R.I.P.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_Georges_Boulanger,_Frans_generaal_en_minister,_RP-F-F01142-BJ.jpg

One of the most moving epitaphs I ever read — actually it is an inscription — is in Ixelles cemetery, Brussels, on the tomb of a girl who had been the mistress of Gen. Georges Boulanger, a former War Minister of France. She died in July 1891; that September, heartbroken, Boulanger made the supreme romantic gesture, one that many, many bereft lovers have threatened, but very, very few have carried through: He shot himself at her tomb. He is buried beside her, and his last, impassioned cry rings out in bronze:

AI-JE BIEN PU VIVRE
2 MOIS 1/2 SANS TOI!

(‘How did I live two and a half months without you!’) Romeo said nothing more poignant.

— J. Bryan, Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book, 1986

| Death

Companion

carnielo tenax vitae

Rinaldo Carnielo’s sculpture Tenax Vitae stands in the Galleria Rinaldo Carnielo in Florence.

After meeting the sculptor in 1893, Helen Zimmern observed that “for him, the shadow of death pervades all existence,” but “he cares not one jot whether his statues find purchasers so long as he himself is satisfied with the results.”

| Art · Death

“The Only Will Ever Written in Shorthand”

https://books.google.com/books?id=D-czJhHzdcgC&pg=PA446

An 1897 article on curious wills in the Strand describes this 1813 will by the Rev. Hugh Worthington of Highbury Place, Islington. One side reads:

Northampton Square, June 16th, 1813. I, Hugh Worthington, give and bequeath to my dear Eliza Price, who is my adopted child, all I do or may possess, real and personal, to be at her sole and entire disposal; and I do appoint William Kent, Esq., of London Wall, my respected friend, with the said Eliza Price to execute this my last will and testament. — HUGH WORTHINGTON.

The other reads:

Most dearly beloved, my Eliza. Very small as this letter is, it contains the copy of my very last will. I have put it with your letters, that it may be sure to fall into your hands. Should accident or any other cause destroy the original, I have taken pains to write this very clearly, that you may read it easily. I do know you will perfect yourself in shorthand for my sake. Tomorrow we go for Worthing, I most likely never to return. I hope to write a few lines to express the best wishes, and prayers, and hopes of thy true, HUGH WORTHINGTON.

| Death · Oddities

Two Dire Punishments

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ertr%C3%A4nken_im_Fass_oder_Sack_1560.jpg

Under Roman law, subjects found guilty of patricide were subjected to poena cullei, the “penalty of the sack” — they were sewn into a leather sack with a snake, a cock, a monkey, and a dog and thrown into water.

In his Life of Artaxerxes, Plutarch describes an ancient Persian method of execution known as scaphism in which vermin devour a victim trapped between mated boats:

Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lie down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, then forcing him to ingest a mixture of milk and honey before pouring all over his face and body. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed.

Happily Plutarch seems to have based his account on a report by the Greek historian Ctesias, whose reliability has been questioned, so perhaps this never happened.

| Crime · Death · History

Early Arrival

https://www.flickr.com/photos/imjustwalkin/8656545137
Image: Flickr

When his wife died in 1893, Brooklyn retiree Jonathan Reed had a tomb built in Evergreens Cemetery, where for 10 years he kept her company. “The Reed mausoleum was furnished just like a living room in a fine house,” read his New York Times obituary, “all the usual articles of furniture being provided. It was warmed with a fine oil stove manufactured specially for the tomb.”

Mr. Reed could never be made to believe that his wife was really dead, his explanation of her condition being that the warmth had simply left her body, and that if he kept the mausoleum warm she would continue to sleep peacefully in the costly metallic casket in which her remains were put. … According to his friends, he really believed that his wife could understand what he was saying to her.

From the hour the cemetery gates opened at 6 a.m. until they closed at 6 p.m., he was in the tomb. “The old man ate all of his meals in the mausoleum and was in the habit of holding imaginary conversations with his wife. … He always appeared to be very happy.”

A visitor eventually discovered him dying on the floor of the crypt in 1905, and he was laid to rest in the empty casket that he had prepared next to hers.

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In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Chronicle_of_Ioannis_Skylitzis_Bulagar_Defeat.jpg

manqueller
n. a man killer; an executioner

In 1014, after a decisive victory over the Bulgarian Empire at the Battle of Kleidion, Byzantine emperor Basil II followed up with a singularly cruel stroke. He ordered that his 14,000 prisoners be divided into groups of 100; that 99 of each group be blinded; and that the hundredth retain one eye so that he could lead the others home. The columns were then released into the mountains, each man holding on to the belt of the man in front. It’s not known how many were lost on the journey, but when the survivors reached the Bulgar capital, their tsar collapsed at the sight and died of a stroke two days later. Basil is remembered as “the Bulgar slayer.”

| Death · History · Language

All’s One for That

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_King_In_The_Car_Park_-_Page_15_-_Figure_12.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The remains of Richard III were discovered under a Leicester car park in 2012. In the city center searchers located the site of the demolished Greyfriars Church where Richard’s body had been buried hastily in 1485, and the skeleton of an adult male human was found beneath the church’s choir. It exhibited severe scoliosis of the spine and 10 injuries to the head, rib, and pelvis, including “a mortal battlefield wound in the back of the skull” apparently inflicted by a halberd. The king’s identity was confirmed by a mitochondrial DNA sample provided by his modern descendants.

He was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.

04/13/2024 UPDATE: He was identified through descendants of his elder sister, Anne of York — he had no direct living descendants. My mistake. (Thanks, Steve.)

| Death · History

In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voluptas_Mors.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

gliff
n. an unexpected view of something that startles one; a sudden fear

irrision
n. the act of sneering or laughing derisively; mockery; derision

mortiferous
adj. bringing or producing death

proceleusmatic
adj. inciting, animating, or inspiring

Photographer Philippe Halsman took three hours to pose seven women in the shape of a skull for his surrealistic portrait In Voluptas Mors, after a sketch by Salvador Dalí, who’s seen in the foreground. Director Jonathan Demme borrowed the idea for the one-sheet poster for his 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs — the skull image on the “death’s head moth” is a miniature version of the same tableau.

| Art · Death · Entertainment · Language

On the Wing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phoebe_snetsinger.jpg

Diagnosed with terminal melanoma at 50, Phoebe Snetsinger resolved to devote her remaining time to watching birds. Between 1981 and 1999, as her cancer went periodically into remission, she visited every continent several times over, traversing jungles, swamps, deserts, and mountains and surviving malaria, a boat accident, abduction in Ethiopia, and rape in Papua New Guinea. In 1995 she became the first person to see 8,000 species of bird, and in time she extended the list to 8,398, nearly 85 percent of the world’s known species. She died in 1999 when her van overturned during a birding trip in Madagascar. The last bird she’d observed was a red-shouldered vanga, a species that had been described as new to science only two years previously.

In her memoir, Birding on Borrowed Time, she wrote, “When I was given my death sentence by the doctors, one of my immediate reactions that I clearly remember was ‘Oh no — there are all those things I haven’t yet done, and now will never have a chance to do.’ … The preparation and primarily the birding itself, plus the record keeping afterwards, all enabled me to forget the threat to my life (or at least push it aside) and to immerse myself totally in what I was doing.”

| Death · Science & Math