In red hot haste to get out of a Colonial town—where the life was too
much like what I had sailed eighteen thousand miles to avoid,—I agreed
to my Mr. Gumscrew’s terms without debate. Board and lodging for self
and horse, undertaking to do the light work of the farm for twelve
months without wages. On these conditions I took up my abode in a
wooden hut thatched with bark, on which any well-bred short-horn would
have looked with contempt. The sun and moon shone clearly through the
chinks between the weather boards; my bedstead was a bullock’s hide
stretched over four posts driven into the ground, a slip of green hide
hanging from wall to wall, formed at once my clothes-horse and chest of
drawers.
To the great contempt of my companion and fellow lodger, the overseer,
I did put up a shelf for a few of my books, and drive in a nail for a
small shaving glass, although not then able to boast a beard. The floor
was of clay, variegated with large holes where the morning broom had
swept too hard. The fire-place, built of unhewn stone, formed a recess
half the size of our apartment. The kitchen was detached, and although
small, rather better constructed than our chief hut, for the cook built
it himself, and being an ‘old hand’ took pains with his special domain.
If I had been ordered into such a dog-kennel in England how I should
have grumbled, and devoured my heart, in vain complainings; but now—it
was my own choice, I had _hope before me_,—the glorious climate, the
elastic atmosphere made chinks and cracks in walls of no consequence;
and when inclined to grumble, I thought of the dark den-like lawyer’s
office in which I had wearied away the last six months of my European
life.
After a few days spent in cantering round the neighbourhood, I was
ready to commence my light ‘duties.’
Returning home one evening I stopped my horse to look at our ploughman
breaking up a fine piece of alluvial flat, which had recently been
cleared and fenced in. He had ten pair of oxen and a heavy swing plough
at work. There was a man to help him to drive, but his voice was as
good as his hands, and it was a pleasure to see him, as he turned up a
broad furrow of virgin soil, and halted his team, and lifted the big
plough over the roots of the stumps that dotted the paddock, as if it
had been a feather weight. Our ploughman, Jem Carden—Big Jem he was
commonly called—was a specimen of English peasantry such as we don’t
often see in Australia, tall, though a round shouldered stoop took
off something from his height, large limbed but active, with a curly
fair-haired bullet head, light-blue good-natured eyes, and hooked nose,
large mouth full of good teeth, a solid chin, a colour which hard work
and Australian sun could not extract, and an expression of respectful
melancholy good nature that at once prepossessed me in his favour. He
was then in the prime of life, a perfect master of every kind of rural
work, ploughing, sowing, reaping, mowing, thatching, breaking-in, and
driving bullocks and horses, and not less an adept in all Colonial
pursuits, for he could do as much with a saw, an auger, an axe, and an
adze as a European workman with a complete chest of tools. He was a
very good fellow, too, always ready to help any one at a pinch; when
the stockman broke his leg he walked twenty miles through the rain, a
tropical rain in bucketfuls, although they had fought the day before
about a dog of Jem’s, the stockman had been ill using; and yet Big Jem
was a convict, or speaking colonially, ‘a prisoner.’
About a year after my arrival at the Station, Mr. Gumscrew having
purchased a large herd of cattle a bargain from a person living some
200 miles from us, in the Mochi district, where all the grass was
burned up, determined on sending me for them, as there was little doing
at Springhill, and left me to choose any one I pleased to accompany me.
I chose Carden.
We got our horses into the paddock close to the hut overnight; the next
morning, at sunrise, buckled a blanket, a couple of shirts, a bag of
tea and sugar, a quart pot, and a pair of hobbles to my saddle, and
started in high spirits.
Now, living in the Bush, and especially while travelling, there is
not the same distance between a master and well-behaved man, although
a prisoner, as in towns. From the first I was interested in the
ploughman, so I took the opportunity of this expedition to learn more
about him.
We travelled all day from sunrise to sundown, seldom going off a walk,
at which our horses could do nearly five miles an hour: toward evening
we tried to strike some station or shepherd’s hut, the whereabouts of
which Jem generally knew by the mixture of experience and instinct
that constitute a perfect Bushman; if we could not light upon a hut
we camped down near a waterhole, lighted a fire on some hollow fallen
gum-tree, hobbled out our horses on the pasture near, put the quart
pots to boil, the damper (flour cake) in the ashes to bake, and smoked
our pipes until all was ready; then rolling up each in his blanket,
slept soundly on the bare ground.
I think it was on the third day that we came upon a long stretch of
open undulating country, where the grass scarcely gave back a sound to
our horses’ feet. I dropped the reins on my little mare’s neck, and
began to fill my pipe; but seeing Carden’s pipe still stuck in his
straw hat, I knew he must be bankrupt in a Bushman’s greatest luxury,
so handed him my pouch, and said, ‘Come, ride along side me, and tell
me how you came here; for I cannot imagine how so honest a fellow ever
got into trouble.’
‘Master,’ he answered, ‘I’ll tell you all the truth; but give me a
little time, for my heart’s full, and it will take us a good three
hours to get across these plains.’ So we paced on in silence for the
space of one pipe, when he spoke again, and said, ‘Master, excuse me,
but I’m not much of a scholar, and if you would read me a chapter from
this book, it would do me a power o’ good. I try sometimes myself to
spell it out, but somehow I can’t see the letters “plain.”’ His eyes
were full of tears as he timidly handed a black clasped copy of the
Bible.
There was something painful in the emotion and humbleness of a strong
man before me a stripling alone with him in a desert.
I took the book from him; on the flyleaf was written, ‘Lucy Carden on
her Marriage from her friend and pastor the Rev. Charles Calton,’ and
turning it over it opened at the 51st Psalm: instinctively, I began to
read aloud, until I came to the 17th verse, ‘The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not
despise.’ At these words my companion wept aloud, and murmured, ‘Oh, my
poor wife’—and I, too, I knew not why, also wept.
Then we rode on in silence for some time; from a confused reverie I
was awakened by my companion saying in a hoarse voice, ‘Master, I am
ready—I can tell you my story now.
