breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure a signal success.
As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which
of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun
descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty road. I had not
walked far, when I encountered this procession:
1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.
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2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in bright
red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was the established
local idea of State.) Both coach doors kept open by the coffin,
which was on its side within, and sticking out at each.
3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
walking in the dust.
4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden,
the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.
It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike to poor
Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so
beautiful.
My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was
that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse. She
married for money. Sally Flanders, after a year or two of
matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small master builder;
and either she or Flanders had done me the honour to express a
desire that I should 'follow.' I may have been seven or eight
years old; - young enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the
expression, as not knowing where the invitation was held to
terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased
Flanders. Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed
up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending
somebody else's shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was
admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands
in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was
personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful day,
having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and
having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn't cry,
I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an excellent creature, and had
been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew
that she was not in her own real natural state. She formed a sort
of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an
orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders's sister, her own sister,
Flanders's brother's wife, and two neighbouring gossips - all in
mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted. At sight
of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating me much
more), and having exclaimed, 'O here's dear Master Uncommercial!'
became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been the death of her.
An affecting scene followed, during which I was handed about and
poked at her by various people, as if I were the bottle of salts.
Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, 'You knew him well, dear
Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!' and fainted again: which,
as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said, 'done her credit.'
Now, I knew that she needn't have fainted unless she liked, and
that she wouldn't have fainted unless it had been expected of her,
quite as well as I know it at this day. It made me feel
uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I was not sure but that it
might be manners in ME to faint next, and I resolved to keep my eye
on Flanders's uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that
direction, to go too, politely. But Flanders's uncle (who was a
weak little old retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we
all wanted tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round,
incessantly, whether we refused or not. There was a young nephew
of Flanders's present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had left
nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea that was offered him, this
nephew - amounting, I should say, to several quarts - and ate as
much plum-cake as he could possibly come by; but he felt it to be
decent mourning that he should now and then stop in the midst of a
lump of cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the
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contemplation of his uncle's memory. I felt all this to be the
fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as
if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be
pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I knew that he
was making game. So, when we got out into the streets, and I
constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people
before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up
the people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we
were all making game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew
that it was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their
heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to
keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning
spy-glass, which he was going to open presently and sweep the
horizon with. I knew that we should not all have been speaking in
one particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if we had not
been making game. Even in our faces we were every one of us as
like the undertaker as if we had been his own family, and I
perceived that this could not have happened unless we had been
making game. When we returned to Sally's, it was all of a piece.
The continued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake; the
ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters containing port and
sherry and cork; Sally's sister at the tea-table, clinking the best
crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she looked down
into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms again,
and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered
to Sally when it was considered right that she should 'come round
nicely:' which were, that the deceased had had 'as com-for-ta-ble a
fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!'
Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of
which the burden has been the same childish burden. Making game.
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and
the funeral has been 'performed.' The waste for which the funeral
customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended
these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my
soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury
the money, and let me bury the friend.
In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly
regulated, because they are upon the whole less expensively
regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the
custom of tying a bib and apron on the front of the house of
mourning, or that I would myself particularly care to be driven to
my grave
in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm four-post
bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a cocked-hat. But it may
be that I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a
cocked-hat. In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently
hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of the
departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the
auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often
carry it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the
bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders;
consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is
carried through the streets without the distressing floundering and
shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and a
dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the
proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon,
which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always
a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows
combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of
the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like
circumstances here. The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for
such shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of the
town, the coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are
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hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no
pretence of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in
them were the worse for it. In Italy, the hooded Members of
Confraternities who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look
upon; but the services they render are at least voluntarily
rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost nothing. Why should high
civilisation and low savagery ever come together on the point of
making them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms?
Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time by
the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources
there were abundant claims. The Conjurer assured me that I must
positively 'follow,' and both he and the Medicine Man entertained
no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear
'fittings.' I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my
friendship, and I objected to the black carriage as being in more
senses than one a job. So, it came into my mind to try what would
happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, from my own house to my
friend's burial-place, and stood beside his open grave in my own
dress and person, reverently listening to the best of Services. It
satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been
disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very
heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest
need, ten guineas.
Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant on
'A message from the Lords' in the House of Commons, turn upon the
Medicine Man of the poor Indians? Has he any 'Medicine' in that
dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their
ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker? Yet there are authorities
innumerable to tell me - as there are authorities innumerable among
the Indians to tell them - that the nonsense is indispensable, and
that its abrogation would involve most awful consequences. What
would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and
forensic 'fittings,' think of the Court of Common Pleas on the
first day of Term? Or with what an awakened sense of humour would
LIVINGSTONE'S account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and
red cloth and goats' hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and
black patches on the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo
instead of Westminster? That model missionary and good brave man
found at least one tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the
ridiculous, insomuch that although an amiable and docile people,
they never could see the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the
attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without
bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much to be
hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever find his way
to England and get committed for contempt of Court.
In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of
personages called Mataboos - or some such name - who are the
masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place
in which every chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting
takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own
Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the
proceedings that every gentleman present is required to drink
something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged order, so
important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high
functions. A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather
near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos
the other day to settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence;
and was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the
Mataboos which, being interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks
with the sense of the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole
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population screaming with laughter?
My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is
not quite a one-sided question. If we submit ourselves meekly to
the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the
savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in
other matters wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely
diffused custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any
affair of public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible
noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they are
familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open places and letting
off guns. It is questionable whether our legislative assemblies
might not take a hint from this. A shell is not a melodious windinstrument,
and it is monotonous; but it is as musical as, and not
more monotonous than, my Honourable friend's own trumpet, or the
trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister. The uselessness of
arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, is
well known. Try dancing. It is a better exercise, and has the
unspeakable recommendation that it couldn't be reported. The
honourable and savage member who has a loaded gun, and has grown
impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and
returns calm and silent to the Palaver. Let the honourable and
civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart into the
cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his
speech off, and come back harmless. It is not at first sight a
very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across
one's nose
and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the
chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one's under lip, to stick
fish-bones in one's ears and a brass curtain-ring in one's nose,
and to rub one's body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to
entering on business. But this is a question of taste and
ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform. The manner of entering on
the business itself is another question. A council of six hundred
savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their
hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem to me,
according to the experience I have gathered in my voyages and
travels, somehow to do what they come together for; whereas that is
not at all the general experience of a council of six hundred
civilised gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting on
mechanical contrivances. It is better that an Assembly should do
its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct
its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would
rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject
demanding attention.
CHAPTER XXIX - TITBULL'S ALMS-HOUSES
By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses
and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and
ambitious of being much bigger than they are), some of which are
newly-founded Institutions, and some old establishments
transplanted. There is a tendency in these pieces of architecture
to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be
ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead
to the embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable
beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense. However,
the manners, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort
themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and
are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway
passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising the
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buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the
lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the
inmates.
Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to
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