Our Last Social Engagement As A Fine Art

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Title:     Our Last Social Engagement As A Fine Art
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

I have just witnessed a revelation. At least, it was a revelation to me. I'm keen on telling you all about it.

One of my earlier articles in this series had to do with the establishment here and there in a great city of those gentlemen engaged in the estimable business of packing you up for keeps--that is the "parlors" of various sorts of "undertakers." I had been much struck by the vast number of cozy little places catering, so to say, to the poor and humble who have forever (as Stevenson puts it) "parted company with their aches and ecstasies." And I had wondered at how very few places there were in evidence on the streets to take care of the "remains" of, in a manner of speaking, the first-cabin passengers in life, those who have travelled through their days in a fashion de luxe. The establishments of this type which now and then I did see were very palatial indeed--and didn't look at all as though they would countenance the corpse of just an ordinary person such as you and me.

Also, all the undertaking establishments visible to me in my goings and comings about town were quite obviously undertaking establishments. They displayed within and without the air, the accoutrements, the paraphernalia traditionally associated with one's last social engagement on earth, his funeral. They varied only in this: some were rich and haughty in general effect, others simple and perhaps dingy in appearance. But each and all of them looked as much like an undertaking shop as a barber shop looks like a barber shop. You could not possibly have mistaken any one of them for a Turkish bath establishment, or a Carnegie library, or an office for steamship tickets.

As I say, I wrote that article telling all this and that about what anybody may see any day as he goes about on his rounds through the thick of the city. But when the article appeared--originally--it soon developed that I was not abreast of undertaking matters at all. I had not in the least kept track of the remarkable advances which have to date been made in the art of being buried--and a very fine art, in the advanced phases of the affair, it certainly has become. I did not even know the present-day, the correct, name for what I, in so old-fashioned a condition of mind, called an "undertaker's." No.

That word, "undertaker," has long, long ago been discarded by the élite of the profession. What a queer word as a business title it was, anyway! How did it originally ever come to be used in its mortuary relation? No one in the business that I have asked has been able to tell me. And why in the dim past when names were being given to trades did not this word, undertaker, seem to be equally descriptive of the career of physician or attorney? Indeed, does not he that sets himself the highly hazardous task of saving a living fellow being from disease or the gallows undertake to do more than he who merely performs the quiet office of laying us away?

And then, oddly enough for its tragic associations, the word acquired in our minds something of a ludicrous turn. It was reminiscent of Dickens, of hired professional "mourners," and that sort of thing. At mention of the word, a picture popped into our mind of a grotesquely angular being, of sallow, elongated features and lugubrious manner, garbed in a rusty frock coat and "stove pipe" hat, who put together before him the tips of black-gloved fingers and spoke with a hollow sound. We would say to our friends when they were feeling blue: "What's the matter with you? You act like an undertaker."

Well, as doubtless you have noticed, the term "funeral director" more or less recently pretty well superseded the word undertaker among progressive concerns. It is a phrase much more in the modern spirit, like "domestic science" for (what used to be) "household work," "modiste" for "dressmaker," "maid" for "hired-girl," "psychic" for "fortune teller," "publicity engineer" for "press agent," and so on. And it has a good, business-like, efficient sound.

Still (I discovered) to be buried by a funeral director is not the very latest, the most fashionable thing. The really smart way nowadays of bidding good-bye to the world is to go to the establishment of a "mortician."

Yes; that's what the gentleman said in his very cordial letter: would I care to look over a "real mortician's establishment in New York City?" I replied that nothing could give me greater pleasure. So at the time appointed a couple of days later his car came round for me.

When I told people of the visit I was about to make, they all laughed, very heartily. Now that brings to one's attention a curious thing: why should they laugh? Honestly, between you and me, think hard and tell me what really there is funny about going to see a burial establishment?

Paradoxical indeed is the attitude of mind of practically everyone toward this subject of being ushered out of life. Sundry totally contradictory emotions are aroused in the very same person by slightly different aspects of the same subject. If you remark that you are going to spend the afternoon at the undertaker's that is awfully amusing. At the same time, is not nearly everyone down in his heart a bit scared of undertakers' shops? Uncomfortable, gruesome places, would not most of us feel, to have next door?

