American funeral directors often say, “England is about fifty years behinds us.” To the English, this might sound like a veiled note of warning: does it mean, for example, that fifty years from now much of England’s green and pleasant land will have been converted into Memorial Gardens of Eternal Peace? From Sherwood Forest to Forest Lawn in one easy step? It requires more than a little imagination to visualize a bluff English squire and his hard-riding, rugged-faced lady transformed into Beautiful Memory Pictures, their erstwhile stony and disapproving features remolded by the hand of a Restorative Artist into unfamiliar expressions of benign sweetness. Would their caskets be named (like the American “Valley Forge”) after famous battles—the “Battle of Britain,” in delectable shades of Royal Air Force blue, or “Flodden Field,” with an archery motif? Or perhaps (like the American “Colonial Classic”) after periods in English history: the Restoration Rolick, the Crusader, Knighthood in Flower, the Victorian Voluptuous with overstuffed horsehair interior made expressly to simulate the finest drawing-room furniture of the period? Would the squire and his wife be decked out as for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, he in top hat and cutaway, she in trailing flowered chiffon, or more simply in Harris tweeds complemented by Practical Burial Gum Boots?

There has been heard in America a singing radio commercial whose words, set to the tune of “Rock of Ages,” go like this:

This might be going a little too far for England, but it would be rash to underestimate the penetrating power of American enterprise.

Jingles like this may one day be beamed on commercial telly and adorn billboards in the countryside: “Repose with your mate / Near the bones of the great / By appointment, I ween / To H.M. the Queen.”—Westminster Memory Gardens, Ltd. Or, “Your Heart in the Highlands-Forever!”—Happy Hebridean Haven, Ltd.

Fanciful, perhaps, yet perhaps also the English would be well advised to note that American missionary schemes to “civilize” English funerals are already under way, and some headway has been recorded.

As early as 1926, a member of National Selected Morticians reported to his colleagues on what had most impressed him on a visit to England: “I spent a day in Liverpool with a fine gentleman, one of the very best. They know very little about embalming in any other part of the world, outside of America. They are going to. England has been agitating the matter. I take one of their journals, and they commenced agitating a couple of years ago. I think if we could send some missionaries over there, we would do them a world of good….”

It took a long time for our missionaries to show tangible results for their efforts. The Brits seemed to likebeing fifty years behind their Yank counterparts.

It is of little use to ask English friends to describe the procedures in a typical funeral, because so few have been to one. Whereas Americans flock to the funeral of a coworker, a neighbor, or a casual acquaintance, in England only the closest relations go; consequently many people, even those of middle age, have never actually seen a funeral. Some are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to make inquiries. One friend wrote, “I have not yet been to call at _______ Undertakers, although I walk past there every day; I fear I have the superstitious feeling of an old horse passing the knacker’s yard.”

Another friend spent some time with a country undertaker and sent a full report: “First and foremost, he said—and this is borne out by my own feelings and the experience of everybody I have asked—that we aren’t even on the fringe of imitating Americans yet, and there will have to be a big change in the psychology of everybody concerned before we do. This at least is one area where there’s no attempt to produce a milk-and-water copy of the American original. The undertaker is quite definitely regarded as a tradesman—no cachet attached to the job whatsoever; and in the country he is almost invariably the local builder as well. About embalming, the local man said he’s only had to embalm one corpse in ten years (the family was abroad and the funeral had to be delayed ten days), and there’s not the slightest indication that it is likely to grow in popularity. The whole mentality of burying here is that the dead should be disposed of with quiet respectability and the minimum of fuss and publicity. Decent and quiet, you might say.”

Further investigation convinced me that there were contradictory forces at work. There are those within the trade who are envious of their American counterparts, who would love nothing better than to transplant the American way to England’s unreceptive soil. They find themselves, however, up against the relentless English common sense and preference for the ordinary way of doing things. An English undertaker, speaking at a Dallas meeting of National Selected Morticians, explained the difficulty: “The chief reason why our average is low is the very fact that I have tried to tell you about British character—their desire for moderation. In our own selection room we display a full range of hardwood caskets, oak, walnut, and mahogany. Yet of the clients who can afford the best, 90 percent would choose the traditional coffin. They would say of the caskets, ‘Very beautiful, but too big, too elaborate! We will have an oak coffin like we had for grandfather!’ This is a problem that has concerned us for many years…. I must tell you, also, that our presentation must be accomplished without the use of cosmetics. Heavy cosmetizing would bring the strongest complaints from our clients. They tell us quite firmly, ‘I don’t want Mother touched up!’ ” He does, however, mention “an aspect of American funeral service which appears to be more readily accepted by our British public. All over the country funeral directors are building funeral homes, putting in private chapels and rest rooms. [21]They are not comparable with the beautiful buildings I have already seen this last week, but nevertheless, our men have recognized the need and are now beginning to provide the facilities.”

The English trade publications the Funeral Directorand Funeral Service Journalreflect in their pages a predominantly traditional approach, with occasional revealing flashes of possible changes on the way. Their very titles, which must have, to the English ear, an unfamiliar transatlantic ring, tell us something; yet unlike the American funeral magazines, they are modest in format and sparsely illustrated.

The advertisements for the most part call a coffin a coffin, a hearse a hearse, and a shroud a shroud; there is “Coffinex Aqueous Emulsion, [which] supersedes the old method of applying boiling pitch and wax, which was both laborious and uneconomical” (an improvement we can surely applaud); but “casket” is by no means unknown; there is Casketite Bitum Emulsion, “for simpler, more economical sealing of caskets and coffins.” Social events for English undertakers as reported in these journals have not reached the Vault-burger Barbecue stage; they adhere rather to traditional English ideas of what constitutes jolly good entertainment; we are told that “in April a number of members and their ladies attended a performance of ‘The Iron Hand’ given at H.M. Prison, Sudbury.” The editorial writers tend towards conservatism. One of them, describing an American funeral director who distributes “packs of quite good-quality playing cards which, on the back, carry an advertisement for so-and-so’s funeral home,” comments that he “would not like to see such advertising in this country.” Yet there are also reprints from American magazines: how to use the telephone (“never use the personal pronoun ‘I,’ always use ‘we’; speak with warmth in your voice, clearly and with sincere friendliness”); how to set up a casket-selection room, and the like—but they did not seem to have altered the basically English character of these journals.