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INTRODUCTION.

The making of a last will and testament is one of the most solemn acts of a man’s life. Few are so frivolous and indifferent as not to realize the importance of an act which is to live after them, and survive long after the hand that traced it has mingled with its kindred dust. They feel that, however regardless people have been of their sayings and doings, however trivial and unimportant have been their acts in the eyes of others, a certain attention, respect, and weight will be given to so deliberate and serious an act as a man’s will. They realize, when making it, that they are exercising one of the highest and most important privileges society has granted to the individual—the right to speak and order as to the disposition of his effects and property after he has ceased to live. Accordingly, men who have been rudely treated by the world, whose infirmities and eccentricities have subjected them to its ridicule, whose words would command no hearing from their fellow-men, have eagerly availed themselves of this last and important opportunity to freely speak their mind, to vent their spleen on ungrateful friends, to deride an unfeeling world, and in a cynical manner to express without reserve opinions about persons and things, which could have no hearing while they lived, but in a last will and testament will command the attention due to the solemnity of the occasion. In a word, they take this method to give a parting hit to an unfriendly and unsympathizing world.

It will be instructive, as well as interesting, as a phase of human nature, to refer, by way of introduction, to some curious wills, which may form an inviting prelude to a more serious treatment of the subject.

As might be anticipated, many wills reflect the singular notions, the eccentricities and prejudices of the makers. In many cases, the testator speaks his mind so freely that his opinion of others really amounts to a libel; again, his antipathies or his affections are as freely exhibited; while the instances are not rare in which he bequeaths to posterity the benefit of his religious opinions.

Testators often give directions as to the place and manner of their burial, as well as the expenses of their funeral pageant. In one case, a testator desired to be buried in a space between the graves of his first and second wives.[1] Mr. Zimmerman, whose will was proved in 1840, in England, accompanied the directions for his funeral with something like a threat in case they were not carried out. In his will he says: “No person is to attend my corpse to the grave, nor is any funeral bell to be rung; and my desire is to be buried plainly and in a decent manner; and if this be not done, I will come again—that is to say, if I can.” The Countess Dowager of Sandwich, in her will, written by herself at the age of eighty, proved in November, 1862, expresses her wish to be buried decently and quietly—no undertakers’ frauds, or cheating; no scarfs, hatbands, or nonsense. In a similar manner, Mrs. Kitty Jenkyn Packe Reading, whose will was proved in April, 1870, gives explicit directions as to avoiding useless expense at her funeral. She died abroad, and directed that her remains be put into a leaden coffin, then enclosed in a wooden coffin, and to be taken as freight to her residence, Branksome Tower, in England. She foresaw that in this way the remains could not enter the house through the door, and directed a window to be taken out of a certain room, in order to permit her remains to enter.

The memory of the jars and ills of domestic life has so embittered a man’s mind, that if the strife was unequal during his lifetime, he hopes to turn the scale in his favor when dying, and in his will have a last word, and in this way cut off his spouse from her inalienable prescriptive right of having the last word. A man, then, has been known to call his wife “jealous, disaffectionate, reproachful, and censorious.” And again, a wife’s faults and shortcomings have been published to the world, and children must be mortified to know that in the public documents of the country allusion is conspicuously made to the failings of their mother, as when a husband perpetuates his wife’s “unprovoked, unjustifiable fits of passion, violence, and cruelty.” The following words are used by an individual who died in London in June, 1791, in reference to his wife: “Seeing that I have had the misfortune to be married to the aforesaid Elizabeth, who ever since our union has tormented me in every possible way; that not content with making game of all my remonstrances, she has done all she could to render my life miserable; that Heaven seems to have sent her into the world solely to drive me out of it; that the strength of Samson, the genius of Homer, the prudence of Augustus, the skill of Pyrrhus, the patience of Job, the philosophy of Socrates, the subtlety of Hannibal, the vigilance of Hermogenes, would not suffice to subdue the perversity of her character; that no power on earth can change her, seeing we have lived apart during the last eight years, and that the only result has been the ruin of my son, whom she has corrupted and estranged from me. Weighing maturely and seriously all these circumstances, I have bequeathed, and I bequeath to my said wife, Elizabeth, the sum of one shilling, to be paid unto her within six months after my decease.”[2]

Happily, the ills and strifes of conjugal life are not the most frequently remembered incidents of a man’s life; its felicities, its joys and tender experiences, the fidelity and devotion of a true partner, are often most vividly and fondly cherished at death, and touchingly alluded to in a man’s last will. In this manner, Sharon Turner, the eminent author of the “History of the Anglo-Saxons,” and other works, who died in London in 1847, at the age of seventy-nine, and whose will was proved in that year, delights to speak of his wife’s affection, and is particularly solicitous that she should not suffer in her personal appearance by the unskillfulness of the persons who had taken her portrait. Speaking of his wife, who was dead, he says: “It is my comfort to have remembered that I have passed with her nearly forty-nine years of unabated affection and connubial happiness, and yet she is still living, as I earnestly hope and believe, under her Saviour’s care, in a superior state of being.... None of the portraits of my beloved wife give any adequate representation of her beautiful face, nor of the sweet, and intellectual, and attractive appearance of her living features, and general countenance, and character.”

Too often testators place all the obstacles they can in the way of their widows marrying again, as will appear more fully in another part of this work. The following instance is one of the few exceptions, and it contains, besides, the most graceful tribute to a wife’s character, as given in a will, that we know of. Mr. Granville Harcourt, whose will was proved in March, 1862, thus speaks of his wife: “The unspeakable interest with which I constantly regard Lady Waldegrave’s future fate induces me to advise her earnestly to unite herself again with some one who may deserve to enjoy the blessing of her society during the many years of her possible survival after my life. I am grateful to Providence for the great happiness I enjoy in her singular affection; and I pray and