Chapters on churchyards

Contents

PAGE

Churchyards Chap. 1 1

Chap.II 8

Chapter I

Many are the idle tourists who have babbled of country churchyards — many are the able pens which have been employed on the same subjects. One in particular, in the delightful olio of the " Sketch-book," has traced a picture so true to nature, so beautifully simple and pathetic, that succeeding essayists might well despair of success in attempting similar descriptions, were not the theme, in fact, inexhaustible, a source of endless variety, a volume of instructive records, whereof those marked with least incident are yet replete with interest for that human being who stands alone amongst the quiet graves, musing on the mystery of his own existence, and on the past and present state of those poor relics of mortality which every where surround him, mouldering beneath his feet — mingling with the common soil — feeding the rank churchyard vegetation — once sentient like himself with vigorous life, subject to all the tumultuous passions that agitate his

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own heart, pregnant with a thousand busy schemes, elevated and depressed by alternate hopes and fears — liable, in a word, to all the pains, the pleasures, and " the ills, that flesh is heir to."

The leisurely traveller arriving- at a country inn, with the intention of tarrying a day, an hour, or a yet shorter period, in the town or village, generally finds time to saunter towards the church, and even to loiter about its surrounding graves, as if his nature (solitary in the midst of the living crowd) claimed affinity, and sought communion, with the populous dust beneath his feet.

Such, at least, are the feelings with which I have often lingered in the churchyard of a strange place, and about the church itself — to which, indeed, in all places, and in all countries, the heart of the Christian pilgrim feels itself attracted as towards his very home, for there at least, though alone amongst a strange people, he is no stranger : It is his Father's house.

I am not sure that I heartily approve the custom — rare in this country, but frequent in many others — of planting flowers and flowering shrubs about the graves. I am quite sure that I hate all the sentimental mummery with which the far-famed burying-place of the Pere la Chaise is garnished out. It is faithfully in keeping with Parisian taste, and perfectly in unison with French feeling ; but I should wonder at the profound sympathy with which numbers of my own countrymen expatiate on that pleasure-ground of Death, if it were still possible to feel surprise at any instance of degenerate taste and perverted feeling in our travelled islanders — if it were not, too, the vulgarest thing in the world to wonder at any thing.

The custom, so general in Switzerland, and so common in our own principality of Wales, of strewing flowers over the graves of departed friends, either on the anni-

CHAPTER I. 5

versaries of their deaths, or on other memorable days, is touching and beautiful. Those frail blossoms scattered over the green sod, in their morning freshness, but for a little space retain their balmy odours, and their glowing tints, till the sun goes down, and the breeze of evening sighs over them, and the dews of night fall on their pale beauty, and the withered and fading wreath becomes a yet more appropriate tribute to the silent dust beneath. But rose-trees in full bloom, and tall staring lilies, and flaunting lilacs, and pert priggish spirafrutexes, are, methinks, ill in harmony with that holiness of perfect repose which should pervade the last resting-place of mortality. Even in our own unsentimental England, I have seen two or three of these flower-plot graves. One, in particular, I remember, had been planned and planted by a young disconsolate widow, to the memory of her deceased partner. The tomb itself was a common square erection of freestone, covered over with a slab of black marble, on which, under the name, age, &c, of the defunct, was engraven an elaborate epitaph, commemorating his many virtues, and pathetically intimating, that, at no distant period, the vacant space remaining on the same marble would receive the name of " his inconsolable Eugenia." The tomb was hedged about by a basket-work of honeysuckles. A Persian lilac drooped over its foot, and, at the head, (substituted for the elegant cypress, coy denizen of our ungenial clime,) a young poplar perked up its pyramidical form. Divers other shrubs and flowering plants completed the ring-fence, plentifully interspersed with " the fragrant weed, the Frenchman's darling,'' whose perfume, when I visited the spot, was wafted over the whole churchyard. It was then the full flush of summer. The garden had been planted but a month ; but the lady had tended, and propped, and watered those gay strangers with her own delicate hands, evermore in the dusk of evening returning to her tender task, so that they had taken their removal kindly, and grew and flourished as carelessly round that cold marble, and in that field of graves, as they had done heretofore in their own sheltered nursery.

