Christmas Eve: fine, bright, frosty weather; for a time hatred, malice, and uncharitableness seem to be dying away. Some purses are heavy. more are light, but the hearts of their owners seem alike touched by thoughts that bring all that is best in them to the surface.
Fathers, who perhaps in the ordinary way would seek employment at the public-house to-night, assist their wives with the shopping. Plum puddings are a recognised Christmas institution, but in many families new pinafores for the little girls are almost as much so.
“I want to see some pinafores,” says a customer. Then going to the shop door, she sings out, “Come in, Joe.”
Joe appears doubtfully but when the pinafores are produced his shyness wears off, and his interest is keen. Nellie’s eleven, Marjorie’s eight, Jane is three, and baby’s 9 months. “We want one for each of them.” says the mother. They look at several.
“I say, mother, wouldn’t Nell look fine in that?” says Joe.
“Too dear.” says the careful housewife.
“’Ow much?” asks Joe.
The price quoted, and the generous father declares it is not a ha’penny too much. The selection is completed, and away they go happy. A minute or two after Joe reappears alone–left his stick, he says. “I say, show me some haprons, quick, miss, to fit the missus.” He buys a good one, and, cramming it into his pocket, goes out flourishing his recovered stick, left for the purpose.
Later his wife will dodge in and purchase a tie for Joe, bright enough to dispel a fog of the “London particular” variety.
Such is the pleasant scene enacted again and again in many a fancy shop on Christmas Eve, telling of a fund of affection which seldom finds expression.
Bashful young men appear to buy gloves, fur necklets, or silk ties for their sweethearts. Many come for gloves with no idea of size. One blushing swain informed me that her waist was 23 inches, but didn’t know her size in gloves. A few years ago girls were fond of buying braces and tobacco pouches, which they would embroider with their own fair hands for their beloved ones, but these are not so greatly favoured now, mufflers and silk handkerchiefs having replaced them. And. indeed, generally in present giving there seems to have been a movement in favour of the useful as opposed to the purely ornamental.
One Christmas Eve incident to close with. I was once employed in a shop the proprietor of which his assistants generally spoke of as the “Curmudgeon”–a name his character apparently justified. Just as we were close upon closing time a poor woman in widow’s weeds who had been a good customer in happier times came in and asked for pinafores. There had been a great rush of business, and all the cheap ones of the size she required had been sold. Her eyes tilled with tears to think that her little one must be disappointed.
Just as she was going the “Curmudgeon” came forward with a pinafore, saying. “This has been badly inked. and if it is of any use you may have it for six-pence.” The widow went away happy. The “Curmudgeon” had deliberately inked one of the best pinafores, knowing that she would not accept a big reduction as a matter of charity.
I am persuaded that the half-sovereign he gave me that night was meant to close my lips about the incident, but I refused to be bribed, and his name is no longer the “Curmudgeon.”
Waikato [NZ] Times 24 December 1903: p. 2
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is always pleased to hear of kindly and generous fathers and husbands and of Scrooge-like employers who show unexpected flashes of liberality in the Christmas season. One hopes that the missus was pleased with her apron and Joe was delighted with his brilliant cravat. The Curmudgeon receives a reverential tip of a figurative cap for his delicate handling of a situation that called for the nicest diplomacy.
A “movement in favour of the useful as opposed to the purely ornamental,” was certainly all to the good. Young men groaned under the weight of the fancy-work inflicted on them by industrious young ladies and longed for a misfit holiday gift exchange where one could trade six pairs of nicely embroidered slippers for a serviceable jacket or cap. Even better would be if the ladies would not send the fad du jour done up in tissue. Mrs Daffodil shudders as she remembers a certain “singing fish” that was all the rage one Christmas.
THE CHRISTMAS FAD.
I would put forth a yearning prayer
That these, the loving ones, and fair,
Who keep unworthy me in view
As one for Christmas presents due.
Might each, though generously inclined.
A separate inspiration find.
One year with handkerchiefs I’m showered.
The next by neckties overpowered:
Again more slippers than I’d need
Had I been born a centipede.
Another year, both maids and wives
Embower me in paper knives.
Then gloves came in, pair after pair
Of every sort— from everywhere—
And smoking caps, whose sizes strange
From infants’ up to giants’ range!
Sweethearts, I pray you. list to me!
Whatever gift is said to be
The proper thing to send— the “fad”—
If you would make my poor heart glad
And cause my bosom joyous swells—
Don’t send it–please, send something else.
Feilding [NZ] Star 24 December 1901: p. 8
Of course, some gentlemen, driven to extremes by an excess of fancy-work might do as this man did:
For this man, who as a terrible fellow with the girls, no less than seven fair creatures manufactured pairs of slippers, all delicious things of embroidery, ribbons and velvet, and presented them to the lucky favorite at Christmas.
This was an embarrassment of riches, and the wretched man, having picked out the finest pair for his own use, quietly placed the remaining six pairs of slippers in the show window of a drygoods store downtown for sale. And they fetched fancy prices, I am told.
Pittsburg [PA] Dispatch 7 May 1890: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
The cat had been put out, the children were in bed, and Lysander John Appleton, worn out with the terrors of another day, was prepared to spend an evening in peace.
“Dear, dear, dear,” said Mrs. Lysander John, looking up from her paper. “Isn’t it horrible?”
“What?” snorted her husband.
“Seventy-five people killed by a flood in Italy! Just think of the poor little orphans’.”
(Silence for two minutes.) “Oh, my, how can the Lord permit such terrible things. A man shot his wife and five of her sisters in Laurel, Del., last night. The rooms looked like a slaughter house when he got through. I am glad he killed himself and saved the people the expense of trying such a brute. His poor, poor wife! What she must have endured living with a man of that disposition.”
(The clock ticks about ten times.) “Oh listen to this. Oh, Lysander John, my heart aches so I can scarcely read it. Oh, my, oh my, this life is a troubled vale! Just think, five people killed in a train wreck in Georgia. The sorrow that goes into their homes to-night reaches my heart.”
Silence while Mrs. Appleton wiped the tears from her eyes, and turned the page. Then a scream, “A bride and groom killed on their wedding trip! The poor dears. Just think of the happiness with which they started out, and now the journey ends in two coffins. Maybe they will be buried In one coffin. I think that would be so sweet.”
(Silence for two minutes that was finally broken by violent sobbing.) “A girl of sixteen poisoned her own sister in Massillon, Ohio. It is too horrible to be true. Oh, Lysander John, how grateful we should be that none of our children ever did a thing like that! The poor, Poor, POOR mother!”
Mrs. Lysander John reached blindly for her apron to wipe away her tears, her handkerchief having been soaked in previous enjoyment of the news, and then she turned tearful eyes toward Lysander John, only to find his chair vacant. Upstairs there was a sound of heavy shoes being kicked off viciously to the floor.
“The men,” said Mrs. Lysander John to herself, picking up her newspaper and preparing to read some more, “are SO Unfeeling.”
The Atchison [KS] Weekly Globe 31 March 1910: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Indeed. The press in the nineteenth century, particularly in the United States, was avid for a sensation. “If it bleeds, it leads,” about sums it up. Mrs Daffodil has previously examined some of the blood-thirsty themes of the press in this post: “Poison! Arson! Death His Bride!”
It was traditionally the role of the pater familias to read the newspaper to the family gathered round the fireside, eliding or pruning judiciously, when the gore or the body count was deemed harmful to the sensibilities of his listeners. Mrs Daffodil wonders at the patience of Mr Appleton at having his newspaper snatched away by a woman so lacking in womanly delicacy. She suspects that, one day, particularly when Mr Appleton longs to read of the outcome of some sporting contest, he will snap and there will be yet another horrid murder for the unfeeling public to slaver over in the morning edition.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Everybody on the West Side knows Barney Sullivan. He drives a hearse for a Madison street undertaker. He wears a fuzzy old plug hat and a monkey-fur cape. Barney also takes great pride in his whiskers. They are of a pleasing though rather tyrannical red, and exude only from his chin.
Not long ago Barney met the Widow McGraw, whose husband was killed last summer in the Burlington yards. It was at a wake that Barney became acquainted with the Widow McGraw. Barney was invited to call, which he did, and on leaving it was arranged that they should go buggy-riding Sunday afternoon if the day was fine.
Barney forgot all about engaging a rig until 10 o’clock yesterday morning. He went to several stables on the west side, but could not hire a horse for love or money. There wasn’t a horse or buggy to be had in all Chicago. As a last resort he hitched up a team of cream-colored horses to a white hearse and started for Prairie avenue. In front of where the widow is employed he turned in so close that the wheels of the hearse scraped against the curbstone.
People in the neighborhood went out on the front steps to inquire who was dead. Presently Barney and the widow came out of the house and mounted the driver’s box. They drove in impressive dignity down Drexel boulevard, and then turned the heads of the cream-colored horses toward Jackson Park. Thousands of persons saw the strange vehicle circling around the park, but they didn’t know what to make of it. Barney and the widow paid no attention to the caustic comments made upon them from time to time. They enjoyed the drive as well as they would have done in a landau.
