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The Sacred Remains
This page intentionally left blank
 GARY LADERMAN

The Sacred Remains

AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD
DEATH, 1799-1883

Yale University Press

New Haven &
London
Copyright © 1996 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written per-
mission from the publishers.

"Printed in the United States of America"

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laderman, Gary, 1962-
The sacred remains: American attitudes toward death, 1799-1883 /
Gary Laderman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-300-06432-2. (cloth : alk. paper)
0-300-07868-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
i. Protestants — Northeastern States—Attitudes. 2. Death —
Religious aspects — Christianity—History of doctrines — 18th
century. 3. Death—Religious aspects — Christianity—History of
doctrines — 19 th century. 4. Funeral rites and ceremonies—
Northeastern States — History — 18th century. 5. Funeral rites and
ceremonies—Northeastern States—History — i9th century.
6. Northeastern States — Church history— i8th century.
7. Northeastern States — Church history — 19th century. I. Title.
BR525.L25 1996
3o6.9'o974'o9O34 — dcio 96-10373
CIP

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Li-
brary Resources.

09 08 07 06 4 5 6 7
To my parents, Carol and Pete, my brother, David, and my wife, Elizabeth
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction i

Part I Living with the Dead in the Antebellum North

George Washington's Invisible Corpse and the Beaver Hat 15
1 Signs of Death 22
2 From the Place of Death to the Space of Burial 27
3 Simplicity Lost: The Urban Model of Death 3 9
4 The Great Escape 51
5 "The Law of Nature": Revisioning Mortality and the Natural
Order 63
6 Morbid Obsessions 73

vn
i/iii Contents

Part II Death in the Civil War

John Brown's Body and a Soldier's Experiences of
Death on the Battlefield 89
7 Death During Wartime 9 6
8 "Let the Dead Bury the Dead": The Search for Closure 103
9 National Interests 117
10 "Resurrection Days" and Redemptive Blood 123
11 Disenchantment with the Mortal Remains 136
12. Looking Death in the Face 144

Epilogue. The Birth of the Death Industry

Abraham Lincoln's Hallowed and Hollowed Body 157
13 The Business of Death in the Late Nineteenth Century 164
Notes 177
Bibliography 199
Index 2,19
 Acknowledgments

I cannot possibly express my appreciation to all of the people who have

contributed to the completion of this work. Scholars, friends, and family
members have been supportive during the research and writing of this project,
inspiring me with their curiosity, insights, and, perhaps most important of all,
laughter. Even though I have spent the last several years reading, thinking, and
writing about death and corpses, people around me made sure I kept a sense of
humor. There is no doubt that the one person who has been especially sup-
portive—intellectually, editorially, and emotionally—is my wife, Elizabeth
Hardcastle. To her I offer my deepest gratitude; thank you for your wisdom,
guidance, patience, and humor.
This book grew out of the dissertation I wrote in the Religious Studies
Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to its
beautiful setting on the California coast, UCSB has an exceptional array of
faculty, graduate students, and staff. There are many reasons why it proved to
be such an advantageous place for me to study, but the most significant of
these was the composition of my dissertation committee. Each member con-
tributed to my intellectual and professional growth in her or his own way and,
once again, I cannot find the words to acknowledge them adequately. It is with
great appreciation and respect that I thank Robert Kelley, who died after a
short illness while I was in the process of writing the dissertation, Constance
x Acknowledgments

Penley, W. Richard Comstock, Catherine L. Albanese, and Richard D. Hecht

for all they have done for me. Professor Penley brought her creative mind and
cultural studies approach to our discussions of my work; Professor Comstock
engaged in provocative conversations with me and helped in the conceptual-
ization of the project; Professor Albanese, who deserves special mention for
her careful, critical reading of every page, paragraph, and sentence of the
dissertation, kept me firmly grounded in American religious history and cul-
ture; and Professor Hecht provided me with overall direction —he was my
adviser during graduate school, and his counsel and friendship continue to be
extremely valuable.
Fortunately, I have moved on to another exceptional academic setting. The
Department of Religion at Emory University is an ideal place to begin a profes-
sional career. My colleagues here, as well as throughout the Emory commu-
nity, have been encouraging and supportive while I reworked the manuscript.
The enthusiasm and advice of Paul Courtright and Louis Ruprecht Jr. were
greatly appreciated, and the constructive, insightful comments of E. Brooks
Holifield gave me a fresh perspective on the manuscript while I was putting it
into its final form. The summer research support I received from the university
was also helpful as I finished putting the final manuscript together.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Graduate Division and the
Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, for research support. During the research for this project I encoun-
tered a number of generous and friendly people who made the task of search-
ing through materials much easier. To the librarians and assistants at the
following institutions, thank you for all your support: the American Anti-
quarian Society in Worcester, Mass.; the Baker Library and Countway Medi-
cal Library, both at Harvard University; the Davidson Library, Special Collec-
tions and Interlibrary Loan Services, at UCSB; the Huntington Library in San
Marino, Calif.; the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield; the National
Foundation of Funeral Service in Chicago; the Old Sturbridge Village Re-
search Library in Massachusetts; and the Woodruff Library at Emory. Thanks
to Edward C. Johnson and Melissa Johnson Williams for access to their pri-
vate collection of funerary materials. Mr. Johnson provided me with useful
information about the history of embalming in the United States and burial
during the Civil War. I would also like to express my gratitude to Athena
Angelos, pictorial researcher in Washington, D.C., who helped me locate
many of the images included in the book.
Portions of Part I appeared in a different form in the Journal of the Ameri-
can Academy of Religion. I am grateful to the journal for permission to use
this material. Also, portions of the book were presented at national meetings
 Acknowledgments xi

of the American Academy of Religion, the American Studies Association, the

Civil War Round Table Association, and the Organization of American Histo-
rians. A number of people who heard my presentations provided me with
useful and astute comments, including Howard Kushner, Glen LaFantasie,
Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Colleen McDannell, Ellen More, Michael Sappol, and
Barbara Sicherman. I also presented the section on Lincoln during various
"job talks," and received helpful comments from faculty and students at
UCSB, Duke, and Emory. In addition, the following individuals read over all
or part of this work and offered constructive suggestions about both form and
content: John Gillis, Thomas Laqueur, Edward Linenthal, James McPherson,
Maris Vinovskis, and Michel Vovelle.
Finally, I would like to thank Charles Grench, Dan Heaton, and the other
editors at Yale University Press for their interest in my work and their assis-
tance in producing this book.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

What should be done with the dead body? Who is best qualified to
prepare the corpse for its final disposition? Does the decaying, disintegrating
individual body have any symbolic value for the collective social body? These
are disturbing questions indeed, yet every culture must grapple with them be-
cause of one universal, inescapable truth: death. Throughout history, however,
living communities have demonstrated a remarkable range of strategies for
managing and imagining their dead. While most societies have turned to re-
ligious authorities and teachings to make metaphysical sense of death, con-
fronting the reality of the human corpse has been a particularly compelling
dilemma for survivors. As sociologist Robert Hertz observed, the death of a
societal member "is tantamount to a sacrilege" because society itself "is
stricken in the very principle of its life, in the faith it has in itself."1 How the
dead body is cared for, and the practices employed for its disposal, can tell us as
much about the animating principles within a given society as about how that
society understands the meaning of death. Before turning to an investigation of
these questions in Protestant culture in the northern United States of the nine-
teenth century, a few words about the status and meaning of the dead in
contemporary American society are in order. After all, a primary goal of this
study is to shed some light on how changing attitudes toward death and the
dead in the previous century have led to present-day perspectives and practices.

1
2 Introduction

In the United States today, corpses are handled in a fairly practical, rational,
and organized way by a group of expert professionals. Family members, close
relatives and friends, and other acquaintances depend on these professionals
to provide confirmation that life is truly extinguished and to prepare the body
for its exit from living society. Although the details of the funeral service differ
according to a number of factors, including degree of religious belief and class
standing, treatment of the corpse itself varies little. Throughout most of the
twentieth century, the same rituals to remove the dead from the human com-
munity have prevailed, and the corpse has been kept securely within the pur-
view of individuals who have an interest in the mortal remains at death.2
When death occurs, it usually takes place and is officially announced in a
medical setting. The individual presiding over the transition from life to death
is the doctor, who reads the body with an assortment of technological devices
to make sure that there are no positive signs of animation.3 With this pro-
nouncement a series of actions is set in motion that ultimately lead to the
disposition of the corpse out of sight from the living. Before the body of the
deceased disappears from view, however, its presence as a unit of information
must be recorded in a number of registers, including those managed by the
hospital, the government, private agencies, religious institutions, and other
social organizations that maintain demographic and biographical records.
If necessary, an autopsy is performed at the hospital, and from there the
corpse is transported to a funeral home or mortuary. Here a new set of special-
ists begin their professional services to ensure that the body of the deceased is
properly arranged for disposal. Disposal usually takes one of two forms: either
the body is embalmed and then interred in the ground, or it is cremated. If the
family chooses cremation, the body still may be embalmed before it is inciner-
ated. Although an increasing number of families choose this last method of
disposition, embalming and earth burial has been the most popular option for
the majority of U.S. citizens throughout most of the twentieth century.4 But
common though embalming may be in the United States, many individuals do
not understand —and do not want to understand—why this practice has be-
come so ritualized.
State and federal laws require embalming only under specific circumstances.
Most American funeral directors and health and safety experts, though, assert
that embalming is an essential social responsibility for those who handle the
dead and get them ready for their final passage.5 A variety of federal and state
agencies are interested in the practice of embalming, from local boards of
health to state associations of funeral service organizations to the Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Administration. The Federal Trade Commission also
has an interest in embalmed bodies because they are, in effect, commodities for
use in a consumer market that generates millions and millions of dollars.6
 Introduction 3

When a corpse is to be buried its appearance seems to be a principal concern

both to the professionals who work on it and to the survivors. The presenta-
tion of the dead, the display of an apparently serene, content figure in an
expensive, comfortable, mass-produced coffin located in a "slumber" room or
funeral chapel, offers the living the opportunity to gaze upon the remains of
the deceased one last time before the body disappears. In order to assist in this
component of the ritual, funeral technicians perform their unique duties on
the dead. These duties, which usually take place out of sight of the bereaved in
the privacy of well-equipped preparation rooms, include disinfecting the body,
washing its surface and shaving facial hairs, draining the blood, injecting
embalming fluid into the arteries, gluing the eyes and mouth shut, applying the
necessary cosmetic touches, and dressing the body in formal attire.7
Specialists in the funeral industry claim that there are compelling hygienic
reasons for the process of embalming and that, even more important to those
involved in this highly lucrative business, it also offers customers who bid
farewell to their loved ones a service that is therapeutic and greatly appreci-
ated. Many survivors seem to have a strong desire to gaze upon the lifeless
body before it is removed. Embalming provides a simulacrum of the living
loved one, even though the secret of real death hovers over the peaceful figure
"at rest" in the coffin. There is a variety of explanations as to why this practice
is so pervasive in the United States, but there can be no doubt that "the
embalmed body is the cornerstone of [the funeral] industry."8 As a highly
technical procedure that requires expertise, training, and some form of gov-
ernmental regulation, and as a service with a sustaining consumer demand,
embalming has grown from the end of the nineteenth century and throughout
the twentieth century into a legitimate and fundamental element of the rite of
passage leading the dead from the living community.
The routinization of the dead and their placement within a rigid, organized
ritual guarantees that the survivors can turn to mediators to deal with the
lifeless remains. Whether or not the corpse is viewed, the living have minimal
contact with it and can choose not to bid farewell in person to their lost loved
one. Although the dead become the center of a range of medical, economic,
and religious activities, they can also move from hospital room to burial plot
or urn without making any public appearance. Their location in society is
securely regulated and controlled by numerous specialists, so the physical
trace left behind at death in no way threatens the equilibrium of living society.
But the dead do not simply vanish when life is extinguished; although their
final physical disposition is managed by specialists, the dead must also be
accounted for in the imagination. In contrast to the relative simplicity and
uniformity of the ritual activity surrounding the corpse, the life of the spirit —
if it is affirmed at all —is described within a variety of symbol systems and
4 Introduction

imaginative constructs. The radical dualism that underlies this imagery about
the afterlife reveals the modern indifference toward the fate of the body, a loss
of interest in the semiotics of decomposition, and a sense of confidence about
the spirit after death has occurred. Yet while popular, optimistic narratives of
out-of-body adventure have captured much of the public's attention, darker
counternarratives about the threatening return of the dead are just as powerful
and popular in American culture.9
Surveys published in the 19808 indicate that roughly 70 percent of adult
Americans believed in life after death.10 But as Colleen McDannell and Bern-
hard Lang observe in their analysis of conceptualizations of heaven, "While
Christians still accept heaven as an article of faith, their vigor in defining the
nature of eternal life has much diminished."11 In spite of growing interest in
angels during the 19905, specifics about the afterlife seem not to be pressing to
most Christians; even with the proliferation of ideas about the spiritual world
that challenge traditional religious views, many Christians remain focused on
religious life in this world and spend little time or energy describing the next.
On the other hand, one of the most fundamental changes in the vision of the
afterlife since the Enlightenment has been the virtual erasure of images of hell
from the Christian imagination.12
Most theologians in the twentieth century have been hesitant to offer spe-
cifics about the heavenly realm and what awaits the spirit after death. Protes-
tant thinkers like Rienhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich have adopted a "symbol-
ist compromise" that avoids both literal, supernatural interpretations of the
spiritual realm and scientific, rational skepticism about nonempirical realities.
For these Christian philosophers "there are dimensions of reality which can-
not be approached in any other way than by symbols"; they suggest that a
whole range of questions relating to immortality, heaven, and the spirit are
ultimately inaccessible to human understanding.13 In contrast to the reticence
of theologians, though, others within the Christian tradition have provided
concrete answers about the details of death. Spokespersons for specific Protes-
tant denominations frequently address these questions with language unhin-
dered by philosophical ambiguity and multivalent symbolism. For many the
body is inconsequential to the spirit's future prospects.
For example, in Major Methodist Beliefs, Bishop Mack B. Stokes asserts
that people will be able to recognize each other in the next life and friendships
will not only be maintained but enhanced by greater love: "Eternal life is one
of peace and joy because it brings together the redeemed souls into a perfect
fellowship.... We shall not only recognize [our friends], we shall see how truly
wonderful they are and we shall more perfectly love them."14 But the Method-
ist Service of Death and Resurrection, acknowledges that the material, decom-
 Introduction 5

posing or cremated body will no longer be of use at the time of the individual's
resurrection. When the body is disposed of the mourners are reminded that it
"has been valued and loved. When it no longer serves its purpose in its old
form, it is returned to the elements from which it came."15
While American Protestant churches often frame discussions of death in
terms of reunions, personal immortality, and the presence of Jesus Christ,
numerous descriptions of the afterlife offer an alternative set of images, sym-
bols, and meanings for public consumption. A popular narrative that has
captured the American imagination describes the "near-death" experiences of
individuals who have come back from death to provide insight into this life
and the spirit's "otherworld journeys."16 Although there are variations, the
recurring themes expressed by those who claim to have died and come back
include lights and tunnels, guardian angels and departed relations who serve
as spirit guides, mystical insight into the meaning of life, and reentrance into
the body. Most informants insist that they acquired a new, spiritual body as
their physical one ceased to function.17 Whatever the details, the primary
message remains the same: at death the spirit leaves the body and begins a new,
disembodied life. In the words of Betty J. Eadie, whose Embraced by the Light
was a huge commercial success in 1994 and 1995: "When we 'die,' my guides
said, we experience nothing more than a transition to another state. Our
spirits slip from the body and move to a spiritual realm. If our deaths are
traumatic, the spirit quickly leaves the body, sometimes even before death
occurs."18
Death and the metamorphosis from matter to spirit constitute simply one
stage in the supernatural progression outlined by those who report on near-
death experiences and by scientists who attempt to provide empirical evidence
of their validity. The suffering and inevitable deterioration of the physical body
are overcome in these narratives, which draw on an assortment of religious
systems, including Christianity, Native American mythology, and various
other mystical traditions to present a syncretic, comprehensible, and highly
satisfying vision of the afterlife. Considered as a cultural fashion in contempo-
rary America, the popularity of near-death adventures reveals three specific
characteristics of modern society: the increasing impotence of conventional
religious traditions in making sense of death, the persistent desire to ground
some form of personal immortality in medical and scientific language, and the
powerful need to avoid imaginatively the symbolically potent corpse.19
Popular literature describing near-death journeys appeals to modern, ra-
tional, scientifically minded individuals in search of hopeful signs of postmor-
tem existence. But on the other hand, countervailing expressions in mass media
offer menacing and dangerous revenants rather than peaceful, adventurous,
6 Introduction

and ethereal spirits. From Jason in Friday the Thirteenth to Freddy in Night-
mare on Elm Street to the flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead,
horror films since the late 19608 have provided enthusiastic audiences with an
orgy of fantastic violence and graphic, often sexual, brutality perpetrated by
monsters who return from the grave to haunt the living. Cinematic exploits of
the walking dead, through such figures as Frankenstein, Dracula, and the
Mummy, have always been a successful draw at the theater. But in recent
decades the horror film has attained new levels of popularity, partly as a result
of the vivid and spectacular images of human destruction depicted on screen.
In these narratives all is not light and progress but instead only darkness and
fear. The dead rarely assume a disembodied, spiritual form —they come back
either to exact some form of vengeance or to engage in random acts of violence
and destruction.20 The insights they return with do not promote peace and
promise, only chaos, injustice, and terror. The motivations and experiences of
the dead in these films are inversions of what transpires in popular, out-of-
body travels. Instead of visiting a realm of spiritual progress and comforting
reunions, they return from beyond to this world to wreak havoc, sever the
bonds of family, love, and friendship, and satisfy their aggressive, toxic de-
sires. These fiends personify Death —sometimes with a degree of parody and
humor —as an irrational force that can vanquish any and all individuals, re-
gardless of faith, intelligence, or income.
The dead also return to the imagination of the living through mechanisms
that exist outside the logic of conventional religious discourse and popular
expressions in various media. In politics, the dead have been extremely power-
ful sources of national legitimation and sanctification. From Gettysburg Na-
tional Cemetery to the Challenger disaster, the federal government has acted
to preserve the memory of certain significant individuals and moments in
national history.21 Its interest in the dead goes beyond questions of propriety
and respect for individuals who make up the republic; indeed, the very life of
the political order has depended on trampling over the bones of indigenous
peoples and glorifying the remains of figures whose significance reflects the
principles and mission of the nation. Assuming a role once reserved for the
church, the state confers immortality on particular national heroes and sacral-
ity on specific locations that solemnize the sacrifices and triumphs of American
citizens. In addition, the maintenance of graves, museums, and memorials
contributes to the construction of sacred places on the American landscape;
the celebration of such national holidays as Presidents' Day, Martin Luther
King Jr. Day, and Memorial Day establishes the sacred time by which citizens
orient themselves. The cosmology of American political life is saturated with
death and the bones of the dead.22
 Introduction 7

