No. LVIII.
The late Archbishop of Bordeaux, when Bishop of Boston, Dr. Cheverus, told me, that he had very little influence with his people, in regard to their extravagance at funerals. It is very hard to persuade them to abate the tithe of a hair, in the cost of a birril.
This post-mortuary profligacy, this pride of death, is confined to no age or nation of the world. It has prevailed, ever since chaos was licked into shape, and throughout all Heathendom and Christendom, begetting a childish and preposterous competition, who should bear off the corpses of their relations, most showily, and cause them to rot, most expensively.
This amazing folly has often required, and received, the sumptuary curb of legislation. I have briefly referred, in a former number, to the restraining edicts of the law-givers of Greece, and the laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome.
Even here, and among the earlier records of our own country, evidences are not wanting, that the attention of our worthy ancestors had been attracted to the subject of funereal extravagance. At a meeting, held in Faneuil Hall, October 28, 1767, at which the Hon. James Otis was the Moderator, the following resolution was passed: “And we further agree strictly to adhere to the late regulations respecting funerals, and will not use any gloves but what are manufactured here, nor procure any new garments, upon such occasions, but what shall be absolutely necessary.” This resolution was passed, inter alia similia, with reference to the Stamp Act of 1765, and as part of the system of non-importation.
There is probably no place like England—no city like London, for funereal parade and extravagance. The Church, to use the fox-hunting phrase, must be in at the death; and how truly would a simple funeral, without pageantry, in some sort—a cold, unceremonious burial, without mutes, and streamers, and feathers—without bell, book, or candle—flout and scandalize the gorgeous Church of England! The Church and the State are connected, so intimately and indissolubly connected, that he, who dies in the arms of Mother Church, must permit that particular old lady, in the matter of his funeral, to indulge her ruling passion, for costly forms and ceremonies.
It is more than forty years, since, with infinite delight, I first read that effusion—outpouring—splendid little eruption, if you like—of Walter Scott’s, called Llewellyn. Apart from all context, a single stanza is to my present purpose; I give it from memory, where it has clung, for forty years:
When a prince to the fate of a peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark, round the dim lighted pall,
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute in the canopied hall.
Through the vault, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming,
In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.
In all this, the nobility ape royalty, the gentry the nobility, the commonalty the gentry: and there is no estate so low, as not, in this particular, to account the death of a near relative a perfect justification of extravagance.
There is scarcely one in a thousand, I believe, who has any just idea of the amount, annually lavished upon funerals, in Great Britain; or of the extraordinary fact, that joint stock burial companies exist there, and declare excellent dividends.