I am going to see a gentleman cremated at the famous monumental cemetery of Milan. I am specially invited to be present at nine o’clock in the morning, and if my courage does not ooze out of my fingers’ ends, I shall certainly go in the interest of my readers who may wish to be cremated, and who would like to know beforehand what they have to go through and what it is like.

To the ‘crematorio’ of Milan people are brought from all parts of the world. The room in which the furnace is situated is a very nice comfortable one, and there are black chairs set against the walls, in which the friends of the deceased sit and wait while his body is in the oven. The process is very simple. Suppose you want to be cremated. You are brought into the room dressed in a nice white shirt and drawers, and you are gently laid on an iron plate that looks like a large tea-tray turned up at the ends. As soon as the oven is sufficiently heated the door is opened, and you are pushed into a receptacle inside on the tray, much on the same principle as a baker puts bread into the oven. The door is then closed for two hours, and then the iron coffer is taken out. Inside it your friends see a nice white powder and a few fragments of white-coloured bone. That is you. You are then put into an urn, or glass box, or anything you like, and put away in a nice little locker in the great hall of the cemetery. Outside your locker is a lid with your name and the date of your cremation inscribed on it.

I was shown in this hall, in a glass case, the ashes of a lady, aged twenty-six, who was cremated a year or two since. She left her body in her will to be burned, and afterwards shown in the interests of the Cremation Society. Outside, in the grounds, there is a monument to her, and on it in a glass frame is her photograph. She was a very pretty lady, and it is difficult to imagine that she is the same person as the little heap of white ashes in the glass jar. But she is.

It is a general I am to see cremated. He has been brought a long distance in a coffin, and is temporarily deposited in the cemetery. The performance is public, and there are no reserved seats. From what I have seen it is absolutely devoid of offensiveness in any way, and all the officials are smiling, happy-looking folks. I took so much interest in the place that the chief official fancied I might one day be a customer. He pointed out to me that in the hall of the cemetery the places for ‘urns’ to be deposited were booking fast, and would soon be quite full. He had a capital stall—I mean locker—to let in the third row and one in the fifth. The offer was very tempting, but I didn’t close with it.

I don’t know whether many people, when they are exhilarated by Nature’s champagne, cry out, ‘I’m glad I’m alive.’ I do sometimes, and just at present I have very good grounds for the exclamation. I have been cremated, and that is enough to make any man rejoice that he can see and hear and eat and smoke a cigar.

As I told you, I had an invitation to the ‘crematorio’ of Milan to see a general cremated, which I accepted. Wonderful things have happened since then, and that they may be understood let me proceed methodically. On the day preceding the proposed cremation I made up my mind to spend the evening at La Scala, with the exception of the San Carlo at Naples the largest theatre in the world. I sent to the office for a box, and was told there were none; they were all let. If I wanted one I must apply to a subscriber who did not intend to use his that night. Off I started in search of a subscriber. I inquired of the ladies and gentlemen I met in the street, all in my choicest Italian, ‘Pray, have you a box at La Scala, and do you intend to use it?’ At last in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele I met an old lady, who told me her master, the Count Somebody, was out of town. I could have his key for fifty francs. I sent to the address she gave, and received the key, and in the evening marched into the theatre, unlocked my box, and was, for the time being, chez moi. It seems droll to an Englishman to buy a key instead of a ticket, but this is a common way of doing business in Italy, where, in some of the theatres, the boxes are bought right out by nobles and others for a lifetime. This perpetual proprietorship accounts for the fact that the boxes are many of them differently decorated and lined. Some are blue, some green, some red—all are furnished after the fancy of the owner, and the general effect to the foreign eye is bizarre in the extreme.

The performance was, of course, magnificent. They know how to sing and how to mount an opera at La Scala, and there were some processions and stage pictures in ‘Don Carlos’ that Sir Augustus might have studied, and Sir Henry made notes of. After the opera there was a ballet. It was a prologue and six acts, and I was very interested in it, so much so that I forgot for a long time to look at my watch, and when I did, in the middle of the fourth act, I found it was 1.30.

I went home and to bed at once. I had to be in the cemetery by nine in the morning to see the General cremated, and was terribly tired. I awoke in the morning at 8.30. Then began a struggle in my mind. Should I dress and rush up to the cemetery without my breakfast? I hesitated. A man wants a meal before he sees a sight like that. I hesitated, and I was lost, for I turned over and went to sleep again, and when I woke it was 10.30. The General was finished, and I had not been there to see.

I was sorry that, like my Lord Tomnoddy who went to the coffee-house opposite Newgate, I had slept too long, but after a ballet that lasts until 2 a.m. a man may be excused if he doesn’t get up in time for a cremation at nine. I had made special arrangements with the officials and a famous scientific gentleman of Milan, who was most anxious for me to publish an account of the proceedings in England, and the thing worried me a little all day; but at night I stepped into a compartment in the sleeping-car for Lugano, and forgot all about the matter. Just, however, as the train was starting and my eyes were closing in sleep—I had dined well an hour previously—who should enter the car but the scientific gentleman. ‘They told me where to find you at the hotel,’ he said. ‘Come out at once; there’s a cremation to-night.’ ‘But my ticket,’ I said; ‘I must go on to Lugano.’ ‘Bother your ticket! Come with me, and see what I’ll show you. You’ll never regret it.’ Before I could expostulate further he had me out of the station and into a cab, and we were soon driving along through the night in the direction of the cemetery.

As we entered the gates the moon was high, and the figures of angels and women in white marble, keeping guard over the graves, had a ghostly effect. It was with something like a shudder that I passed through the black doors of the chapel-like building where the crematory rites are performed. The furnace was roaring already, and the heat was intense. I glanced at the metal tray raised to the level of the oven, expecting to see the body ready, but, to my surprise, this was empty. I turned to my guide. ‘Where is the person to be cremated?’ I asked. ‘Here,’ was the reply, and he touched me on the shoulder. Instantly I was seized, and bound, and gagged, and hoisted on to the awful tray, where I lay dumb and helpless. ‘You wished to have a thorough knowledge of cremation,’ said the fiend who had lured me to this awful place. ‘You shall have it.’ I tried to scream; I tried to burst my bonds—all, all in vain. The great doors of the oven were flung open, and there came forth a great gust of heat that seemed to scorch my living flesh. Slowly the tray moved nearer and nearer to the mouth of the oven. I was going to my death—to be cremated alive! The heat grew more and more intense. I scorched and singed; my eyeballs started from their sockets; my body seemed to swell and crack. Suddenly with a violent jerk I was shot forward into the oven, the great doors closed on me with a clang—— and—and—the conductor of the sleeping-car came rushing into my berth to know what was the matter.

I woke with a start. The heat was intense, the fumes of the charcoal terrible, and I had been dreaming a dyspeptic dream in my berth. Moral: Never travel by an overheated sleeping-car after thinking about cremation all day.