Charles Dickens Implemented A Dress Code For His Funeral
Wikimedia CommonsCharles Dickens was very concerned about his privacy, which is how he ended up having one of history’s strangest celebrity funerals.
Charles Dickens was very much a celebrity of his era. Perhaps no author better represented the Victorian period than Dickens, known for such literary classics as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.
As such, Dickens was an incredibly private individual, going to extreme measures to hide his love affair with an 18-year-old actress, Ellen Ternan, after the dissolution of his long marriage to his wife Catherine.
When Dickens died, his family faced a dilemma regarding where he should be buried. Dickens would have wanted, they knew, to be buried near his home. But they chose to bury him in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, a much more public area, despite it largely being against his wishes.
Dickens’ last will and testament, however, shows just how private he wanted his funeral to be. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Dickens wrote that he wanted to be “buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner.”
He did not want any public announcement to be made mentioning the time or place of his burial, and wanted no more than three plain mourning coaches to be employed. He also asked “that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long hat-band, or other such revolting absurdity.”
It may seem odd to enforce a dress code at your own funeral, but the inclusion of this detail speaks to Dickens’ larger philosophy of keeping his private life truly private. In the end, it seems he simply didn’t want much fuss to be made over his passing, likely to avoid making it a public spectacle.
Unfortunately for Dickens, while only 14 people attended his private funeral, his grave was ultimately left open for three days so that the public could come and pay their respects to the late author, making it far from a private affair.
After reading about these weird celebrity funerals, read about 11 of the most tragic celebrity deaths in recent history. Or, learn about the 10 weirdest people throughout history.