A year afterwards — a year almost to a day — I stood once more on that same spot, in the same month — " the leafy month of June." But — it was leafless there. The young poplar still stood sentinel in its former station, but dry, withered, and sticky, like an old broom at the masthead of a vessel on sale. The parson's cow, and his half score fatting wethers, had violated the sacred enclosure, and trodden down its flowery basket-work into the very soil. The plants and shrubs were nibbled down to miserable stumps, and from the sole survivor, the poor straggling lilac, a fat old waddling ewe had just cropped the last sickly flower-branch, and stood staring at me with a pathetic vacancy of countenance, the half-munched consecrated blossom dangling from her sacrilegious jaws. " And is it even so?" I half-articulated, with a sudden thrill of irrepressible emotion. " Poor widowed mourner ! lovely Eugenia ! Art thou already re-united to the object of thy faithful affection? And so lately! Not yet on that awaiting space on the cold marble have they inscribed thy gentle name. And those fragile memorials ! were there none to tend them for thy sake ?" Such was my sentimental apostrophe ; and the unwonted impulse so far incited me, that I actually pelted away the sheep from that last resting-place of faithful love, and reared against its side the trailing branches of the neglected lilac. Well satisfied with myself for the performance of this pious act, I turned from the spot in a mood of calm, pleasing melancholy, that, by degrees, (while I yet lin-

CHAPTER I. 5

gered about the churchyard,) resolved itself into a train of poetic reverie, and I was already far advanced in a sort of elegiac tribute to the memory of that fair being, whose tender nature had sunk under the stroke " that reft her mutual heart," when the horrid interruption of a loud shrill whistle startled me from my poetic vision, cruelly disarranging the beautiful combination of high- wrought tender, pathetic feelings, which were flowing naturally into verse, as from the very fount of Helicon. Lifting my eyes towards the vulgar cause of this vulgar disturbance, the cow-boy (for it was he, " who whistled as he went, for want of thought") nodded to me his rustic apology for a bow, and passed on towards the very tomb I had just quitted, near which his milky charge, the old brindled cow, still munched on, avaricious of the last mouthful. If the clown's obstreperous mirth had before broken in on my mood of inspiration, its last delicate glow was utterly dispelled by the uncouth vociferation, and rude expletives, with which he proceeded to dislodge the persevering animal from her rich pasture* ground. Insensible alike to his remonstrances, his threats, or his tender persuasion — to his " Whoy ! whoy ! old girl ! Whoy, Blossom ! whoy, my lady ! — I say, come up, do ; come up ye plaguey baste ! " Blossom continued to munch and ruminate with the most imperturbable calmness — backing and sideling away, however, as her pursuer made nearer advances, and ever and anon looking up at him with most provoking assurance, as if to calculate how many tufts she might venture to pull before he got fairly within reach of her. And so, retrograding and manoeuvring, she at last intrenched herself behind the identical tombstone beside which I had stood so lately in solemn contemplation. Here — the cow-boy's patience being completely exhausted — with the intention of switching old Blossom from her last stronghold, he caught up, and began tearing from the earth, that one long straggling stem of lilac which I had endeavoured to replace in somewhat of its former position. " Hold ! hold ! " I cried, springing forward with the vehement gesture of impassioned feeling — " Have you no respect for the ashes of the dead ? Dare you thus violate with sacrilegious hands the last sad sanctuary of faithful love ?" The boy stood like one petrified, stared at me for a moment, with a look of indescribable perplexity, then screwing one corner of his mouth almost into contact with the corresponding corner of one crinkled-up eye — at the same time shoving up his old ragged hat, and scratching his curly pate ; and having, as I suppose, by the help of that operation, construed my vehement address into the language of inquiry, he set himself very methodically about satisfying my curiosity on every point wherever he conceived it possible I might have interrogated him — taking his cue, with some ingenuity, from the one word of my oration which

was familiar to his ear " Dead ! Ees, Squoire been

dead twelve months last Whitsuntide ; and thick be his'n moniment, an' madam was married last week to our measter, an' thick be our cow — "

Oh, Reader !

