Her grave is dug; Stéphane Mallarmé and Harriet Smyth (1838 -1859) Kensal Green Cemetery

If I hadn’t been kneeling down, trying to take a photo of the colonnades reflected in a puddle, I probably would never have noticed the newish plaque on the grave next to the path; ‘Harriet Smyth 1838 – 1859 Friend of the young Stéphane Mallarmé Une larme sur sa tombe, ce n'est pas trop pour tous les sourires angeliques qu'elle nous donnait!’ The French translates as “a tear on her tomb is not too much for all the angelic smiles she gave us!” I was intrigued.

Harriet Smyth was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 1838, the daughter of Thomas Sheppard Smyth and Harriet Delatre. Her father was English, born in Uttoxeter, and was described as a gentleman and a graduate of the University of Oxford. Her mother was born in Canada to English parents; Harriet’s grandfather was Colonel Philip Chesneau Delatre, a British army officer who had served in Ceylon and then moved to Canada on resigning his commission, where he became President of the Niagara Harbour and Dock Company. Harriet’s mother was close to her older sister who had married Robert Sullivan, an Irishman who become a successful business man in Canada and was the second ever Mayor of Toronto. The couple had nine children but Harriet was closest to her cousin Emily. In the late 1850’s the two families were in the habit of travelling to France to pass the winter at Passy, then an elegant suburb of Paris. In Passy they made the acquaintance of a neighbour, Fanny Desmoulins, who was Stéphane Mallarmé’s grandmother. The two girls became friends with the young Mallarmé; Harriet was four years older than the future French poet (though he seemed to be under the impression that they were the same age, 17), Emily a year younger. Harriet was probably already sick with the tuberculosis that was soon to kill her and in February 1859 Mallarmé also became severely ill (his anxious father thought he might die) but had recovered enough by April to be sent to Passy to convalesce with his grandmother.  A year or so later Mallarmé wrote out a list of the key events of his short life in the back of a notebook he had entitled entre quatre murs – between four walls. One of these key events, written in English rather than French was "April 1859 I passed a night with Emily." No one is sure what Mallarmé meant by this – was he suggesting that he had lost his virginity to the 16-year-old Canadian? The subject was never mentioned again but whatever had happened between the two was seen by the young poet as being of unusual significance. 

Harriet and Emily soon returned to England with their families. Harriet must have been desperately ill by this time as she died on the 11 July at the house the Smyth family were renting in West Kensington, 9 Edith Villas, W14. She was 21. The family placed a short notice in the Morning Post and arranged a funeral. She was buried at Kensal Green on 15 July. At some point in the next few weeks news of Harriet’s death reached Mallarmé in Passy. The young poet was already obsessing over death, he had lost his mother at the age of 5, his sister in 1857 and then just before Christmas his aunt Herminie. That summer his grandfather was ill and left to his own devices Stéphane made a gloomy pilgrimage to the cemetery of Père Lachaise to see the grave of the poet Béranger and wrote the first of his Tombeaux poems, the most famous of which are his elegies for Gautier, Poe, Verlaine and Baudelaire. When he heard of her death, he also wrote two poems for Harriet Sa fosse est creusée (Her grave is dug) and Sa tombe est fermée (Her grave is closed). The poems are generally regarded as juvenilia;

Elle donna partout un doux souvenir d'elle!
De tout... que reste-t-il? que nous peut-on montrer?

Un nom!... sur un cercueil où je ne puis pleurer!
Un nom!... qu'effaceront le temps et le lierre!
Un nom!... couvert de pleurs, et demain de poussière
Et tout est dit![i]

Harriet’s story had been largely forgotten until Declan Walton, a retired UN diplomat, once deputy director-general of food and agriculture, took an interest in Mallarmé’s early poems and was moved by his elegies to the 21 year old and the story of their friendship. With the help of the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery Declan found and restored Harriet’s grave in 2013 and paid for the plaque that commemorates her friendship with Mallarmé. He also wrote an articule for the French academic journal Études Stéphane Mallarmé; Du nouveau sur quelques poèmes de jeunesse Mallarmé et les demoiselles Smyth et Sullivan (New Insights into Some Youthful Poems of Mallarmé and the Misses Smyth and Sullivan.) Declan himself died in April 2020. So it goes.

---

[i]

She gave everywhere a sweet memory of her!
Of everything... what's left? what can you show us?

A name!... on a coffin where I cannot cry!
A name!... that time and ivy will erase!
A name!... covered in tears, and tomorrow in dust
And all is said!

The shot I was taking when I noticed Harriet's grave

 

This extravagant journey: Steve Peregrin Took (1949-1980) Kensal Green Cemetery

I'm taking this extravagant journey
Or so it seems to me
I just came from nowhere
And I'm going straight back there

The Buzzcocks - Boredom 

Failure is often more interesting than success.  When Steve Took achieved a fleeting form of fame in the early 1970’s he was already a has been, a man whose moment had passed, who would spend what little time he had left to live watching his friends and acquaintances become household names whilst he slipped into obscurity. He was born Stephen Ross Porter in Eltham in 1949 and in 1967 answered an ad in the International Times for a drummer. The advertiser was Marc Bolan and the group he was planning to form was called Tyrannosaurus Rex. Adopting the name of a hobbit from Lord of the Rings Bolan and Took became a duo recording three folk inspired albums that met with limited success. Took moved to Ladbroke Grove and began to make the acquaintance of the hipsters, druggies and drop outs that formed the W10 scene in the late 60’s and early 70’s, one of them being Syd Barrett. Playing second fiddle to Bolan in Tyrannosaurus Rex rankled with Took and after the recording of their third album, Unicorn, he began to pester Bolan to sing and perform some of his own material. The two fell out and Took was sacked from the band just before their 1969 tour of the US. 

