Last Things First

One of the saddest songs I know is called “The Last Time I saw Paris.” It came out in 1940, after France had been defeated, and Paris occupied, by the Nazis. Paris had been a favorite haunt of Americans. But the war was still going on (although the U.S. had not yet entered it) and people abroad could now only reminisce about how it had been to walk the streets of Paris, dodge the taxis, and enjoy the cafés. Hitler was so proud of his triumph that he came in person to (a suddenly very quiet) Paris. The last and most poignant line of the song said,

“No matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.”

There was no telling if things would ever be “normal” again.

Of course, there is something sad about the last of many things. As it happens, I am the last member of my family – but I am the only one left to feel sad about it. It’s also possible to be the last member of a whole tribe, of which we are reminded by the title of something that was first – the first great American novel: The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper. I’ve never read it, but can’t forget the name of a main character which has always seemed to me incredibly silly: Natty Bumppo. (Happily, Cooper gave him the nickname of ‘Hawkeye.’)

But life itself has a last part, which may also seem sad – although Robert Browning put a very positive spin on it in his poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” which begins with these words:

Grow old along with me – The best is yet to be – 
The last of life, for which the first was made.

Browning, however, is probably better known for another “last” poem, which is called “My Last Duchess.” It is written in the form of a “dramatic monologue,” the type of poem in which a whole story is told through the voice of one person. In this case, that person is a Duke in Renaissance Italy, who is evidently addressing the representative of another nobleman with whom he is negotiating a second marriage, since his first wife, the Duchess, has died. They are descending a staircase which is lined with paintings, one of which is a portrait of his deceased wife. They pause there – and, as the story unfolds, it becomes chillingly apparent that the Duke does not mourn his last Duchess – and that in fact he deliberately caused her death. Why?

I would say it was some kind of perverted family pride. This Duke felt that his young bride did not live up to his eminent heritage (“a nine hundred years old name.”) She was too easily pleased. She smiled at everyone. She didn’t take her family position seriously enough. And so, she had to go.

Certain last meals have been historically and culturally important, particularly the “Last Supper” of Jesus with his disciples, as depicted in many works of art, most notably that of Leonardo da Vinci. But Jesus is also quoted as saying that, “The last shall be first,” in the same Gospel that he says: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (That latter passage leads irreverent people to make it “Many are cold, but few are frozen.”) These utterances are extracted from parables – simple stories intended to teach some kind of moral lesson. I’m not sure why Aesop’s stories are called “Fables” rather than parables, unless it’s because Aesop preferred to borrow his characters from the animal world, rather than let them be humans.

Another famous “last” novel was The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published in 1834. (In case you didn’t know, Pompeii was a Roman town in southern Italy, destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Its ruins, covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash, have been dug up, and you can still visit them, as I have.) Unfortunately, Bulwer-Lytton has, in recent times, acquired a reputation for an excessively florid style of writing. In particular, the opening sentence of another one of his novels (Paul Clifford, 1830) has been so mocked that there are now regular “contests” for opening lines, celebrating bad writing, which have been named in his honor. Lytton’s sentence simply says: 

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

If you think that was a perfectly good way to start a story, I agree – but who are we against so many?