I promised you a second post on our adventures in the Lowell Cemetery, so here it is!  This blog will concentrate on the unique statuary gracing the cemetery.  However, to begin, I want to revisit two of the monuments I showed you last time out.  I’ve done some additional research and discovered intriguing background on them.

First is this beauty.  I wrote about it as a penitent soul being ministered by an angel.  However, I found out that it has an intriguing back story.  A mill girl had saved up a considerable sum over the years, planning for a special monument to be erected upon her death, which came to pass in 1886, after a long life.  For various reasons, her plans weren’t implemented until some after her burial.  Finally, when everything came together for the tomb stone to be created, there was $8000 available (lots of dough back then!),  and those left in charge employed Daniel Chester French (creator of the Minute Man Monument) to create this work of art (Chris Camire).

This monument to the Bonney family has been the subject of all kinds of crazy stories about witches and hauntings.  However, the truth  is that it is just a remarkable monument to the Bonney family (“Mysterious Witch Bonney”).  It was created by Frank Elwell, the director of the Sculpture Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  He titled the monument “New Life”(Camire), no references to witchcraft at all!  The tomb honors Clara Bonney, who died relatively young in 1894, as well as other members of her family (Camire) – which kind precludes the monument housing the remains of anyone executed in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s as some like to claim.  I’m just saying . . .

Maybe the most remarkable monument, definitely the most well known, is this gorgeous recumbent lion. Called the Ayer Lion it memorializes James Ayer, a business man so prominent that he has a major street named after him in the city.  The face is so powerfully expressive you almost forget it’s not a human.  The lion is made of the finest Italian marble and was created in Italy, by Price Joy (“The Ayer Lion,” Lowell Cemetery).

I don’t have any  back stories on the following statuary, but I think their beauty speaks for itself.  I did note that books and publishing seemed popular, with two monuments taking the forms of volumes.   I believe this one on the right  honors two publishing partners.   I also found the one below that showed the “open volume” of one man’s life, resting steadfast on a rock.

And below, is a closeup of the text of his life.

There were also some funky, creative shapes.  I love the intertwining of initials here with what could be some form of a Celtic cross.

I can’t even begin to tell you what this thing is supposed to be – but it does have a kind of Lovecraftian flavor,  does it not?  Speaking of Lovecraft, there were some people taking pictures of a wonderfully goth-coutured wedding party.  The groom had perfect H.P.  hair, glasses, and suit!  We exchanged conspiratorial smiles as Yang and I drove by!

Of course there were also plenty of  angels, women ready to guide you to the unknown, and wise matrons. Something that gave many of these statues a wonderfully eerie quality was that, as Yang noted, they hadn’t been cleaned, so they frequently were aged with wear from the elements.  This woman bearing a cross is a particularly good example.  Is she coming to get me or guide me?  Her blurred features make her seem unnervingly not quite human and her motives ambivalent.

Others could be put in unique settings like atop a tall monument or caged within the marble barriers of something like a spire.  I see the woman above as a symbol of the heaven to which we all aspire above us. Holding a victory wreath, she implies if we reach her we can achieve the victory of salvation.   Perhaps she is a guide waiting in a liminal space to lead us ever upward.  Still, what about the woman encased in marble.  Does she need to be kept in to protect us?  Don’t blink!

Uh oh!  Hope that Whovian reference wasn’t too unnerving!  Here’s a picture of the victory lady in closeup to comfort you.

And what better way to end an October visit to a Romantic cemetery than with an autumn moon in a pure blue October sky?  Keats would surely approve.

Below are the web sites where I found the background information not evident from just looking at the monuments.  Check them out for more information and photos:

Chris Camire.  “What a Site!  The Lowell Cemetery Celebrates Its 175th Anniversary and ‘The Serenity of Nature.'” The Lowell Sun. 16 June 2016.  http://www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_30022685/what-site

“The History of the Ayer Lion”  Lowell Cemetery. 2015.  http://www.lowellcemetery.com/

“The Mysterious Witch Bonney.” Atlas Obscura.  2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mysterious-witch-bonney