For on the way home it was all planned that the Widow McGraw will soon change her name to Sullivan.
Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 22 March 1891: p. 9
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil wishes the couple joy, but to be punctilious about a point of etiquette, a white hearse, while no doubt a lovely spectacle, is meant only for the youthful and the previously unmarried, which the Widow McGraw emphatically was not.
There was also a popular superstition that to see a hearse or mourning-coach on one’s wedding day was an ill-omen for the marriage. Mr Sullivan is fortunate that the lady of his choice not only did not recoil in horror at his choice of vehicle, but took pleasure in the ride and the company, despite the circumstances, hinting at a character of rare flexibility and amiability, and suggesting that their home life will be a happy one.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
I am no longer a young girl. The age of illusions is over with me, and that which I state now, I state with a calm conviction in its truth which no amount of incredulity can shake. It is many years ago since I was a school-girl. It chanced that I formed a friendship with a girl of my own age, but not of my own temperament. Our physiques differed as widely as did our fates. She had been christened Emmeline, but to me, and to others of her familiars, she was always Milly Deane. A handsome brunette, with a wealth of colour and vitality about her that made of her large-pupilled grey eyes two dancing stars, and of her rounded firm cheeks two ever-blooming roses. A fine upright girl, whose attitudes never required correction at the tongue of the stiffest of governesses, and whose back never was condemned by the ignominy of a board. In the days of which I write, if Milly Deane was a fair embodiment of night, I was a fairer one of morning ; for I had waves of feathery ringlets of bright gold, when she had pounds of bonny brown ones ; and pale pink roses in my cheeks in place of her crimson blooms. The daughters of the royal tribe of wanderers–those dusky flowers who break into bloom all over the land simultaneously whenever the sun shines genially–had told our fortunes over and over again. I, Annette Davant, was to love, and be loved by, a dark gentleman, whose lot was cast in India, whither I was to accompany him, and live a life of Oriental splendour, amongst elephants, and punkahs, and Cashmere shawls. Milly, on the contrary, was to marry young young and happily a gentleman who rolled in wealth in the city, and to have a large family, and a long life, and everything else that the heart of woman can desire. We accepted these prophecies with assumed incredulity, and real belief. We left school the same quarter, and came out at the same county ball. Our homes were not very far apart. Milly Deane’ s home was in the high street of a flourishing country town; a tall, square, considerable mansion of red brick, with white stone copings, which her father had bought the freehold of on his attaining the position of first solicitor in the neighbourhood. My home was more exclusively situated. It was an old, rambling, picturesque Grange, in the environs of one of the prettiest villages of Norfolk. A house with an oaken parlour, and a cedar room in it, with a grand old grey-balustraded terrace in front of it, and with our coat-of-arms carved massively on a shield over the entrance door. It was in this house that I came home to live just before Milly Deane and I made our debut at the county ball. Ours was a very small family. It consisted only of my mother and myself. Our household was composed of a number of old, stolidly-unimaginative servants, who had lived with us for years, and to whom our interests and our nerves were of the dearest consequence. They were tenacious, too, about the regulation of the house. Idle rumour asserted it to be haunted by a discreditable ancestress, but none of those then resident in the house had either seen anything or heard anything when I left school with Milly Deane. In the order of things–at least in what appeared to be the order of things to young girls’ minds–my favourite schoolfellow and I deemed it incumbent upon ourselves to spend a large portion of our time together. It was easy enough to ride and drive over to see one another constantly; but that did not satisfy us. Friendship demanded that we should stay at each others’ houses–that our morning aspirations and evening conclusions should be breathed in each others’ ears–and the demands of friendship were attended to. We did these things, and I don’t know that we were ever the worse for doing them, in spite of the current scepticism which mocks at all that it does not understand.
The county ball, at which Milly Deane and I were to make our first appearance as grown-up and eligible young ladies, came off in the Christmas week of 1850. It had been the source of joy and woe to us both for at least a fortnight previously– that is to say, we were charmed at the idea of going–but, as became young women to whom it was still left to make the first impression, we stood very much upon the order of our going, and were severe, even in our slumbers, with audacious dressmakers, who presumed to hold adverse opinions to ours on the important subject of when it was needful for our costumes to come home. For several days before the great event Milly had been staying at the Grange with me, sharing my room, as well as my costumes, cares, and creating a feeling of dismay in the minds of one or two of our old servants by her obstinate persistence in stating that the house was haunted. It was about a week before the ball that she confided her conviction to me, first quite calmly. I had run up hurriedly into my room one afternoon, when darkness was just creeping over things, meaning to dress quickly for the dinner, that my dear mother never liked to have kept waiting. I burst into the room, with my hat and habit on, my hair blowing about somewhat loosely, and my whip in my hand, just as I had come in from riding since two o’clock. Candles were burning on my dressing table, and, by the fire, Milly stood ready dressed in a soft amber silk, which became her dark glowing beauty well. She was speaking and laughing as I came into the room; and, to my surprise–for I made sufficient noise–she did not look up at my entrance. The words I caught were, “Will call me the yellow crocus still, for I wore this dress the last night he saw me.” I looked round the room in an instant. There was no one but ourselves in it. She must have been speaking to herself–yet that was never a habit of hers. In that instant my face had time to pale, and my flesh had time to creep. “Milly,” I exclaimed, and she looked straight at me without the slightest start or hesitation. As her gaze fell upon me, though, she gave vent to a surprised ejaculation, “Annette, how have you managed to metamorphose yourself in this minute?” she asked quickly, and I said–“In this minute, indeed! I am very much as I have been ever since I started for my ride, I believe.” Milly Deane came and put her hand on my shoulder. and looked at me with bewildered eyes. ” You came in some time ago, Annette–half an hour ago, at least.” she said earnestly. “I didn’t. I wish I had; I shall be late for dinner, as it is.” I answered, beginning to hurry off my riding gear. “But you did.” she repeated emphatically. “How silly of you to try to mystify me! why you should have taken the trouble to put on your habit again, puzzles me.” “I have never had it off, Milly,” I said, rather crossly; “it is you who are trying to mystify me, talking to yourself aloud, and arraying yourself in amber silk, as if some one was coming.” “I was not talking to myself, I was talking to you,” she said, indignantly; “and you told me yourself to put on this dress, when you said Captain Danvers was coming.” “I have never spoken to you since luncheon,” I said, “and as to Captain Danvers, I have never even heard of him.” Her face blanched, as I spoke, with a sort of horror that quickly reflected itself in mine. “You never told me to put on this dress because he was coming?” she said. interrogatively. “No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Do go and ask Mrs. Davant if you didn’t come with that message to me, half an hour ago. Stay! I’ll come too. I dare not be alone now.” “I shall not face mamma until dinner is ready,” I said, going on with my dressing. “Half an hour ago I was two miles away from home, in the middle of the common, on Cock Robin.” “Then the house is haunted,” Milly said; “and I have seen and spoken to a spirit. And it was like you,” she added stammeringly; and then she sat down, and seemed to be trying to collect herself. I had a very natural elucidation to offer, both to her and to myself, of this seeming mystery. “You probably sat down by the fire when you came up to dress?” I asked her. She nodded assent. “There is the clue to your mental maze.” I said, rather scornfully. “The heat overcame you, and you slept and dreamt a dream that has bothered you.” “It may have been a dream; but if it was, I am not awake now,” she said, slowly; “it was so vivid–so horribly vivid. I will just tell you how it all happened or how it seemed to happen,” she said. “I was sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown, when you came quickly into the room, dressed in a blue silk, with a quantity of Christmas roses in your hair and on your bosom. You didn’t look at me, but you said, ‘Make haste, and dress yourself in your amber silk, Milly; mamma wishes it.’ And when I asked, ‘Why?’ you said, ‘Oh! because Captain Danvers is coming to dinner.’ Then you went again, and I dressed: and that is all.” “A dream!” I said laughing. “Now, I am ready: mamma will think you crazy when she sees you such a swell. Who is Captain Danvers?” “An army officer,” Milly said, with a young country girl’s pride in knowing a military man. “I saw him several times while I was up in London with my aunt.” “You never mentioned him to me,” I said. “I know that,” she said, blushing a little. “I made myself a goose about him, so aunt said,” she continued, laughing, “and so I have held my tongue about him since; but I was very glad indeed when you told me just now that he was coming here to dine.” “When you dreamt it,” I insisted; and then we went in to dinner, and told this joke, as we both began to consider it, to mamma.