‘I was born in a village in Hampshire, the youngest of a large
family—the son of labouring people. As soon as I had strength and voice
enough, I was sent into the fields to scare the birds from the corn,
and at eight years old, I began to drive plough for my father, so I got
very little schooling but what I picked up in the winter evenings at
a school kept by an old pensioned soldier. To tell the truth, I never
liked my books when I was young, for which now I have often need to be
sorry. But I was a strong hearty lad, and no out-door work came amiss
to me. As soon as I could stand to them, I took hold of the stilts of
the plough, and by the time I was sixteen, I could do a man’s day’s
work.
‘When I was seventeen I won a great ploughing-match. Among the young
gentlemen that came to see it was our young ’Squire, that owned nearly
all the parish. He had just left College, and come into his fortune,
for his father had been dead a many years. He was so much pleased with
what he saw at the ploughing-match, that he determined to take the Home
Farm into his own hands, and nothing would serve him but that I must
be his head ploughman; indeed, I believe if I had understood writing
and cyphering, he would have made me his bailiff,—for he was a young
gentleman that nothing could stop when he took a fancy into his head.
I mind well when he sent me off at twelve o’clock at night to London
in his own carriage to buy a team of Suffolk Punches, he had heard of
from a gentleman that was dining with him. Well, this made a man of
me at once. I was as tall as I am now, and I’m afraid I grew spoiled
with so much good. I was courting my Lucy at the time. She was the
only daughter of the blacksmith in the next village, and if ever there
was an angel she was one. The parson and his daughters noticed her
a good deal, because she was clever at her book and sang so sweetly
at church. Her father was a drunken old chap; her mother had been
dead many years. I used to look out for him when he came down to our
village, as he often did to drink and play at bowls, and see him safe
over the stiles when he was ill able to walk straight. Many and many a
day, after ploughing all day, and supping up my horses, have I walked
five miles, half leading, half carrying, old Johnny Dunn, for the sake
of five minutes’ talk to dear Lucy. Well, one night, in a wet autumn,
I was up at the Hall to take the ’Squire’s instructions; for he loved,
when he had strangers from London, to have me in after dinner, to give
me a glass o’ wine and make believe of talking farming; old Dunn tried
to get home after an evening’s bouse by a short cut over a ford I had
often led him, missed his footing, and was found by some lads that went
next morning to take up their night lines, stone dead—drowned.
‘There was poor Lucy left all alone in the world, for her father,
who had been a dragoon farrier, and married one of Parson Calton’s
maid-servants, had no relations in that part of the country.
‘I was getting good wages: there was a cottage and garden, belonging
to the ploughman of the Home Farm, that I had never taken up, because
I had lived with my father. The ’Squire made me many presents, and
I had saved a little money, made by working at different things in
winter evenings, being always handy with tools. Well, to make a long
story short, Lucy found her father had left nothing behind him but a
quarter’s pension he had not had time to drink, a few pounds due for
work, and the furniture of his cottage. She had nobody to take care of
her, so we moved the furniture to my cottage, and were married before
I was nineteen, and on the day Parson Calton gave her that Bible,
that never has left me since I left her. Many people blamed us, and
wanted us to wait. I don’t think good Mr. Calton quite liked it, but
his daughters were well pleased, and gave Lucy her wedding dress. Oh,
God, sir, when I think upon those days, on two years that followed, and
think of what I am, I wonder how I live and keep my senses. There was
not a happier couple or prettier cottage in the county. My working days
were not hard, for I had Lucy to welcome me home; and then on Sundays,
to see her dressed in her best and walk across the fields to church,
and hear her sing! Why, there was not a lady in the county could
compare with her, and I have heard many great gentlemen say so.
‘I had a child, too, a darling little Lucy. * * * But this was too much
happiness to last; we had been married just two years. The ’Squire
stopped at our cottage, as he was riding by on his way to London, to
settle about a ploughing-match that he had determined to make up for
the next week, and talked over a plan for breaking up a lot of old
pasture. A fortnight afterwards the bailiff came down with a letter in
his hand, and said with a grave face, “Carden, I have some bad news
for you; the ’Squire has determined to give up farming, and is going
to foreign parts. I am to discharge all the hinds as soon as I can get
a tenant for the farm. You are to be paid up to Christmas, and you
may keep the cottage until the farm’s let, but I rather think Farmer
Bullivant will take it.”
‘Here was a blow; we had thought ourselves provided for for life, and
now we had a home and a living to seek. Farmer Bullivant would not keep
me on, I knew well; he had his own ploughman, a relation. Well, we were
put to sore straits; but at last I got another place, although at lower
wages, some distance from my native village. Hard times came on; wages
were lowered again and again; and at the same time a cry rose up round
the country against the threshing-machines that were being very much
used, and were throwing a good many poor people out of work. The people
in England, sir, are not as we are here, sir, a very few words, and one
or two desperate fellows can always lead them; they are so ignorant,
they are ready for anything when they are badly off.
‘I went up one night to get my wages, and behold, when I got me to
the farmer’s house, the bailiffs were in, and he going to be sold up,
and the winter coming on. I walked toward home half mad; passing by a
public-house, who should be at the door but the ’Squire’s gamekeeper—he
kept him on—and he being sorry to see me so downcast, for he was a good
kind fellow, though a gamekeeper, would make me take a glass with him;
I think I had not been in a public-house since I had been married. The
drink and the grief flew up into my head; before I got home, I fell in
with a crowd of friends and fellow-labourers holloing and shouting.
They had been breaking Farmer Bullivant’s threshing-machine, and swore
they would not leave one in the county. I began to try to persuade
them to go away quietly, but they ended by persuading me; we met a
machine, as ill-luck would have it, on the road just turning into
Farmer Grinder’s stack-yard. We smashed it to pieces; in the middle of
the row the soldiers came up. I was taken in the act, with about twenty
others; they lodged us in Winchester gaol the same night. The assizes
were sitting; they tried us in batches, and found us guilty almost as
soon as we came into court. I never saw my poor wife until the moment
when the judge sentenced me to transportation for life. I hear her
scream often now; I wake with it in the middle of the night. We had
no time to get any one to speak to character for us; we had no lawyer
or counsellor. Such poor people as we were had no friends of any use.