At any rate, as we glided along I was told by the gentleman who had come to fetch me that the feeling was very general that the presence of a funeral director's establishment depreciated the value of property in the immediate neighborhood. Though, he asserted, this popular idea frequently had not at all been borne out in fact.

It developed (from his lively conversation) that nothing so much annoys a funeral director, or a mortician, as for a visitor to pull old gags which he thinks are smart--such, for instance, as the remark: "I see your business is pretty dead." I gathered that this jocular pleasantry was the stock joke of all near-wits who visited undertakers--I mean morticians.

No; there is another thing which annoys these gentlemen (morticians) even more than such punk puns as that. They deeply resent, I discovered, any disrespectful allusion to their silent clients, such as calling them "stiffs," or something like that. How would you, they ask, like to have someone of yours--someone who but yesterday returned your heart's clasp, now dumb and cold--made game of by such ribaldry? Certainly, I cannot say that I should like it.

Another paradoxical contradiction! Tell me (if you can) what strange spring of his being prompts a man to think it big and bold and hearty of him to speak with such cynical contemptuousness of a fellow man returned to rigid clay.

We had arrived at our destination, I was told. But I saw nothing, but what was (seemingly) a rather handsome private residence, set in a pleasant lawn. Though I did discern by the door a modest plate which read (as I recall the name) "Wentworth Brothers," nothing more. Wentworth Brothers might have been, for all the exterior evidence to the contrary, architects, or teachers of dancing and the piano, or breeders of pedigreed dogs, or dealers in antiques, or physical instructors, or almost anything you please.

This I soon learned was the fundamental principle of the sensitive art of the mortician--to scrap all the old stage properties of the bugaboo type of undertaker.

We passed into a charming hall, light and cheerful, furnished in excellent taste, altogether domestic in effect. A number of bright looking people, apparently attached to the premises, were lightly moving about. I had somewhat the sensation of having come to a most agreeable afternoon tea.

I was presented to my host, as cheerful, wholesome and cordial a young chap as anyone would care anywhere to see. The senior, he, of the brothers. I had been a little depressed that morning, having a bad cold and being fretted by a number of gloomy things, but as we proceeded through the house my spirits picked up decidedly. I experienced a feeling of mental and physical well-being, so attractive was everything about.

A dainty reception room opened off the hall at the front. My impression was of a nice amount of charming Colonial furniture. Altogether such a room as you might see in an illustration in the magazine House and Garden. Secluded back of this rooms having a brisk atmosphere and serving as offices. Peopled by very trim and efficient looking young people.

We descended to the "stock room," a most sanitary looking place of cement floor, ceiling and walls, where was a large store of caskets of many varieties. Behind this a spick and span embalming room which (except for the two tables) somewhat suggested an admirable creamery. Here I discovered that to the mind of the mortician towels belong to the Dark Ages. The up-to-date way of drying hands is by holding them before a blast of air turned on from a pipe.

We ascended to the third floor. Here were the chapels, rooms which might have been designed to accommodate fashionable audiences attending literary lectures. In connection with them a tiny "minister's study," not unlike the sanctum of a university professor. Also here small hotel suites, each with bath attached, available for the bereaved from out of town. Here, too, snug quarters for wakes. And a spacious chamber wherein friends may sit for a little last visit with the departed. The dominant article of furniture in this room an Empire lounge such as we see supporting the figure of Madame Récamier in the famous portrait by David. A consummate refinement was shown me on this floor: telephones, concealed behind panels in the wall, with no bells to jangle over-tried nerves, but with a tiny red electric globe on the wall to light as the signal.

The top floor a dormitory for male employees, having much the effect of rooms for boys at college, gay soft cushions, pipes and mandolins scattered about.

I lingered for a smoke and a chat with my host on the ground floor in an oak panelled room like the library of a gentleman's club before leaving.

I came away with (I very much fear) an idea that I should like to go back tomorrow and see some one of my friends so agreeably buried from that place.

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Our Last Social Engagement As A Fine Art

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