By the time the ball came off, we had nearly forgotten Milly’s vision, as she would insist on calling it. It does not in the least matter my mentioning now, at this distance of time, that Milly and I were the rival belles of the evening. We were young, we were fresh, we were pretty–above all, we were new. Being both under the wing of the same chaperone, we met at long intervals during the progress of the ball, and in the midst of my own triumphs I found time to notice that Milly was frequently on the arm of a handsome, distinguished looking man, a stranger, who was in the uniform of an infantry regiment. “That is Captain Danvers, Annette,” she had time to whisper to me once in the evening; and from the tone of that whisper I judged that she fancied she had met with her fate. I soon knew Captain Danvers very well indeed; for shortly after that ball, he became Milly Deane’s declared lover. I have called him distinguished looking, and so he was to our girlish eyes. Perhaps if we looked at him with the matured vision of to-day, we might substitute the word unhealthy for distinguished, and be considerably nearer the mark. But in those days he was, if not a god of beauty, a very fair object of admiration to us. He was very tall and very slight, and his hair and eyes were both black and shining, and his face was of almost a ghastly pallor. Unquestionably he was a very striking looking man; and we stricken ones, in those early days, pronounced him an Apollo. He talked in a way that was quite new to us both, too. We trembled, but admired, when he avowed his beliefs, which were few, and his non-beliefs, which were many. His shallow scepticism, and his mystical metaphysical allusions, seemed to be very brilliant things to us in those early hours of our luckless intercourse with him. Yet all the time I felt him to be a dangerous man and wondered how Milly’s infatuation would terminate for herself.
They were married in about four months from the ball at which they had renewed their acquaintance. Milly went off to India almost immediately with her husband, and so we parted, my pretty friend and I. And soon a romance of my own swept her romance from my mind and memory, although for herself I had a warm affection still. I settled down into the happy wife of a prosperous man, and the proud mother of fair good children. Milly and I corresponded with tolerable regularity. Of her husband she never spoke after the first six months or so of her marriage. That she was a disappointed and unhappy woman I could not fail to perceive.
At the end of five years Mrs. Danvers came home alone on a sort of sick leave which had been granted her by her husband. We were living in London at the time, and it seemed to me only natural that my solitary friend should have made our house her home. The very morning after her arrival in town I went to the hotel at which she had given me her address, and solicited her to do so. But she refused decidedly at once, saying that she was better alone for many reasons. I questioned her closely, with the loving curiosity my affection for her entitled me to display, as to how she was wont to pass her time, and whether her husband and herself were sympathetic in their pursuits or not. “Very sympathetic!” she said once, rather harshly. “We both like to please ourselves.” “Have I been superseded, Milly?” I persisted. “Have you any female friend in India who seems nearer and dearer to you than I do?” “I haven’t a female friend besides yourself in the world,” she said, quietly; “not one I assure you, Annette; not one that I would go a yard out of my way to confide a joy or a sorrow to.” “You would confide both to me if we were thrown much together again,” I said, determined not to be rebuffed. “Not trivial ones.” “Great ones, then?” I said. She moved uneasily off the sofa on which she had been reclining, and stood with her back to me, gazing out of the window. “Great ones, perhaps,” she said slowly, after a long pause.
“Annette,” and she turned round suddenly upon me, “shall I promise you that in the greatest trouble of my life I will come to you? I will so promise if you wish it.”
“You may not be able to come to me,” I began protesting. I was going on to say, “but I hope you will always write to me if–,” but she interrupted me. “I may not be able to come to you in the flesh,” she said emphatically ; and I answered “That is exactly what I meant; but you will write?” She nodded her beautiful head and said,–“I promise that, in my greatest trouble, I will come to you, Annette; and you, on your part, promise that you will not shrink from me.” An interruption occurred just then, and we never renewed the subject. “Annette,” she said to me one day, when we were sitting alone, talking over schoolgirl days, “have you a blue dress trimmed about the body and sleeves with Christmas roses?” “No,” I said, laughing; “haven’t you forgotten my ghostly visitation to you yet?” “No, I haven’t forgotten that ghostly visitation, and I never shall forget it.”
Milly Danvers stayed in England about eight months ; then she re-embarked for India, “which I shall probably never leave again,” she said sadly. “Does the climate try you so very much?” I asked anxiously. “Cruelly! cruelly!” she said warmly; “I can’t live there long.” “Does Captain Danvers know this?” I asked, indignantly. “Yes, dear champion of mine;” she said, affectionately. “Why else should he wish me back?” she said, curling her lip a little; “of course he knows it. Captain Danvers would not miss me–” “Oh, yes, he would!” I interrupted, hastily; her tone was so desperately despairing, that I could not bear it. “Oh, yes, he would! why else should he wish you to go back to him?” “Because no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death there,” she said; and then she peremptorily decreed that nothing more should be said about it. We parted very soon after this, and when I heard from her that she had arrived in their cantonment in the Madras Presidency safely, the gloomy impression upon my mind by our last interview faded away.
Months passed away, and Christmas-tide was upon us. We had arranged a juvenile party on the occasion of our eldest child’s seventh birthday, and. in decking out my little men and women, and arranging my rooms, I overlooked that usually important matter–my own toilette. A couple of days before our juvenile ball, I laughingly told my husband of my dilemma. “I haven’t a ball dress fresh enough to wear in honour of our little Milly,” I said to him, “and really I have no time to go to my dressmaker.” “I will go and order you one; leave it to me, Annette,” he replied; and I agreed to do so, only stipulating that he should not make me too fine, and that he should avoid pink. The night of little Milly’s ball arrived in due season; and, fatigued with my exertions, I went up to my dressing-room, determined upon resting until it was time for me to dress. My robe had not come home yet, but I could rely on Madame Varcoe’s honour–she had said that it should be home by half-past eight at the latest, and I knew that she would keep her word. Feeling thus easy, I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep of some hour and a half. Then I awoke, and found my dress laid out ready for me to put on, and my maid waiting to do my hair. “It’s one of the prettiest dresses Madame Varcoe has ever made for you,” my maid said, as I cast a glance towards the bed, “a most delicate rich blue, trimmed with the most loveliest Christmas roses.” Strange as it may appear–at least, strange as it does appear to me now–I gave no thought at the time to the coincidence between my actual dress and the dress of Millv Deane’s dream. My head was full of other things, and memory was effectually put to flight by the entrance of my three little girls, vociferously declaring “that I should be late, and that it seemed as if people were never coming.” But the little guests came all in good time, and enjoyed themselves almost as much as I did. I say almost as much as I did advisedly, for that must be the happiest ball for a woman which she organises for the first time for her eldest child. At any rate, I can imagine no higher Terpsichorean happiness than this. Yet the day has been (not so very long ago either) when I enjoyed a ball as gaily as the gayest.
It was over at last, and when I had seen my pleased and sleepy children safely into their respective beds, I went slowly to my own room, and sat down by the fire to wait for my husband. I had told my maid that I would dispense with her services, and so I sat alone, and pleased myself with recalling the little ebullitions of childish pleasure which I had witnessed that night. My husband was down in his study still, looking through the evening papers, the late editions of which had been neglected by him in his endeavours to contribute to the little people’s entertainment. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning when I roused myself from my cheerful reverie, and stood up to commence my preparations for retiring for the night. The chair I had been occupying was a large massive carved oak one, with a very high back. As I stood up, I became conscious, without seeing anything, that some one was leaning on this back, and, thinking that it must be my husband, I said quietly, “You have come at last, dear?” “At last,” a very soft voice whispered–breathed rather; and then I turned round startled, and saw nothing on the spot from whence the voice had proceeded. A nameless horror, a dreadful fear possessed me. I could not cry out; even in my agony of fear I revolted against doing that. When I could move–and for a few moments I was quite unable to do so–my impulse was to get nearer to the gas, which was low, and turn on a brighter light. I had two lamps in my room, one on either side of my cheval glass; and as I reached up to turn on a higher light, I caught sight of myself. I was in just such a dress as Milly had described me as wearing when she saw me, or fancied that she saw me, or dreamt that she saw me. Sick and horrified, and chilled with a more than mortal dread, I staggered back to my chair, and buried my face in my hands. Something swept softly up to me from a darker corner of the room, swept softly up and stood beside my chair. I felt the air grew heavier, as occupied air does grow. I heard low breathings; some one was bending over me nearer and nearer. Then the breathings formed themselves into words, into a word rather, and I heard my own name murmured distinctly,
“Annette, Annette,” and I knew that it was murmured in Milly Danvers’ voice. I shuddered, and tried to look up. I took my hands down from before my face, and strove to lift my eyes and strove in vain. I could not do it. I had a dread of being so awfully frightened that I might never recover it. That Milly Danvers was standing close to me I was well assured. But I was also well assured that it was not Milly Danvers in the flesh. Then I remembered the words she had spoken to me. “I will promise to come to you in the greatest trouble of my life,” she had said ; and I felt, as her words flashed back upon me, that my friend must be in fearful trouble now. Again the impalpable presence spoke, “Annette, remember the hour! note it!” Shiveringly, shudderingly I raised my eyes at last, and there, gilding away into the shade by the side of the bed, I saw a slight frail form. Instantaneously I turned to my clock. The hour hand stood at three, the minute hand at five minutes past twelve. I grasped the bell, “all my soul within me sinking,” and rang such a peal as quickly brought my husband to my side. I wrote to Milly the following day, and I got no answer. I wrote again, and my second letter shared the fate of my first one. Then I gave up the attempt to elucidate whatever of mystery there was in the affair, and tried to forget it–and could not. Just twelve months after this I was spending the Christmas week, together with my husband, at the house of one of his married sisters in the country. We arrived just in time to dress for dinner, and in the brief interval between my going up to my room for that purpose, and being joined by my husband, my sister-in-law came to speak to me for a minute. “We have a goodly party dining here to-day, Annette,” she said. “Captain Danvers expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting you again.” “Captain Danvers! is he here?” ” He is, with his wife,” she said, shutting the door, and running off; and I was left alone, repeating to myself, “His wife! Then Milly is not dead!” and then we dressed, and went down to dinner. I recognised Captain Danvers the instant I got into the drawing-room. He was considerably altered; still I knew him at a glance. I looked round the room. Milly was not there. Impulsively I went up to him and asked, as I took his offered hand, “Where is your wife?” “She will be here in a few moments,” he answered, smiling his old, brilliantly flashing smile and the wild throbbing at my heart ceased. She was alive, and she was here! That was sufficient for me. I curbed my impatience, and stood still, watching the door. Two or three ladies, strangers to me, entered the room, and, a moment after, my brother-in-law asked a gentleman to take me down to dinner. We all went down. Captain Danvers was on the opposite side of the table, at some little distance from me. I looked round the table, and Milly was not there. The dinner that day seemed to be an endless affair to me. I was most impatient to ask our hostess where Mrs. Danvers was. I went to her the moment we got into the drawing-room, ” Where is Mrs. Danvers?” I said; “she is my dearest old friend, and I’m longing to see her.” “You might have renewed your acquaintance at the table, then, surely,” she said, pointing out a fair, pretty young woman whom I had observed sitting very near to me at dinner. “That Mrs. Danvers! impossible!” “But the truth, notwithstanding,” she said, laughing; “she is a bride, and a beauty, and altogether rather an acquisition to my Christmas party, I consider.” I was almost stunned at the revelation of Milly’s death; and when Captain Danvers, later in the evening, came sauntering up to me suavely, saying, “Now, at last, I can renew my very pleasant acquaintance with you,” I cut him short at once by saying, “Captain Danvers, when did Milly die?” “Last Christmas Eve,” he said. ” At five minutes past three?” I asked eagerly, and he said—“Yes.” And as he said it the two ghostly episodes which connected the three (Milly, Captain Danvers, and myself) together, stood out like bodily presences before my eyes.
