C. M. Ingleby

“ To compare Humphreys’ drawing, which hangs in the Birthplace, and is its most valuable portrait, with Samuel Cousin’s fine mezzotint of the Chandos, engraved forty years ago, is to be convinced that the existing picture no longer represents the man—whosoever he may have been—from whom it was painted. How many questions, affecting the Bust, the Death-Mask, and these portraits, would be set at rest by the production of Shakespeare’s skull! ”

“ If there were no other reason for searching Shakespeare’s grave, save the extinction of an unpleasant but not irrational doubt, I would forthwith perform the exploration, and if possible obtain tangible proof that the poet’s skull had not been removed from its resting-place.
But the exploration, if successful, would have a bearing upon more material issues. The most opposite judgments have been passed upon the Bust, both as a work of art and as a copy of nature. Landor, whose experience of Italian art was considerable, recorded it as his opinion, that it was the noblest head ever sculptured ”

“ Not only did society in general take offence, but a variety of persons in authority, particularly ecclesiastical dignitaries, began to talk of interfering. Schwabe was haunted by the idea of the ‘clearing out,’ which was now close at hand. That dismal hole in the corner of the churchyard once closed and the turf laid down, the dust of Schiller would be lost for ever. He determined to proceed. His position of Bürgermeister put the means in his power, and this time he was resolved to keep his secret. To find the skull was now his utmost hope, but for that he would make a final struggle. ”

“ On the destruction of the burial-place of the Old Meeting House, in Old Meeting Street, Birmingham, in March, 1882, the coffin of the poet was found in the earth, and on opening it, the face was almost as fresh, and quite as perfect, as on the day of the old man’s interment seventy-four years before: and as to his bones? Does Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps believe that in a period but little more than double that of the poet Freeth’s unmolested repose, namely 180 years, all Shakespeare’s Bones would have been turned to dust, and become indistinguishable from the mould in which the coffin lay? ”

“ Why should not the authorities of Stratford, to whom this brochure is inscribed, sanction, or even themselves undertake, a respectful examination of the grave in which Shakespeare’s remains are believed to have been buried?
Two grounds have always been assigned for abstention: (1) the sentiment which disposes men to leave the relics of the dead to their rest in the tomb: (2) the prohibition contained in the four lines inscribed upon Shakespeare’s gravestone. ”

“ Whoever would see the resting-place of Goethe and Schiller must descend into the Grand Ducal vault, where, through a grating, in the twilight beyond he will catch a glimpse of their sarcophagi.”
The other case of exhumation, and reinterment with funeral rites, which I deem of sufficient importance to be recorded here, is that of the great Raphael. In this the motive was not, as in that of Schiller, to give his bones a worthier resting-place, nor yet, as in so many other cases, to gratify a morbid curiosity, but to set at rest a question of disputed identity. ”

“ As the examples, more or less analogous to that of Shakespeare, which I am about to adduce, concern great men who were born and were buried within the limits of our island, I will preface them by giving the very extraordinary cases of Schiller and Raphael, which illustrate both classes: those in which the object of the exhumation was to give the remains a more honourable sepulture, and those in which it was purely to resolve certain questions affecting the skull of the deceased. ”

“ He says, “The man who wrote the four lines [of epitaph] which have thus far secured his bones that rest which his epitaph demands, omitted nothing likely to carry the whole plan into effect. The authorship of the epitaph cannot be doubted, unless another man in England had the wit and wisdom to divine the loyal heart’s core of its people, and touch it in the single appeal ‘for Jesus sake.’ Nothing else has kept him out of Westminster [Abbey] . The style of the command and curse are Shakespearian, and triumphant as any art of forethought in his plays.” ”

“ It is, I say, too late to raise such an objection, because exhumation has been performed many times with a perfectly legitimate object, even in the case of our most illustrious dead, without protest or objection from the most sensitive person. ”

“ I give one more example of robbing the grave of an illustrious man, through the superstition of many and the cupidity of one. Swedenborg was buried in the vault of the Swedish Church in Prince’s Square, on April 5, 1772. In 1790, in order to determine a question raised in debate, viz., whether Swedenborg were really dead and buried, his wooden coffin was opened, and the leaden one was sawn across the breast. ”

“ If we could even get a photograph of Shakspeare’s skull it would be a great thing, and would help us to make a better portrait of him than we now possess.” His courageous article is particularly useful for the adduction of cases in which corpses have lain in the grave far longer than that of Shakespeare, and been discovered in a state of comparative perfection. What would one not give to look upon Shakespeare’s dead face! ”

“ J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, who thinks he sees a reason for the disappearance of Shakespeare’s Bones, in the fact that his coffin was buried in the Chancel mould. [32] If this be all the ground of his assurance, that nothing but dust would reward the search, I would say “despair thy charm;” for many corpses so buried have for many years been preserved in comparative freshness—corpses which had been treated with no more care than the body of Shakespeare is believed to have received. ”

“ None doubted that Schiller’s head was now at rest for many years. But it had already occurred to Goethe, who had more osteological knowledge than the excellent Bürgermeister, that, the skull being in their possession, it would be possible to find the skeleton. A very few days after the ceremony in the library, he sent to Jena, begging the Professor of Anatomy, Dr. Schröter, to have the kindness to spend a day or two at Weimar, and to bring with him, if possible, a functionary of the Jena Museum, Färber by name, who had at one time been Schiller’s servant. ”