With Took out of the band and a new partner, Mickey Finn, Bolan shortened the name of the group to T. Rex and within a year became a seventies rock legend. Took suddenly found himself well known, his part in the founding legend of T. Rex was widely reported, but unable to capitalise on his new semi celebrity status. He formed and broke up a succession of bands including Shagrat and Steve Took’s Horns or performed with nascent versions of acts that were to become better known like the Pink Fairies. He worked with Rob Calvert and Nik Turner from Hawkwind, formed shortlived bands with Larry Wallis from the Pink Fairies and Mick Farren from the Deviants, recorded demos and talked to record companies but failed to sign a deal or release any music. When punk exploded in 1976 his Ladbroke Grove hippy friends somehow survived being washed away to oblivion, his friend Lemmy from Hawkwind forming Motorhead and Larry Wallis becoming a performer and producer for Stiff Records, but Took was well and truly finished. By 1980 he was living in his girlfriend’s council flat in Westbourne Park Road.  On Sunday 26 October he bought morphine and magic mushrooms for himself and his girlfriend and the pair injected the morphine that evening. Took died next day, choking to death on a cocktail cherry. His death certificate records the cause of death as asphyxiation.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s some of Took’s unreleased demo tapes were cleaned up and released on CD. They didn’t sell well, a few die hard Bolan fans probably indulging their curiosity. It isn’t surprising, they aren’t musical masterpieces. Spotify cruelly exposes the utter indifference met by Took’s music; Shagrat, his venture with Larry Wallis, has a mere 186 monthly listeners. His album ‘Crazy Diamond’ released as Steve Peregrin Took, 60 monthly listeners. And Steve Took’s Horns, just 11. T. Rex currently has 3.6 million monthly listeners. 

Not seeing 'Death' in Toronto; Mount Pleasant Cemetery

There were two things I wanted to do on a recent trip to Toronto; the first was to visit Mount Pleasant Cemetery, the second to see an exhibition called ‘Death; Life’s Greatest Mystery’ at the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibition, initially organised by and shown at the Field Museum in Chicago, explores “death through culture, science, and art, with an examination of the diversity of cultural practices and the myriad ways death is observed in the natural word” according to the Royal Ontario’s chief curator. There were no problems visiting the cemetery but the exhibition closed after being open for just one day. When I tried to buy a ticket the admission staff were cagey, telling me that an unforeseen issue had led to the closure of the exhibition until further notice. As we were only there for a few days that was my chance to see it gone. Only later did I find out what had been the problem; a Palestinian American artist, Jenin Yaseen, had staged a sit in at the museum in protest at “censorship and alteration” of one of her paintings which features in the exhibition. The museum had promptly closed the exhibition, presumably in an effort to minimise adverse publicity. This didn’t work of course as the story was soon all over social and traditional media and within 24 hours the museum had backed down and reinstated Yaseen’s work, uncut. 

What was all the fuss about? Yaseen says that two days before the exhibition was to open senior museum staff invited her, and three of her collaborators, to a Zoom call to discuss changes they wanted made to the display they had worked on which showed Palestinian burial practices. The museum was concerned that the display had become politically sensitive following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Amongst other changes the museum wanted to remove the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘exile’ and wanted to crop part of an image of Yaseen’s painting which showed two Israeli soldiers and a traditional Palestinian embroidery motif symbolising burial and death. The four were told that if they did not agree to the changes the whole display would be pulled along with a display concerning Jewish burial rites “to be fair to both sides”. Yaseen and her collaborators flew to Toronto from Michigan the following day and attended the opening of the exhibition. Unhappy at the changes they decided to stage a sit in. The Museum’s ham-fisted attempt to avoid controversy had spectacularly back fired. The story was now all over the media and the museum quickly capitulated and reinstated the original display. But not quickly enough for me to see the exhibition, alas. 

What struck me most forcibly about Mount Pleasant Cemetery was how immaculately kept it is. Its lawns are closely cropped, its paths rut free, its trees well maintained and its memorials almost miraculously well preserved. There were no areas taken over by wilderness, no collapsed trees, no impenetrable thickets of bramble and dog rose and no notices warning that memorials are liable to topple over and kill the unwary. No historic cemetery in London is this well looked after. Luckily our unkempt and neglected burial grounds have acquired an aura of romantic abandon that helps disguise the truth that they are shockingly neglected. Mount Pleasant was opened in 1876, its gardens and landscape designed by Henry Adolph Engelhardt. The 200-acre site was laid out with more than 12 miles of carriage drives. The legal status of the cemetery is controversial – it is owned and run by the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries, an organisation which says that it is an independent non-profit corporation. Others disagreed and said that the cemetery group is a public trust and the property of the citizens of Ontario, as a result of the original founding law passed in 1826. A six year legal campaign sought to bring the cemetery group back into the public sector and in 2019 a judge agreed with the campaigners, designated the group a trust and ordered that the directors be renamed trustees.

There are fewer interesting graves than you might expect in what is probably Canada’s premier cemetery. Ones that caught my eye were Harry Judson Crowe (1928) with its half-naked warrior resting on one his sword and one knee, and the memorial to Thomas Moor Junior and Isaac Hughes who died fighting against the Métis people of the District of Saskatchewan in the North-West Rebellion of 1885. The memorial in the form of a bench flanked by two semi naked women on the Cutten grave is pretty memorable. It is Mount Pleasant’s mausoleums which are most spectacular. Department store founder Timothy Eaton built an enormous Greek revival temple guarded over by two life size bronze lions. Most famous of all is the Massey family’s Romanesque tower built in 1891 to a design by EJ Lennox, the architect responsible for many of Toronto’s landmark buildings (including the Old Town Hall and Casa Loma).