My story is finished. Call it a ghost story, a fable, a fancy—what you will. I can only declare that the spiritual visitations actually occurred. Milly’s fate was never cleared up. She died, we learnt afterwards, after a long, tedious illness which defied the medical skill that was called in, nearly at the last, by her philosophically calm husband, Captain Danvers.
The Bradford [West Yorkshire England] Observer 18 November 1869: p. 6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: How very solicitous of Captain Danvers to recall his ill and unhappy wife to that place where no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death–and where physicians called to a death-bed, are commendably discreet about the belated summons. One wonders whether the Captain (who had surely attained the rank of Colonel) retained the services of the same medical gentleman when he tired of his beauty of a bride.
Touching though it is to see the two friends reunited by the late Milly’s apparition, it would be far more satisfying to see the first Mrs Danvers haunt the Captain so that he would be found dead in his bed with an expression of stark, staring horror on his ghastly, pallid face and a scrap of amber silk clutched between his fingers.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Mourning veil, 1895 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bank’s Flirtation.
Mr. Banks and Mrs. Banks had had a falling out. She said that he didn’t spend enough of his time at home, and he told her that she was too much taken up with society to make home pleasant. That morning they agreed to separate and he slammed his hat on the back of his head, and left the room telling her that she could keep the house and furniture and do what she pleased with it. She was just vowing very sharply that she didn’t want anything to do with the old trash, when the front door slammed and he was gone. Then Mrs. Banks swallowed a few sobs that insisted on coming out, paid the hired girl and sent her away, and went up stairs to pack her valise so as to catch the next train which would take her to her mother’s home.
Banks went down town whistling dance tunes, breaking here and there into an abstracted quaver which made them sound strangely mournful. He sat down in his law office, and tried to work on a case, but it was of no use. He put on his hat, took up his cane and went down town. A huge poster met his eye, and informed him that rates to a town near Barnesville were very low. As he had an old college chum at Barnesville he concluded to take the opportunity to go and see him and talk it all over.
He boarded the train and found the out his pocket I usual excursion crowd on it Some ladies too, who seemed very much out of place, and full of regret because they had ventured to come, were there. One especially attracted his attention. She was dressed entire in black and wore a heavy veil. She was struggling up the steps with a heavy valise as the bell gave warning that the train was about to start. Banks gallantly came to her assistance and taking the valise out of her willing hand helped her on the platform, and found a seat for her. She thanked him merely with a nod, but she seemed to have a sort of fascination for Banks. He kept near at hand and was constantly tendering little services. She was apparently averse to acquaintances formed in this way and indicated very plainly by her manner, that his attentions were not pleasing.
In the course of a half hour the conductor came around for tickets. The little woman in black put her hand in her pocket and withdrew it, in evident consternation.
“It’s gone,” she said in a dismayed tone.
“What’s gone?” asked the conductor.
“My pocketbook and ticket too.”
Banks stepped up and said politely. “I trust you will permit me to offer some assistance in this dilemma,” at the same time taking out his pocket book.
“Never sir, never,” and she said it with an air that meant plainly that she would have a scene rather than accept his offer of help. “I will get off at the next station.”
” Very well,” said Banks. “Here is the station now. I think I will get off here too.”
When they reached the waiting room which was empty, Banks. handed her her valise which he had picked up and carried for her. She lifted her veil and looked him fiercely in the eye and said:
“Now sir, I have discovered you in the midst of your perfidy. You had no idea that you were pursuing your own wife with your wicked attentions, had you.” Here she burst into years. “O just to think that I was scarcely out of the house before you commenced trying to flirt with some other woman. I didn’t think it of you.”
“Didn’t you tell me this morning that I might forget you just as soon as I pleased?”
“Yes-es, but I didn’t mean it that way.”
“And you didn’t want me to forget you after all?”
“No; of course not.”
“Well, look here, Clara, there’s no use of crying about it It’s all right.”
“Don’t come near me any more.”
“But I knew it was you all the time.”
“Don’t try to deceive me. You could not recognize me.”
“No, but you see, I recognized my own name on your valise.”
The next train took them back home and he went out that evening and told the servant girl that she needn’t consider herself discharged.
The Sherman County Dark Horse [Eustis KS] 31 May 1888: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Two sundered hearts re-united–by a valise! Not, perhaps, the most romantic of plot devices, but, there–it will do. At least until the next time Mr Banks spends too much time out at lodge meetings. It would serve him right if she met him at the door at 2 am in her widow’s weeds–in mourning for the “late” Mr Banks. Which begs the question: why did she have a set of mourning clothing at the ready in her wardrobe? Was she, perhaps, so annoyed at his absences that she was preparing to poison his coffee?
The Wife Disguised, particularly at masquerade parties, is one of the hoariest chestnuts in the amusing anecdote file. We have read about “The Lost Columbine,” with its frisson of French intrigue. Then there is this naughty tale:
At Cornely’s Masquerade , last Monday, a pretty Fruit Wench attracted so forcibly the Attention of Lord Grosvenor that for two Hours she was the sole Object of his Flattery and Admiration. At length, worked up into an irresistible Want of forming an Alliance with her, he told her his Name, offered a Carte Blanche, and begged she would not delay his Happiness. The Lady whispered her Consent, but insisted upon continuing masked. The amorous Lord, overjoyed at the Conquest he had made, conducted his fair Inamorata to the Nunnery in Pall Mall, where, having praised and re-praised every Charm he beheld and enjoyed, he obtained Leave to untie the odious Mask that concealed the Beauty who had made him happy. What Pen, or Pencil, could paint or describe the ghastly Astonishment of his Lordship at the Sight of that Woman! What! my Wife, muttered he, shaking in every Limb! Lady Grosvenor burst into Laughter and left the Room, thanking him ironically for the Right he had given her to taste with Impunity of the forbidden Fruit.
The Virginia Gazette [Williamsburg VA] 14 May 1772
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Ten years ago, while visiting friends in Thistledown, Pa., I was told the following story, and will here relate it, word for word, as it was given, as far as memory will permit:
“Thistledown has just had a sensation,” said my hostess, Mrs. Doree, “a veritable ghost story. Shall I tell you about it?”
“Certainly, but I warn you not to impose too much upon my credulity, for I am not very superstitious.”
“Oh, I know you are a sad skeptic in such matters. However, this is a true story, an actual occurrence. Did you notice the occupants of the pew directly in front of us this morning at church?”
“Yes. A gentleman, a sweet little girl with a young woman who looked like a nurserymaid. The man wore a light tweed suit, has tawny hair and mustache and the most cynical face I ever saw.”
“The same. His name is Cornelius Butterfield. He is a native of London, England, and the little girl is his only child. Pansy, he calls her. He came here five years ago, and entered into partnership with McLeod & Co. His wife, report said, was the daughter of an English nobleman. She was a fair, blue-eyed, delicate-looking lady. Her age was about twenty years. She was highly educated, an accomplished musician, and the most romantic, sensitive being I ever knew. Her maid accompanied her to this country, but after a few weeks returned to England.
