TO mention only by name the sorrows of an Undertaker, will be likely to raise a smile on most faces,—the mere words suggest a solemn stalking parody of grief to the satiric fancy;—but give a fair hearing to my woes, and even the veriest mocker may learn to pity an Undertaker who has been unfortunate in all his undertakings.
My Father, a Furnisher and Performer in the funeral line, used to say of me,—noticing some boyish levities—that “I should never do for an Undertaker.” But the prediction was wrong—my Parent died, and I did for him in the way of business. Having no other alternative, I took possession of a very fair stock and business. I felt at first as if plunged in the Black Sea—and when I read my name upon the shop door, it threw a crape over my spirits, that I did not get rid of for some months.
Then came the cares of business. The scandalous insinuated that the funerals were not so decorously performed as in the time of the Late. I discharged my mutes, who were grown fat and jocular, and sought about for the lean and lank visaged kind. But these demure rogues cheated and robbed me—plucked my feathers and pruned my scarfs, and I was driven back again to my “merrie men,”—whose only fault was making a pleasure of their business.
FAIRY LAND.
Soon after this, I made myself prominent in the parish, and obtained a contract for Parochial Conchology—or shells for the paupers. But this even, as I may say, broke down on its first tressels. Having as my first job to inter a workhouse female—Ætat. 96—and wishing to gain the good opinion of the parish, I had made the arrangements with more than usual decency. The company were at the door. Placing myself at the head, with my best burial face, and my slowest solemnity of step, I set forward, and thanks to my professional deafness,—induced by the constant hammering—I never perceived, till at the church gates, that the procession had not stirred from the door of the house. So good a joke was not lost upon my two Mutes, who made it an excuse for chuckling on after occasions. But to me the consequence was serious. A notion arose amongst the poor that I was too proud to walk along with their remains, and the ferment ran so high, that I was finally compelled to give up my contract.
So much for foot funerals. Now for coach work. The extravagant charges of the jobbers at last induced me to set up a Hearse and Mourning Coaches of my own, with sleek ebony long-tailed horses to match. One of these—the finest of the set—had been sold to me under warranty of being sound and free from vice; and so he was, but the dealer never told me that he had been a charger at Astley’s. Accordingly on his very first performance, in passing through Bow,—at that time a kind of Fairy Land,—he thought proper, on hearing a showman’s trumpet, to dance a cotillion in his feathers! There was nothing to be done but to travel on with three to the next stage, where I sold the caperer at a heavy loss, and to the infinite regret of my merry mourners, with whom this exhibition had made him a great favourite. From this period my business rapidly declined, till instead of five or six demises, on an average, I put in only two defuncts and a half per week.
In this extremity a “black job” was brought to me that promised to make amends for the rest. One fine morning a brace of executors walked into the shop, and handing to me the following extract of a will, politely requested that I would perform accordingly—and with the pleasing addition that I was to be regardless of the expense. The document ran thus: “Item, I will and desire that after death, my body be placed in a strong leaden coffin, the same to be afterwards enclosed in one of oak, and therein my remains to be conveyed handsomely to the village of *** in Norfolk, my birth-place; there to lie, being duly watched, during one night, in the Family mansion now unoccupied, and on the morrow to be carried thence to the church, the coffin being borne by the six oldest resident and decayed parishioners, male or female, and for the same they shall receive severally the sum of five pounds, to be paid on or before the day of interment.”
It will be believed that I lost no time in preparing the last solid and costly receptacles for the late Lady Lambert; and the unusual bulk of the deceased seemed in prospective to justify a bill of proportionate magnitude. I was prodigal of plumes and scutcheons, of staves and scarfs, and mourning coaches; and finally, raising a whole company of black cavalry, we set out by stages, short and sweet, for our destination. I had been prudent enough to send a letter before me to prepare the bearers, and imprudent enough to remit their fees in advance. But I had no misgivings. My men enjoyed the excursion, and so did I. We ate well, drank well, slept well, and expected to be well paid for what was so well done. At the last stage it happened I had rather an intricate reckoning to arrange, by which means being detained a full hour behind the cavalcade, I did not reach the desired village till the whole party had established themselves at the Dying Dolphin; a fact I first ascertained from hearing the merriment of my two mutes in the parlour. Highly indignant at this breach of decorum, I rushed in on the offending couple; and let the Undertaking Reader conceive my feelings, when the following letter was put into my hands, explaining at once the good joke of the two fellows, or rather, that of the whole village.