Life in the Clearings versus the Bush

by Susanna Moodie

Like mourning coaches when the funeral's done.'"

Some years ago I witnessed the funeral of a young lady, the only child of very wealthy parents, who resided in of Bedford-square. The heiress of their enviable riches was a very delicate, fragile-looking girl, and on the day that she attained her majority her parents gave a large dinner party, followed by a ball in the evening, to celebrate the event. It was during the winter; the night was very cold, the crowded rooms overheated, the young lady thinly but magnificently clad. She took a chill in leaving the close ballroom for the large, ill-warmed supper-room, and three days after, the hope of these rich people lay insensible on her bier.

I heard from every one that called upon Mrs. L---, the relative and friend with whom I was staying, of the magnificent funeral would be given to Miss C---. Ah, little heeded that pale crushed flower of yesterday, the pomp that was to convey her from the hot-bed of luxury to the cold, damp vault of St. Giles's melancholy looking church! I stood at Mrs. L---'s window, which commanded a view of the whole square, to watch the procession pass up Russell-street to the place of interment. The morning was intensely cold, and large snow-flakes fell lazily and heavily to the earth. The poor dingy sparrows, with their feathers ruffled up, hopped mournfully along the pavement in search of food; they,

"In spite of all their feathers, were a-cold."

The mutes that attended the long line of mourning coaches stood motionless, leaning on their long staffs wreathed with white, like so many figures that the frost-king had stiffened into stone. The hearse, with its snowy plumes, drawn by six milk-white horses, might have served for the regal car of his northern majesty, so ghost-like and chilly were its sepulchral trappings. At length the coffin, covered with black velvet, and a pall lined with white silk and fringed with silver, was borne from the house and deposited in the gloomy depths of the stately hearse. The hired mourners, in their sable dresses and long white hatbands and scarfs, rode slowly forward mounted on white horses, to attend this bride of death to her last resting place. The first three carriages that followed contained the family physician and surgeon, a clergyman, and the male servants of the house, in deep sables. The family carriage too was there, but empty, and of a procession in which 145 private carriages made a conspicuous show, all but those enumerated above were empty. Strangers drove strange horses to that vast funeral, and hired servants were the only members of the family that conducted the last scion of that family to the grave. Truly, it was the most dismal spectacle we ever witnessed, and we turned from it sick at heart, and with eyes moist with tears not shed for the dead, for she had escaped from this vexatious vanity, but from the heartless mockery of all this fictitious woe.

The expense of such a funeral probably involved many hundred pounds, which had been better bestowed on charitable purposes.

Another evil arising out of this absurd custom, is the high price attached to black clothing, on account of the necessity that compels people to wear it for so long a period after the death of a near relation, making it a matter of still greater difficulty for the poorer class to comply with the usages of society.

"But who cares about the poor, whether they go into mourning for their friends or no? it is a matter of no consequence."

Ah, there it is. And this is not the least forcible argument we have to advance against this useless custom. If it becomes a moral duty for the rich to put on black for the death of a friend, it must be morally necessary for the poor to do the same. We see no difference in the degrees of moral feeling; the soul of man is of no rank, but of equal value in our eyes, whether belonging to rich or poor. But this usage is so general, and the neglect of it considered such a disgrace, that it leaves a very wide door open for the entrance of false pride.

Poverty is an evil which most persons, however humble their stations may be, most carefully endeavour to conceal. To avoid an exposure of their real circumstances, they will deprive themselves of the common necessaries of life, and incur debts which they have no prospect of paying, rather than allow their neighbours to suspect that they cannot afford a handsome funeral and good mournings for any deceased member of their family. If such persons would but follow the dictates of true wisdom, honesty, and truth, no dread of the opinion of others should tempt them to do what they cannot afford. Their grief for the dead would not be less sincere if they followed the body of the beloved in their ordinary costume to the grave; nor is the spectacle less imposing divested of all the solemn foppery which attends the funeral of persons who move in respectable society.