Sometimes, past and present intertwine like coils of smoke. Sometimes, the merging relies on words, other times actions, that travel through years, indeed centuries to reach a point, where by chance you might be standing, where you might be living.
It can seem all rather nebulous, as smoke would have it, and yet it can seem resonant as a scene from a play can chime within the spectator. Which is where this writer found himself while on holidays in Tasmania.
My wife, publisher and local historian Pip Butler, was trawling through Trove and came across this:
Gisborne Express 1860
Wanted
A sexton for the Gisborne cemetery. The successful candidate for the office will have the advantage of a comfortable house to reside in together with a liberal salary and, among other privileges, will be allowed to cut and sell the wood in the cemetery for his own use. The candidate must not necessarily be an artist, the only accomplishments required being those of reading and writing. If he be an honest man so much the better. Apply to the Secretary of the Gisborne Cemetery.
Gisborne cemetery is on a small hill about a kilometre from the centre of town. We live a few blocks from it. Back in 1860 you could imagine the funeral trains wending up the dirt road to it. The night would be without light bar the stars and moon. Now it is enclosed by roads with, of course, streetlights, and a roundabout directs traffic around it. There are still the gravestones from that time, tragic stories written in the names and dates of birth and death; one family around that time lost two daughters within weeks and other children later on, for instance. There are unmarked graves and glorious towers to God, no doubt erected by the wealthy of the time. The one constant is the uncertainty of life.
The sexton’s cottage is no longer there. The world of the sexton as detailed in the ad has also faded. Wood is no longer chopped, a resident gravedigger long departed. But it was the latter part of the ad that in equal measure made me laugh, ponder and wonder at the circumstances of the time and this endeavour: The candidate must not necessarily be an artist, the only accomplishments required being those of reading and writing. If he be an honest man so much the better.
Not necessarily be an artist? But if they were, possibly it would be only a small matter. Possibly the secretary at the time saw art only through the divine. Reading and writing are described as required accomplishments, as indeed they would have been viewed back then, and as the job would have demanded. The last sentence though is intriguing and as though written from the travails of past experiences. If he be an honest man so much better. Indeed, so much the better. It’s Shakesperean in its plea. It has echoes of Hamlet’s dialogue at the grave, written about 425 years ago.
First Gravedigger
Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born — he that was mad and sent into England.
Hamlet
Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
First Gravedigger
Why, because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, it's no great matter there.
Hamlet
Why?
First Gravedigger
'Twill not be seen in him. There the men are as mad as he.
Hamlet
How came he mad?
First Gravedigger
Very strangely, they say.
Hamlet
How, strangely?
First Gravedigger
Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
Hamlet
Upon what ground?
First Gravedigger
Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.
Hamlet
How long will a man lie i'th'earth ere he rot?
First Gravedigger
Faith, if he be not rotten before 'a die (as we have many pocky corpses that will scarce hold the laying in) he will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year.
You could almost imagine the gravedigger opining, Well, if he were an honest man, he may not rot at all!
Perhaps that last line was just a joke. Perhaps it was exasperation, a cry from the secretary’s heart, lord send us an honest man, if not we must make do with what we have to dig the graves and maintain the resting places of men, women and children. And if they should want to paint, so be it.
Now though when I walk through the graveyard, I’ll think of that ad and who might have secured the job, and if they brought paints and easel, a literate mind, and honesty.
A sexton was found for the cemetery. Charles Warren was a carpenter who built the cottage in which he lived, and who had done a little work around the graveyard. However, his work was not up to standard, and in a few years he was gone.
Warwick McFadyen is an award-winning journalist. He has won two Walkley Awards and four Quill Awards. He has published several books of poetry. The latest is 21+4 Poems. His prose and poems have also appeared in Quadrant, Overland and Dissent.
Main image: The Hamlet and the Gravediggers by Eugène Delacroix (WikiMedia Commons)