The farmers who knew us were too angry and too frightened—although some
of them were the first to speak against the threshing-machines. Good
Parson Calton had been away, ill and dying, or I do not think it would
have happened. For where are we poor countrymen to look for a friend
wiser than ourselves if the Parson or the ’Squire does not stand by us?
‘My wife came to see me in prison, and wept so we could not talk much;
for it was so quick, so sudden—it seemed like a horrid dream; for me to
be a felon—for me, that could not strike a blow against any man, except
in fair fight—that never wronged a living soul out of a farthing—to
be the same as robbers and murderers! Well, I advised her to get quit
of all bits of furniture, and try to get to service, through the Miss
Caltons. I knew they were not rich, and could not help except by giving
her a good name—by giving a character to the convict’s wife! We were
to have met again the next day; the poor soul had walked twenty miles
to Winchester, and a fruit-woman that was in court took pity on her
when she fainted, and gave her half her bed. But the same night I was
waked up from the first sound sleep I had had since I was taken, and
put into a coach with a lot of others, with a guard of soldiers, and
sent off to the hulks; and in three days we sailed for Botany Bay, as
they called it in England. Oh, sir, that time was terrible. There were
many on board that thought the punishment a pleasure voyage. They had
no wives, no children to love. They had no good name to lose; they had
not lived in one parish to know and love every stick and stone in it.
They boasted of their villany, and joked at the disgraceful dress; they
only found fault with the food, and the labour of helping to stow the
ship; I did not care for the food or the work. They made me a constable
on the voyage, and I landed with a good character from the surgeon in
charge. I was assigned straight away to Major Z——. You must have heard,
sir, what a terrible man he was. A rich man that had forgotten he had
once been poor. He had more cattle and stock of all kinds than he could
count; he starved us, he cursed us, and very few Mondays passed that he
didn’t take up five or six for a flogging. But he was very glad to get
me and three or four of the same lot, for it was not often such regular
first-rate husbandmen came into the colony, so we were better treated
than many. For in those times, if masters could be hard where they took
a spite, still prisoners had a good chance of getting on. Well, my
spirits rose and I began to have some hope when I found that, with good
luck, I might have my “ticket,” that would give liberty in the colony,
in seven years, and when I saw so many who had been prisoners riding
about in their carriages, or driving teams of their own, as good as the
’Squire’s. Indeed, those that had good masters got on very well, but it
was commonly thought that Major Z—— never parted with a good man if he
could help it. He was sure to make up some charge and get him flogged,
so as to put off the time for his getting a _ticket of leave_.
‘I had driven oxen at home and soon got into the ways of the colony,
when, one day, the master came down to see a new piece of land I had
been breaking up near a house he was building, and was so pleased that
he began to talk quite kindly, although every second word was an oath,
and asked me all about myself. Well, I told him, and made bold to say
that, as he was going to build a large dairy, if he would send for my
wife and child we would serve him for any wages he choose, all the days
of our lives. He turned on me like a tiger, he cursed me, he told me he
wanted no women or brats on his estate, no canting saints, no parsons,
all he wanted was men that could work, and work they should. “If, you
fool,” he said, “you had asked for a gallon of rum among the gang you
might have had it, and drowned all your troubles, but I’ll have no
women here, wives or no wives.”
‘I think at that moment Satan took possession of me. I was ready to do
anything for my liberty, or to be free from my tyrant, and there were
tempters enough all round me. A few days afterwards one of my fellow
servants, an old hand, who had heard the last part of my master’s
speech, came to me in the evening, and, after telling me that he
supposed I had found out that nothing was to be got by fair means, that
my master was a rogue, in fact that every one was a rogue who was not a
fool, he began to hint that he could tell me a way to get my wife out
and my liberty too. I swallowed the bait, I listened; then he went on
to show how with money anything could be done in the colony, told me
instances of tickets and conditional pardons, besides escapes managed
by bribing, and then, when I was thoroughly poisoned, he swore me to
secrecy and explained how, out of a thousand bullocks, a few pair would
never be missed; so that all I had to do when I took a bullock team
to Sydney was to yoke an extra pair of young bullocks, making ten or
twelve pair, instead of eight or ten—a butcher, near where the drays
generally stood, was all ready prepared to take and pay for, as many
pair of bullocks as I chose to drive in. They were worth from 10_l._ to
12_l._ each, and I was to have 6_l._ for every pair.
‘I refused point blank. “Well,” he said, “I rely on your honour not to
peach.” He knew he had caught me. My master took an early opportunity
of having me flogged on a charge of insolence; the magistrates were two
friends who had been dining with him. My tempter came to me again,
and, on the next opportunity, I drove in the bullocks and became a
_thief_. Having begun I could not stop; my tempter became my tyrant; to
drown care I began to drink and to associate with the old hands, and
then the money, for which I had resigned body and soul, melted away.
What I saved up I knew not what to do with, and so I went on getting
worse and worse, until one day, just as I was driving a pair of young
heifers into the butcher’s yard, I was arrested, tried, and convicted
on the evidence of my fellow-servant, who, having been found out in
another robbery, saved himself by turning on me. I was sentenced to
three years hard labour in an iron gang on the Blue mountains. What I
suffered in those three years no tongue can tell. I was coupled with
a wretch who had been a thief from his childhood, a burglar, and a
murderer, but there was one man, a political prisoner sentenced to the
iron gang for striking his overseer, who saved me, and spoke words of
comfort to me; my term was shortened a year for rescuing a gentleman
from a bush ranger, and Major Z—— having left the colony, I was
assigned to my present master. In another year I shall have my ticket,
but what I shall do heaven only knows. I have had one letter from my
wife; she was living as dairy-maid with one of the Miss Caltons, who
had married a country gentleman; they were very good to her, and I
think her letter, full of good words, helped to save me from total
ruin. But you, sir, are almost the only gentleman that has spoken
a kind word to me in the Colony. We live like beasts of the field,
working and well-fed, but nothing more. On many stations the prisoners
don’t even know when Sunday comes round, and we die like dogs.’
