Joseph Addison, the English essayist, playwright and politician is interred at Westminster Abbey in London. He was born in May of 1672 in the Hamlet of Milston, population 130 in 2011. That population count was the same in 1861. May we infer that Addison’s hometown was a sleepy neighborhood.? Time seemingly stood still here next to the River Avon.

An American essayist, Henry David Thoreau, might well have written of the River Avon, “its thin current slides away but eternity remains”.

Then there was Clare Addison Tucker, his middle name in recognition of Joseph Addison. Clare was my Father. Regrettably, I never learned any of the lineage details that wove Addison with the Tuckers. Maybe I can off-load that research to my niece’s son, Addison Idol. Obviously the name appears intermittently in the family.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d lay off the writing for a bit and do some reading. The book was an easy choice. A volume from the Harvard Classics collection devotes its first pages to …tada… Joseph Addison, as though custom- scripted for my humble writing endeavor here, the first chapter is entitled Westminster Abbey.

In the first pages, Addison is at once comical and macabre . Apparently he was given to whiling away hours in or around the ancient cathedral. May I have you join him in his own words? But before I do, an editorial note: Addison wrote with an extravagance in style that is, safe to say, all but non-existent today. Your patience as his reader, I’m sure he would have requested, were he wrangling with this same time lapse.

Shall we join him: “Upon my going into the church, I entertained my self with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another and blended… undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.”

Apparently, “Cousin” Joseph was buried under that pavement, one hopes comfortably separated from the promiscuous of masses. How would I know that? I recall my Dad’s account of his and Mom’s guided tour of Westminster Abbey. Dad inquired of the tour guide as to any idea where Addison lay. “Funny you should ask”, the guide replied. “You’re standing on him right now.”

Anyway, back to my book. Addison further noted regarding the graves, “I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, they would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him.”

Coincidence never ceases to amaze! My niece, Krista Tucker, Addison Idol’s Mom, attended a seminar a few years back somewhere in Arizona desert. At this event, she had a conversation with a gentleman whose business happened to deal with rare documents. Imagine Krista’s surprise upon hearing that this fellow had in his inventory a letter written by Addison in his handwriting. Not long afterward, Krista became the grateful owner of this document, bequeathed to her by this gentleman in the. Arizona desert.

While taking a short break from the keyboard, I ponder what I’ve been doing ; that is writing of a family member who lived 350 years before me. That alone is humbling. While I dabble with writing, his had a measure of eloquence that I have no expectation to equal. Then I compare the divergent mechanics of inkling letters onto paper. I poke at a keyboard. His calligraphy was infinitely more time consuming, a tad more articulate than my helvetica.

Further humbling, Addison wrote far more prolifically than I probably will ever find the time to muster. I can live with that, though. That is, if time ever becomes measured by words never written. If not, I’ll just write ‘till I die, then simply resign myself to Mt. Thoreau’s mediation: “Time is but the stream I go a fishin in.”