Taxation & Estate Planning

The Kindle, and Dr. Johnson's Naughty Executor

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

I was the high bidder on a Kindle at my church's recent silent auction fundraiser. I have to admit that it's been fun playing around with it. I'm still getting used to not having physical books in my hand, but the Kindle has given me the opportunity to read longer works without having to lug them around. For instance: Boswell's Life of Johnson, which I've always wanted to tackle. (If you are also a Johnson fan, you may want to check out "his" twitter feed, here. Very funny.) It's 1408 pages, but it fits just perfectly -- and downloaded very quickly -- on my Kindle.

I'm just getting started on the book (I think -- my biggest objection to the Kindle so far is the lack of pagination), but came across an interesting comment from Boswell. He spends part of his introduction criticizing the other "lives" written of Samuel Johnson, especially the one by Sir John Hawkins:

[Hawkins] being appointed as one of [Johnson's] executors, gave him an opportunity of taking possession of such fragments of a diary and other papers as were left; of which, before delivering them up to the residuary legatee, whose property they were, he endeavored to extract the substance. In this he has not been very successful, as I have found upon a perusal of those papers, which have been since transferred to me.

So we learn a couple of things from this passage:

1. Apparently Boswell was Johnson's residuary legatee.

2. Hawkins, in his capacity as executor, first used property of the estate for his own benefit before turning it over to the beneficiary. That seems like a definite no-no, and a breach of fiduciary duty. An executor's duty is to put a beneficiary's interests above his own, but that didn't seem to happen here. That being said, who knows whether we can trust Boswell regarding the facts. Boswell seems somewhat blinded by hatred -- for instance, he says that Johnson barely knew Hawkins. ("... [D]uring my long intimacy with Dr. Johnson, I never saw [Hawkins] in his company, I think but once, and I am sure not above twice.") But if this is true, then why did Johnson name Hawkins as an executor in the first place?

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on May 21, 2010 (boomark / email).