Letter XI.—To Chickweed, Widow, Penzance.
Dear Mrs Chickweed,—It has given me a vast deal of concern that you should have been frightened by the ignorant reports in the newspapers. Don’t believe a word they say on the matter. It isn’t true that the churchyard where you laid Solomon Chickweed before you went back to your native place, is to be shut up—the tombstone to be taken down—and all future burials forbidden. It’s very true that St Clement’s Churchyard is in the middle of the Strand; but that’s no reason why folks shouldn’t be buried there, twenty deep, if the sexton can only as much as sprinkle ’em with a little grave-dust. Parliament knows better than to interfere in the matter. To be sure, there’s a great hubbub about public health; but what’s public health in comparison with church fees? Some meddlesome people have been writing a report about the burying at St Clement’s, and the report says, “Thus a diluted poison is given in exchange from the dead to the living in one of the most frequented thoroughfares in the metropolis.” So, you see, your late husband—poor fellow! he’d have been sorry to think it—may at this moment be helping to kill some of his oldest and best neighbours.
But what of that? Look at what is called the moral good these churchyards do in the middle of London. What wicked people we cockneys should be without ’em! Isn’t it plain that they keep a check upon us? that they make us think of life and death? that they often give us, so to speak, a pull up when we are about to stumble? Look at the state of all the tradespeople in the neighbourhood of such churchyards as St Giles’ and St Clement’s and St Bride’s, and a hundred others, within a few yards of shop counters. Why, they’re all pattern folks. They have all so constantly death in their eyes, that it makes ’em honest to their own disadvantage. Think, too, what it is for folks from the tops of omnibuses now and then to see funerals going on in the highways of London. Do you suppose that it doesn’t do them a world of good? To be sure; and that’s the reason the rectors and so forth of the churches in London have set their faces against the new-fangled cemeteries, where people are buried in quiet, with nobody but the mourners to see the ceremony. Don’t, Mrs Chickweed, think it’s for the fees: certainly not; it’s all for the sake of the souls of the giddy, sinful people of London. It’s true enough that what is called the “effluvia” from these churchyards may poison the bodies of the living, but what of that when it helps to keep the soul so sweet? I’m called away, and so for the present can add no more. If, however, at any time they think of disturbing Solomon, depend upon it, for old acquaintance’ sake, you will hear from me. Till then, I am your wellwisher,
Juniper Hedgehog.