MR LEACH’S FUNERAL SERMONS
Perhaps the “funeral sermons” which Mr Leach preached on his two wives in the early part of 1891 were as funny as the London lectures. Mr Leach said I should have to be his chairman at the “sermons,” but when the day came he said he would do without me, as he “durst bet ah’d bin hevin’ whiskey.” I went to the Temperance Hall, but was told by Police-superintendent Grayson, who was there with two constables, that he had special instructions not to admit me into the “precincts of that holy place” unless I was perfectly sober. There was an overflow crowd in the street, and I put it to them whether I was drunk or sober. There was a majority that said I was sober, and Mr Grayson allowed me to pass in. When Mr Leach saw me entering the hall, he called out of the police; but finally allowed me to take a seat at the foot of the stage. At the outset he declined to have me on the platform, until he “broke down,” and said, “Tha’d better come up here, Bill, for ah’m ommost worn aat. Ah’ll gie thee ten minutes ta say summat.” I accordingly mounted the platform and recited a few pieces I had written—“Come, nivver dee i’ thi shell, owd lad” (one of Mr Leach’s favourites), “Biddy Blake,” &c. After the lecture, I went with Mr Leach in a cab to his home. When we got there he said “They’ll be tawkin’ abaat this at t’ Devonshire. Tak’ this shillin’, and go see what they’ve ta say abaat my lecter.” I went to the Devonshire Hotel, and found several gentlemen talking and laughing over the “sermons.” However, Mr Leach had done his best, “an’ t’ Prime Minister couldn’t dew more,” as he expressed it. The delivery of the funeral sermons marked the close of his public life. It was not long after that he showed signs of illness, and I went to live with, and wait upon him. I had often to recite my poems for him, and one he frequently asked for was “The pauper’s box;” he assured me that he would leave me enough to keep me from being buried in a pauper’s coffin:—
Thou odious box, as I look on thee,
I wonder wilt thou be unlocked for me?
No, no! forbear!—yet then, yet then,
’Neath thy grim lid do lie the men—
Men whom fortune’s blasted arrows hit,
And send them to the pauper’s pit.
. . . . .
But let me pause, ere I say more
About thee, unoffending door;
When I bethink me, now I pause,
It is not thee who makes the laws,
But villains, who, if all were just,
In thy grim cell would lay their dust.
But yet, ’twere grand beneath yon wall
To lie with friends,—relations all,
If sculptured tombstones were not there,
But simple grass with daisies fair—
And were it not, grim box, for thee,
’Twere Paradise, O Cemetery!