The San Francisco call., 1904-06-03
Should the Dead A7euke.


pany that would fill the abbey if its
honored and dishonored dead could
wake up in the night. The son of
Charles Stuart would meet the daugh-
ter of Cromwell; William Pitt would
be standing. il might be, with a pugil-
isl or spy; Robert Browning would
be in the company of a writer of dis
graceful plays. Great and little, good
and bad, famous and infamous, meet
at this shrine of immortalities. The
shelter of the abbey has not always
been so jealousy guarded as it is to-
day. Here, in the holy quiet of the
cloisters, is a monument to-a prize
fighterl Why it is here probably no
man knows-no man in the world
knows why some Of the people buried
in the abbey should ever have been
there.
John Broughton, if he had ever any
title to a place at Westminster, has
certainly not left it clear to his pos
teYity. He was a waterman, who lived
through most of the eighteenth century
and revealed his bent for fighting and
knocking his brother down. He
knocked his brother down so well that
he left his boat to become a public
bruiser," and his booth in Tottenham
Court road was the resort of the elite
of the bruiser-loving fraternity. You
would have found even royalty there,
until one day when the Duke of Cum
berland backed him for 10000 and
Broughton lost. The Duke never for
gave him, and though he had made
his -protege a Yeoman of the Guard,
he took away his patronage and left
Broughton to grow rich alone at his
theater off oxford street. There he
fought until he died and was carried
to his grave by five pugilists appointed
by himself. He has a niche in fame
as the father of prizefghting in Eng
land, and it is surely the strangest
claim that any man has ever had for
being honored in the most sacred spot
Of English earth, among statesmen
and poets and kings.
There would be room for all our
great men in the abbey if great men
only had been buried there. The doors
in centuries past were thrown open
very wide. The Duke of Buckingham
buried a Scotsman there for no other
reason than that he was his friend,
and on the funeral day a dog was
buried in Tothill Fields in public ridi-
cule. Thomas Parr, though he did not
write Mems, was not poet, could ad-
vance, at any rate, one claim to lie in
Poets Corner. Was he not the Oldest
man alive? That is reason enough,
clearly, why he should lie where
Shakespeare does not lie, and it was
reason enough in his day, it would ap-
pear, why he should lie among our
Kings.
Parr, if the inscription in the abbey
speaks the truth, was 152, and lived
under ten rulerssof England. He mar
ried again it is said at 122 and threshed
corn at 100. He began life as a farm
servant in Shropshire, and would have
died no doubt on his Shropshire farm
if the Earl Of Arundel had not un-
earthed him. brought him UP TO town
by stages and presented him as piece
OF antiquity" to the King. What, "
asked Charles Stuart, have you, who
have lived longer than other men, done
more than other men?' And Parr in
formed the King that he had done
penance in a white sheet when he was
100. Parr was exhibited as a curiosity
at a tavern in London until he died
and in 1888 the 'old, old, very old man
was buried in-Poets' Corner! He had
perhaps one other claim to the honor
than his years-he adopted the religion
of his ten Kings and Queens. He came
into this world raw, said be to Charles
Stuart, and he saw no good in being
broiled out Of It.
More bitter was the insult paid to the
dead when Thomas Thynn was laid in
the abbey in 1882. He was an Infamous
man, murdered in Pail Mall by the
creatures of a Swedish Count who
wanted to marry Thynn's wife, a girl
three times married at II. The men
were hanged at the scene Of their crime
where Waterloo place now is, and the
assassination is pictured in bas-relief
in Westminster Abbey, where the viii
I famous Thynn lies with Chatham and
Dickens and wilberforce.
In the same company lies Aphra
Behn, the BARRIERS daughter, who was
the first woman ito live by her pen in
England. She was a notorious and
scandalous person, fit for the court OF
Charles IL, who used her as a spy and
some of her plays were the worst ever
acted. She delighted in her wickedness
and rests with the saints.
The stage in olden times was more
closely allied to the church than now
Thomas Betterton tottered off the Hay
market stage into grave in Westmin-
ster Abbey. He was old and crippled
with gout when he trembled through
his last triumph before house packed
with great people, and in two weeks
the same great people were gathered
again in the abbey TO see the actor &C
dUmbly through his last part. Here lies
F, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and here, too, Anr
Oldheld. her rival for fame. Born in q
tavern, she went on the stage almost
! before she was in her teens, and she
grew up a woman with a great gift and
no character. The ready dean of the
abbey found her a place when she died
and Ann went to her grave as she
would have gone to a play.
One would not sure. be frightfuI when one'I
And. Betty. give this check little red.
Pope makes her say, and the actress
was laid in her coffin decked with Brus-