A Picture of Thackeray's Grave

In 1988, on my first trip to London, I took the train out to Kensal Green Cemetary, and, with the help of my trusty Blue Guide to Literary Britain, I located Thackeray's grave:

No. 18177 in square 36 between South Avenue and the canal. Its simplicity and modest position prompted Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, a friend since their days at Trinity College, to write: "But, may be, he--who could so draw/ The hiddens great--the humble wise,/ Yielding with them to God's good law/ Makes the Pantheon where he lies." (386-87)

The "simplicity and modest position" had been enhanced, as one can see above, by an equally modest memorial, and the grave's inscription was worn to illegibility by the weather. Nearby the grave of Mary Hogarth, Dickens' beloved sister-in-law, stood carefully tended and with a surprisingly unfaded headstone.