Quickie Question: Crafting Epitaph?
By Twistie
This, for those of you who do not recognize him, is Anthony Trollope. He happens to be one of my all-time favorite novelists, though I also enjoy many of his essays and short stories. In addition to writing nearly fifty novels, scads of essays and short stories and even the odd poem or two, Trollope came up with an idea that changed many a life and still has an impact on us today: while working for the Royal Mail in Ireland, he invented the public mailbox.
Then he published his first novel and, well, let’s just say that for the rest of their lives he and Dickens were more or less neck and neck in popularity. In fact, Trollope wrote an obituary for Dickens that still stands as one of the finest tributes one author has paid another.
What does all this have to do with today’s Quickie Question? Well, one slightly overcast October day in the latter part of the last century, I stood in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey and read the memorial stone for Anthony Trollope. It read:
Anthony Trollope
Novelist. Public Servant.
Pioneer of the Postal Services
The creator of Barsetshire
1815 – 1882
Now I stretch out my hand
from the further shore I bid
adieu to all who have cared
to read any among the many
words that I have written
The quote at the end is the final line of Trollope’s autobiography.
I love this memorial, not only for the lovely quote, but because I firmly believe Trollope’s accomplishments are laid out in pretty much the order he would have wanted them.
And that makes me think about how I would wish to be remembered, should anyone bother to do so in the distant future. I’m thinking it goes something like this:
In Memory of Twistie
Blogger, baker, bobbin lacer
She never met a recipe or a craft
she wouldn’t try once
How about you? How would you like to be remembered?
