Sad, So Very Sad: The Ink-Black Heart’s Connections to Victorian Cemetery Art and Mourning Customs

Happy October! Although some of us are pretty spooky all year ‘round, and the Hobby Lobby has had pumpkins out on shelves since July 5, there is just something about the beginning of October that puts us in the mood for all things Halloween, from stocking up on Frankenberry cereal to watching Linus rolling in the pumpkin for Lucy to kill it once again.

So it seems quite appropriate that we take a few moments today to look at the way in which our latest Strike installment draws upon traditional Victorian mourning customs and cemetery art in this appropriately Gothic tale of a murder that takes place in a cemetery because of a cartoon set in a cemetery. It’s a topic with plenty of motifs that are currently adorning the yards and homes of otherwise respectable people during the traditional season of spooky, so grab your walking shoes and mourning armband, and let’s take a stroll through the cemetery to uncover some Victorian traditions and motifs that wander through The Ink Black Heart.

High Gothic Highgate

If a story requires a cemetery for a setting, there’s hardly any competition for the best choice in London. Highgate, which was the appropriate backdrop for Rowling’s recent Robert Galbraith Q and A, is not London’s only uber-Gothic cemetery, but it is probably the best known of the “Magnificent Seven”: seven sites established in the 1830s to provide burial space for a burgeoning London population that had far exceeded the capacity of churchyards, the traditional resting places for the departed. The seven cemeteries were originally created on the outskirts of London, away from the hubbub of town, but now, of course, the sprawling metropolis has grown and embraced these sites, many of which provide much-appreciated greenspace and a quiet, park-like setting that would have appealed to the Victorians. While earlier generations had often produced both cemeteries and stones that were bleak and often uninviting to the living, the mid-nineteenth century saw the emergence of the cemetery as a place not merely to decently bury the dead, but as a place to visit the dead, to ponder one’s own existence, and to enjoy life a bit in a setting that was as beautiful and peaceful as it was somber.

The Victorian habit of picnicking among the tombstones might seem ghoulish to some 21^st-century folks, but it nicely encapsulates that era’s fascination with cemeteries as places of recreation. Today, tourists like those in the tour group Robin follows around Highgate are welcome to visit the Magnificent Seven, all of which are popular destinations. Since all but one of the cemeteries still accepts burials, visitors are encouraged to be respectful, even if they are not, like Robin’s tour group, visiting right after a murder there in the cemetery itself. Just as the guide explains that the tour won’t go to Edie’s very recent grave because it is in one of the working cemetery’s private plots, current visitors are urged to be respectful, and, unlike nineteenth-century visitors, are discouraged from eating in the cemetery. This handy guide to the seven cemeteries even identifies which ones are the best fits for various kinds of visitors (history buffs, families, etc.) and, as the Victorians would have wanted, includes restaurant recommendations for each.

Strangely enough, one of the most appealing aspects of the Victorian cemetery is the sense of neglect. Modern, public cemeteries are places of meticulous maintenance, sometimes to the point of annoyance, as mourners are discouraged from leaving out flowers or other memorials for too long lest they interfere with the mowing. The classical Victorian cemetery, though, is like Highgate, maintained but not controlled. Plants and trees run roughshod over the landscape. The Victorians liked this sort of wild abandon in nature. They would not have found a modern memorial garden—flat stones and acres of manicured grass—to be very appealing. Instead, they would find much more to love amidst the Gothic appeal of nature creeping over the stones; the contrast of the stone monuments and the living greenery that we see on the IBH cover would be quite satisfying to the Victorian Romantic sensibility.

The Art of Death

Because the cemetery of the nineteenth century was a place to visit and to enjoy the scenery, the era also saw the dramatic rise in funerary art. Traditionally, tombstones have either been traditional or commercial. Traditional stones, also called vernacular or folk stones, according to Sticks and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers, were created by family members, local craftspeople, or communities, often with whatever resources were available, while commercial stones were crafted by professionals for paying customers, including the wealthy, who could afford to commission elaborate gravemarkers, monuments, and mausoleums. Today, both types of funerary art continue to draw observers, including family members, history lovers, and taphophiles (people who love cemeteries and funerary art), all squinting to make out the faint letters and slowly eroding clasped hands or sculpted flowers.

