“The Will in hand, the Father musing stood, Then gravely answered, ‘Your advice is good; Yet take the paper, and in safety keep; I’ll make another will before I sleep, But if I hear of some atrocious deed, That deed I’ll burn, and yours will then succeed. Two thousand I bequeath you. No reproof! And there are small bequests—he’ll have enough; For if he wastes, he would with all be poor, And if he wastes not, he will need no more.’ The Friends then parted: this the Will possess’d, And that another made—so things had rest.”

Until the father died.

“Unhappy Youth! e’er yet the tomb was closed, And dust to dust conveyed in peace reposed, He sought his father’s closet, searched around, To find a will: the important will was found. Well pleased he read, These lands, this manor, all Now call me master! I obey the call! Then from the window looked the valley o’er, And never saw it look so rich before. He viewed the dairy, viewed the men at plough, With other eyes, with other feelings now, And with a new-formed taste found beauty in a cow. The distant swain who drove the plough along Was a good useful slave, and passing strong! In short, the view was pleasing, nay, was fine, ‘Good as my father’s, excellent as mine!’ Again he reads,—but he had read enough; What followed put his virtue to a proof. ‘How this? to David Wright two thousand pounds! A monstrous sum! beyond all reason!—zounds! This is your friendship running out of bounds. Then here are cousins, Susan, Robert, Joe, Five hundred each. Do they deserve it? No! Claim they have none—I wonder if they know What the good man intended to bestow! This might be paid—but Wright’s enormous sum Is—I’m alone—there’s nobody can come— ’Tis all his hand, no lawyer was employed To write this prose, that ought to be destroyed! To no attorney would my father trust: He wished his son to judge of what was just, As if he said, My boy will find the Will, And, as he likes, destroy it or fulfil. This now is reason, this I understand— What was at his, is now at my command. As for this paper, with these cousiny names, I—’tis my Will—commit it to the flames. Hence! disappear! now am I lord alone: They’ll groan, I know, but, curse them, let them groan.’”

Needless to say, Wright inquires for the will, and is told that there is none. After expostulation and discreet delay, the friend is satisfied that the will is destroyed: to the son’s consternation a copy of the first will is produced, and David Wright becomes the lawful heir.

In “The Thunderbolt” the simple theme is drawn out with quiet but subtle skill. An elder brother dies, rich and with one child only, a natural daughter. The family, upon whom nature has showered neither excellence nor wealth, assembles with all the gloom and all the curiosity appropriate to the occasion. It appears that there is no will forthcoming; the daughter therefore will have no share in the estate, the brothers and a sister being entitled between them. But when all is thought to be settled and safe, when each has devised a new scheme and scale of life, a brother breaks in upon the smug conclave announcing that there was a will, but that he had destroyed it. His story breaks down, and the act is traced to his wife who nursed the deceased on his death-bed, accidentally found the will, and after his death deliberately destroyed it. The poor daughter finds that her father has not forgotten her; the selfish family is thunderstruck. Such is the character, and hence the name, of the play.

In Sir Arthur Pinero’s drama no lawsuit follows, all parties agreeing in a compromise. But in real life probate actions are a rich source of intimate dramas and revelations. From them innumerable details emerge: threats and cajolery, rights and wrongs, loves and hates, stand out with all their tender or terrible insistence. In fiction inevitably they find a place. In “Mr. Meeson’s Will” Sir Henry Rider Haggard has discovered an extraordinary theme, but he has not shown the art which made the ordinary theme of “The Thunderbolt” a subtle and telling play. Mr. Meeson is outraged by his nephew’s plain-speaking, which reminds him of his unrighteous dealings, and in a rage cuts him out of his will. The girl on whose behalf the nephew was to be disinherited is, by a strange course of events, thrown with Mr. Meeson on a deserted island, with two sailors and a child only besides. In terror of death, which swiftly overtakes him, Mr. Meeson would revive his former will, but there is nothing with or upon which to write it. The only possible method is to tattoo the dying man’s desires upon human flesh, and this is done by one of the sailors upon the back of the tortured girl. She is rescued by a passing ship; and on returning home a probate action, such as never yet had been, was fought out to a triumphant conclusion.

Another story, scarcely less remarkable in its own way, is revealed by Edmund Gosse, in “Father and Son,” of an action set in motion by a son who was grievously wronged by one of the “saints”—the sect among whom Mr. Gosse’s father held an honourable place. This member of the community had persuaded a rich man, well on in years, to board with him, and when he died a will was produced leaving his entire fortune to the “saint” with whom he lodged. Yet the old man had a son surviving. In time the son came home from overseas, and the universal legatee of the will was arrested. The trial disclosed that the old man had been “converted” by the “saint,” and had disinherited his son as an “unbeliever.” The “saint” had traced the signature to the will by drawing the testator’s fingers over the document, when he was already comatose. To the last the “saint” declared his belief that he had done no wrong, that it was righteous to wrest the money to pious and charitable uses. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

FOOTNOTE

[1] The “Dictionary of National Biography” says: “Born December 23, 1621, probably at Sellinge, Kent.”