Dickens and Wills: Voices from the Past

Abstract

Dickens and Wills:Voices from the Past David Paroissien (bio) 'There is just one other [instruction to take], and no more,' [Mr. Boffin said to his lawyer]. 'Make me as compact a little will as can be reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole property to "my beloved wife, Henerietty Boffin, sole executrix." Make it as short as you can, using those words; but make it tight.' (Our Mutual Friend, Bk. 1, ch. 8, 92) Thus Noddy Boffin to Mortimer Lightwood, when their conversation takes a new turn. The "Golden Dustman" and the idle young barrister had met by appointment soon after the body of young Mr. John Harmon had been discovered, "floating in the Thames" (31). Before them lay a will removed from an iron box labeled "HARMON ESTATE" (88). By its provisions, Nicodemus Boffin, old John Harmon's former servant, had come into possession "of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds" as residuary legatee.1 Now, with all the forms of law having at length been complied with and the Harmon will proved and "moved, &c., and so forth," nothing remained except for the "eminent solicitor" to offer his congratulations. "'There are no estates to manage,'" Mortimer Lightwood, continued, "'no rents to return so much per cent. upon in bad times […], no agents to take the cream off the milk before it comes to the table.'" Without codicils and trusts the lucky legatee could run off with the money "'and take it […] to – say, to the Rocky Mountains," an unlikely option for Mr. Boffin, perceived by some as "an old fellow of rare simplicity." "'I beg your pardon,'" Lightwood hesitated, and felt his way, at some loss to fathom his client's notion, "'but professional profundity must be exact. When you say tight – '" To which Boffin swiftly responded: "'What I want is, to make it all hers so tight as that her hold of it can't be loosed'" (Bk. 1, ch. 8, 92–3). [End Page 7] As this exchange illustrates, the making and administering of wills have different uses. In real life, people engage solicitors, make wills and die and legatees inherit; in novels, characters follow suit although with generally more dramatic results, offering authors from Sir Walter Scott to E. M. Forster a range of narrative and thematic opportunities. Howard's End (1904) in fact serves as a coda for the genre. Howard's End, the house gifted to Margaret Schlegel by Henry Wilcox's first wife, Ruth, bestows neither wealth nor influence. "It is a retreat," writes John R. Reed, "a salvaged piece of England that is less real estate than it is homestead of the soul." With inheritance redefined as something "strictly internal," it becomes its own reward. "Ownership is in the heart of the beholder," Reed concludes, arguing that Forster's novel is the culmination of the inheritance convention. It avoids "the more wooden details associated with lost wills and laboriously traced genealogies," while making "the grand point that novels like Our Mutual Friend, Felix Holt and others sought to confirm" (287). Dickens knew the will business intimately, perhaps better than most Victorian novelists.2 Indeed, we might characterize his viewpoint as unique, an insider's familiarity with wills as the voice of troubled testators. A remark he made about the lack of public support for charities in England illustrates this. While such philanthropic institutions in the United States "are either supported by the State or assisted by the State," the Government in England offers "very little shelter or relief" beyond the jail or the workhouse. What little aid reached the poor came indirectly, primarily from wills capriciously made and badly executed. To support that contention – "The maxim that out of evil cometh good"3 – turn to "the records of the Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons,"4 Dickens advised. Drawing on knowledge gained as a freelance shorthand reporter working at the Wills office, Dickens put the following case in American Notes. Suppose an immensely rich old gentleman or lady. Both are surrounded by [End Page 8] "needy relatives" and both vent their displeasure by making, "upon a low average, a will a-week." For the old gentleman, naming legatees presents an opportunity to...