An amusing incident in Noel Coward’s play, This Happy Breed (Act III, Scene 1), finds Frank and his sister Sylvia sitting in the lounge room. Sylvia, a soured spinster, has become an ardent Christian Scientist. Frank and Sylvia have finished supper and are listening to the wireless. Frank’s wife Ethel is in the kitchen.
SYLVIA: There’s not so much to do since Mrs. Flint passed on.
FRANK: I do wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Sylvia, it sounds so soft.
SYLVIA: I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.
FRANK: (firmly) Mother died, see! First of all she got flu and that turned to pneumonia and the strain of that affected her heart, which was none too strong at the best of times, and she died. Nothing to do with passing on at all.
SYLVIA: How do you know?
FRANK: I admit its only your new way of talking, but it gets me down, see?
(Ethel comes in)
ETHEL: What are you shouting about?
FRANK: I’m not shouting about anything at all. I’m merely explaining to Sylvia that mother died. She didn’t pass on or pass over or pass out—she died.
This conversation is peculiarly modern. It reflects our self-consciousness, our embarrassment about the fact of death. Death is no longer regarded as a subject of polite conversation; it has become a convention to speak of death euphemistically, and to use tactful circumlocutions. Frank’s bluntness is not only callous but crude.
In this matter there has been a radical change in social behavior patterns. In the nineteenth century the processes of birth and reproduction were never mentioned in polite society, but the processes of death were an accepted subject of conversation. Today the processes of death are never mentioned in polite society, but the processes of birth and reproduction are almost a matter of daily discussion. Our grandparents, in their embarrassment and self-consciousness over the facts of birth, said that babies were found under gooseberry bushes; and we, in our embarrassment and self-consciousness over the facts of death, speak of “passing on” (Geoffrey Gorer, “The Pornography of Death,” The Encounter, October, 1955).
Death Bed A Traditional Theme
This can be illustrated from the field of literature. It is difficult to recall a play or a novel written during the past 25 years which has a “death-bed scene” in it, describing in detail the death of a major character from natural causes. Yet this topic was a set piece for most eminent Victorian and Edwardian writers, and it evoked their finest prose. To create the maximum pathos or edification, they employed the most elaborate technical devices and supplied a wealth of imaginative detail.
A single example will suffice. The climax to The Old Curiosity Shop is the death of little Nell. The book was published in serial form, and, when successive installments began to foreshadow the death of the child, Dickens was “inundated with imploring letters recommending poor little Nell to mercy.” Dickens was acutely aware of the artistic demands of the situation, and for days he was in a state of emotional tension. Dickens had to nerve himself to describe the death. He confided, “All night I have been pursued by the child, and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable.” He felt the suffering so intensely that he described it as “anguish unspeakable.” Writing to George Cattermole, he said, “I am breaking my heart over this story.”
Tremendous Impact
When the final installment was published, with the lithograph illustration showing the dead child lying on a bed, with pieces of holly on her breast, the resulting emotional excitement was almost unprecedented. Macready, the noted actor, returning from the theater, saw the print, and a cold chill ran through his blood. “I have never read printed words which gave me so much pain,” he noted in his diary. “I could not weep for some time. Sensations, sufferings, have returned to me, that are terrible to awaken.” Daniel O’Connor, the Irish Member of Parliament, reading the book in a railway carriage, was convulsed with sobs and groaned, “He should not have killed her,” and threw the book out the window. Thomas Carlyle was utterly overcome. Waiting crowds on the pier in New York harbor shouted to the passengers, “Is little Nell dead?” The news flashed across the United States and rough and hardy pioneers dissolved in tears. Lord Jeffrey, one of Her Majesty’s judges, was found by a friend in the library of his house, with his head bowed on the table. When his friend entered the room, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. “I had no idea that you had bad news or cause of grief,” she said, “or I would not have come. Is anyone dead?” “Yes, indeed,” he replied, “I’m a great goose to give myself away, but I couldn’t help it. You’ll be sorry to hear that little Nelly, Boz’s little Nell, is dead.” (For a detailed reference, see Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens, His Tragedy and Triumph, London, 1953, Vol. I, p. 304.)
Modern Flight From Death
Today, the situation is very different. Without any certainty in the life to come, man finds that the facts of natural death and physical decomposition have become too horrible to contemplate, let alone to discuss or describe. It is symptomatic of our present condition that one of the most flourishing sects in the world today is Christian Science, which denies the fact of physical death and which refuses to allow the word to be printed in the columns of the Christian Science Monitor.