The struggle to account for death can also be linked with a wide range of
high-profile, contentious, often extremely emotional issues in American so-
ciety, including abortion, euthanasia, violence, suicide, genocide, and AIDS.
The public debates surrounding these issues, as well as the popularity of new-
age visions of the afterlife, mourning manuals, techniques of grief therapy, and
bereavement workshops, indicate that death is not a taboo topic, but rather a
subject that is unavoidable in American culture. Although the dead —that is,
the physical corpses of deceased individuals — are either disguised and made to
appear in a state of peaceful repose or removed entirely from view, the broad
questions associated with human mortality can be imagined in a variety of
contexts and are debated vigorously in the public arena. This signals a signifi-
cant change in the status and location of death in modern society.
According to the historian Philippe Aries, by the early decades of the twen-
tieth century death had become "hidden" and "invisible." Death was even-
tually understood as "dirty" and a source of pollution, which led to the medi-
calization of death and its banishment to the hospital. At the same time, as
individuals in larger communities and major urban centers grew more and
more alienated from each other, social solidarity in the face of death dissolved.
The forces of life, the disappearance of hell, and the successes of medicine
began to transform death into something shameful and unnatural. Under
these conditions American society became "ashamed of death, more ashamed
then afraid," and proceeded to eliminate it from public life.23 Aries concludes
his 1977 study: "A heavy silence has fallen over the subject of death. . . .
Neither the individual nor the community is strong enough to recognize the
existence of death."24
Popular interest in the subject developed gradually in the United States,
clearly in large part after the publication of Aries's study.25 Even in religious
circles there was little public interest until the last decades of the twentieth
century in debating and exploring the meanings, politics, psychology, and
other dimensions of death that fascinate us today. The reasons for this "si-
lence" need further exploration, but perhaps the experience of two world
wars, particularly the mass destruction of the Holocaust in Europe and the
dropping of the atomic bomb in Japan, contributed to this reticence to discuss
the subject; perhaps, as will be argued in this work, the gradual displacement
of the presence of death in daily living began sometime after the Civil War.26
In the following investigation I shall discuss the changing status of the corpse
in the culturally dominant white, Protestant communities of the northern
United States before and during the Civil War, culminating in the emergence of
the funeral industry after the war. While the making of American society
resulted from a mixture of religious groups and movements, immigrants and
8 Introduction

ethnic communities, and entrepreneurs and workers from various classes, the
creation and acceptance of the funeral industry in the postbellum years de-
pended on these Protestants. This was not an entirely homogenous culture, but
its lineage can be traced back to the New England Puritans.27 The imaginative
and social world constituted by middle-class Protestant sensibilities will serve
as the focus of this study because it was in this world that the corpse moved
from a symbolically powerful though liminal object to a commodity at the
heart of the nascent industry.
The time frame of this history is rather specific: it begins with the cere-
monial activities associated with the death of George Washington in 1799 and
closes with the assassination and funeral journey of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
A close examination of the years between the burials of the first president
and the sixteenth will reveal the conditions —demographic, social, cultural,
and symbolic —that led to the consolidation and professionalization of what
became by the turn of the century a nationally organized confederation of
market-conscious American death specialists. One of the principal services
offered by technicians in the new industry — and the one that legitimated their
claims to expertise in death—was embalming, a practice that offended and
repulsed popular sensibilities before the onset of the Civil War.
The study concludes with the second annual meeting of the Funeral Direc-
tors' National Association in Rochester, New York, in 1883; here, at the
beginning of this collective enterprise, their article of faith about embalming
was articulated. At the funeral directors' first national meeting the effort to
preserve the body was proclaimed to be central to American deathways and
consistent with the ancient "scientific" endeavor to preserve the corpse. In the
words of the first secretary of the group, S. R. Lippincott,
From the earliest age of which we have any authentic history, it seems to have
been the ardent desire of the scientific world to obtain the mystery of the art of
preserving this wonderful piece of mechanism from waste and decay and
dissolution, so that time should not efface or destroy it We want to know
whether this lost art, if it ever really did exist, is to be again restored, and
whether it has remained thus long buried in obscurity that the great American
Republic may have the distinguished honor of restoring again to mankind a
lost art.
We have met, then, to-day, my friends, from the different parts of a great
country, to lay the corner stone of a new structure to art and science.28
Lippincott went on to describe this task as a religious enterprise. He compared
the members who were present to King David: although they might not live to
see the "Temple" of the industry completed, they were involved in "preparing
the materials and design" for it. But he also acknowledged that this would not
 Introduction 9

be an easy task. In addition to the scientific, artistic, and religious imperatives

involved in "building the Temple," Lippincott realized the economic urgency
of banding together "professional" death specialists into a national organiza-
tion. "Up to the present time, then, we have been but a loose aggregation of
individuals, in no way united for a common purpose. Hereafter we shall be a
conservative central force, that will unite and control, to a certain extent, the
discordant elements among us, and save our profession from disintegration
and disgrace."29
Before the i88os no funeral industry existed to provide goods and services
for the dead or the survivors in any uniform, dependable manner. Family
members, friends, and neighbors were responsible for the actions that led to
the burial of the dead. Undertakers, liverymen, and cabinetmakers offered
assistance at various moments in the transferral of the dead from the living
community to the grave, but they usually played a subsidiary role in the drama
of death, particularly in the antebellum period, secondary in importance be-
hind the survivors and the corpse itself. Outside of the immediate circle of
relations and friends, one of the earliest expressions of managerial interest in
the disposal of the dead appeared around the 18305, in the growing urban
centers of the North. In locations such as Boston, New York, and Phila-
delphia, the corpse began to be understood as a source of pollution and hy-
gienic danger; the movement toward rural cemeteries, which capitalized on
the public's nostalgia for pastoral settings and pious, moral instruction, be-
came a popular middle-class answer to the horrors of bodily disintegration
and putrefaction. The arguments for burial reform that proliferated during the
middle of the century were informed by a combination of deep-rooted Ro-
mantic sensibilities and inspiring advancements in the natural sciences.30
It was only after the war that a group of professionals mobilized as a collec-
tive force, assumed a hegemonic position over the dead, and began to serve as
mediators between them and the living. Their self-understanding was couched,
as already demonstrated, in scientific, artistic, religious, and economic lan-
guage, and their immediate impact was in the cities of modernizing America. In
additioti to large-scale demographic expansion, the last decades of the nine-
teenth century were characterized by tremendous economic and industrial
growth in the North, though there were the occasional crises that convulsed
the economy and led to depression.31 The creation and growing respectability
of local and national organizations or associations of professionals who legiti-
mated, regulated, and monitored the logic of the marketplace were integral
components of American —more specifically, northern —economic success in
the late nineteenth century. The dead were subsumed within this logic, not only
because of the nature of the capitalist urban marketplace but also because of
io Introduction

two specific circumstances: the growing market value of corpses and other
goods and services associated with death, and experiences with the dead in the
Civil War.
But this study does not simply focus on the development of an institution,
nor on the evolution of burial practices, as the only ingredients in the story of
attitudes toward death. It is also concerned with the symbol and meaning
systems used by northern Protestants to interpret and imagine the dead.32
While the corpse was saturated with Christian symbolism in this cultural
milieu, there is evidence of a gradual process of "dechristianization" that led to
reconceptualizations of the meaning of the corpse and of death in general.33
This process was twofold: on the one hand, traditional Protestant views began
to lose their authority in public culture; and, on the other hand, many compet-
ing beliefs about the spirit and spiritual journeys after death became dissoci-
ated from the corpse and the church, and assumed a multiplicity of popular
forms. Equally important in this process were the unconventional interpretive
responses to the presence of death, which could be manifested in terms of
fascination, fixation, or —for soldiers during wartime — utter disregard. The
relation between the reality of death —and the material reality of the dead
body —and how that reality was represented in the imagination is critical to
this cultural history.
Although academic interest in death has grown in recent years, the subject
has not yet attained the privileged place in American historiography that it has
in the study of Europe.34 True, historians and other scholars have identified an
"American way of death" that has developed over the course of the country's
history.35 But invoking an American way of death does not do justice to the
conflicts and discord surrounding the dead throughout American history in
general and within Protestant American history in particular. In these north-
ern communities before the Civil War, and even, as we will see, during the
bloody conflict that united the North against the southern states, there was no
one "way" to understand the proper location of the dead in society and to
construct their meaning in the imagination.
In this cultural history I shall examine the formation of a new way of
looking at death. In particular, I shall describe the initial yearnings for, and
the transformative moment in the history of, the death industry in the post-
Puritan world of the North. The two periods that are most often identified as
maintaining fairly strict, rigid controls on public expressions related to death
are the recent past — in which the uniformity of burial practices coexisted with
a general silence on the subject—and the Puritan era in New England at the
beginning of the nation's history —in which an evangelism of fear positioned
the realities of death at the center of communal life.36 The period from the
 Introduction n

beginning of the nineteenth century to the start of the Givil War, in contrast,
displayed a greater degree of conflict over the place and interpretation of the
dead; Protestants in the North had trouble establishing a consensus on the
meaning of death in public culture. As the Puritan theocracy began to recede
further and further into the past, the location of the dead in popular northern
society became more and more questionable. If the dominant Protestant in-
stitutions and local communities could no longer maintain their hold on the
dead, what in American culture would take their place?
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 P A RT i

Living with the Dead in the Antebellum North

This page intentionally left blank
 George Washington's Invisible Corpse
and the Beaver Hat

On January 7,1800, the town of Providence, Rhode Island, engaged in

an act of communal solidarity that temporarily transformed and united the
people in a collective demonstration of sorrow. George Washington had died
and the young republic had lost a revered and respected leader. Normal rou-
tines were suspended in Providence so that citizens could participate publicly
in one of the most important events of the new nation. This day was to be "set
apart for humiliation and mourning," and citizens were requested to close
their shops, refrain from "secular affairs," and wear a mourning badge on
their left arms until the end of February.1
A funeral procession began on the morning of the seventh, accompanied by
the firing of sixteen cannons in quick succession. After this initial military
display, a cannon was discharged every half-hour. Throughout the course of
the procession minute guns were fired, and muffled bells tolled from morning
until evening. The cortege included various military orders, a bier supported
by four pallbearers, a riderless white horse, members of the local government,
representatives from local trade associations and other societies, and officials
from several agencies and organizations. It moved to the sounds of solemn
music, which heightened the drama and impact of the spectacle for those
citizens who witnessed the ceremonies in honor of the first president of the
United States.

15
16 Living with the Dead

Pallbearers reverently transported the bier from the Baptist meetinghouse,

which had been draped in black like most of the churches in town, to the
Episcopal church in an atmosphere infused with patriotism, grief, and venera-
tion. Religious leaders delivered orations over the bier at various stops along
the procession route and provided the appropriate words for the somber occa-
sion, conveying a combination of collective sorrow, national pride, and Chris-
tian faith. With the final discharge of three volleys, the empty bier was then
deposited underneath the Episcopal church, and the procession returned to
the home of a Colonel Olney to the tune of the "President's March." An
individual observed that although the parade was great, "it by no means
equaled the grief it was intended to express."2
George Washington died in his bed at Mount Vernon, Virginia, on Decem-
ber 14,1799. His body was entombed on the grounds of his home.3 One of the
first heroes of the newborn republic was no longer among the living, but in
death his memory and presence would be honored throughout the land. Many
of the great number of obsequies, ceremonies, and observances that followed
in the wake of his death, like those described in Providence, were simulations
of a real burial. These activities suggested that ushering the founding father's
body out of the social order had symbolic importance and served the social
solidarity of the new nation. But, of course, the corpse was absent from the
numerous rituals that swept both the northern and southern sections of the
nation. Washington was at the center of these activities, and though his actual
body was missing, the invocation of his presence in the local ceremonies and
numerous speeches celebrating his death allowed the national community to
collectively express their social unity. The human remains were inconsequen-
tial to the valorization of the spirit of the man.
In towns throughout the republic, however, these observances were carried
out as //the real body were present. Philadelphia citizens not only saw a mock
coffin but also a "symbolic reproduction of the Mount Vernon ceremony."4
The funeral procession in New London, Connecticut, consisted of military
and civil officers, members of the Masonic order, a riderless horse, various
clergy, sixteen girls in white robes, and pallbearers carrying a bier.5 In the
city of New York the cortege was larger and even more elaborate. The vast
array of symbols in these processions confirmed that in his death, the spirit of
Washington was being deified in the collective imagination of the young na-
tion. Symbols that linked Washington to the mythic themes at work in the
republic included an eagle with a laurel wreath in its beak, various military
trophies, and stripes from the U.S. flag.6 Most of the towns in the North, as in
other parts of the country, participated in these types of funeral activities
during January.
 George Washington's Invisible Corpse 17

But while funeral ceremonies were enacted throughout the country, there
was only one body to be buried. Protestant public culture appropriated the
spirit of Washington in these observances, but his remains were laid to rest in
the private family vault at Mount Vernon. The Protestant roots of American
culture discouraged any activity resembling the Catholic tradition of venerat-
ing the relics of saints in the treatment of Washington's body; in spite of its
immediately recognized sacrality, the corpse would not be an accessible object
to be used as a source of personal healing or other forms of miraculous ac-
tivity.7 Its integrity and its security within the bonds of.his family were assured,
and the material remains would not be shared with the rest of the nation.
Instead, the memory of the man as a "living" symbol for national virtue and
unity replaced the actual body of the dead president in the funeral ceremonies
across the country.8
Although Washington's death caused widespread grief and mourning,
Americans did not understand it as a setback to the life of the nation. It was,
rather, transformed into a heroic event that regenerated and rejuvenated the
body politic; the various celebrations associated with the burial of his invisible
body conveyed a sense of social cohesion that many believed distinguished the
American republic from other nations in the world. In addition, at the time of
his death and during the services commemorating his passing, Washington
continued to be imagined as an agent of Providence, remembered with a series
of rituals and mythic narratives that reconfirmed the chosen, millennial des-
tiny of the country in world history as prefigured in political and religious
rhetoric from before the Revolutionary War.9
Efforts to memorialize Washington through mourning art became one of
the many popular strategies for interpreting his death. This type of art ex-
pressed a modern manifestation of the cult of the hero, valorizing the dead
iconographically through motifs borrowed from ancient Greece and Rome —
the urn, the stele, and the mourner in classical maiden's dress. Also interwoven
with these themes were Christian symbols of resurrection and redemption,
most commonly a willow or an evergreen; Romantic motifs expressed in pas-
toral settings; and allegorical figures, such as America, Columbia, and Father
Time. The mourning art associated with the death of Washington suggests that
the act of mourning him was, "in true Roman spirit, an act of patriotism,
the love of one's country and its beloved founder being equated with the love
of God."10
In rituals as well as in public discourse, Washington's corpse was secondary
to his apotheosis in the collective imagination of the early republic. In death he
was not only a unifying symbol that bound disparate sections of the nation
together, he was also the personification of a model citizen. His virtuous,
i8 Living with the Dead

revered life was held up as an ideal for all citizens to emulate. Many orators
who delivered eulogies in communities throughout the country reminded lis-
teners that the mortal part of Washington, which obeyed the laws of nature
and God by returning to dust, was less an object of reflection than the spirit of
the man. According to these speakers, his spirit must be remembered and used
to nourish the soul of the country and of each citizen. But his invisible corpse,
ceremoniously incorporated into the rituals around the nation, initiated the
process of remembrance and civic renewal.
Another death that occurred in 1799 offers an instructive contrast to the
honor, ceremony, and symbolism bestowed on Washington's absent body. In
Scituate, Rhode Island, an individual with no friends or relatives hanged him-
self. In the early years of the republic, English Common Law was normally
followed in the case of suicide: authorities confiscated the individual's per-
sonal property and, for good measure, dishonored the body by burying it
either in a highway or at a crossroads with a stake driven through it. But the
corpse of this suicide, though buried decently in the local graveyard, ulti-
mately suffered a fate as disturbing as what was prescribed by the Common
Law and became embroiled in a political and personal controversy that turned
into one of the most famous legal cases in the early history of Rhode Island.11
In December 1801, charges of slander and defamation were brought against
Arthur Fenner, the governor of Rhode Island, by John Dorrance, a justice on
the Court of Common Pleas and onetime president of the Town Council in
Providence. In his suit, Dorrance charged the governor with uttering a series of
false and malicious lies through the public telling and retelling of a particular
story. Fenner told the story, according to Dorrance, with the intent of de-
priving Dorrance of his judicial office and destroying his political character.
Governor Fenner denied these charges, asserting that the story he told was
indeed true.
According to Governor Fenner, Dorrance sold the corpse of the man who
had hung himself in Scituate to a Dr. Pardon Bowen. The body, after being
snatched from its original resting place by medical students, was allegedly
left in the care of Dorrance by some of the inhabitants of Scituate. They
had entrusted him with protecting the corpse and providing it with a de-
cent reburial. Instead, the body was purportedly sold to Dr. Bowen for the
same purpose for which it was first stolen: dissection. Fenner went on to say
that Dorrance had received a beaver hat from Dr. Bowen in payment for the
corpse and had "had the impudence to wear the aforesaid hat on his ...
head, while he ... officiated as Moderator of a Town-Meeting of the town
of Providence."12
 George Washington's Invisible Corpse 19

