FUNERAL FORMALITIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XI, 14 September 1895, Page 335

FUNERAL FORMALITIES.

Among the many quaint characteristics of the human mind, none at first seems to be quainter than the exaggerated importance it attaches to decent, and in some sense honorific, funerals. Everyone who knows anything of the poor, knows how they will toil and even shorten their days by pinching themselves of proper food and clothing to avoid the ignominy of a pauper’s funeral. A great scandal has just taken place at Cardiff, in consequence of some undertaker’s having contracted with the Poor-law Guardians, to bury the poor dying in the workhouse at the rate of 17s 6d ‘ a case.'— as the event of death was tersely and rudely described —the only hearse provided being a spring-cart—although a competitor in undertaking had been in the field who was willing to have performed the same operation for the Guardians at 16s or is 6d less, with a proper hearse ‘thrown in,’ —the Guardians having preferred the higher and less decent offer from some motive attributed to favouritism ; and it seems likely that the indignation felt at this want of respect for the decencies of funeral rites, will bring down condign punishment on the local authorities responsible for the scandal. Public feeling evidently condemns sharply THE SUBSTITUTION OF A SPRING CART FOR A HEARSE with its black plumes,—to say nothing of the cheaper rate at which the more solemn vehicle could have been hired—and the question is why this feeling should be so strong in almost every class of society as it is. Why, again, should the poor scrape and put themselves to very severe sacrifices, in order that when they are no longer in this life at all, it should be rumoured among their friends and acquaintances that they themselves paid for the last rites, and did not suffer the ‘ parish ’ to defray the expense of arranging for their interment ? Yet nothing is more certain than that they do this in hundreds and hundreds of cases. There is no exercise of imagination in which even the neediest of the needy take more delight, than that of projecting their minds into the future and anticipating the arrangements for their own decent interment. The author of ‘ Tales of Mean Streets,’ which we recently reviewed in these columns, gives verj- pathetic instances of this passion of the imagination. We have, indeed, no doubt that if most men had to choose between providing against a spasm of superfluous suffering in the deathagony, and the necessity for a pauper funeral, the great majority of the English people would prefer the additional suffering, of which they would be fullv conscious, to the ignominy of which, except in their forecasting imagination, they would not in all probability be conscious at all. Indeed, though they themselves would

have to endure the pangs of the former, and would only feel the shadow of the coming and purely conventional humiliation pass over their minds in the latter case, they would think nothing of the real pain of the former in comparision with the imaginative pain of the latter experience. Ignominy which you only anticipate as likely to be attached by others to the last appearance of your body in this world, is far more dreaded than even pain which you yourself must shrink under before you leave his world. WHAT IS THE REASON, OK RATHER, IS THERE ANY REASON, FOR THIS FEELING ? Why are we so sensitive to a sort of conventional public opinion which will affect us only so far as it affects the memory of us in the minds of others, and that not for more than a few hours or a few minutes in a crowd of very languid impressions, and are yet so comparatively indifferent to troubles which we must go through ourselves, and which no one will give us credit for our courage in confronting and ignoring ? We suppose the answer must be that if it were not so, if ‘ the bubble reputation ’ had not in thousands and thousands of cases far more fascination for us than even the endurance of real and keen pangs could outweigh, human society could hardly be the solid fabric that it is. Is not half the so-called courage which men display really due to the fear of shame ? Is not half the willingness of women to be thought more timid than they really are, due to the pleasure of being considered feminine, and exciting by that impression a kind of gentle sympathy which is half-mis-placed ? Without the strong wish to conform ourselves in outward effect at least, to a purely conventional standard of what we ought to be, it would be almost impossible for men to form any correct estimate of what to expect in the conduct of their fellow-creatures. There is A LANCASHIRE STORY of an old woman who on her death-bed was listening to her sons’ deliberations as to the conduct of the funeral, and who in a weak and trembling voice put in a wish of her own as to the order to be observed, whereupon she was firmly rebuked by one of her children in the words, ‘ Thee leave all that to us, thee mind thee dying.’ Could there be a clear illustration of the conventional character of these emotions ? It might be natural and right for a dying person who had no one else to take care of the arrangements for the funeral, to be concerned about them, but where that was not the case, where the living were taking due interest in the decent preparations for a final notification of what had happened to the world, the proper course for the departing spirit was to occupy itself in studying the attitude in which her farewell of this woild should be taken. It seemed to the sons almost an unworthy reflection on their solicitude for the decencies of death, that their mother should be distracted from playing her proper part in the affair, by over - anxiety as to the earthly part of the ceremony. Without universal respect for the conventional expectations as to the proper part to be taken by the living and the dying in the last great pageant of life, we should certainly not have such elaborate funeral rites as are to be found amongst all races, savage as well as civilised ; and we should also lose that valuable moulding power of conventional custom, which compels us, throughout life, more or less to feel whatever it is necessary for the well-being and convenience of our fellow-creatures that we should feel. We cannot throw off at the last moment, —indeed, it is far more difficult to throw off at the last moment than at any more vigorous moment of life, —that respect for the conventional expectations of others which has, in great measure, moulded our life from beginning to end. If we are ever to rebel successfully against the authority of conventional standards, it must be when the individual life flows strongly in our veins, and not when it is just ebbing away in the feebleness of an expiring pulse.