Tag: charles dickens

Postcard from London, England: Who lies amongst the trees of Kensal Green?

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A vintage postage stamp featuring an illustration related to Charles Dickens, depicting a scene with children and a caregiver, and text indicating his lifespan (1812/1870) and name.

Above: A field in Kensal Green Cemetery, 2023.

The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred….”

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (1812-1870), 1838

Wandering amongst the quarter-million souls resting amongst the bucolic 72 acres of The General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green, you absorb a sense of peace from the surroundings. Inspired by Pere Lachaise in Paris, the design incorporates multiple broad pathways and lush landscaping. Opened in 1833, this privately run graveyard was once the fashionable spot to be buried – some 650 titled nobles rest there.

Every direction we looked, there were headstones for those of note and those of more humble backgrounds. But all with stories. I longed to read them all, to grasp snippets of the lives they led. Given their age, many of their resting places are unapproachable, dangerously sunken or knocked out of kilter by the roots of the trees that shade them. Taphophile, yes, but I have no desire to plunge down into a grave, forced to embrace its skeletal contents.

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Postcard from Parma, Italy: Reclaiming the stage from ancient ghosts

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There is the Farnese Palace, too, and in it one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen – a grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away…. Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, enhanced in the spectator’s fancy by its gay intention and design, now but worms can be familiar with. A hundred and ten years have passed, since any play was acted there…. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this ghostly stage.

Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens, 1846

Cosimo II de Medici (1590-1621) was going to be passing through town, and Ranuccio I Farnese (1569-1622), the duke of Parma and Piacenza, was eager to make a major impression. Ranuccio’s eagerness was enhanced by his desire to arrange a marriage between his son and one of Cosimo II’s daughters to fortify relations between the two families.

The huge Farnese Theatre was commissioned in 1618 in honor of the visit that actually failed to occur. But, never mind, the marriage did happen within a year or two anyway.

The massive theatre was made of wood with faux-marble plaster ornamentation. The theatre was used less than 10 times, only for lavish, expensive weddings and productions, including one during which the ground floor was flooded with water to make depiction of a naval battle more convincing. Following a grand finale in 1732, the stage indeed was abandoned for more than a century before the visit of Charles Dickens.

Allied bombing destroyed much of the Farnese Theatre in the spring of 1944. Even though it had not been in use for years, the decision was made in the 1950s to rebuild the theatre on the same grand scale as before.

Classical music resounds from concerts presented on the stage several times a month, much higher usage than the theatre ever experienced during its first three centuries.