Leaving aside questions of guilt or innocence and the political motivations

involved, of particular interest are the sworn statements by the individuals
who participated in the trial. According to some witnesses, two nights after the
body of the suicide was buried it was "taken up and carried away" by medical
students who were studying with Dr. Bowen and a Dr. Benjamin Dyer. A
search party followed the tracks of the sleigh that carried the body from the
graveyard to Dr. Dyer's house. The search party, denied entry to the house,
went to Governor Fenner, who suggested that they request a search warrant
from Judge Dorrance. The following day Dorrance arranged a meeting of all
the interested parties and negotiated an agreement whereby the body would be
reinterred under his direction. After the reburial, a group of people again
disinterred the body and carried it away for dissection, this time to the home of
Jabez Bowen, who lived with and was employed by a Mr. Suggin.13
Daniel Knight, a physician from Connecticut, participated in the two
disinterments and the second burial. His deposition includes the following
exchange:
Q. Was the body put into a coffin [for the second burial] of the usual form?
A. The body was put into a rough, pine box, not made in the usual form of a
coffin.
Q. Was the body, when put into the coffin, covered with a shirt, and otherwise
laid out in a common and decent manner?
A. It had no shirt on, and to the best of my recollection no cover at all.
Q. How far below the surface of the earth was the coffin settled?
A. To the best of my recollection, not to exceed eighteen inches.14
Knight then gave a detailed account of what transpired during the dissection.
Q. What operations were performed on the dead body the same night after
you had removed it from the grave to Mr. Suggin's?
A. The body was opened and the entrails taken out.
Q. What was done with the entrails?
A. They were buried in said Suggin's shop, which had no floor.
Q. What knowledge do you have of any operations which was [sic] performed
on the dead body afterwards?
A. The operation of dissection was begun the next night following, which was
continued for several nights until completed.
Q. Do you know what became of the flesh which was taken from that corpse,
or the contents of the breast?
A. I was not present when the flesh was taken off, but the heart and lights were
buried in the same shop that the entrails were, but not at the same time nor in
[the] same place.15
20 Living with the Dead

Later, another doctor testified that the bones of the suicide were kept by a Dr.
Cleavland, who moved away from Providence sometime after the dissection.16
Dr. Bowen testified that during his conversations with members of the
search party he attempted to persuade them of the utilitarian virtues of dissec-
tion but that his arguments fell on deaf ears. According to Dr. Bowen, cutting
into the body of this suicide could be extremely useful to the living. Dissection
would provide essential anatomical knowledge, a necessary pursuit "if we
meant to qualify ourselves to preserve the lives and limbs of our fellow crea-
tures." Dr. Bowen went on to explain why the suicide's corpse was the perfect
specimen for medical experimentation: "He was a stranger, entirely unknown,
and had no friends nor relatives whose feelings could be hurt by his dissec-
tion."17 For Dr. Bowen and many others in the medical field, the integrity of
the lifeless body could be destroyed, provided that no living relations were
disturbed by its dismemberment. But the citizens of the community, though
none had been close to the suicide, were scandalized by the treatment of his
body and were in any case adamantly opposed to the practice of dissection.
In an odd strategic reversal, the defense lawyer for Governor Fenner at-
tempted to demonstrate that Governor Fenner had not slandered Dorrance
because no crime could be imputed from the story the defendant told. Citing
Common Law, the defense stated that "when the human body is once divested
of the functions of life, when once the power of death has rendered it useless
and unprofitable to the surviving it becomes a cast out beyond the reach of the
laws or protection of society; —it becomes a loathsome object of abhorrence,
disclaimed and deserted by all the living and the human race."18 He even as-
serted that the stealing of a shroud was more of a crime than the stealing of
a corpse.19
Compared with the invisible body of Washington, which was a potent sym-
bol of national unity in the funeral ceremonies throughout the country, the fate
and meaning of the suicide's body collapsed into nothingness. Indeed, the de-
sirability of seeing the body's interior space—of rendering what was invisible,
visible —led to its ultimate annihilation. In spite of the objections of commu-
nity members, individuals in the medical field argued that this corpse had no
value in itself because there was no circle of close friends or family to ascribe
meaning to it through an act of emotional projection. According to both the
medical and legal logic of the period, the body of a suicide was an outcast from
the social order. What was once a living human being was now a pure and in-
significant object, thoroughly desacralized and empty of meaning. The only
way for the corpse to regain value was to be reappropriated and to function in
society by serving, in this case, as an instrument for the advancement of medi-
cal knowledge. For this the integrity of the body would have to be destroyed.
 George Washington's Invisible Corpse 21

The funeral ceremonies for Washington and the unceremonious treatment

of the suicide's body suggest the antithetical interpretations of a corpse at the
turn of the nineteenth century. These interpretations, which determined mean-
ings and prescribed actions in the two cases outlined above, reflected mallea-
ble cultural sensibilities. They also give an indication of the potential contests
that could erupt over rival understandings of the place and meaning of the
corpse in northern society. In order to explore these interpretations, meanings,
and actions, however, we must first understand how individuals in these com-
munities experienced death and the frequency with which they encountered
the tangible, physical remains of the dead.
 1

Signs of Death

Signs of death were commonplace in towns and villages in the northern

states at the beginning of the nineteenth century. For most individuals death
was an integrated element of everyday life. The familiarity with death and the
intimacy that characterized its status in antebellum society, however, did not
ease the pain and suffering endured by the survivors. Losing a child, a sibling, a
parent, a friend, or any other close relation often led individuals to seek conso-
lation and succor from a support network accustomed to the emotional rup-
ture caused by death. Still, there was no denying its reality, for not only did
death strike frequently and with cruel force, but it was also a pervasive theme
in the discourses, economy of symbols, and collective imagination of the Prot-
estant communities in this region.
The complex network of signs associated with the omnipresence of death
could be expressed in a variety of forms. There were the somber tolls of the
church bells, which, through a system of publicly recognized codes, provided
such information as the age and gender of the recently deceased. The elaborate
rules for mourning dress, followed by many women and men of the period,
contributed to the public acknowledgment that a death had occurred. The
funeral procession, an event often witnessed in the communities of the North,
reminded citizens that death regularly intruded into the vicinity of the living.
In the drama of this procession, the corpse played an unmistakably leading
role. Broadsides that were posted in towns and villages often touched on the

22
 Signs of Death 23

subject of death, either directly or indirectly, with words and symbols. For
example, a discussion of the "funeral honours" enacted after the deaths of
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams justified civic observances by describing
biblical precedents occasioned by the death of certain Old Testament rulers.1
A great number of elegies were also printed and posted, many of which incor-
porated an image of a coffin. They were usually written about an individual
whose death could serve as a reminder of the passage of time and the inevitable
fate awaiting every person:

Our life and time, of which some boast,

Will hasten fast away:
Tis like the flow'r or shade at most,
That quickly doth decay!!2

The communal burying ground, both in its early rural configuration and in
the later garden cemetery, offered a wide array of iconographic and textual
expressions testifying to the imminence of death. The death's heads, cherubs,
hourglasses, urns, and willows were only a few of the symbolic designs found
on tombstones in nineteenth-century America. Besides this iconographic land-
scape, the textual variations found in cemetery epitaphs also conveyed a com-
munal awareness of the omnipresent fact of death and an effort to grapple
with its meaning. In addition, the location of many burial grounds, either at
the center or on the periphery of the community, ensured the close proximity
of the dead with the living.
Religious homilies consistently invoked death, as did much of the literature
and art of the period. In the well-attended funeral sermons, mass revival meet-
ings, and local religious services, the theme of death, on an individual as well
as an eschatological level, was central to the religious language of the North.
Ministers used the reality of death as a suasive tool to encourage the congrega-
tion to live morally, warn them of the dangers of sin, and prepare them for
Judgment Day. In addition, numerous religious authors employed the motif of
a good Christian death in the popular literature of the time because it served as
a powerful evangelical device for converting community members who had
strayed from, or who were never part of, the church.
According to the cultural historian Carl Bode, death was a persistent theme
(along with love and success) running through much of antebellum culture.3
The fiction, poetry, and visual arts of the period commonly incorporated the
subject into narrative structures and imaginative representations. From the
death of Little Eva in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, to the
metaphysical musings about death in William Cullen Bryant's poem "Thana-
topsis," to the human corpse serving as a footstool for Death in Rembrandt
Peale's painting The Court of Death, writers, poets, and painters showed a
24 Living with the Dead

fascination with human mortality. Even mourning paraphernalia —samplers,

jewelry, and other mementos—were popular items in the material culture of
the period.
Signs of death permeated the communities of the North, saturating every-
day life in a public display of communal awareness. In order to better under-
stand the cultural status of death in the early nineteenth century, however, we
must look behind the sign systems to the more basic demographic realities of
human mortality. Elizabeth Garrett, writing on the social history of the home
in the United States, elaborates on the pervasive and unavoidable encounter
with death experienced by nineteenth-century Americans of all ages and so-
cioeconomic levels. Although life expectancy was on the rise throughout the
century, she writes, "there were few families that did not frequently renew
acquaintance with the grim reaper The pall of death was omnipresent."4
Accurate records of antebellum mortality rates in the northern United States
are difficult to find, but demographers have been able to offer some general
observations.5 Gradual improvements in sanitation and diet helped raise
health standards over the course of the nineteenth century, but up until the
Civil War mortality rates in the North remained fairly stable, indicating that
advancements in medical research, disease control, and scientific knowledge
had not yet made a significant impact on the health of the general population.
Significant fluctuations in mortality rates were often caused by severe seasonal
conditions, epidemics, or other forces that were, at the time, beyond human
control. In addition, changes in living and work patterns contributed to how
people died. Increased urban populations and the process of industrialization
aggravated the stress of living conditions in cities throughout the North,
which in turn raised death rates, especially among the poor.6 Although differ-
ences in life expectancy were minimal between urban and rural areas, mor-
tality rates were somewhat higher in cities.7
According to some estimates, the crude death rate in the period before the
Civil War was around fifteen per thousand in rural towns and ranged any-
where from twenty to forty per thousand in the larger cities.8 Near the end of
the eighteenth century, 80 percent of Americans died before reaching the age
of seventy.9 In general, those who were strong enough to survive the various
diseases and occasional epidemics that swept through their communities could
expect to live into their late thirties. For females in Massachusetts in 1849, life
expectancy at birth was between 36.3 years and 38.3 years, while for males
the age was slightly lower.10
Unfortunately many people did not even reach these ages—the chances of
dying during the early years of life were exceedingly high. According to one
historian, "between one fifth and one third of all children died before age
ten."11 Another historian suggests that infant mortality might have been as
 Signs of Death 25

high as two hundred per thousand live births.12 Between childhood, or the age
of one, and adulthood, around twenty-one years, death could strike a family
member without warning and without reason. Anywhere from 8 to 10 percent
of the individuals in this age group could expect to die before reaching their
twenty-first birthday. The death of a brother or sister, son or daughter, was a
common experience in the large families that predominated in the early years
of the republic.13
No significant decline in mortality figures emerged until after the Civil War.
Compared with twentieth-century standards, the dead and the realities of
death were constant and inescapable facts of consciousness for most commu-
nity members in the antebellum North. They commonly witnessed, or knew
about, or were exposed to, the death of a relation, friend, acquaintance, or
public figure at nearly every stage of life. Signs of death circulated throughout
antebellum culture, but the most significant and meaningful confrontation
with human mortality arose out of the day-to-day experiences of individuals
in their homes and communities.
Perhaps a better way to capture the familiarity with death evident in the
everyday lives of northerners is to listen to the voices of the period rather than
examine the impersonal statistics of demographers. Numbers can help con-
textualize the reality of death in the antebellum period, but the words of those
who lived in this era reveal human efforts to make sense of this intimacy.
References to death were ubiquitous in the personal writings of many individ-
uals, who related their feelings, actions, and prayers in the face of death and
often acknowledged the human inability to prevent the loss of life. And al-
though the reflections found in the letters and diaries of the period evince a
variety of philosophical temperaments and religious sentiments, the constant
intrusion of death into the fabric of communal life was a frequent and com-
monplace event widely commented on.
The diaries of Josiah Stone, a resident of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, con-
tain notations on the weather, comments on town meetings, and a detailed
record of deaths and funerals in his community. The following series of diary
entries exemplifies the tone and frequency with which Stone recorded events
related to death.
[Monday, i February 1847:] Mrs Abigail Maynard, wife of Simon, died to
day of Lung Fever, aged 76 [years]- 8 [months]-13 [days],
[Thursday, 4 February 1847:] Funeral of Mrs. Simon Maynard today at i P.M.
[Sunday, 7 February 1847:] Aunt Brigham of Northboro died about 5 O'clock
this P.M. aged 89 years, 11 Vi months.
[Tuesday, 9 February 1847:] [Hasty] Alexander died of Consumption at the
Alms House yesterday aged 3 z years.
[Wednesday, 10 February 1847:] Funeral Services at the house of Nathaniel
26 Living with the Dead

Brigham by the Rev. Joseph Allen of Northboro —continued cloudy [and]

snowed a little in the morning.14

In a letter written in 1837, Sarah Walker, a farmer in Sturbridge, Mas-

sachusetts, wrote to her brother about the family's good health and the various
chores they were doing on the farm. She also informed him of recent losses
that had occurred in town. "Since I have wrote you, Mrs. Bullard has buried
her fourth little son whome she called Charles Perez, also Mrs. Julia Rice
buried her little boy, nine months old.... Aretus Hooker has likewise buried
his wife and is left with two motherless babes. Mr. Solomon Richardson died
two weeks ago he was sick only two days, within three months Mr. Barnard
Bowen has consigned to the silent earth his wife and daughter and a young
lady... who was there as a maid."15
The highly objective nature and the compressed factual information con-
tained within these two examples are fairly typical of the personal accounts of
daily dying in communities in the North; they also convey something of the
frequency and immediacy of death in the first half of the nineteenth century. As
mentioned earlier, most individuals incorporated this reality into their daily
lives and consciousness largely because of the high visibility and public status
of death. Diaries, letters, sermons, literature, poetry, and other texts acknowl-
edged that human mortality was an inescapable dimension of life; cemetery
iconography, works of art, mourning paraphernalia, and other visual cues
reminded people of the prevalence of death in everyday life. Denying or avoid-
ing the certainty of death, on either a personal or societal level, was an unlikely
response in this time and place. Death was integrated, through a series of
rituals and symbols, into the life of the community.
At the center of this network of practices and significations was the corpse,
an irreducible object that evoked feelings of dread, fear, and resignation, as
well as reverence, respect, and hope. The lifeless body occupied a liminal place
in society, and the uncertainty that surrounded its status led to a number of
competing interpretations and actions that attempted to provide it with mean-
ing and context. From the place where death occurred, usually on a bed in the
home, to the final destination of the body, in most cases a grave in the local
burial ground, the treatment of the corpse generally depended on certain pre-
established rituals in northern, Protestant communities at the end of the eigh-
teenth century. And yet, during the course of the nineteenth century, the rigid
structures that determined how to dispose of the physical remains began to
waver, and new meanings, rituals, and technologies began to be imposed on
that site where signs of death made their most impressive mark —the corpse.
 2

