Embroidery and Entombment

Sunny though it was, Thursday turned out to be a day of Gothic concerns. I sped up to London on the train with Is This Desire? on the headphones (a good start) and by noon was at the V&A for ‘Opus Anglicanum’, its show of material from the time – the 14^th and 15^th centuries – when English needlework was the envy of Europe. Amid the dark of the V&A’s temporary exhibition space, islanded within pools of light were works of such sumptuous detail and grandeur that they made one gasp. Of course I’ve seen a lot of this before, illustrated, but to see it in the flesh, in the thread and the silk, is a different matter. I was caught out by how long the vestments are: the great Clare Chasuble would come down nearly to my feet, and your average medieval clergyman would have been a bit shorter than me. Catherine-spotting was rewarding: she was present quite a bit. The ‘Embroiderers’ Lantern’, a hanging table-top-sized lamp with the known names of craftspeople picked out in black fretwork, managed to move me rather: these were the people whose fingers made these beautiful things, whose minds planned them, whose hearts rejoiced to see them complete and ready to be used.

The only one of the ‘magnificent seven’ Victorian cemeteries ringing the capital I’d never visited was Abney Park, so from Kensington that was where I went. The great Egyptian piers of the entrance are rather grander than anything you find inside the rails: there are no big, elaborate monuments or characterful culturally-distinct sections such as you find at Highgate, Kensal Rise, or West Norwood. The cemetery’s status as a nature reserve (like its cousin at Tower Hamlets) means that much of it is even wilder than it would otherwise be, and straying off the main paths is a hazardous enterprise. The tree cover is such that even Abney Park’s grandiose centrepiece, the heroically unattractive Chapel, can easily be missed if you don’t know it’s there, no matter that it’s winter. The sun filters through somewhat reluctantly. There are many moving and pretty corners, though. The Chapel’s being renovated at the moment, hopefully rendering it a bit less dangerous than it is now: my Goth accountant friend Ms Death-and-Taxes was once photographed posing inside it for the cover of Accountancy News, and it looked as though the arches could collapse any moment. In the Visitor Centre I met the custodian, a middle-aged gentleman in a black leather coat and a pair of New-Rock boots who clearly has his ideal job. He was touchingly uncertain what to do when I requested to buy a guidebook and a handful of postcards, implying it was an unexpected eventuality.