Note 143 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
Boswell says: “Garrick’s funeral was talked of as extravagantly expensive, but Dr. Johnson, from his dislike to exaggeration, would not allow that it was distinguished by an extraordinary pomp. ‘Were there not six horses to each coach?’ said Mrs. Burney. Johnson: ‘Madam, there were no more six horses than six phœnixes.’” On this Croker notes: “There certainly were, and Johnson himself went in one of the coach and six.” Richard Cumberland saw Johnson standing beside the grave, at the foot of Shakespeare’s statue, bathed in tears. Horace Walpole wrote to the Countess of Ossory, February 1, 1779: “Yes, madam, I do think the pomp of Garrick’s funeral perfectly ridiculous,” and he gave his reasons with epigrammatic force. Others were of the same opinion; and John Henderson, the actor, wrote “a rather bitter impromptu on Mr. Garrick’s Funeral,” in which Garrick is represented as directing the pageant.
“‘Call all my carpenters—bid George attend. And ransack Monmouth Street from end to end; Buy all the black, defraud the starving moth. Or let him, if he will, defile the cloth: Bring moth and all—we have no time to lose— If there’s not black enough, then buy the blues.’ … Thus far he spoke, in an imperial tone, And quite forgot the funeral was his own.”