Samuel Pepys attends the death of his brother:
It's very affecting and real -- the attention first to the bodily spill of his brother, the phlegm "and stuff" at the moment of death mirroring the verbal spill he had been suffering from for days. And then the words he reports his brother saying: a suggestion of vomiting from having drunk to excess -- the idea that Thomas has drunk to excess of life (though his "privitie" is clean. That at least is a relief -- he has drunk too deeply, but he has not sunk himself in unclean flesh. The ulcer, the lesion, is of his mouth, not his genitals).
And finally the suggestion that one must rest content -- the choice has been made, the judgment is final (both Pepyses are strong Protestants -- almost to the point of being nonconformists, in fact), but still, resting content seems impossible. The woman must hold Tom's eyes down, and poor Samuel, "full of disorder and grief," can neither sleep nor wake. The borders between life and death, health and disease, have been broached, and though both Samuel and Thomas understand that one must pass from one side to the other -- there is no lingering, their feeling, their sense, their unruly bodies (most unruly in the presence of death and disease) keep them in an unhappy limbo they must, theologically, deny.
About 8 o’clock my brother began to fetch his spittle with more pain, and to speak as much but not so distinctly, till at last the phlegm getting the mastery of him, and he beginning as we thought to rattle, I had no mind to see him die, as we thought he presently would, and so withdrew and led Mrs. Turner home, but before I came back, which was in half a quarter of an hour, my brother was dead.
I went up and found the nurse holding his eyes shut, and he poor wretch lying with his chops fallen, a most sad sight, and that which put me into a present very great transport of grief and cries, and indeed it was a most sad sight to see the poor wretch lie now still and dead, and pale like a stone. I staid till he was almost cold, while Mrs. Croxton, Holden, and the rest did strip and lay him out, they observing his corpse, as they told me afterwards, to be as clear as any they ever saw, and so this was the end of my poor brother, continuing talking idle and his lips working even to his last that his phlegm hindered his breathing, and at last his breath broke out bringing a flood of phlegm and stuff out with it, and so he died.
This evening he talked among other talk a great deal of French very plain and good, as, among others: ‘quand un homme boit quand il n’a poynt d’inclination a boire il ne luy fait jamais de bien.’ ["When a man drinks when he is not at the point of inclination to drink he never fares well by it"] I once begun to tell him something of his condition, and asked him whither he thought he should go. He in distracted manner answered me — “Why, whither should I go? there are but two ways: If I go, to the bad way I must give God thanks for it, and if I go the other way I must give God the more thanks for it; and I hope I have not been so undutifull and unthankfull in my life but I hope I shall go that way.”
This was all the sense, good or bad, that I could get of him this day. I left my wife to see him laid out, and I by coach home carrying my brother’s papers, all I could find, with me, and having wrote a letter to, my father telling him what hath been said I returned by coach, it being very late, and dark, to my brother’s, but all being gone, the corpse laid out, and my wife at Mrs. Turner’s, I thither, and there after an hour’s talk, we up to bed, my wife and I in the little blue chamber, and I lay close to my wife, being full of disorder and grief for my brother that I could not sleep nor wake with satisfaction, at last I slept till 5 or 6 o’clock.
It's very affecting and real -- the attention first to the bodily spill of his brother, the phlegm "and stuff" at the moment of death mirroring the verbal spill he had been suffering from for days. And then the words he reports his brother saying: a suggestion of vomiting from having drunk to excess -- the idea that Thomas has drunk to excess of life (though his "privitie" is clean. That at least is a relief -- he has drunk too deeply, but he has not sunk himself in unclean flesh. The ulcer, the lesion, is of his mouth, not his genitals).
And finally the suggestion that one must rest content -- the choice has been made, the judgment is final (both Pepyses are strong Protestants -- almost to the point of being nonconformists, in fact), but still, resting content seems impossible. The woman must hold Tom's eyes down, and poor Samuel, "full of disorder and grief," can neither sleep nor wake. The borders between life and death, health and disease, have been broached, and though both Samuel and Thomas understand that one must pass from one side to the other -- there is no lingering, their feeling, their sense, their unruly bodies (most unruly in the presence of death and disease) keep them in an unhappy limbo they must, theologically, deny.
Labels: death/mourning/corpses, early modern
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