From the Place of Death to the Space of Burial

The majority of Protestant Americans who died in the North during the
antebellum period were treated to funeral services that fell somewhere be-
tween the elaborate ceremonies, national honor, and religious deification ac-
corded Washington's absent body and the lack of ceremony, irreverence, and
ultimate obliteration visited on the suicide's body. Most people considered the
corpse to be worthy of respectful and dignified care. After the pronouncement
of death and before disposition of the body, the corpse had a sacred quality
greatly determined by its liminality: the former living being who had inhabited
the body continued to be associated with the remains until they were removed
from the sight of the living, and these very remains were seen as unstable,
indeterminate, and ambiguous. Indeed, the feelings of horror and danger pro-
voked by the lifeless corpse, combined with the sense of obligation and fidelity
to the deceased, contributed to the religious meanings that survivors linked to
the physical presence of the dead.
Not surprisingly, the journey from the place of death to the space of burial
followed a remarkably similar pattern in this cultural milieu—as a liminal,
sacred object that aroused ambivalence and required immediate attention, the
corpse had to be ushered out of living society in a socially acceptable, re-
ligiously sanctioned manner. The pattern for disposing of the dead had three
fundamental elements: preparation of the body in the home, transportation to

*7
28 Living with the Dead

the grave, and burial in the graveyard. Within each of these elements a variety
of activities and rituals contributed to the removal of the corpse from the
living community, but the basic model was rarely altered. The burgeoning
urban areas of the North, however, provided a setting where modifications
would take place, especially as a result of class differentiation and emerging
sanitation problems. But before examining how urbanization modified burial
patterns, it is first necessary to explore the traditional rural setting.
In the rural areas of the northern states, death would often take place in the
home. Even when death or a life-threatening injury occurred as a result of an
accident or while traveling, an effort would be made to bring the victim home.
Depending on such variables as local population size and level of institutional
support, it was not uncommon for death to occur in such places as almshouses
or hospitals. But these alternatives to death in the home were much more
prevalent in the larger cities. In the rural setting, which retained traditional
values and deep-rooted sensibilities longer than the urban environment, the
deathbed scene was infused with a familiar religious significance.1
At the moment of death, the dying person would often be surrounded by
family, friends or neighbors, the local physician, and occasionally a member of
the clergy. A religious figure, whether present at the time of death or not,
would usually preside over the ceremonies after death either at the home,
meetinghouse, or grave site. With or without a representative from the church
to take the lead, interpreting the signs of religious commitment and spiritual
preparedness during the critical last moments of life gave the survivors an
opportunity to observe and learn from individuals who were about to enter
into the holy and mysterious presence of God: How much did the dying person
suffer? Did she express her faith in Jesus Christ as savior? Was he able to resign
himself to divine Providence?
During the climactic period before death the religious condition of the dy-
ing individual seemed to be particularly important. Yet of equal concern in
many descriptions of these last moments were the physical characteristics and
pathological symptoms manifested by the fading patient. One example of this
pervasive concern with the physical signs of pathology was captured in the
following written account of a death that took place in Rhode Island: "I will
now endeavor to give you some account of dear Harriet's sickness and final
close. Except a few short intervails [sic] her health has been feble [sic] ever
since She left New Garden In the course of this time watery effusion in the
chest began to manifest itself accompanied with soreness of the flesh. Our
family physician was called i n . . . . n o clock I found pulsation at the Wrist
had ceased but she took a little drink several times after this."2 As historian
Lewis O. Saum notes in his analysis of how antebellum Americans character-
 Place of Death, Space of Burial 29

ized the subject of death iri their letters, "common folk recorded and conveyed,
not gratuitous morbidity, but the information of pathology."3 For the ob-
servers who were present in the house of death, the significations from the
dying individual alluded to a curious mixture of spiritual circumstances and
physiological processes. Both were of interest to the close relations who wit-
nessed the body make the transition from life to death, and the nature of this
transition could not be defined by either alone.
When death had finally occurred, a series of actions were set in motion to
prepare the corpse for the journey from the home to the burial ground. The
actors involved in these arrangements were community members, friends,
relatives, and .family members. Preparing the body was a duty for the close
living relations of the deceased, and they rarely hesitated to participate in these
activities. The intimacy that survivors maintained with the corpse preserved
it, at least until the actual interment, as evidence of a valuable, and vital,
social relation. Although the body had lost the spark that animated it, deeply
rooted social conventions demanded that it be given proper respect and care
from the living. Its uncertain status —as an empty container for the newly
departed spirit, as an evocative representative of the lost loved one, as a highly
charged object of reflection and remembrance, and as a decomposing, un-
stable cadaver—also contributed to the deliberate, careful handling by the liv-
ing survivors.
The confrontation with the body thus required a number of procedures that
reaffirmed its dignity and integrity and, at the same time, responded to the
emotional needs among the survivors by combatting and concealing the inevi-
table physical traces of decomposition.4 The first order of business in the
treatment of the newly dead was to "lay out" the body. Those who assisted at
the time of death ritually washed, shaved if necessary, then dressed the corpse
—usually in a shroud or "winding sheet" during the first half of the nineteenth
century—and finally placed it in a coffin.5 Shrouds were made of either mus-
lin, wool, cashmere, or a cloth material treated with melted wax or gummy
matter. Occasionally individuals made their own shrouds for death while
alive, but it was more often the case that this "sack" was made by friends and
relatives who had come to the house to help prepare the body for burial.
Josiah Stone alluded to this activity for the burial of his wife. "[Saturday, 5
May 1847] Wind northerly & some raining in the A.M. Made some prepara-
tions of the funeral Mrs J. E. Munroe was here in the A.M. and most of the
P.M. making a sack for [Emory]."6
The rate of infant mortality was high, and the especially tragic occurrence of
a double death during the act of giving birth led to instances when a mother
and infant would be laid out together. Near the end of the eighteenth century,
3o Living with the Dead

Martha Ballard, a midwife and nurse in Maine, wrote the following: "Shee
departed this Life about i pm. I assisted to Lay her out. Her infant Laid in her
arms. The first such instance I ever saw & the first woman that died in Child
bed which I delivered."7
Gender seemed to be a principle factor determining who was involved in the
preparation of the corpse for its exit from society. In Ballard's diary there are
numerous references to the activity of laying out the dead. In her commentary
on the diary, the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich writes that "midwives and
nurses mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness, and death."8 In a
Philadelphia city directory for 1810 a section labeled "Layers Out of the
Dead" contains the names of fourteen individuals. Nine of these are definitely
women, while the rest have only their last name or first initial and last name
listed.9 Caring for the dead had begun to be seen as a business opportunity
outside of the home, but the gendered division of labor in the period suggests
that responding to death, and more specifically preparing the corpse, was
understood as a component of domestic life, and therefore within the purview
of women's activities.
Though others support the view that midwifes, nurses, and women in gen-
eral carried out the tasks associated with laying out the dead, there is also
evidence that men would perform these duties under certain circumstances.10
In the diary of Joel Clark, a teacher from Hartland, Connecticut, for example,
there is an entry for January 1798 about watching Mr. Taylor "breath [sic] his
last about twelve O clock." Later Clark assisted "about laying him out —it
being the first time I was ever employed in the like occasion."11 In a letter
written from Waterville, Maine, in 1837, Samuel Francis Smith described the
death of his newborn girl. When his infant died, because she could not swal-
low, Smith related that "our Little one was lait [sic] to its repose. Mr A took all
care off my hands."12
By the end of the eighteenth and into the middle of the nineteenth century,
women in the Protestant communities of the northern states indeed had the
primary responsibility of getting the body ready for burial —a crucial activity
performed by women in England for centuries.13 On those occasions when the
deceased was an old man or an infant, however, a male might engage in
handling the corpse and preparing it for disposition. The rules for laying out
the dead, probably gender-specific in most instances, were malleable and de-
pendent on the conditions after death. In any case, the objective was to pro-
vide assistance for the surviving family members and to make the proper
arrangements so that the corpse was ready for the journey from the world of
the living to the silence of the grave.
In the rural communities of the nineteenth century, this journey took place
 Place of Death, Space of Burial 31

in a coffin. A family member, neighbor, or, in many cases, a local cabinetmaker

or carpenter assembled the coffin after death had occurred. This individual
would take the measurements of the deceased and construct the encasement,
usually out of pine wood. The coffin, like the shroud, might also be prepared
before death. There were certain people who had a keen awareness of their
own mortality and who wanted to have a hand in organizing the details of
their exit from society. Most coffins, well into the nineteenth century in rural
locations, "retained their characteristic and unmistakable shape—flat-sided,
with a tapering hexagonal profile that fit the body."14 Another distinctive
feature of many coffins was a sliding, removable, or hinged panel that allowed
the upper part of the corpse to be viewed by the family and other mourners
before the entire entourage proceeded to the grave.15
The body of the deceased would remain in the home for a period of one to
three days under constant surveillance, especially at night. It would be located
in a designated room of the house, often a front room or parlor, that was
marked off by such indicators as black crepe, white cloth covering mirrors, or
an absence of furniture. Close relatives, friends, volunteers, or sometimes
hired help participated in the vigil over the dead, often called the wake. The
primary duties for those involved in the wake consisted of "watching" or
"sitting up" with the corpse until the time came to remove the body from the
home.16 This type of activity allowed the survivors to be sure that death had
definitely occurred, thus erasing the possibility of live burial, a prevalent con-
cern at the time. Sometimes these watchers applied a cloth, soaked in vinegar
or alum, to the face of the deceased. It was believed that this would delay
bodily decomposition and assist in the preservation of the corpse while it
remained in the sight of the living.17 Another method frequently used to pre-
serve the body while it remained in the home, especially in warmer weather,
was to "put a large block of ice in a tub beneath the board [of the coffin], with
smaller chunks about the body."18
The tone of wakes varied throughout the North. When the corpse was in the
house, visitors often engaged in a variety of activities, including somber re-
flection, scripture reading, and socializing, which usually involved some eat-
ing and drinking. The atmosphere and degree of solemnity displayed in the
house of death varied according to the cultural and denominational back-
ground of the family, but in most cases the sharing of food and drinks, which
were often alcoholic, created a strong communal bond. This bond and sense of
togetherness helped to counteract the fissure created by the death of a commu-
nity member.
L. M. Sargent, a self-described "sexton of the old school," wrote a book in
1856 called Dealings with the Dead, which detailed many of his experiences
32 Living with the Dead

with the dead in Boston and surrounding areas. This series of recollections,
which also includes many of his personal reflections on such controversial
issues as the Stamp Act, capital punishment, and slavery, is full of Sargent's
humorous, ironic, and playful observations and commentary relating to the
treatment of the dead. His remarks on funerary practices cover a range of
societies throughout human civilization, from the ancient Egyptians up until
his own social surroundings in New England. In one passage Sargent discusses
his personal experiences as a participant in funerals in the country during his
younger years and the presence of alcohol at these occasions: "In regard to the
use of wine and other intoxicating drinks, at funerals ... a table with liquors
was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his hat, with his left
hand, smoothed down his hair, with his right, walked up to the coffin, gazed
upon the corpse, made a crooked face, passed on to the table, took a glass of
his favorite liquor, went forth upon the plat, before the house, and talked
politics, or of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers or horses,
until it was time to lift."19
Sargent also related a story, told to him by a member of the clergy in Con-
cord, New Hampshire, of how a group of children participating in the funeral
of a little boy were allowed to drink liquor. The group of youngsters, who
were not more than thirteen years old, served as pallbearers in the funeral
ceremony. Before these children began to transport the coffin to the grave, "a
sort of master of ceremonies took them to the table, and mixed a tumbler of
gin, water and sugar, for each."20 Whether or not children frequently indulged
in alcohol at funeral ceremonies is unclear, but such drinks seemed to be
readily available to the adult participants at these gatherings.
When the time arrived for the body to begin its journey to the space of
burial, the mourners congregated in the house of death with the surviving
family members. It was a common though not universal practice for prayers or
a short discourse to be given before the procession commenced. The formality
and organization of the service again depended upon such factors as the eco-
nomic status of the family, whether a full sermon was to be given at a church or
meetinghouse along the way to the grave, or the degree of suffering in the
family. Samuel Smith explained the informal nature of the services that took
place after the death of his infant girl and alluded to his wife's wishes for a
more subdued ceremony in a letter to his sister: "I gave no special invitation,
... & suffering such of the neighbors as chose, to drop in, wishing on my dear
Mary's account to have a quiet funeral, at a quiet hour, as being less likely to
agitate her."21
A completely different account of how this scene might transpire is pre-
sented in an article by a folklorist in 1894. Pamela Martha Cole attempts to
 Place of Death, Space of Burial 33

convey some of the more striking characteristics of traditional New England

village funerals. The service in this description comes across as more of a
theatrical spectacle than a somber affair, with the performative qualities em-
phasized over the solemnities. "The relatives and most intimate friends were
generally seated in an upper room, and the officiating minister stood on the
stairs, where he could be heard above and below. The service over, 'the person
having charge of the funeral,' known on festive occasions as the master of
ceremonies, standing on the stairs, called in a loud tone the names of the
mourners in the order in which they were to come down, and family after
family passed out to take their proper place in the procession."22
After the service, the family and other mourners were called on to transport
the body to the place of burial. In some cases the designated place for the
disposal of the dead was somewhere on the grounds of the family farm, per-
haps in the "shade of an apple tree in front of the house."23 This form of burial,
however, became increasingly rare as the nineteenth century progressed. As
towns and larger urban spaces grew in size, as higher numbers of people
became more mobile, and as public health concerns about the dead led to
stricter forms of regimentation in burial practices, disposal on the grounds of
private homes became less and less acceptable. Instead, it was more common
for the body to be carried to the local burying ground, either the local church-
yard or a graveyard on the periphery of town.
There were two possible modes for transporting the corpse in the rural
model of burial. In the early decades of the nineteenth century the coffin,
situated on a bier with a pall thrown across the top, was carried on foot. Those
who conveyed the coffin and bier were either hired assistants, friends, rela-
tives, or young volunteers. The number of people employed in this duty varied,
though often there were eight individuals, with the first four being close rela-
tions of the deceased and the next four, called "under-bearers," less closely
connected to the family.24 If a small child died it was not uncommon for other
local children to carry the corpse to its grave. The task of transporting the
coffin to the burial ground was relatively easy when the distance was short and
the weather bearable. As towns grew over the course of the first half of the
century, however, and as more people placed greater value on burial in. a well-
organized, delineated space, the distance to the place of interment could be
imposing.
Given the potential for hardship, it became necessary to utilize other means
of transporting the corpse to the grave. In cities during the colonial period, the
local livery stable often made a specially designated horse-drawn carriage, a
hearse, available for rent, a service employed primarily by the upper classes.25
The hearse, which soon became available in the smaller towns and villages of
34 Living with the Dead

the North, eliminated the inconvenience of manual transportation, so its use

increased during the early years of the nineteenth century, though prejudices
persisted against new technologies for conveying the dead. Community mem-
bers who made efforts to prevent the use of hearses based their opposition on
conservative notions of proper respect for the journey of the corpse and a
guarded resistance to innovation in dealing with the dead.26
A "Hearse Book" from Bridgewater, Massachusetts, contained a copy of a
subscription paper that outlined the benefits of using a hearse and encouraged
citizens to contribute the necessary financial resources for its purchase. The
document addressed some of the persistent problems associated with carrying
the dead to their final resting place:

Whereas the common practice in burying the dead hath been for men to carry
the corpse to the grave this mode is frequently attended with inconvenience
and difficulty specially when the distance is great or the roads bad wherefore
as a remedy it is proposed that a hearse be procured for the purpose of
carrying the dead from the place the funeral may be attended to the place of
interment which may be done with more ease conveniency & decency than in
the way & manners as now practiced 6c to effect so laudable a purpose we the
subscribers each one for himself singly doth hereby freely contribute & prom-
ise to pay the sum of money affixed to our several & respective names.27

Such a clear and practical rationale for making life easier on those who were
assigned to carry the weight of the dead eventually led to the purchase of a
hearse in many of the smaller towns and villages of the North.28 The shifting
location of the place of disposal, along with the sheer physical labor involved
in transporting the coffin, contributed to a greater willingness to modify tradi-
tional customs. In the case of Bridgewater there were enough pledges to buy a
hearse for the price of $ 51.2. i.
Whether carried on men's shoulders or transported in a hearse, the coffin
was often diverted to a local meetinghouse or church for a public funeral
sermon and, in many cases, the viewing of the remains before being deposited
in the grave. The funeral sermon placed the recent rupture in the social fabric in
a meaningful religious perspective, drawing on themes related to Christian
morality in general and Protestant visions of the afterlife. Stopping on the way
to the burial ground also served an important social function. The members of
the community, including the family, friends, or casual neighbors involved in
the funeral, collectively responded to the intrusion of death in a setting without
the emotional force of the deathbed and the site of disposal, one that instead
provided a space in which the solidarity of the religious and local community
would remind the participants of the ties that bound them together.
 Place of Death, Space of Burial 35

