It was by the side of dulcet Lough Cara that I began to imagine my
interview with the old family solicitor, prejudiced and white-headed
as the king in a certain kind of romantic play, a devout Catholic who
would certainly understand very little of my paganism; but I should
catch him on two well-sharpened horns--whether he should be guilty of
so unbusiness-like an act as to refuse to make a will for theological
reasons, or to do a violence to his conscience by assisting a
fellow-creature to dispose of his body in a way that would give the
Almighty much trouble to bring about the resurrection of the body in
the valley of Jehoshaphat. The embarrassment of the family solicitor
would be amusing, and if he declined to draw up my will for me there
would be plenty of other solicitors who would not hesitate to draw up
whatever will I was minded to make. In order to secure the burial of
my body, my notion was to leave all my property, lands, money,
pictures, and furniture to my brother, Colonel Maurice Moore on the
condition that I should be burnt and the ashes disposed of without the
humiliation of Christian rites; that if the conditions that the
inheritance carried with it were so disagreeable to Colonel Maurice
Moore that he could not bring himself to see that the disposal of my
remains was carried out according to my wishes, my property, lands,
money, pictures, and furniture, should go to my brother Augustus
Moore; that in the event of his declining to carry out my wishes
regarding the disposal of my remains, all my property should go to my
brother Julian Moore; that if he should refuse to carry out my wishes
regarding the disposal of my remains, all the said property should go
to my friend Sir William Eden, who would, I felt sure, take a sad
pleasure in giving effect to the wishes of his old friend. A will
drawn up on these lines would secure me against all chance of being
buried with my ancestors in Kiltoon, and during the next two days I
pondered my own burning. My brother might think that he was put to a
good deal of expense, but he would not fail me. He had taken off my
hands the disagreeable task of seeing the undertakers and making
arrangements for the saying of Masses, etc., arrangements which would
be intensely disagreeable to me to make so. I had plenty of time to
think out the details of my burning; and I grew happy in the thought
that I had escaped from the disgrace of Christian burial--a disgrace
which was never, until the last two days, wholly realised by me, but
which was nevertheless always suspected. No doubt it was the dread of
Kiltoon that had inspired that thought of death from which in late
years I had never seemed able to escape. I am of the romantic
temperament, and it would be a pity to forgo the burning I had
imagined. I delighted in the vision that had come upon me of the
felling of the larch trees on the hillside and the building of the
pyre about the old castle. It would reach much higher; I imagined it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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