Jane Austen's England
Page 39
Whatever the status of the dead person, funerals largely conformed to a basic pattern. The coffin was carried from the deceased’s home to the churchyard – in a carriage, on the shoulders of pall bearers or on a special wooden frame called a bier, sometimes supported on wheels. Moritz noticed that the coffins were different from those in his native Germany: ‘The English coffins are made very economically, according to the exact form of the body; they are flat and broad at top, tapering gradually from the middle, and drawing to a point at the feet, not very unlike the case of a violin.’39
Funerals were usually heralded by tolling a bell, which was often regarded as an integral part of the ceremony. When asked if a bell could be sounded for the burial of an unbaptised child, Woodforde refused, saying that ‘as the funeral service could not be read over it, the tolling of the bell at any time [was] to be inadmissible’.40 Being unbaptised, the baby was denied a Christian funeral, and its burial could not even be marked by a funeral bell. Before lightning conductors were properly understood, bell ringing, a seemingly mundane occupation, could actually be dangerous. One particular stormy day in June 1782, Woodforde was shocked to hear that ‘there were 3 men struck down in Pilton Church [in Somerset] by the lightning this morning – one of them killed instantly, but the others like to recover. The man that was struck dead was tolling a bell for a person lately dead, the other two were near him.’41
When the coffin arrived at the churchyard, it was customary for the priest to meet the funeral procession at the entrance. Many churchyards had a lich-gate where mourners could wait until the clergyman arrived. These lich-gates (or lych-gates, literally ‘corpse-gates’ from ‘lych’ or ‘lich’, an Old English word for ‘corpse’) often had some means of resting the coffin and sometimes seats for the pall bearers and a roof to shelter them from the weather. After a service inside the church, the burial service was carried out at the side of the grave, which had been dug earlier, but the ceremony did not always proceed smoothly. On one occasion Woodforde was irritated by the carelessness of his clerk: ‘I buried poor Miss Rose this evening at Weston aged 20 years. It was a very pretty, decent funeral. But Js. Smith the Clerk made me wait in performing the office at the grave near a qr of an hour, the grave not being long enough a good deal. It was a very great interruption. I gave it to Js. afterwards.’42 At another funeral, this time of a young man, a different problem occurred: ‘as they were about to let the corpse into the grave one of the leathern straps gave way by the thread with which it was joined being quite decayed, but luckily it slipped before the corpse was moved far from the ground. A rope was then sent for to a neighbouring House with which it was safely deposited in the ground.’43
After the funeral, one widely observed custom was the distribution of mourning mementos, or ‘favours’, to the main people involved. When Woodforde attended the funeral of an old friend, ‘We each of us had a rich black silk scarf [usually tied on as an armband] and hatband, and a pr. of beaver gloves.’44 The servant accompanying him was also given a silk hatband and a pair of gloves – servants were expected to observe the same mourning as their employers.
These favours were a diplomatic part of the etiquette, and when a friend who died was buried in a neighbouring parish, the Reverend William Holland was initially offended. But the next day the family of the deceased made amends by sending him ‘a very handsome sattin hatband and scarf, white and two pair of white gloves, one for my wife as well as one for myself. I expected a hatband, but not a scarf, and it is not the value of it either I regard so much as the intimation of respect it conveys.’45 The following Sunday Holland conducted a service at a distant church and then officiated at his own church in Over Stowey, ‘which was tolerably full and a great appearance there was of hatbands, and all white, and my own sattin scarf white also…looked quite conspicuous’.46 He particularly mentioned that the funeral favours were white, because this was unusual. Black was always the traditional mourning colour, but white could be used for people thought to be innocent in the sight of God, usually children and young unmarried women. In this instance it was a young man who had been buried, and Holland stressed that ‘He was a well disposed young man…of great moral integrity, and uprightness and sincerity of heart.’47
The actual place of burial depended on social status, and the most sought-after place was inside the church, either in the ground under the floor or sometimes in a family vault. If it was not possible to have a vault inside the church, a wealthy family might have one built close by in the churchyard. Doors or hatchways provided access to some vaults, and at his aunt’s funeral in Bristol, Neast Prideaux remarked: ‘When the coffin was put into the vault, I looked in, and saw my late sister’s coffin, which was perfectly entire.’48
In Woodforde’s parish of Weston Longville, the privilege of burial inside the church was assumed by the local squire Mr Custance and his family, and in November 1780 Woodforde buried their infant Edward Custance, just fifty-two days old: ‘Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Custance there. The coffin was lead with a copper breast plate on it and on that was engraved the age and name of the child. The breastplate was plain and made thus . The child was buried in the chancel in the north aile.’49
These gradations of status were satirised on a gravestone set by the door to the chancel of St Edmund’s Church at Kingsbridge in Devon, which carries the inscription:
UNDERNEATH
Lieth the Body of ROBERT
Comonly called BONE PHILLIP,
who died July 27th, 1793,
Aged 63 years,
At whose request the following lines are here inserted.
