No one can deny that the testator had strict right upon his side;
nevertheless the reader will agree with me that Theobald and Christina
might not have considered the christening dinner so great a success if
all the facts had been before them. Mr Pontifex had during his own
lifetime set up a monument in Elmhurst Church to the memory of his wife
(a slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate children of King George
the Fourth, and all the rest of it), and had left space for his own
epitaph underneath that of his wife. I do not know whether it was
written by one of his children, or whether they got some friend to write
it for them. I do not believe that any satire was intended. I believe
that it was the intention to convey that nothing short of the Day of
Judgement could give anyone an idea how good a man Mr Pontifex had been,
but at first I found it hard to think that it was free from guile.
The epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and death; then sets out that
the deceased was for many years head of the firm of Fairlie and Pontifex,
and also resident in the parish of Elmhurst. There is not a syllable of
either praise or dispraise.
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