The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
cannot, however, refrain from giving a passage from Shakespeare, even
though it should appear trite, which illustrates the emblematical
meaning often conveyed in these floral tributes, and at the same time
possesses that magic of language and appositeness of imagery for which
he stands pre-eminent.
With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,
Outsweetened not thy breath.
There is certainly something more affecting in these prompt and
spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the most costly monuments of
art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and the tear
falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier round the sod; but
pathos expires under the slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among
the cold conceits of sculptured marble.
It is greatly to be regretted that a custom so truly elegant and
touching has disappeared from general use, and exists only in the most
remote and insignificant villages. But it seems as if poetical custom
always shuns the walks of cultivated society. In proportion as people
grow polite they cease to be poetical. They talk of poetry, but they
have learnt to check its free impulses, to distrust its sallying
emotions, and to supply its most affecting and picturesque usages by
studied form and pompous ceremonial. Few pageants can be more stately
and frigid than an English funeral in town. It is made up of show and
gloomy parade: mourning carriages, mourning horses, mourning plumes,
and hireling mourners, who make a mockery of grief. “There is a grave
digged,” says Jeremy Taylor, “and a solemn mourning, and a great talk
in the neighborhood, and when the daies are finished, they shall be, and
they shall be remembered no more.” The associate in the gay and crowded
city is soon forgotten; the hurrying succession of new intimates and new
pleasures effaces him from our minds, and the very scenes and circles in
which he moved are incessantly fluctuating. But funerals in the country
are solemnly impressive. The stroke of death makes a wider space in
the village circle, and is an awful event in the tranquil uniformity
of rural life. The passing bell tolls its knell in every ear; it steals
with its pervading melancholy over hill and vale, and saddens all the
landscape.
The fixed and unchanging features of the country also perpetuate
the memory of the friend with whom we once enjoyed them, who was the
companion of our most retired walks, and gave animation to every lonely
scene. His idea is associated with every charm of Nature; we hear his
voice in the echo which he once delighted to awaken; his spirit haunts
the grove which he once frequented; we think of him in the wild upland
solitude or amidst the pensive beauty of the valley. In the freshness of
joyous morning we remember his beaming smiles and bounding gayety;
and when sober evening returns with its gathering shadows and subduing
quiet, we call to mind many a twilight hour of gentle talk and
sweet-souled melancholy.
Each lonely place shall him restore,
For him the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more,
And mourn’d till pity’s self be dead.
Another cause that perpetuates the memory of the deceased in the country
is that the grave is more immediately in sight of the survivors. They
pass it on their way to prayer; it meets their eyes when their hearts
are softened by the exercises of devotion; they linger about it on
the Sabbath, when the mind is disengaged from worldly cares and most
disposed to turn aside from present pleasures and present loves and
to sit down among the solemn mementos of the past. In North Wales the
peasantry kneel and pray over the graves of their deceased friends
for several Sundays after the interment; and where the tender rite of
strewing and planting flowers is still practised, it is always renewed
on Easter, Whitsuntide, and other festivals, when the season brings
the companion of former festivity more vividly to mind. It is also
invariably performed by the nearest relatives and friends; no menials
nor hirelings are employed, and if a neighbor yields assistance, it
would be deemed an insult to offer compensation.
I have dwelt upon this beautiful rural custom, because as it is one of
the last, so is it one of the holiest, offices of love. The grave is
the ordeal of true affection. It is there that the divine passion of the
soul manifests its superiority to the instinctive impulse of mere animal
attachment. The latter must be continually refreshed and kept alive by
the presence of its object, but the love that is seated in the soul can
live on long remembrance. The mere inclinations of sense languish and
decline with the charms which excited them, and turn with shuddering
disgust from the dismal precincts of the tomb; but it is thence that
truly spiritual affection rises, purified from every sensual desire, and
returns, like a holy flame, to illumine and sanctify the heart of the
survivor.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be
divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction
to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this
affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother
who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from
her arms though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that
would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be
but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend
over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains
of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in
the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be
bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of
the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise
its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed
into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the
convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is
softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of
its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though
it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety,
or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would
exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No,
there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance
of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh,
the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect,
extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but
fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave
even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he should ever
have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before
him?
But the grave of those we loved--what a place for meditation! There
it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue
and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost
unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell
upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness, of the parting
scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefs--its noiseless
attendance--its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies
of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling--oh, how
thrilling!--pressure of the hand! The faint, faltering accents,
struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection! The last
fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of
existence!
Ay, go to the grave of buried love and meditate! There settle the
account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited--every
past endearment unregarded, of that departed being who can
never-never--never return to be soothed by thy contrition!
If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or a
furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a
husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole
happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth;
if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought or word or deed,
the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and
hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies
cold and still beneath thy feet,--then be sure that every unkind look,
every ungracious word, every ungentle action will come thronging back
upon thy memory and knocking dolefully at thy soul: then be sure that
thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter
the unheard groan and pour the unavailing tear, more deep, more bitter
because unheard and unavailing.
Then weave thy chaplet of flowers and strew the beauties of Nature about
the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender
yet futile tributes of regret; but take warning by the bitterness of
this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more
faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.
* * * * *
In writing the preceding article it was not intended to give a full
detail of the funeral customs of the English peasantry, but merely to
furnish a few hints and quotations illustrative of particular rites, to
be appended, by way of note, to another paper, which has been withheld.
The article swelled insensibly into its present form, and this is
mentioned as an apology for so brief and casual a notice of these usages
after they have been amply and learnedly investigated in other works.
I must observe, also, that I am well aware that this custom of adorning
graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides England. Indeed,
in some it is much more general, and is observed even by the rich and
fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its simplicity and to degenerate
into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of
monuments of marble and recesses formed for retirement, with seats
placed among bowers of greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally
are covered with the gayest flowers of the season. He gives a casual
picture of filial piety which I cannot but transcribe; for I trust it is
as useful as it is delightful to illustrate the amiable virtues of the
sex. “When I was at Berlin,” says he, “I followed the celebrated Iffland
to the grave. Mingled with some pomp you might trace much real feeling.
In the midst of the ceremony my attention was attracted by a young
woman who stood on a mound of earth newly covered with turf, which she
anxiously protected from the feet of the passing crowd. It was the tomb
of her parent; and the figure of this affectionate daughter presented a
monument more striking than the most costly work of art.”
I will barely add an instance of sepulchral decoration that I once
met with among the mountains of Switzerland. It was at the village of
Gersau, which stands on the borders of the Lake of Lucerne, at the foot
of Mount Rigi. It was once the capital of a miniature republic shut up
between the Alps and the lake, and accessible on the land side only by
footpaths. The whole force of the republic did not exceed six hundred
fighting men, and a few miles of circumference, scooped out as it were
from the bosom of the mountains, comprised its territory. The village
of Gersau seemed separated from the rest of the world, and retained