Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/514

Rh WILLS IN FICTION.

HERE would the novelist of the period be without the disinheriting will, the manipulated will, the secreted will, and all kinds of wills in every style of obliteration and in every stage of destruction? Why, he would be nearly as bereft of staple stock in trade as if he had lost the lovelorn maiden, the tender-hearted soldier, or the grand old "hall of my ancestors." Even writers of a higher grade find it convenient to make use of such machinery to help make the story go. In "The Pennycomequicks," for instance, Baring-Gould tells the tale of a prig of a clerk who becomes the master of a manufactory after the supposed drowning of his uncle in a flood, and all because another more scheming relative had torn off the signature to a will in which the grim ancient had left all his property to the niece of his old partner. This is but a type of countless plots. A little more novelty appears along familiar lines when, as in a story we recently read, the will which gives the heroine everything is thrust into the fire by her in a spirit of self-sacrifice, but is picked up from the grate by the usual spying servant and turns out to be merely charred, and still sufficiently decipherable to set everything right. We might expect to find truth at the bottom of a well, but only the fervid imagination of the story-writer of the day would enable us to discover in such a place the all-important will, in the form of a damp and soiled roll of parchment, hidden by the false but fair step-mother, who walks in her sleep and so leads to the spot the investigating cousin from abroad, determined to ferret out the mystery and restore the wronged heiress to her rights. We are not entirely surprised to find the devoted worshipper of the cousin going down the well for the precious document, breaking his arm, inhaling gas, and dying to waterfalls of tears.

Many readers may recall in this connection an interesting article on "Law in Romance" which appeared in one of the legal periodicals about twenty years ago. The writer, whose name did not appear, divided his suggestive illustrations into two classes. First, he dealt with the stereotyped instances where the plot turns on a disputed will, a forged deed, an altered marriage register, or a contested inheritance. Then he took up those cases where, after a variety of adventures, the hero or heroine is justly or unjustly accused of some crime, generally murder, and where a picture is given of a court-room during a capital or other trial.

As noticeable among the first class was placed Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year,"—a novel, by the way, whose popularity is attested to-day by large successive editions. It was remarked that this was a work filled with accounts of barristers and attorneys without number, including the celebrated pleader who saw law-points in every affair that came up, from a wedding to a funeral; that there was scarcely a page in which some reference was not made to deeds, courts, or conveyancing; that the author was himself a barrister of excellent standing, who had written an admirable work on the study of the law; but yet that the whole plot turned on a question of title which could not be held to be otherwise than bad law. In this respect it was contrasted with George Eliot's "Felix Holt the Radical," where the law on an ancient and abstruse point of like character was approved. So that it would appear that the lore of this most learned of women and philosophic chief of novelists was superior to the knowledge of the distinguished practitioner who, nevertheless, composed such a lively story.

In discussing the second class, the writer considered in very palatable style the le-