The Neglected Art of Writing Epitaphs

How an Ordinarily Grave Subject May Be Made Gay!

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

SOMETHING is decidedly wrong with our cemeteries and now that we have entered the sere and yellow season it seems appropriate to consider them. But, mind you, I mean to approach the subject neither in flippant vein nor in that 'memento mori' fashion which was the evident delight of so many of the earlier authors. Rather let me hope to catch something of the dignified detachment of the peer of all writers on this topic, Sir Thomas Browne, whose fame as a wit and philosopher rests so securely in his own Urne Buriall.

In matters mortuary, we are distinctly oldfashioned. This was first brought to my attention during the height of our last glorious summer when, with a jolly party, I sat picnicing in an old New England cemetery. Among my own immediate circle of summer intimates, I am known as the Picnic Prince, my official function being to pick the site of the proposed picnic, a choice which, as everyone knows, is usually the cause of bitter strife and contention. I have known many picnics to be utterly ruined by hard feeling resulting from the selection of a. location.

When it is left to me, I always look about for a grave-yard,—the older, the better. The very ancient ones are ideal for al-fresco eating. The old table-tombs, the convenient mounds, an occasional iron chain, the well kept greensward seem actually designed for the purpose. Sometimes there are even flowers.

Thus, as I sat one day above the remains of a Colonial Dame, munching a ham sandwich, I looked about and pondered on the unprogressive and dull way in which we, the modems, who pride ourselves on our up-to-date-ness, still continue to plan our necropolises. I pould think of no one, with the possible exception of that great pioneer, Dr. Berthold Baer, who has approached the problem from any angle which could be called modern.

Of course, Dr. Baer's problem and mine do not conflict. His is the difficult one of making demise popular. "More and better burials" is his slogan.

My thought dealt more definitely with the commemorative phases of the subject, the monuments, tablets, brasses, inscriptions and stones with which we record so stupidly the history of past generations. Clearly our field may be divided into two main sections—the architectural and the literary.

Architectural

CONSIDER for a moment the modem cemetery in its larger aspect, that of its total decorative effect. Is it not one of the most blighting elements that can possibly dismpt a landscape? At a distance one sees only a meaningless jumble of white spots, without coordination of design, a closer inspection is even more confusing. Amid the variety of shapes, tablets couchant and tablets rampant, inclined tablets which look like type-writers covered with enduring granite, urns, columns, obelisks and small-scale bank buildings,— amid all this variety, I say, the eye, to say nothing of the soul, finds no rest. All is chaos which should be calm.

Even the French, those great artists of modem times, seem to have failed dismally in this regard, for, in addition to the usual confusion of architectural forms, they evince a pathetic penchant for black-bead decorations. Pere Lachaise, the permanent parking space of many noted Parisians, looks at a distance like an infant Pittsburg rising from the soil of France.

All this is of course entirely unnecessary. In the day and age of community planning, artistic housing and park systems, model tenements, restricted zones and grandiose warmemorials something more worthy can certainly be done to beautify the huddle homes of our forebears. The old Romans had a big idea in the arrangement of two of their great thoroughfares, Appia and Flamina Streets. These two boulevards were the principal routes of ingress and egress to and from the capital and for miles along their way stood the silent testimonials to Rome's greatness, beautiful monuments, not scattered helter-skelter over a broad area, but set in orderly progression, so that the traveller from distant lands could not help taking them in, one by one. He was forcibly fed with Rome's civic greatness.

Base commercialists that we are, we do exactly the same thing with our Fifth Avenue shops, but we hide our illustrious progenitors in obscure places, their life's lesson lost in hideous inaccessibility.

We greet the arriving motorist in a score of our near-by suburbs with huge signs of frantic welcome informing us that "This is Anglehurst, the Queen city of the South. Speed limit strictly enforced." We speed our parting guest with cute little signs of "Good bye! Come again!" "Pleased to have met you!" and so on. Of beauty of historical background, there is not a trace. How much more imposing to think of approaching a city under a really fine commemorative arch inscribed with some such sentiment-as "This is Weedville. Why not die here ? The following did—" and then a list of all the prominent but demised citizens.

This, as you see was the old Roman idea, but unfortunately, as Mr. Gibbon says, they declined and fell off before they could really develop it.

When it comes to the literary contributions of our best epitaphists, I doubt whether any American or English author will even win a place in Dr. Baer's five-foot coffin of classics. For here we are in a state even worse than in relation to the architectural phase, for in that, at least, we do show some signs of originality.

