My credo is that roleplaying is about everything, so I was intrigued to come across this in a letter that Benjamin Franklin wrote to Jacques Barbeu-Duborg in April 1773:
"A toad buried in sand will live, it is said, till the sand becomes petrified: and then, being enclosed in the stone, it may still live for we know not how many ages. The facts which are cited in support of this opinion are too numerous and too circumstantial not to deserve a certain degree of credit. [...] A plant, with its flowers, fades and dies immediately if exposed to the air without having its root immersed in a humid soil, from which it may draw a sufficient quantity of moisture to supply that which exhales from its substance and is carried off continually by the air. Perhaps, however, if it were buried in quicksilver, it might preserve, for a considerable space of time, its vegetable life, its smell, and colour. If this be the case, it might prove a commodious method of transporting from distant countries those delicate plants which are unable to sustain the inclemency of the weather at sea, and which require particular care and attention.
"I have seen an instance of common flies preserved in a manner somewhat similar. They had been drowned in Madeira wine, apparently about the time when it was bottled in Virginia to be sent hither (to London). At the opening of one of the bottles, at the house of a friend where I then was, three drowned flies fell into the first glass that was filled. Having heard it remarked that drowned flies were capable of being revived by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the experiment upon these: they were therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve, which had been employed to strain them out of the wine. In less than three hours, two of them began by degrees to recover life. They commenced by some convulsive motions of the thighs, and at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped their eyes with their fore-feet, beat and brushed their wings with their hind-feet, and soon after began to fly, finding themselves in Old England, without knowing how they came thither. The third continued lifeless till sunset, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown away."
What does this tell us, other than that Franklin held no prejudice against a dangling participle? If it was anybody else I'd dismiss the story of the flies out of hand. We know that fruit flies can survive three days of drowning. Is it credible a bluebottle could last a year?
I suspect that Franklin is confusing two memories. (He doesn't tell Duborg how long ago this happened.) Perhaps on one occasion he saw the flies tipped out of the Madeira bottle, and somebody talked about how long they might survive. Later, he tried immersing and reviving some flies and found it was possible - but after a few hours, not months.
I recall a story, though cannot find the source now, of an officer killed during the retreat from Moscow whom Napoleon ordered sent back in a butt of wine for proper burial in France. What with one thing and another, the body got forgotten in the corner of a regimental cellar for a few decades until the barrel split open, perhaps from the gases released by putrefaction (got to hope nobody had been drinking from that barrel), and the dead officer spilled out. His beard, according to the fabulous account given by a witness, had grown to several feet long.
It wasn't an isolated case. Military campaigning meant that officers' corpses often had to be preserved, as this account by Napoleon's valet of the post-mortem experiences of the Duke of Montebello shows:
"In a few hours putrefaction became complete, and they were obliged to plunge the mutilated body into a bath filled with corrosive sublimate. This extremely dangerous operation was long and painful; and M. Cadet de Gassicourt deserves much commendation for the courage he displayed under these circumstances; for notwithstanding every precaution, and in spite of the strong disinfectants burned in the room, the odour of this corpse was so fetid, and the vapor from the sublimate so strong, that the distinguished chemist was seriously indisposed.
"Like several other persons, I had a sad curiosity to see the marshal's body in this condition. It was frightful. The trunk, which had been covered by the solution, was greatly swollen; while on the contrary, the head, which had been left outside the bath, had shrunk remarkably, and the muscles of the face had contracted in the most hideous manner, the wide-open eyes starting out of their sockets. After the body had remained eight days in the corrosive sublimate, which it was necessary to renew, since the emanations from the interior of the corpse had decomposed the solution, it was put into a cask made for the purpose, and filled with the same liquid; and it was in this cask that it was carried from Schoenbrunn to Strasburg. In this last place it was taken out of the strange coffin, dried in a net, and wrapped in the Egyptian style; that is, surrounded with bandages, with the face uncovered."
Plenty of inspiration there for something creepy, or simply a melancholy memento mori episode to give your players a shudder?
The illustration above is by the late Martin McKenna. Martin wasn't a roleplayer (surprisingly) but he would have loved all this stuff about resurrected insects and pickled heroes. I'm still finding it a wrench that he is no longer in the world, and that painting has particularly fond memories because we came up with the concept for it together as part of our Frankenstein's Legions project. So the lesson as the year draws to an end is to hold onto your dear friends - but not to the extent of preserving them in brandy. Happy Christmas!
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