“Plus, suivant la coutume et anciennes lois, Je fais mon heritier tout le peuple françois; Je lui laisse les pleurs, le sang, les pilleries, Les meurtres, assassins, insignes voleries, Les veuves, orphelins, et les violemens, Les larmes, les regrets, et les rançonnemens, Les ruines des bourgs, des villes, des villages, Des chateaux, des maisons et tant de brigandages, Les ennuis, les douleurs et tous les maux reçus Par surprise ou assauts, par les flammes et feux, Bref de son cher pays les cendreuses reliques, Reste de mes labeurs et secrètes pratiques.”
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.
“Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, Great Love, some legacies; I here bequeath Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see; If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee, My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears; To women or the sea, my tears: Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore By making me serve her who had twenty more, That I should give to none, but such as had too much before:
My constancy I to the planets give; My truth to them who at the court do live; Mine ingenuity and openness, To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness; My silence to any who abroad hath been: My money to a Capuchin: Thou, Love, taught’st me, by appointing me To love there, where no love received can be, Only to give to such as have an incapacity....”
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.
“Here in the presence of my God While yet He spares me from His rod, Of perfect memory and mind And wholly to His will resigned, Not knowing how my lot shall be, Or if my soul may suddenly The summons hear to haste away Unto the realms of deathless day, Ere mortal flesh and spirit faint Or sickness all the senses taint, Before I lose the good intent, I make my will and testament. And first my soul to God I give, In whom all souls and spirits live, That He would set it in the place Prepared of His eternal grace, Though stained with many a spot it be, Nor fit for saints’ society, Until my Saviour wash it white And worthy of its Maker’s sight: Sweet Jesu, may this faith prevail, Nor at the last Thy Presence fail. My body to the fire or earth I give, without remorse or mirth, That without pomp or any pride The trammels may be laid aside That hemmed the soul in, but with meet Solemnity in church and street, Due reverence that moves the heart Of him who sees the dead depart, And tells the living he must come At last himself unto the tomb. And since there have been granted me Some goods of this world’s currency, (An earnest as I hope and trust Of goods that perish not in dust,) And since of higher weight and worth, The first felicity of earth, There has been granted me a wife With ecstasy to crown my life, To calm my spirit in distress And put a term to loneliness, I give, devise, bequeath, dispone, All that I have or call my own, (Though only for the meanwhile lent,) My goods, my stock, my tenement, Unto her use that she may crave No substance when I reach the grave: Though would that it were thrice the more To bless her with an ampler store. Item. The essays of my pen, All thoughts or poems, all that then May perfect or imperfect be, The records and remains of me, I give her to destroy or keep, The chaff to burn, the grain to reap, I give her all sweet thoughts that passed Betwixt us from first days to last, All words of soft and tender guise, All tears and smiles of heart or eyes, To brood on and to dream upon When I the unknown way am gone. Item. I give, all else above, My fervent and unchanging love To have and hold without restraint To her own use, not far and faint, But near and burning, not removed With the dear presence that she loved. Therefore her spirit I entrust To God’s tuition, till the dust And scales of earth fall from her eyes, And she awake in Paradise. Lastly, revoking every will, Without a wish or thought of ill, Praying for pardon from the great, Nor less from those of less estate, For word or deed, that I may be Remembered but with amity, Praying beyond all and above Pardon of His unbounded love, In perfect charity with all, Awaiting the great change and call, Hereto I set my seal and hand, That at the last my will may stand Inviolate, and none contest My mind and meaning manifest.”
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]