Is it to be wondered at, that, since that adventure, I have ever been disposed to look with an wrcglistening, and even cynical eye, on those same flower-plot graves ? Nay, that at sight of them, I feel an extraordinary degree of hardheartedness stealing over me ? I cannot quit the subject without offering a word or two of well-meant advice to all disconsolate survivors — widows more especially — as to the expediency or non-expediency of indulging this flowery grief. Possibly, were I to obey the dictates of my own tastes and feelings, I should say, " Be content with a

CHAPTER I. 7

simple record — perhaps a scriptural sentence, on a plain headstone. Suffer not the inscription to become defaced and illegible, nor rank weeds to wave over it ; and smooth be the turf of the green hillock ! But if — to use a French phrase — II faut afficher ses regrets — if there must be effect, sentimentalities, prettinesses, urns, flowers — not only a few scattered blossoms, but a regular planted border, like the garnish of a plateau ; — then, let me beseech you, fair inconsolables ! be cautious in your proceedings. Temper with discreet foresight (if that be possible) the first agonizing burst of sensibility — Take the counsels of sage experience — temporize with the as yet unascertained nature of your own feelings — Proclaim not those vegetable vows of eternal fidelity — Refrain, at least, from the trowel and the spade — Dig not — plant not — For one year only — for theirs* year, at least — For one year only, I beseech you — sow annuals.

CHURCHYARDS.

Chapter II

In parts of Warwickshire, and some of the adjacent counties, more especially in the churchyards of the larger towns, the frightful fashion of black tombstones is almost universal. Black tombstones, tall and slim, and lettered in gold, looking, for all the world, like bolt upright coffin lids. I marvel the worthy natives do not go a step farther in their tasteful system, and coat their churches over with the same lugubrious hue, exempting only the brass weathercocks, and the gilded figures on the clock faces. The whole scene would unquestionably be far more in keeping, and even sublime in stupendous ugliness. Some village burying-grounds have, however, escaped this barbarous adornment ; and in Warwickshire particularly, and within the circuit of a few miles round Warwick itself, are very many small, picturesque, hamlet churches, each surrounded by its lowly flock of green graves, and grey headstones ; the churchyards, for the most part, separated only by a sunk fence, or a slight railing, from the little sheltered grass-plot of a small neat rectory, the casements of which generally front the long east window of the church. I like this proximity of the pastor's dwelling to his Master's house ; nay, of the abode of the living to the sanctuary of the dead. It seems to me to remove in part the great barrier of separation between the two worlds. The end of life, it is true, lies before us. The end of this life, with all its host of vanities and perturbations ; — but immediately from thence, we step upon the threshold of the holy place, before the

CHAPTER II. 9

gates of which no commissioned angel stands with a flaming- sword, barring our entrance to the tree of life. It would seem to me that thus abiding, as it were, under the very shadow of the sacred walls, and within sight of man's last earthly resting-place, I should feel, as in a charmed circle, more secure from the power of evil influences, than if exposed to their assaults, on the great open desert of the busy world. Therefore, I like this proximity so frequently observable in the little hamlets I have described. In one or two instances, indeed, I perceived that attempts had been made to exclude the view of the church and churchyard from the rectory windows, by planting a few clumps of evergreens, that looked as unmeaningly stuck there as heart could wish. Miserable taste that ! " but let it pass," as the Courier said lately of one of your finest poetical articles, Mr North.

I never saw a more perfect picture of beautiful repose, than presented itself to me in one of my evening walks last summer. One of the few evening walks it was possible to enjoy during the nominal reign of that freezing, dripping summer.

I came abruptly upon a small church, and burial ground, and rectory, all combined and embowered within a space that the eye could take in at one glance, and a pleasant glance it was !

