December, 1679, gave to his sister, Catharine Green, during her life, all his lands in Melbourne, Derby, and after her decease to others in trust, upon condition that the said Catharine Green should give four green waistcoats to four poor women in a green old age, every year, such green waistcoats to be lined with green galloon lace, and to be delivered to the said poor women on or before 21st December, yearly, that they might be worn on Christmas Day.
That the good men do may live after them, at least on their tombstones, has induced some to leave money as bribes to the writers of their epitaphs. The Abbé de la Rivière, son of an appraiser of wood, who became Bishop-duke of Langres, devised 100 écus for that purpose. But La Monnoye wrote the following:
“Here lies a notable personage,
Of family proud, of ancient lineage;
His virtues unnumbered, his knowledge profound,
Remarkably humble, remarkably wise;—
RemarkaCome, come! for twenty-five pound,
Remarkably humblI’ve told enough lies!”
Another clause in the Abbé’s will deserves to be recorded, from its pithiness:
“To my steward, I leave nothing; because he has been in my service for eighteen years.”
This reminds one of an anecdote told of the Cardinal Dubois, whose servants came to him every New Year’s Day to present their congratulations, and to receive a New Year’s box. When the steward came in his turn, the Cardinal said to him:
“Monsieur, I present you with all that you have stolen from me.”
The pleasure of receiving a legacy must be generally mingled with pain, more or less intense, according to the nearness of relationship of the deceased, or the affection we have had for him: but, when a plump legacy drops into our laps from a totally unexpected quarter, and left by one for whom we did not care, or possibly whom we did not know,—the amount of pain must be very minute. Such a case was that of a lady who came in for a large fortune from an eccentric individual whom she had never spoken to, though she had seen him at the opera, or in the park. The wording of the will was:
“I supplicate Miss B to accept my whole fortune, too feeble an acknowledgment of the inexpressible sensations which the contemplation of her adorable nose has produced on me.”
The following is as curious. A good citizen of Paris, who died about 1779, inserted this clause in his will:
“Item: I leave to M. l’Abbé, Thirty-thousand-men, 1,200 livres a year: I do not know him by any other name, but he is an excellent citizen, who certified me in the Luxembourg, that the English, that ferocious people which dethrones its monarchs, will soon be destroyed.”
On opening the testament, the executors were sorely puzzled to know who this Abbé Thirty-thousand-men could possibly be. At last, several people deposed that this citizen, a sworn enemy of the English and a great politician, had been wont every day to march up and down the Allée des Larmes in the Luxembourg; there he used to meet with an Abbé, who had as great an abhorrence of the English as himself, and who was perpetually urging:—“Those English rascals aren’t worth a straw. 30,000 men only are wanted,—30,000 men raised,—30,000 embarked,—30,000 landed,—and London would be in the hands of 30,000 men. A mere trifle!”
This was verified, and the legacy was delivered over to the intrepid Abbé, who had little dreamed of the spoil his 30,000 men were to bring him.
There is a question which we have been asking ourselves repeatedly, and which we now put before the reader. Is it possible to classify these wills? We have tried to do so, and have failed in every attempt. First, we have distributed them according to the bequests contained in them;—legacies of money, goods, animals, persons (of which latter, by the way, we have not given an example). There is no reason which can justify such an arbitrary system. Then again, when we arrange them according to the motives of the testator, as, wills indited by a perverted moral sense, or those composed under the influence of an aberration of the intellect, then we are obliged to exclude that of Corocotta Porcellus, of Jean Certain, beside many others, which can hardly be forced into position under either of these heads. And it is because the mind of man is too intricate, his motives too involved, his feelings too transient, his principles too obscure, for us to divide and subdivide the actions springing from them, as we can settle the classes of molluscs, or determine the genera of butterflies,—that in this paper we have attempted nothing of the kind. For wills are, as has been shown, as diverse as the hearts of men, of which they are the transcripts. An anatomist may dissect the heart, may name and register every muscle and fibre,—but he can tell us nothing of the motives which impelled that heart to throb faster, or chilled it to a sudden stillness. The bitterness of hate has left no poison in its cavities, in it the fleeting passion has set no seal, emotion left no trace, pity relaxed no nerve. The impulses which brought forth so full a leafage of action are lost, as the sap from the bare tree.
So surely as the berry indicates the soundness of the root, the flower of the bulb, so does man’s last will tell of the goodness or foulness of the heart which conceived it. The cankered root sends up only a sickly, withered germ, which brings forth no fruit in due season; whilst the wine that maketh glad the heart of man, the oil which maketh him a cheerful countenance, and the bread that strengthens his heart, have burst from roots which mildew has never marred, nor worm fretted.
Hitherto we have presented little but what is cramped or distorted to the reader; the generous and good, often quite as eccentric, have only received a passing touch, for we may possibly speak of “Curious Benefactions” in a separate article.
S. Baring-Gould, M.A.
