Of the three epigraphs at the head of Muriel Sparks (1959) Memento Mori, the first two provide alternative views of old age: this caricature, Decrepit age and venerable and reverend.[1] The third, listing the four last things, death, judgment, hell, and heaven, is echoed in the final sentence of the book telling us that Jean Taylor lingered for a time … meditating sometimes … upon Death, the first of the Four Last Things. Interestingly, when I was six years old and memorizing the catechism, the order of the final two was reversed: heaven was named before hell. Im sure there are theologians who dispute the correct order, but since heaven and hell are alternatives rather than sequential, I dont see that the order of naming amounts to anything.
Memento Mori is itself a meditation on the first two of the Four Last Things, an exploration of how an imagined collection of characters deal with them. The remembrance of Death is the call to action. When your time is running short, if you are going to do something, you had better do it now because there may not be a later. The remembrance of Judgment suggests the goal that should inform the action. One must put ones house in order. The final two represent the denouement: the carrot and the stick (or is it the stick and the carrot?).
Principal among the activities of the characters are avoidance, guilt, and the making of wills. Spark initially tells us, with gentle humor, of the Grannies in the Maud Long Medical Ward (aged people, female), their will-making and remaking, and the reactions of the ward staff. Granny Duncan, annoyed at being called Granny threatens to write to her M.P., but changes her mind when they promise to stop calling her Granny.
But, she said, you shall never go back in my will.
In the name of God thats real awful of you, said the ward sister as she bustled about, I thought you was going to leave us all a packet. (p.16)
And Granny Barnacle
would send out to Woolworths for a will-from about once a week; this would occupy her for two or three days. She would ask the nurse how to spell words like hundred and ermine. (p.16)
But it is not just the patients in the public ward who are busily writing people into and out of their wills. We learn that Lisa Brooke, who dies before we get to meet her, had changed her will a year earlier. It was a mere sheet of paper, witnessed by the charwoman and her daughter, cutting out all of her relatives and bequeathing all of her fortune to my husband if he survives me, and thereafter to my housekeeper, Mabel Pettigrew. (p.34) And tubby Dame Lettie has made twenty-two different wills over the past forty years. Maybe there is a Fifth Last Thing, which is the Kvetching of the Disinherited, the prospect of which is a strong motivator to people whose ability to affect the course of events has been reduced to will-making.
Spark has a novel take on guilt. The reader first encounters it when Mrs. Pettigrewwho tries to keep herself from mixing it up with those whom she regards as inferiors, but never succeedsis overwhelmed … with that sense of having done a foolish thing against ones interests, which in some people stands for guilt. My first thought was that this is a truly odd concept of guilt, but on further reading, other characters seem to share it. I think of guilt pretty much as it is defined by The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48: A feeling of regret or remorse for having committed some improper act; a recognition of one’s own responsibility for doing something wrong. What is missing among Sparks characters is the sense of having done something wrong. Regret and remorse we see, but I wouldnt call it guilt.
Charmian frets about her husband Godfrey. Her friend and former lover Guy Leet observes
I perceive you have a slight sense of guilt concerning [Godfrey].
Guilt? Oh, no, Guy. As I was saying, I feel unusually innocent in this place.
Sometimes… a sense of guilt takes a self-righteous turn. I see no cause for you to feel either in the right or in the wrong where Godfreys concerned.
Still, the feeling gives rise to a desire and often an action to remedy the consequences of the original behavior, so the absence of a sense of having done wrong doesnt actually seem necessary to achieve the ends, vis-à-vis others, that guilt is supposed to accomplish.
Mrs. Pettigrew is a satisfying villain whose malicious reach often exceeds her grasp and Spark has a lot of fun with her. Precisely because Mrs. Pettigrew has a reputation for being bossy and manipulative, she is hired to look after Charmian in a sort of passive-aggressive conspiracy between Dame Lettie and her brother, Charmians husband, Godfrey. When Mrs. Pettigrew arrives at the Colstons, Spark tells us, Mrs. Anthony [the current cook and caregiver] knew instinctively that Mrs. Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong. (p.54)
After a minor contretemps between Charmian and Mrs. Petigrew over whether Charmian has taken her pills, the doctor calms Charmian, saying that it wont do any harm to miss a dose or to take an extra dose. Afterwards, Mrs. Pettigrew, was filled with a furious envy at the thought that, if she herself were to take the vapours, there would not be any expensive doctor to come and give her a kind talk and injection no doubt, and calm her down so that she could sit and read a book after turning the household upside down.
Mrs. Pettigrew, having had keys made for the various locked drawers in the Colson household, comes into possession of evidence of Godfreys infidelities to Charmian and sets in motion a plan to blackmail Godfrey to write Mrs. Pettigrew into his will. Mabel Pettigrew thought: I can read him like a book. She had not read a book for over forty years, could never concentrate on reading, but this nevertheless was her thought. (p.159)
Jean Taylor, learning from Alec Warner of Mrs. Pettigrews machinations, decides to intervene. Reasoning that Godfrey is open to blackmail because he fears the humiliation it will cause him if Charmian learns of his affairsas Taylor puts it, Godfrey is morally afraid of Charmian (p.175)Taylor instructs Alec to tell Godfrey about Charmians affairs over the years 1902-1907. Alec objects that Jean will be betraying Charmian.
