“How Can Money Be a Corpse’s?”: Legal History and Old Harmon’s Will in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend
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This paper examines the plausibility of Old Harmon’s testation in Our Mutual Friend in the context of English legal history. The will of Old Harmon is not disputed by any one at any law court. Even if it did, there would have been small chance for the plaintiff. The actual suits in Chancery, which we sample from the English Reports, involving the form or plurality of wills, show that the court of equity adopted a cautious approach to the plaintiff’s argument, respecting the testator’s intention unless its authenticity could be patently challenged. Given the virtually absolute freedom of testation which law and equity protected, Old Harmon’s wills bequeathing movable properties to individual legatee appear transparent and unobjectionable, so that no lengthy litigation about trust could branch out of it. Not only does English legal tradition receive a more favorable treatment in Our Mutual Friend than in Dickens’s previous novels, but the spirit of the law is also given a fulsome rein to unfold itself. John Harmon’s marrying Bella as John Rokesmith serves to salvage the principle of consent in marriage so flagrantly spurned by Old Harmon’s will. The legal principle of “use” or trust, which the court of equity took under its care, is most adequately realized by the benign and generous grant made by Boffin to John and Bella.
Abstract
This paper examines the plausibility of Old Harmon’s testation in Our Mutual Friend in the context of English legal history. The will of Old Harmon is not disputed by any one at any law court. Even if it did, there would have been small chance for the plaintiff. The actual suits in Chancery, which we sample from the English Reports, involving the form or plurality of wills, show that the court of equity adopted a cautious approach to the plaintiff’s argument, respecting the testator’s intention unless its authenticity could be patently challenged. Given the virtually absolute freedom of testation which law and equity protected, Old Harmon’s wills bequeathing movable properties to individual legatee appear transparent and unobjectionable, so that no lengthy litigation about trust could branch out of it. Not only does English legal tradition receive a more favorable treatment in Our Mutual Friend than in Dickens’s previous novels, but the spirit of the law is also given a fulsome rein to unfold itself. John Harmon’s marrying Bella as John Rokesmith serves to salvage the principle of consent in marriage so flagrantly spurned by Old Harmon’s will. The legal principle of “use” or trust, which the court of equity took under its care, is most adequately realized by the benign and generous grant made by Boffin to John and Bella.
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