The west window of the church was lighted up with red and glowing refulgence — not with the gorgeous hues of artificial colouring, but with the bright banners of the setting sun ; and strongly defined shadows, and mouldings of golden light, marked out the rude tracery of the low ivied tower, and the heavy stone-work of the deep narrow windows, and the projections of the low massy buttresses, irregularly applied, in defiance of all architectural proportion, as they had become necessary to the support of the ancient edifice. And here and there on the broken slanting of the buttresses, and on their projecting ledges, might be seen patches of green and yellow moss, so exquisitely bright, that methought the jewellery with which Aladdin enchased the windows of his enchanted palace, was dull and colourless, compared with the vegetable emeralds and topazes, wherewith " Nature's own sweet and cunning hand" had blazoned that old church. And the low headstones also — some half-sunk into the churchyard mould — many carved out into cherubim, with their trumpeters' cheeks and expanded wings, or with the awful emblems of death's-heads, cross-bones, and hour-glasses ! The low headstones, with their rustic scrolls, " that teach us to live and die," those also were edged and tinted with the golden gleam, and it stretched in long floods of amber light athwart the soft green turf, kissing the nameless hillocks ; and, on one little grave in particular, (it must have been that of an infant,) methought the departing glory lingered with peculiar brightness. Oh ! it was a beautiful churchyard. A stream of running wat^er intersected it almost close to the church wall. It was clear as crystal, running over grey pebbles, with a sound that chimed harmoniously in with the general character of the scene, low, soothing, monotonous, dying away into a liquid whisper, as the rivulet shrank into a shallow and still shallower channel, matted with moss and water plants, and closely overhung by the low underwood of an adjoining coppice, within whose leafy labyrinth it stole at last silently away. It was an unusual and a lovely thing to see the grave-stones, and the green hillocks, with the very wild-flowers (daisies and buttercups) growing on them, reflected in the little rill as it wound among them — the reversed objects, and glancing colours, shifting, blending, and trembling, in

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the broken ripple. That and the voice of the water! It was "Life in Death." One felt that the sleepers below were but gathered for a while into their quiet chambers. Nay, their very sleep was not voiceless. On the edges of the graves — on the moist margin of the stream, grew many tufts of the beautiful " Forget me not.'* Never, sure, was such appropriate station for that meek eloquent flower !

Such was the churchyard, from which, at about ten yards' distance from the church, a slight low railing, with a latch wicket, divided off a patch of the loveliest green sward, (yet but a continuation of the churchyard turf,) backed with tall elm, and luxuriant evergreens, amongst which peeped modestly out the little neat rectory. It was constructed of the same rough grey stone with the church. Long, low, with far projecting eaves, and casement windows facing that large west window of the church, still flaming with the reflected splendour of the setting sun. His orb was sinking to rest behind the grove, half-embowering the small dwelling, which stood in the perfect quietness of its own shadow, tfye dark green masses of jasmine, clustering round its porch and windows, scarcely revealing (but by their exquisite odour) the pure white blossoms that starred " its lovely gloom."

But their fragrance floated on the gentle breath of evening, mingled with the perfume of mignonette, and the long-fingered marvels of Peru, (the pale daughters of twilight,) and innumerable sweet flowers, blooming in their beds of rich black mould, close under the lattice windows. These were all flung wide, for the evening was still and sultry ; and one, opening down to the ground, showed the interior of a very small parlour, plainly and modestly furnished, but panelled all round with well-filled book-cases. A lady's harp stood in one corner, and in another two fine globes, and an orrery. Some small flower-baskets, filled with roses, were dispersed about the room ; and at a table near the window sat a gentleman writing-, or rather leaning over a writing-desk with a pen in his hand, for his eyes were directed towards the gravel- walk before the window, where a lady- — an elegantlooking woman, whose plain white robe and dark uncovered hair well became the sweet matronly expression of her face and figure — was anxiously stretching out her encouraging arms to her little daughter, who came laughing and tottering towards her on the soft green turf, her tiny feet, as they essayed their first independent steps in the eventful walk of life, twisting and turning with graceful awkwardness, and unsteady pressure, under the disproportionate weight of her fair fat person. It was a sweet, heart-thrilling sound, the joyous, crowing laugh of that little creature, when with one last, bold, mighty effort, she reached the maternal arms, and was caught up to the maternal bosom, and half devoured with kisses, in an ecstasy of unspeakable love.

