Any Last Words?. Joseph Hayden

      The author of all of the James Bond novels that are worth reading, Fleming’s own life reflected that of 007 more than one might expect. Fleming was an intelligence officer during World War II and was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye. He excelled at athletics, attended a tiny private school run by a former British spy, and had several broken engagements and affairs with high-profile women.

      Though he was not a strong English student as a young man, Fleming eventually went on to a fairly successful career as a journalist and a wildly successful career as a novelist, writing not only the Bond novels, but also the children’s favorite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

      Sadly, Fleming’s heavy smoking and hard drinking led to a series of ailments which cut his life short. His last words were to paramedics who were transporting him to the hospital following a heart attack. He was politely British to the end:

      “I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.”

      Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)

      Most will know Alcott from her Little Women, a loose recollection of her own childhood that has withstood the test of time and become a children’s favorite. Fewer know that the American-born novelist and poet was a revolutionary.

      Alcott grew up learning from and speaking with intellectuals such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. She and her family helped escaped slaves navigating the Underground Railroad, even housing Frederick Douglass. As well as an active abolitionist, Louisa May was a staunch feminist, remaining independent throughout her life.

      Alcott’s health deteriorated in her later years, despite her being an avid runner which went against the gender norms of the time. In the end, it took some combination of typhoid fever—which she contracted during her service in the American Civil War—mercury poisoning from the treatment, and perhaps lupus to take her down, and, even then, she thought she could beat it. Her last words:

      “Is it not meningitis?”

      William S. Burroughs (1914–1997)

      The elder statesman of the Beat Generation, Burroughs was a writer, traveler, and famous user of narcotics. Burroughs divides critics like few others. His works range from linear stories involving heavy drug use to psychedelic narratives that some found impenetrable. While some saw Burroughs as an important counterculture voice, others fought to ban his works for obscenity. The author was as equally as contentious as his work. His well-documented drug and alcohol use sadly contributed to a William Tell stunt gone wrong which resulted in the accidental shooting of his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer.

      Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Burroughs’s life is that he lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four. Burroughs had a hand in many of the counterculture movements of the twentieth century, including the Beat Generation in the 1950s and Andy Warhol’s Factory in the 1960s and 1970s.

      Despite years of heavy drug use (he was still an active heroin user in his eighties), in the end Burroughs died near his small house in Kansas, of a heart attack on the way to the store. His last words:

      “Back in no time.”

      Herman Melville (1819–1891)

      Melville is best known for writing Moby Dick, a novel that often finishes the sentences “One day I mean to read…” and “I should really finish…” While the novel is a favorite bookshelf filler for today’s well-meaning fans of the classics, it was not well received until long after Melville’s death.

      It took even longer for people to appreciate Billy Budd, a novel that was left unfinished after Melville’s death but was finally published more than thirty years later, in 1924. Melville’s last words suggest that at least he thought it might be something of a success, as he died referencing one of the novel’s characters:

      “God Bless Captain Vere!”

      Jane Austen (1775–1817)

      Jane Austen only published four novels in her lifetime and two more posthumously. This means that her film-adaptation-to-novel ratio is somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand to one.

      Austen’s name never appeared on the covers of her novels during her lifetime. Sense and Sensibility was credited as being written “By A Lady,” and all subsequent novels were billed as being by the author of Sense and Sensibility.

      Austen died at age forty-one of a combination of Addison’s disease and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At first, she apologized for her illness, making light of it and seeing it as weakness in herself, but, by the end of a long hard fight, she was sadly ready to go:

      “I want nothing but death.”

      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)

      Conan Doyle is almost as interesting as the characters he created. The writer was a doctor, a botanist, a sailor, an adventurer, an amateur architect, and a politician. He even studied the occult and mysticism. And, amidst all this, he still found time to create the many adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

      Conan Doyle was also something of a sportsman. He boxed, played goalkeeper in soccer, and was on an amateur cricket team that also featured A. A. Milne and J. M. Barrie.

      After his first wife died of tuberculosis, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie, who became the love of his life. When he died in his garden of a heart attack at age seventy-one, his last words were to her:

      “You are wonderful.”

      Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)

      The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of The Ice Man Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, among other works, Eugene O’Neill was known as one of the great realist American writers.