added,
which was not taken too sadly. (Pardon the paradox.) The spirits of
the deceased's many admirers had to be raised, and the enlivening
process was set in motion by means of numerous libations, not of
tea, but of lusty wine. When the wife of mine host of the "Crown
and Sceptre" left this world of cooking and drinking, the women who
crowded to the good lady's funeral had to drown their sorrows in a tun
of red port,[A] and it is evident that at the burial of men the grief
of the mourners required an equal amount of quenching. Indeed, the
most absurd expenditures and preparations were made for what should be
the simplest of ceremonies, and the result oftentimes proved garish
in the extreme. As an example of the display in this direction, John
Ashton quotes from the _Daily Courant_ a report of the obsequies of
Sir William Pritchard, sometime Lord Mayor of London. After a
vast deal of pomp wasted in St. Albans and other places upon the
unappreciative and inanimate Pritchard, the remains reached the
country seat of the deceased, in the county of Buckingham. "Where,
after the body had been set out, with all ceremony befitting his
degree, for near two hours, 'twas carried to the church adjacent in
this order, viz., 2 conductors with long staves, 6 men in long cloaks
two and two, the standard, 18 men in cloaks as before, servants to
the deceas'd two and two, divines, the minister of the parish and the
preacher, the helm and crest, sword and target, gauntlets and spurs,
born by an officer of Arms, both in their rich coats of Her Majesty's
Arms enbroider'd; the body, between 6 persons of the Arms of Christ's
Hospital, St. Bartholomew's, Merchant Taylors Company, City of
London, empaled coat and single coat; the chief mourner and his four
assistants, followed by the relations of the defunct, &c."[B] In this
aggregation of grandeur the mere bagatelle in the shape of a corpse
seems almost completely overshadowed, and it is thus comforting to
reflect that the latter finally had interment in a "handsome large
vault, in the isle on the north side of the church, betwixt 7 and 8 of
the clock that evening." The dear departed, or grief for his memory,
frequently played but too small a role in all these trappings of
despondency, and the insignificance of the deceased might only be
likened to the secondary position of a man at his own wedding. It was
all fuss and mortuary feathers, mourning rings and mulled wine in the
one case, just as