Last Words

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On April 8, 1959, when keepers arrived at the Spectacle Reef lighthouse in Lake Huron to prepare it for a new season, they discovered a note:

To Whom It May Concern:

At 1705 hours my plane went down 400 kilometers out at 035 to 050 degrees. I was one mile northeast of here at 5000 feet when my engine went quite dead. I tried to make it in but landed in the water. At that time there were large open areas of water. I did not try to land on the ice as it did not look thick enough. Also I wanted to get as close to this light as possible.

The plane went down in about two minutes after it landed. Before it did it floated close enough to a floe for me to jump. The ice was not over two inches thick. Another large body of water separated me from the light so I waited.

Suddenly the wind shifted to the northeast. The ice I was on started to move. At the very last moment one quarter of the ice ground against the ice packed around the light. My ice floe broke up fast so I ran for the light. I got ashore but was wet from falling in. My clothes froze before I could get the door open.

Once inside I used your towels and overshoes to keep from freezing.

About 2100 I got your stove lit. I hooked up the batteries and lit your warning lamp. The radio receiver worked but the transmitter was dead. I didn’t know enough about it to make it work. I have used the batteries until they are going dead. I sat up last night sending out SOS calls by blinking the main light.

Right now I am deliberating whether to stay here or cross the ice. From the chart I will have eleven miles to travel. There are large water holes, thin ice which had been broken into pieces by the wind yesterday. There is hardly any wind today. We have had two freezing nights, so I ought to make it in about four hours. I want to go now because it is nice weather.

Also I did not file a flight plan so no one will look for me another two or three days. The weather may be bad again.

I have made a mess of your building. I hope you will forgive me. I am going to take some equipment with me, binoculars, coat, hat, blankets, etc. I will turn them into the United States Coast Guard as soon as I get ashore.

Signed,

M.Sgt. William J. Wyman
USAF

The note bore no date. Wyman had departed Saginaw in a Piper Super Cruiser on Feb. 22, headed for the former Kinross Air Force Base near Sault Ste. Marie. He had never arrived. No trace of him was ever found.

(Thanks, Charles.)

| Death · Oddities

Family Matters

The humorous will of Dr. Dunlop of Upper Canada is worth recording, though there is a spice of malice in every bequest it contains.

To his five sisters he left the following bequests:

‘To my eldest sister Joan, my five-acre field, to console her for being married to a man she is obliged to henpeck.

‘To my second sister Sally, the cottage that stands beyond the said field with its garden, because as no one is likely to marry her it will be large enough to lodge her.

‘To my third sister Kate, the family Bible, recommending her to learn as much of its spirit as she already knows of its letter, that she may become a better Christian.

‘To my fourth sister Mary, my grandmother’s silver snuff-box, that she may not be ashamed to take snuff before company.

‘To my fifth sister, Lydia, my silver drinking-cup, for reasons known to herself.

‘To my brother Ben, my books, that he may learn to read with them.

‘To my brother James, my big silver watch, that he may know the hour at which men ought to rise from their beds.

‘To my brother-in-law Jack, a punch-bowl, because he will do credit to it.

‘To my brother-in-law Christopher, my best pipe, out of gratitude that he married my sister Maggie whom no man of taste would have taken.

‘To my friend John Caddell, a silver teapot, that, being afflicted with a slatternly wife, he may therefrom drink tea to his comfort.’

While ‘old John’s’ eldest son was made legatee of a silver tankard, which the testator objected to leave to old John himself, lest he should commit the sacrilege of melting it down to make temperance medals.

— Virgil M. Harris, Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills, 1911

| Death · Society

Body Heat

London doctor Thomas Ellerby had strong feelings about the disposal of his remains — in his will of February 1827 he threatens to haunt his doctors if they don’t follow his instructions:

I bequeath my heart to Mr. W., anatomist; my lungs to Mr. R.; and my brains to Mr. F., in order that they may preserve them from decomposition; and I declare that if these gentlemen shall fail faithfully to execute these my last wishes in this respect I will come — if it should be by any means possible — and torment them until they shall comply.

The Lancet records that “[t]he gentlemen named — eminent in their day — rightly renounced the legacies left them, and it never appeared that they were, like St. Dunstan and other medieval saints, tromented by visitations from the other world.”

| Death

Solo

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

A poignant little detail from my podcast research on Maurice Wilson, who in 1934 set out to climb Everest alone:

There was only one precedent in mountaineering history for such an impossible lone assault. In May of 1929 a young American climber, E.F. Farmer of New Rochelle, N.Y., had set off from Darjeeling on a suicidal attack on 28,146-foot Kangchenjunga. He disappeared into the clouds and was never seen again.

