OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART
I have just witnessed a revelation. At least, it was a revelation to me.
I'm keen on telling you all about it.
One of my earlier articles in this series had to do with the
establishment here and there in a great city of those gentlemen engaged
in the estimable business of packing you up for keeps--that is the
"parlors" of various sorts of "undertakers." I had been much struck by
the vast number of cozy little places catering, so to say, to the poor
and humble who have forever (as Stevenson puts it) "parted company with
their aches and ecstasies." And I had wondered at how very few places
there were in evidence on the streets to take care of the "remains" of,
in a manner of speaking, the first-cabin passengers in life, those who
have travelled through their days in a fashion de luxe. The
establishments of this type which now and then I did see were very
palatial indeed--and didn't look at all as though they would
countenance the corpse of just an ordinary person such as you and me.
Also, all the undertaking establishments visible to me in my goings and
comings about town were quite obviously undertaking establishments. They
displayed within and without the air, the accoutrements, the
paraphernalia traditionally associated with one's last social engagement
on earth, his funeral. They varied only in this: some were rich and
haughty in general effect, others simple and perhaps dingy in
appearance. But each and all of them looked as much like an undertaking
shop as a barber shop looks like a barber shop. You could not possibly
have mistaken any one of them for a Turkish bath establishment, or a
Carnegie library, or an office for steamship tickets.
As I say, I wrote that article telling all this and that about what
anybody may see any day as he goes about on his rounds through the thick
of the city. But when the article appeared--originally--it soon
developed that I was not abreast of undertaking matters at all. I had
not in the least kept track of the remarkable advances which have to
date been made in the art of being buried--and a very fine art, in the
advanced phases of the affair, it certainly has become. I did not even
know the present-day, the correct, name for what I, in so old-fashioned
a condition of mind, called an "undertaker's." No.
That word, "undertaker," has long, long ago been discarded by the élite
of the profession. What a queer word as a business title it was, anyway!
How did it originally ever come to be used in its mortuary relation? No
one in the business that I have asked has been able to tell me. And why
in the dim past when names were being given to trades did not this word,
undertaker, seem to be equally descriptive of the career of physician or
attorney? Indeed, does not he that sets himself the highly hazardous
task of saving a living fellow being from disease or the gallows
undertake to do more than he who merely performs the quiet office of
laying us away?
And then, oddly enough for its tragic associations, the word acquired in
our minds something of a ludicrous turn. It was reminiscent of Dickens,
of hired professional "mourners," and that sort of thing. At mention of
the word, a picture popped into our mind of a grotesquely angular being,
of sallow, elongated features and lugubrious manner, garbed in a rusty
frock coat and "stove pipe" hat, who put together before him the tips of
black-gloved fingers and spoke with a hollow sound. We would say to our
friends when they were feeling blue: "What's the matter with you? You
act like an undertaker."
Well, as doubtless you have noticed, the term "funeral director" more or
less recently pretty well superseded the word undertaker among
progressive concerns. It is a phrase much more in the modern spirit,
like "domestic science" for (what used to be) "household work,"
"modiste" for "dressmaker," "maid" for "hired-girl," "psychic" for
"fortune teller," "publicity engineer" for "press agent," and so on. And
it has a good, business-like, efficient sound.
Still (I discovered) to be buried by a funeral director is not the very
latest, the most fashionable thing. The really smart way nowadays of
bidding good-bye to the world is to go to the establishment of a
"mortician."
Yes; that's what the gentleman said in his very cordial letter: would I
care to look over a "real mortician's establishment in New York City?" I
replied that nothing could give me greater pleasure. So at the time
appointed a couple of days later his car came round for me.
When I told people of the visit I was about to make, they all laughed,
very heartily. Now that brings to one's attention a curious thing: why
should they laugh? Honestly, between you and me, think hard and tell me
what really there is funny about going to see a burial establishment?
Paradoxical indeed is the attitude of mind of practically everyone
toward this subject of being ushered out of life. Sundry totally
contradictory emotions are aroused in the very same person by slightly
different aspects of the same subject. If you remark that you are going
to spend the afternoon at the undertaker's that is awfully amusing. At
the same time, is not nearly everyone down in his heart a bit scared of
undertakers' shops? Uncomfortable, gruesome places, would not most of us
feel, to have next door?
