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The Giggling Horror Of It All
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
Omaha, 1880's
One night, a man awoke from a sound sleep to discover that he was dead. Through the sheet which covered him, he could see the light of many candles. His head buzzed with alcohol and with the ear splitting report of a gunshot.
Perhaps that was the shot which had killed him. Sitting up and drawing back the sheet, he looked all around, struggling to comprehend his destiny. Alone in a somber room, he lay on a little cot, surrounded by glowing candles. By the candlelight he could make out the stacks of coffins against the walls. Perhaps in the eerie half-light he could even distinguish the bad from the good, the cheap pine boxes from the polished black caskets with plush, pillowed interiors; perhaps he even noticed how the candlelight glinted off the plate glass windows on the front of the finer models.
His coffin would be one of the fine ones. He was a prominent businessman; he would go in style. The papers would print admiring obituaries, and wealthy and respected men would stand hats-in-hand at the graveside. No one would mention the drinking. Death was too polite an occasion for that. But everyone knew, and later they would talk about it. They would assume that drink had had something to do with it, with whatever it was (was it the gunshot?) which had brought him here to this place of death, this place of inescapable and horrifying death.
He began praying aloud, though he must have known it was too late for that. It was all over. He was dead.
* * * * *
"Omaha, Nebraska, was but a halting-place on the road to Chicago," wrote Rudyard Kipling of his 1889 visit, "But it revealed to me horrors that I would not have willingly missed." The twenty-four-year-old Englishman was making his way back home from the Far East, where he had just spent seven years in India. The future author of The Jungle Book was a cosmopolitan young man, knowing the customs and beliefs of many exotic peoples; he knew, for instance, how corpses were burned in India. But that didn't prepare him to meet Gring the undertaker in Omaha.
"... I wish I could live a few generations just to see how my people keep," Gring said with enthusiasm. "But I'm sure it's all right. Nothing can touch 'em after I've embalmed 'em."
Kipling had been sauntering down Farnam street when he came upon "a shop the like of which I had never seen before: its windows were filled with dress-coats for men, and dresses for women. But the studs of the shirts were made of stamped cloth upon the shirt front, and there were no trousers to those coats-nothing but a sweep of cheap black cloth falling like an abbe's frock." This was Gring's shop. The clothes on display were for burial. Gring explained,
"As you see here, our caskets have a plate-glass window in front... and you don't see anything below the level of the man's waistcoat. Consequently... " Gring then "unrolled the terrible cheap black cloth that falls down over the stark feet, and I jumped back."
Kipling was appalled. "Can you imagine anything more awful," he wrote, "Than to take your last rest as much of a dead fraud as ever you were a living lie- to go into the darkness one half of you shaved, trimmed, and dressed for an evening party, while the other half- the half your friends cannot see- is enwrapped in a flapping black sheet?"
"I tried hard to make Mr. Gring comprehend dimly the awful heathendom that he was responsible for- the grotesquerie- the giggling horror of it all. But he couldn't see it."
* * * * *
People of the Victorian era had a strange relationship with death. Death was enshrined in the culture to a degree which seems maudlin and depressing to us-in gushing obituaries and grand funeral orations, in black mourning clothes, in gaudy monuments, even in popular art and music. We have roamed and loved 'mid the bowers, wrote Stephen Foster in a popular song of the 1850s,
When thy downy cheeks were in their bloom;
Now I stand alone 'mid the flowers,
While they mingle their perfumes o'er thy tomb.
In the days before modern medicine and sanitation, death was always lurking nearby, even for the young and healthy. It wasn't that death was more common then-they all died sooner or later, just as we do-but in those days, death was more likely to come for you sooner than later, and without warning. Especially in a wicked town like Omaha, where a man just might hear a gunshot and wake up dead.
Not that everyone went about with sad faces. Some even made a mockery of death. Take the Coffin Club, for instance. This social club- newspaper men, mostly- had as its headquarters the undertaking parlors of Drexel & Maul, near Fourteenth and Farnam. The presence in their meeting room of caskets, burial clothes, and frequently, corpses, did not interfere with club business. The room was even equipped with a cot, in case someone wanted to take a nap less permanent than the sleep of the dearly departed nearby.
One night a stranger came in while the club was meeting. He had no place to sleep for the night and apparently felt that an undertaking parlor would be quiet enough. The club members, which included Drexel and Maul themselves, had no objections. They offered the cot-which was not being used, though it sat just ten feet from a casket which was.
As soon as the meeting ended, the stranger was alone on his cot in the darkness, happy to be in for the night, and apparently untroubled by the nearby corpse. He fell asleep.