“The Butterfields moved into a new, uncomfortable-looking house uptown, where the young wife, who had never dressed herself alone or arranged her gold-colored hair without the aid of her maid, was obliged to do her housework and sewing. Of ‘course, this was very distasteful to one who had been tenderly reared in a luxurious London home. The lady could not help being homesick and unhappy. It is said that she made many mistakes in the culinary department—that her husband was harsh and cruelly impatient with his young, inexperienced wife. Poor thing! He even denied her many of the necessaries as well as all of the luxuries of life, I was told. It seems that it was an elopement. Mrs. Butterfield had a highly cultivated voice. She could play on the piano with taste and expression, but her husband refused to get her an instrument. She would plead with him for hours for a piano, with tears in her eyes, and declare that she should be less homesick if she could amuse herself with music when her work was done; but he did not wish to gratify her in this respect. It is said that her family across the ocean sent frequent sums of money to her. If they did, he must have kept the money, for the piano did not come to cheer her.
“It is reported that he used to beat her, but I am not sure that this was true, although I have heard him scold her for boiling the coffee too much or too little, and then reproach her for crying.
“When I found that she could play so finely, I invited her to come here whenever she had time to practice. She was very thankful, I can assure you; and would come in and sing for hours at a time. I must say again, that I still think Alice Butterfield’s touch and voice were both the finest and sweetest I have ever heard. Her selections were new to most of us. Indeed no one in Thistledown could play any of her pieces; for her music was of a higher class than ours, I wish you could have heard her.”
“How did it please her husband to have her practice here?” I asked. “Not very well. He told me that she was crazy to sing in public and he wanted to discourage her. That ‘she had been trained for the opera.’ But, how homesick and distract she was before her baby was born! Her playing only seemed to revive old memories and associations; for her cheeks were usually wet with tears when she rose from my piano;—yet one could not question her.
“I did not see her alive after her little girl was born, although I called frequently. The doctor or her husband was always on guard, and would say: ‘She is raving with fever, you cannot see her to-day;’ or, ‘she is sleeping, and ought not to be disturbed.’ One day when I went to the foot of the chamber stairs to inquire about her, she heard me, and cried out: ‘Let Mrs. Doree come up! I tell you I must and will see her!’ But the doctor came hurrying downstairs, and told me that his ‘patient did not know what she was saying;’ that my ‘presence might excite her too much.’ That, ‘her very life depended on her being kept quiet.’
“I went away fearing, I knew not what. She died that night; and when I again called, she was in her coffin. Her husband was present. ‘He has never left her since the beginning of her sickness,’ the nurse said, ‘not even for his meals. He only wanted me to take care of the baby and bring things upstairs when they were needed,’ she added, ‘He was the real nurse, and the doctor was always in the house. He ordered me to keep her baby out of the sick-room, and people out of the house, as his wife could not be disturbed by visitors. So nobody went into her room except himself and the doctor, but I could hear the poor lady raving and crying all day long for a piano, or money to go home to London, to her mother.’
“Mr. Butterfield and the physician prepared the dead woman for the grave. She was dressed in her beautiful wedding gown, white satin and real lace. A Queen Elizabeth ruche was placed high about her neck, and her breast and throat were covered with white roses, for her corsage was cut low. Her face seemed to rise out of a thick mass of white flowers and lace. They buried her very quickly, I think—the second morning after she died. The funeral was private, only a few being present, except the doctor and clergyman. We wondered why the corpse was so profusely decorated with flowers, as she was not a bride. Her dead face was beautiful. It seemed to glorify that poorly furnished apartment, yet Mr. Butterfield, I remember, did not once raise his head from his hands or take one farewell look at his dead wife. After a short prayer they placed the white casket in a hearse and drove directly to the cemetery.
“Mr. Butterfield’s apparently undue haste in burying his wife, as well as the privacy attending both her sickness and funeral obsequies, caused no little stir in Thistledown. There was talk of unfair play on the part of her husband and the physician, and a coroner’s inquest was spoken of. Then the story leaked out that in her delirium Alice Butterfield had attempted suicide by cutting her throat so badly as subsequently to cause her death. That Dr. Webb had hoped to save his patient until the very last, he said, ‘by keeping her quiet, and not allowing any one to see
or talk to her until the wound had healed. That is why I excluded everybody except her husband and nurse from the room. But she died from her own hand.’
“Mr. Butterfield’s apparent penuriousness ceased soon after his wife’s death. He rented a larger house uptown, furnished it handsomely and purchased a grand Steinway piano. He employed a cook and nurserymaid, then sent for his sister to come and preside over his establishment. She came.
“Miss Butterfield was no longer young, but she talked and dressed like a woman accustomed to good society. She played accompaniments for church music and songs, but lacked Alice’s nice touch for the piano and classical knowledge of instrumental music, as well as her innate delicacy and fine culture. Still, we rather liked her and tried to make the English lady feel at home with us, although her reserved manner repelled our well-meant overtures of friendship.”
About a fortnight after Elizabeth Butterfield’s arrival both she and her brother were startled in the dead of the night by hearing some one playing on the new piano. The style of the nocturnal visitor was not only brilliant, but was unmistakably like that of the late Mrs. Alice Butterfield. Instrumental music of a high order, portions of celebrated operas, nocturnes and classical compositions, rarely heard in an inland town like Thistledown. The sweet notes trembled all through the house, thrillingly clear and wonderfully pure, closing with Mendelssohn’s wedding march.
Brother and sister and maids rushed downstairs, and stared at each other in alarm when they met at the door of the drawing-room.
“‘I thought it was you, Elizabeth,’ said Mr. Butterfield.
“‘And I thought it was you, Cornelius, but wondered how you had learned to play so well since you left England. But how did the player get in? I have the key in my pocket, upstairs.’
“Her brother tried the door and found it locked, as his sister had said. ‘It is very strange,’ he whispered, in an awe-struck manner, then to his sister: ‘Run and get the key. We will solve this mystery at once.’
“When they opened the door they found that the fine-toned instrument was being played by invisible fingers, for the music still continued, although the music stool was unoccupied and they were the only visible occupants of the room. They listened in alarm—looked at each other with terror-stricken faces until the music ceased. Then Mr. Butterfield asked:
“‘Can you play any of those pieces?’
“‘No, Cornelius. I never learned any difficult music; you know I only play simple chords and accompaniments,’ was the answer. They looked into and under the piano, then in every room and closet in the house; examined the windows and outbuildings—but no one was to be found. They took off the lid of the piano to see if a mouse could have set it to playing, or to see if a music box could have been hidden within it; searched everywhere in vain for the performer. The following night it was the same, and so on for several nights in succession. Neighbors were called in, and declared that the parlor was haunted. The servants left the house in fear. Still the grand Steinway awoke the inmates of the house nightly with its dulcet tones. The keys could be seen moving up and down, while marches, quicksteps, bits of operas followed each other in rapid succession— now swelling like martial music, grand and glorious; again dying away to a whisper, then rising like the sound of a storm or furious battle.
“The first intimation we had of their parlor being haunted was when its owner asked Mr. Doree if his piano ever got out of order and played right on, of its own accord, and, when answered in the negative, told us why he had asked the question. He acknowledged that he was greatly puzzled—said he could give no solution to the mystery. He remarked that the keys were certainly manipulated by ‘invisible fingers.’ Then, after a silence of a few minutes: ‘The strangest part of it is that neither my sister nor myself are able to play this class of music, which we recognize as the work of the old masters, and the servants cannot tell one note from another. Our neighbors are unable to whistle a single bar of it, let alone playing it. There is not another instrument of the kind on our street. My sister thought that some wag had hidden a music box inside of the piano, but we have had it taken all apart, had it tuned over anew and searched everywhere, but found nothing. It plays beautifully such music as I have heard my late wife play on her father’s piano.’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘it is clear that the house is haunted. It would hardly be safe for you if we were living in the witch-burning age.’ He laughed rather nervously, I fancied, and said, ‘Good night, come and hear it for yourselves,’ and we went.
“He told my husband’s partner the same story. All the people in the town declared that his dead wife had come back to punish him for not buying her an instrument, while the more malicious gossips of the town said that ‘there must have been foul play in the manner of Mrs. Butterfield’s death.’ There was talk of lynching the young widower—of disinterring his poor wife’s remains, and every one was for avenging her wrongs, when he suddenly closed his house, sold his effects, including the haunted piano, and sent his sister back to England.”
“Well, does the instrument still entertain its new owners?”
“Oh, no! That is the oddest part of the whole story. The lady who owns it has never been disturbed by any nocturnal music. The ghost has stopped playing. No invisible spirit hands now touch the keys. Both herself and daughters play very unscientifically. If poor Alice did return, she did so to punish her cruel husband and no one else. He is still boarding at the hotel uptown, but it is rumored that he will soon marry Pansy’s nurse. Some people are yet suspicious of his neglect, of possible foul play in his wife’s last sickness, but Dr. Webb is a Christian gentleman, whose veracity has rarely been doubted, and his testimony ought to be believed, I suppose. He affirms that the poor lady was delirious and destroyed her own life; that the husband went to him in great distress of mind and begged him, the doctor, to save the sick woman, if possible. Of course, Mr. Butterfield or any other man would not half-commit a deed of that kind and stand the chance of being exposed by the victim and brought to trial, if not to the gallows,” she added.
