Dagonet Abroad

by George R. Sims

The next funeral arrives as I am leaving the cemetery. A car, driven by a man smoking a cigarette, comes up. It is followed by a cab, from which alights an old gentleman, also smoking a cigarette. The car pulls up at the gate of the ‘depository,’ a little house in the grounds arranged for the reception of people who have died too late to be buried that day. The guardian of this house, cigarette in mouth, flings open the doors, speaks to the gentleman, and then calls for somebody to come. A man with a cigarette in his mouth now approaches. He and the car-driver lift out the coffin and carry it into the house and lay it on the trestles. They then light a candle at the head and foot, and come out and shut the door. Off drives the car, the man lighting another cigarette, and the gentleman to whom the corpse belongs strolls across the cemetery with the gravedigger to choose ‘his place.’ The gravedigger turns up a little earth in one brick square, and then in another. ‘Too full,’ says the gentleman, puffing his cigarette. He goes from square to square, and pokes at the loose earth with his stick. At last he settles on a square which is only half full. ‘That will do,’ he says, and then he returns to his cab and drives away.

I make inquiries of the keeper of the ‘depository.’ The body inside the coffin is the gentleman’s wife. She died last night. She will be buried to-morrow morning. ‘Will the gentleman return to see her buried?’ ‘Oh, no; he has finished. He has left her here. The rest concerns us!’ We find it difficult to understand this leaving the dead to be buried without ceremony, and without a friendly watcher; but the Spaniards think nothing of it. They bid their dead good-bye with the last prayer. The interment is no ceremony at all to them. The dead are hurried out of the house as soon as possible. Sometimes they are sent to the undertaker’s ‘depository’ within a couple of hours of their decease, and the friends see no more of them. This, with the Southern horror of a corpse, one can understand. But the cigarette-smoking of hearse-drivers, cemetery attendants, and gravediggers while handling the coffin, strikes the foreign looker-on as, to say the least of it, lacking in ordinary respect for the dead.

In many parts of Spain the death ceremonies are peculiar. The corpse is elaborately dressed in its best, and has its hair beautifully done, and a pair of new boots put on its feet. It is then got rid of as soon as possible, and all the furniture in the room is taken out and sold, or given away. Everything that can remind the family of the deceased is removed. A notice of the death is not only inserted in the newspapers, but in some cases placarded on the walls; and you are requested to go to such and such a church on such and such a day, when a mass will be said for the repose of the dead person’s soul.

Among the poor there is a very free-and-easy way of getting their dead buried. One day, outside a great cemetery, I came upon three common coffins lying on the ground near the gate. Seeing that the coffins were occupied, I started back in horror, and asked what, in Heaven’s name, such an exhibition meant. ‘Oh,’ said my Spanish friend, ‘they are poor people who cannot afford to be buried yet. There is a little fee to be paid. Someone will come by presently, and pay for the coffins to be put away as an act of charity.’

Unburied coffins are bad enough, but what do you think of dead children hung up outside the cemetery gates, waiting for some kind soul to pay for them to be put into the earth? The sight is not uncommon in the South of Spain, where every form and shape of beggary is rampant. Sometimes the friends of a small corpse, instead of asking charity, will smuggle it into the cemetery hidden under a cloak; and, when no one is looking, drop it into one of the big square graves I have told you about, and kick a little loose earth over it. There are plenty of uncoffined dead under the loose earth in the great cemetery of Seville.

Burials alive are far more common in hot countries, where the burial takes place within twenty-four hours after death, than they are in England, where one gets, as a rule, a week’s grace. In Spain the body is frequently removed to the undertaker’s shop a few hours after death. In one of the largest of these establishments in Madrid, some years ago, an extraordinary sight was witnessed. A gentleman was brought in his ‘casket’ one afternoon, and placed in the room set apart for that branch of the business. The proprietor lived over his premises, and on this especial evening was giving a grand ball. When the ball was at its height, a gentleman in full evening dress suddenly joined the company. He danced with the wife of the undertaker, and he danced with the undertaker’s daughter, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

The undertaker thought he knew his face, but did not like to be rude and ask him his name; but by-and-by all the guests departed, and the strange gentleman was the only one left. ‘Shall I send for a cab for you?’ said the host at last. ‘No thank you,’ replied the gentleman; ‘I’m staying in the house.’ ‘Staying in the house!’ exclaimed the undertaker; ‘who are you, sir?’ ‘What, don’t you know me? I’m the corpse that was brought in this afternoon.’ The undertaker, horrified, rushed to the mortuary-room and found the coffin empty. His wife and daughter had been dancing with a corpse. An explanation, of course, followed. The gentleman, who had only been in a trance, had suddenly recovered, and hearing music and revelry above, and having a keen sense of humour, had got out of his coffin (the Spanish coffin closes with a lid, which is only locked just previous to interment) and joined the festive party. He was quite presentable, as in Spain the dead are generally buried in full evening dress.

Writing about funerals in Spain reminds me of a curious ceremony in connection with the burial of Spanish kings. The Pantheon in the Escorial is their last home. Here they lie in splendid marble sarcophagi in great niches, and you can walk about and see them all. Alfonso’s sarcophagus is empty as yet. The late King’s body lies on a table in an adjoining chamber—a chamber called El Pudridero, which is really a place where the royal bodies are left to undergo the natural process of decay which at last fits them to be placed in the ornamental arrangement in the Pantheon. The ceremony to which I referred above took place at the late King’s funeral. The body was brought in great state from Madrid to the Escorial, a distance of thirty miles. The ‘intendant’ of the royal palace was in charge of it. When the procession reached that gate of the Escorial which is only opened to admit a dead sovereign, the procession halted. The ‘intendant’ then went to the coffin and opened it, and exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘Don Alfonso!’ then again still louder, ‘Don Alfonso!’ and again, ‘Don Alfonso!’ He then turned to the officials, and said, ‘Don Alfonso does not answer; he is dead!’ The coffin was locked again, and the King passed on to his last home.

A note or two before I leave Seville. When I arrived in Seville, before seeing the sights, I went to a barber’s shop to have my head shampooed and to be shaved, and to be generally put straight after fifteen hours in the train. I asked my ‘Figaro’ if he was the Barber of Seville. He shook his head deprecatingly, and said, ‘No; but he was one of them.’ I explained to him that I wanted to know if he was the immortal Barber of Seville—that it was a mild joke. He said there were so many barbers in Seville. He had never heard of Count Almaviva, but he knew a Rosina. She was working in the great tobacco factory of Seville, and was very pretty. I lost my patience. I cried, ‘Great heavens, man! you are a barber of Seville, and you never heard of the Barber of Seville who is in an opera known all over the world?’ The man thought for a little while, and then exclaimed, ‘Ah! I know what you mean now. They show a shop to tourists where a barber once lived who did something. But I didn’t know it was true about him. The guides here make so many stories for the tourists!’

I left the Barber of Seville sad and downcast. I had expected that all the time he was shaving me he would be singing the best-known airs of the opera. And he didn’t even know who Figaro was!