Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/387

Charles Dickens] allowed one peep from his grave, to know the failure of his malignant efforts.

It would be a curious study to analyse the feelings of those odd testators when, pen in hand, they sat down to dispose of their own remains, after some truly fantastic fashion. There is a whole line of these eccentrics; indeed, they are to be expected in the ordinary course of nature. It would seem that with this unbounded power of disposition comes also a sort of fitful fancy akin to the caprices of a sick person, or it may be ascribed to an exaggerated and morbid sense of self-importance. However this may be, the instances of this shape of extravagance are innumerable. There have been legions of testators insanely and jealously solicitous lest the mortal tenement they left behind them should go down to the clay, or come in contact with worms or clods; and yet the same persons, had they to suffer amputation of a leg or an arm, could scarcely be uneasy as to what was done with their severed limb. The tourist both in England and Ireland, travelling along by-roads, is sometimes pointed out a house with a peculiarly-shaped roof, and is then told a story of some oddity of a Dives who had left, to the great torment of his executors, some very strict and minute directions as to the putting away of his body above ground in the roof. Sometimes this arrangement is to be accounted for through the observances of some fancied legal condition, as where a lease has been granted for so long a time "as the lessee shall be over ground;" and though the law-courts would have very soon shown that this was not a carrying out of the spirit of the agreement, the baffled heirs might not have cared to take the trouble of making a new disposition of the remains, and would have left them where they were.

About the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, people who passed by Stevenage had a bill thrust into their hands inviting them to visit an old hovel that once belonged to a certain Henry Trigg, and "where," added the bill, "his remains are still upon the rafters of the west-end of the hovel, and may be viewed by any traveller who may think it worthy of notice." The former tenant of the remains thus disposed of, had made his last will almost entirely, it would seem, with a view to secure the gratification of this peculiar idiosyncrasy. He began it with that sort of complacent and even jubilant strain of piety, which is common, however, to all testators. "I, Henry Trigg, grocer," he wrote, "being very infirm and weak in body, but of perfect sound mind and memory, praised be God for it, do give my soul to God; as to my body, I commit it to the west-end of my hovel, to be decently laid there upon a floor erected by my executors, upon the purlins, nothing doubting, but that at the great resurrection I will receive the same again."

All his property, with the exception of some slight legacies, he bequeathed to his brother, a clergyman, provided he strictly carried out this condition; if he should be disinclined to do so, it was to go to a second brother on the same condition; should he refuse, it passed to a nephew on the same terms. The whole wound up with a number of bequests, varying in amount from a guinea downwards to one shilling, and even the shilling and guinea were not to pass to the legatee until three years after his decease.

Some of these cases are, of course, due to sheer insanity, in others to an almost grotesque spirit of mischief, but in a far larger class they may be set down as the outpourings of arrogance; as who should say, "I have the wealth, the will, and the power, and am entitled, if I choose it, to make my whims and humours attend on what I give." Under which category is to be classed that Mr. Tuke, of Rotherham, who died in 1810, leaving a testamentary disposition that must have been the delight and amusement of the district. He left a penny to every child that should attend his funeral, to the utter disorganisation of, or certain holiday at, every school for miles round. The result was, that some seven hundred flocked to pay this tribute of respect: they received the allotted reward. This could have been no yearning towards infant life, for he was a notorious and churlish miser of the Scrooge pattern. To every poor woman in the parish was left the sum of one shilling. The only legacies of respectable amount were those that had reference to the glorification of his poor old remains—half a guinea was left to the bellringers "to strike off one peal of grand bobs" at the precise moment he was put down into the clay. Seven of the oldest navvies were to receive a guinea for "puddling him up" in his grave. There must have been great merriment and general hilarity at these odd obsequies. His more serious dispositions were quite in keeping. To a daughter he left four guineas; but to his old and faithful servant twenty guineas a year. To an old woman, "who had for eleven years tucked him up in bed," was bequeathed the sum of one guinea. Finally, he set apart a sort of endowment to supply forty dozen penny loaves, which, at noon on every Christmas-day for ever, were to be thrown down from the steeple of the parish church. These ridiculous fancies were no doubt the offspring of a petty vanity wishing to obtain the most fuss and publicity at a very cheap rate—tinged also with a wish to leave some trouble behind him.

Akin to this testator must have been Oliver the Miller, who died about seventy years ago. He seems to have had a strange fancy for the colour popularly associated with millers and their men, and perhaps their hats. He was interred in a choice spot, and close to his mill, in a tomb made by himself some thirty years before, and in a coffin which had reposed many years under his bed. It was all painted white, and was carried by eight men harmoniously dressed in the same colour; a young girl, twelve years old, officiated as clergyman, and preached a sermon at the edge of the grave. Now, again, it may be asked, what pleasure could Oliver have found in the anticipation of these grotesque rites?

To the pure Tartuffe element the preparation