Long life
Where there's a Will
Nigel Nicolson
because I think its implementation immi- nent, but because about once every ten years I need to check that my posthumous provisions still sound sensible. They rarely do. This time I was astonished to find that in 1983 I left £500 to Helen and nothing to Fred, when my relationship with each has since been reversed, and that I instructed my heirs to tip my ashes into the Medway. Now Fred will get £1,000 and Helen noth- ing, and my ashes will be interred in the vil- lage churchyard.
It's quite a solemn moment when you sign a Will. It is, after all, a solemn docu- ment, one of the few inanimate objects (I can think of only one other — the Bible) that merits an upper-case initial. It is not only legally binding, but open for anyone to inspect, because while a person's finances and taxes are confidential in his lifetime, when a Mrs Kathleen Bailey of Malvern dies, we can read in the newspapers that she left exactly £1,282,006 and which chari- ties she chose to benefit. A visit to Somer- set House will reveal every detail of her bequests to anyone who may consider him- self ill-used.
A Will is a summing-up of one's perfor- mance in life, one's affections and moral indebtedness. While some of those affec- tions, like that for 'Helen', may be ephemeral, most, like those for one's chil- dren, are cut in granite. Let the testator picture the scene when the Will is read, and ask himself how much shock, dismay and pleasure it will cause. It must seem fair and sensible. For example, it would be absurd to leave large sums of money to those who are already amply endowed or have only a few more years to live. I knew of someone who left the bulk of her for- tune to a Hospital for Sick Children and only token, but not insignificant, sums to her own children who were thriving. If at first that seemed mean, in retrospect it was fair enough. Less forgivable are bequests that are unredeemable, like the £276,000 bequeathed to Jesus Christ last month in anticipation of a second coming, or cruelly restrictive like Casaubon's legacy to his widow Dorothea on condition that she did not many Ladislaw. Beware, too, of impos- ing on your trustees intolerable duties like scattering your ashes at sea within sight of your house at Rottingdean, bequeathing to the National Portrait. Gallery a bad paint- ing of your undistinguished spouse, or leav- ing £500 for a 'booze-up' after your funeral.
The best method, I believe, is to tell your chief beneficiaries what you intend while you are still capable of doing so. Discuss your Will with them, so that there can be no surprises, no disappointments, when the day comes, and no paying-off of old scores or Parthian shots from the grave. And leave, like Hitler, a 'testament' which explains why you have done what you have done, and what your posthumous hopes will be, not binding but dealing frankly with awkward questions like primogeniture and sex-discrimination, allowing for changes of interpretation in case conventions change.
In spite of all these precautions, the reading of a Will is always a momentous occasion. The classic scene is in the dining- room after the funeral when the relatives gather half-guiltily to hear their fate. I have attended only one such scene. I was 19 when my grandmother died. The solicitor said that her Will was quite simple. She left her money to my mother, her furniture to my brother, and her house to me. I found it hard to take in the legal language and realised my good fortune only when my father walked me to the window and said, `There's a rabbit on your lawn'.
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