GRAVESTONES:

ESTHETICALLY AND ETHICALLY CONSIDERED.

BY IRVING BROWNE.

[Read before the Albany Institute, June 29, 1880.]

Our Puritan forefathers cared little to assuage the natural terrors of death. Indeed, one is almost disposed to think that they deemed it a solemn duty to enhance them. At all events, their neglect of the resting-places of their dead was well fitted to make one content to live. A New England burying-ground, even thirty or forty years ago, was the most neglected spot in the village. The thought of being laid away in such a place added a new terror to death, almost as keen as the little man's threat to the great man that he would write his biography if he survived him. The graveyard was always placed where nothing would grow, and the only cultivation it ever received was the digging of an occasional grave. The ground was usually given by some citizen, who had found, by experiment, that he could not raise any thing on it, and wanted to escape taxation for it. Its unsightly growth of weeds and grass, its ruinous fences or tumbling walls, its gravestones pitched in every direction by the assaults of the elements and the vaulting ambition of schoolboys, all combined to make it repulsive. Every thing like decency in the care of it was regarded as a squandering of money, if not rather irreligious. Any suggestion of improvement met with small favor. God's acre was left to the exclusive care of the proprietor.

It is related of the late lamented Commodore Fisk, that when appealed to for a subscription to rebuild the fence around the buryingground in his native town, he declined, saying that he thought it was a useless outlay; those who were inside couldn't get out, and those who were outside didn't want to get in. This was the feeling of the whole community, though probably few could give so plausible a reason for it.

In New England literature, we get two noteworthy descriptions of the burying-grounds of that country. In "Twice-Told Tales " "Chippings with a Chisel "-Hawthorne says:

"In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown - where the dead have laid so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its original barrenness-in that ancient burial-ground I have noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones,

dated a century back, or more, have borders elaborate, carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's heads, cross-bones, scythes, hour-glasses and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward. These productions of gothic taste must have been quite beyond the colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London, and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the ordinary style without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions. But others and those far the most impressive, both to my taste and feelings-were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme in deep letters, which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept! It is an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor, then we may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts."

And in Judd's almost forgotten but powerful novel, "Margaret,' we read:

"This spot, chosen and consecrated by the original colonists, and used for its present purpose more than a century, was conspicuous both for its elevation and its sterility. A sandy soil nourished the yellow orchard grass that waved ghost-like from the mounds, and filled all the intervals and the paths. No verdure, neither flower, shrub nor tree, contributed to the agreeableness of the grounds, nor was the bleak desolation disturbed by many works of art. There were

two marble shafts, a table of red sandstone, several very old headstones of similar materials, and more modern ones of slate. But here lay the fathers, and there too must the children of the town ere long be gathered, and it was a place of solemn feeling to all."

In the reaction against Puritan asceticism, it is possible that in our burying-grounds we are in danger of going to the opposite extreme, and of detracting from the proper dignity of the place by making it too much a theater for artistic display. In modern practice, the cemetery is the pleasure-ground and park of the locality. It has the finest site, the greatest abundance and variety of trees, the best roads, the most picturesque lakes and water falls, the handsomest bridges, the most inviting lodges and summer-houses, and every thing is contrived to make us forget death. In short, the cemetery is now the perfection of landscape gardening. In the midst of the beauties of natural scenery, skillfully enhanced by art, it seems essential that the few objects designed to mark the proper use and purpose of the place should be regulated by good taste and correct principles of art; and that the cultivated sense should not be shocked by obtrusive and inartistic

erections that almost make one sigh for the huckleberry bushes of the New England graveyard of old time.

Let me offer a few practical suggestions about grave stones, or mort uary monuments, restricted to out-door monuments of private individuals.

The first point to be settled in the selection of a gravestone is the material. In this regard, durability is the main requirement. Here there is not much room for choice, for our climate imposes strict limitations in this matter. Ours is not, so to speak, an "out-of-doors" climate. A material which would be proper in the sunny clime of Italy would soon become impaired under our own stormy sky. Experience has shown that white marble will not answer in our climate. It soon becomes stained and defaced, and unless constantly scoured, like Aladdin's lamp or Mr. Stewart's house, it quickly loses its characteristic purity and beauty. Besides, it looks too cold under our cool sky, and when the earth is covered with snow, the whitest marble looks dirty. Sandstone is too friable, and yields too readily to the disintegrating influences of the weather. This has been proved by its use for many years in this country. The sandstone obelisks transported from Egypt to Europe have already, it is said, suffered much loss of sharpness of outline in their hieroglyphics. Nature has provided in every climate the material best adapted to the local architecture. The Carrara quarries of Italy and the sandstone quarries of Egypt furnish the materials best fitted for those countries, and in our land we need look not beyond the granite hills of New England. Granite seems on all accounts our best resource for mural monuments, not only for its superior durability, but because it is capable of a brilliant and lasting polish. Bronze is a very beautiful and durable material, but it can appropriately be used only in large forms, and is intrinsically, as well as for this reason, very costly. Modern use has conformed to the evident necessity of the case, and granite is now almost the only material from which out-door monuments are constructed. In respect to color, good taste banishes every thing like variety from our graveyards, but a pleasing and good effect is produced by intermixing, with certain shapes of granite, our blue limestone, or the red Scotch granite, which takes a beautiful polish. The proper use of the Scotch granite is in combination, and not by itself, for an isolated shaft of Scotch granite looks painfully like cheap pottery. It has occurred to me that in the use of red granite a good effect might be attained by rough. dressing and smooth dressing in combination with polished surfaces, which mode of treatment is so effective in the gray granite. A pleasing combination may also be effected by the combination of the light Concord