As if provoked to emulous loudness by that mirthful outcry, and impatient to mingle its clear notes with that young, innocent voice, a blackbird, embowered in a tall, neighbouring bay-tree, poured out forthwith such a flood of full, rich melody, as stilled the baby's laugh, and for a moment arrested its observant ear. — But for a moment. — The kindred natures burst out into full chorus ; — the baby clapped her hands, and laughed aloud, and after her fashion, mocked the unseen songstress. The bird redoubled her tuneful efforts ; and still the baby laughed, and still the bird rejoined ; and both together raised such a melodious din that the echoes of the old church rang again ; and never since the contest of the nightingale with

CHAPTER II. 13

her human rival, was heard such an emulous conflict of musical skill.

I could have laughed for company, from my unseen lurking- place, within the dark shadow of one of the church buttresses. It was altogether such a scene as I shall never forget — one from which I could hardly tear myself away. Nay, I did not. I stood motionless as a statue in my dark-grey niche, till the objects before me became indistinct in twilight — till the last slanting sunbeams had withdrawn from the highest panes of the church window — till the blackbird's song was hushed, and the baby's voice was still, and the mother and her nursling had retreated into their quiet dwelling, and the evening taper gleamed through the fallen white curtain, and still open window. But yet before that curtain fell, another act of the beautiful pantomime had passed in review before me. The mother, with her infant in her arms, had seated herself in a low chair within the little parlour. She untied the frock-strings, drew off that and the second upper garments dexterously, and at intervals, as the restless frolics of the still unwearied babe afforded opportunity ; and there it was in its little coat and stay, the fat white shoulders shrugged up in antic merriment far above the slackened shoulder-straps. Then the mother's hand slipped off one soft red shoe ; and, having done so, her lips were pressed, almost, as it seemed, involuntarily, to the little naked foot she still held. The other, as if in proud love of liberty, had spurned off to a distance the fellow shoe ; and now the darling, disarrayed for its innocent slumbers, was hushed and quieted, but not yet to rest ; the night-dress was still to be put on, and the little crib was not there : — not yet to rest, but to the mighty duty already required of the young Christian ! — And in a moment it was hushed — and in a moment the small hands were pressed together between the mother's hands, and the sweet serious eyes were raised and fixed upon the mother's eyes, (there beamed, as yet, the infant's heaven,) and one saw that it was lisping- out its unconscious prayer — unconscious, not surely unaccepted. A kiss from the maternal lips was the token of God's approval : — and then she rose, and, gathering up the scattered garments in the same clasp with the half-naked babe, she held it smiling to its father, and one saw in the expression of his face, as he upraised it after having imprinted a kiss on that of his child — one saw in it all the holy fervour of a father's blessing.

Then the mother withdrew with her little one — and then the curtain fell, — and still I lingered ; for, after the interval of a few minutes, sweet sounds arrested my departing footsteps. A few notes of the harp, a low prelude stole sweetly out — a voice still sweeter, mingling its tones with a simple, quiet accompaniment, swelled out gradually into a strain of sacred harmony, and the words of the evening hymn came wafted towards the house of prayer. Then all was still in the cottage, and around it ; and the perfect silence, and the deepening shadows, brought to my mind more forcibly the lateness of the hour, and warned me to turn my face homewards. So I moved a few steps, and yet again I lingered, lingered still; for the moon was rising, and the stars were shining out in the clear, cloudless heaven, and the bright reflection of one danced and glittered, like a liquid fire-fly, on the ripple of the stream, just where it glided into a darker, deeper pool, beneath a little rustic foot-bridge, which led from the churchyard into a shady green lane, communicating with the neighbouring hamlet.