A modern writer has said: “The fact of death is the great human repression, the universal ‘complex.’ Dying is the reality man dare not face, and to escape which he summons all his resources … Death is muffled up in illusions” (H. F. Lovell Cocks, By Faith Alone, 1943, p. 55). And yet we cannot live indefinitely on illusions; we know that eventually we must stop kidding ourselves. Some of our best thinkers and writers are courageous enough to say that we must face the fact of death. George Every, a gifted and sensitive poet, said: “In the younger poets the urgent problem is the imminence of death, the need of some significance that can be attached to dying in a world where there is no common belief in immortality” (“Designs for Culture,” Humanities, Vol. II, No. 2, 1948). Storm Jameson, in an address on the writer’s situation, echoed the same thought:
At this moment in history, a writer who concerns himself with anything less than the destiny of man on the earth is only amusing himself. If that is the thing he does best, he should do it. And we, when we want to be amused, pleased, enchanted … will listen to him. But in the anxiety that weighs upon us now, what we sometimes want most of all is to be answered … I propose a way to test the value of the writers of our day. Not a test to find out whether he is honest or dishonest, brave or cowardly. No!—what we should ask the writer is only this: Is he able to tell us about the destiny of man, our destiny, in such a way that we have the courage to live it, and gaily? If not, then he may be a very clever writer, he may even be honest, but he is not a great writer—not for us [The Writer’s Situation and other Essays, London, 1950, pp. 18–19].
The Victorians surrounded death with pathos and with sentiment. Twentieth-century man is cynical about sentiment and callous about death. What are the possibilities before us now? They are, quite simply, the alternatives of either brave endurance or triumphant conquest.
Fatalistic Resignation
First, there are those who face the inevitable fact of death calmly and stoically, without flinching and complaining, in a spirit of fatalistic resignation. They contemplate the bleak prospect of “emptiness, absence, the void,” and, in the classic words of Ronald Duncan, they point to the darkness and say, This Way to the Tomb (London, 1933). They proclaim a destiny of “dust and ashes.”
Bertrand Russell is a typical representative: “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation” (What I Believe, London, 1925, p. 21). No one can despise the real courage of this confession. But only a few heroic souls are able to face the chilling and cheerless prospect of the waiting grave with such unflinching fortitude.
Triumphant Victory
What is the alternative? The alternative is triumphant conquest. “Thanks be to God,” says the Apostle Paul, “who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” On the one hand, the Christian recognizes the horror of death—death indeed is a hated enemy. On the other hand, the Christian recognizes the reality of Christ’s resurrection and the hope of the life to come. For the Christian the horror is submerged in the hope, so that the sting of death is taken away and the victory of the grave is overcome.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, noted lexicographer and prince of conversationalists, was a devout churchman and an earnest Christian. He was concerned about the licentiousness and levity of his age, both of which he endeavored vigorously to combat and withstand. He was a man of personal integrity and public rectitude, and he was also diligent in the practice of private prayer. Nevertheless, he had a deep horror of death and a lively fear of the coming judgment. He believed that those who were indifferent to such dread realities were guilty of shallow insensibility, and that they were not only foolish but irresponsible. In the Rambler (No. 110) he wrote the following sober thoughts:
If he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting with insecurity; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient convictions.
Sense Of Judgment
Samuel Johnson, for his part, was aware not only of the precariousness of life but also of the reality of coming judgment. He was fearful of the sin of presumption, despite his own earnest faith and exemplary conduct.
James Boswell has recorded the following conversation:
JOHNSON: … I am afraid that I may be one of those who shall be damned. (Looking dismally)
DR. ADAMS: What do you mean by damned?
JOHNSON: (Passionately and loudly) Sent to hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.…
BOSWELL: But may not a man attain to such a degree of hope as not to be uneasy from the fear of death?
JOHNSON: A man may have such a degree of hope as to keep him quiet. You see I am not quiet, from the vehemence with which I talk; but I do not despair.
MRS. ADAMS: You seem, Sir, to forget the merits of our Redeemer.
JOHNSON: Madam, I do not forget the merits of my Redeemer; but my Redeemer has said that he will set some on his right hand and some on his left.
He was in gloomy agitation, and said, “I’ll have no more on’t” (The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1927, Vol. II, p. 526). Nevertheless, when Johnson came to die, he was able to face man’s last enemy with calm and cheerful composure. “He was able to be cheerful in spite of a deep belief in divine judgment, because he also had a deep belief in the gospel of salvation” (Elton Trueblood, Dr. Johnson’s Prayers, London, 1947, p. 13). His deep fear was overshadowed, and therefore silenced, by a deep hope.
The Christian Realities
This is the authentic Christian experience. On the one hand, there is the fact of death, inevitable and inescapable, frightening and forbidding; on the other hand, there is the fact of Christ’s resurrection, irradiating the darkness of the grave, dispelling the gloom of death, “bringing life and immortality to life through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).
Strengthened by Christ, we face death calm and unafraid; we are preserved from sentimentality on the one hand and synicism on the other. We are able to say with the Apostle Paul and all the faithful: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55, 57).
S. Barton Babbage is Principal of Ridley College and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia. A native of New Zealand, where he pursued studies leading to the B.A. and M.A. degrees, he earned the Ph.D. degree in London and the Th.D. in Australia. He is author of Puritanism and Richard Bancroft and Man in Nature and Grace. The excerpt in Principal Babbage’s essay from This Happy Breed (copyright 1943 by Noel Coward) is reprinted by permission.
