The Deceased

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Title:     The Deceased
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

I think it was William Hazlitt's brother who remarked that "no young man thinks he will ever die." Whoever it was he was a mysterious person who lives for us now in that one enduring observation. That is his "literary remains," his "complete works." And many a man has written a good deal more and said a good deal less than that concerning that "animal, man" (in Swift's phrase), who, as Sir Thomas Browne observes, "begins to die when he begins to live."

No young man, I should say, reads obituary notices. They are hardly "live news" to him. Most of us, I fancy, regard these "items" more or less as "dead matter" which papers for some reason or other are obliged to carry. But old people, I have noticed, those whose days are numbered, whose autumnal friends are fast falling, as if leaf by leaf from the creaking tree, those regularly turn to the obituary column, which, doubtless, is filled with what are "personals" for them.

And yet, if all but knew it, there is not in the press any reading so improving as the "obits" (to use the newspaper term), none of so softening and refining a nature, none so calculated to inspire one with the Christian feelings of pity and charity, with the sentiment of malice toward none, to bring anon a smile of tender regard for one's fellow mortals, to teach that man is an admirable creature, full of courage and faith withal, constantly striving for the light, interesting beyond measure, that his destiny is divinely inscrutable, that dust unto dust all men are brothers, and that he, man, is (in the words of "Urn Burial") "a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the tomb." I doubt very much indeed whether any one could read obituaries every day for a year and remain a bad man or woman.

In many respects, the best obituaries are to be found in country papers. There, in country papers, none ever dies. It may be because, as it is said, the country is nearer to God than the town. But so it is that there, in country papers, in the fulness of time, or by the fell clutch of chance, one "enters into his final rest," or "passes from his earth life," or one "on Wed. last peacefully accepted the summons to Eternity," or "on Thurs." (it may be) "passed to his eternal reward." "Died" is indeed a hard word. It has never found admittance to hearts that love and esteem. Whitman (was it not?) when he heard that Carlyle was dead went out in the night and looked up at the stars and said that he did not believe it. Even so, are not all who take their passing "highly esteemed" in country papers? In small places, doubtless, death wears for the community a more tragic mein than in cities, where it is more frequent and where we knew not him that lies on his bier next door but one away. In the country places this man who is now no longer upright and quick was a neighbour to all. And the provincial writer of obituaries follows a high authority, another rustic poet, deathless and known throughout the world, who sang of his Hoosier friend "he is not dead but just away."

When one enters upon his last role in this world, which all fill in their turn, he becomes in rural journals that personage known throughout the countryside as "the deceased." It might be argued that, alas! the only thing you can do with one deceased is to bury him. It might be held that you cannot educate him. That he, the deceased, cannot enter upon the first steps of his career as a bookkeeper. That he cannot marry the daughter of the Governor of the State. That whatever happened to him, whatever he accomplished, enjoyed, endured, in his pilgrimage through this world he experienced before he became, as it is said, deceased. That, in short, he is now dead. And that it should be said of him, as we say in the Metropolitan press, as a young man Mr. Doe did this and later that. But in places simpler, and so more eloquent, than the Metropolis the final fact of one's existence colours all the former things of his career. In country obituaries all that has been done was done by the deceased. In this association of ideas between the prime and the close of life is to be felt a sentiment which knits together each scene. This Mr. Some One did not merely apprentice himself to a printer at fourteen (as city papers say it) and marry at twenty-one. But he that is now deceased was once full of hope and strength (at fourteen), and in the brave days of twenty-one did he, that is now struck down, plight his troth. So, doubtless, runs the thought in that intimate phrase so dear to country papers, "the deceased."

And there are no funerals in the country. That is a word, funeral, of too forbidding, ominous, a sound to be under the broad and open sky. There where the neighbours gather, all those who knew and loved the departed from a boy, the "last sad rites are read," and the "mortuary services are performed." Then from the fruitful valley where he dwelt after his fathers, and their fathers, he mounts again the old red hill, bird enchanted.

He is not buried, though he rests in the warm clasp of the caressing earth. Buried has an inhuman sound, as though a man were a bone. The deceased is always "interred," or he may be "laid to rest," or his "interment takes place."

Now, it is in these biographical annals of small places that one finds the justest estimates of life. There folks are valued for what they are as well as for what they do. Inner worth is held in regard equally with the flash and glitter of what the great world calls success. I was reading just the other day of a late gentleman, "aged 61," whose principal concern appeared to be devotion to his family. His filial feeling was indeed remarkable. It was told that "after the death of his parents, three years ago, he had resided with his sister." After his attachment to his own people, his chief interest, apparently, was in the things of the mind, in literature. He had "never engaged in business," it was said, but he "was a great reader," he could "talk intelligently on many topics which interested him," and in the circles which he frequented he was admired, that is it was thought that he was "quite a bright man." Who would not feel in this sympathetic record of his goodly span something of the charm of the modest nature of this man? Again, there was the recent intelligence concerning William Jackson, "a coloured gentleman employed as a deck hand on a pleasure craft in this harbour," who "met his demise" in an untimely manner. Clothes do not make the man, nor doth occupation decree the bearing. This is a great and fundamental truth very clearly grasped by the country obituary, and much obscured elsewhere.