The language of funerary art is a remarkably complex one, with many of the symbols and designs transmitting coded messages about those whose graves they adorn. Specific flowers, animals, or positions of symbols like hands are connected to specific facts about the departed. For example, rose buds and lambs are more common on the graves of children, while sheaves of wheat are more common on the graves of those who died in the prime of life. Angels, whether sleeping like the one on Mary Nichols’s tomb, lair of Paperwhite the Ghost, or taking up some other posture, are the most recognizable of cemetery artworks, and many cemeteries showcase their angel sculptures with tours, signage, and even souvenirs like T-shirts or magnets. Although angels were common in Renaissance art, they really became popular cemetery figures in the nineteenth century. Since full angel sculptures would have been costly and elaborate, they frequently appear on the graves of the wealthier inhabitants of cemeteries. Interestingly, when Tim Ashcroft, under the guise of The Pen of Justice, is trying to paint Drek as an anti-Semitic caricature (while also grooming his underage victims), he wrongly describes Drek’s tomb as the most costly. Rachel Ledwell, posting as Penny Peacock, counters that Lord and Lady Wyrdy-Grob’s tomb is actually more extravagant. She could have also mentioned that Paperwhite’s grave, with that full-size angel, denotes high social and economic standing.

Animals are strangely popular elements in funerary art, and Robin, when she visits, makes especial mention of a couple of creatures adorning the graves. Some animals represent some aspect of the departed’ s interests or occupation, while others are symbolic, and still others actually denote the grave of an animal, like that of famous racehorse Man O’War, who has a statue of himself over his grave at the Kentucky Horse Park. When Robin is on the tour, she notices a horse statue that does not denote the grave of a horse but of Queen Victoria’s horse slaughterer, denoting his occupation, while the grave of William Wombwell, site of notorious logjams in Drek’s Game, features a lion, a salute to his career as a menagerie-owner. 

The pelican that adorns the grave of Elizabeth, Baroness de Munck, however, has symbolic, rather than practical connotations. The distinctive artwork primarily works for the bereaved Inkhearts as a landmark of the site of both the cartoon’s genesis and Edie Ledwell’s murder. While the folklore about the pelican feeding her chicks with her blood is rooted in a mistaken observation about the way the bird’s anatomy works, it remains a powerful and popular Christian symbol for sacrificial love. Interestingly, the pelican is the second-most popular bird symbol in cemetery art, ranking just behind the extremely popular dove.

Victorians and the Art of Mourning

For the Victorians, death was both a central part of life and an experience that included its own complex practices. With the death of Prince Albert in 1861 making her a widow for the rest of her unusually long life and reign, Queen Victoria helped cement the traditions connected to mourning, from the social requirements of mourning garments to the behavior of the bereaved.  Widows were expected to wear full mourning for at least a year, and even poorer people made the effort by dying garments in order to adhere to social customs. Half-mourning and other graduated levels were practiced by individuals in conjunction with their specific relationship to the deceased and the amount of elapsed time since the death. Even fictional characters might enjoy the attention of mourners. When Arthur Conan Doyle “killed off” Sherlock Holmes (he had to bring him back, of course, perhaps the first and best instance of fan response affecting an author’s choices), men all over London sported black mourning bands tied around their arms.

Many folk  traditions associated with death, such as informing the bees (see here the report on Queen’s beekeeper recently performing this duty), stopping clocks, and covering mirrors, became codified in the Victorian era.

