Necropolitan

I like cemeteries, they’re peaceful. There are plenty of trees, and the residents don’t mind the visits. If they do they can hardly complain. What are they going to do, haunt me? We have more to fear from the living than the dead.

Besides, I am extremely dense when it comes to incorporeal beings. If a ghost were sitting next to me I wouldn’t notice. Just to be sure, I looked to my left and right: nothing. I once went to a “spirit quest” at the Manila Film Center, reputedly the most haunted place in the city. The other participants said they saw and heard the most bloodcurdling things; I spent the whole time worrying that the roof of that condemned building would fall on our heads.

The London Underground: that’s scary. I spend the first couple of days taking the wrong train, getting out at the wrong station, backtracking, missing transfers, and generally being lost. There are many ways to get acquainted with a city, and being lost is the most effective one I know. When you have been wandering for an hour or so with no idea where you are, and then you finally figure out your route, it is as if you have conquered new territory. 

The important thing is to always look as if you know where you’re going. I could give you lessons. Though I seem to have been born with a malfunctioning internal GPS, I’m the one who always gets asked for directions. (Here’s my chance to apologize to the girl in Ealing Common who asked me which train went to Heathrow: Sorry, but I did mention that I was an alien. I hope you made it to the airport on time.) 

As a public transportation snob I feel sorry for my rich friends who are always being driven or taking taxis when they travel. No, “sorry” isn’t the word; I feel like hitting them over the head with something. Speaking of the class struggle, Karl Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery. I like that segue back to the original topic.

If there were vampires in Highgate, they were probably fast asleep. It was almost noon; the only dangerous creatures about would be rabid fans reading aloud from the Twilight books (Nooo!!). There is a three-pound fee, said the lady at the East gate, who looked embarrassed to be charging money. The map costs another pound. 

Highgate Cemetery is gorgeous: wild, overgrown, lush and green, with plenty of chipped urns and stone angels with averted eyes and noses worn away by time. It’s Romantic, capital “R” — a place that invites meditations on the transience of earthly existence and other subjects best discussed while wearing velvet waistcoats and capes. In the sunshine it is shockingly un-spooky.

I had not even consulted the map when I noticed the simple gray headstone beside the road. In lieu of flowers there were pens of different colors stuck in the earth. Behind the stone — was that a towel? It was the grave of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The pens are an appropriate tribute. The tombs of authors should be festooned in typewriter ribbon and sprinkled with letters from old keyboards; instead of wreaths, handwritten passages from their work should be laid on the ground. 

Down the path was some sort of modernist memorial with cut-out letters that spelled “Dead.” I thought it was a bit of an overstatement. According to the map, it is the grave of Patrick Caulfield, one of the great 20th century British painters, and he designed it himself. “His most striking works are of colourful interiors which suggest that people have just left or are about to enter.” This one definitely says he’s left.

There’s the mausoleum of Baron Dalziel, who owned a travel empire that included the Orient Express, and the Fireman’s Monument bearing the names of firemen who have died in the service since 1918. I got off the road and walked up the path between the graves. Some of the tombs were completely covered in wildflowers, others were scarcely visible under creeping vines. Back home if you let vines and grow over the graves of your dead relatives, you are being remiss in your filial duties. I do not know if the families of these dead were being neglectful, but I find these overgrown burial places beautiful. Somehow I do not think the dead would mind: the earth has reclaimed them.

And there is Highgate Cemetery’s most famous resident, Karl Marx, the author of Das Kapital, who took refuge in Britain. Never been a Marxist, membership in groups makes me break out, but Karl is probably the most influential political philosopher in history. If his ghost were present I would ask for his opinion of all the deeds done in his name by people quoting his words. What would he think of the former Soviet Union, of China? 

Diagonally across the street is the marker containing the ashes of another philosopher, Herbert Spencer. His influence has waned since his death; he is now remembered for coining the phrase, “survival of the fittest.” Aha, Marx and Spencer.

A short walk up is the obelisk marking the grave of Mary Ann Evans, the author better known as George Eliot. I was a little ashamed to stand before her tomb — I could not get through Silas Marner, even if it is short, and all my attempts to read Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss have failed before they even began. I hadn’t known she was there; was I being told to read her?

The west side of the cemetery is said to be fascinating, but it was lunchtime and I had half a dozen museums to go to. I crossed Waterlow Park to the bus stop and to the Underground I no longer feared.