The Romance of Wills and Testaments

It is said that Lord Eldon, in early days, would wrest pieces of poetry into the form of legal instruments, and that he succeeded in reducing “Chevy Chace” into the style of a bill in Chancery. The opposite tendency, it may be imagined, is the more common, and from the history of England to the last will and testament there is little that has not been converted into verse from time to time. It is rumoured that the essential points of those prosaic documents, the acts relating to Death Duties, have been versified: certainly the “Canons of Descent” are in verse and in print. Their quality is not high.

Little better is the style of most wills which have appeared in verse. Of these the rhyming will of Will Jackett (1789), who died in North Place, Islington, is well known:—

Such wills have naturally been seized upon by collectors of verse and oddities. But for the most part they are scarcely worth transcription in full, so that space and time may be saved by quoting a few fragments only. A will, “found in the house of an old Batchelor lately deceased” according to “The Muses’ Mirror” (1783), begins thus:—

Four years later Nathaniel Lloyd, Esquire, of Twickenham, followed the “old Batchelor’s” example.

More modern, but in its touches of human nature not of this age only, is the will of one Sarah Smith.

Genuine wills in rhyme are naturally rare, but literature is full of imaginary or fantastic testaments, as well in prose as in verse. To such a one Sir Walter Scott refers in a letter to Lady Anne Hamilton: “I always remind myself of the bequest which once upon a time the wren made to the family of Hamilton. This magnanimous, patriotic bird, after disposing of his personal property to useful and public services, such as one of his legs to prop the bridge of Forth and the other to prop the bridge of Tay, at length instructs his executors thus:—

Whether in prose or in verse—verse not seldom prosaic—a striking similarity of idea runs through them, from the will of the cochon of the fourth century, who gives his teeth to the quarrelsome, his ears to the deaf, his muscles to the weak, down to the will of Chatterton in the eighteenth century, who gives “all my vigour and fire of youth to Mr. George Catcott, being sensible he is most in want of it,” and “from the same charitable motive ... unto the Rev. Mr. Camplin, senior, all my humility.”

On earth all things decay and have their period, so all things may make their wills.

The idea may be indefinitely extended. Among the writings of Thomas Nash, for instance, is a fantasy entitled “Summer’s Last Will and Testament.”

Peignot, in his “Choix de Testaments” (1829) made a beginning of a bibliography of imaginative or imaginary wills, among which he cites the last will of the Ligue in the “Satyre Ménippée.” It has eloquent and poignant passages.

Peignot showed what possibilities lay in this research; perhaps of poetic wills his countryman Villon’s “Testaments” are the most noteworthy. English literature, too, has many poems of this nature, and John Donne’s poem called “The Will” is characteristic of its author and of its kind.

It can be seen how readily the mock will lends itself to satire or wit; but as a last example of poetic wills may be quoted one of quite another nature, one which savours of the piety and the spirit of seventeenth-century testaments.

That sweet spirit Eugénie de Guérin, at the entry in her Journal for March 31, 1838, suddenly muses on the making of a will: “Let us see how I would make my will. To you, my Journal, my pen-knife, the ‘Confessions’ of Saint Augustine. To Father, my poems; to Érembert, Lamartine; to Mimi, my rosary, my little knife, ‘The Way to Calvary,’ ‘The Meditations of Father Judde.’ To Louise, ‘The Spiritual Conflict’; to Mimi also my ‘Imitation’; to Antoinette, ‘The Burning Soul.’ To you also my little strong box for your secrets, on condition that you burn all mine, if there should be any in it. What would you do with them? They are affairs of conscience, some of those matters that lie between the soul and God, some letters of counsel from M. Bories and that good Norman curé whom I have mentioned. I keep them as a souvenir, and because I require them; they are my papers, which, however, must not see the light of day. If, then, what I write here for amusement should come to pass, if you become my heir, remember to burn all the contents of this box.”

Kenneth Grahame, forgetting for a moment his Eugénie de Guérin, asks in “Dream Days”: “Who in search of relaxation, would ever dream of choosing the drawing-up of a testamentary disposition of property?” But this sudden craze he gives to little Harold. He was shy of showing his “death-letter,” as he called it, but it came out after a tussle. It was not the first will to cause dissension. “My dear Edward, when I die I leave all my muny to you my walkin sticks wips my crop my sord and gun bricks forts and all things i have goodbye my dear charlotte when i die I leave you my wach and cumpus and pencel case my salors and camperdown my picteres and evthing goodbye your loving brother armen my dear Martha I love you very much i leave you my garden my mice and rabets my plants in pots when I die please take care of them my dear—”

But will-making may have a sinister attraction, a suspicion of something hardly sane. Fragments of Chatterton’s will have already been quoted. Apprenticed to an attorney, he strove to get free, and as a last means to induce his master to dismiss him, he left in the office this strange document, dated April 14, 1770, in which his approaching suicide was announced. It had the effect desired. “All this wrote between 11 and 2 o’clock Saturday, in the utmost distress of mind. April 14, 1770. This is the last will and testament of me, Thomas Chatterton, of the city of Bristol; being sound in body, or it is the fault of my last surgeon, the soundness of my mind, the coroner and jury are to be judges of, desiring them to take notice that the most perfect masters of human nature in Bristol distinguish me by the title of the Mad Genius; therefore, if I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savoured of insanity.” There follow directions for tomb and tablets, and bequests of satirical or bitter humour. “I leave also my religion to Dr. Cutts Barton, Dean of Bristol, hereby empowering the Sub Sacrist to strike him on the head when he goes to sleep in church.... I leave my moderation to the politicians on both sides of the question.... I give my abstinence to the company of the Sheriff’s annual feast in general, more particularly to the Aldermen.... I leave the young ladies all the letters they have had from me, assuring them that they need be under no apprehension from the appearance of my ghost, for I die for none of them.... I leave my mother and sister to the protection of my friends, if I have any. Executed in the presence of Omniscience this 14th day of April, 1770.”

But probably of imaginative and fantastic wills the most remarkable is one said to be the work of a lunatic in America, more surprising for its beauty than are others for their satiric or malicious inventiveness.[2]

“ ... I leave the children for the term of their childhood the flowers, fields, blossoms, and woods, with the right to play among them freely, warning them at the same time against thistles and thorns. I devise to the children the banks, the brooks, and the golden sands beneath waters thereof, and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees, and I leave to the children long long days to be merry in, and the night and the moon and the train of the Milky Way to wonder at.

“I devise to the boys jointly all the useful fields, all the pleasant waters where one may swim, all the streams where one may fish or where, when grim winter comes, one may skate, to have and hold the same for the period of their boyhood.... I give to the said boys each his own place by the fireside at night, with all the pictures that may be seen in the burning wood, to enjoy without let or hindrance and without any encumbrance or care.

“To lovers I devise their imaginary world with whatever they may need, as stars, sky, red roses by the wall, the bloom of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire.... To the loved ones with snowy crowns I bequeath happiness, old age, the love and gratitude of their children, until they fall asleep.”