Thump.
The stranger awoke, thinking he had heard something. He looked around, but was blind in the darkness. He listened, and thought he heard something that sounded like... like somebody breathing- snoring, even- and the sound was coming from nearby, in the direction of the coffin.
Thump.
He was wide awake now. He was not dreaming, not imagining anything. The rasping, snoring sound of breaths being drawn in and exhaled, drawn in and exhaled, had grown stronger, even as a terrible thought had grown stronger in the stranger's mind, grown till he could no longer deny it: The dead man was trying to get out of the casket!
Thump.
At once the stranger leapt to his feet and ran for the door. In the next moment his feet were knocked from under him and he crashed to the floor face first. He had tripped over a coffin- yet he was sure there had been no coffin in that spot when he had gone to bed! Again he leapt up and made for the door, but again he tripped and fell flat- over a second coffin!
In fact, several coffins lay between the cot and the door, none of which had been there earlier. He tripped over each of them. Finally reaching the door in a blinding frenzy of panic, the stranger found it locked. Rearing back and crashing into the door, he broke it down and ran into the street.
No explanations could have induced the terrified man to return to his lodging. One might have explained that the dead man was still dead, still silent, and still in his coffin. One might have added that the snoring was produced by a dog, a butcher's dog, in fact- "a large fat animal"- a dog which not only snored, but which thumped his tail on the floor while he slept. And one might have explained that the dog was led into the room by a member of the Coffin Club, the same group who so thoughtfully arranged the coffins between the cot and the door. But it probably wouldn't have done much good.
Of course, no one could offer any such explanation to the stranger, since, as club member Ed Morearty wrote in his memoirs, he "never was seen nor heard of since, and for aught I know he is going yet."
Which brings us back to our dead, drunken businessman, lately awakened to his state of demise. Gradually, he began to recognize his surroundings. He realized that he lay on his usual cot at the undertaking parlor of Drexel & Maul, the place where he commonly went to sleep off a drunk. Confused, he got up and walked out the back door, never to enter the parlor again.
It had been Drexel's idea. The club had grown tired of this man staggering in "every time he got beastly drunk," so Drexel arranged the sheet and the candles, while another club member hid in a pile of coffins and "fired off a gun that sounded like a cannon."
One night, a man awoke from a sound sleep to discover that he was dead. Through the sheet which covered him, he could see the light of many candles. His head buzzed with alcohol and with the ear splitting report of a gunshot.
Perhaps that was the shot which had killed him. Sitting up and drawing back the sheet, he looked all around, struggling to comprehend his destiny. Alone in a somber room, he lay on a little cot, surrounded by glowing candles. By the candlelight he could make out the stacks of coffins against the walls. Perhaps in the eerie half-light he could even distinguish the bad from the good, the cheap pine boxes from the polished black caskets with plush, pillowed interiors; perhaps he even noticed how the candlelight glinted off the plate glass windows on the front of the finer models.
His coffin would be one of the fine ones. He was a prominent businessman; he would go in style. The papers would print admiring obituaries, and wealthy and respected men would stand hats-in-hand at the graveside. No one would mention the drinking. Death was too polite an occasion for that. But everyone knew, and later they would talk about it. They would assume that drink had had something to do with it, with whatever it was (was it the gunshot?) which had brought him here to this place of death, this place of inescapable and horrifying death.
He began praying aloud, though he must have known it was too late for that. It was all over. He was dead.
* * * * *
"Omaha, Nebraska, was but a halting-place on the road to Chicago," wrote Rudyard Kipling of his 1889 visit, "But it revealed to me horrors that I would not have willingly missed." The twenty-four-year-old Englishman was making his way back home from the Far East, where he had just spent seven years in India. The future author of The Jungle Book was a cosmopolitan young man, knowing the customs and beliefs of many exotic peoples; he knew, for instance, how corpses were burned in India. But that didn't prepare him to meet Gring the undertaker in Omaha.
"... I wish I could live a few generations just to see how my people keep," Gring said with enthusiasm. "But I'm sure it's all right. Nothing can touch 'em after I've embalmed 'em."
Kipling had been sauntering down Farnam street when he came upon "a shop the like of which I had never seen before: its windows were filled with dress-coats for men, and dresses for women. But the studs of the shirts were made of stamped cloth upon the shirt front, and there were no trousers to those coats-nothing but a sweep of cheap black cloth falling like an abbe's frock." This was Gring's shop. The clothes on display were for burial. Gring explained,
"As you see here, our caskets have a plate-glass window in front... and you don't see anything below the level of the man's waistcoat. Consequently... " Gring then "unrolled the terrible cheap black cloth that falls down over the stark feet, and I jumped back."