Charmian will be shocked. She trusts you. …
There is a time for loyalty and a time when loyalty comes to an end. Charmian should know that by now…. Tell [Godfrey] from me he has nothing to fear from Mrs. Pettigrew. Poor old man. (pp.176-7)
That is, adherence to the letter of the principle on principle is not enough; one must look at the bigger picture. Jean is the moral center of the book. Consigned to the Maud Long Medical Ward, suffering intense arthritic pain, she maintains a balanced and compassionate outlook throughout and manages as best she can to intervene as her conscience directs.
Eric Colston, Charmian and Godfreys son, learns that Mrs. Pettigrew is blackmailing his father and rushes to join forces with her. Eric does not have a large role in the novel, but what he has is cherce (as Ralph Kramden would say). Eric is resentful of his mothers literary success and has managed to estrange himself from both his father and his mother. Nevertheless, Charmian has been sending him money all along.
I do not like to say these things, and of course Eric was a disappointment, but I cant help feeling that Godfreys attitude
Eric, said Guy, is a man of fifty-five.
Fifty-seven, said Charmian….
Fifty-seven, said Guy. And he has had time to acquire a sense of responsibility. (p.189)
Eric has no charity, she said.
well, perhaps it is just that he is middle-aged. The really young are so much pleasanter, said Guy. (p.190)
By way of explanation of Erics character, Spark tells us that when he was young his family attributed his (apparently obvious) faults to an upbringing that was generally agreed to be too lenient and at the same time generally agreed to be too strict. The real key to understanding Eric is that
Eric was amazed when his elders eventually stopped blaming themselves for his condition. He thought them hypocritical and callous to go back on their words. He longed for them to start discussing him again in the old vein; but by the time he was thirty-seven they had said quite bitter things to him. (p.201)
Eric cant do anything to his own satisfaction (although he has managed to publish a novel), and his combination with Mrs. Pettigrew fares no better when Taylors anti-blackmail information reaches Godfrey, who tells both of them in no uncertain terms to get out of the house.
Mrs. Pettigrews ambitions and dreams are dashed when it turns out that the husband named in Lisa Brookes will, whom nobody had ever heard of, turns out to be alive albeit in a mental institution. So Mrs. Pettigrew gets nothing. Ironic justice. The husband dies shortly thereafter and Mrs. Pettigrew inherits after all. Ironic injustice. Mrs. Pettigrew has a stroke and goes to live in a hotel at South Kensington, where she can still be seen in the evening jostling for a place by the door of the hotel lounge before the dinner gong sounds. Reading between the lines, one would say she worries lest she be seated at a table whose location proclaims a social status below that which she obsessively arrogates to herself. Villainy reduced to banality by irony.
As Jean Taylor is the moral center of Memento Mori, Death is its motivating core. It is a wonderful conceit. Death takes advantage of technology to convey his message. In an updated version, Death would send text messages. Death is always him, notwithstanding that his calls to Inspector Mortimer are always from this woman, gentle-spoken and respectful (p.156)
For more than half of the text, the only calls we know of are those made to Dame Lettie Colston, but then Godfrey gets a call (p.121). Seven pages later, Charmian gets a call to which she replies
My memory is failing in certain respects. I am gone eighty-six. But somehow I do not forget my death, whenever that may be.
Delighted to hear it, he said. Goodbye for now. (p.128)
Ten pages later, Alec gets a call. And by the time the investigation brings the people complaining about the calls together at Inspector Mortimers, everyone over the age of seventy has received a call (although Mrs. Pettigrew on principlewhat the principle would be, she would be unable to articulatedoes not acknowledge that she has been called.). Inspector Mortimer opines that the offender is Death himself. (p.144) Later, Jean Taylor, unaware of Mortimers suggestion, says, In my belief, the author of the anonymous calls is Death himself, as you might say. (p.179) By this time, the reader is willing to accept this as fact.
Guy Leet, asked if the calls worry him, replies, Me? No. I dont mind a bit of fun…. Personally, I tell the young fellow to go to hell. So, different folks have different reactions, which is, of course Sparks point.
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There are eighteen characters (aside from the minor Grannies) it is informative to list them, their ages, and their status at the end of the book.
| Matt OBrien | ? | Deceased |
| Alec Warner | 79 | Alive |
| Mabel Pettigrew | 73 | Alive |
| Mrs. Anthony | 70 | Alive |
| Lisa Brooke | 73 | Deceased |
| Jean Taylor | 82 | Deceased |
| Eric Colston | 56 | Alive |
| Charmian Colston | 87 | Deceased |
| Godfrey Colston | 87 | Deceased |
| Dame Lettie Colston | 81 | Deceased |
| Guy Leet | 78 | Deceased |
| Tempest Sidebottome | ? | Deceased |
| Janet Sidebottome | 77 | Deceased |
| Ronald Sidebottome | 79 | Deceased |
| Percy Mannering | 80 | Alive |
| Olive Mannering | 24 | Alive |
| Inspector Mortimer | 73 | Deceased |
| Emmeline Mortimer | 74 | Alive |
[1] The book has reverent in place of reverend. From everything I can find, it is the book that is incorrect.