Here he paused: and I felt so much affected by his melancholy story,
that I could not at the time answer him, or offer any words of comfort.
* * * * *
In my various wanderings I lost sight of Carden for two or three
years; but one day as I was going down to Sydney with a mob of horses
of my own for sale, at a roadside inn I met Jem Carden, at the head
of a party of splitters and fencers doing some extensive work in
the neighbourhood on a new station; he was looking thin, haggard,
nervous, and was evidently ashamed to meet me. In fact he was only just
recovering from a drunken spree; I taxed him with his folly; he owned
it, and showed me the cause. He could earn with ease at piece-work,
from 5_l._ to 8_l._ a week, building stations and stockyards. Twice he
had saved, and paid into the hands of apparently respectable parties,
40_l._, to remit for the passage of his wife and daughter. The first
time the dashing Mr. W—— was insolvent two days after receiving the
money. In the second instance he was kept nine months in suspense,
and then learned from England by letter and in the Sydney list of
bankrupts, that he had been again swindled. ‘And what,’ he asked, when
he had concluded this tale of pitiful, contemptible robbery, ‘what can
a poor fellow do but drink his cares away, when all striving to be
honest and happy is in vain!’
I thought, but did not say, how uneven were the laws that sent Jem
to the iron gang for stealing a bullock, and had no punishment for
those who devoured his hard earnings, and laughed at him from their
carriages. Thank God, a better system has been established, and
government now charges itself with the passage money of poor men’s
relations.
But barren sympathy was of little use, so I turned to the ploughman,
and said, ‘What money have you left?’ ‘About 10_l._ in the landlord’s
hands; he’s an honest man, although a publican.’ ‘And what are you to
have from this contract?’ ‘My share will be over 40_l._, and I can get
it done in less than six weeks, working long hours.’ ‘Then hand me over
the 10_l._, give me your solemn promise not to touch anything stronger
than Bushman’s tea for twelve months, and to let me have 30_l._ out of
your contract when I return this way, and I will send the money for
you.’
To cut this long story short, I put the business in the hands of my
excellent friend B******, one of the modern race of Australians,
wealthy, warm-hearted, and liberal, who was on his way to England.
Within a year the ploughman embraced his wife; they returned with me to
my station, they passed some years with me, and some eventful scenes,
before the district round me was settled. They have now a station and
farm of their own; they are growing rich, as all such industrious
people do in Australia, but they have not forgotten that they once
were poor. If you need a subscription for a church, a school, or a
sick emigrant, you may go to Mr. Carden, safe of a generous answer. It
is Mr. Carden now; and perhaps that fine little boy may sit a native
Representative in an Australian Parliament. A tall youth who rides
beside him, is not his son but the orphan child of a poor prisoner,
whom he adopted ‘to make up in part,’ as he expressed it, ‘for what
happened long ago.’
Lucy Carden, now the mother of a numerous brood of Australians, has
grown happy and portly, although you may trace on her mild features the
tide marks of past griefs.
The last time I saw them I was on my way to England. ‘Oh, sir,’ said
the happy husband and father, ‘tell the wretched and the starving how
honest, _sober_ labour is sure of a full reward here. Tell them that
here poverty may be turned to competence, crime to repentance and
happiness. And pray tell the great gentlemen who rule us that we much
need both preachers and teachers in this wide Bush of Australia, but
that it is _virtuous wives who rule us most_, and in a lovely land make
the difference between happiness and misery.’
HEATHEN +and+ CHRISTIAN BURIAL.
If, from the heights of our boasted civilisation, we take a retrospect
of past history, or a survey of other nations—savage nations
included,—we shall, with humiliation, be forced to acknowledge
that in no age and in no country have the dead been disposed of
so prejudicially to the living as in Great Britain. Consigning
mortal remains to closely-packed burial-grounds in crowded cities;
covering—scarcely interring them—so superficially that exposure
sometimes shocks the sentiments, while the exhalations of putrefaction
always vitiate the air, is a custom which prejudice has preserved the
longest to this land. A calculation made by Dr. Playfair, and quoted
by the Board of Health in their admirable report on Burials, estimates
the amount of noxious gases evolved annually from the metropolitan
grave-yards alone at 55.261 cubic feet per acre. The average of corpses
packed into each acre is 1117; therefore, as 52,000 interments take
place every year, the entire amount of poison-gas emitted per annum to
enter the lungs of the Londoners, and hasten their descent to the grave
to contribute fresh supplies for their successors, is 2,572,580 cubic
feet.
It is our present purpose to see whether such a fact can be paralleled
by researches into the past or by a short survey of the manners and
customs of existing savage life itself—adding such of the singular or
instructive funeral ceremonies of the various people as will prove
interesting.
Among the most ancient records are those of the Egyptians. The care
of that extraordinary people for their dead, both as to actual
preservation and that they should not become noxious to the living,
has never been surpassed. This partly arose, it is true, from a
superstitious reverence for the material part of man; but that
superstition doubtless originated from the wise sanitary regulations
of their early sages. The laws of Leviticus—many of them instituted to
prevent disease and the depreciation of the species—formed, in like
manner, a main part of the religion of the Jews.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul would return, after the
lapse of ages, to inhabit, in this world, the same body from which it
had been separated by death. In this belief commenced the process of
embalming by which the bodies of that people have been preserved with
wonderful integrity to the present day. To so extraordinary a point had
the antiseptic art been brought that, as appears from Diodorus, there
was a mode of preservation which ensured the retaining of the eyebrows,
eyelashes, and the general external character of the person, who could
be recognised by their form and features. ‘Whence,’ says Dr. Pocock,
in his Travels through Egypt, ‘many of the Egyptians kept the bodies
of their ancestors in houses [but never near their own residences]
adorned at a very great expense, and had the pleasure to see their
forefathers, who had been dead many years before they were born, and
to observe all their features as well as if they were living.’ The
painter’s art has in modern times superseded these curious picture
galleries.
