Commercial travellers are rather like bees; they take the seed of a
good story from one district and deposit it in another.
Thus several localities, imperfectly righteous, have within recent
years appropriated this story to their own annals. I once met an old
herbalist from Wigan-Wigan of all places in beautiful England!--who
positively asserted that the episode occurred just outside the London
and North-Western main line station at Wigan. This old herbalist was no
judge of the value of evidence. An undertaker from Hull told me flatly,
little knowing who I was and where I came from, that he was the
undertaker concerned in the episode. This undertaker was a liar. I use
this term because there is no other word in the language which
accurately expresses my meaning. Of persons who have taken the trouble
to come over from the United States in order to inform me that the
affair happened at Harper's Ferry, Poughkeepsie, Syracuse, Allegheny,
Indianapolis, Columbus, Charlotte, Tabernacle, Alliance, Wheeling,
Lynchburg, and Chicago it would be unbecoming to speak--they are best
left to silence themselves by mutual recrimination. The fact is that
the authentic scene of the affair was a third-class railway carriage
belonging to the North Staffordshire Railway Company, and rolling on
that company's loop-line between Longshaw and Hanbridge. The undertaker
is now dead--it is a disturbing truth that even undertakers die
sometimes--and since his widow has given me permission to mention his
name, I shall mention his name. It was Edward Till. Of course everybody
in the Five Towns knows who the undertaker was, and if anybody in the
Five Towns should ever chance to come across this book, I offer him my
excuses for having brought coals to Newcastle.
Mr Till used to be a fairly well-known figure in Hanbridge, which is
the centre of undertaking, as it is of everything else, in the Five
Towns. He was in a small but a successful way of business, had one leg
a trifle shorter than the other (which slightly deteriorated the
majesty of his demeanour on solemn occasions), played the fiddle, kept
rabbits, and was of a forgetful disposition. It was possibly this
forgetful disposition which had prevented him from rising into a large
way of business. All admired his personal character and tempered
geniality; but there are some things that will not bear forgetting.
However, the story touches but lightly that side of his individuality.
One morning Mr Till had to go to Longshaw to fetch a baby's coffin
which had been ordered under the mistaken impression that a certain
baby was dead. This baby, I may mention, was the hero of the celebrated
scare of Longshaw about the danger of being buried alive. The little
thing had apparently passed away; and, what is more, an inquest had
been held on it and its parents had been censured by the jury for
criminal carelessness in overlaying it; and it was within five minutes
of being nailed up, when it opened its eyes! You may imagine the
enormous sensation that there was in the Five Towns. One doctor lost
his reputation, naturally. He emigrated to the Continent, and now,
practising at Lucerne in the summer and Mentone in the winter, charges
fifteen shillings a visit (instead of three and six at Longshaw) for
informing people who have nothing the matter with them that they must
take care of themselves. The parents of the astonished baby moved the
heaven and earth of the Five Towns to force the coroner to withdraw the
stigma of the jury's censure; but they did not succeed, not even with
the impassioned aid of two London halfpenny dailies.
To resume, Mr Till had to go to Longshaw. Now, unless you possess a
most minute knowledge of your native country, you are probably not
aware that in Aynsley Street, Longshaw, there is a provision dealer
whose reputation for cheeses would be national and supreme if the whole
of England thought as the Five Towns thinks.
'Teddy,' Mrs Till said, as Mr Till was starting, 'you might as well
bring back with you a pound of Gorgonzola.' (Be it noted that I had the
details of the conversation from the lady herself.)
'Yes,' said he enthusiastically, 'I will.'
'Don't go and forget it,' she enjoined him.
'No,' he said. 'I'll tie a knot in my handkerchief.'
'A lot of good that'll do!' she observed. 'You'd tied a knot in your
handkerchief when you forgot that Councillor Barker's wife's funeral
was altered from Tuesday to Monday.'
'Ah!' he replied. 'But now I've got a bad cold.'
'So you have!' she agreed, reassured.
He tied the knot in his handkerchief and went.
Thanks to his cold he did not pass the cheesemonger's without entering.
He adored Gorgonzola, and he reckoned that he knew a bit of good
Gorgonzola when he met with it. Moreover, he and the cheesemonger were
old friends, he having buried three of the cheesemonger's children. He
emerged from the cheesemonger's with a pound of the perfectest
Gorgonzola that ever greeted the senses.