“No—that certainly is in his favor. If he alone had heard the music we might have accounted for it on the score of a haunted conscience; but, as others heard it, one does not know what to think of it,” I said. “But who was the musician?”
“Little Pansy is now four years old. She is still under the care of her nurse,” said Mrs. Doree. I subsequently heard the same story from a number of the town’s people, and have given it to the reader as it was told to me, unmodified in any particular.
Modern Ghost Stories, Emma May Buckingham, 1905: pp. 75-82
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is not so sure about the idea that Mr Butterfield or any other man would not half-commit a deed of that kind. Such men generally have short attention spans and would be impatient to have an invalid wife put out of the way quickly. Any risk of being exposed by the victim could be explained away as “delirium.” How easy to wait until the doctor stepped out of the room to wound poor Mrs Butterfield in a convincingly half-hearted way that would still ensure her death. Dr Webb, in keeping visitors away and accepting this exceedingly thin story–pray, Doctor, why was anything sharp allowed within her reach?–proved himself an able accomplice.
Young Mrs Butterfield, who had so little agency in her earthly life, seems to have chosen a delightful method of ghostly revenge: She got to play to her heart’s content, while publicly unnerving her husband. Win, as they say, win.
Depend on it: a man who talks about how the music from a haunted piano sounds like that played by his late wife has something more than marital cruelty on his conscience.
Had he not moved and sold the piano, Mrs Daffodil rather fancies Mr Butterfield would have “cracked” and perhaps even confessed. But then, all his talk of a haunted piano would have laid the ideal ground-work for an insanity defence. We live in a sad world when the ghost of a murder victim cannot even haunt her murderer into the grave.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“I understand, then, you mean an elopement? Oh, surely, surely, Gerty, you never can be in earnest?”
Gerty Fane sat on a fallen log. whose mossy cylinder was half hidden in tall, plumy ferns, and where the trembling July sunbeams rained down through soft summer foliage like a cascade of gold. An artist would have painted her as a wood nymph. with her hair of braided sunshine, her deep, limpid eyes, and the peach-like bloom upon her perfect cheeks.
And yet this dew-eyed beauty was neither more or less than a factory girl, who worked a machine in the big shop whose gray stone chimneys rose out of the hollow below, at a dollar a day; a girl who had grown up on a diet of yellow-covered novels, and dreamed of knights and ladies and perilous adventures.
“Yes,” said Gerty, lifting her dew-blue eyes, “an elopement. Isn’t it romantic? And isn’t he handsome?”
Sarah Willis looked sadly down into the eyes that were so like blue flowers
“Gerty,” said she, “I beseech of you to think twice about this business. Have you forgotten Francis Tryon?”
“Francis Tryon! Only a cutter in the shop!”
“An honest, honorable man,” said Sarah, impressively.
“Why don’t you take him yourself, since he is such a paragon?” retorted Gerty, saucily.
“Because he loves no one but you.”
“Then he may leave off loving me at his leisure,” said Gerty. “I don’t care a fig for him, and never shall. I am going to marry Mr. Montressor; and I never would have told you of the elopement if I had supposed you were going to be so ill natured about it. My father is as unjustly prejudiced against him as you are, and so I am driven to it.”
And Gerty Fane tried to vail her exaltation beneath a tone of injury as she rose up and began to make her way through the tall ferns. Sarah looked wistfully after her.
“A spoiled, harmless little beauty!” she said to herself. “But Mr. Tryon was kind to me when I came here friendless and alone; and Mr. Tryon loves her; for his sake I will not stand quietly by and see her rush on to ruin.”
“You see,” Gerty Fane had told her, confidentially, “I am to go to the shop on Wednesday, just as usual, so that my father will not suspect anything, and then I am to feign a headache, just at train time, and leave work, step quietly on board the train, and go to Pittsburg; there I stop at the Hapgood house. He comes there the next day, and we’re married; and then we shall go to Saratoga, or Newport, or Long Branch, or some of those aristocratic places; and won’t it be charming?”
But Sarah Willis shook her head dubiously.
“I don’t like Mr. Montressor’s looks,” said she.
“He’s just exactly like that picture, ‘Lord Byron,” in the ‘Poets of England,'” retorted Gerty, triumphantly.
“He is only a traveling salesman.”
“But he’s to be a partner in the firm in the fall. He told me so himself, and he showed me the photograph of his employer’s daughter, who is madly in love with him.”
“Why don’t he marry her, then?”
And now Gerty dimpled into radiant consciousness. “I suppose because he likes me best.” said she.
“Oh, Gerty! and you believe all this farrago?” sighed Sarah, despairingly.
“You’re only jealous because you haven’t such a lover yourself,” retorted Gerty, frowning under her curls like a lovely, willful child. And then Sarah Willis abandoned the task of remonstrance. But for all that, the thought of Frank Tryon’s heart-break lay sore and heavy at her inmost soul.
“She may go to ruin her own way,” thought Sarah; “but she shall not drag him down with her. Montressor–Montressor I know I have heard the name somewhere–it carries a disagreeable remembrance with it. I remember now! It was a Mr. Montressor that boarded so long with Aunt Polly Sharker, and then went away without settling his score. George Gordon Montressor! that was the name! I’ll go see Aunt Polly this very night. I can easily get there on the train by 9 o’clock, and back again in time for work tomorrow morning. And if there is anything to be found out, I’ll find it! Francis Tryon was good to me once, and I shall never forget it.”
***
“Can I speak to you tonight, Gerty?”
Gerty Fane was hurrying away from the great workroom where the buzz of wheels was gradually decreasing, and the girls were beginning to look for their hats and shawls, when Francis Tryon advanced toward her.
“No!” she retorted, petulantly. “I’m in a hurry!”
“Then I will walk along toward home with you.”
“I’d rather go alone!”
He cast one sad, reproachful glance toward her and stepped back. “Gerty—” began he.
“I’m not Gerty, I’m Miss Fane.” said the girl, half defiant, half frightened. “And I’ll trouble you to keep your distance.”
And away she flew like an arrow out of a bow. She was just in time for the train that paused a minute at the solitary little depot in the woods, and, leaning back in the seat, reflected joyfully that she was already beginning the elopement.
Pretty, blossom-like little fool! How little had she calculated the end of her rash experiment! And yet to her it seemed that she was beginning to live romance.
It was toward 10 o’clock at night when the train stopped at Pittsburg. The Hapgood house was nearly opposite the terminus, a comfortable, old-fashioned wooden structure, its windows gleaming with lights, like the shine of friendly eyes; and thither Gerty bent her footsteps.
“Oh!” said the plump, motherly landlady, “it’s the young lady from Wardham village as a room was engaged for by Mr. Montressor. Number 16. Yes, it’s all right, Miss. Please to walk up. The lady’s there, waiting for you!”
“The lady?”
“Mrs. Montressor, you know,” said the landlady. “And a fine, handsome person she is, only a trifle stout, as we all is, when we gets toward 40 odd.”
Gerty stood as still and white as if she was turned to stone.
“His mother, I suppose,” she told herself, regaining courage. “How kind of him to send her here, to welcome me!”
At the same moment the landlady flung open the door of number 16, a small cozy room, with a bright lamp burning on the table.
“It’s the young lady, mem!” said she, dipping a courtesy.
And a fat woman, gayly dressed in cotton velvet and imitation lace, waddled forward.
“Oh!” said she, “good evening, my dear. So you’re the gal that’s goin’ to marry my husband?”
“Your husband?” echoed Gerty.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the fat woman, busying herself with the strings of Gerty’s hat. “We was divorced eight years ago. He couldn’t support me, and I wasn’t goin’ to support him. He’s had two wives since. But don’t worry. He’s got bills from both of ’em. One of ’em drank, and t’ other one said he drank. I guess they was both true! And now he’s shined up to you! Well. I guess you’ll get enough of him: a great lazy, drinkin’ vagabond, as was raised in Pork Hill workhouse, and served two terms in the penitentiary for forgin’ Lawyer Odderley’s name to a check for $50.”
Gerty stood pale and shocked.
“It is false!” gasped she. “You are inventing these lies to estrange me from him.”
“Bless your heart, my dear, no I ain’t,” said the fat woman, with a comfortable, chuckling laugh. “What should I gain by estrangin’ you from him? I don’t care. I’ve my marriage lines to show, and my papers of divorce, and Gordy’s welcome to marry as many new wives as Bluebeard, for all I care.”
Gerty turned to the landlady.
“How early does the first train for Wardham start in the morning,” said she.
“At 4 o’clock,” said the landlady. The railroad hands go down on it.” “So will I.” said Gerty. “And how about the gentleman as engaged the rooms?” questioned Mrs. Hapgood.
“I’ll never speak to him again!” said Gerty, with spirit.
