Funeral on Franklin Street: A Farce

OF the funerals of the Duke of Wellington, Victor Hugo, and General Grant I have no first-hand knowledge, but of the funeral of Simon Englander, who lived next door to the DaCostas, I can speak as an eyewitness. The Iron Duke’s cortege may have been longer, the grief of France’s best bad poet may have been deeper, and the pomp and muffled drums for our most amiable President more impressive, but Simon could boast, could the dead boast, that in one respect at least his funeral surpassed those of the others: Simon had two hearses.

One of them bore his bones, the other his huge trombone for which he had formed a lifelong attachment. It was his wish that the instrument have its own coffin and be buried alongside of him, as a tribute to its fealty from the time, as a young man, he first oompah’d on it in the old Garrick Theatre orchestra to his last days when, as a man of wealth and local fame, he would play it for his own enjoyment, though not the neighbors’. This wish was devotedly carried out.

Men make their fortunes variously, by purveying to human necessities, to human vanity, to human credulity, or to ever so many human mischiefs, venal and venial. Englander, however, chose to make his by giving quasi-scientific exhibitions to the public of the human form, specifically of the female human form. He was the proprietor of the ramshackle Star Theatre, the Home of Refined Burlesque, where a man might take a sister, but hardly his own.

For years the Star had been a mint for Englander. At prices from fifteen to seventy-five cents his patrons saw the same extravaganzas, with the same cast and chorus, as Sam T. Jack or Hurtig & Seaman in New York scaled at twice the price. Even when such extraordinary productions as ‘Twentieth Century Widows,’ ‘Giddy Girls,’ ‘A Load of Peaches,’ and ‘Frisky Maidens’ came to the Star, the prices were not raised. Only once do I recall a slight revision upwards, but that was excusable, for the attraction was that Sophoclean masterpiece, ‘Krausmeyer’s Alley,’ with the original Billy Watson. It was the feminine chorus of this show that Billy nicknamed the ‘Beef Trust.’ It was a day when men demanded flesh on the hoof.

Because of its policy of a change of bill weekly, the Star had a steady clientele, so steady that it kept open the year round, except for two weeks in August when the house would be repainted, the scenery repatched, and the plumbing repaired. Englander never let the Star run down.

There were those who didn’t want to let the Star run at all, citizens who were concerned with such abstractions as Taste and Public Morals. They would form Committees of Protest almost every year and descend upon Englander, demanding that he ‘clean up or close up.’ That Simon had the Police Department, from top to bottom and from bottom to top, in the vest pocket in which he kept his large bills was something that these civic purifiers didn’t know and couldn’t know. Yet Simon was not high-handed with them; he received them courteously, listened to their charges and threats, and always promised to do some fumigating. Of course this was never done. Simon had to consider his patrons. After his death, when his son Syd took over the management, these committees met with quite a different reception. Syd told them that God Almighty would not have made a shapely leg had He not intended it to be seen.

‘Let them get around that,’ Syd used to say with a satisfied chuckle.

The day that Simon and his trombone were taken to their last rest the crowd in front of the Englander home was so dense that from half a block away it looked more like a raid than a funeral. It was not till the carriages came into the street and the mourners began entering them that one could identify the funebrial character of the occasion. But this was dispelled to some extent by the cumbrous handling of those who had come for a free ride. In the first carriages the members of the family were permitted to take their assigned places unmolested, but when it came to the ‘outsiders’ there was a rush and crowdburst for the remainder of the carriages, with pushing and shoving and bumping and jostling that was more than two policemen could subdue. When the last of some thirty carriages had been filled, many of them overfilled, those who had failed to get inside hitched on behind or rode on the frail step outside the door.

The cortege passed along Franklin Street to Market, where it turned west and proceeded till the Star was reached. There, according to plan, the carriage came to a halt while the theatre’s orchestra of seven pieces, stationed on the steps, played ‘Kiss Me Again, Nellie,’ a beloved tune of Simon’s. Gus Falkenberg, the leader, with a sense of the solemnity of the moment, beat the time slow and dirgeful, all the inner beauty of the piece coming out.

