Toombs’s “The Undertakers’ Picnic,” a popular song of the 1890s, is doggerel:
On the grass was spread a splendid dinner,
Fit enough to please a saint or sinner,
Not a soul of them grew any thinner
When they took the champagne off the ice!
Jokes and fun were everywhere abounding
Till a man that all were there surrounding,
Took a fit of “coffin” most astounding!
This broke up the Picnic in a trice!
This broke up the Picnic in a trice!
CHORUS.
First came Mister Gravesall in a sober suit of black,
Then old Dusenbury in a Cemetery hack!
Coffinbury Nickelplate, who has a well-filled purse,
Bones and Jones and other men whose names we won’t re-hearse!
See Solomon Toombs. The Undertaker’s Picnic. New York, 1891. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts / Music Division. The name Toombs is surely a pun.
Featured Image: Thomas Rowlandson. Undertakers Regaling (1801), engraving on paper.