She was at her machine the next morning, as usual, and when Frank Tryon came past she looked up shyly into his face.
“Please, Mr. Tryon,” she said, “won’t you forgive me for being so cross with you last night? I–I am very sorry. And if you can walk home with me tonight–”
That was enough for Mr. Tryon. They were engaged before the moon was an hour high that night!
For Gerty’s fancy could not endure the idea of being fourth or fifth wife to a man who had once graced the penitentiary, and Mr. Montressor never beheld his pretty fiancee again.
And Sarah Willis kept the secret of her elopement well. The Shippensburg [PA] Chronicle 12 September 1889: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: A spoilt little beauty she may be, but Gerty is far from harmless. Her engagement to Mr Tryon is one best characterised as “rebound.” Mrs Daffodil wonders if there had not been quite so many Mrs Montressors–if she had been, say, only the second wife–if she would have gone through with the elopement. One fears that Gerty will continue to sigh over yellow-covered novels and long for perilous adventures. Sooner than later she will tire of the faithful Mr Tryon for whom she does not care a fig and run off with some plausible, Byronesque drummer with a wife and five children back in Buffalo. If there was any justice in this world, Mr Tryon, hurt by Gerty’s refusal, would have walked home with Sarah Willis and immediately awakened to her kindliness and goodness, recognising that Gerty’s dew-blue eyes and hair of braided sunshine concealed a cankered heart. One does not like to dwell on the sequel to this “happy ending.”
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Fell Info a Trap Which a Revengeful Rival Had Planned for Him.
Cost Groom Something to Change His Route, but He Paid Cheerfully.
“I don’t go very much on these new fads in the line of weddings,” said the bridegroom, cocking his feet on the desk of the insurance man and lighting a fresh cigarette. “I’ve just been up against the game, and I’ll stake any body to my part of it next time.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the insurance man. “What do you mean by new fads in weddings?”
“Well, I’ll tell you my troubles and you can figure It out for yourself,” said the benedict. “You see, some daffy guy framed up a game some place or other where the fads come from for what is known as a ‘secret honeymoon.’ The bride and groom are not to be wise to where they are going until they are on the train after the ceremony. The best man is the whole works and does everything for them. He selects a route, buys the tickets, checks the baggage, frames it up with the hotels and gets everything ready for one round of pleasure. Then the tickets and a letter of instructions are put in a sealed envelope and dealt out to Mr Sucker, the bridegroom, and he opens it on the train and goes wherever the best man has things arranged. Now what do you think of that tor a nutty scheme?”
“That is certainly very much foolish house,” admitted the insurance man. “If the best man wanted to gently josh you along the line he couldn’t do a thing under that scheme.”
“Well maybe you think he didn’t, said the bridegroom. “Wait till I tell you. They kept on shooting a bunch of hot air into me about this game and what a good thing it was and how novel it was, that they finally got me to stand for it. I don’t know what kind of hop I was against when I said all right but this fellow Haskins, who was framed to pull off the deal certainly had me conned. I was a little bit daffy anyhow, you know, as a man is likely to be just when he is going to be married, and I thought it would be a grand little plan and it was me to it.
“But it’s no more for me, not if I get married eight times more. It’s me for the little details and all the plans next time. Old Mr Haskins is a good thing and this was the only chance he had to jolly me. As a matter of fact he used to be pretty well stuck on this girl I married and I guess he thought he was there until I got in the running and then he wasn’t 1, 2, 46. But any how, he pretended to be the real glad-hand friend when he heard I had things settled, and it was nobody but him for the best man at the doin’s, and then he springs his funny game on me about the secret honeymoon.
“I let him go ahead and frame every thing up, and I congratulated myself that I wouldn’t have to worry about train time and hotels and Niagara falls and other things, as the average bridegroom does. He got me the tickets and everything, and I got his little old sealed envelope and the wife, and I tore for the rattlers all in good shape after the ceremony. When I got her nicely seated in the parlor car I went into the smoker, a little bit nervous, to see what Haskins had framed up for me.
“O, but he was there with the goods strong! ‘Get off at Albion and go to the Pararzoom house,’ says Mr Sealed Instructions. And I spent the next three hours wondering what Albion was like and whether the Pararzoom house had money enough to buy fly screens. Of course Edith and I were not especially anxious to tip off to the mob that we had just been married. Every couple feels that way, I suppose, and I know I was willing to keep dark for a while and make a bluff that we were celebrating our golden wedding.
“Well, about 7 o’clock In the evening we pulled in at a little old bum wooden station with a big sign ‘Albion’ all across the front of It. I didn’t get wise on the jump that we were on a lobster, but I piled out with Edith on my arm and the porter carrying a wagonload of grips. A coachman steps up to me as soon as I got off and says:
“‘Mr Amschasm?’
“I says ‘Yes.'”
“’This is your rig, sir,’ he says. Well, I thought that was pretty fair for a starter, and we got in, me handing Haskins a little mental compliment for his thoughtfulness about the rig. Just then I heard a band playing the ‘Wedding March’ from ‘Lohengrin.’ I thought I was dopey first, and that it was only a memory, but around the corner of the station came the Albion silver cornet band, and it fell in right ahead of our carriage. I was wise in a minute.
“Edith was ready to jump out and take to the woods, but I managed to make the driver stop while about 200 rubbernecks gathered around us. I helped Edith out of the carriage, and we hustled for another one, while the crowd sent up three cheers for the bride. I was sore enough to have shot Haskins if he was there, and I told the driver to take us to the best hotel in town. He whipped up and in a few minutes we walked into a hotel.
“As soon as I registered the clerk turned around and handed me the key to the bridal chamber. It was decorated with white ribbon, and he smiled a knowing smile as he laid it before he. I wanted to strangle him, but I took the key and went upstairs. The room was about 10 feet square, low ceilinged and hot. There was no screen in the window, and I could see my finish in there. I went back to the clerk and made a large roar, but he said it was the best room in the house and had been especially ordered for me.
“’When does the next train leave here?’ I asked.
“’Quarter after 1 tomorrow morning,” he said, with a bow and a rub of the hands which drove me frantic.
“‘Well I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your clothes closet up there.’
“We gathered up our baggage and were driven back to the station, and there I fixed it up with the station agent to wire to the division headquarters and hire me a special car and engine to take me Cincinnati. It came all right and It cost me $125, but we got out of Albion. The next morning I carefully tore up Mr Haskins’ letter of instructions, got a lot of time tables and framed up a little wedding tour of our own, and I’ve been looking for him ever since. I understand he has enlisted.”
The Boston [MA] Globe 2 October 1898: p. 37
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The embarrassing ordeal of the honeymoon for both bride and groom was well recognised. If they went directly to their own home, they were apt to be serenaded in the night by neighbours with horns, banging pots, and celebratory gunfire. If they went on a wedding tour, every porter, hotel clerk, and waiter easily identified them as newlyweds and grinned a knowing grin.
The ideal was to pass for an old married couple on a little holiday jaunt–it was axiomatic that “no one tries to look so experienced as a brand-new bride”—but this did not always work:
And when a honeymoon couple are trying to pass themselves off as married folk of long standing, and a shower of tell-tale rice, descending from a pocket or a suddenly-opened umbrella, gives the whole show away, the result is embarrassing.
Taranaki [NZ] Daily News 23 October 1909: p. 4
The reality was more often like this gentleman’s experience:
Will not the postboy, the fly-driver, the landlord, and the chambermaids pursue him with commiseration?…Brisk, cheery, bald-headed old gentlemen, utter strangers to you, shake you by the hand; elderly and excellent dowagers, with no claims on your friendship, take a warm interest in you — perhaps one will utterly confound you with a smacking kiss — and away you are jostled out of the passage, across the pavement, bundled into the carriage, slippers shied at your head, and amid the cheers of the company, the jeers and hurrahs of all the butcher boys, costermongers, and little urchins of the neighborhood, hey! presto! you’re on your honeymoon, minus one glove, and your hat backside foremost….As to Fred [the bridegroom]…he wishes all this parade over. Of course every one is smiling, and can see he is a foo — bridegroom….. Draw up with a very sudden halt at first-class entrance Paddington Station, porters twig in a moment, require no whistling now — bran’ new boxes, and “Both of ’em rigged out in new clothes; I say, Bill, here’s a wedding….”
And thus after a month’s bliss, a sweet honeymoon and the consciousness that they have been stared at and detected throughout the length and breadth of the land, the “happy couple” return to the quietness of their new little — their own home, to receive the congratulations of their friends, and the calls of their acquaintances. Bella is contented and happy, Fred himself again, thoroughly glad that the ordeal of the honeymoon has been passed, and that the world can now recognise his new position without staring at him, and without thinking him a — well, without thinking him a bridegroom.
North Otago Times 15 March 1872: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Wedding rings have been worn in all ages; but no information respecting their origin can be discovered. It is known they were used by the ancient Greeks and Romans; but their use was then at the ceremony of betrothal, and not marriage. Pope Nicholas, writing of the ninth century, says that the Christians first presented the woman with espousal gifts, including a ring, which was placed on her finger; the dowry was then agreed on ; and afterwards came the nuptial service. These rings of the Romans were made of various metals, as iron, brass, copper, and old; and while betrothal and marriage were distinct, the rings were ornamented; but when formal betrothal became obsolete, the marriage ring took a plain shape, as at present.
