The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-06 00:00:00

"EARTH TO EARTH."

Tn connection with this subject, the following letters have
also been sent to The Times for publication :

Sir,—The letter of your correspondent " Vita "
seems to me to want a supplement. Some time ago I
attended as executor the reading of a will in which
specific directions were laid down as to the abandon-
ment of Pagan rites, coupled with an earnest request
that none would wear mourning; but it was too late—
the will was not opened until after the Pagan rites,
and we were all in deep mourning.
There should be some express injunctions elsewhere
than in the will, or it should be opened and read be-
fore the undertaker is sent for.—Your obedient servant.

Sir,—l, too, like your correspondent "Vita," have
given orders that when my time comes I am to be laid
to rest, not in a close coffin, but in a wicker basket, in
order that as soon as possible I may, as I told my little
daughter in explaining the first terror and mystery of
death and burial, "turn into daisies."
Talking and writing is useless, unless somebody does
something. Let some enterprising undertaker invent
this wicker basket, suitable for our last sleep, but with
a suitable covering, to guard against two difficulties
which I think Mr. Seymour Haden uuderrates—first,
the wide spread fear of premature interment; second,
the frequent need that the poor cast-off garment of the
most beautiful and beloved soul should be shut up im-
mediately after death and before any arrangements
can be made for even the simplest funeral. This tem-
porary coffin could be easily removed at the grave-
side or in the grave' leaving the wicker basket only—
earth to earth—to help in making the earth more
green and lovely.
I think half the horror of mortality would be taken
away if we could feel that even our dead bodies be-
came a blessing instead of a curse; and our ghastly
church-yards and gloomy cemeteries were changed
into what my child stills calls the first grave I ever
brought-her to, MOTHER'S GARDEN.
P.S. I enclose my card, and will add to "Vita's"
all the influence of a not quite unknown name to this
desirable end.

The Times has also the following leader on the sub-
ject :
It is seldom that a question which concerns everybody,
and which is beset with prejudices and interests, is so care-
fully, sensibly, and reverentially treated as that entitled
"Earth to Earth" has been in these c.dumns. Stepping on
the tenderest of ground, and with thorns and briers, too, in
the path of his argument, Mr. Seymour Haden, nevertheless,
said all that was necessary, withcut laying himself open to
one serious objection. Beyond the trifling remark that in
order to express the destruction or purification of miasma
he had employed a word which properly meant the
arrest of decay, we cannot recall a single criticism
worth notice on his long and able letter. We wish we
could be certain the appeal to our moral sense will be re-
sponded to as thoroughly as that to our sientific perceptions.
Mr. Seymour Haden proved his lase, and it now remains to
be seen whether a world which professes to have attained

the very time of enlightenment on all material questions
is wise enough to he governed by the sound logic which
itself appeals to. We certainly imow a great deal more,
about this matter than our fathers did; but thus far, in-
stead of being the wiser, we are tenfold more the victims
of sentimental weakness. The letters, however, that
reach us, especially the appeal by Lord Essex to women,
and the decisive response to it by " Vita, " give us
some hope that a topic necessarily distressing has not been
brought up in vain, it should never be forgotten that
everybody has a voice in this matter, and everybody a right
to dictate the future disposition. df that which is now his
only inalienable and most valuable property—his own body.
Both custom and law give as much range of choice in this
matter as is compatible with public decency. If any
One of our readers to-day is buried, we will say a
fortnight hence, with a pomp, a cost, and a dura-
bility of ' arrangement contrary to his own wishes
and, perhaps, beyond his means, it is his own fault.
it is positively unfair to leave the business to survivors.
In the absence of all instructions to the contrary it is a fair
presumption that what is actually done, however absurd it
may be, has been distinctly and even pleasurably contem-
plated by the person now its unconscious object. We assert
that it is in the power of every gentleman and lady-in this
country to take a sheet of note-paper, to write on it a few
words forming the second pa.rwzraph in "Vita's" letter,
and put it into an envelope superscribed with a direction
that it be opened immediately after death.
Of course it will be said that English feeling is all the
other way, and that the revolution demanded cannot be
effected in a day. We are rather inclined to think that an
increasing evil, as our funereal customs certainly are, is
likely to er.tail a violent reaction, which it would be well
to anticipate. Every day there occur instances verging
upon scandal in their folly and wickedness. A poor man
dies after some years of failing hcaith and strength, amid
burdens and difficulties ever increasing. His mind has
latterly been clouded ; the reins of discipline and of judg-
ment have fallen from his hands; his weaknesses have
had more sway; Isis long-standing debts have been ac-
cumulating; his household accounts are in arrear ;
creditors great and small are waiting for his
recovery or his death. By mere force of habit he
fosters the old illusions founded on his hopes, or his
He dies. Immediately orders and invitations are sent out,
for he must ne buried as he lived. In a day or two, with the
aid of a lawyer, perhaps at his suggestion, a search is made;
desk, drawers, strong boxes, writing cases, are opened, and
the contents turned upside down. No will is found, or, if
found, an old one, disposing of properties long parted with
or mortgaged to their full value. A call at the banker's elicits
a melancholy and long-concealed tale. Astor securities, stock,
share=, deeds, they are nowhere to be found, or, if found
are worthless. Possibly there is a bill of sale on the furni-
ture of the house. There really is not a sixpence to be got
at, or coming in—nothing but old debts struck off, or that
should be. Of course, there is a long doctor's bill to be
paid ; rent, rates, and taxes, too, perhaps. Such is the
moment when by sheer force of custom a new debt of fifty
pounds is incurred for a perfectly useless and, under the
circumstances, dishonest expenditure. We seem to have
put an extreme case, but we can assure our readers
It is not so extreme or so uncommon as they may
suppose. In this case the illusion of a life goes on
by a sort of momentum after death. The ruling pas-
sions of the life have been ostentation, indulgence,

