Fine old custom

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The tradition of the funeral cortège is very ancient, dating back at least to the time of the Roman empire. In the late 19th century and the early years of the 20th, hearses bearing the deceased and carriages carrying mourners were commonly drawn by horses, but new mechanized modes of transport were quickly making this practice obsolete. Automobiles were first used in an American funeral procession in 1909. Several years later Lyle Abbot, the automobile editor of the Arizona Republican, coined the term "motorcade," and where the tradition survives today it usually involves these strings of cars. But automobiles were rare in 1904 (only one appears in all the pages of Ulysses), while many North American and European cities had streetcar systems. Mexico City and Milan introduced dedicated funeral trams in the 1880s—horse-drawn at first, it seems, but soon electric—and by the end of the century many large cities had followed suit. Although Dubliners were justifiably proud of their new electric tram system, their city was behind the times on this count.

As the funeral procession picks its way through a herd of lowing cattle Bloom says, "I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the parkgate to the quays.... All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the boats." Martin Cunningham agrees: "Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare.... Quite right. They ought to." But when Bloom volunteers a similar idea––"to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all"––his proposal is derided for giving strangers no opportunity to pay respects to the dead. Cunningham, however, recalls a time when a hearse overturned at Dunphy's Corner, spilling a corpse onto the roadway. Such incidents continue to happen. In 2008 a hearse bearing the remains of Caroline Thompson through the streets of Ipswich, England performed an evasive maneuver and hit a bollard. Two of the four horses bolted, the carriage slammed into automobiles and overturned, the horses ran away in terror, and the coffin slid onto the street.

Glossing "That's a fine old custom," Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner remark: "The custom is that a funeral procession will take a route through the centre of the city, thereby giving many a chance to salute the hearse as it passes, by lifting their caps or hats." In a personal communication, Senan Molony objects to this reading, observing that Simon must be referring to doffed hats rather than to funeral processions. He is certainly correct about the referent: what other grammatical sense could "That" have, coming from someone inside one of the carriages? Nevertheless, there is good reason to associate the funeral procession with the doffed hats as Slote's annotation does. The two customs were intimately linked, and modern efficiency and anonymity were threatening them both. (Both have since "died out," as Simon fears may happen.)

The drawing and the photograph at the end of this note show that when great public figures like Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Collins died, their remains were carried to the Glasnevin cemetery through the heart of the Hibernian metropolis––both scenes are set on lower O'Connell Street––so that crowds of onlookers could pay their respects. There is good reason to suppose that lesser personages received similar honorific treatment and that the route of Paddy Dignam's procession has not been determined solely by geography. Slote and his collaborators quote from Dublin Explorations and Reflections, a book published anonymously in Dublin in 1917: "All day, and particularly on Saturdays and Sundays, the long processions wind up Sackville Street on their way to Glasnevin. Whether it is more people die in Dublin than in other cities, or simply that they die more expensively and with more pomp, I have no idea. But I have never before in my life been in a town where hearses and coffins and mourning coaches were so much in evidence."