In addition to reinforcing social cohesion and Protestant strategies for inter-

preting the meaning of death, stopping at the meetinghouse offered a tempo-
rary diversion, or way station, that also served as the place where mourners
had one last opportunity to view the remains of the deceased. The last look
could have taken place in the home when relations planned to transport the
corpse directly to the grave site or when the family was isolated from a larger
rural community. But whether the body was immediately taken to the grave
site or brought to a meetinghouse or church, survivors valued the chance to
view it before the final disposition in the grave. Personal writings of northern
community members as well as those of foreign travelers attest to this critical
moment in the journey from home to grave. English visitors often complained
about this practice, though it was a common feature in the treatment of the
dead in English popular culture as well during the nineteenth century.29
In the northern Protestant communities of the United States, survivors who
viewed the corpse engaged in a socially sanctioned activity that was integral to
the collective rituals of death and the funerary journey.30 Alvan Bond, a gradu-
ate from Andover Seminary, captured the habitual nature of the ritual in an
account of his brother's funeral service in New England during the month of
August, 1817: "The audience was then seated and the particular mourners
then proceeded to look at their departed friend for the last time. After the
spectators had seen him we followed our dear deceased friend in mournful
procession to the grave yard."31 Not all participants took the opportunity to
view the corpse before burial, but the diversion to the local meetinghouse or
church provided relations with a ceremonial space that encouraged the prac-
tice of a ritual gaze.
After the corpse had been adequately groomed, viewed, and discoursed
over, it was ready for the inevitable final journey to the grave site. The end of
the description quoted above refers to this next stage in the journey. The
"mournful procession," often accompanied by the sound of tolling bells, usu-
ally had some kind of formal organization that depended on many of the
variables mentioned before, like the degree of isolation of the family from
other farms and more populated areas, class standing in the community, and
number of people attending the funeral. Members of the family and commu-
nity carried and accompanied the body to the burying ground regardless of
how many people attended the funeral and how complex was the organization
of the participants.
The procession in the rural setting was rarely an elaborate, involved, or
highly intricate affair. The protagonists in the cortege were the family mem-
bers, relatives, friends, neighbors, and local minister, who together made up
the social network of the deceased. During the procession participants were
36 Living with the Dead

engaged in a relatively plain and unencumbered series of actions that termi-

nated the journey from home to grave. Although the participants often oper-
ated within a generally Protestant universe that, from the time of the Reforma-
tion, had dedramatized many of the Christian religious rituals, a tendency
toward displays of symbolic behavior prevailed. In one village funeral, more
elaborate than most, both the drama and simplicity of this ritual were evident:
"First came twelve young girls, in white dresses, and with wreaths of evergreen
in their hands. Then followed [an] old man, who proved to be the minister of
the place. . . . Mourners, and a numerous train, succeeded. The procession
moved on to the grave; they gathered close around it; those that bare the body
stood still, and placed it on the ground. Reverently the pall was taken off, and
in sad silence the coffin descended to its place."32
The last remaining duty of the living was to dispose of the corpse ade-
quately. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the start of the Civil
War there were essentially two alternatives: interment and entombment,
which is to say that people could be buried in the earth or in tombs above
ground. Embalming and cremation were impractical if not inconceivable to
the majority of the population. Indeed, any procedure that accelerated the
destruction of the body and threatened its supposed integrity after death pro-
voked outrage and horror among antebellum Protestants. Most individuals in
the rural communities of the North were buried in the ground when they died.
Burial above ground, in individual or family tombs, was mostly an option for
the wealthier classes in these regions.
On at least one occasion a woman "borrowed" a tomb of a wealthy friend.
Louisa Park of Salisbury, Massachusetts, wanted to postpone the interment of
her infant because of psychological resistance to earth burial and because she
wanted to wait until her husband, who was away at sea, could see their child
and make a final decision about how he should be buried. She wrote in her
diary after her infant died in the month of May 1801: "Captain Hoyt's polite-
ness I shall never forget.... His consenting so readily to lay the corps in his
tomb was a satisfaction to me. For some reason, to see him deposited there
was not half so distressing to my feelings as it would have been to see him
buried under the [ground]; and when his father returns he can see him, and
remove him as he may think best."33
A local religious representative gave another discourse or prayer when a
corpse finally arrived at the place of burial. Those involved in carrying the
body during the funeral journey took the pall off of the coffin, which was then
lowered into a grave dug in advance by family members, friends, or, if the
burial was in a churchyard, the sexton.34 This moment was perhaps the most
emotional of the funeral journey, and it provided an opportunity for those in
 Place of Death, Space of Burial 37

grief to be praised for their strength in the face of severe affliction, their cour-
age for accompanying the dead on such a sorrowful occasion, or their sincerity
of emotions, whether they wefe paroxysms of grief, restrained sentiments of
suffering, or something in between.
These scenes in the space of burial had a pathetic and often poignant quality,
regardless of the degree of emotional expression by the mourners. Many ob-
servers looked at this juncture, when the living relations saw their loved one
committed to the grave, as a challenging and pivotal moment for those closest
to the deceased. One report of a highly touching and evocative farewell scene
alludes to the beauty of the moment and the emotional display anticipated by
witnesses. It described the funeral ceremony at the graveyard as "a spectacle at
which the Stoic might experience emotion, from which the painter might
sketch his fairest subject, and on which the poet might dwell with all the glow
of inspiration. . . . Here every eye was bent upon the single mourner, as if
expecting a natural burst of sorrow over ... his departed partner; but there
was none. He stood calm and collected."35
The last act of throwing into the grave a branch, straw, or commonly dirt
from the earth before leaving the place of interment was a frequent gesture
recognizing the finality of the journey. Many services at the burial site con-
cluded with this ritual drama that signified both individual and communal
acknowledgment that the deceased would no longer be seen or heard from
again, and that the body would be finally returning to earth. The family rela-
tions, friends, and other intimate associates standing beside the grave said any
last thoughts or prayers before turning their backs on the dead and returning
to the community of the living. On some occasions the mourners would stay
by the grave until it had been filled up with dirt, either performing the task
themselves or watching others do it.
The journey of the lifeless body from the place of expiration to the space of
disposal was significant for the family and community members involved. The
rite of passage from life to death, deathbed to grave, allowed the survivors
an opportunity to pay their last respects and to make certain that collective
action repaired the rupture in the social fabric. Throughout the journey par-
ticipants in the funeral had a number of occasions to ensure that the corpse
was safely and appropriately handled until reaching its final destination. It is
evident that when the dead were in the land of the living an attempt was made
to preserve their integrity, to treat them according to inherited conceptions of
dignity, and to manage their remains in a manner that ensured familial or
communal continuity.
The latter tendency helps to explain why burial on the family farm dimin-
ished over the course of the nineteenth century.36 As the likelihood increased
38 Living with the Dead

