Courtships in Old Graveyards
“I don’t think there is as much genuine love-making in Saratoga nowadays as there used to be years ago,” said old Sexton Palmerston, as he leaned on his spade. “They all seem to be going for money. Why, I haven’t had four genuine love cases in the graveyard this year. Now, when a man is going for money you don’t see him bringing his girl over here.”
“How does he act when he is going for money?” I asked.
“Why, he spends his time around the florists, he heaps presents on her, keeps her room full of flowers, hands chairs on the balcony, always stands ready with a music programme, looks after her mail, always compliments her clothes, and___”
“And what else?” I asked, impatiently.
“Why, the courting-for-money lover even looks after his sweetheart’s table. He even goes and bribes the head cook to send her chicken livers en brochette, woodcock and Spanish mackerel. The cooks always have these delicacies for guests provided and they are well paid for them. O! he gives his girl an elegant time, but there’s no love in it.”
“But how does the all-for-love young man go to work?” I interrupted.
“Why, he don’t fool around at a distance,” said the old sexton, “with bouquets, and chairs, and programmes, and nice breakfasts. He just quietly walks his sweetheart over to the graveyard, and, sitting on one of those benches out under the trees yonder, he takes her hand. He sits right down and attacks her heart. He don’t fool around buying flowers for her eyes, nor candies for her tongue, nor perfumes for her nose; he just gets his arm right around her heart, and when it begins to throb, and when her cheek gets red and warm he knows that girl is hisn’. (Don’t stand so near the grave or it’ll cave in.) Why, that girl would rather have one hour of our warm graveyard courting than 400 years of such iceberg courting as I see going on over in the States parlors. I’ve seen this courtin’ goin’ on for forty years. (By jiminy, there’s a bone! I’m getting too near that other grave.) I see old grey-headed men every day riding up here in carriages who courted their wives in this graveyard forty years ago. There’s R.L. Stuart, the wealthy sugar refiner__”
“But he’s an old bachelor,” I interrupted.
“Never mind that. I tell you, my benches could tell why he never got married. He loved the girl well enough, and__”
“But who else do you remember seeing here?” I asked.
“Why, there was Mr. Winston of the Mutual Life. He used to walk around here thirty years ago, with a beautiful blonde girl. I can see him now kissing that girl—but I’m not going to tell all I know. Andrew H. Green, he married a girl he courted in my graveyard. Fernando Wood used to have a seat here, and Charles A. Dana, he used to know, forty year ago, all about flirting in a graveyard. Old General James Watson Webb used to walk the young ladies up here forty years ago, and his son, the Doctor, why he could never get along at all in courting Miss Vanderbilt till he got her away from the stuck-up States Hotel, and found himself one day in one of my seats. I knew Vanderbilt would lose a daughter that night. I tell you, these graveyard seats mean business every time. Dd I ever have any Senators or Governors on my seats? Why, of course. Senator Kernan courted two girls at once in this graveyard, and President Arthur knows where all the best seats are. They needn’t be ashamed of it either, for Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton used to do the same thing when they were boys. Boys will be boys,” continued the old man, as he jumped out of the grave, “and girls will be girls. Girls with big hearts like to be loved, and fellows with big hearts will kiss and love them. I don’t care how straight their parents make them sit up and down at the States, they will occasionally get away and come up here in the graveyard to act natural, and I’m the last man to hinder ‘em. Why I often keep these graveyard gates open till nine o’clock when there are genuine lovers enough around to warrant it. I don’t mean flirters. I mean real, genuine lovers.”
“But how do the lover manage down at Long Branch and over at Newport, where they have no graveyards handy?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but they have mating places somewhere. I ‘spect they sit out in the sand under the bluffs, or sit around under umbrellas in the pavilions, or get in dismal corners on the balconies. They’ve got to—by gosh, they’ve got to!”
That’s what the old Saratoga graveyard philosopher said. Saratoga Cor. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser.
Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 6 September 1882: p. 10
Chris Woodyard is the author of 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.
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