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Spring-Cleaning the Ghosts
(published in Trespass, November 2008)
They are restoring the tombs in St John's churchyard, Hackney.
Each day the young stonemasons arrive like a little band of tomb priests. As they strip off the layers of dirt and flaky stone the dead seem reborn, and then re-clothed in a limewash solution.
The lucky ones have their lettering repainted too, for example the exotic tomb of the Rivaz family. One inscription laments the loss of their son: 'Sacred to the memory of First Lieutenant Francis Clifton Rivaz of the Ist Bombay Fusiliers who died on board the "Oriental" in the Red Sea on the 15th February 1855, aged 26 years. Now his long death has been reinscribed and an idea of him lives on freshly.
The crest of the aristocratic Cravens has a melancholy hue as if the family has been discomposed to find itself in one of the poorest boroughs of London. Admiral Francis Beaufort KB (1774-1857), sturdy on lion's legs, exudes a greater confidence. Hackney Council's attached printed details about the origins of the Beaufort Scale adds to his sense of resurgence. Thomas Edward Spencer (1845-1911), born in Hoxton, became president of the Stonemasons' Society at the age of twenty four.
The restorers retouch his tomb with professional courtesy.
Even the language of death has a quiet grandeur that our age cannot emulate, for instance: 'Leaving an affectionate husband and twelve children to deplore their irreparable loss.'
As the world helter-skelters towards oblivion, how beautifully absurd feels the love of these craftsmen for their work. They have no utilitarian purpose at all, and revel in restoring the past so that it flickers with transcendent dignity on the chaos of the present.
Today, ugly graffiti was scrawled across the angel's wings of a finely ornamented tomb. This insult felt inconsequential compared to the beauty of the memorial.
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