At any rate, as we glided along I was told by the gentleman who had come
to fetch me that the feeling was very general that the presence of a
funeral director's establishment depreciated the value of property in
the immediate neighborhood. Though, he asserted, this popular idea
frequently had not at all been borne out in fact.
It developed (from his lively conversation) that nothing so much annoys
a funeral director, or a mortician, as for a visitor to pull old gags
which he thinks are smart--such, for instance, as the remark: "I see
your business is pretty dead." I gathered that this jocular pleasantry
was the stock joke of all near-wits who visited undertakers--I mean
morticians.
No; there is another thing which annoys these gentlemen (morticians)
even more than such punk puns as that. They deeply resent, I discovered,
any disrespectful allusion to their silent clients, such as calling them
"stiffs," or something like that. How would you, they ask, like to have
someone of yours--someone who but yesterday returned your heart's clasp,
now dumb and cold--made game of by such ribaldry? Certainly, I cannot
say that I should like it.
Another paradoxical contradiction! Tell me (if you can) what strange
spring of his being prompts a man to think it big and bold and hearty of
him to speak with such cynical contemptuousness of a fellow man returned
to rigid clay.
We had arrived at our destination, I was told. But I saw nothing, but
what was (seemingly) a rather handsome private residence, set in a
pleasant lawn. Though I did discern by the door a modest plate which
read (as I recall the name) "Wentworth Brothers," nothing more.
Wentworth Brothers might have been, for all the exterior evidence to the
contrary, architects, or teachers of dancing and the piano, or breeders
of pedigreed dogs, or dealers in antiques, or physical instructors, or
almost anything you please.
This I soon learned was the fundamental principle of the sensitive art
of the mortician--to scrap all the old stage properties of the bugaboo
type of undertaker.
We passed into a charming hall, light and cheerful, furnished in
excellent taste, altogether domestic in effect. A number of bright
looking people, apparently attached to the premises, were lightly moving
about. I had somewhat the sensation of having come to a most agreeable
afternoon tea.
I was presented to my host, as cheerful, wholesome and cordial a young
chap as anyone would care anywhere to see. The senior, he, of the
brothers. I had been a little depressed that morning, having a bad cold
and being fretted by a number of gloomy things, but as we proceeded
through the house my spirits picked up decidedly. I experienced a
feeling of mental and physical well-being, so attractive was everything
about.
A dainty reception room opened off the hall at the front. My impression
was of a nice amount of charming Colonial furniture. Altogether such a
room as you might see in an illustration in the magazine _House and
Garden_. Secluded back of this rooms having a brisk atmosphere and
serving as offices. Peopled by very trim and efficient looking young
people.
We descended to the "stock room," a most sanitary looking place of
cement floor, ceiling and walls, where was a large store of caskets of
many varieties. Behind this a spick and span embalming room which
(except for the two tables) somewhat suggested an admirable creamery.
Here I discovered that to the mind of the mortician towels belong to the
Dark Ages. The up-to-date way of drying hands is by holding them before
a blast of air turned on from a pipe.
We ascended to the third floor. Here were the chapels, rooms which might
have been designed to accommodate fashionable audiences attending
literary lectures. In connection with them a tiny "minister's study,"
not unlike the sanctum of a university professor. Also here small hotel
suites, each with bath attached, available for the bereaved from out of
town. Here, too, snug quarters for wakes. And a spacious chamber wherein
friends may sit for a little last visit with the departed. The dominant
article of furniture in this room an Empire lounge such as we see
supporting the figure of Madame Récamier in the famous portrait by
David. A consummate refinement was shown me on this floor: telephones,
concealed behind panels in the wall, with no bells to jangle over-tried
nerves, but with a tiny red electric globe on the wall to light as the
signal.
The top floor a dormitory for male employees, having much the effect of
rooms for boys at college, gay soft cushions, pipes and mandolins
scattered about.
I lingered for a smoke and a chat with my host on the ground floor in an
oak panelled room like the library of a gentleman's club before leaving.
I came away with (I very much fear) an idea that I should like to go
back tomorrow and see some one of my friends so agreeably buried from
that place.