that future generations would move away from the homestead, the expecta-
tion diminished that family members would always be nearby to maintain and
preserve the place of burial. In the first half of the nineteenth century the
country graveyard came to be understood as a socially secured and conse-
crated space. It provided a context in which the dead could be protected by the
same religious, moral, and communal values that operated in the towns and
villages of the living. The transformation in the place of disposal reflected
changing attitudes about the care of the dead and the relations between them
and the living.
In the rural model, burial was an intimate affair in which the living were
familiar, both physically and imaginatively, with the dead. During the funeral
journey survivors integrated the corpse into a network of rituals that allowed
the living to engage in what they considered to be approbatory behavior. This
behavior was carried out by a close circle of relations, reinforcing communal
solidarity, affirming the integrity of the family, and demonstrating the potent
symbolic value of the corpse before it disappeared from view. In the more
populated regions of the North, however, a range of interested parties and
impersonal forces began to converge on the dead and alter the details of their
exit from society. The simplicity of the journey would gradually be lost in the
city, where new concerns — related to urban space, class status, economic op-
portunity, and public health — led to innovations in the treatment and disposal
of the dead.
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she had as yet made no reply to it. It was the thing, perhaps, on the whole
which made the persecution in the house less important to her. What did it
matter what Saunders and his kind might do? The humiliation which they
inflicted made her smart for the moment, but it was not so bad even now as
the careless civility which she had borne from their masters, or the no-
account which was generally made of such a person as herself in the world.
She was well used to all that. And to think that by a word at any moment
she would put a stop to it all and change everything! She did not answer the
letter she could scarcely tell why. Not that it did not occupy her day and
night. She thought of it in all ways, turning it over and over. It was a sort of
occupation to her which obliterated everything else to think what she should
say. What should she say? And then the long round of questioning, of
balancing one side against the other would begin.
There was this advance, however, that Mary had come to a perfect
conviction that were she unhampered by others, she herself could be happy
with Lord Frogmore. To marry at all and enter upon a mode of life so
entirely new is a shock to a middle-aged woman. The old maid has
hindrances in her way in this particular which do not affect the girl. She has
formed all her habits often with a certain rigidity, and to be brought into
relations so close as those of matrimonial life, to give up her seclusion, her
privacy, to share everything with another, has a sort of horror in it. Mary too
had something of the primness which in some natures accompanies that
modest withdrawal from the mysteries of life. To a girl it is all romance, to
a woman other reflections come in. She had moments of panic in which she
asked herself how she could bear such a revolution of existence. It is,
however, so deeply impressed upon the feminine mind that to be married is
the better and higher state, a doctrine largely emphasized by the contempt
of the foolish, that she was half ashamed of her own shrinking, and knew
that everybody would consider it fantastical even if for sheer modesty she
had ever breathed to anyone the confession that she felt this panic and
shrinking—which was very unlikely. That was a sentiment never to be
disclosed, to be got over as best she could, to be ignored altogether. But
putting aside that shock to all her habits, both of mind and life, there was
nothing in her which objected to Lord Frogmore. He was kind, he was old,
he would need her care, her help, her services. He was the least alarming
companion that could be thought of: he was sympathetic and understood her
—and she thought she understood him.
But Letitia. There the struggle began. Letitia would not like it! Mary
could not salve her conscience by the hasty advice given with such
frankness by Mrs. Parke. To marry any old gentleman who might present
himself with money enough to support her, and provide for her when he
died, was one thing. To marry Lord Frogmore was another. The mere idea
that Mary might be Lady Anything while Letitia was Mrs. Parke would be
an offence—but Lady Frogmore! What would Letitia say? How would she
like it. She would never forgive that promotion. The thought of Mary
walking out of a room before her, placed at table before her, would drive
her frantic. If that were all how gladly would Mary give up to her any such
distinction! But that was not all. There were the children who would, as
Letitia thought, be defrauded by their uncle’s marriage. That was a matter
which it was not so easy to get over. She tried to represent to herself that
Lord Frogmore was rich, that it was not certain he would leave all he had to
the children, that in any case he would be just; and that whatever he
appropriated to himself would at least go back to the children on his death.
She had taken out her paper, seated herself at the table, prepared her pen
(with little anxious cares that it should be a good one) to write half a dozen
times at least—and had been stopped by that thought of the children. That
was a thought that could not be got over. To take this away from the
children, how could she do it? If she were to endeavor to make the
condition that no money should be given to her (which crossed her mind for
a moment), Mary had too much good sense not to see that this would be
impossible, and also foolish and unjust. And then she had laid down her pen
again, and put by her paper, and returned to herself to think out that
problem—with equal failure. Defraud the children—take from them their
inheritance—how could she do it? she who had been like their aunt, like a
second mother. She retired before that thought with continued affright. It
was a barrier she could not get over. And so the letter was put off day after
day.
She had met the children in their walk one morning, and gone on with
them, glad of the companionship, pleased that little Letty should abandon
the group to cling to her hand and rub against her with a way the child had,
like an affectionate dog, and that Duke in his little imperious way should
place himself exactly before her, walking a step in advance, so that Mary
had to restrain her own movements not to tread on him, one of these little
inconveniences which, to people who love children, are pleasant, as signs of
the liking of the little tyrant. She had begun in her usual way to tell them a
story when the nurse who walked majestically in the rear of the party
interfered.
“If you don’t mind me saying it, miss,” said nurse, who was too well
bred herself not to know that this mode of address was particularly
offensive to a person of Mary’s age, “I’d much rather you did not tell them
stories.”
“But!” cried Mary, with astonishment, “I have always told them stories
—it’s what they expect whenever they see me.”
“That may be,” said the nurse, “but I don’t myself hold with working up
their little brains like that. When their mamma is here she can judge for
herself; but I can’t have them put off their sleep, and excited, and not able
to get their proper rest——”
“But that has never happened,” cried Mary.
“It’s quite soon enough then if it happens now.”
“Well, no doubt that is unanswerable,” said Mary, with a laugh, and she
added half playfully, half vexed, “I think you want to keep me from saying
anything to the children at all.”
“I don’t want to be any way disagreeable, miss,” said nurse, “but so long
as my mistress is away and I’ve all the responsibility, that is just what I’d
like best.”
“Why,” cried Mary, inadvertently. “I stayed here on purpose.”
“To spy upon us and watch all we did,” said the woman red and angry.
“We all know that; and that is just what I will never put up with if there
wasn’t another situation in the world.”
Mary had for the moment forgotten the humiliation of her present
position which made this sudden assault almost more than she could bear.
She disengaged herself with a little difficulty from the children and hurried
in, feeling that she must take some immediate resolution and free herself
from these insults. Saunders and the footman were playing a game of
billiards in the hall when she entered hastily, the great door being open. In
the extreme freedom of this new regime, Saunders, so proper and correct in
the presence of his master, had fallen into habits of self-indulgence, and
was, indeed, most generally under an exhilarating influence, which made
him very ready to exhibit his wit at the expense of any butt that might
present itself, secure of the admiration and applause of his subordinates in
the house. Mary had become rather afraid of an encounter with the butler in
these circumstances, and started a little as she came suddenly upon him in
her hurried passage indoors. He came forward to meet her with his cue in
his hand.
“Well, Miss ’Ill,” he said, “I hope I see you well this fine mornin’. Been
to the post to send off your report, eh; and tell how the servants is going
on?”
“Let me pass,” Mary said.
“We hope you’ve given us a good report, miss. We’re nothing but poor
servants astrivin’ to do our dooties,” said Saunders, with an air of mock
humility, which sent the footman into such screams of obsequious laughter
that he had to throw down his cue and hold his sides with exclamations of
“Oh, Lord, don’t, Mr. Saunders! You’ll kill me with laughing afore you’ve
done.”
“And if you was to give us a bad report what ’ud become of us?” said
Saunders. “But we hopes you won’t say nothing more than you can prove,
Miss ’Ill. And what are you?” he added, changing his tone, “but a servant
yourself, and worse off than any of us—currying favor with bringing other
folks into trouble, or tryin’ to bring folks into trouble; but you’ll not succeed
this time, miss, I’ll promise you. We knows what to expect, and we’re on
our guard. Hi, old man! what are you wanting? The bosses ain’t at home;
can’t you see that with half an eye? Stop a bit, miss, I ain’t done with you
yet.”
“Oh, good Lord, Mr. Saunders!” cried the footman, in a tone of alarm.
“Let me pass, please,” said Mary, trembling, and quite unaware what
strong succours had arrived behind.
The next sound was a firm foot upon the floor coming in—the next a
voice which made Mary’s heart jump up to her throat.
“Where is my brother, sir—where is your master? and how dare you
speak to a lady like that?” said Lord Frogmore.
Lord Frogmore! Saunders himself—whose countenance was a wonder to
behold as he dropped the cue and backed against the table limp and
helpless, his mouth open, his eyes bursting from their sockets with wonder
and fright—was scarcely more discomposed than Mary, who felt herself in
a moment vindicated, restored to her proper place, protected and avenged—
yet at the same time more agitated and shaken than she had ever been in her
life. She turned round and saw him before her, his eyes sparkling with
anger, his neat small person towering, as it seemed, over the discomfited
servants driven back by the first glance of him into servile humiliation.
Lord Frogmore’s voice, which generally was a mild and rather small voice,
thundered through the hall. “You disrespectful rascal! How dare you speak
to a lady in that tone?”
“My lord!” Saunders cried, faltering. At first he could not even think of a
word to say for himself. The footman discreetly stole away.
“My brother is absent, I suppose, and Mrs. Parke; and you cowardly
scamp, you wretched snob, you take this opportunity——”
“Oh, Lord Frogmore, don’t be severe upon the man. He thought I had
written about him to his mistress. Please don’t say any more.”
“I shall write about him to his mistress,” said Lord Frogmore, “or to his
master, which will be more effectual. John Parke is no brother of mine if he
does not turn such a fellow neck and crop out of the house. Get out of my
sight, you brute, if you don’t want to be kicked out.” Saunders was twice
Lord Frogmore’s size and half his age, but the old gentleman made him
cower like a whipped dog. He made a faint effort to bluster.
“I’m responsible to my own master, my lord: I’ll answer to him.”
“By Jove,” said the old lord. “You shall answer to a sound thrashing if
you stay here a moment longer. Out of my sight! Miss Hill,” he said,
turning round and offering Mary his arm, “I suppose there is some room
where I can say a word to you. It is clear that you cannot remain an hour
longer in this house.”
 CHAPTER XVI.
She took him upstairs to the morning-room, in which she had been living,
and which was full of traces of her habitation and ways—the book on the
table, the work, even the writing paper and the new pen which all this time
she had been trying to use to answer his letter. Her heart was beating as
wildly as if she had been a young girl—beating with pride, with pleasure,
with gratitude, and with that satisfaction in being vindicated and re-
established which it is impossible for human nature not to feel. It was no
doubt a very poor foe who had thus been flung under her feet; but he had
been able to humiliate and insult her. And Mary felt as proud of her
deliverer as if he had faced the dragon. His very age and physical
unimportance made her only the more conscious of the force and mastery
he had shown—a man accustomed to command, accustomed to hold a
foremost place. What a difference it had made to everything the moment he
had appeared! The very atmosphere had changed. It had become impossible
for any one in the world to show her anything but respect and reverence as
soon as Lord Frogmore had come. What a difference! What a difference!
Mary had never filled that imposing place, never had it made evident as a
matter of certainty that wherever she appeared respect must necessarily
attend her. She had been respected in her modesty by those who knew her.
But no one had ever thought it necessary to give to Mary the first place.
What a difference! The first inarticulate feeling in her mind was this which
brought her up as upon a stream of new life. Everything had been different
from the moment he had appeared. No more insult, no further call for self-
assertion, no need to take any trouble. His presence did it all. Where he was
there would always be honor, observance, regard.
These thoughts surged through her mind as she went upstairs with him
through the empty house, in which all at once instinctively, without
anything said, she had become as a queen. There was no longer any
question in her mind as to what she should say. All was said it seemed to
Mary. Could the lady who had been delivered from the dragon think what
she should say to her Redcross Knight? It was ridiculous to be so highflown
—and yet it was the only simile she could think of. Dragons are different in
different cases—sometimes they mean only poverty, humiliation, the spurns
which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and not any great heroic danger,
which the champion can make an end of: her champion had ended for her in
a moment the fear of all these things. He had made her see what would be
her fate henceforward if she trusted herself to him. He was a little
gentleman, of short stature, of appearance rather neat than fine, resembling
anything in the world rather than St. George. He was old—was he old?
surely not so old as was thought—surely not as Letitia made him out, an
antediluvian, a person out of date, whom only his own egotism and the care
of Rogers kept alive to keep other people out of their rights. To look at him
with his active step, his eyes that grew quite bright and blue in his anger,
the color as of a winter apple in his cheek, his neat well cared for person—it
was almost absurd, Mary thought, to call him an old man at all.
Lord Frogmore put her in a chair when they reached the morning-room,
and bade her rest a little. “I came to see if there was not an answer to my
letter,” he said, “but there are other things more important to be thought of
first. How long have you been here alone exposed to these impertinences?
You can’t be left to run such a risk again.”
“Oh, it doesn’t really matter now—it is all over now,” said Mary, with a
faint smile.
“You are trembling still,” said the old lord. “I have a thousand minds to
go and thrash the fellow still.”
“Oh, no,” she said, putting out her hand as if to detain him. “I am not
afraid of anything now.”
The old gentleman took the hand which she held out. “Do you mean to
give me this, Mary?” he said.
Upon this she roused herself, and with a changing color made her last
stand, “Oh, Lord Frogmore, I could do nothing that would be injurious to
the children,” she said.
“The children—what children? There are no children,” said the old lord,
thinking of himself only and his own concerns. Then he perceived her
meaning with a sudden, quick start, letting her hand drop in his impatience.
“What,” he said, “is it John’s children you are bringing up in this ridiculous
way? My dear, when John succeeds me he will be quite rich enough to
provide for his own children. I have nothing to do with them. If you put the
children in my way and in the way of my happiness in my old age, they
shall never get a penny from me. I shall leave everything I can away from
them. Be sure you will do them harm, and not good by bringing them up
between you and me.”
“Lord Frogmore—I would not do them harm for anything in the world.”
“Well,” he said, with a smile, “you will do them a great deal of harm if
you bring them in between us. I remember now what Mrs. John told you.
That all I had belonged to them. She is an odious woman.”
“Lord Frogmore.”
“Don’t say anything more, my dear. She is an odious woman. You have
not found it out, because you think everybody as good as yourself. She it is
who is the cause of the impudence of her servants as well as of any other
wrong things. No, my dear, let Mrs. John and her brats go by. I am an old
man, Mary, that is the worst of it. I can’t hope to stand by you very long. Do
you think you can like me well enough to give me the best chance of living
to be a Methuselah? I’ll live as long as ever I can if you’ll share my life
with me, Mary, my dear.”
“Oh, Lord Frogmore!” she said.
And, as a matter of fact, Mary said very little more. They came to
understand each other very thoroughly without many words on her part.
When the hour of luncheon arrived it produced no tray carried by the under-
housemaid, as was usual, but John, the footman, in his best livery to
announce that my lord was served in the dining-room. “You mean Miss Hill
is served,” said the old gentleman, sternly. And John humbly begged his
lordship’s pardon. Saunders kept out of sight, not trusting himself in Lord
Frogmore’s presence. And the way in which Lord Frogmore talked at lunch
was soon reported all over the house, and carried an universal shudder. “I
shall lose no time in letting my brother know what has been going on,” he
said. “And I don’t think you should stay here any longer. Mrs. John would
be unhappy if she knew to what you are exposed.”
“Oh,” said Mary; “they will be kinder now.”
“Kinder! I could not let any lady run such a risk. I suppose they know
that you would not say anything as long as you could help it. That is the
penalty of being too good.”
“They did not think at all,” said Mary. “They supposed I was to be a spy
and tell everything. But don’t please take much notice, Lord Frogmore. In
another month Mr. Parke and Letitia will be back again.”
 “You must not remain another night,” said the old gentleman. “Allow me
to have the pleasure of taking you home. I cannot consent to your remaining
here.”
John went downstairs much and deeply impressed. He told the
assembled company in the servants’ hall that his lordship had said nothing
to him personally. “But the rest of you may just get ready to go. Mr.
Saunders won’t get even his month’s warning. That much I can tell you, and
you’ll have to clear out—but there’s nothing against me.”
“Nobody can say,” said cook, “as I’ve shown any incivility to Miss ’Ill.
I’m one as likes Miss ’Ill. I always did say as you was going too far.”
“I’ve never said a word good, bad, or indifferent,” said the housemaid,
“since the first day: and then it was John as sauced her, and I only looked
on.”
“I never sauced her,” cried John.
Saunders alone was silent. His confederates had all given him up as is
inevitable in such circumstances, and it was very evident that there was no
help possible for him. There was dismay also in the nursery, but in those
regions the authorities held apart and did not compromise themselves in the
servants’ hall.
Mary, however, felt herself taken hold of as by a little beneficent
providence when she was taken in hand by Lord Frogmore. He arranged at
once a little programme for her. It was too late now to go up so far as
Yorkshire that afternoon, so he permitted her to remain for the night at
Greenpark, to pack and arrange for her journey. He himself in the
meanwhile would remain at the railway hotel near the station, and in the
morning he would come for her and take her home. It was very startling to
Mary to be thus swept away. She had herself strongly developed the instinct
of putting up with what was disagreeable—with the certainty that there
were many things in life which it was impossible to mend, and which had to
be borne as cheerfully as possible. But Lord Frogmore had no mind to put
up with anything. The idea of enduring a moment’s annoyance which could
be prevented seemed folly to the imperative old gentleman. The difference
was that he had always had it in his power to prevent the greater part at
least of the annoyances of life, whereas Mary never had possessed that
power. He whirled her away next day in a reserved carriage with all the
luxury with which it was possible to surround a railway journey—she who
had been accustomed to a humble corner in the second class! and deposited
her that evening in the vicarage in a tumult of joy and excitement which it
would be impossible to describe. The old people, the vicar and his wife,
were indeed full of alarm, terrified by the telegram that announced Mary’s
immediate return, and troubled to think that something must have happened
to account for so sudden and important a journey. They had comforted each
other by the reflection that it could not be Mary’s fault. Mary who was
always so good and patient. But an event so sudden is always alarming, and
it took them a long time to understand the rights of the matter, and what
Lord Frogmore had to do with it and what they had to do with him. Old Mr.
Hill was not very much older than Lord Frogmore, but he was not nearly so
lively either in intelligence or in physique, and it required a great deal of
explanation to make him understand the real state of the case. Mary going
to marry—that old gentleman! This was the first thought of the
unsophisticated household. The thought that Mary was to become Lady
Frogmore did not penetrate their minds till some time after. As for Mary
herself the process was quite different. She had actually forgotten that Lord
Frogmore was an old gentleman nearly as old as her father, and the idea of
being Lady Frogmore had become quite familiar, and caused her no
excitement. She was still troubled about Letitia, and the possible money to
the children, but otherwise she had begun to regard her own prospects with
a satisfied calm. It is astonishing how quickly the mind accustoms itself to a
new resolution even when it entails a revolution in life. Mary was surprised,
and even a little offended, that her family should have so much difficulty in
understanding her position. “My dear,” her mother said, “I hope you have
well considered what you are going to do. Lord Frogmore is a very nice
gentleman, but he is only five years younger than your father. I looked him
up in the peerage. Mary, he is sixty-six.”
“Is that all?” said Mary. “Letitia speaks as if he were a hundred: but,
mother, for a woman, forty is almost as old.”
“Oh, what nonsense,” said Mrs. Hill, “more than a quarter of a century
of difference. It is a great temptation in a worldly point of view, my dear,
but Mary——!”
Mr. Hill was a venerable person of large bulk, whose voice came out of
the depths of his throat, and who was, Mary said to herself with energy, a
hundred years older than Lord Frogmore. He had a large head, with heavy
white hair, and always a solemn aspect. This big white head he shook
slowly at his daughter and said, mumbling, “You must think it well over.
