15

A Suitcase filled with Death

Dear Sir,

The suitcase was among the belongings of my grandfather, Frederick Hill, of Ossining, New York (a town famed as the site of Sing Sing Prison, on the Hudson River -- from which the phrase "up the river" as in being sent to jail, comes from).

When my grandfather died, I, with the rest of my family, went through his belongings, dealing with what to keep and what to throw away. My grandfather was an embalmer and funeral director by trade, first with Frank E. Campbell in New York City (where he became quite famous among those in the trade for the quality of his work, and embalmed Astors, Rockefellers, and the author Damon Runyon among others), then with his own funeral home in Rye, New York. I have always been facinated with his work, and chose to keep a number of belongings dealing with his trade, as well as a few fragments of his hobby, which was collecting antique clocks.

Among what I grabbed with an -- at first -- cursory glance was a small (about 18x10x5 inches), hard, light brown leather suitcase/satchel, which could accurately (considering both its contents and the circumstances of finding it) be called A SUITCASE FILLED WITH DEATH.

On top were some empty paper clock faces for replacement or repair on broken clocks.

Then a pile of official (blank) death certificates, which appear to date from approximately sometime in the 1940s to 1980 or so.

Then a number of small metal tools used in the embalming of bodies.

Then, the most important find. A pile of eight hard cardboard and fairly flat advertisements/promotional pieces from casket manufacturers, dating from the same time as the death certificates. These are things sent to funeral directors to encourage them to choose caskets to have amongst their stock. Some are simply pictures glued onto a hard cardboard backing, some are more elaborate (one is like a child's pop-up book -- when you pull a tab, the casket opens to show you the inside).

The interesting thing is what is on the backs of these promos. Each one has a piece of paper or some other writing surface glued to the back of it. In each case, there is an original work on the paper in pencil or ink, but none of the works appears to be in the same hand, and from vastly different periods. However, each is signed "Tulse Luper" in a hand and ink which matches none of the others, and is far clearer than any of the other printing, as if the signer were trying to take credit for the work at a much later date. In what I believe is chronological order (that is, with the dates of the caskets), the items on the back are:

1. (one sheet of fine creamy paper) A finely-crafted, but unfinished, drawing of an ornamental pool on what appears to be an English country estate. It is scortched, as though pulled from a fire before being destroyed. There is a statue of a horse (with a rider possibly begun) above the pool, and an unclear figure perhaps floating in it.

2. (a thin handmade book) A child's primer on the alphabet, using crudely-drawn animals for each of the letters. The child has marked up many of the pages with crayon, but a different adult hand has carefully marked in a great deal of unusual animals for each letter in pen. The back page, where one assumes the letter Z would be, is glued to the promo.

3. (heavy drafting paper) A section of an architectural study for a monument of some kind, as though being prepared for blueprinting. The beginning of a dome is evident, as well as part of a statue of a large, big-bellied man, his face not on this section.

4. (a lined page torn from a child's notebook) Hard to make out -- the pencilled page has been soaked in water at some point -- instructions for some kind of game cataloging the stars of the heavens in a precise numerical pattern.

5. (heavy paper of ostentatious quality) A menu to a expensive French restaurant. Neither prices nor the name of the restaurant are evident. It is stained with different colored sauces: blue, red, brown, green, white, black.

6. (an old piece of rough vellum, crumpled, then restretched) A section of a play, finely calligraphed, but so crossed through and rewritten as to obscure the original text beyond understanding.

7. (torn from a book) At first, this page looks like a section of a religious manuscript. A closer examination reveals it to be a section of the accounts book for a church, denoting operating costs. An official, apparently royal, hand has notated approval of the expenditures.

8. (an unidentifiable piece -- perhaps a piece of tanned leather) Japanese kanji characters.

As to how this wound up in my grandfather's hands. Well, he met a lot of people in his line of work, and through his hobby. He was a collector of many odd things, as I know well from sifting through them. His only connection to England, as far as I know, was when he was stationed there for a couple of years during WWII. But perhaps, somehow, he knew Tulse Luper. We will never know for sure.

There is of course, as always, the possibility of forgery. The signatures are rather blatant as identification. Perhaps someone in the IRR is misguidedly continuing in too much Luperist homage...

Yours sincerely,

Ian W. Hill
Falmouth, ME

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Peter Greenaway

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