Victorian Mourning

Public shows of grief came to predominate in both England and America in the 19th century. In America, the trend was encouraged by bloodshed during the Civil War (the Union paid to embalm fallen soldiers and ship them home for burial) and cemented by the assassination of President Lincoln, whose body travelled in state by railcar from Washington home to Illinois, greeted at every stop along the way by vast crowds of mourners. In Britain, the trend was cemented by the public example of Queen Victoria, whose beloved husband Albert died in 1861 at age 42. She wore black the rest of her reign, some 40 years; the MET in New York has one of her dresses in its collection: link.

Whereas today we spend a fortune on housing, the Victorians spent a fortune on death, as we saw during our visit to Highgate Cemetery. In addition to the expense of a funeral plot and stone monument, Victorians paid for mourning dress—a purpose-made outfit worn for a set period and then ceremoniously burned. If you decide to write on this topic for the interdisciplinary essay, novelist Tracy Chevalier provides an excellent summary of mourning etiquette here, information she learned in doing background research for a work of historical fiction. In addition, scholar Sarah Tarlow provides a brief history of garden cemeteries, available in the “Readings” folder of the course Blackboard site.

The Victorians’ preoccupation with death and mourning is particularly visible in the work of its most prominent poet, Alfred Tennyson. After his best friend, Arthur Hallam, died in 1833, aged 22, Tennyson spent the next 17 years producing a book-length poem wrestling with that loss, titled In Memoriam, A.H.H. obit. MDCCCXXXIII.

Reading: Three pieces by Tennyson mourning the loss of Arthur Hallam.

• “Break, Break, Break” (published independently of In Memoriam in 1842)
• “Old Yew, which graspest at the stones,” Canto 2 of In Memoriam, 1850
• “Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,” Canto 106 of In Memoriam, 1850

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

1. Call our attention to a particularly moving line or detail from one of Tennyson’s poems of mourning.
2. Tennyson originally conceived of In Memoriam with a different title, “The Way of the Soul.” Just based on the three poems here, do you discern a path or journey taking place in his mourning process?
3. Wearing mourning was a public performance. But Tennyson published In Memoriam, A.H.H. obit. MDCCCXXXIII anonymously, shortly before assuming the title of Poet Laureate. Do these poems strike you as public or private expressions of grief?