the poetry.

There are several quite spectacular monuments I wish I could have seen, but they are not on the tour. I have seen images of them (including that of the Victorian pugilist Thomas Sayers and his dog copied above) and would have enjoyed seeing the Thornton piano—a grand piano in stone—and the Myth of Sisyphus stone.

After the cemetery fell into near ruin in the 1960s, The Friends of Highgate Cemetery was launched to secure access to the cemetery for public benefit and future generations. Over the last 30 years much restoration and conservation work has been carried out on buildings, boundary walls, architectural features and the landscape. Several features and monuments have been listed as of special importance by English Heritage. Extensive work has been carried out on the chapels, which lay derelict until 1985.

-From Her Fearful Symmetry.

He walked with Thomas and Matthew back to the hearse. Elspeth’s coffin was lead-lined, for above-ground burial, so it was incongruously heavy. Robert and the other pall-bearers shouldered it and then conveyed it to the tomb; there was a moment of awkwardness as they tried to lower it unto the trestles. The mausoleum was too small for all the pall-bearers, and the coffin seemed to have grown suddenly huge. They got it situated. The dark oak was glossy in the weak sunlight. Everyone filed out except Robert.

George Williams founded the YMCA—The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)—in 1844. Williams was looking for positive alternatives for young men like himself drawn to the temptations of London, and created the YMCA to foster Christian principles in action, achieved by the development of a “healthy spirit, mind and body.” It was at this point that out guide broke into the Village People spelling out Y-M-C-A. My own father was very involved in the YMCA in Halifax, NS, in the 1920s and 30s, mostly, I suspect, for the athletic facilities and opportunities.

After the tour ended in the Western Cemetery, and I spoke to Neil and another guide, I crossed the road to the East Cemetery, which is open to the public for a small £3 entrance fee. (There is one tour each month.) This new ground, now known as the East Cemetery, was opened in 1856. It was set out in a much less dramatic style than the west, and in many ways is quite modern in appearance. A tunnel beneath Swains Lane connected the new ground with the Anglican chapel in the older side. With the aid of a hydraulic catafalque, coffins could descend into the tunnel and remain on consecrated cemetery ground for their entry to the other half of the cemetery.

The first burial in the new ground took place on 12th June 1860. There were over 10,400 graves by this point within the cemetery, which then continued to be used on both sides.

Another sculpted tomb, that of the artist and sculptor Michael Kenny R.A., who died in 1999.

John Alfred Groom founded the Orphanage at Clacton-on-Sea and the Crippleage at Clerkenwell. “A servant of God and a friend of the poor, the orphan, and the afflicted.”

Sir Ralph David Richardson’s grave, with members of his family. With John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, he is considered the third of the great actor Knights of the 20^th century.

The wonderful tombstone for Jeremy Beadle MBE, writer, presenter, and curator of oddities, who died in 2008. The message on the stone is basic: “Ask My Friends.”

Anna Mahler (1904-1988) a Viennese sculptor, daughter of composer Gustav Mahler. The memorial is called “Vision” and is a copy of an original now owned by her daughter.

The grave of the Victorian writer, George Eliot, the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans (who later became Mary Ann Cross.) Eliot was the author of several novels well-known to students the world over: The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1871-1872). She lived with a married man for over 20 years, causing scandal. She lost her religious faith and this denial of Christianity and her affair with George Henry Lewes prevented her being buried in Westminster Abbey. Thus she is buried here with like-minded free-thinkers amongst atheists and communists.

The ashes of the philosopher and socialist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) are here. He coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” as a succinct summary of Darwin’s theory.

Arguably the world’s most influential political philosopher, Karl Marx has been called Britain’s most famous refugee. Marx was originally buried in a secluded spot about 200 metres behind his current grave—and only a dozen people even attended his funeral in 1883. But so many visitors were coming to his grave by 1956 that the remains of all those buried in the original spot were moved to this location.

The tablet refers to Jenny Von Westphalen, Marx’s wife; Marx himself; their grandson, Harry Longuet (1875-1883); Helena Demuth (1823-1890); and Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, the political activist and feminist, who committed suicide. (Her ashes were kept elsewhere for 60 years and interred here in 1956.

The new memorial was sculpted by Laurence Bradshaw and dates from then but the tablet is the original.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.

The largest crowd in the public East Cemetery is always for Karl Marx. This part of Highgate is clearly non-denominational, with burials here of people of all and no faiths. Avowed atheists like Ernestine Rose, the Polish-born feminist who played a major role in the feminist movement in the USA and the UK, and the “fearless and notorious atheist,” George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1878), are buried in what is a dissenter’s section, alongside famous communists like Dr. Yusuf Mohammed Dadoo (1909-1983), the Muslim Indian activist buried just a few feet away from Marx, and Monsoor Hekmat, the Tehran-born humanitarian Marxist theorist and leader of the Iran Worker Communist Party, opponent of the Shah and the Islamic Republic. Forced into exile, he died in 2002.

WORKERS of the ALL LANDS UNITE. Apparently, people care enough about Marx that there are flowers on the grave. Everyone in the crowd—few of whom spoke English—had their photo taken here, so I joined in.

Highgate was not about the tours, or the monuments, not about the supernatural or the atmosphere or the morbid peculiarities of the Victorians; for her, the cemetery was about the dead and the grave owners. [From Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.]