Keep It Grave, Watching Out for Flippant Epitaphs

1922

Censored Tombstones
By Frederic J. Haskin

WASHINGTON. D. C., May 29.— Censorship is now being carried to the very grave. The latest thing in censors, according to a serious minded trade journal which keeps up with tombstone news, is a censor of epitaphs. This official has been appointed in an unnamed English village and entrusted with the job of seeing that graveyard solemnity is not violated by flippant quips and epigrams on the tombstones.

English vicars for a number of years have supervised to some extent tombstone sentiments. It may seem strange that now, when epitaphs are no longer indulged in by poets or poetasters, there should be any great need for a special guardian of tomb- stone dignity. But the dangers it seems, are in the epitaphs which have been perpetrated in the past. Graved on old, moss grown, tottering stones, the verses of a century or two ago oftentimes express sentiments regarding death and the dead that are flippant, irreverent, and in short, unsuited for public perusal in this highly regulated age.

Our attitude toward tombstones undoubtedly has changed. It is not so much that we think more solemnly of death; but rather that we think less of it. The churchyard is seldom the graveyard any longer. Few people think of visiting the cemeteries outside the city when they set out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. Decidedly, the dead are not so much with us as they were a few centuries, or even a few generations, back.

Tombstones Topics of Talk.

Then, tombstones were a live topic. A man expected to have an epitaph written about him, and if there was any fear in his mind that his relatives would not make a good job of it, he wrote the label for his stone himself or hired a professional to write one.

Ben Jonson, Milton, and Pope wrote epitaphs. Shakespeare wrote his own epitaph in a four-line verse of warning to any who might wish to disturb his bones. To dash off a witty epitaph for a friend or enemy was a parlor trick with which kings and courtiers whiled away a dull afternoon.

Thus when Charles II casually asked Rochester to write his epitaph, the courtier thought a minute and produced the following famous lines:

Here lies our mutton-eating king,
Whose word no man relied on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And did a wise one.

The king took no offense, but set his brains to work and composed a second stanza:

If death could speak, the king would say,
In justice to his crown,
His acts they were the minister's,
His words they were his own.

Even if a man was inadvertently misplaced, he had to have a tombstone and an epitaph, as is shown by the following in an English churchyard:

Underneath this sod lies John Round,
Who was lost in the sea and never was found.

Rhyme of Free Verse.

Epitaphs were correct style and everybody had them. Those individuals whose outstanding deeds and characteristics could not be squeezed into rhymed couplets were gloriously immortalized in free verse. Lady O'Looney's epitaph is a good example:

Here lies the body of
Lady O'Looney,
Great nice of Burke, commonly
Called the sublime,
She was
Bland, passionate, and deeply religious;
Also painted in water-colors,
And sent several pictures to the exhibition.
She was first cousin to Lady Jones,
And of such is the kingdom of heaven.

But those days are gone. Poets no longer specialize in epitaphs. Henpecked husbands get even by some other means than by writing sarcastic verses to go on tombstones. The epitaph, which started off well in this country in the graveyards of Massachusetts, is practically defunct.

Still, the possibilities of epitaph reform, even in this country, should not be overlooked. Like England, we have ample material which should be of interest to censors in our old New England churchyards. The verse which is said to have started the agitation in the English village is on an old stone. We quote it now. In future, it may be permissible to designate it only by four rows of dots:

Here lies the body of Mary Ann Lowder
Who burst from drinking a seldlitz powder,
Called from this world to her heavenly rest,
She should have waited till it effervesced.

Danger of Levity Less.

The danger of the public catching the idea that death is not to be taken seriously is less now, to be sure, than it might have been a few decades back when promenades in the graveyard were a popular outdoor sport. Still, the old grinning, chuckling epitaphs are there, legible under the grime, to corrupt anybody who strays into their neighborhood.

Take the following, for instance, out in Iowa, written on stone for dignified and sober-minded middle westerners to read:

Beneath this stone our baby lays. He neither cries nor hollers He lived just one and twenty days And cost us forty dollars.

Or consider that admired and copied verse by some unknown English poet:

Here lies my wife,
Here lies she.
Hallelujah!
Hallehujee!

The effect of such epitaphs on the public is obviously demoralizing. In the future we may have a national censor of epitaphs to see that covers are made for all epitaphs which do not conform to the national regulations for tombstone literature. Or possibly the epitaph official will gather together a collection of forbidden tombstones and keep them in a locked and guarded graveyard museum.

Anyway, the English village may expect to go down in history as the pioneer in the crusade for preservation of tombstone dignity.

—The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska, June 7, 1922, page 2.