,
I unwillingness to look facts steadily in the face, and to live
accordingly; and as the man has lived so he dies, and so he
Is buried. He is buried as if so important a person must
Indeed be a loss, not only to his family, but to the whole
world; and as if his body, the centre of so much social wor-
ship, had a right to be long protected from the lama of decay,
It is within the last half century that prodigious funerals,
awful hearses drawn by preternatural quadrupeds, clouds of
black plumes, solid and magnificent oak coffins, instead of
the sepulchral elm, coffin within coffin, lead, brick graves,
and capacious catacombs have spread downwards far beyond
the select circle once privileged to illustrate the
vanity of human greatness. If there must be dynasties
living to be forgotten, and therefore pyramids and
obelisks, it was something that these necessary me-
mentos should be few and exceptional. . But latterly
funeral pomp has exceeded itself, and whils•the world is
living faster than ever it did, and fashion indulging in wilder
caprices, death, in a kind of rivalry, joins the race of extra-
vagances. Funerals are more oppressive, mourning more
costly, and both really more revolting to the true instincts
of real grief. Pcrhaps the most odious part of the affair is
that the pressure is put not merely on poverty, but on
poverty at its very weakest. The survivors are often wholly
incapable of action—worn out, prostrated, overvvnelmed. A
neighbour does it all, and goes by the common rule. He can
Only open the door to the undertaker and his myrmidons.
On Mr. Seymour Haden's main positions there can be no
dispute. A correspondent suggested that one kind of soil
hastens et. cay and absorbs the results quicker than another;
but every one who has frequently stood by the sexton at his
work knows that in all ordinary burial grounds the marvel
is how quickly the stoutest frame yields to the salutary
influences of old mother earth, not how long it with-
stands them. He also knows that while there is a cer-
tain pleasure in the reflection that earth has really come
to earth in obedience to the Divine command and in
faith in the Divine promise, nothing is so shocking as
the too successful result of attempts to set that command
at naught. When it is necessary, as sometimes it must
be, to disturb interments not older than the rest, hut
of a more ambitious—shall we say rebellious ?—character,
the spectacles disclosed are such as to make one envy the
pauper his quicker return to Dame 'Nature's all-teeming,
all-receiving bosom. The family vaults of old parish churches
are, as anybody may know, the scene of more grotesque)
incidents, more sacrilegious robberies, more horrible profane-
ness, than any spots above-ground, however open to the
every-day world. Nuisances as they certainly are, they
suffer a Nemesis in the dishonour and contempt they often
bring on the poor remains they were designed to protect and
honour. We feel, however, that the qustion is one of a larger
character. Our appeal ni.ust be to that great, wealthy, and ambi-
tit.U3 middle class, winch aims to be as good and as generous
as thehighest, but somewhat wiser and moreready to learn. It
has shown itself susceptible of strong impulses and capable
of great movements. Can it make up its mind to return in
due time, at the appointed hour, to the earth it springs
from with cheerfulness, alacrity, and goodwill? Heroes
have tried the edge of the fatal axe, and even kissed it;
saints have embraced the cross or the stake ; monks end
hermits have worn their own shrouds, slept in their coffins,
or by the side of the open grave : even wise men have had
their memento rnori over their heads, and potentates have
had the warning daily whispered in their ears. The
emblems of mortality had a prominent place in the religious
devotion of a former age, when even ladies of fashion used
to retreat from the world for days or for a season, in order to
go through the semblance of death and burial in one quaint
form or another. There is no need of all this. It can be
done much better, with'much more sincerity and much more
edification. If we uld only make up our minds to quit this
world, when the call comes, rather more unrepiningly, putting
a better face on the matter, and accepting our fate without
the black looks of a rebel or of a slave, we should
thereby impart more life and force to all the lessons of mor-
tality preached in our ears. We are invited to hasten to our
journey's end, and to see in death the gate of life. We are
told a thousand cheerful things of our common goal, and we
hold it a sin to doubt or despond as to that distant, further
country. Then why are we to add continually new
terrors to that Death which we believe not to be terrible at
all? Why are we to dress the road to Heaven as if it
were indeed, and could only be, the descent into a Pagan
Tartarus?