MILAN.
I am going to see a gentleman cremated at the famous monumental cemetery
of Milan. I am specially invited to be present at nine o’clock in the
morning, and if my courage does not ooze out of my fingers’ ends, I
shall certainly go in the interest of my readers who may wish to be
cremated, and who would like to know beforehand what they have to go
through and what it is like.
To the ‘crematorio’ of Milan people are brought from all parts of the
world. The room in which the furnace is situated is a very nice
comfortable one, and there are black chairs set against the walls, in
which the friends of the deceased sit and wait while his body is in the
oven. The process is very simple. Suppose you want to be cremated. You
are brought into the room dressed in a nice white shirt and drawers, and
you are gently laid on an iron plate that looks like a large tea-tray
turned up at the ends. As soon as the oven is sufficiently heated the
door is opened, and you are pushed into a receptacle inside on the tray,
much on the same principle as a baker puts bread into the oven. The door
is then closed for two hours, and then the iron coffer is taken out.
Inside it your friends see a nice white powder and a few fragments of
white-coloured bone. That is you. You are then put into an urn, or glass
box, or anything you like, and put away in a nice little locker in the
great hall of the cemetery. Outside your locker is a lid with your name
and the date of your cremation inscribed on it.
I was shown in this hall, in a glass case, the ashes of a lady, aged
twenty-six, who was cremated a year or two since. She left her body in
her will to be burned, and afterwards shown in the interests of the
Cremation Society. Outside, in the grounds, there is a monument to her,
and on it in a glass frame is her photograph. She was a very pretty
lady, and it is difficult to imagine that she is the same person as the
little heap of white ashes in the glass jar. But she is.
It is a general I am to see cremated. He has been brought a long
distance in a coffin, and is temporarily deposited in the cemetery. The
performance is public, and there are no reserved seats. From what I have
seen it is absolutely devoid of offensiveness in any way, and all the
officials are smiling, happy-looking folks. I took so much interest in
the place that the chief official fancied I might one day be a customer.
He pointed out to me that in the hall of the cemetery the places for
‘urns’ to be deposited were booking fast, and would soon be quite full.
He had a capital stall--I mean locker--to let in the third row and one
in the fifth. The offer was very tempting, but I didn’t close with it.
I don’t know whether many people, when they are exhilarated by Nature’s
champagne, cry out, ‘I’m glad I’m alive.’ I do sometimes, and just at
present I have very good grounds for the exclamation. I have been
cremated, and that is enough to make any man rejoice that he can see and
hear and eat and smoke a cigar.
As I told you, I had an invitation to the ‘crematorio’ of Milan to see a
general cremated, which I accepted. Wonderful things have happened
since then, and that they may be understood let me proceed methodically.
On the day preceding the proposed cremation I made up my mind to spend
the evening at La Scala, with the exception of the San Carlo at Naples
the largest theatre in the world. I sent to the office for a box, and
was told there were none; they were all let. If I wanted one I must
apply to a subscriber who did not intend to use his that night. Off I
started in search of a subscriber. I inquired of the ladies and
gentlemen I met in the street, all in my choicest Italian, ‘Pray, have
you a box at La Scala, and do you intend to use it?’ At last in the
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele I met an old lady, who told me her master,
the Count Somebody, was out of town. I could have his key for fifty
francs. I sent to the address she gave, and received the key, and in the
evening marched into the theatre, unlocked my box, and was, for the time
being, _chez moi_. It seems droll to an Englishman to buy a key instead
of a ticket, but this is a common way of doing business in Italy, where,
in some of the theatres, the boxes are bought right out by nobles and
others for a lifetime. This perpetual proprietorship accounts for the
fact that the boxes are many of them differently decorated and lined.
Some are blue, some green, some red--all are furnished after the fancy
of the owner, and the general effect to the foreign eye is _bizarre_ in
the extreme.
The performance was, of course, magnificent. They know how to sing and
how to mount an opera at La Scala, and there were some processions and
stage pictures in ‘Don Carlos’ that Sir Augustus might have studied, and
Sir Henry made notes of. After the opera there was a ballet. It was a
prologue and six acts, and I was very interested in it, so much so that
I forgot for a long time to look at my watch, and when I did, in the
middle of the fourth act, I found it was 1.30.
I went home and to bed at once. I had to be in the cemetery by nine in
the morning to see the General cremated, and was terribly tired. I awoke
in the morning at 8.30. Then began a struggle in my mind. Should I dress
and rush up to the cemetery without my breakfast? I hesitated. A man
wants a meal before he sees a sight like that. I hesitated, and I was
lost, for I turned over and went to sleep again, and when I woke it was
10.30. The General was finished, and I had not been there to see.
I was sorry that, like my Lord Tomnoddy who went to the coffee-house
opposite Newgate, I had slept too long, but after a ballet that lasts
until 2 a.m. a man may be excused if he doesn’t get up in time for a
cremation at nine. I had made special arrangements with the officials
and a famous scientific gentleman of Milan, who was most anxious for me
to publish an account of the proceedings in England, and the thing
worried me a little all day; but at night I stepped into a compartment
in the sleeping-car for Lugano, and forgot all about the matter. Just,
however, as the train was starting and my eyes were closing in sleep--I
had dined well an hour previously--who should enter the car but the
scientific gentleman. ‘They told me where to find you at the hotel,’ he
said. ‘Come out at once; there’s a cremation to-night.’ ‘But my ticket,’
I said; ‘I must go on to Lugano.’ ‘Bother your ticket! Come with me, and
see what I’ll show you. You’ll never regret it.’ Before I could
expostulate further he had me out of the station and into a cab, and we
were soon driving along through the night in the direction of the
cemetery.
As we entered the gates the moon was high, and the figures of angels
and women in white marble, keeping guard over the graves, had a ghostly
effect. It was with something like a shudder that I passed through the
black doors of the chapel-like building where the crematory rites are
performed. The furnace was roaring already, and the heat was intense. I
glanced at the metal tray raised to the level of the oven, expecting to
see the body ready, but, to my surprise, this was empty. I turned to my
guide. ‘Where is the person to be cremated?’ I asked. ‘Here,’ was the
reply, and he touched me on the shoulder. Instantly I was seized, and
bound, and gagged, and hoisted on to the awful tray, where I lay dumb
and helpless. ‘You wished to have a thorough knowledge of cremation,’
said the fiend who had lured me to this awful place. ‘You shall have
it.’ I tried to scream; I tried to burst my bonds--all, all in vain. The
great doors of the oven were flung open, and there came forth a great
gust of heat that seemed to scorch my living flesh. Slowly the tray
moved nearer and nearer to the mouth of the oven. I was going to my
death--to be cremated alive! The heat grew more and more intense. I
scorched and singed; my eyeballs started from their sockets; my body
seemed to swell and crack. Suddenly with a violent jerk I was shot
forward into the oven, the great doors closed on me with a clang----
and--and--the conductor of the sleeping-car came rushing into my berth
to know what was the matter.
I woke with a start. The heat was intense, the fumes of the charcoal
terrible, and I had been dreaming a dyspeptic dream in my berth. Moral:
Never travel by an overheated sleeping-car after thinking about
cremation all day.