Cemeteries and Memorials

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1040, 2 August 1930, Page 8

Cemeteries and Memorials

PAGANISM IN TOMBSTONES \ - “IT is the trappings of death that terrify, rather than death 1 itself.” This is a saying of one of the Ancients in a wise inquiry into man’s fear of death. Trappings of death—one begins to appreciate what that means after a visit to any of Auckland’s cemeteries. Here we are, by confession a Christian community, yet in death numbers of our citizens, or more properly their relatives, resort to pagan expression in monumental tokens of remembrance.

Why should a cemetery in a Christian land exude heaviness and dolours and gloom and sadness? One of the most depressing experiences, one may venture to say, is to saunter through any Auckland burial ground on a wet day. The heavens are weeping, the stones splashing tears; those angels with extended hands garlanded with sorrows are the more pathetic of expression, and goodness |uows they’re comfortless enough even in sparkling sunlight. And the draperies and the black urns and the columns snapped off short to symbolise life withdrawn prematurely—it is all wretchedly con tradictory to the teaching of the Christian Church, which in its essence shouts: “Oh, death, where is thy sting!” And one might listen for the echo: “Oh, death, why all these trappings?” The Church has no ruling on the question of monuments in memoriam, what form they should take or how they should be designed. An Anglican clergyman who is an authority on ecclesiastical law and custom observed the other day that he wished most devoutly that the Church had a law. Selection of monuments was left entirely to the circumstances and taste of the relatives of the departed He believed that the widespread lean ing to the urn and to a lesser extent to the broken column, arose from ignorance that such symbols were not Christian in origin, but ante-dated our era. Cemeteries of the Old World with their magnificent sculpture designed delicately or grandly, hut always in the best of taste, contrasted pointedly with the adornments of the modern reserves sometimes termed “God’s Acre.” Pere La Chaise, in Paris, the cemetery at Montevideo, any military cemetery . . . these had more Christianity in them than the conglomeration forming most public burial grounds in a British community. As for the angels, well, declared the clergyman, he supposed sculptors abroad had to be kept in their jobs. Chatting in as frank a way as his business permitted a city monumental mason remarked recently that death, like life, had its fashions and its vogues. WheVeas not many years ago the favoured memorial was a tall headstone, the type sought after today, was a shorter, more massive stone —blocks of granite rough hewn.

one face polished; open books with a verse of Scripture inscribed, and so on. No, the broken column was not widely popular . . . not greatly in demand even by those whose relatives had passed beyond with tragic suddenness. Did he look upon this symbol as worthy of our Christian calling? As to that he smiled —loyal always to his catalogue and pleasantly non-committal.

Then the urns, all sad and draped in artificial melancholy. This form of monument was coming into favour —noticeably. The explanation? He thought that the trend toward crema tion had much to do with the fashion People were raising this kind of memorial over plots whereunder no body lay. No, ashes were not put in. the urn being merely symbolic of of an old custom. The monument with the top corners rounded not unlike the film producer's concept of the tablets of stone slashed in the rock for* Moses by Hollywood studio lightning, was now disappearing, though the pyramidal obelisk was* still commonly erected. On the topic of imported angels the mason was diffident to dwell. He allowed that most came from Italy, Carrara marble. The sculptors, sometimes chiselled artistically in their peculiarly imaginative way, more often. . . . Well, one could not but notice that these chilly representations of the heavenly beings scattered about the yards were inevitably sad of feature and down in the mouth Little mallet aud chisel work was now done in Auckland, the mason mentioned incidentally. The beautifully polished monuments of one sort and another were today fashioned oy machinery, the old method being too costly. Asked if he did not agree that some of the stones erected in Auckland cemeteries had prominence principally in ostentation and even, perhaps, vulgarity, he observed laconically that there was no vulgarity in monuments —some were more chaste than others.

And the sign of the Cross, what was its place in, this age? Ah, yes, it was ever sacred in the people’s regard; it held an unquenchable appeal. Simply wrought and unembellished the Cross was gladly set up by the poor as a token of remembrance, and more ornately, but still the Cross, by him of ampler means. C.W.