The abode of the censured parents was close by, and also close to the
station. He obtained the coffin without parley, and told the mother,
who showed him the remarkable child with pride, that under the
circumstances he should make no charge at all. It was a ridiculously
small coffin. He was quite accustomed to coffins. Hence he did the
natural thing. He tucked the little coffin under one arm, and, dangling
the cheese (neat in brown paper and string) from the other hand, he
hastened to the station. With his unmatched legs he must have made a
somewhat noticeable figure.
A loop-line train was waiting, and he got into it, put the cheese on
the rack in a corner, and the coffin next to it, assured himself that
he had not mislaid his return ticket, and sat down under his baggage.
It was the slackest time of day, and, as the train started at Longshaw,
there were very few passengers. He had the compartment to himself.
He was just giving way to one of those moods of vague and pleasant
meditation which are perhaps the chief joy of such a temperament, when
he suddenly sprang up as if in fear. And fear had in fact seized him.
Suppose he forgot those belongings on the rack? Suppose, sublimely
careless, he descended from the train and left them there? What a
calamity! And similar misadventures had happened to him before. It was
the cheese that disquieted him. No one would be sufficiently
unprincipled to steal the coffin, and he would ultimately recover it at
the lost luggage office, babies' coffins not abounding on the North
Staffordshire Railway. But the cheese! He would never see the cheese
again! No integrity would be able to withstand the blandishments of
that cheese. Moreover, his wife would be saddened. And for her he had a
sincere and profound affection.
His act of precaution was to lift the coffin down from the rack, and
place it on the seat beside him, and then to put the parcel of cheese
on the coffin. He surveyed the cheese on the coffin; he surveyed it
with the critical and experienced eye of an undertaker, and he decided
that, if anyone else got into the carriage, it would not look quite
decent, quite becoming--in a word, quite nice. A coffin is a coffin,
and people's feelings have to be considered.
So he whipped off the lid of the coffin, stuck the cheese inside, and
popped the lid on again. And he kept his hand on the coffin that he
might not forget it. When the train halted at Knype, Mr Till was glad
that he had put the cheese inside, for another passenger got into the
compartment. And it was a clergyman. He recognized the clergyman,
though the clergyman did not recognize him. It was the Reverend Claud
ffolliott, famous throughout the Five Towns as the man who begins his
name with a small letter, doesn't smoke, of course doesn't drink, but
goes to football matches, has an average of eighteen at cricket, and
makes a very pretty show with the gloves, in spite of his thirty-eight
years; celibate, very High, very natty and learned about vestments,
terrific at sick couches and funerals. Mr Till inwardly trembled to
think what the Reverend Claud ffolliott might have said had he seen the
cheese reposing in the coffin, though the coffin was empty.
The parson, whose mind was apparently occupied, dropped into the
nearest corner, which chanced to be the corner farthest away from Mr
Till. He then instantly opened a copy of The Church Times and began to
read it, and the train went forward. The parson sniffed, absently, as
if he had been dozing and a fly had tickled his nose. Shortly
afterwards he sniffed again, but without looking up from his perusals.
He sniffed a third time, and glanced over the top edge of THE CHURCH
TIMES at Mr Till. Calmed by the innocuous aspect of Mr Till, he bent
once more to the paper. But after an interval he was sniffing
furiously. He glanced at the window; it was open. Finally he lowered
The CHURCH TIMES, as who should say: 'I am a long-suffering man, but
really this phenomenon which assaults my nostrils must be seriously
inquired into.'
Then it was that he caught sight of the coffin, with Mr Till's hand
caressing it, and Mr Till all in black and carrying a funereal
expression. He straightened himself, pulled himself together on account
of his cloth, and said to Mr Till in his most majestic and sympathetic
graveside voice--
'Ah! my dear friend, I see that you have suffered a sad, sad
bereavement.'
That rich, resonant voice was positively thrilling when it addressed
hopeless grief. Mr Till did not know what to say, nor where to look.
'You have, however, one thing to be thankful for, very thankful for,'
said the parson after a pause, 'you may be sure the poor thing is not
in a trance.'