Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 540, March 31, 1832», sayfa 5

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE COFFIN-MAKER

The paper in the New Monthly Magazine, under this title, occupies a sheet or sixteen pages, and is stated to be from the pen of the Hon. Mrs. Norton. It is written in an almost breathless, and purposely hurried, style, and the narrative of feelings and incidents flows with such rapidity, that the reader is carried onward, nolens volens, vi et verbis through the adventures. The writer is the son of a carpenter: his father dies; unable to obtain any other employment, he obtains that of a coffin-maker. His aversion to the trade, and the state of his feelings is thus naturally described:

"The first few weeks of my employment passed pleasantly enough; my master was satisfied with me, and on Sunday evenings I was able occasionally to enjoy a walk. But my spirits soon became less buoyant, and even my health began to suffer; I entirely lost the florid look which was my poor mother's admiration; my very step grew slower, and there were Sundays when I declined the evening walk, which had been my only recreation, merely because the happy laugh and continued jests of (my friend) Henry Richards annoyed and distressed me while contrasted with my own heaviness of heart. Evening after evening, sometimes through a whole dismal night, I worked at my melancholy employment; and as my master was poor, and employed no other journey-man, I worked most commonly alone. Frequently as the heavy hammer descended, breaking at regular intervals the peaceful silence of night, I recalled some scene of sorrow and agony that I had witnessed in the day; and as the echo of some shriek or stifled moan struck in fancy on my ear, I would pause to wipe the dew from my brow and curse the trade of a coffin-maker. Every day some fresh cause appeared to arise for loathing my occupation; whilst all were alike strangers to me in the town where my master lived, I worked cheerfully and wrote merrily home; but now that I began to know every one, to be acquainted with the number of members which composed different families, to hear of their sicknesses and misfortunes; now that link after link bound me as it were by a spell, to feel for those round me, and to belong to them, my cheerfulness was over. The mother turned her eyes from me with a shuddering sigh, and gazed on the dear circle of little ones as if she sought to penetrate futurity and guess which of the young things, now rosy in health, was to follow her long lost and still lamented one. The doting father pressed the arm of his pale consumptive girl nearer to his heart, as he passed me: friends who were yet sorrowing for their bereavement, gave up the attempt at cheerfulness, and relapsed into melancholy silence at my approach. If I attempted (as I often did at first) to converse gaily with such of the townspeople as were of my master's rank in life, I was checked by a bitter smile, or a sudden sigh, which told me that while I was giving way to levity, the thoughts of my hearers had wandered back to the heavy hours when their houses were last darkened by the shadow of death. I carried about with me an unceasing curse; an imaginary barrier separated me from my fellow men. I felt like an executioner, from whose bloody touch men shrink, not so much from loathing of the man, who is but the instrument of death, as from horror at the image of that death itself—death, sudden, appalling, and inevitable. Like him, I brought the presence of death too vividly before them; like him, I was connected with the infliction of a doom I had no power to avert. Men withheld from me their affection, refused me their sympathy, as if I were not like themselves. My very mortality seemed less obvious to their imaginations when contrasted with the hundreds for whom my hand prepared the last narrow dwelling-house, which was to shroud for ever their altered faces from sorrowful eyes. Where I came, there came heaviness of heart, mournfulness, and weeping. Laughter was hushed at my approach; conversation ceased; darkness and silence fell around my steps—the darkness and the silence of death. Gradually I became awake to my situation. I no longer attempted to hold free converse with my fellow men. I suffered the gloom of their hearts to overshadow mine. My step crept slowly and stealthily into their dwellings; my voice lowered itself to sadness and monotony; I pressed no hand in token of companionship; no hand pressed mine, except when wrung with agony, some wretch, whose burden was more than he could bear restrained me for a few moments of maddened and convulsive grief, from putting the last finishing stroke to my work, and held me back to gaze yet again on features which I was about to cover from his sight. It is well that God, in his unsearchable wisdom, hath made death loathsome to us. It is well that an undefined and instinctive shrinking within us, makes what we have loved for long years, in a few hours

 
"That lifeless thing, the living fear."
 

It is well that the soul hath scarcely quitted the body ere the work of corruption is begun. For if, even thus, mortality clings to the remnants of mortality, with 'love stronger than death;' if, as I have seen it, warm and living lips are pressed to features where the gradually sinking eye and hollow cheek speak horribly of departed life; what would it be if the winged soul left its tenement of clay, to be resolved only into a marble death; to remain cold, beautiful, and imperishable; every day to greet our eyes; every night to be watered with our tears? The bonds which hold men together would be broken; the future would lose its interest in our minds; we should remain sinfully mourning the idols of departed love, whose presence forbade oblivion of their loveliness; and a thin and scattered population would wander through the world as through the valley of the shadow of death! How often have I been interrupted when about to nail down a coffin, by the agonized entreaties of some wretch to whom the discoloured clay bore yet the trace of beauty, and the darkened lid seemed only closed in slumber! How often have I said, 'Surely that heart will break with its woe!' and yet, in a little while, the bowed spirit rose again, the eye sparkled, and the lip smiled, because the dead were covered from their sight; and that which is present to man's senses is destined to affect him far more powerfully than the dreams of his imagination or memory. How often, too, have I seen the reverse of the picture I have just drawn; when the pale unconscious corse has lain abandoned in its loveliness, and grudging hands have scantily dealt out a portion of their superfluity, to obtain the last rites for one who so lately moved, spoke, smiled, and walked amongst them! And I have felt, even then, that there were those to whom that neglected being had been far more precious than heaps of gold, and I have mourned for them who perished among strangers. One horrible scene has chased another from my mind through a succession of years; and some of those which, perhaps, deeply affected me at the time, are, by the mercy of Heaven, forgotten. But enough remains to enable me to give a faint outline of the causes which have changed me from what I was, to the gloomy joyless being I am at length become. There is one scene indelibly impressed upon my memory."

