Death mask

they're Waring Street, right.

Death Mask is in St Patrick's Cathedral.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And some of my favorites feature some of these strange and wonderful traditions that have been somewhat lost to history.

Today we are talking about mourning clothes, funeral processions, post-mortem photography, hair jewelry, death masks, embalming, funeral biscuits, mourning stationery, cemeteries, and memorial objects.

Today we are talking about Victorian death rituals.

Okay.

There you go.

Good point.

We just did an entire series on masks with a specific emphasis on death masks.

But we should also mention them here.

belly of mahogany

filled a corner of the room breathing antique mystery and refinement at one end of it on a small vacant space of wall hung a cast apparently the death mask of a woman by which the eye was immediately attracted with something of a shock and hailed by a curious fascination the face was smiling a smile of great peace and also of a strange cunning one other characteristic it had the woman looked as though at any moment she would suddenly open her eyes and if you turned away from her and looked again she seemed to be smiling to herself because she had opened them that moment behind your back and just closed them again in time it was a face that never changed and yet was always changing she looked doubly strange in the evening light and her smile softened and deepened as the shadows gathered in the room antony came and stood in front of her

silencieux he whispered i love you silencieux smiling silence i love you all day long on the moors your smile has stolen like a moonbeam by my side as he spoke from far down the wood came

the gentle sound of a woman's voice calling antony and coming nearer as it called with a shade of impatience antony bent nearer to the image and kissed it good-bye silencieux he whispered good-bye until the rising of the moon then he passed out on to the little staircase that led down into the wood and called back to the approaching voice i am coming beatrice beatrice being the name of his wife as he called a shaft of late sunlight suddenly irradiated the tall slim form of a woman coming up the wood she wore no hat and the sun made a misty glory of her pale gold hair she seemed a fairy romantic thing thus gliding in her yellow silk gown through the darkening pines and her face was the face of the image feature for feature there was on it too the same light the same smile antony she called as they drew nearer to each other where in the wide world have you been dinner has been waiting for half an hour dinner he said laughing and kissing

Only at first sight, for, if like Beatrice, you were the possessor of a face so uncommon in type that your lover might, with little fear of disproof, declare at all events in England that there was none other like it, you might grow superstitious as you looked at an anticipation so creepily identical, and conceive strange fancies of reincarnation.

what if this had been you in some former existence or at all events if there is any truth in those who tell us that in the mould and the lines of our faces and hands yes and in every secret marking of our bodies our fates are written as in a parchment would it not be reasonable to surmise perhaps to fear that the writing should mean the same on one face as on the other and the fates as well as the faces prove identical beatrice gave the mask back to antony with a little shiver

it is very wonderful very strange but she makes me frightened what was the story the man told you antony no doubt it was all nonsense antony replied but he said that it was the death mask of an unknown girl found drowned in the seine drowned in the seine exclaimed beatrice growing almost as white as the image yes and he said too that the story went that the sculptor who moulded it had fallen so in love with the dead girl that he had gone mad and drowned himself in the seine also Can it be true, Antony? I hope so, for it is so beautiful, and nothing is really beautiful till it has come true.

But the pain, the pity of it, Antony.