On the other hand, positively nowhere else does the heart to dare and the power to do find such generous recognition as in the obituaries of country papers. The "prominence" of blacksmiths, general store keepers, undertakers, notaries public, and other townspeople bright in local fame has been made a jest by urban persons of a humorous inclination, who take scorn of merit because it is not vast merit. Pleasing to contemplate in contrast to this waspish spirit is the noble nature of the country obituary, inspiration to humanism. Here was a man, to the seeing eye, of sterling stamp: "He attended public grammar school where he profited by his opportunities in obtaining as good an education as possible, etc." Later in life, be became "well and favourably known for his conservative and sane business methods," and was esteemed by his associates, it is said, "fraternally and otherwise." He was "mourned," by those who "survived" him, as people are not mourned in cities, that is, frankly, in a manner undisguised. Country obituaries are not afraid to be themselves. In this is their appeal to the human heart.

They are the same in spirit, identical in turn of phrase, from Maine to California, from the Gulf to the Upper Provinces. That is one of the remarkable things about them. You might expect to come across, here or there, a writer of country paper obituaries out of step, as it were, with his fellow mutes, so to put it, one raising his voice in a slightly off, or different key, a trace, in short, of the hand of some student of the modes of thought of the world beyond his bosky dell or rolling plain. But it is not so in any paper truly of the countryside. And, perhaps, that is well.

A type of obituary which very likely is read rather generally in cities is that of slow growth and released from the newspaper-office "morgue" as occasion calls. One such timely and capable biographical account is waiting for each of us that is a Vice-President, King, lord of great dominions, high commander of armed forces, intellectual immortal of any kind, recognised superman in this or that. Big Chief anywhere, or beloved popular idol, nicely proportioned according to our space value. Of course, if we are a very great Mogul indeed we get a display head on the first page upon the dramatic occasion of our exit. But, generally speaking, this type of matter would run somewhere between the seventh and the thirteenth or fifteenth page, according to the number of pages of the issue of the paper coinciding with the date of the ending of our day's work. There, if we are pretty important, we should lead the column, and take a two-line head, with a pendant "comb." This, altogether, would announce to the passing eye that we went out (as the poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, puts it) in such or such a year of our age, that pneumonia, or what not, "took" us, that we were a member of one of the city's oldest families, that a family breach was healed at the death of our sister, or the general points of whatever it is that makes us interesting to the paper's circulation. We are likely to have a date line and a brief despatch from Rome, or Savannah, or wherever we happen to be when we shuffle off, stating that we have done so. This to be followed by a "shirt-tail dash." Then begins a beautifully dispassionate and highly dignified recital of the salient facts connected with our career, which may run to a couple of sticks, or, even, did our activities command it, turn the column.

Or, suppose for the sake of our discussion that your achievements have not been quite of the first rank. You get a one-line head, a sub-head, and a couple of paragraphs. Somebody has exclaimed concerning how much life it takes to make a little art. Just so. How much life it takes to make a very little obituary in the great city! Early and late, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, in the sun's hot eye of summer, through the winter's blizzard, year after year for thirty-six years you have been a busy practising physician. You have lived in the thick of births and life and death for thousands of hours. What you know, and have lived and have seen would fill rows of volumes. You are a distinguished member of many learned societies, widely known as an educator. You are good for about a hundred and fifty words.

Perhaps not. Perhaps you were a person of rather minor importance. You are, that is, you were, we will say, an astronomer, or you were a mineralogist, or a former Alderman, or something like that. So you call for a paragraph, with a head. Your virtues (and your vices) have been many. You were three times married. As Mr. Bennett says of another of like momentous history, the love of life was in you, three times you rose triumphant over death. Goodness! what a novel you would make. You call for a paragraph, with a head. All your clubs are given.

You are doing pretty well. Many of us, just somebodies but nobodies in especial particular, do not have a separate head at all but go in a group into the feature "Obituary Notes." Our names are set in "caps," and we have a brisk paragraph apiece, admirable pieces of composition, pellucid, compact, nervous. Our stories are contained in these dry-point-like portraits stript of all that was occasional, accidental, ephemeral, leaving alone the essential facts, such as, for instance, that we were, say, a civil engineer. I think it would be well for each of us occasionally to visualise his obituary "note." This should have the effect of clarifying our outlook. Amid the welter of existence what is it that we are above all to do? To thine own self be true. You are a husband, a father, and a civil engineer. That is all that matters in the end.

But after all, all obituaries in a great city are for the elect. The great majority of us have none at all, in print. What we were is, indeed, graven on the hearts that knew us, and told in the places where we have been. But in the written word we go into the feature headed "Died," a department similar in design to that on the literary page headed "Books Received." We are arranged alphabetically according to the first letter of our surnames. We are set in small type with lines following the name line indented. It is difficult for me to tell with certainty from the printed page but I think we are set without leads. Here again, frequently, the reader comes upon the breath of affection, the hand of some one near to the one that is gone: "Beloved husband of ------." And he is touched by the realisation that even in the rushing city, somewhere unseen amid the hard glitter and the gay scene, to-day warm hearts are torn, and that simple grief throbs in and makes perennially poignant a bromidian phrase.

As this column lengthens the paragraphs shorten, until is reached what seems to me the most moving obituary of all, that most eloquent of the destiny of men. "ROE. ------ Richard. 1272 West 96th St., Dec. 30, aged 54." It is like to the most moving line, perhaps, in modern literature. For nowhere else, I think, is there one of such simplicity and grandeur as this from "The Old Wives' Tale": "He had once been young, and he had grown old, and was now dead."

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Deceased

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