Surrounding the musicians, in costume and make-up, — for there was a matinee that day, — were the cast and chorus of the ‘High Kickers’ troupe which happened to be playing the Star that week. It was now one-thirty in the afternoon, and though it had been announced that the curtain would be delayed half an hour out of respect to the memory of Simon, the company would not have had time to dress after the cortege had passed the theatre. That accounted for the colorful scene on the steps, with the comedians’ red bulbous noses blending with the fleshy pink tights of the girls.

With the playing of an encore of ‘Kiss Me Again, Nellie,’ this time in a spirited tempo, the entire company sang a verse and chorus, the girls, through habit, wiggling to the beat. The occupants of the carriages, who had got out to witness the impressive ceremony, returned to their seats, and the tide of mourning resumed its course out Market Street to the cemetery gates.

Few of the mourners accompanied the two caskets to their graves; instead, they convened in the saloon near the entrance of Heavenly Rest. When Syd Englander and the family returned from the grave he announced that all the drinks were on him, whereupon the mob switched from beer to schnapps, except Mr. DaCosta, who shamelessly ordered a bottle of Rhine wine for himself and my aunt.

‘I didn’t say wine,’ Syd shrilly reminded Mr. DaCosta.

‘If you’re going to be petty about it we won’t drink it,’ said my aunt, pushing the bottle to one side.

‘If you meant beer, why didn’t you say beer?' Mr. DaCosta replied, hurt.

My mother made her way to me through the crowd to inquire for my father. I said I hadn’t seen him.

‘You’d better look for him,’ she said. ‘You know how funerals affect him.’

It was not easy to find anyone; you had to thread your way past bodies, feet, elbows, and raised beer steins, in the bar, in the back room, and in the garden at the rear, ducking a waiter who might be coming towards you head-on, with a bouquet of steins clumped in each hand. From the garden came the echo of that favorite cheer of the Alcoholic Fellowship that goes: ‘He’s all right. . . . Who’s all right? . . . Eng-landerrrrrrrrrrrrr!’

There, undoubtedly, I should find my father.

When I reached the garden there were perhaps forty or fifty men, stein in hand, marching round and round in lock step, singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.’ My father then climbed upon the improvised bar and started warbling ‘Kiss Me Again, Nellie,’ whereupon the crowd hilariously joined in, repeating the refrain several times, with its touching opening line: ‘Kiss me again, Nellie, for the bugle soon will call.’ Mrs. Englander, who had stepped into the garden, was overcome by the song’s sad association and had to be led away. There were a number of moist eyes.

What now ensued is painful to report. When the crowd, led by my father, had exhausted its repertoire of songs, it huddled about him to hear a new proposal. Their plans apparently set, they left the garden and went into the bar, which now had thinned out considerably.

‘There he is! There he is!’ came shouts from a few of them, as they espied Mr. DaCosta sitting with his wife, nibbling at free pretzels. I was relieved when I saw that my father had disappeared and was not among them.

The ringleader now was Mr. Seil. In Western-sheriff fashion, sporting his two hundred and fifty pounds, he walked over to Mr. DaCosta and requested that he step outside ‘for just a moment.’ Disarmed by Mr. Soil’s playful demeanor, Mr, DaCosta didn’t demur, nor did his wife. He rose from his chair, told my aunt to wait till he returned, put a few pretzels in his pocket, and went out the door, followed by the ‘posse.’

‘What can I do for you?’ he inquired when he reached the sidewalk.

The reply he waited for came not in words. It came more intelligibly, more impressively, with Mr. Seil grabbing him posteriorly and whisking him in bum’srush fashion to the waiting hearse that only a little while before had borne the remains of Simon Englander. At the driver’s seat, reins in hand, stood my father, ready to give his horses the whip when he got the signal.

He hadn’t long to wait. With the assistance of a few others, Mr. Seil dumped his struggling victim into the wagon and slammed the double door tight. There was no escape for Mr. DaCosta, for the door was knobless on the inside. He sat upright and pounded on the window in protest.