My child, you must think it well over—we mustn’t do anything rashly.” As
if it were possible to deliberate further when everything was settled, when
Mary had brought her old lover home and accepted his escort and allowed
him to disentangle her from her troubles. She felt vexed and angry with the
objections, which proved what excellent people, how unworldly, and how
simple-minded her parents were.
“What I think of is Tisch—and what a fuss she will be in,” said Agnes,
Mary’s sister, in whose voice there was perhaps a note of exultation over
the discomfiture of Letitia. This it was that made Mary falter and grow pale.
Her just duty was to write to Letitia, and how, oh, how, was this to be done!
The other remarks of her family only made her impatient with their futility
—as if she did not like Lord Frogmore as well, nay better, for being old and
having need of her! But Letitia! She put it off for three days pleading to
herself that she was tired; that she must have a rest; that until Lord
Frogmore went away she could do nothing. To tell the truth it was a relief
when Lord Frogmore went away. The shabby little vicarage on the edge of
the moors was not congenial to him. He did not know what to say to the
mumbling old vicar, who was so very conscious of being only five years
older than his intending son-in-law, but who was a-hundred years older as
Mary truly felt. And there was but one spare room at the vicarage, the
chimney of which, being very little used, smoked when a fire was lit (the
Hills themselves had no fires in their bedrooms on the theory that it was a
piece of self-indulgence and extravagance, though coal was cheap enough),
and there was not a corner for Rogers, without whom Lord Frogmore was
not at his ease, nor taken care of as he required to be. These drawbacks a
bridegroom of twenty-six or thirty-six might have made a jest of, but at
sixty-six it is another matter. And Mary was very glad when he went away.
He was to return in a fortnight for the marriage with a special licence,
though there was just time for the banns to be proclaimed in Grocombe
church three Sundays, a formula which the vicar would not dispense with.
Mary saw the old lord away with a sense of satisfaction. But she went back
to the vicarage with a cold trembling all over her. The letter to Letitia could
be put off no longer.
Truth compels us to say that it was a most specious letter—a letter in
which innocence was made to look like guilt, a letter full of excuses, of
explanations, of deprecations, trying to show how she could have done
nothing else, how no harm could follow, and yet that the culprit was
conscious of a thousand dreadful consequences. The effort of writing it
made Mary ill. She kept her bed in a fever of anxiety and excitement,
counting the hours till Letitia should receive it, thinking, with her heart in
her mouth, “Now she has got it, what will she say? What will she do?”
It did not take a very long time to show what Letitia meant to say and do.
Mary thought the world had come to an end when she heard by return of
post, as it were, a carriage, that is a cab from the nearest station rattle up to
the door with every crazy spring and buckle jingling as if in fury, and heard
a whirlwind in the passage, and, rising up, tremblingly beheld her mother’s
little parlor fill, as by an excited crowd, with two impetuous figures—
Letitia, pale with passion, and behind her the imposing form of the
Dowager Lady Frogmore.
 CHAPTER XVII.
The parlor at Grocombe Vicarage was but a small room and a shabby one.
There was a drawing-room which was the admiration of the parish into
which all visitors were shown, but Mrs. Hill and her daughters had too
much respect for it to use it commonly; and the centre of their domestic life
was the parlor, where all their makings and mendings were done, and where
Agnes did not disdain to boil the eggs in the morning and make the toast for
tea, both of which operations were so much better done, she thought, when
“you did them yourself.” She had been making a dress for her mother;
indeed, the very dress in which Mrs. Hill intended to appear “at the
ceremony,” and the large old sofa which stood between the door and the
window was rendered unavailable for all the ordinary uses of a sofa by
having the materials of this dress stretched out upon it. Mary was in a chair
by the fire with a white knitted shawl wrapped round her, much oppressed
with her cold. There was a little tea kettle upon the old-fashioned hob of the
grate. It may be supposed with what a start of discomposure and vexation
the invalid of the moment started up when the door of this sanctuary was
flung open and the visitors appeared. Fearful under any circumstances
would have been the sight of Letitia to Mary at this moment, but in the
drawing-room she might at least have been kept at arm’s length. She
stumbled to her feet with a cry; her nose was red, her eyes were streaming,
and the feverish misery of her cold depressed any spirit with which she
might have met this invasion. Letitia on the other hand swept in like an
army, her head high, her hazel eyes blazing like fire, full of the energy of
wrath. She was a small woman, but she might have been a giantess for the
effect she produced. After her there came a personage really large enough to
fill the little parlor, but who produced no such effect as Letitia,
notwithstanding that she swept down a rickety table with the wind of her
going as she hobbled and halted in. But Mary recognized with another thrill
of alarm the Dowager Lady Frogmore, and felt as if her last day had come.
Letitia swept in and did not say a word till she had reached the chair
which Mary had hurriedly vacated. She had the air of bearing down upon
her unfortunate friend, who retreated towards the only window which filled
the little room with cold wintry light. “Well!” Mrs. Parke cried, as she came
to a sudden pause, facing Mary with a threatening look. “Well!” But it was
ill she meant.
“Well,—Letitia,” cried poor Mary, faintly.
“I have come to know if it was you that wrote me that disgraceful letter.
Could it be you? Tell me, Mary, it’s all some terrible mistake, and that I
have not lost my friend.”
“Oh, Letitia! You have lost no friend. I—I hope—we shall always be
friends.”
“Did you write that letter?” said Letitia, coming a step nearer. “You—
that I trusted in with my whole heart—that I took out of this wretched place
where you were starving, and made you as happy as the day is long. Was it
you—that wrote to me like that, Mary Hill?”
Mary was capable of no response. She fell back upon the window, and
stood leaning against it, nervously twisting and untwisting her shawl.
“Letitia,” said the dowager, from behind, “don’t agitate yourself—and
me: tell this person that it can’t go any further: we won’t allow it, and that’s
enough. We’ve come here to put a stop to it.” Lady Frogmore emphasized
what she said with the stamp of a large foot upon the floor. Her voice was
husky and hoarse by nature, and she was out of breath either with fretting or
with the unusual rapidity of motion, which had brought her in like a heavy
barge, tugged in the wake of a little bustling steamboat. She cast a glance
round to see if there was a comfortable chair, and dropped heavily into that
which was sacred to the vicar on the other side of the fire, from which she
looked round, contemplating the shabby parlor and the figure of Mary in
her shawl against the window. “We’ve come—— to put a stop to it,” she
repeated in her deep voice.
Now Mary, though held by many bonds to Letitia, had at the bottom of
her mild nature a spark of spirit—and it flashed through her mind
involuntarily that it was she who would soon be Lady Frogmore, and that
this large disagreeable woman was only the dowager. She put a stop to it!
So impudent a threat gave Mary courage. “I don’t know,” she said, “who
has any business to interfere; and I don’t think there is anyone who has any
right. I don’t say that to you, Letitia. You are not like anyone else. I very
much wish—oh, if you would only let me! to explain everything to you.”
“She has every right,” said Mrs. Parke; “and so has my husband. I
suppose you don’t know that this is Lady Frogmore?”
 “I know—that it is the dowager,” said Mary. She was aware, quite aware
of what was in her heart, the meaning underneath, which Letitia understood
with an access of fury. In Mary’s mild voice there was a distinct
consciousness that this title was hers—hers! the poor dependent, the less
than governess! Mrs. Parke made a step forward as if she would have fallen
upon her antagonist.
“You think that’s what you’ll be! Oh, you Judas, taking advantage of all
I’ve done for you. Oh, you wicked, treacherous, designing woman! You
wouldn’t have had enough to eat if I hadn’t taken you in. Look at this
wretched hole of a place and think what rooms you’ve had to live in the last
six years—and pretending to care for the children, and bringing them to
ruin! I’ve heard of such treachery, but I never, never thought I’d ever live to
see it, and see it in you. I trusted you like a sister; you know I did. It was all
I could do to keep the children from calling you Aunt Mary, as if you
belonged to them; and you nobody, nobody at all! I got into trouble with my
husband about you, for he couldn’t bear to see you always there. Oh, Mary,
Mary Hill! where would you have been all these years but for me—and to
turn upon me like this—and ruin me! I that was always so good to you!”
This address melted Mary into tears and helplessness. “Letitia,” she said,
with a sob, “I never, never denied you had been kind: and I love the
children, as if—as if—they were my own. It will be no worse for the
children. Oh, if you only would believe what I say! I asked him before I
would give him any answer, and he said, no, no, it would make no
difference to the children. I would rather die than hurt them; but he said no,
no, that it would hurt them if I refused. Letitia!”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Parke. “So you’re our benefactor, it appears.
Grandmamma, this lady is going to patronize us you’ll be glad to hear. She
has taken care of the children before she would accept his beautiful love.
Oh!” cried Letitia, in her desperation, clenching the hand which was out of
her muff as if she would have knocked down her former friend. She drew a
long breath of fury, and then she said, “You think nobody can interfere! You
think a noble family can be played upon by any wicked treacherous thing
that likes to try, and that no one can do anything to stop it! but you’re
mistaken, there, you’re mistaken there!”
Foam flew from Letitia’s lips. In her excitement she began to cry—hot
tears of rage gathering in her eyes, and a spasm in her throat breaking the
words. She sat down in the chair which Mary had so hurriedly vacated,
overcome by passion, but carrying on her angry protest with mingled sobs
and threats only half articulate. Poor Mary could not stand against the
storm. A cold shiver of alarm lest this might turn out to be true, mingled
with the shiver of her cold, which answered to the draughts from the
window. Hunted out of her warm corner by the fire, exposed to the chill, her
heart sinking, her cough coming on, there is no telling to what depth of
dejection poor Mary might have fallen. She was saved for the moment at
least by the rush at the door of her mother and sister, who, after a pause of
wonder and many consultations, had at last decided that it was their duty to
be present to support Mary—however grand and exalted her visitors might
be. They came in one after the other a little awed but eager, not knowing
what to expect. But they both in the same moment recognized Letitia and
rushed toward her with open arms and a cry of “Oh, Tisch!” in the full
intention of embracing and rejoicing over such an old friend. “Why didn’t
you send for me, Mary?” cried Mrs. Hill. “I thought it was some grand
stranger, and it’s Tisch, our dear old Tisch! What a pleasure to see you here
again, my dear!”
Mrs. Parke put on a visage of stone. She could not avoid the touch of the
mistress of the house who seized upon her hand with friendly eagerness, but
she drew back from the kiss which was about to follow, and ignored Agnes
altogether with a stony gaze. “I’m sorry I can’t meet you in the old way,”
she said. “I was a child then and everything’s changed now. We have come
here upon business, and unpleasant business too. I’m glad to see you,
however, for you will have sense enough to know what I mean.”
“Sense enough to know what she means!” cried the vicar’s wife. “I am
sure I don’t know what that means to begin with, Tisch Ravelstone! You
were never so wonderfully clever that it wanted sense to understand you—
so far as I know.”
“I am the Honorable Mrs. Parke and this is Lady Frogmore,” said Letitia
with angry dignity. “Now perhaps you understand.”
“Not in the least, unless it’s congratulations you mean, and that sort of
thing; but you do not look much like congratulators,” said Mrs. Hill. She
drew a chair to the table and sat down and confronted the visitors firmly. “It
looks as if you did not like the match,” she said.
 “The match—shall never be,” said Lady Frogmore, in that voice which
proceeded out of her boots, waving her arm, which was made majestic by
the lace and jet of her cloak.
“It shall never be!” cried Letitia. “Never! My husband has already taken
steps——”
“My son—has taken steps—the family will not allow it. They will never
allow it.”
“Never!” said Letitia, raising her voice until it was almost a scream.
“Never! if we should carry it into every court in the land.”
The ladies of the vicarage were very much startled. They lived out of the
world. They did not know what privileges might remain with the nobility,
for whom such excellent people have an almost superstitious regard, and
the boldness of an assertion, whatever it was, had at all times a great effect
upon them. For the moment Mrs. Hill could only stare, and did not know
what to reply. She reflected that she might do harm if she spoke too boldly,
and that it might be wiser to temporize. And she also reflected that the sight
of a man was apt to daunt feminine visitors who might be going too far. She
said, therefore, after that stare of consternation, “I’m sure I don’t know
what you mean, Tisch, nor how you can put a stop to a marriage; but
perhaps the vicar may understand. Agnes, tell your father to come here. I
am sorry you did not take this lady to the drawing-room, Tisch, you who
know the house so well. This is the room we sit in in the morning, where we
do all our little household jobs. Agnes is making me my dress for the
ceremony, and everything is in confusion. Dress-making always does make
a mess,” said Mrs. Hill, rising with dignity to arrange, yet with a quick fling
of the long breadths of the silk spread out on the sofa to dazzle the
spectators with a glimpse of the dress which she was to wear at the
ceremony. She then addressed herself to Mary, who still stood shivering in
the window. “My dear,” she said, “you’ll get your cold a great deal worse,
standing there. Yes, I see Tisch has got your chair—but come here to the
corner of the fire—she’ll make a little room for you. It’s a pity she should
have such a bad cold just on the eve—Oh, here is the vicar. This is Lady
Frogmore, my dear. What did you say, Mary? The Dowager Lady
Frogmore? Yes, to be sure. And this is my husband, Mr. Hill. As for the
other lady, you know very well, my dear, who she is.”
 “Why, it’s Tisch!” said the vicar, “my little Tisch! Who would have
thought it? Why we ought to have the bells ringing, for you haven’t been
here, have you, since you were married, Tisch? and cheated me out of that
too, which was unkind. Anyhow, you are very welcome, my dear.” He took
her hand in both of his and swung her by it, which was the vicar’s way. He
was a large flabby old man, with much bonhommie of manner, and ended
off everything he said with a laugh. Letitia had not been able to avoid the
paternal greeting. But she pulled her hand away as soon as that was
possible. All these references to her absence and to her marriage were gall
and wormwood to Mrs. Parke.
The vicar looked around after this, much discomfited by finding himself
ousted from his usual chair. He wavered for a moment not knowing where
to go, but finally planted himself in front of the fire, leaning his shoulders
against the mantel-piece. He had an old coat on, very much glazed and
shabby, and a large limp white neckcloth, fully deserving of that name,
loosely tied. He looked round him amiable and a little unctuous, not
perceiving, for his faculties were not very alert, the storm in the air. “Well,
ladies,” he said, “I suppose you’ve come to talk things over, and all the fal-
lals and things for the wedding, eh? It’s astonishing what interest ladies
always take in anything of this kind, though they can’t be called, can they,
on this occasion, the young couple?” He chuckled in his limp good humor,
as he stood and warmed himself. “Only six years, I’ll give you my word for
it, younger than myself—and going to be my son-in-law—but Mary there
doesn’t seem to mind.”
His laugh had the most curious effect in that atmosphere charged with
fiery elements. It was so easy, so devoid of any alarm or possibility of
disturbance. Tisch, who knew very well that all that could be done was to
frighten these simple people if possible, had too much sense not to see that
her mission would be a failure furious as she was—but the dowager had not
this saving salt. She held out her arm again with all the lace and jet. “We’ve
come to put a stop to it,” she said.
“Eh?” said the vicar. His chuckle was a little different now, and he
repeated it at the end of his ejaculation, which was scarcely a question.
“They’ve come,” said Mrs. Hill, raising her voice, “to put a stop to
Mary’s marriage. Don’t you know? They won’t have it, they won’t allow it
—they say a noble family—Mr. Hill, don’t you hear?”
 For he went on chuckling, which was exasperating, and made his wife
and daughters long to seize him by the shoulders and shake him. “Oh,” he
said, “they’re going to put a stop to Mary’s marriage. How are they going to
do that, my dear? Has he got another wife living?” And the vicar chuckled
more than ever at such a good joke.
“Father!” and “my dear!” cried daughter and wife, simultaneously, in
indignation. But the vicar went on laughing unmoved.
“Well?” he said. “We don’t know much about his life. He might have
had several other wives living, he’s old enough. And that’s the only way I
know.”
“It shall be put a stop to,” cried the dowager, “my son has taken steps.
My son has been heir presumptive ever since he was born. It shall be put a
stop to. If no one else will do it, I’ll do it. I’ll have him shut up. I’ll have
him put in an asylum. He can’t be allowed to ruin the family. Letitia, can’t
you speak?”
“My good lady,” said the vicar, carried out of himself and out of his
natural respect for a peeress by his amusement and elation in being sent for
and looked up to as the arbiter, which was a new and unusual position for
this good man. “My good lady, is it Frogmore you are speaking of?” He
laughed all the time so that all the women could have murdered him.
“Frogmore! I’d like to see any one shut up Frogmore in an asylum, or
dictate to him what he is to do.” He stopped to laugh again with the most
profound enjoyment of the joke. “I think I never heard anything so good.
Frogmore! Why he’s only in his sixties—six years younger than I am. Do
you think you could put me in an asylum, or make me give up anything I
wanted to do, my dear?” He looked up at his wife and rippled over with
laughter, while she, almost put upon the other side by this appeal, gave him
a glance which might have slain the vicar on the spot. The ladies of his
house habitually dictated to the vicar; they put no faith in his power of
acting for himself. What he proposed to do they generally found much fault
with, and considered him to require constant guidance. But now for once he
had his revenge. He went on chuckling over it till their nerves could
scarcely sustain the irritation; but for the moment the vicar was master of
the situation, and no one dared say him nay.
Letitia had taken no part in this, such sense as she had showing her that
it was vain to maintain that altogether hopeless struggle. She had her own
undertaking ready to her hand, and a much more hopeful one. Mary, who
had been placed by her mother in a low chair close to the corner of the fire,
was so near to her as to be at her mercy. The vicar’s large person standing in
front of the fire shut them off from the rest, throwing a shadow over this
pair; and while he occupied the entire space over them with his voice and
his laugh, Letitia caught at Mary’s shoulder and began another argument in
her ear. “Mary Hill,” she said, “you know you daren’t look me in the face.”
“I have done you no harm, Letitia,” said Mary trembling.
“You are going to take my children’s bread out of their mouths. They’ll
have nothing—nothing! For how can we save off our allowance? The little
things will be ruined, and all through you.”
“Letitia, oh, for goodness sake, listen to me for a minute. He says it will
make no difference. They will not be the worse. I told him I would do
nothing against them—and he says if I refuse he will cut them off altogether
—Letitia——!”
“Don’t talk nonsense to me, Mary Hill! Do you think he will not rather
leave his money to his own children than to ours.”
“He has no children,” said Mary.
“No, not now; but when a man is going to get married——”
“Letitia!”
“Oh, don’t be a fool, Mary Hill! You’re not a baby not to know. When a
man marries—if he were Methuselah—one knows what he looks for. John
and I would scorn to ask anything from you, though you will ruin us too.
But the children! A mother must fight for her children. Poor little Duke,
whom you always pretended to be so fond of—he’s fond of you, poor child
—he sent his love to his Aunt Mary, little thinking they will all be ruined—
because of you——”
“Letitia, oh what can I do?”
“You can give him up,” said Mrs. Parke, “in a moment. It will not give
you much trouble to do that. An old fool like Frogmore, an old precise,
wearisome old——. Why, he’s older than your father: and you who are
engaged to my poor brother Ralph, such a fine man.”
“I never was engaged to your brother Ralph!” cried Mary, with
indignation.
 “You say so now: but if one had asked you ten years ago. We might
make up a little something for him even now—a little goes a long way in
Australia: and with someone whom he was fond of to keep him right,
Mary!”
“Letitia! It is all a mistake. I never, never was fond of him.”
“And now, when you might save him if you liked! This has been such a
blow to him. He would marry you to-morrow and take you away out of
everybody’s reach. The man that was really, really, oh, you won’t deny it!
the man of your heart.”
“I do deny it! Never, never! I would not marry your brother Ralph if—if
there was not another. I would marry nobody,” said Mary, raising her head,
“nobody—except the man I am going to marry!”
“You will say you are in love with him next. A man that is older than
your father—that has lived such a life, oh, such a life! all to humble us and
bring us down to the ground—that have been so kind to you, treated you
like a sister—and trusted you with everything, Mary.”
Mary knew very well that this was not true—but it is so difficult to
contradict any one who asserts thus boldly that she has been kind. Perhaps
Letitia meant to be kind. She could not have had any other notion—at least
at first. But Mary could not be warm in her response. She said, “It is misery
to me to think of doing you any harm. I would not harm—a hair of one of
their heads—not for the world!”
“No—you wouldn’t stab them or give them poison—but you would do
far worse, take everything from them—their whole living. You would
change everything for us. I,” cried Letitia, tears coming into her voice as
she realized the emancipation of her once slave, “would not mind—for
myself—I’m used to—putting up with things—for the sake of my family;
but there is John—and little Duke—their inheritance taken from them that
came from their ancestors—that they’ve always been brought up to—
everything changed for them. And all because a friend—one we’ve been so
kind to—my oldest friend, Mary, one brought into the family by me; oh,
that is the worst of it! If it had not been for me you would never, never have
known that there was such a person as Lord Frogmore. They’ve a right to
say it’s all my doing. Oh, Mary Hill, it was a fine thing for me to marry
John Parke, and then to bring my friends with me into the family and ruin
them all!”
 Mary felt herself as obdurate and hard as the nether millstone. She
folded her shoulders in her shawl and her mind in what she felt to be a
determined ingratitude. Yes, she was ungrateful. They had been kind to her,