Ironically, in The Ink Black Heart, we see very little actual mourning. Edie Ledwell’s funeral is only recounted secondhand, with more details about the suspicious behavior of the attendees than about the departed animator. Most of her estranged “family” expresses very little in the way of mourning, and, like her boyfriend, Phillip Ormond, her uncle seems far more concerned about the financial windfall that may come via Edie’s creation. The cartoon’s fans on the cemetery tour are more fascinated than saddened by Edie’s passing, drawn to the dark glamour of the location of both her death and her inspiration for the surprisingly popular cartoon. Only Josh Blay seems to truly grieve for Edie, in part due to his survivor’s guilt.   However, the Victorian fascination with death and the symbols of mourning created and celebrated by that era are central to the Gothic sensibilities that inform the cartoon created by Ledwell and Blay, the controversial game run by their attacker, and the easily recognizable décor of October, the Addams Family, and Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

Rowling’s Cemetery Trends

While the Highgate setting and cemetery ambience are distinctively appropriate to The Ink Black Heart, this is certainly not the first time Rowling has drawn on the rich symbolic and cultural associations with cemeteries. One of the most  evocative scenes in all of Harry Potter’s story is in the “Godric’s Hollow” chapter of Deathly Hallows.

On a snowy Christmas Eve, as Harry and Hermione travel to Godric’s Hollow in search of Horcruxes, they visit the cemetery where Dumbledore’s family is buried, along with Harry’s parents. In addition to viewing those graves, Harry and Hermione see the grave of Ignotus Peverell, and, although they do not know at the time that he is Harry’s ancestor, they do pause at his very old grave. Interestingly, that stop means Harry and Hermione visit three plots in the cemetery, completing the triad that resonates with the on-going theme of threes that will be affirmed yet again in a few chapters when our duo becomes a trio again, setting our protagonists in the right direction once more.

Also interesting is the lack of funerary art in the cemetery. Of course, the Potters are celebrated with the statue in the center of town (which also includes the very-much-alive Harry with his departed parents), but there is only a brief Scripture on their stone. Scripture verses are some of the most popular inscriptions on gravestones, both before and after the Victorian era, along with Victorian poetry like that of the women poets whose quotations open our chapters in Ink Black Heart. It is not surprising that twentieth-century people with a statue in town have no elaborate grave art. The Dumbledores, though, are Victorians, so their simple memorial is intriguing. In fact, of the graves Harry visits, only Ignotus’s grave, with the Deathly Hallows symbol, has funerary art, art whose code Harry and Hermione cannot yet decode.

Considering how much death is a part of our detectives’ lives, it is surprising that more of Robin’s and Strike’s stories do not take place in cemeteries. The fact that Rowling specifically does not take them to a cemetery anytime someone dies is telling. The death that most affects Strike, that of his beloved Aunt Joan, is mourned in the unconventional way she requested, with her ashes being set out to sea, so there is no grave to visit, as thoughtful Joan did not want to burden Uncle Ted with trying to keep it maintained or make Strike and his sister Lucy feel obligated to make pilgrimages to visit a burial site. When Robin attends her future mother-in-law’s funeral in The Silkworm, the wintertime burial is glossed over quickly, with nary a mention of the Masham churchyard’s details.

In Troubled Blood, when Robin visits a cemetery in the course of the investigation, she is puzzled by its location as a possible Margot sighting, since the Leamington Spa All Saints Church has a very strange cemetery. All but two of the graves were destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing in 1940, and while Robin does get an interesting history lesson about the real James Virgo Dunn, whose stone survived, she is confused by the story of Margot being seen here in the 70s, looking at the stones. Of course, as the plot unfolds and it becomes clear that this story was, in fact, a ruse, that makes more sense.

Keep Digging!

Although our intrepid detectives seldom return to previous cases, it will be interesting to see if Highgate or other Victorian cemeteries come back into play in future books. If you’d like to visit Highgate from the comfort of your home, check out this walking tour on Youtube. If you would like to learn more about nineteenth-century American funeral and mourning customs, many of which parallel or are based on ones originating in Europe, check out this sneak preview of an upcoming event in eastern Tennessee later this month. I’ll be working with this event, so I will have some follow-up after it concludes. You may also check out Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography if you would like to learn more about this fascinating subject!