A scene of domestic tragedy follows, which is wrought up with great effect:

"I was summoned late at night to the house of a respectable merchant, who had been reduced, in a great measure, by the wilful extravagance of his only son, from comparative wealth to ruin and distress. I was met by the widow, on whose worn and weary face the calm of despair had settled. She spoke to me for a few moments, and begged me to use dispatch and caution in the exercise of my calling:—'for indeed,' said she, 'I have watched my living son with a sorrow that has almost made me forget grief for the departed. For five days and five nights I have watched, and his bloodshot eye has not closed, no, not for a moment, from its horrible task of gazing on the dead face of the father that cursed him. He sleeps now, if sleep it can be called, that is rather the torpor of exhaustion; but his rest is taken on that father's death-bed. Oh! young man, feel for me! Do your task in such a manner, that my wretched boy may not awake till it is over, and the blessing of the widow be on you for ever!' To this strange prayer I could only offer a solemn assurance that I would do my utmost to obey her; and with slow creeping steps we ascended the narrow stairs which led to the chamber of death. It was a dark, wretched-looking, ill-furnished room, and a drizzling November rain pattered unceasingly at the latticed window, which was shaken from time to time by the fitful gusts of a moaning wind. A damp chillness pervaded the atmosphere, and rotted the falling paper from the walls; and, as I looked towards the hearth, (for there was no grate,) I felt painfully convinced that the old man had died without the common comforts his situation imperiously demanded. The white-washed sides of the narrow fire-place were encrusted with a green damp, and the chimney-vent was stuffed with straw and fragments of old carpet, to prevent the cold wind from whistling through the aperture. The common expression, 'He has seen better days,' never so forcibly occurred to me as at that moment. He had seen better days: he had toiled cheerfully through the day, and sat down to a comfortable evening meal. The wine-cup had gone round; and the voice of laughter had been heard at his table for many a year, and yet here he had crept to die like a beggar! I looked at the flock bed, and felt my heart grow sick within me. The corpse of a man, apparently about sixty, lay stretched upon it, and on his hollow and emaciated features the hand of death had printed the ravages of many days. The veins had ceased to give even the appearance of life to the discoloured skin; the eyelids were deep sunken, and the whole countenance was (and none but those accustomed to gaze on the face of the dead can understand me) utterly expressionless. But if a sight like this was sickening and horrible, what shall I say of the miserable being to whom a temporary oblivion was giving strength for renewed agony? He had apparently been sitting at the foot of the corpse, and, as the torpor of heavy slumber stole over him, had sunk forward, his hand still retaining the hand of the dead man. His face was hid; but his figure, and the thick curls of dark hair, bespoke early youth. I judged him at most, to be two-and-twenty. I began my task of measuring the body, and few can tell the shudder which thrilled my frame as the carpenter's rule passed those locked hands—the vain effort of the living still to claim kindred with the dead! It was over, and I stole from the room, cautiously and silently as I entered. Once, and only once, I turned to gaze at the melancholy group. There lay the corpse, stiff and unconscious; there sat the son, in an unconsciousness yet more terrible, since it could not last. There, pale and tearless, stood the wife of him, who, in his dying hour, cursed her child and his. How little she dreamed of such a scene when her meek lips first replied to his vows of affection! How little she dreamed of such a scene when she first led that father to the cradle of his sleeping boy! when they bent together with smiles of affection, to watch his quiet slumber, and catch the gentle breathing of his parted lips! I had scarcely reached the landing-place before the wretched woman's hand was laid lightly on my arm to arrest my progress. Her noiseless step had followed me without my being aware of it. 'How soon will your work be done?' said she, in a suffocated voice. 'To-morrow I could be here again,' answered I. 'To-morrow! and what am I to do, if my boy wakes before that time?' and her voice became louder and hoarse with fear. 'He will go mad, I am sure he will; his brain will not hold against these horrors. Oh! that God would hear me!—that God would hear me! and let that slumber sit on his senses till the sight of the father that cursed him is no longer present to us! Heaven be merciful to me!' and with the last words she clasped her hands convulsively, and gazed upwards. I had known opiates administered to sufferers whose grief for their bereavement almost amounted to madness. I mentioned this hesitatingly to the widow, and she eagerly caught at it. 'Yes! that would do,' exclaimed she; 'that would do, if I could but get him past that horrible moment! But stay; I dare not leave him alone as he is, even for a little while:—what will become of me!' I offered to procure the medicine for her, and soon returned with it. I gave it into her hands, and her vehement expressions of thankfulness wrung my heart. I had attempted to move the pity of the apothecary at whose shop I obtained the drug, by an account of the scene I had witnessed, in order to induce him to pay a visit to the house of mourning; but in vain. To him, who had not witnessed it, it was nothing but a tale of every-day distress. All that long night I worked at the merchant's coffin, and the dim grey light of the wintry morning found me still toiling on. Often, during the hours passed thus heavily, that picture of wretchedness rose before me. Again I saw the leaning and exhausted form of the young man, buried in slumber, on his father's death-bed: again my carpenter's rule almost touched the clasped hands of the dead and the living, and a cold shudder mingled with the chill of the dawning day, and froze my blood."