“ No relics whatever were visible through the small opening that thus presented itself, and as the poet was buried in the ground, not in a vault, the chancel earth, moreover, formerly absorbing a large degree of moisture, the great probability is that dust alone remains. This consideration may tend to discourage an irreverent opinion expressed by some, that it is due to the interests of science to unfold to the world the material abode which formerly held so great an intellect. ”

“ The Hôtel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura at Rome, [1b] are indebted to this sentiment for the possession of relics which make those edifices the natural resort of pilgrims as of sight-seers. It were a work of superfluity to adduce further illustration of p. 2the position that the mere exhumation and reinterment of a great man’s remains, is commonly held to be, in special cases, a justifiable proceeding, not a violation of that honourable sentiment of humanity, which protects and consecrates the depositaries of the dead. ”

“ In reviewing the various incidents connected with the foregoing cases of exhumation one is perhaps most struck with the last two. That an illustrious man of science, and his son, who at that time must already have been a scientific naturalist, should have coöperated in so stupendous a blunder as the mere inspection of Ben Jonson’s skull, without taking so much as a measurement or drawing of it, would be incredible, but for the fact that both are dead, and nothing of the sort has come to light: and it is scarcely less surprising that the Swedenborgians, p. ”

“ He then invited every person in Weimar and its neighbourhood, who had been on terms of intimacy with Schiller, and admitted them to the room one by one. The result was surprising. Without an exception they pointed to the same skull as that which must have been the poet’s. The only remaining chance of mistake seemed to be the possibility of other skulls having eluded the search, and being yet in the vault. To put this to rest, Schwabe applied to the Landschaftscollegium, in whose records was kept a list of all persons buried in the Kassengewölbe. ”

“ They ‘did not desire,’ as one of themselves expressed it, ‘to strive against Nature’s appointment that man’s earthly remains should be reunited with herself;’ they would prefer that their father’s dust should rest in the ground rather than anywhere else. But the Grand Duke and Goethe decided otherwise.
“Dannecker’s colossal bust of Schiller had recently been acquired for the Grand Ducal library, where it had been placed on a lofty pedestal opposite the bust of Goethe; and in this pedestal, which was hollow, it was resolved to deposit the skull. ”

“ Accordingly it is held justifiable to exhume a body recently buried, in order to discover the cause of death, or to settle a question of disputed identity: nor is it usually held unjustifiable to exhume a body long since deceased, in order to find such evidences as time may not have wholly destroyed, of his personal appearance, including the size and shape of his head, and the special characteristics of his living face. ”

“ But there is another sentiment, not inconsistent with this, which prompts us, on suitable occasions, to disinter the remains of great men, and remove them to a more fitting and more honourable resting-place. ”

“ What message a bone or a weed may have for the man or the race depends p. 29wholly upon the recipient. Your Shakespeare or Goethe, your Owen or Huxley, would find in it an intelligible language; while your Capel Lofft would denounce what he found there as dirt and indecency. How true is the proverb of Syr Oracle Mar-text: “To the wise all things are wise.” In the case of Schiller, the skull spoke for itself, and claimed to be that of Schiller; the bones, like those in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, aggregated themselves around their head, and submitted to an accurate articulation ”

“ To expose a man’s remains after any interval for the purpose of treating his memory with indignity, or of denouncing an unpopular cause which he espoused, or (worst of all) “to p. 20fine his bones,” or make money by the public exhibition of his dust, deserves unmeasured and unqualified reprobation, and every prudent measure should be taken to render such an act impossible. ”

“ After being examined, and a cast made from the skull and [one] from the right hand, the skeleton was exhibited publicly in a glass case, and multitudes thronged to the church to look upon it. On the 18th of October, 1833, a second funeral ceremony took place. The remains were deposited in a pine-wood coffin, then in a marble sarcophagus, presented by the Pope (Gregory XVI) , and reverently consigned to their former resting-place, in presence of more than three thousand spectators, including almost all the artists, the officers of government, and other persons of the highest rank in Rome. ”

“ Though the dead be unconcerned, the living are neither benefited nor improved: decency is violated, and a kind of instinctive sympathy infringed, which, though it ought not to overpower reason, ought not without it, and to no purpose, to be superseded. ”

“ Ryde observed had been purloined from the grave on the second opening. Mr. Buckland is a scientific naturalist, and an ardent worshipper of the closest of all observers, John Hunter. Now mark what satisfies such a man on such an occasion as this. He was wrong and Mr. Ryde was right, p. 26because Mr. Ryde described his skull as having red hair; and in Aubrey’s Lives of Eminent Men, ‘I find evidence quite sufficient for any medical man to come to the conclusion that Ben Jonson’s hair was in all probability of a red colour, though the fact is not stated in so many words.’ In so many words! ”

“ Albans, [27b] an account of a search that had been made for Bacon’s remains, on the occasion of the interment of the last Lord Verulam. “A partition wall was pulled down, and the search extended into the part of the vault immediately under the monument, but no remains were found.” On the other hand, we have the record of his express wish to be buried there. I am afraid the doctor, who is said to have become the laughingstock of the living, has entirely faded out of men’s minds and memories. ”

“ Attention should not be attracted if he could help it.
“When the night came, he himself, with a trusty servant, proceeded to the entrance of the Kassengewölbe. The four men p. 11were already there. In darkness they all entered, raised the trap-door, adjusted the ladder, and descended to the abode of the dead. Not till then were lanterns lighted; it was just possible that some late wanderer might, even at that hour, cross the churchyard. Schwabe seated himself on a step of the ladder and directed the workmen. Fragments of broken coffins they piled up in one corner, and bones in another. ”