Another peculiarity could not have been due to superstition, but to a
more rational care of the living than we at present evince, namely, the
distance of their great burial-places from their chief cities. The Nile
intervened; the Necropoli, including the range of stupendous pyramids,
were formed on the western, while the most considerable towns were on
the eastern bank of that river. Diodorus gives an interesting account
of the ceremonies arising out of this wise arrangement.
‘Those who prepare to bury a relative, give notice of the day intended
for the ceremony, to the Judges and all the friends of the deceased,
informing them that the body will pass over the lake of that district,
or that part of the Nile, to which the dead belonged; when, on the
Judges assembling to the number of more than forty, and ranging
themselves in a semicircle on the further side of the lake, the vessel
provided for this purpose is set afloat. It is guided by a pilot called
in the Egyptian language, _Charon_; and hence they say that Orpheus,
travelling in old times into Egypt, and seeing this ceremony, formed
the fable of the infernal regions, partly from what he saw, and partly
from invention. The vessel being launched on the lake, before the
coffin which contains the body is put on board, the law permits all
who are so inclined, to bring forward an accusation against it. If any
one steps forth, and proves that the deceased had led an evil life,
the Judges pronounce sentence, and the body is precluded from burial;
but if the accuser is convicted of injustice in his charge, he himself
incurs a considerable penalty. When no accuser appears, or when the
accusation is proved to be false, the relations present change their
expressions of sorrow into praises of the dead.’ The author adds, that
many kings had been judicially deprived of the honours of burial by the
indignation of their people; and that the dread of such a fate had the
most salutary influence on the lives of the Egyptian sovereigns.
Two singular coincidences will occur to the reader on perusing this
passage:—A _postmortem_ trial, precisely similar to that described
above, forms part of the Roman Catholic ritual of Canonising a Saint.
Before the defunct can be inscribed in the Calendar, a person appears
to set forth all the involuntary candidate’s sins and backslidings
during life; and if these be of a venal character he is rejected.
This officer is called ‘The Devil’s advocate.’ Secondly, the ancient
Egyptian and excellent system of funereal water conveyance is, it would
appear, to be revived. In the Report of the Board of Health, dated two
thousand years later than that of Diodorus Siculus, the most extensive
new burial-place recommended, is to be on the borders of the Thames;
and one of the Board’s propositions runs thus:—
‘That, considering the river as a highway passing through the largest
extent of densely-peopled districts, the facilities for establishing
houses of reception on its banks, the conveniences arising from the
shorter distances within the larger portion of the same area for the
removal of the bodies to such houses of reception, the advantages of
steam boat conveyance over that by railway in respect to tranquillity,
and the avoidance of any large number of funerals at any one point,
at any one time, and of any interference with common traffic and with
the throng of streets; and, lastly, taking into account its great
comparative cheapness, it is desirable that the chief metropolitan
cemetery should be in some eligible situation accessible by water
carriage.’
The case of the Jews is stronger than that of the Egyptians, as showing
saner modes of burial than we have so long persisted in. They had no
especial regard for the mere body, except as the temple of the soul;
hence, a burial-place was, with them, _the house of the living_; an
expression finely implying that death is the parent of immortal life.
Their cemeteries were always in sequestered spots. In the 23rd chap.
of Genesis we find that Abraham, when his wife Sarah died, desired a
family burying-ground from the tribe among whom he lived:—
‘And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons
of Heth, saying,
‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me possession of a
burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead _out of my sight_.’
A ready consent was given, and he was offered the choice of their
sepulchres. But this did not satisfy him: he wished to obtain the Cave
of Machpelah, and the field in which it lay, from Ephron, the son of
Zohar. The generous proprietor offered it as a gift, but the Patriarch
purchased it. Thus the first transference on record of real property
was the acquisition, in perpetuity, by the patriarch Abraham, of a
family burying-ground especially selected for its seclusion.
Nor was the classic heathen of a more western clime less mindful of
public health in his modes of disposing of the dead. The Romans, being
largely indebted to the Greeks for their science, literature, arts, and
habits of life, of course adopted their funeral ceremonies; and one
general description may suffice for those of both. By law of the Twelve
Tables, burial was prohibited within the city of Rome, and therefore
cemeteries were provided without the walls.[D]
[D] ‘_Hominem Mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito._’
Immediately after the death, the body was washed, anointed with
aromatic unguents, and sometimes embalmed. It was shrouded in fine
linen; white with the Greeks and black with the Romans. If the departed
was a person of rank, he was clothed in his garments of ceremony, kept
for seven days during the preparations for the funeral, and lay in
state in the vestibule of his house, at the door of which were placed
branches of pine or cypress, together with the hair of the deceased,
which had been consecrated to the infernal deities. In Rome, between
death and burial seven days elapsed. The funeral was attended by the
friends and relatives of the deceased, who were bidden by a herald,
pronouncing the invitation:—‘It is time for whoever wishes, to go to
the funeral of N. son of N.; who is now to be borne from home.’[E]
The remains of persons who had done service to the state were honoured
by the attendance of public officers, and sometimes the procession was
followed by large bodies of the people. According to one of the laws of
Solon, the Athenians carried out the bodies of the dead before sunrise,
especially the young, in order that the orb of day might not throw
his light on so sad a spectacle, or by his heat induce decomposition
prematurely. The body was laid on a bier, crowned with flowers,
and having the face exposed. The bier was followed by the funeral
procession, among whom, at Roman funerals, there was often a _mime_,
or buffoon, wearing the dress of the deceased, and giving satirical
imitations of his bearing and manners. At the funeral of the Emperor
Vespasian, the lustre of whose many virtues was tarnished by love of
money, a celebrated buffoon (as Suetonius tells us) acted the part of
the emperor,—mimicking, as was customary, the deportment and language
of the deceased. Having asked the managers of the funeral what would
be the amount of its expense, and being answered that it would cost
a sum equivalent to eighty-thousand pounds, he replied, that if they
would give him eight hundred, he would throw himself into the Tiber—for
drowning was thought so revolting a death, that bodies rejected by the
waves were denied sepulture. The bust of the deceased, his warlike
trophies, or decorations of honour, were conspicuously exhibited in
the procession. His family followed the bier, walking bareheaded and
barefooted, with dishevelled hair, and mourning dresses of black; and
after them came bands of hired mourners, male and female, who rent the
air with cries and lamentations. Thus the body was conveyed to the
place of sepulture.
