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W. C. Fields
and his wife began to find him intolerable. She complained to Fields that her husband was trying to steal his thunder and begged the comedian to find a new pen name. Fields, in an obliging humor, used the more memorable "Mahatma Kane Jeeves" for his next script.
"Chester Snavely" was a name that Fields admired. He used it in two or three of his short comedies. The original owner, as far as he knew, was an undertaker of exceptional accomplishments in a suburb of Philadelphia. As a boy, Fields had blundered across a damp, crepy cortege led by the spotless Snavely, and, curious, had padded along behind. It was a funeral of distinction; Fields never forgot either it or Snavely. In fact, he was so powerfully influenced that he took steps to avoid a similar festivity for himself. The second paragraph of his last will and testament read: "I direct my executors immediately upon the certificate of my death being signed to have my body placed in an inexpensive coffin and taken to a cemetery and cremated, and since I do not wish to cause my friends undue inconvenience or expense I direct my executors not to have any funeral or other ceremony or to permit anyone to view my remains, except as is necessary to furnish satisfactory proof of my death."
In arranging the obsequies, Snavely was only following the custom of the day, and one which has altered little in the passing years. When Fields came upon the scene, having heard a peculiar ululation from his sanctuary in a clump of beeches (where he was roasting a borrowed chicken), a brief church service had been concluded and the procession was on its way to the grave. Deceased, surrounded by flowers, was in the first carriage, an open one, and behind him were eight other open, filled carriages, a hayrick containing a small party garbed in black, and a buckboard somewhat incongruously loaded with limestone blocks. The latter mystery was solved when it developed that the driver of
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