Here lie I at the Chancel door;
Here lie I because I’m poor;
The forther in the more you’ll pay;
Here lie I as warm as they.50
It was not just a simple matter of being buried inside or outside the church, since different parts of the churchyard were more desirable than others. On a gravestone dated 1807 at the Church of St Andrews at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the inscription included the lines:
And that I might longer undisturbed abide,
I choosed to be laid on this Northern side.51
There was a reluctance to be buried on the north side of the church, which many people considered was for strangers, unbaptised infants, the poor and those suspected of suicide. In some places, there was also a superstitious dread of being buried on the north side, probably made worse by the fact that such graves were in the shadow of the church and away from the main paths leading to the west and south doors. At the Church of St Mary in Selborne, Hampshire, the curate Gilbert White expressed his concern:
all wish to be buried on the south side, which is becoming such a mass of mortality that no person can be interred there without disturbing or displacing the bones of his ancestors…At the east end are a few graves; yet none till very lately on the north-side but, as two or three families of best repute have begun to bury in that quarter, prejudice may wear out by degrees, and their example be followed by the rest of the neighbourhood.52
White himself was buried in 1793 on the north side of the church at Selborne, with a simple headstone giving his initials and date of death.
In large cities and towns with growing populations, and particularly in London, entire churchyards were becoming crammed full with burials. However, the situation had not yet reached the level of dire overcrowding that would lead to large new cemeteries being established in the mid-nineteenth century.
Burials were recorded in parish registers, and often the entry simply consisted of the name of the deceased, some indication of where they were living when they died and the burial date (not the date of death). Ever since the Burial in Woollen Acts of 1666–80, registers were also supposed to record whether a sworn affidavit had confirmed that the dead person was buried in a woollen shroud. In November 1783 Parson Woodforde recorded that he had received a shilling fee for providing ‘a Certificate of Persons being buried in Woolen at Hockering according to the Act’.53
Such a certificate ensured that the person responsible for the burial was not liable to pay the £5 fine for not burying a person in wool. The law had been designed to promote the English woollen industry, but by Woodforde’s time it was already widely ignored, and the law was repealed in 1814.
After a funeral, the period of mourning continued, but the social code was not so rigid as it would become in the Victorian era. As in later decades, the time that women, particularly widows, spent in mourning was longer than for men, and their mourning dress was more conspicuous. Although there were variations between different places, between social classes and even within families, it was common for widows and close female relatives to stay in mourning for at least a year. If someone died suddenly, people might be unprepared and have no suitable clothes. Some black clothes might be quickly obtained for the funeral, but the weeks and months of mourning afterwards required a full wardrobe.
Having had to go into mourning with the family employing her at Dove Nest, Nelly Weeton asked a friend to forward her some clothes: ‘Little expecting to wear black so soon after I left you, I brought nothing of the kind with me; and there are several things which might be worn to save better [ones]. What I have now is too good for every day.’54 She asked for a parcel of her old clothes to be sent, including ‘a black Chambray gown, a silk petticoat, a cambric muslin petticoat…some black lace net, wrapped in a piece of black mode, and a black silk work bag with some crape’.55
When Cassandra Austen was with her brother Edward in October 1808, she found herself in a similar predicament on the sudden death of his wife Elizabeth. Jane therefore wrote to her:
Your parcel shall set off on Monday, and I hope the shoes will fit; Martha and I both tried them on. I shall send you such of your mourning as I think most likely to be useful, reserving for myself your stockings and half the velvet, in which selfish arrangement I know I am doing what you wish. I am to be in bombazeen and crape, according to what we are told is universal here, and which agrees with Martha’s previous observation. My mourning, however, will not impoverish me, for by having my velvet pelisse fresh lined and made up, I am sure I shall have no occasion this winter for anything new of that sort.56
The fact that Jane and Martha had discussed the correct mourning dress demonstrates how variable social etiquette was at this time. After being in full black mourning for a year or more, a woman might go into half-mourning, with less sombre clothes or a mixture of white and black. Men seldom went to such extremes. They generally wore dark-coloured clothes anyway, to which a black hatband and armband could be added. They also wore their mourning for shorter periods and were less likely to be censured for flouting such social conventions. In any case, mourning etiquette was largely for those who could afford to follow fashion – and fashion was set by the wealthy. The middle classes tried to follow their example, while the working classes made do with armbands, hatbands and whatever else they could afford. Servants might have mourning clothes provided for a bereavement in their employer’s family, but not for a death in their own family.
