The Highgate Cemetery: In search of the Highgate Vampire
I was moved by the monument of the Victorian boxer Thomas Sayers, who wanted his faithful dog, Tim, commemorated as well. Though boxing was illegal in the 19th century, Sayers was enormously popular, and his funeral was attended by 10,000 people—a larger funeral than the Duke of Wellington’s.
“The Victorians had very small weddings and very big funerals.”Thus said our cheery guide by way of explaining the elaborate monuments of Highgate Cemetery, where I and my friend Caroline Kellett-Fraysse, fellow writer and journalist and connoisseur of all things esoteric, recently spent a sunny Tuesday afternoon. We had wanted to inspect this final resting place of Karl Marx, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a host of other famous and infamous folks, and discovered that the older and more interesting part of the cemetery was only open by tour (unless one actually dies). Immaculately kept, it has a studied overgrown quality, the sort perfected by English gardeners over the centuries.
We specifically wanted to explore Highgate because it is the fictional resting place of Lucy Westenra, the vixen/victim of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” though Stoker changed the name of the place to Kingstead. As we walked past the more ornate monuments like the Egyptian Hall, done in a style reminiscent of the Valley of the Kings, or the many-sided Circle of Lebanon, a many-vaulted tomb sitting dramatically beneath an ancient Cedar of Lebanon tree, I imagined poor Lucy buried within the vaults, only to be disentombed and subsequently slain and beheaded by the vampire hunters.
Friends and readers, you know how I like my swan themes. Readers often ask why I chose “Leonardo’s Swans” as the title to that book. I’ve always thought it was self-explanatory. Swans, like the heroines of the book, are creatures of immense grace, dignity, and power. In certain mythologies, swans represent the soul and one’s inner radiance. Swans are also associated with transformation. Zeus turned himself into a swan to seduce the mortal queen Leda. The misfit duckling of the fairy tale transformed into a beautiful swan. In “Swan Lake,” a princess and her retinue are condemned by an evil spirit to spend their days as swans until the pure love of a prince for the princess sets them free. Even though I’m now writing a Gothic novel, I am no less enamored with the myth and meaning of swans.
