I am not quite ready to polish my witty deathbed aphorism
and I fancy many of the reported last words of the famous are apocryphal. Most people shuffle off this mortal coil with
a long sigh or a complaint about how fed-up they are as in Churchill’s: I’m bored by the whole thing, or Groucho
Marx’s crack: This is no way to live.
19th century US Presidents supposedly expressed their thanks to
their devoted wives and undying faith in the Republic viz: President W.H. “Tippecanoe”
Harrison: Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the
government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more - a likely story, fit only for post-mortem
hagiographers. The British tried the same distortion with William Pitt the
Younger whose last words were supposedly a patriotic: O my Country, how I love my Country! It seems what he actually said
before expiring was: I think I could eat
one of Bellamy’s veal pies, a much more human and cheering epitaph.
Food and drink feature
in quite a few final utterances. US Frontiersman Kit Carson pleaded; I wish I had time for one more bowl of
chili and John Maynard Keynes regretted: I should have drunk more Champagne. Humphrey Bogart was equally
rueful; I should never have switched from
Scotch to Martinis while Lou Costello at least died happy: That was the best ice-cream soda I ever
tasted!
Some people at the
end cannot forget their settled routines. Thus circus proprietor PT Barnum
still enquired: How were the receipts
today at Madison Square Gardens? Or pedantic French grammarian Dominique
Bouhours’ statement: I am about to – or I
am going to – die: either expression
is correct. Bing Crosby was told by his doctors only to play 9 holes but
instead played 18: That was a great game of
golf, fellers, before paying the final penalty at the 19th.
The venue of
departure can provoke comment. I knew it,
I knew it cried playwright Eugene O’Neill, Born in a hotel room and, goddam it, dying in a hotel room! Oscar
Wilde found the decoration not to his taste: Either that wallpaper goes, or I do! Confused by the assembly of
family members surrounding her bed, Nancy, Lady Astor asked: Am I dying, or is this my Birthday?
The great and the
good often go out with a flourish. Mehr
Licht whispered Goethe memorably. Plaudite,
amici, commedia finita est (Applaud, friends, the comedy has ended) is
attributed to Beethoven. Happy! exclaimed Raphael while Voltaire kept
his sense of humour when priests urged him to renounce Satan: Now, now, my good men, this is no time for
making enemies!
Yet I most enjoy the legendary last words of bluff and
laconic George V, chivvied by his doctors to recuperate at his favoured seaside
resort Bognor Regis: he croaked Bugger
Bognor!
SMD
9.02.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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