James Clegg (dated April 13, 1781), after giving a sum to Mrs. Tommasa Jackson to employ it in giving a dinner to herself and his most intimate friends, within a month of his death, “sooner or later according as her tears may have subsided,” proceeds: “With regard to my burial my executors shall do as they please: all I recommend is not to be lain under ground alive, I mean that they keep me after my death for two days in some place before burial, paying those for their trouble who may have me in charge—will you do it? It being customary to honour the dead with monuments and pompous tombs, here I intend to interfere, and give orders that for me no greater expense be made than 100 dollars and for an inscription these few words: ‘Here lies James Clegg,’ which to me appears sufficient: every reader may say what more he thinks fit.” But time—perhaps success—seems somewhat to have relaxed his resolution, for by a codicil dated May 4, 1784, he says: “In case of my decease there shall be called an honourable meeting at which all my countrymen and all the merchants shall be invited, and to my countrymen scarves shall be given, and that a decent tomb shall be made for me at the expense of from two to three hundred dollars, and on the same this inscription shall be written: ‘The monument of James Clegg anno ...’”
“And lastly, to close all,” wrote Gilbert White, of Selborne, “I do desire that I may be buried in the Parish Church of Selborne aforesaid in as plain and private a way as possible, without any pall bearers or parade, and that six honest day-labouring men (respect being had to such as have bred up large families) may bear me to my grave, to whom I appoint the sum of ten shillings each for their trouble.”
Coming to recent days it would be easy to illustrate the desire for simplicity in death, from highest to lowest, but instances may be seen in the papers from day to day. Leopold, King of the Belgians, whose will was dated November 20, 1907, said: “I wish to be buried early in the morning, without any pomp whatsoever. Apart from my nephew Albert and my household, I forbid anyone to follow my remains.” The late Earl of Leicester, when he died the “Father” of the House of Lords, desired that his body “be buried in the churchyard at Holkham, enclosed in a single plain deal coffin only, without any brasses or ornament whatever; and I request my executors not to provide any gloves or hatbands, or to allow any other foolish expenditure at my funeral.”
A late Bishop Suffragan of Shrewsbury directed that he should be buried in the simplest possible manner, in an earthen grave which was to be covered with a low plinth bearing the words, “Not worthy of the least of all the mercies which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant,” and earnestly entreated that no attempt should be made to raise any public memorial in his honour. Father Tyrrell, in a document dated January 1, 1909, wished nothing to be written on his grave except his name and the statement that he was a Catholic priest, with the addition only of the emblem of the Chalice and the Host.
Less simple in the desire for simplicity were the instructions of a solicitor, who directed that his remains should be cremated and the ashes scattered in some plantation for restoration to the world which he had “found so delightful”; that his funeral should be conducted in the most unostentatious, private, and, indeed, secret manner, without advertisement or invitations to attend, and that no gravestone should be erected.
At the particular desire of Edward Nokes, a miser of Hornchurch, whose niggardliness was extended to his funeral arrangements, none who followed him to the grave was in mourning, but each follower appeared in striking costume and the undertaker in blue coat and scarlet waistcoat. Such is the lamentable antithesis of a desire which is sometimes expressed, and with which it is easy to sympathise, that no black garments shall be worn. It is a desire which is, perhaps, increasingly common, though in the seventeenth century there are such conspicuous passages as Jeremy Taylor’s protest against undue lamentation and Bacon’s Essay “Of Death.” Sir John Monson (who is referred to on [p. 202]) makes it his last request that his wife and relations will not think that a loss to them which will be so great an improvement of his joy and happiness, and not make his crown their cross, but enjoy themselves and those earthly comforts God shall still bless them with in an holy submission and cheerfulness. Perhaps the ideal method in this question, difficult because of prejudice and custom, was attained by Christina Rossetti, who, at her grandmother’s death, was without black clothes, but wrote that she had nevertheless “managed to put on nothing contrary to mourning.”
Recently a testatrix desired her body to be buried in quicklime in an ordinary grave, not a walled grave or a vault, and directed especially that no mourning should be worn and that the funeral service should be as cheerful as possible: another that her children should wear as little black as possible, and not shut themselves up, but go out among friends and to places of amusement. “I am not afraid of them forgetting me, but I want them to be happy.”
“Let me be placed in my coffin,” wrote an artist in Paris, “as quickly as possible after my death, and let nobody outside the household be admitted to my death chamber before I am placed in the coffin. In a word I do not wish anybody to attend through curiosity to see how I look. Let no portrait or photograph be made of my corpse, and let me be buried in the shortest time possible. And do not weep for me. I have lived a life happy enough; the aim of my life was my painting, and I gave all of which I was capable. I might have lived another twenty years, but should not have progressed any more, so what would have been the good? And how content I should be if no one wears the marks of mourning. I always had a horror of this show, so if you cannot do otherwise, then wear the least of it possible.”
Thought and care for those who are to “have the pleasure of surviving” add here and there pathetic touches. Mary Horne in 1784 wrote an informal will, of which this is the dominant note. “My dear Sister, being very desirous of giving you as little trouble at my death as possible shall make no will, being well assured you’ll strictly observe and comply with this my last request, which is that I may be decently interred according to the enclosed directions.... My desire is that I may be kept as long as possible before I am buried, and to lay as near my dear father and mother in the parish church of Swindon as conveniently to be done, and if not attended with much trouble. I would have no shroud but combed wool: to be carried by six poor men of the town, and to each half a guinea given and a strong pair of gloves: the pall flung over me which belongs to the clerk, and no one invited to the funeral, but a pair of the best kid gloves sent to all in the town who I visited.... To those who have the trouble of laying me out and being in the room with me after I am dead a guinea to each and a good pair of gloves.”
As this was dated September 29, 1784, and proved on October 6th, the good lady must have written it within a day or two or an hour or two of death: it is legitimate to believe that she was as loath to give trouble in her life as after death, and that “all in the town whom she visited” were her mourners.