Mr. Zwilling, the undertaker, came rushing out of the saloon with a stein in his hand and called to his drivers to break up the disgraceful scene. The drivers, however, by prearrangement, were in the garden splashing contentedly in suds.

‘Get going! Get going!’ shouted Mr. Seil to my father, and my father immediately got going. As the wheels of the cavalcade now slowly turned, Mr. DaCosta frantically thumped the windows of the hearse with his fists.

To avoid the policemen stationed at almost every corner along Market Street, my father, leading the procession with his equipage, chose the smaller streets on the way back to town. But in doing so he picked up a throng of marchers, boys of all ages, who were bewitched at the sight of a corpse prancing in its cage like an animal in captivity. They ran alongside the hearse and the half-dozen carriages, booing Mr. DaCosta, sticking out their tongues and threatening to throw things at him. Fortunately the window protected his person, but windows cannot protect our sensibilities.

When we reached Schimmel’s brewery my father alighted and called out: ‘Schimmel’s Junction! Change cars!’

There was an astonishing unanimity of desire and decision, everyone knowing that at Schimmel’s, as at every brewery back in those amber days, you could gratuitously drink as much as you could carry.

A covenant was entered into with the kids, providing for their each receiving a dime, in hand paid, in consideration of their keeping an eye on the horses while we were inside. As for Mr. DaCosta, we didn’t bother to include him among the things to be watched. We knew that with a door that was knobbed on the outside and knobless on the obverse he was safe.

My father got up close to the window of the hearse and bellowed: ‘It’s all free . . . beer and sauerkraut . . . much as you want.'

Mr. DaCosta was suffering visibly.

As soon as our backs were turned, we afterwards learned, the prisoner-corpse, to gain the attention and sympathy of the kids, pressed a dollar bill against the window. Making signs to indicate that he wished the kids to turn the outside knob so that he might escape, and pointing to the dollar as their reward for so doing, he quickly consummated a deal, deals being consummated quickly when the buyer is in the mood to buy and the seller is in the mood to sell. Promptly the knob was turned and Mr. DaCosta clambered out of the hearse, again to take his place among free and honest men. He stretched his legs, straightened his tie, folded the dollar bill and replaced it in his pocket, and thanked his liberators, not with a thanks that was perfunctory, or condescending, or wanting in appreciation, but with a thanks that spoke of the satisfaction it gives us all to know that we have done a good deed. He then shook the hand of each boy and, with an affable ‘good-bye,’ walked away. He went into the brewery.

All was forgiven and forgotten when he joined us, and we gave him two choruses of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.’

‘Gee, it was hot in there!’ he said.

‘That’s to prepare you for where you’re goin’,’ said some wit in the crowd.

The sally rocked the room with laughter. Even Mr. DaCosta, who could never be called a free-laugher, succumbed to the humorous quips and soon became stricken with hiccups.

None of us paid any attention to Mr. DaCosta’s affliction; though his head would jerk regularly, he was able to steady himself so that no beer was spilled from his seidel. But when he reached his twentieth seidel it was seen that the jerking had gone from his head to his knees. We stretched him out across three chairs, and my father admonished the gathering to give him air.

‘Don’t crowd around him!’ he shouted. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a man run over by a beer truck before ?’

‘Is there any ammonia in the house?’ someone asked.

‘No,’ came a reply; ‘will beer do?’

‘We’d better get him home,’ said Mr. Seil with a twinge of guilt.

My father agreed, sharing the same guilt. He told the others to remain.

‘Seil and I will take him home,’ he said. ‘Don’t break up the party on his account. Give us a hand and we’ll carry him out.’

Mr. DaCosta’s limp form was lifted from the chairs and borne out the door and down the outside steps.

‘I think he’d be more comfortable in the hearse,’ said my father, directing his helpers to the stately black wagon. It couldn’t be doubted that he would be, and he was carefully lifted into it.

My father and Mr. Seil climbed up to the driver’s seat, my father resuming the reins.

‘He’ll be all right soon as he gets home,’ my father reassured the others and he touched the horses with his whip.

On the return to Franklin Street no small boys chased after the hearse, for this time Mr. DaCosta was a quiescent corpse.