Nooks and Corners / being the companion volume to 'From Kitchen to Garret'

by J. E. Panton

Now all this can be managed, and, indeed, should be managed, on the wife’s part by a letter written to her husband, and on a man’s by a calm conversation with his wife, who of course will vow that nothing on this earth would induce her to marry again; but, unfortunately for her argument, example can be brought against her of people who have said just the same, who have wept in the marketplace and wrung their hands in high places, ‘so to speak,’ and yet have married generally ‘for the sake of the dear children’ before they had worn out their mourning, and therefore her protestations can be gently set on one side with the quiet statement that in that case the money will be in her own power. This can show no lack of confidence in the wife; it simply shows a lack of confidence in any possible future husband, and a consummate knowledge of human nature, which forgets disagreeables speedily, alas! and accepts hurriedly any chance that may present itself of obliterating a mournful memory and changing one’s trappings of woe for newer and far more beaming garments.

I never could understand the sensitiveness that prevents some wives and husbands from ever speaking of the future that must come when they will be separated. There need be no continual discussion of the mournful subject, but it should be discussed thoroughly when the will is made; it need never be spoken of again until circumstances arise that may cause some alterations to be made, or codicils added; anything that may be too painful to discuss can be written in the final letter of farewell. Then, if one has no accumulations of other folks’ letters, if one’s drawers are tidy, one’s bills paid, and one’s conscience clear, there will be nothing to make anyone extra-miserable after we have departed; we shall have done our work, left everything in order, and shall leave nothing but a pleasant memory behind us.

Death as a rule is either made unduly awful, or is a time of the most extravagant expenditure. The immense quantities of florists’ wreaths sent nowadays have brought into disrepute one of the most charming ideas possible, and the money once devoted to black plumes and undertaker’s millinery of all kinds, to extravagant mourning and absurd woe, is now squandered equally extravagantly and absurdly on wreaths, which cost from 15s. to 30s. each, and which are simply thrown into the earth to perish there untimely. Not for one moment would I deprecate the use of flowers entirely, but let them be arranged by people who loved me, and really bound them together because they knew I loved them. I would rather spend money, or have money spent, on some useful memorial than on a perishable wreath; and were I to die to-morrow I should say, Give me as simple, as cheap a funeral as you can, and give the money to my pet charity. It could be done in my name, and would be a practical remembrance of me, and a far more useful one than hundreds of wreaths. Why, I once saw a funeral in mid-winter where there were over 300 wreaths. This would have almost built a ward in the Hospital for Sick Children; it would certainly have helped the good Sisters at Kilburn, and have done great good to the children there, who had always been loved by her whose funeral it was. And in the same way would I deprecate a ‘handsome’ coffin and elaborate headstone; neither can do any good to the dead, and the memory of those we have loved can be perpetuated a thousand times longer should we content ourselves with the simplest oak coffin we can get and the plain cross, which will last as long as anyone could wish it to, while the money saved can be given elsewhere. Everyone has some pet scheme that could be benefited by his or her death; no one but the undertaker and florist is benefited now.

Another reason why we should not encourage the sending of an immense quantity of flowers from our friends is, that there is something almost ghastly about the false air of festivity given by the constant receipt and opening of the parcels and boxes in which they are sent; in the list of names which, must be written out, in order that all who sent may be thanked or their names mentioned in the local paper; and in the smothered remarks of the servants and children as they look at the beauties, and compare the present one with the last one laid on the coffin in the room which is so familiar and yet has become so fearfully and wonderfully strange.

But if flowers need not be sent (and I wish I could think all would send the money instead to some special fund), letters should always be written. They may not be read at first—nay may never be really read at all—but the name of the writer will always be remembered warmly, and as that of one who knew that sympathy is the most precious gift we can any of us receive when we are in the depths, and that dark curtain descends which seems as if it would lie for ever between us and the outside world. Ah me! no matter who has died, it will rise again, and life will flow on just the same as if we had never lost those who were so near and so dear to us.

Undoubtedly, too, though we should none of us ever call at the house to inquire after a scarlet fever, small-pox, or diphtheria case, we should let our friends know through the post that we are thinking of them. If their child is ill we can make up tiny parcels to send. A few flowers; a paper doll; a few old books, which can be burned as soon as read; ‘scraps’ to paste into books; odds and ends which cost nothing and can be destroyed without a pang, often making a small child’s day of tedious weariness and slow convalescence, an entirely different thing to what it might have otherwise been; and the idea of what to-morrow’s post may bring has, to my knowledge, more than once soothed a tired little girl to rest; for she would go to sleep easier when she remembered that the sooner the night was over the sooner the familiar ring would be heard, and the lovely parcel would arrive, which might contain nothing more costly than glass beads for stringing, or some roses and a cheap little vase to put them in, but which was a never-ending source of wonder and delight, until the child was well and able to take her place again among her brothers and sisters.

In the sick room, which may be the death chamber, sympathy, always precious, becomes an absolute necessity, and a tedious day of pain is often borne more courageously than it otherwise would have been, and passes quicker than it otherwise might have done, if we know that people are thinking of us and wondering if there is anything they can do to lighten our time of trouble and to help us bear the inevitable misery of it all. A sick person, or an invalid, should never be forgotten. I verily believe half our dread of death comes from the fact that we know that soon we shall be as if we had never been, and that our place shall be taken by another and shall know us no more.

When we are quite sure that there is an infectious disease in our house, we ought to be compelled by Act of Parliament to register the fact at some convenient place, where a list of houses similarly infected should undoubtedly be exposed in a prominent place. None should be exempt from this law, and the doctor should be the person responsible for the registration, a severe penalty, moreover, being inflicted in any case of wilful misrepresentation or of the withholding of proper information of the outbreak.

That the penalty is necessary is proved by the fact that I once knew a country doctor speak of a bad attack of scarlet fever as a mild case of rose rash, because he was abjectly afraid of losing the patronage of the dame whose child it was, and who objected to the isolation which would have been her portion had the truth been known. Still the disease spread, owing to her selfishness and the doctor’s supineness, and the truth came out, but not before she had done endless mischief and caused the death of a child of one of her relations, who was sent into the house with his nurse to inquire after the ‘rose rash,’ and who would never have been allowed to pass even the same side of the street had his mother known the truth; and both the doctor and the patient’s mother were in consequence ostracised and isolated from their fellow-creatures far more completely and for a much longer period than they would have been had they boldly and at once told the truth.

Nowadays, with the slight exception of the law that we must not wilfully expose anyone suffering from an infectious disease in a public conveyance, we may do pretty much as we like.[A] We can send other members of the family to church or the theatre; we can send our washing to the public laundry, we may let our friends come and see us without mentioning what is the matter, and, in fact, there is no law except the moral law (which governs so few of us) to prevent us handing on the complaint to as many people as we can comfortably manage to infect. The registration would prevent this, as it would prevent us from stopping in a fever-bed or (as happened to me not a month ago) from sending a cat to be doctored in a house where there was a fatal case of scarlet fever; and how that cat didn’t bring it back to us is more than I can understand, but it did not. Albeit, any mother can understand what I felt until I knew all chance of infection was over from that source at all events.