While standing in Mount Jerome cemetery in Harold’s Cross yesterday, waiting for the hearse to arrive, I stumbled upon the gravestone of William Wilde and his wife Speranza, the father and mother of Oscar Wilde. The sun was sharp and clear, and the day was wintry but bright, and the skeletal trees shook with the violence of the wind. Mount Jerome is a beautiful cemetery, one that at some time in the past would have had a view of the Dublin mountains, but now the vista is disturbed somewhat by the redbrick terraced apartments that line the south wall of the grounds. The graveyard houses much of Dublin’s upper crust: doctors, Sirs this and that. Founded in 1830, it only began to allow Catholic burials there in 1920. Yesterday the place had a distinct Joycean air – but perhaps I was just kidding myself: in spirit, and in reality, Mount Jerome belongs to the Victorians. It has much of the weather beaten, decaying charm of Pere Lachaise in Paris, and stands on a hill shielded from the view of the main road.
27
Sep