In our inscriptions, however, I search in vain for any departure from the time worn models of past centuries, the name of the deceased, a date or two, a quotation, voila tout! Do not think I overlook much that is amusing or quaint, but these examples are invariably of the unconscious school of humor and, had they been understood by the family at the time of the funeral, the chances are that the stone cutter would be still waiting for his money. I have memorized several of them which are suitable for all ages and I frequently use them with great success at dinners.

Let me keep one thing in mind. Epitaphs are commonly written or carved on enduring materials and their expression should therefore be a matter of tremendous thought and concentration. Only the most important items should be included. It is no idle matter to work with a chisel and hammer for six months on a large slab of adamantine slate, only to be told that the author had decided to use "but" instead of "if" in the second line, as if the whole affair were a carbon copy which you hand over to Miss Perkins for retyping.

Next to concentration and importance of matter we should demand beauty of style or, if this seems asking too much, we must look for a straight-forward honesty of expression which shall be characteristic of our own times.

The Egyptians as Epitaph Writers

THE earliest contributors to historical necrology were the Egyptians, but their literary compositions were invariably as dry as their own deserts. They simply used to write on the sarcophagus or mummy-case a sort of letter of introduction addressed to some particular divinity: "Osiris, Dear Sir: Enclosed please find my Uncle Rameses. Any attention you may be able to show him, etc., etc.—"

Doubtless it is too much to hope, to attain the nobility fused with wit, which inspired so many of the early Greeks, to whom their very monuments spoke with personal force and fire. What was it, written by Simonides, for the heroes of Thermopylae?

Go tell the Spartans that thou passest by That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Beauty, sadness and defiance in a couplet. How engaging is Plato's imaginative and sprightly thought:

I am a ship-wrecked sailor's tomb; a peasant's there doth stand,

Thus the same world of Hades lies beneath both sea and land.

For the benefit of the benighted, it should be pointed out that the worthy philosopher was by no means suggesting that his subjects had gone to hell in the modem sense. All the best people were supposed to go to Hades in those days and undoubtedly did so.

Equally unattainable seems to be that cynical humour which enabled an old French seigneur of the XVIth century to append to his wife's effigy:

Ci-git ma femme. Ah! qu'elle est bien Pour son repos—et pour le mien.

Could H. G. Wells express their married life in one hundred and fifty thousand words?

Could the refined pen of Henry James more delicately shadow forth the chase exclusiveness of an ancient spinster than in the words of her memorial:

Ci-git Marguerite Guiltier Dans son petit particular.

Very evidently life was no bed-room farce for Marguerite.

Think of the magnificent defiance of the great M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, Bishop of Noyon, who announced epitaphically that he had left Heaven in disgust at some of the people he found there,—which surely takes the prize for parting slaps, including as it does, both the temporal and spiritual worlds.

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But I might quote indefinitely. Let us rather consider our own faults and possibilities. For the most part, we are negative. Our memorials say nothing or, at best, consist of rhetorical flourishes as artificial as wax-flowers. Another unpleasant variant is that type of Mid-Victorian ghoulishness which with great gusto contrasts the attractive state of the deceased when alive with his present loathsome condition underground—the ugh-ugh school.

Epitaphs 100% American

NO—we are on the wrong track. What we need is a modem, up-todate punch in our stuff, a breezy, succinct, it-pays-to-advertise spirit, suited of course to the peculiar requirements of individual cases. Let us frankly try to put some heart interest into our efforts. How much it would add to the sprightliness of a bald record to read a neat couplet in memory of a ptomaine victim:

Such a little thing to do it;

It was only a Cotuit.

What consolation might be conveyed if we were informed that:

It simply couldn't be avoided:

She had to be de-adenoided.

How optimistic the thought back of:

Thus we go,

Cheerio !

Furthermore, in our more extended records, let us strive to tell the things in which future generations will find real interest, things expressive of the cultural and social side of people of importance. How dull are most obituaries,—a genealogical survey. How much more vital to know that the late Mrs. Cadwalader Bemis left, in her day, forty two miles of calling cards, or that Mr. Wallace Penderford, the great club-man, consumed during his three score years more than eight tons of caviar.

Let these vital facts be prominently and artistically displayed in and about our great cities, let the amusementpark idea be incorporated with our places of interment and the result will vindicate itself in sound financial returns. How magnificent was the recent bequest of the late philanthropist, Phineas Atwater of Olean, Ill., who left his ashes to his native city as the nucleus of a collection to be used on the icy pavements of winter and thus make Olean a better place to live and die in. What sound sense and lofty sentiment!

Thus musing, I hope profitably, I ate my last sandwich in the old New England burying ground and voted the picnic a complete success.