Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; London (England) -- Description and travel
There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as Mr.
Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot. He was
always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that
to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration. But when at
dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived the
brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with ‘an English funeral,’ I
ventured to intimate that I thought that institution, which was not
absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian hands.
However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he
presently wrote down into the town requesting the attendance with
to-morrow’s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer. This
upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his
own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.
When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and when I
overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking phrases into very
choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues; and
when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance
to English funerals; I became in my secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr.
Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure
a signal success.
As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which of the
city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended,
and walked along the dusty, dusty road. I had not walked far, when I
encountered this procession:
1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.
2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in bright red
velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was the established local idea
of State.) Both coach doors kept open by the coffin, which was on its
side within, and sticking out at each.
3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
walking in the dust.
4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden, the
unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.
It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike to poor
Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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