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| Illustration by John Blair Moore |
October marks our one year anniversary! On October 26, 2012, the very first essay was posted to the blog and The Overleaf has been chugging along ever since. Thanks to those of you who have read and enjoyed the blog over the past year. I hope you'll continue to check in.
Last October, the second article I posted dealt with three nineteenth century horror novels and the films they inspired. I like the idea of writing about books for Halloween reading, so this year we're establishing a new tradition in which essays in the month of October will be devoted to scary, or at least Halloween-appropriate, literature.
The great thing is that there's no shortage of good books to choose from. In addition to the many stone-cold literary classics we've explored, there is a growing number of oddball titles appearing on Project Gutenberg that would have slipped through the cracks and probably been lost to history were it not for the deluge of public domain titles that have been made available as eBooks. In the coming year, I'm making a point to write more essays on a few of these oddball titles. The first of this season's Halloween picks is one of them--a nineteenth century collection of epitaphs collected from gravestones in Great Britain and the United States.
Curious Epitaphs (1883) by William Andrews
The epitaph is literature that serves a practical purpose. For centuries, when a family or community cared enough about someone to bother to erect a monument in honor of his or her memory, they called in two folks with special skills--the stonecutter, who created a suitable stone relief, and the poet who encapsulated the dearly departed's life and essence in a few words. Imagine…the poet's job was actually deemed important.
Of course, sometimes a parish clerk or sexton had to fulfill the duty of parish poet, and sometimes local amateurs filled the bill. Some prominent citizens even wrote their own epitaphs to ensure a firm grasp of their legacies from the grave. In any case, results were mixed. At their best, epitaphs could be succinct, artful summations of lives, highlighting the good deeds and redeeming qualities of their subjects, forging in stone the life stories that might have otherwise been lost and giving their subjects a lasting, dignified monument. Epitaphs could be funny, profound, cautionary and weird, sometimes all at once. At their worst, they could be long winded, self serving, pompous wheezes that serve only as metered and rhymed public relations copy, enshrining the deceased in a chiseled halo of folderol.
In Curious Epitaphs, there is much in the way of shrewd wit, reflecting a healthy and even whimsical attitude toward death that can only be embraced by people who had little choice but to make peace with it one way or another. Before the twentieth century, lives were shorter, disease more rampant, women were far more likely to die in childbirth and infant and child mortality were grim facts of life. Reading through these epitaphs made me realize how improvements in health and living standards have sheltered us from the reality of death in a way that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors. One seldom finds a tombstone in this day and age that exudes a sense of humor.
If William Andrews' introduction is to be believed, his book was a runaway hit, selling out its first edition quickly in 1883. It may come as a surprise to some that a potential bummer of a book like this should be so popular, but it doesn't surprise me at all; these epitaphs give us glimpses of life stories just as novels and history books do. Through the gravestone etchings of those long gone, we can recognize the common thread of humanity connecting their individual lives--and their collective fate--to our own.
Anyway, here are a few examples of what can be found within this most curious volume:
Simple, concise phrasing that carries a message more profound than one might expect is always a pleasure to find, especially on a gravestone. Consider the mind-bending recursive quality of this epitaph, chiseled on the tombstone of Frank Raw, of Selby, Yorkshire-- the guy who, until then, was responsible for chiseling epitaphs on tombstones:
Here lies the body of poor Frank Raw,
Parish clerk and grave-stone cutter,
And this is writ to let you know
What Frank for others used to do,
Is now for Frank done by another.
Some of the best epitaphs are replete with inside jokes and/or groan-inducing puns, like this one for a watchmaker:
Here lies, in horizontal position,
the outside case of
George Routleigh, Watchmaker;
Whose abilities in that line were an honour
to his profession.
Integrity was the Mainspring, and prudence the
Regulator,
of all the actions of his life.
Humane, generous, and liberal,
his Hand never stopped
till he had relieved distress.
So nicely regulated were all his motions,
that he never went wrong,
except when set a-going
by people
who did not know his Key;
even then he was easily
set right again.
He had the art of disposing his time so well,
that his hours glided away
in one continual round
of pleasure and delight,
until an unlucky minute put a period to
his existence.
He departed this life
Nov. 14, 1802,
aged 57:
wound up,
in hopes of being taken in hand
by his Maker;
and of being thoroughly cleaned, repaired,
and set a-going
in the world to come.
This punny epitaph makes very clever use of the name of one Dr. William Cole, Dean of Lincoln, who died in 1600. It approaches eloquence while holding fast to the obvious gag:
Reader, behold the pious pattern here
Of true devotion and of holy fear.
He sought God’s glory and the churches good.
Idle idol worship he withstood.
Yet dyed in peace, whose body here doth lie
In expectation of eternity.
And when the latter trump of heaven shall blow
Cole, now rak’d up in ashes, then shall glow.
Here's one for a sportsman, presumably a cricketer, near Salisbury. It's straight to the point, combining universal truth with a grin-inducing pithiness:
I bowl’d, I struck, I caught, I stopp’d,
Sure life’s a game of cricket;
I block’d with care, with caution popp’d,
Yet Death has hit my wicket.
How about this one found on the gravestone of a bellows maker:
Here lyeth John Cruker, a maker of bellowes,
His craftes-master and King of good fellowes;
Yet when he came to the hour of his death,
He that made bellowes, could not make breath.
Indeed. Or consider the unassailable truth of these lines:
Here I lie, at the chancel door,
Here I lie, because I’m poor;
The farther in, the more you pay,
Here I lie as warm as they.
I could go on forever. This is a fascinating, well researched book that is more than a mere catalog of epitaphs. The author includes many morsels of backstory and context on the lives soliloquized here, sparking the imagination and often inspiring a giggle. Who would have thought a book full of tombstone scribblings could be so fun? This is the kind of eBook you can pick up and put down at will, which makes it the perfect bus or train commuter's companion. Think of it as a literary palette cleanser. That's probably the best way to read it, too, because these bits of past lives should be savored.
As always, if you read and enjoy free eBooks prepared by Project Gutenberg, you should really consider ponying up and make a small contribution so they can continue to serve humanity by making literature available for free to everyone.
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