On that bridge I stopped a minute longer — and yet another and another minute — for I listened to the voice

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of the running water : and methought it was yet more mellifluous, more soothing, more eloquent, at that still shadowy hour, when only that little star looked down upon it with its tremulous beam, than when it danced and glittered in the warm glow of sunshine. There are hearts like that stream, and they will understand the metaphor. The unutterable things I felt and heard in that mysterious music ! — Every sense became absorbed in that of hearing ; and so spell-bound, I might have stayed on that very spot till midnight, nay, till the stars paled before the morning beam, if the deep, solemn sound of the old church clock had not broken in on my dream of profound abstraction, and startled me away with half incredulous surprise, as its iron tongue proclaimed, stroke after stroke, the tenth hour of the night.

Chapter III

Within a short distance of my own habitation stands a picturesque old church, remote from any town or hamlet, save that village of the dead contained within the precincts of its own sequestered burial-ground. It is, however, the parish church of a large rural district comprising several "small hamlets, and numerous farms and cottages, together with the scattered residences of the neighbouring gentry; and hither (there being no other place of worship within the parish boundary) its population may be seen for the most part resorting on Sundays, by various roads, lanes, heath-tracks, coppice and field-paths, all diverging from that consecrated centre. The church itself, nearly in the midst of a very beautiful churchyard, rich in old carved head-stones, and bright verdure roofing the nameless graves — the church itself stands on the brow of a finely wooded knoll, commanding a diversified expanse of heath, forest, and cultivated land ; and it is a beautiful sight on Sundays, on a fine autumn Sunday in particular, when the ferns are assuming their rich browns, and the forest-trees their exquisite gradations of colour, such as no limner upon earth can paint — to see the people approaching in all directions, now winding in long straggling files over the open common, now abruptly disappearing amongst its innumerable shrubby declivities, and again emerging into sight through the boles of the old oaks that encircle the churchyard, standing in their majestic beauty, like sentinels over the slumbers of the dead. From two several quarters across

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the heath, approach the more condensed currents of the living stream ; one, the inhabitants of a far distant hamlet, the other, comprising the population of two smaller ones within a shorter distance of the church. And from many lanes and leafy glades, and through many field-paths and stiles, advance small groups of neighbours, and families, and social pairs, and here and there a solitary aged person, who totters leisurely along, supported by his trusty companion, his stout oak staff, not undutifully consigned by his neglectful children to that silent companionship, but willingly loitering behind to enjoy the luxury of the aged, the warmth of the cheerful sunbeams, the serene beauty of nature, the fruitful aspect of the ripening corn-fields, the sound of near and mirthful voices, the voices of children and grandchildren, and a sense of quiet happiness, partaking surely of that peace which passeth all understanding.

And sometimes the venerable Elder comes, accompanied by his old faithful helpmate, and then they may be seen once more side by side, her arm again locked within his as in the days of courtship, not, as then, resting on his more vigorous frame, for they have grown old and feeble together; and of the twain, the burden of years lies heaviest upon the husband, for his has been the hardest portion of labour. In the prime of life, during the full flush of his manly vigour, and of her healthful comeliness, he was wont to walk sturdily onward, discoursing between whiles with his buxom partner, as she followed with her little ones ; but now they are grown up into men and women, dispersed about in their several stations, and have themselves young ones to care and provide for ; and the old couple are, as it were, left to begin the world again, alone in their quiet cottage. Those two alone together, as when they entered it fifty years agone, bridegroom and bride — alone, but not forsaken — sons, and daughters, and grandchildren, as each can snatch an interval of leisure, or when the labours of the day are over, come dropping in under the honeysuckle porch, with their hearty greetings; and many a chubby great-grandchild finds its frequent way to Grannum's cottage ; many a school truant, and many a " toddlin' wee thing," whose little hand can hardly reach the latch of the low wicket, but whose baby call of " flichterin' noise an' glee" gains free and fond admittance. And now they are on their way together, the old man and his wife. See ! — they have just passed through the last field-gate leading thitherward to the church. They are on their way together towards the house of God, and towards the place where they shall soon lie down to rest " in sure and certain hope ;" and they lean on one another for mutual support ; and would it not seem as they are thus again drawn closer together, as they approach nearer to the term of their earthly union, as if it were a type and token of an eternal reunion in a better and a happier state ?