Monuments

Every man should leave a monument behind him in the recollection of his own life by his neighbors. There must be something very much amiss about a man who is not missed when he dies. A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble. So live towards others that they will keep your memory green when the grass grows on your grave. Let us hope there will be something better to be said about us than of the man whose epitaph is—

"Here lies a man who did no good,
And if he'd lived he never would;
Where he's gone, and how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares."

May our friends never remember us as great gormandizers of meat and drink, like the glutton over whose grave is written—

"Gentle reader, gentle reader,
Look on the spot where I do lie,
I always was a very good feeder,
But now the worms do feed on I."

As much as that might be said of a prize pig, or a fat bullock, if it died of disease. Some men are nothing better than walking beer barrels while they live; when death staves in the cask, they deserve to rot out of notice.

However, a plain-speaking tombstone is better than downright lying. To put flattery on a grave is like pouring melted butter down a stone sink. What queer tastes those must have who puff off the departed, as if they wanted to blow the trumpet of the dead before the last angel makes his appearance! Here's an apple out of their basket—

"Here lies the body of Martha Gwyn,
Who was so very pure within;
She crack'd the outer shell of sin,
And hatch'd herself a cherubim."

Where do they bury the bad people? Right and left in our churchyard, they seem all to have been the best of folks, a regular nest of saints; and some of them so precious good, it is no wonder they died—they were too fine to live in such a wicked world as this. Better give bread to the poor than stones to the dead. Better kind words to the living than fine speeches over the grave. Some of the fulsome stuff on monuments is enough to make a dead man blush.

What heaps of marble are stuck over many big people's tombs! Half enough to build a house with! What a lift they will have at the resurrection! It makes me feel as if I could not get my breath to think of all those stones being heaped on my bones; not that there's any fear of it. Let the earth which I have turned over so often lie light upon my corpse when it is turned over me. Let John Ploughman be buried somewhere under the boughs of a spreading beech, with a green grass mound above him, out of which primroses and daisies peep in their season: a quiet shady spot where the leaves fall, and the robins play, and the dewdrops gleam in the sunshine. Let the wind blow fresh and free over my grave, and if there must be a line about me, let it be—

HERE LIES THE BODY OF
JOHN PLOUGHMAN,
WAITING FOR THE APPEARING OF HIS
LORD AND SAVIOUR,
JESUS CHRIST.

I've often heard tell of patience on a monument, but I have never seen it sitting there when I have gone through churchyards; I have a good many times seen stupidity on a monument, and I have wondered why the parson, or the churchwarden, or the beadle, or whoever else has the ruling of things, let people cut such rubbish on the stones. Why, a Glos'tershire man told me that at Dymock graveyard there's a writing like this—

"Too sweetur babes you nare did see
Than God amity gave to wee;
But they wur ortaken wee agur fits,
And hear they lys has dead as nits."

I've read pretty near enough silly things myself in our Surrey burying-grounds to fill a book. Better leave the grave alone than set up a monument to your own ignorance.

Of all places for jokes and fun the queerest are tombstones, yet many a time gravestones have had such oddities carved upon them that one is led to think, the nearer the church the further from common decency. This is a cruel verse, but I dare say a true one:

"Here lies, return'd to clay,
Miss Arabella Young,
Who on the first of May
Began to hold her tongue."

This is not much better:

"John Adams lies here, of the parish Southwell,
A carrier who carried his can to his mouth well;
He carried so much, and he carried so fast,
He could carry no more, so was carried at last;
For the liquor he drunk being too much for one,
He could not carry off, so he's now carri-on."

Why could not these people poke their fun somewhere else? A man's wit must be nearly dead when he can find no place for it but the grave. The body of the raggedest beggar is too sacred a thing to crack jokes upon. What a queer fish must Roger Martin have been, who lived in Walworth, and put on his wife's tomb—

"Here lies the wife of Roger Martin,
She was a good wife to Roger—that's sartain."

And whoever was the foolish creature at Ockham, one of the prettiest spots in these parts, who wrote these outrageous lines?

"The Lord saw good, I was topping off wood,
And down fell from the tree;
I met with a check, and I broke my blessed neck,
And so death topped off me."

There, that's enough, and quite as good as a feast. Here's proof positive that some fools are left alive to write on the monuments of those who are buried. Well may there be ghosts about. No wonder the sleepers get out of bed when they are so badly tucked in. I say let us have a law to let nobody put nonsense over the dead unless he likes to take out a certificate to be an ass, just like the license to shoot partridges and pheasants. At the same time, let all puffery be saved for drapers' shops and quack doctors, and none be allowed at the grave. I say as our minister does—

"Let no proud stone with sculptur'd virtues rise,
To mark the spot wherein a sinner lies,
Or if some boast must deck the sinner's grave,
Boast of His love who died lost man to save."

One more Surrey rhyme, and John Ploughman leaves the churchyard to go about his work, and turn up other sods. It is in St. Saviour's, Southwark, and is, I think, a rare good one.

"Like to the damask rose you see,
Or like the blossom on the tree,
Or like the dainty flow'r of May,
Or like the morning of the day,
Or like the sun, or like the shade,
Or like the gourd which Jonah had;
Even so is man, whose thread is spun,
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done:
The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth,
The sun sets, the shadow flies,
The gourd consumes, and man he dies."