When members of the royal family died, a time of national mourning was announced and the whole nation (being subjects of the monarch, rather than citizens of a state) was expected to respond. Because of the sudden overwhelming demand for black fabrics and the corresponding slump in the sale of most other colours, periods of national mourning frequently disrupted the textile industry. Sometimes, though, the response was less than zealous, and when the Duke of Gloucester died in 1805, Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra: ‘I suppose everybody will be black for the D. of G. Must we buy lace, or will ribbon do?’57 Yet when the popular Princess Charlotte died in childbirth in November 1817, a few months after Jane’s death, genuine public grief was evident as William Darter recalled:
the lamented death of the Princess Charlotte occurred at the age of 22, leaving a husband (Prince Leopold) and the whole nation in deep sorrow. No public event in my time ever produced such a universal union of spontaneous sympathy. All business was suspended and shops closed; blinds were drawn down to the windows of private houses, and even the poorest of the poor wore some humble token of sympathy.58
Before the period of mourning was well under way, but usually after the funeral, the will of the dead person was read, proven and executed. For anyone with any wealth to bequeath, however small, a will was essential. Jane Austen left a simple will, bequeathing to her sister most of her estate:
I JANE AUSTEN of the Parish of Chawton do by this my last Will and testament give and bequeath to my dearest sister Cassandra Eliz’th every thing of which I may die possessed or which may hereafter be due to me subject to the payment of my funeral expenses and to a legacy of £50 to my brother Henry and £50 to Mde Bijion which I request may be paid as soon as convenient and I appoint my said dear sister EXECUTRIX of this my last Will and testament JANE AUSTEN April 27; 1817.59
As executrix, Cassandra distributed a few personal items among relatives and close friends, including some of her sister’s hair. It was common to cut hair from a dead person as a memento, which was often put into a locket or incorporated into mourning jewellery such as a ring or a brooch.
Wills were crucial in ensuring that wealth was kept within the family and that the estate passed intact to the eldest son or another male relative. This situation is a frequent feature of Jane Austen’s novels and drives the plot in Pride and Prejudice – although Mr Bennet owns a modest estate and has enough to keep his family comfortably, he has five daughters and no son. The terms under which he himself inherited the estate ensure that without a male heir, it will pass to his next male relative – the unpleasant Mr Collins. Mr Bennet’s family could therefore be left destitute. Mrs Bennet and her daughters would never be able to find occupations to support themselves and so would be dependent on charity from relatives.
All this unspoken anxiety, resulting from middle-class attempts to maintain their position in society, is behind Mrs Bennet’s hysterical outbursts. On hearing that Mr Collins is engaged to Charlotte Lucas, Mrs Bennet is immediately convinced that they will be uncharitable towards her family: ‘Indeed, Mr Bennet, it is very hard to think that Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to make way for her, and live to see her take my place in it!’ This complaint brings forth a typically ironic reply from her husband: ‘My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.’ The humour masks the gravity of the underlying situation, but as Jane Austen’s contemporaries might have personally known people in similar situations, or be in such a position themselves, the humour was obviously pointed.
While the relatives argued over the will, the body of the dead person was left to rest in peace – except where bodysnatchers were at work. People visiting graveyards today to discover where their ancestors lie may be unaware that the body occupied the grave for only a few hours. Various measures were taken to stop bodysnatchers where they were particularly active, the simplest being to bury the coffin deeper in the ground, making it more difficult to reach. Strong, well-made coffins, especially those lined with lead, provided some deterrent, and special coffins to foil bodysnatchers were advertised in newspapers such as the Morning Post:
INFORMATION to the PUBLIC.—The FRAUD of ROBBING GRAVES and VAULTS, in and near London, is constantly practised, and the bodies missing bearing a small proportion to the numbers dissected, it is presumed a security for the dead from such depredations, must prove a great consolation to the living. This security is the PATENT COFFIN, which not only protects the body, but prevents the lead being stolen; nor is lead necessary where the Patent Coffin is used, but in particular cases. The Patent Coffin may be had, at a few hours notice, of Jarvis, Son, and Co. Undertakers, 15, Piccadilly.60
More bodies were dissected than were reported stolen, and so the advertisement was playing on the fear of readers that they might be weeping over an empty grave. Jarvis’s Patent Coffins were supposedly
impossible to open, but ordinary coffin lids could also be reinforced and various obstructions, such as branches and stones, placed on top, while the grave itself could be covered with heavy stone slabs. Unfortunately, most of these precautions were circumvented by bodysnatchers digging alongside the coffin rather than directly over it and breaking into the grave from the side. In some churchyards traps were set with spring guns fired by tripwires, but they could be disarmed in advance by an accomplice. Watchmen were hired to guard churchyards at night, but they could be bribed, and the only way to be certain that a corpse remained undisturbed was for trusted family and friends to keep a vigil until the body was no longer fresh enough to be a valuable commodity.
For poor people, the possibility of mustering enough friends and family to guard the grave was severely limited by their own need to keep working to survive. Nor could working-class people afford patent coffins, or indeed anything but the cheapest coffins, so it is hardly surprising that bodysnatchers preyed mainly on the graves of the poor – and there were so many more of them. In death, as in life, the wealthy enjoyed distinct advantages. This situation was summarised in a verse that is found, with minor variations, on many gravestones of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: