I must say my eyebrows shot up when Nat casually mentions that Miss Isabella Emery was one of his former mistresses, and I immediately wondered why he hadn't written it in shorthand. Then he mentioned being an errand boy for her, and I felt slightly ashamed for thinking such things!
It's not really surprising that Nat's so interested in death/funerals/graves and inscriptions when so many people he knew were dying so young. On the episode of the Edwardian Farm before the one last night (for anyone who's not watching, it's a TV show where a group of historians and archaeologists experience life as it would have been like on a farm in the early years of the 20th century), there was an expert who spoke of Hallowe'en as being not just about the ghosties and witches and ghouls that we play around with now, but that it was the harbinger of winter, which in a very real way did bring death with it, through the cold and the lack of food. I hadn't thought of it that way before. Death was never very far away for our ancestors, so it's natural that they should be mindful of it.
