Puffing an Undertaker.
“I’ve taken your paper for twenty-six years,” he commenced, as he reached the head of the stairs, ”and now I want a puff.”
He was a very tall, slender man, had a face which hadn’t smiled since 1842, and his neck was embraced by a white cravat, and his hands were thrust into black gloves.
“I’ve got a new hearse, a new stock of coffins, and I want a local notice,” he continued, as he sat down and sighed, as if ready to screw a coffin lid down.
“My dear sir,” replied the man in the corner, “I’ve met you at a great many funerals, and your general bearing has created a favorable impression. You sigh with the sighers, grieve with the grievers, and on extra occasions you can shed tears of sorrow, even though you know that you can’t get ten per cent. of your bill under six months.”
“Yes,” sighed the undertaker, instinctively measuring the length of the table with his eye and wondering to himself why editors’ tables weren’t covered with crape, with rows of coffin nails around the edges.
“Death is a very solemn thing,” continued the man in the corner, “but still, it is an occasion when one can appreciate a neat thing. I’ve seen you rub your knuckles against door-posts and never change countenance; I’ve seen you listen to eulogies on men who owed you for twenty years before their death, and you looked even more solemn than the bereaved widow; I’ve seen you back your hearse up to a door in such an easy, quiet way that it robbed death of half its terrors. All this have I seen and appreciated, but I couldn’t write a puff for you.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“For many reasons. Now you have a new hearse. Could I go on and say: ‘Mr. Sackcloth, the genial undertaker, has just received a fine new hearse, and we hope that our citizens will endeavor to bestow upon it the patronage such enterprise deserves. It rides easy, is handsomely finished, and those who try it once will want no other.’ Could I say that?”
“No, not very well.”
“Of course I couldn’t. You can call a grocer or a dry goods man a ‘genial friend,’ and it’s all right, but you aren’t genial–you can’t be. It’s your business to be solemn. If you could be even more solemn than you are, it would be money in your pocket.”
“That’s so,” he said, signing heavily.
“If it was an omnibus, or a coal cart, or a wheelbarrow, I could go on and write a chapter on every separate spoke, but it isn’t, you see.”
He leaned back and sighed again.
“And as to your coffins, they are doubtless nice coffins, and your prices are probably reasonable; but could I go on and say: ‘Mr. Sackcloth, the undertaker, has just received his new styles in spring coffins, all sizes, and is now prepared to see as many of his old customers as want something handsome and durable at a moderate price.’ Could I say that?”
Another sigh.
“I couldn’t say that you were holding a clearing-out sale in order to get ready for the spring trade, or that, for the sake of increasing your patronage, you had decided to present each customer with a chromo. I couldn’t say that you were repairing and repainting, and had the most attractive coffin shop in Detroit. It wouldn’t do to hope that people would patronize you, or to say that all orders sent in by mail would be promptly filled, and that your motto was: ‘Quick sales and small profits.”
He put on the look of a tombstone, and made no reply.
“You see, it you had stoves to sell, or dealt in mackerel, or sold fishing tackle, everything would be lovely. You are an undertaker–solemn, sedate, mournful. You revel in crape, and you never pass a black walnut door without thinking how much good coffin lumber was recklessly wasted. The tolling bell is music to you, and the City Hall flag at half-mast is fat on your ribs. We’d like to oblige you, but you see how it is.”
“Yes, I see,” he signed, and he formed in procession and moved down stairs, looking around now and then to see if the hearse was just 34 feet behind the officiating clergyman’s carriage.
Portland [ME] Daily Press 12 March 1875: p. 1
To be fair, hearses and their horses were mentioned and celebrated in local papers as a “puff”–free advertising/PR. See these posts on hearse horses and “A Daisy of a Hearse.” And some undertakers bought extensive advertisements as in this post on the advertising spiel of one A.N. Johnson of Nashville, Tennessee: No Funeral Balks and Blunders When You Have A.N. Johnson: 1917.
Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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