with the dark Quincy granite. It is difficult to imagine what could have induced the adoption of those streaked and variegated cheap marbles which are sometimes seen in our older cemeteries, and which so strongly reminds one of that soap which prevails in country inns or of those ingenious monuments of soap which were common in the Philadelphia exposition. The use of colored glazed tiles in out-door monuments is of doubtful propriety, as well in point of durability as in point of color. It is to be noted that the Quincy granite is unfit for receiving inscriptions, as its dark color renders them nearly illegible, and necessitates the use of paint or gilding, both of which are perishable and unpleasant to the eye.

In regard to construction, it may be observed that in addition to the evident necessity of a deep foundation, below the frost line, there should be as few joints as possible, and these should be horizontal rather than perpendicular, in order the better to resist the effect of the elements. For the same reason, the joints should be overlapped as much as possible. Owing to these laws, the use of tiles is objectionable in point of durability; the frost and the wet are quite apt to displace them.

It is evident from these limitations of material and color that the main resource of the designer must be in form. The cardinal rule as to form is that it shall be simple and severe. To my own taste, intricate carving and tracery, the elaborate gothic forms, are out of place in a burial-ground. This is not the place for the display of dexterity in handling or skill in constructing. The forms should not be so attractive as to engross the attention for the art's sake, nor so delicate and slender as to become the prey of the elements. Probably the Candé monument in Green wood cemetery is popularly admired, but to me it is one of the most repulsive of monuments, in respect to form, saying nothing of durability. It is a sort of a sugar-candy order of architecture that is more appropriate to a confectioner's window than to a cemetery, but is not so much to be wondered at when we remember that it was executed after a design by the young lady herself.

I think it may be laid down as a rule of good taste that the principal lines of a monument should be few, straight and compact. As durability is the chief requisite, it can best be attained by simplicity and solidity. Of course there may be well rounded and curved surfaces, but they should be subordinate. Curved or concave lines in a shaft, excepting as flutings of a column, are entirely wrong, just as they are in a tower, or would be in the wall of a house. Any thing like pagoda architecture should be avoided. The lines of a shaft may

Nothing is

be converging or parallel, but the ascent should be decisive, not hesitat ing. The pure obelisk is always grateful to the sense, and the idea of ascent is best attained by isolation; a single shaft is better than a number of pinnacles. It is probably the gratefulness of this feeling of ascent that dictates that the principal lines should be perpendicular rather than horizontal. The spirit is not elevated by the contemplation of a low horizontal structure. And yet I do not deny that much has of late been accomplished in the use of horizontal lines, rising to a moderate height. Indeed, I think some of the most beautiful monuments in our modern cemeteries are in this form. But if this form is adopted, it should be in large and solid blocks. more offensive than a slab laid on the earth, or mounted on legs like a table. It must always be borne in mind, however, that large horizontal surfaces require more care and are less durable than perpendicular structures. The slabs in old graveyards, overgrown with moss, grimy with dirt, and with their inscriptions obscured, are disheartening ob jects. The use of the horizontal form, too, should always be sincere; it should never seem to be what it is not, as for example a sarcophagus. Literally, there is nothing in such an object. It does not even indicate a like object hidden under ground, and if it did, it would be all the more offensive to good taste.

Mortuary chapels should be marked by simplicity. The mortuary chapel in the Troy cemetery is a model of this kind of erection, in every point of view-materials, color, form and expense. It presents a refreshing contrast to a very elaborate and pretentious chapel in the Cincinnati cemetery.

In regard to columns I must say that except in combination with a structure, I think they are not in the best taste for monuments. A column is properly an integral part of a building. It supports something. But a column standing alone suggests nothing but ruin or incompleteness, and on esthetic grounds these ideas are not to be tolerated in a cemetery. However it may be in human estimation, I suppose in the divine eye the life of man is always complete, or if ruinous, it is man's own fault, and attention should not be invited to that failure. Incompleteness in the human sense is not ruin. The idea of discontent or repining should never be represented in a monument. Rather the expression should be of submission, faith, aspiration. So the broken columns, which used to be so common, are not esthetically commendable, it seems to me. I once saw the use of the column singularly debased I think it was in Greenwood where three columns, broken off at different heights, were used to indicate the different ages of deceased members of one family.