(John Cottrell, “The Madman of Everest,” Sports Illustrated, April 30, 1973.)

| Death

Death Do Us Part

From the will of John G—-e, who died at Lambeth around 1772:

Whereas it was my misfortune to be made very uneasy by Elisabeth G—-e, my wife, for many years, from our marriage, by her turbulent behavior; for she was not content with despising my admonitions, but she contrived every method to make me unhappy; she was so perverse in her nature, that she would not be reclaimed, but seemed only to be born to be a plague to me; the strength of Sampson, the knowledge of Homer, the prudence of Augustus, the cunning of Pyrrhus, the patience of Job, the subtilty of Hannibal, and the watchfulness of Hermogenes, could not have been sufficient to subdue her; for no skill or force in the world would make her good; and as we have lived separate and apart from each other eight years, and she having perverted her son to leave and totally abandon me, therefore I give her one shilling only.

From the Annual Register.

| Death · Society

Endorsement

In 1906, as George Bernard Shaw and his wife were looking for a house in rural Hertfordshire, they came upon a tombstone in Ayot St Lawrence:

Mary Ann South
Born 1825, Died 1895
Her Time Was Short

When asked why he chose the village as his home, Shaw said that if the biblically allotted threescore years and ten was considered a short life in Ayot, it must be a good place to live.

| Death · Literature

The Bright Side

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Lucian, why dost thou lament my death, or call me miserable that am much more happy than thyself? what misfortune is befallen me? Is it because I am not so bald, crooked, old, rotten, as thou art? What have I lost, some of your good cheer, gay clothes, music, singing, dancing, kissing, merry-meetings, thalami lubentias, &c., is that it? Is it not much better not to hunger at all than to eat: not to thirst than to drink to satisfy thirst: not to be cold than to put on clothes to drive away cold? You had more need rejoice that I am freed from diseases, agues, cares, anxieties, livor, love, covetousness, hatred, envy, malice, that I fear no more thieves, tyrants, enemies, as you do.

— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621

| Death

Late Word

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A week after songwriter Jim Croce died in a plane crash in 1973, his wife, Ingrid Jacobson, received this letter:

Dear Ing,

I know I haven’t been very nice to you for some time, but I thought it might be of some comfort, Sweet Thing, to understand that you haven’t been the only recipient of JC’s manipulations. But since you can’t hear me and can’t see me, I can’t bullshit, using my sneaky logic and facial movements. I have to write it all down instead, which is lots more permanent. So it can be re-read instead of re-membered, so, it’s really right on the line.

I know that you see me for who I am, or should I say, as who I are. ‘Cause I’ve been lots of people. If Medusa had personalities or attitudes instead of snakes for her features, her name would have been Jim Croce. But that’s unfair to you and it’s also unhealthy for me. And I now want to be the oldest man around, a man with a face full of wrinkles and lots of wisdom.

So this is a birth note, Baby. And when I get back everything will be different. We’re gonna have a life together, Ing, I promise. I’m gonna concentrate on my health. I’m gonna become a public hermit. I’m gonna get my Master’s Degree. I’m gonna write short stories and movie scripts. Who knows, I might even get a tan.
Give a kiss to my little man and tell him Daddy loves him.

Remember, it’s the first sixty years that count and I’ve got 30 to go.
I Love you,
Jim

(From Ingrid’s 2012 memoir, I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.)

| Death · Entertainment

R.I.P.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CemeteryPorn/comments/15ifhvw/poet_philosopher_failure_st_peters_church_in/

This stone, behind St. Peter’s Church in Heysham, Lancashire, commemorates the lives of James Jones and his two wives, Sarah and Sadie.

Which of them earned this epithet, and how, is not clear.

(Thanks, Dave.)

| Death

The Bell Tolls

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

John Donne may have posed for his own funerary monument. In his Lives of 1658, Izaak Walton writes:

… Dr. Donne sent for a Carver to make for him in wood the figure of an Urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and, to bring with it a board of the height of his body. These being got, then without delay a choice Painter was to be in a readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth. — Several Charcole-fires being first made in his large Study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand; and, having put off all his cloaths, had this sheet put on him, and so tyed with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed, as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrowded and put into the grave. Upon this Urn he thus stood with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale, and death-like face; which was purposely turned toward the East, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour. Thus he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bed-side, where it continued, and became his hourly object till his death …”

It’s not clear whether this really happened — the sketch, if there was one, has been lost. The statue stands in St. Paul’s Churchyard in London.

| Death · Literature