[E] ‘_Exequîas N., N. filii, quibus est commodus ire, tempus est: ollus
(ille) ex ædibus effertur._’
The claims to antiquity vaunted by the Chinese next force upon
attention their provisions against allowing the dead to interfere with
the well-being of the living. As they believe themselves _perfect_, to
alter any one custom is sacrilege punishable with death; hence they
observe the same ceremonies now, that their ancestors did several
thousand years ago. ‘Their tombs and sepulchres,’ says Mr. Sirr, ‘are
always built outside the city walls, and usually upon a hill, which is
planted with cypress and pine trees.’ In China nothing is so offensive
to good breeding as the remotest allusion to death. A number of amusing
periphrases are therefore resorted to when a hint of the subject is
unavoidable; a funeral is called from the kind of mourning used: ‘A
white affair.’
In Persia intramural burials are also forbidden. ‘The place of
sepulture,’ says a Persian sage, ‘must be far from dwellings: near it
must be no cultivation; nor the business necessarily attending the
existence of dwellings; no habitation nor population must be near it.’
This is another ancient injunction in remarkable accordance with one of
the recommendations of our modern sages, the Board of Health.
The Mahommedans again show much better taste than Christians in their
Mausoleums and burial-places—they never bury in their temples or within
the walls of a town.
Among the funeral customs of the other inhabitants of the East, that
of burning the dead is of very great antiquity. The Jews adopted it
only in emergencies. When Saul fell on the fatal field of Gilboa, and
his body was left exposed by the enemy, it was burnt by his faithful
followers (1 Samuel, chap, xxxi., v. 11–13). From a passage in the
book of Amos (chap. vi., v. 10), it appears that the bodies of the
dead were burnt in times of pestilence, no doubt on sanitary grounds.
For the same reason, incineration has been habitually perpetuated
in tropical climates, but has been accompanied unhappily with the
most horrible superstitions, particularly in Hindustan, where it is
associated with the self-sacrifice of the widow on the funeral pile of
her dead husband. The origin of this last custom, as a religious rite,
has been the subject of much investigation and discussion among learned
Orientalists; but Colebrooke, in his paper on the ‘Duties of a Faithful
Hindoo Widow,’ in the fourth volume of the _Asiatic Researches_,
has shown that this, among other duties of a faithful widow, is
prescribed by the ancient Sanscrit books of the Bramins. Bernier, the
French traveller, who visited India at the time when this practice
of self-immolation was very general, gives striking descriptions of
several scenes of this kind which he witnessed. The heroine of one
of them was a woman who had been engaged in some love intrigues with
a young Mahommedan, her neighbour, who was a tailor, and could play
finely on the tabor. This woman, in the hopes of marrying her paramour,
poisoned her husband, and then told the tailor that it was time for
them to elope together, as they had projected, as, otherwise, she
should be obliged to burn herself. The young man, fearing lest he
might be entangled in a dangerous affair, flatly refused. The woman,
expressing no surprise, went to her relations and informed them of the
sudden death of her husband, protesting that she would not survive
him, but would burn herself along with him. Her kindred, well satisfied
with so generous a resolution and the great honour thereby done to the
whole family, presently had a pit made and filled with wood, exposing
the corpse upon it, and kindling the fire. All being prepared, the
woman went to embrace and take farewell of all her kindred and friends
who surrounded the pit, among whom was the tailor, who had been invited
to play upon the tabor along with a number of other minstrels, as was
usual on such occasions. The woman, having come to the place where the
young man stood, made a sign as if she would bid him farewell with
the rest; but, instead of gently embracing him, she seized him by the
collar with both hands, dragged him with all her strength to the pit,
into which she threw herself and him together, and both instantly
perished in the flames.
It was not till a comparatively recent period that the British
Government made any attempt to abolish or check this barbarous custom:
being unwilling, it would seem, to interfere with the religious rites
and usages of the natives. The tardy intervention of the British
Government has at length effectually put an end to the practice;
and the natives themselves, instead of resenting this measure as
a violation of their religion, have (as might have been expected)
universally hailed it as a deliverance from a horrible oppression under
which they groaned, but from which they were unable to emancipate
themselves.
Throughout the greatest part of the wide region comprehended under the
general name of India, this practice of burning the dead prevails,
except among those who profess Mahommedanism. In the kingdom of Siam,
it is regarded as the most honourable funeral; the bodies of criminals,
and of persons disgraced, being buried. In the Birman empire, burning
is the established practice.
In colder climates where the necessity for the rapid disposal of
mortality is not so great, cremation has not been prevalent. Among the
Greeks and Romans, it was confined to the wealthier classes, because of
its expensiveness. When the Romans burnt the bodies of the dead, the
ashes were gathered and enclosed in a vase or urn, which was sometimes
deposited in the burial-place of the family, and sometimes preserved
by them in their house. Among the remains of antiquity which have been
found in Britain, and which belong to the period when a large portion
of this country was a Roman province, there are many sepulchral urns
which must have been deposited in the ground, either by the Roman
population of this island, or by the British who adopted the Roman
usages. Some of these urns are described by Sir Thomas Browne, and
later discoveries of a similar kind have been made at different times.
They have been found to contain, not only ashes mixed with half-burnt
human bones, but the remains of combs, beads, and other articles of
dress, and coins, both Roman and British.