Kipling was appalled. "Can you imagine anything more awful," he wrote, "Than to take your last rest as much of a dead fraud as ever you were a living lie- to go into the darkness one half of you shaved, trimmed, and dressed for an evening party, while the other half- the half your friends cannot see- is enwrapped in a flapping black sheet?"
"I tried hard to make Mr. Gring comprehend dimly the awful heathendom that he was responsible for- the grotesquerie- the giggling horror of it all. But he couldn't see it."
* * * * *
People of the Victorian era had a strange relationship with death. Death was enshrined in the culture to a degree which seems maudlin and depressing to us-in gushing obituaries and grand funeral orations, in black mourning clothes, in gaudy monuments, even in popular art and music. We have roamed and loved 'mid the bowers, wrote Stephen Foster in a popular song of the 1850s,
When thy downy cheeks were in their bloom;
Now I stand alone 'mid the flowers,
While they mingle their perfumes o'er thy tomb.
In the days before modern medicine and sanitation, death was always lurking nearby, even for the young and healthy. It wasn't that death was more common then-they all died sooner or later, just as we do-but in those days, death was more likely to come for you sooner than later, and without warning. Especially in a wicked town like Omaha, where a man just might hear a gunshot and wake up dead.
Not that everyone went about with sad faces. Some even made a mockery of death. Take the Coffin Club, for instance. This social club- newspaper men, mostly- had as its headquarters the undertaking parlors of Drexel & Maul, near Fourteenth and Farnam. The presence in their meeting room of caskets, burial clothes, and frequently, corpses, did not interfere with club business. The room was even equipped with a cot, in case someone wanted to take a nap less permanent than the sleep of the dearly departed nearby.
One night a stranger came in while the club was meeting. He had no place to sleep for the night and apparently felt that an undertaking parlor would be quiet enough. The club members, which included Drexel and Maul themselves, had no objections. They offered the cot-which was not being used, though it sat just ten feet from a casket which was.
As soon as the meeting ended, the stranger was alone on his cot in the darkness, happy to be in for the night, and apparently untroubled by the nearby corpse. He fell asleep.
Thump.
The stranger awoke, thinking he had heard something. He looked around, but was blind in the darkness. He listened, and thought he heard something that sounded like... like somebody breathing- snoring, even- and the sound was coming from nearby, in the direction of the coffin.
Thump.
He was wide awake now. He was not dreaming, not imagining anything. The rasping, snoring sound of breaths being drawn in and exhaled, drawn in and exhaled, had grown stronger, even as a terrible thought had grown stronger in the stranger's mind, grown till he could no longer deny it: The dead man was trying to get out of the casket!
Thump.
At once the stranger leapt to his feet and ran for the door. In the next moment his feet were knocked from under him and he crashed to the floor face first. He had tripped over a coffin- yet he was sure there had been no coffin in that spot when he had gone to bed! Again he leapt up and made for the door, but again he tripped and fell flat- over a second coffin!
In fact, several coffins lay between the cot and the door, none of which had been there earlier. He tripped over each of them. Finally reaching the door in a blinding frenzy of panic, the stranger found it locked. Rearing back and crashing into the door, he broke it down and ran into the street.
No explanations could have induced the terrified man to return to his lodging. One might have explained that the dead man was still dead, still silent, and still in his coffin. One might have added that the snoring was produced by a dog, a butcher's dog, in fact- "a large fat animal"- a dog which not only snored, but which thumped his tail on the floor while he slept. And one might have explained that the dog was led into the room by a member of the Coffin Club, the same group who so thoughtfully arranged the coffins between the cot and the door. But it probably wouldn't have done much good.
Of course, no one could offer any such explanation to the stranger, since, as club member Ed Morearty wrote in his memoirs, he "never was seen nor heard of since, and for aught I know he is going yet."
Which brings us back to our dead, drunken businessman, lately awakened to his state of demise. Gradually, he began to recognize his surroundings. He realized that he lay on his usual cot at the undertaking parlor of Drexel & Maul, the place where he commonly went to sleep off a drunk. Confused, he got up and walked out the back door, never to enter the parlor again.
It had been Drexel's idea. The club had grown tired of this man staggering in "every time he got beastly drunk," so Drexel arranged the sheet and the candles, while another club member hid in a pile of coffins and "fired off a gun that sounded like a cannon."
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