but she would not give up her life for that. It was not fair to ask her. And
how could she change when everything was settled? She turned her
shoulder to her friend. “He said it should do them no harm,—I told him I
would not consent to do them any harm.”
“Oh, as for that!” Letitia cried. She leaned down close, near to Mary’s
ear with her hand upon her shoulder. “Mary,” she said, “you’re my oldest
friend. We used to play together, don’t you recollect? It was you who was
kind to me in those days. Sometimes I’ve seemed to forget, but I don’t
forget, Mary. It wouldn’t have mattered if we had cut each other out as girls
—that’s natural; but now! You might win the day and welcome. Get the title
and go out of the room before me and all that——” Letitia’s laboring
bosom gave forth a sob at the dreadful possibility, but she went on. “But it
is the others I am thinking of. It isn’t me, Mary! And we that were always
such friends.”
There came from Mary’s bosom an answering sob of excitement and
misery, but she made no reply.
“I can understand, dear,” said Letitia, putting her arm around the arched
shoulders, “that now you have made up your mind to marry you don’t feel
as if you could give it up. I don’t ask you to give it up—but oh, think how
far better than an old man like that it would be to have one that was really
fond of you, one of your own age, a person that was natural! Oh, Mary, hear
me out. Father has settled to give him something, and we could make out
between us what would be quite a fortune in Australia. And he worships the
very ground you tread on—and you were always fond of him you know,
you know—— Oh, Mary!”
“Don’t you know that you’re insulting me?” cried Mary, so miserable
that to be angry was a relief to her. “Oh! take away your hand. Oh! go away
and leave me. I won’t listen to you any more.”
“Mary—John told me to tell you that he had turned that insolent
Saunders and all those horrid servants out of the house. He never even
consulted me, and it’s a dreadful inconvenience, every servant we had. But
he turned them every one out of the house. You might be satisfied after that,
to see how much we think of you. He said no one should ever be suffered to
be insolent to you in our house. We have all esteemed you above
everything, Mary. Insulting! Is it insulting to want you to marry my own
brother—my favorite—and to make sacrifices that you should have
something to marry on.”
“Letitia,” said Mary, in her passion springing up from her seat, “so long
as you talk of the children my heart’s ready to break, and I don’t know what
to do—but you shall not put this scandal upon me. Oh! no, no. I won’t bear
it. It is an insult! Mother, don’t let her come after me. I won’t have it. I
won’t hear another word.”
For Letitia, too, had risen to her feet. She stood staring for a moment
while Mary pushed past her flying. But the fugitive had no more than
reached the door when she was caught by the shriek of Mrs. Parke’s
valediction. “Mary Hill! If you go and do it after all I’ve said—oh! I hope
you’ll be miserable! I hope you’ll be cursed for it—you and all belonging to
you. I’ll never forgive you—never, never, never! I hope if you have a child
it’ll be an idiot and kill you. I wish you were dead. I wish you would go
mad. I wish the lightning might strike you. I wish——”
Letitia fell back in her chair, choking with rage and hatred; and Mary,
like a hunted creature, with a cry of pain flew sobbing upstairs. The others
looked on aghast, not knowing what to think or say.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
When Lord Frogmore arrived at Grocombe Vicarage the day but one before
his marriage, Mary was still so pale, so depressed and nervous, that the
brisk old bridegroom was much disturbed. It had been agreed in the family
that it would be better to say nothing about that visit, which after all, though
disagreeable, had done nobody any harm. This arrangement had been
consented to by everybody, but Mrs. Hill and Agnes were always doubtful
whether the vicar and Mary could keep their own counsel. And it turned out
that these discreeter members of the family were right. For, indeed, Lord
Frogmore had not spent an hour with his bride before he ascertained the
cause of her low spirits and troubled looks. He was angry yet relieved.
“I had begun to think you had found out since I left you that you would
not be happy with an old man,” he said.
“Oh, Lord Frogmore!”
“It was a reasonable fear. You are a great deal younger than I am, though
you think yourself so old, Mary. However, if it is only Mrs. John and the
dowager who have frightened you, it is to be hoped we may get over that.”
Mary shivered but did not speak. It was her cold hanging about her still
her mother thought, but Lord Frogmore was not quite of that opinion.
“They must have said something very nasty to take such a hold upon
you. What was it? Come now, Mary. You will not make me think worse of
them (which is what you are afraid of) by anything you can tell me, and it
will be a relief to you to get it out.”
“It was—nothing particular,” Mary said; but again a shudder ran through
her. “It was just, I suppose, what people say when they are very angry.”
“Come, Mary. What did she say?”
“Oh, Frogmore,” cried Mary at last, “she could not mean it. You know
she could not mean it. Poor Letitia! she is a mother, and they say a mother
will do any thing I am sure she had no ill meaning. She said she hoped I
would be cursed, that if I had a——oh, I can’t, I can’t repeat what she said.
That she wished I were dead, or would go mad, or—— No, no, she could
not mean it. People don’t curse you nowadays. It is too dreadful,” Mary
cried, and she shivered more and more, wrapping herself up in her shawl.
 “The devil,” cried Lord Frogmore. “The little fierce devil!—a mother.
She is no more a mother than a tigress is. She hates you because after all her
ill-treatment of you you will have the upper hand of her. And I hope you
will take it and make her feel it too. What a woman for my poor brother
John to have brought into the family! I can forgive his mother, who is as
stupid as a figurehead, but would cut herself or anyone else in little pieces if
she thought it would be good for John; but not John’s wife, the odious little
shrew—the——”
“Oh, Frogmore,” cried Mary, “don’t speak of her so. I can never forget
how kind she was to me.”
“Kind to you—accepting all your time and care and affections and
downright hard work, and giving you how much for them?—nothing. Now,
Mary, there must be an end of this. She has made a slave of you for years. I
hope you don’t mean to let her make a victim of you at the end.”
“Oh—she could not mean it. I don’t think she could mean it; but to curse
me—just when everyone, even the old women in the almshouses, send their
blessing.”
Mary fell into a fit of shivering again, vainly wrapping herself in the
shawl to restore warmth, and keeping with difficulty her teeth from
chattering. The old lord was much disturbed by this sight. He tried to caress
and soothe her into composure, but elicited little save a weeping apology.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Frogmore.”
“Mary,” he said at length, “I suppose we’ve both agreed as to the source
from which blessings and curses come—or rather, let us say good fortune
and bad, for I don’t like to credit God with the curses, for my part.”
Mary, a little startled, looked at him with wide, open eyes, the tears, for
the moment at least, arrested. She was not sure whether he was not about to
say something profane, and as a clergyman’s daughter she felt it her duty to
be on her guard.
“Well,” said Lord Frogmore, “I shouldn’t, for my part, think the people
who call down curses were very likely to be heard up there—do you think
so, my dear? If they are it is not in accordance with anything we know.
Curses are only in use in romance books. And as for believing that Mrs.
John has any credit in that quarter I don’t, Mary. I’d back the old women in
the almshouses against twenty Mrs. Johns.”
 It was very profane—still it introduced a view of the subject which
proved, after a while, consolatory to Mary. She recognized reason in it. And
the presence of the old lord, who was so cheerful and self-possessed, and
was afraid of nobody, was also very supporting, as Mrs. Hill said. He had
the confidence of a man who had always been accustomed to have his own
way, and to be baulked by nobody, which is a great prop to the minds of
people who have the persistent sensation, due to the records and traditions
of many failures, that something is always likely to interpose between the
cup and the lip. Lord Frogmore did not take any such contingency into
consideration. When he found that Mary’s cold was so obstinate he changed
all his plans with the most lordly indifference to calculations and resolved
to take her to the Riviera for what he had too much sense to call the
honeymoon. “Moons,” he said to Mr. Hill, “do not drop honey when the
bridegroom is sixty-seven, but I hope to make it very pleasant to Mary for
all that.” And this was exactly what he did. The marriage and all the little
fuss and excitement—for the parish was moved from one end to the other
for the vicar’s daughter and her wonderful match—shook her up and roused
her spirits. And she wanted to do credit to the old lord, and would not have
him carry off a bride with watery eyes and a red nose. So that even before
they left Grocombe, Mary had recovered herself. She had a few wedding
presents, for her friends were not rich enough to send anything worthy of a
lady who was going to be a viscountess. But there was one which moved
her much, and amused the old lord. The family at the hall had taken no
notice of what was going on in the vicarage—indeed it was so rough a
man’s house that the amenities of life were disregarded altogether. But the
day before the wedding Ralph Ravelstone, who had been known to be at
home, but had showed very little, appeared at the vicarage with a stable-boy
behind him leading a colt. He went in to the house, leaving this group at the
gate, and paid his respects to the family, where he was received without
enthusiasm. “You see I’ve come back,” he said.
“Yes, we heard you had come back,” said Mrs. Hill.
“Mary would tell you. I’m rather put out about Mary. I always meant,”
said Ralph, “to marry her myself. Oh, I don’t mind if Frogmore hears. He’s
a connection of mine and very jolly. I always meant to marry her myself.”
“You showed your good taste, Mr. Ralph; but I am glad that I was first in
the field,” said Lord Frogmore.
 “That’s what it is to have plenty of money,” said Ralph, with a grave
face. “You see things on the other side didn’t turn out as well as I expected.
I’ve brought her a wedding present, though. He looks leggy at present, but
he’s a good sort. You wouldn’t know his sire’s name perhaps, but it’s well
known in Yorkshire, and if he’s well trained he’ll make a horse. There he is
at the gate. I don’t say but he looks a bit leggy as he is now——”
“Oh—is it that foal? l am sure it was very kind of you, Ralph,” said Mrs.
Hill, in an extremely doubtful tone.
They had all gone to the window to look, and for a moment there had
been some perplexity in the minds of the ladies as to which of the two
animals visible was the wedding present—the half-grown stable-boy or the
neglected colt. Mary repeated, still more doubtfully, “I am sure it is very
kind of you, Ralph,” and there was a momentary pause of consternation.
But this Lord Frogmore disposed of in his brisk way.
“We’ll send him to the Park,” he said, “where I don’t doubt he’ll be
attended to; and who knows what races you may not win with him, Mary.
She shall run him under her own name. We’ll make the Frogmore colors
known on the turf, eh, my dear? Mr. Ravelstone has given you a most
valuable present, and for my part I am very much obliged.”
“Lord Frogmore always speaks up handsome,” said Ralph. “I saw that
the first moment we met at Tisch’s little place. And that little shaver, don’t
you remember? By Jove, now he’ll have his little nose put out of joint.”
It was not perhaps a very elegant joke, and the ladies took no notice of it
save by alarmed mutual glances between themselves. But Frogmore—the
refined and polite little old gentleman; Frogmore, with his old-fashioned
superiority in manners; Frogmore—laughed! There was no doubt of it—
laughed and chuckled with satisfaction.
“Well,” he said, “such things can’t be helped. It’s best in all
circumstances not to count one’s eggs before—— My brother John’s family
were, perhaps, what we may call a little cocksure.”
“I don’t know much about your brother,” said Ralph. “But, lord, I
shouldn’t like to come in Tisch’s way when she knows. Oh, she knows,
does she? I’d just like to see her face when she reads it in the papers. Tisch
is a fine one for pushing on in the world, but when she’s roused——”
“Ralph,” said Mrs. Hill, “you might be better employed than speaking
against your sister. She has been very kind to Mary; and Lord Frogmore
would never have met my daughter at all if it had not been in her house.”
“That was all the worse for me perhaps, Mrs. Hill,” said Ralph.
“You are quite right, my dear lady,” said Lord Frogmore. “We have all I
am sure the greatest respect for Mrs. John. She has made my brother an
excellent wife, and she has put me in the way of acquiring for myself a
similar blessing.” He made this little speech in his precise way, quite
concluding the argument, and even quieting Ralph in a manner which much
impressed the ladies. But the big bushman shook his head and his beard as
he went away. “That’s all very well,” he said, “but if Tisch has ever a
chance to come in with a back-hander—” He went off continuing to shake
his head all the way.
Fortunately, Mary did not notice this, being diverted by the perplexity
and embarrassment caused by Ralph’s “leggy” gift, what to do with it, how
to find accommodation for it in the little stable at the vicarage, already
occupied by an old and self-opinionated pony, very impatient of being
interfered with. But Mrs. Hill and Agnes shook their heads too behind the
bride’s back. If Tisch ever had it in her power to do an ill-turn to Mary!
Even all the excitement of the wedding preparations could not banish this
thought from Mrs. Hill’s mind. She impressed upon her other daughter the
oft-repeated lesson that there is no light without an accompanying shadow.
“In the course of nature,” said the vicar’s wife, “poor Mary will be left a
widow to struggle for herself. It is true that the settlement is all we could
desire—but if Tisch is at the back of it, her husband being the heir, how can
we know what may happen—and your father an old man, and me with so
little experience in the ways of the world——”
“But, mother,” said Agnes, with hesitation, “Mary is not so old, she is
only two years older than I am. She may have——”
“Oh, my dear! Heaven forbid there should be any family!” cried Mrs.
Hill lifting up her hands and eyes.
 CHAPTER XIX.
Mary came back from her travels a most composed and dignified young
matron, bearing her honors sweetly, yet with a mild consciousness of their
importance. I say young, for though she was forty she had always preserved
her slim youthfulness of aspect, and the unwrinkled brow which belongs to
a gentle temper and contented soul. She looked younger as Lady Frogmore
than she had done as Miss Hill. The simple dresses, which were perhaps a
little too simple for her age, had not become her so well as those she now
wore, the rich silks and velvets which the ladies at the vicarage felt and
pushed and admired with an elation of soul in regarding “Our Mary,” which
it would be impossible to put into words. Mrs. Hill herself had now a velvet
dress, a thing to which she had looked wistfully all her life as the acme of
woman grandeur without any hope of ever attaining it; and Agnes had been
supplied with a little trousseau to enable her to pay in comfort her first visit
to the Park. But when Mary appeared in the Frogmore diamonds at the head
of her own table, receiving the best people in the county, Agnes was silent
in awe and admiration. For Mary Hill, who had never asserted herself
anywhere, had insensibly acquired the self-possession of her new rank, her
sister could not tell how. And the little old gentleman beamed like a wintry
sun upon his household and his guests. Impossible to imagine a kinder host,
a more delightful brother-in-law. He was good to everybody who had ever
had to do with Mary—the old aunts in London; even, oddly enough, Ralph
Ravelstone, who so frankly informed Lord Frogmore of his intention to
marry Mary had all gone well with him. There had been an additional little
episode about Ralph which nobody knew of, not even Mary herself. For
Lord Frogmore had received from Mrs. John Parke, a day or two before the
marriage, the note which Mary had written to Ralph begging him to meet
her at the sundial in the grounds of Greenpark on that eventful day Lord
Frogmore had made his first appearance. The reader may recollect that this
note had been an urgent appeal for an interview, when Letitia had
demanded of Mary that she should send Ralph away. Lord Frogmore burnt
the little note, which, indeed, was evidently a note written in great
perturbation of mind, and drew his wife into conversation upon the events
of the day, from which he very speedily understood the situation, and the
exact character of Mary’s intercourse with Ralph. He replied by a most
polite note to Letitia, informing her that he was very glad to be able to do,
in response to her friendly recommendation, something for her brother—
not, perhaps, equal to his merits, but the best that was in his power—by
making Ralph agent for his Westmoreland property. There was not very
much responsibility, nor a large income, but at all events a life of activity
and freedom which he believed was in consonance with Mr. Ravelstone’s
habits and tastes. Letitia was entirely overwhelmed by this communication.
She grew pale while she read, overawed as by a superior spirit.
It will be well, however, to draw a veil over the behavior of Letitia at this
trying moment of her career. She had reason to be angry. There was
scarcely any of the lookers on at this drama of ordinary life who did not
acknowledge that. All her actions for years had been shaped by the
conviction that sooner or later she would be Lady Frogmore. She had
married John Parke on that understanding. It is possible, indeed, that, as no
one else offered, she might have married him anyhow, for the substantial, if
modest, advantages which his individual position secured. But nowadays
Letitia did not remember that, and felt convinced that she had married him
because he was heir-presumptive to Lord Frogmore. Who could say now
when that designation might be erased from the peerage? And even if it
were now erased, there was still the humiliating certainty that Mary—Mary
Hill—was my Lady Frogmore, a fact that produced paroxysms almost of
madness in the bosom of Mrs. John Parke. And she had a right to be angry.
Even Mrs. Hill allowed this. To have had for years only an old bachelor
between you and your highest hopes—and then that he should marry at
sixty-seven! If ever woman had a grievance, Letitia was that woman. A
certain amount of rage, virulence, revengeful feeling was what everybody
expected. It was even allowed that the part of the interloper being a
dependent of her own—a useful old friend—made things worse. She was
bound, indeed, for her own sake, to preserve appearances a little more than
she did; but, except in that respect, nobody blamed her. It was a very hard
case. And more than by anybody else was this felt by Lady Frogmore, who
did everything that woman could do to conciliate Letitia. She sent endless
presents to the children, invited them to the Park—condescended in every
way to keep them in the foreground. She even urged that Duke should
spend as much time with them as possible, in order that Lord Frogmore
should get to know his heir! His heir! Poor Mary insisted upon this—
repeated it, lost no opportunity of directing attention to the fact—good
heavens!—until at last one day——
One day—it was early in the year, a day in spring, when she had been
married for more than a twelvemonth, and had quite got used to her
position, and felt as if she had worn velvet and diamonds, and a coronet
upon her pocket-handkerchiefs, all her life. Mary had got so used to it all
that when a stranger in a London shop, or a cottager, or any person of the
inferior classes called her ma’am instead of my lady, she was much amused
by the mistake. And she had forgotten all evil prognostications, and was
almost happy in a sort of truce with Letitia, kept up by the presents and the
visits and numberless overtures of amity which it pleased her to make, and
which Mrs. John condescended to accept. She had begun to think that all
was well, and to know herself to be happy, and to feel as if nobody could
ever be ill or die, or fall into trouble more.
When suddenly Mary made a discovery—the first suspicion of which
threw her into a faintness which made the world swim all about her. It was a
beautiful day, full of light and life and hope. The birds were twittering in
every tree, talking over their new nests and where to build them, flitting
about to look at different sites. Mary was out walking in the grounds,
rejoicing in the lovely air, when suddenly it occurred to her what was the
matter with her, for she had been slightly invalidish—out of her usual way.
All at once her head swam, her whole being grew faint. She tottered along
as well as she could till she came to one of the late cuttings in the avenue,
where the great trunk of a tree was lying on the side of the path, and then
she sat down to think. A great tremor came over her, a something of
sweetness indescribable, something like the welling out of a fountain of joy
and delight. She had never been a knowing woman or experienced in the
courts of life, but rather prim and old-maidish in her reserve. And she had
not known or thought what might be going on—was that what it was? She
sat down to think, and for half-an-hour Mary’s mild spirit was, as it were in
heaven. Tears, delicious tears came to her eyes—a tender awe came over
her, a feeling which is one of the compensations of women for the many
special troubles that they have to bear. As the one is indescribable so are the
others. Mary could not for her life have put into words the emotions which
filled her heart.
Presently Lord Frogmore came in sight walking briskly up the avenue,
the trimmest, most active, cheerfullest of old gentlemen. He was never far
off from where his wife was, liking to be near her, regarding her with an
honest homely affection that had something polished in it. He came up to
her quickening his pace. “Are you tired, Mary,” he said, “or were you
waiting for me?”
“Partly the one and partly the other,” said Mary, bringing herself back to
ordinary life with a little start and shock. He seated himself beside her upon
the tree.
“I think, my dear,” he said, “that you have been of late more easily tired
than you used to be.”
“Oh, no,” said Mary, with a sudden flush, for she was jealous of her
secret, and shy as a girl, not knowing how it ever could be put into words.
She got up quickly, shaking her skirts from the dead leaves which had been
lying in the crevices. “I am not in the least tired now,” she said, “and it is
time to get home.”
“On account of little Duke?” said Lord Frogmore. “You may be sure the
boy is happy enough. I think you are as fond of that boy, Mary, as if he were
your own.”
She had been a step in advance of him going on, but now she turned
round suddenly and gave him a look—such a look. Never in all their life
before had Mary’s mild eyes confessed such unfathomable things. The look
filled Lord Frogmore with amazement and dismay. “Mary,” he said, “my
dear, what is the matter? What has happened? What is wrong?”
She made him no reply; but suddenly the light went out altogether from
the eyes which had turned to him so solemn and terrible a look. And Mary
did what she had never done in her life—slid down at his feet in a faint,
falling upon the grass on the side of the way. It was all so quiet—so
instantaneous—that poor Lord Frogmore was taken doubly unprepared.
There was nothing violent even about the fall. She slipped from his side
noiselessly, and lay there without a movement or a cry. The old lord was for
a moment terrified beyond measure, but presently perceived that it was
merely a faint, and knelt down by her, taking off her bonnet, fanning her
with his hat, watching till the life should come back. He had shouted for
help, but Mary came to herself before any help arrived. She raised herself
from the ground, the damp freshness of which had restored her, and put up
her hand to her uncovered head in confusion. And then the colorless face
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