Burning the dead has fallen into disuse in many countries where it once
prevailed, partly because of the expense—fuel diminishing as population
and agriculture increased—and partly, perhaps, because the early
Christians may have thought it less congruous than interment with the
doctrine of the Resurrection. ‘Christians,’ says Sir Thomas Browne, in
his usual quaint style, ‘abhorred this way of obsequies, and, though
they sticked not to give their bodies to be burned in their lives,
detested that mode after death; affecting rather a depositure than
absumption, and properly submitting unto the sentence of God, to return
not unto ashes but unto dust again, conformably unto the practice of
the Patriarchs; the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul, and the
ancient Martyrs.’ In every age, and in every country where Christianity
has prevailed, the burial of the dead has been the unvarying usage.
Evidence, however, of a desire for another remarkable revival of the
practices of antiquity now lies before us. It is no less than the
prospectus of an association—bearing the recent date of January,
1850—“for Promoting the Practice of Decomposing the Dead by Fire.”
Among other advantages, cheapness is promised. We may mention as some
criterion on this point, that Mr. Ward, the Indian missionary, who had
many opportunities of ascertaining the fact, computed that the smallest
quantity of wood necessary to consume a human body, is about three
hundred weight.
However averse public feeling may be to this mode of disposing of the
remains of deceased relatives; yet anything is better than crowded city
churchyards and poisoned air. To these a favourable contrast is offered
by even the curious expedients of savage life—of which we now proceed
to take a glance.
The Parsees or Gabres—the race of fire-worshippers who still exist
in India,—abhor the burning of the dead as a pollution of the Deity
whom they adore. This feeling they appear to have inherited from the
ancient worshippers of fire, the Chaldeans, and the Magi of Persia;
from whom, also, they seem to have derived the custom of exposing
the bodies of the dead to be devoured by dogs, and beasts and birds
of prey. A similar usage exists at this day in the kingdom of Tibet.
‘According to the custom of Tibet,’ says Mr. Turner (Narrative of an
Embassy to Tibet), ‘instead of that pious attention which is paid to
the remains of the dead, in the preservation of their bodies from
pollution, by depositing them in the ground, they are here exposed
after their decease, like the Parsees of India, in the open air, and
left to be devoured by ravens, kites, and other carnivorous birds.
In the more populous parts, dogs also come in for their share of the
prey, and regularly attend the consummation of the last obsequies.’
The same practice anciently existed among the Colchians, and has been
remarked by modern travellers among the Illinois of North America, and
the savage inhabitants of the Aleutian islands. Even in this revolting
custom we trace a desire—savagely indulged, it is true—to ward off the
bad effects of putrefaction by a speedy disposal of the air-polluting
remains of the dead.
Among the Caffres, Hottentots, and other savage tribes of Southern
Africa, adjoining the European settlements, it seems to have been
customary to expose aged and helpless people in desert places, and
leave them to die, because of a superstition against any one expiring
in a hut. Intercourse with civilisation is mitigating this and other
barbarities.
Of the means used to avert the evils of decay by preservation, none
are more singular than those mentioned by Captain Tuckey, as in force
upon the river Congo. The people envelope their corpses in cloth; the
smell of putrefaction being only kept in by the quantity of wrappers.
These are successively multiplied as they can be procured, or according
to the rank of the deceased. The bulk thus attained is only limited by
the power of conveyance to the grave; so that the first hut in which
the body is deposited becoming too small, a second, a third—even to a
sixth—each larger than the former, is placed over it.
The South American savages run no risks from the putrefying remains
of their dead. The Orinoco tribes fasten them by a rope to the trunk
of a tree on the shore and sink the body in the river. In the course
of four and twenty hours the skeleton is picked perfectly clean by
the fish. Bones alone are reverenced in this part of the world. The
inhabitants of the Pampas and other South American tribes bury only the
bones of the dead, the flesh having been first removed from them: an
operation performed by the women. While the work of dissection is going
on, the men walk round the tent, covered with long mantles, singing
a mournful tune, and striking the ground with their spears, to drive
away the evil spirits. The bones, being prepared, are packed up in a
hide, and conveyed on a favourite horse of the deceased to the family
burial-place, sometimes hundreds of miles distant. Being disposed in
their natural order and tied together so as to form a skeleton, they
are clothed in the deceased’s best attire, and ornamented with beads
and feathers. The skeleton is placed in a sitting posture, with the
carcases of horses, killed—in order that their master may ride them in
the next world—in a pit or grave, which is then covered over. Among all
the customs of unenlightened mankind, there are few more remarkable
than this provision for the material wants of the dead in another state
of existence. In all ages, and in most parts of the world, the dead man
has been sent to his long home, furnished with servants, horses, dogs,
domestic utensils—every article of physical comfort and enjoyment
he is supposed to require. Money has been supplied for his journey,
and even (as among the Jukati of Siberia) food has been put into his
coffin, ‘that he may not hunger on his road to the dwelling of souls.’
‘As if,’ quaintly remarks an ancient Spanish traveller, ‘the infernal
regions were a long way off.’ But in every instance the corpse has been
so dealt with as to prevent injury to those who still exist.
It is now time to allude to our own burial customs, and to the great
reform which happily has at length begun. It appears extraordinary,
that amidst the advance which has been made in social and sanitary
science, Great Britain should be the last to give up the unwholesome
custom of continuing the dead as near neighbours to the quick. The
long conservation of this evil has mainly arisen from a sentiment of
the superior sanctity of burial-places in and near to sacred edifices.
That this is, however, an unqualified superstition, it is not difficult
to prove, by tracing it to its root. Joseph Bingham states in his
_Origines Ecclesiasticæ_, that churchyards owe their origin to respect
paid to the remains of saints and martyrs, which was shown first by
building churches and chapels over them, and then by a general desire
of people to be interred as near to their sacred dust as possible.
