I had rather a shock to-day. I was sitting down to write an article on
a subject that had still to be found, and had almost reached the point
of decision, when a letter which had been addressed to the Editor of
_The Star_, and which he had sent on to me, started another and more
attractive hare. It was a letter announcing my lamented demise. There
was no doubt about it. There was the date and there was the name (a
nice name, too), and there were the circumstances all set out in black
and white. And the writer wanted to know, in view of all this, why no
obituary notice of me had appeared in the columns of the paper I had
adorned.
Now this report, however it arose, is, to use Mark Twain's famous
remark in similar circumstances, "greatly exaggerated." I am not dead.
I am not half dead. I am not even feeling poorly. I had a tooth out a
week or two ago, but otherwise nothing dreadful has happened to me for
ever so long. I was once nearly in a shipwreck, but that was so long
ago that I had almost forgotten the circumstance. Moreover, as all the
people in the ship were saved I could not possibly have died then even
if I had been on board. And I wasn't on board, for I had left at the
previous port of call. It was a narrow escape, but I can't pretend
that I wasn't saved. I was. But though I am most flagrantly and
aggressively alive, the announcement of my death has set me thinking of
myself as if I were dead. I find it quite an agreeable diversion. Not
that I am morbid. I do not share my friend Clerihew's view, expressed
in his chapter on Lord Clive in that noble work "Biography for
Beginners." You may remember the chapter. If not, it is short enough
to repeat:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There's something to be said
For being dead.
That is overdoing the thing. What I find agreeable is being alive and
thinking I am dead. You have the advantage of both worlds, so to
speak. In company with this amiable correspondent, I have shed tears
over myself. I have wept at my own grave-side. I have composed my own
obituary notice, and I don't think I have ever turned out a more moving
piece of work. I have met my friends and condoled with them over my
decease, and have heard their comments, and I am proud to say that they
were quite nice. Some of them made me think that I might write up the
obituary notice in a rather higher key, put the virtues of the late
lamented "Alpha of the Plough" in more gaudy colours, tone down the
few, the very few, weak points of his austere, saintly, chivalrous,
kindly, wise, humorous, generous character--in a word, let myself go a
bit more. Old Grumpington at the club, it is true, said that I should
be no great loss to the world, and that so far as he was concerned I
was one of the people that he could do without. But then Old
Grumpington never says a good word for anybody, living or dead. I
discounted Grumpington. I took no notice of Grumpington--the beast.
And then I passed from the living world I had left behind to the
contemplation of the said Alpha, fallen on sleep, and I found his case
no subject for tears. After all, said I, the world is not such a gay
place in these days, that I need worry about having quitted it. I have
left some dear friends behind, but they will pass the toll-gate, too,
in due course, and join me and those who have preceded me. "What
dreams may come!" Well, so be it. I have no fear of the dreams of
death, having passed through the dream of life, which was so often like
a nightmare. If there are dreams for me, I think they will be better
dreams. If there are tasks for me, I think they will be better tasks.
If there are no dreams and no tasks, then that also is well. "I see no
such horror in a dreamless sleep," said Byron in one of his letters,
"and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not
make tiresome." And so, dreamless or dreaming, I saw nothing in the
circumstances of the departed Alpha to lament....
Meanwhile, I am very well indeed, thank you. If you prick me I shall
still bleed. If you tickle me I shall still laugh. And with due
encouragement I shall still write.