Presently I saw "Thomas Carlyle" on a big marble slab that stood in a
family inclosure. But this turned out to be the name of a nephew of the
great Thomas. However, I had struck the right plat at last; here were
the Carlyles I was looking for, within a space probably of eight by
sixteen feet, surrounded by a high iron fence. The latest made grave was
higher and fuller than the rest, but it had no stone or mark of any kind
to distinguish it. Since my visit, I believe, a stone or monument of
some kind has been put up. A few daisies and the pretty blue-eyed
speedwell were growing amid the grass upon it. The great man lies with
his head toward the south or southwest, with his mother, sister, and
father to the right of him, and his brother John to the left. I was glad
to learn that the high iron fence was not his own suggestion. His father
had put it around the family plat in his lifetime. Carlyle would have
liked to have it cut down about half way. The whole look of this
cemetery, except in the extraordinary size of the headstones, was quite
American, it being back of the church, and separated from it, a kind of
mortuary garden, instead of surrounding it and running under it, as is
the case with the older churches. I noted here, as I did elsewhere, that
the custom prevails of putting the trade or occupation of the deceased
upon his stone: So-and-So, mason, or tailor, or carpenter, or farmer,
etc.
A young man and his wife were working in a nursery of young trees, a few
paces from the graves, and I conversed with them through a thin place in
the hedge. They said they had seen Carlyle many times, and seemed to
hold him in proper esteem and reverence. The young man had seen him
come in summer and stand, with uncovered head, beside the graves of his
father and mother. "And long and reverently did he remain there, too,"
said the young gardener. I learned this was Carlyle's invariable custom:
every summer did he make a pilgrimage to this spot, and with bared head
linger beside these graves. The last time he came, which was a couple of
years before he died, he was so feeble that two persons sustained him
while he walked into the cemetery. This observance recalls a passage
from his "Past and Present." Speaking of the religious custom of the
Emperor of China, he says, "He and his three hundred millions (it is
their chief punctuality) visit yearly the Tombs of their Fathers; each
man the Tomb of his Father and his Mother; alone there in silence with
what of 'worship' or of other thought there may be, pauses solemnly each
man; the divine Skies all silent over him; the divine Graves, and this
divinest Grave, all silent under him; the pulsings of his own soul, if
he have any soul, alone audible. Truly it may be a kind of worship!
Truly, if a man cannot get some glimpse into the Eternities, looking
through this portal,--through what other need he try it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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