This privilege was only for a time accorded to Emperors and Kings, but
so early as the sixth century the commonalty were allowed places, not
only under the church wall, but in the consecrated space of ground
surrounding it. Bodies were not deposited within the church till after
a long struggle on the part of the heads of the Church.[F]
So far from burying in churches, corpses were not admitted into
parish churches, even for the funeral service to be read over them,
except under special circumstances. An interesting canon—the 15th of
the Council of Tribur—runs thus, ‘The funeral service must only be
performed in the church where the bishop resides: that is to say in
the cathedral of the diocese. If that church be too distant, it may be
celebrated in some other, where there is a community of canons, monks,
or religious orders; in order that the deceased may have the benefit
of their prayers. Should again that be impossible, the service may be
performed where the defunct during life paid tythes: this is in his
parish church.’ By a previous canon (one of the Council of Meaux) no
burial fees could be exacted by the clergy, although the relations
were allowed to give alms to the poor. This injunction was but little
observed either at or after the time it was laid, in 845.
[F] Several canons were issued against this now universal abuse. Among
others, the 18th of the Council of Brague (Portugal) in 563. The 72nd
of the Council of Meaux (845), the 17th of the Council of Tribur, 895,
&c.
The unwholesome practice of intra-ecclesiastical interment became
general after the 10th century, when the clergy succumbed to the power
of money, and the sale of the indulgence proved too profitable to be
abandoned. To show by what frauds the unhealthy custom was kept up, we
may cite a legend relating to St. Dunstan. An unbaptised son of Earl
Harold having been deposited within the church where the deceased saint
rested, St. Dunstan—so the fable runs—appeared twice to the chaplain
to complain that he could not rest in his grave for the stench of the
young Pagan. Other underground saints were, however, consulted on the
matter, and they silenced St. Dunstan by acquiescing in the abuse.
It therefore not only continued but gave rise to another evil. Tombs
came to be erected, and these became convenient as lurking-places and
rendezvous for various immoral and improper purposes. The Council of
Winchester, in 1240, forbade the holding of markets, gaming and other
iniquities performed among the tombs in churches and cemeteries. But
this injunction was of little avail, as we learn from the History of
St. Paul’s. Duke Humphrey’s Tomb in ‘Paul’s walk’ (the middle aisle of
the Cathedral), was the occasional resort for ages of the idleness and
infamy of London. It was a regular mart and meeting place for huxters,
gossips, gamblers, and thieves. In 1554 the Lord Mayor prohibited the
church to be used for such ‘irreverent’ purposes, under pain of fine.
Still it was not till the great fire that Duke Humphrey’s tomb was
utterly deserted.
Meanwhile in every part of the country, families who could afford the
expense, were buried inside in preference to outside the various places
of worship, and, until the present year, no effective stop has been
put to the evil. Our French neighbours were before us in this respect.
Inhumation inside churches was forbidden except in rare cases, by a
royal ordinance dated Versailles, 10th March, 1777. We perceive by
the excellent report of Dr. Sutherland to the Board of Health on the
practice of interments in Germany and France, that cemeteries have been
since substituted by law in almost every considerable town in those
countries. It has therefore been continued, almost exclusively in this
empire.
At last, however, we have good reason to hope that intramural burials,
with all their attendant evils, will speedily be themselves buried with
the barbarous relics of the past. The comprehensive suggestions of the
Board of Health appear to meet every difficulty, and as a strong stream
of common sense has, we hope and believe, set in in favour of funereal
reform, we trust they will pass into the statute book without much
opposition; some they will inevitably encounter, in compliance with the
fixed law of English obstinacy.
It may console those in whom lingers, from old association, almost a
religious prejudice in favour of churchyards, to be reminded that some
of the most eminent Christians, both lay and clerical, have earnestly
pleaded for extramural cemeteries. Evelyn—the model of a Christian
gentleman—regretted that after the Fire of London advantage had not
been taken of that calamity to rid the city of its burial-places, and
establish a necropolis without the walls. ‘I yet cannot but deplore,’
says he, in his ‘Silva,’ ‘that when that spacious area was so long
a _rasa tabula_, the churchyards had not been banished to the north
walls of the city, where a grated inclosure of competent breadth for
a mile in length, might have served for an universal cemetery to all
the parishes, distinguished by the like separations, and with ample
walks of trees, the walks adorned with monuments, inscriptions, and
titles, apt for contemplation and memory of the defunct, and that wise
and excellent law of the Twelve Tables renewed.’ The pious Sir Thomas
Browne says quaintly in his ‘Hydriotaphia,’ ‘To live indeed is to be
again ourselves; which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble
believers, ’tis all one to lie in St. Innocent’s Churchyard, as in the
sands of Egypt, ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and
as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.’
Would it not then be well to reflect, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and fifty, whether any of the best, whether the
very worst custom—considering the state of society in which it has
obtained—is so extraordinary and degrading as that of burying the dead
in the midst of the living, to generate an amount of human destruction,
compared with which the slaughter attendant on an African funeral
is as a drop of water in an ocean. It should be remembered that, in
the barbarous customs we have cited there is always to be traced the
perversion of an idea:—as that the dead man will want food, passage
money, attendants, beasts of burden, something that benighted ignorance
is unable to separate from the wants incidental to this earthly state.
There is no such poor excuse for the custom into which this civilised
age has insensibly lapsed, until its evils have become too great to
bear. The affection which endures beyond the grave is surely more
fitly associated with a tomb in a beautiful solitude than amidst the
clamour and clatter of a city’s streets. If, in submission to that
moral law of gravitation, which renders it difficult to separate our
thoughts of those who have departed from some lingering association
with this earth, we desire to find a resting-place for our dead which
we can visit, and where we may hope to lie when our own time shall
come, reason and imagination alike suggest its being in a spot serenely
sacred to that last repose of so much of us as is mortal, where natural
decay may claim kindred with nature, in her beautiful succession of
decay and renovation, undisturbed by the strife of the brief scene that
has closed.
Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
Printed by +Bradbury & Evans+, Whitefriars, London.