The ancients wore the betrothal ring, as now, on the next least finger of the left hand. Many reasons are assigned for this, as the erroneous idea that a vein or nerve went direct to the heart, and therefore the outward sign of matrimony should be placed in connection with the seat of life: the left hand is a sign of inferiority or subjection: the left hand is less employed than the right, and the finger next least the best protected. At one time, it was the custom to place the wedding ring on the right hand of the bride. The Anglo-Saxon bridegroom at the betrothal gave a wed or pledge, and a ring was placed on the maiden’s right hand, where it remained till marriage, and was then transferred to the left.
During the times of George I. and II. the wedding ring, though placed upon the usual finger at the time of marriage, was sometimes worn on the thumb, in which position it is often seen on the portraits of the titled ladies in those days. It is now absolutely necessary to use a ring at the English marriage service. The placing of the ring on the book is a remnant of the ancient custom of blessing the ring by sprinkling holy water in the form of a cross. This is still done by the Roman Catholic priest. The Puritans attempted the abolition of the ring. The Quakers don’t use a ring at the service because of its heathenish origin; but many wear them afterwards. The Swiss Protestants do not use a ring either at the service or afterwards.
Rings have not necessarily been made of gold, in order to be used in the English service. They may be of any metal or size. At Worcester, some years ago, a registrar was threatened with proceedings for not compelling the use of a gold ring. At Colchester, at the beginning of this century, the church key took the place of the ring; and this has been the case elsewhere. A story is told of a couple going to church and requesting the use of the church key. The clerk, not thinking it lawful, fetched a curtain ring, which was used at the ceremony. The Duke of Hamilton was married at Mayfair with a bed curtain ring. Notes and Queries of October 1860 relates the cutting of a leather ring from the gloves of the bridegroom and the use of it at the service. An Indian clergyman stopped a wedding because the ring contained a diamond; and in Ireland all rings except plain gold ones are rigidly forbidden.
One of the earliest forms of rings was the gemel or gimmal ring. It was a twin or double ring composed of two or more interlaced links, when the two flat sides were in contact, the links formed one ring. Mottoes and devices were often engraved on the inner or flat side. At the time of betrothal, it was customary for the man to put his finger through one hoop, and the woman through the other. They were thus symbolically yoked together. The links were then broken, and the two kept a link until the marriage. Some gimmal rings with three links were made for the purpose of a witness keeping the middle one. There is a gimmal containing nine links still in existence. A old one given by Edward Seymour to Lady Katharine Grey had five links and a poesy of his own composition.
The Exeter Garland, written in 1750, contains:
A ring of pure gold she from her finger took,
And just in the middle the same then she broke;
Quoth she: ‘As a token of love, you this take;
And this is a pledge I will keep for your sake.’
Wedding rings, also, were not always worn plain, the common emblem being clasped hands or hearts. Two silver-gilt rings were used for the marriage of Martin Luther and Catherine von Borga. Luther’s ring is still in Saxony, and bears the following: ‘D. Martino Luthero, Catherine v. Borga, 13 Junii 1525.’ The other is in Paris, and has a figure of Christ upon the cross, and the Latin inscription as above. On the ring given by Henry VIII. to Anne of Cleves was inscribed, ‘God send me well to kepe,’ in allusion to the fate of Anne Boleyn. Lady Cathcart, on her fourth marriage in 1713, had the following: ‘If I survive, I will have five.’ Dr John Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, 1753, had a similar inscription.
Many superstitions attach to the wedding ring, probably arising from the Roman Catholic custom of its receiving the blessing of the priest before putting it on. In Ireland, the rubbing of the ring on a wart or sore was sure to cure it; also, the belief still remains that by pricking a wart with a gooseberry-bush thorn through a wedding ring it will gradually disappear. In Somersetshire they say that a sty on the eyelid may be removed by the rubbing of the ring. The Romans believed a peculiar virtue lay in the ring finger, and they stirred their medicines with it. Another superstition is that if a wife lose her ring, she will also lose her husband’s love; and if she breaks it, the husband will shortly die. Many married women would not remove their rings, for fear of the death of their partners. As old saying is, ‘As your wedding ring wears, your cares will wear away.’
Chambers’s Journal, 6 February 1892: p. 95-6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: To be Relentlessly Informative, the more common spelling of the rings pictured is “gimmel,” from the Latin gemellus or twin. And Frau Doktor Luther came to her marriage as Katharina von Bora, rather than a member of some cadet branch of the Borgias.
Let us have a few more wedding ring superstitions:
In Northumberland, the young girls prepare for the May feast the May syllabub, made of warm milk from the cow, sweet cake and wine. Into this a wedding ring is dropped, for which the girls fish with a ladle. Whoever gets it will be married first. Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences, Cora Linn Morrison, Daniels, Charles McClellan Stevens, 1904: p. 1541
A Wedding Ring Superstition.
A Yorkshire lady told me that, having lost her wedding ring from her finger, she had been told by the wise people of the place that she must on no account permit her husband to buy her a new one, but that her nearest male relatives must pay for the fresh ring and give it her. Notes and Queries 1 July 1882: p. 9
It is regarded as most unlucky is the wedding ring slips off the finger of the newly married wife either through accident or carelessness; another superstition is that when the wedding ring has worn so thin as to break in two, the woman or the husband will die, that the wedding ring and married life wear away pari passu. [“with even step.”] Perhaps, we have here an answer to the often-asked question of modern days, ‘Why do ladies encumber themselves with such heavy wedding rings?’ Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, William Gregory Wood-Martin, 1902: p. 45
And, finally
HE FORGOT THE WEDDING-RING
A story has come to light regarding a former Earl of Crawford, Colin by name, who married a relative of the Prince of Orange. The lady, Mauritia de Nassau, was a very beautiful woman, and having fallen in love with the then-Earl of Crawford a marriage was arranged. But when the wedding day arrived and the bridal party were assembled at the church no bridegroom was forthcoming. A messenger was despatched in hot haste to fetch the missing earl, who was found at his house enjoying a late breakfast, attired in dressing gown and slippers, completely oblivious to the fact that it was his wedding day. Hurriedly dressing, the earl rushed off to the church, and the service began. In the middle of the ceremony he discovered he had forgotten the ring. This want being hastily supplied by one of the guests the marriage proceeded.
At the end of the ceremony the bride, glancing at her hand, saw to her unutterable horror that the ring with which she had been wedded was a mourning ring with skull and cross-bones on it.
“I shall be dead within a year!” she shrieked, and fainted dead away. Her words came true, and the earl himself had a most unlucky life. North Otago Times, 31 July 1909, Page 2
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
People are always interested in the breaking of a record, whether it be that of the steamer time across the Atlantic, or the number of days which a superfluous man can go without food and still continue his superfluity. So it is not strange that when it is announced that an Elmira young woman, twenty-four years old, has just been married for the fifth time, a demand for information concerning her should arise so loud that we cannot ignore it.
Before her marriage, two days ago, with the present incumbent, the lady’s name was Mary Mason. Space will not permit as to give her entire list of names, and thus run back to her maiden name–we can only say that her father was named Spottswood, and as Mary Spottswood she was known to her school-girl friends. She was bright and pretty, and later was well known in Elmira society.
Seven years ago, she contracted the marrying habit and has not yet been able to shake it off. A Tioga man named J. M. Coleman met Mary Spottswood and won her young heart So they were married in June, while the forward roses clambered up the veranda and peeped in the open windows at the redder roses of the cheeks of the bride. She was dressed in some sort of clinging white stuff, while the bridegroom wore the conventional black. Six months of wedded happiness rolled by, when the foolish Coleman stopped behind a vicious horse to look at the scenery. The horse knew the danger and switched his tail warningly, but still Coleman tarried and feasted his eye on the hill and dale. Then the horse kicked, and Mary Coleman put on her first mourning. But she did not wear it long, for mourning seems so out of place for a bride, especially when it is for a former husband.
Samuel Rucker, of Binghamton, came in seven months and claimed her for his own, and again the roses on the veranda envied those in her cheeks. Rucker was a butcher, and strong and healthy, and cautious as to horses, but the smallpox came, and he fell sick of it. His young wife nursed him faithfully, but one day she told the hired girl to go up stairs and to bring down the mourning. Mary Rucker was a widow after five short months of married life. But there was one slight consolation–how slight none may know–the mourning had not had time to go out of fashion.
And the same may be said of her wedding dress, for in a few more months Edwin Ailing, of Buffalo, threw himself at her feet, and hand in hand they went to the altar, while the girl packed away the mourning up stairs and the roses nudged one another in the ribs as they peeped in the window. Ailing lived a year, and it occasioned much quiet talk in the neighborhood. But one day he went into the bar to get a lemon, and a beer keg exploded and blew him through the ceiling. The faithful domestic had the mourning out before the Coroner arrived, for Mary Ailing was a widow. The dresses needed a little changing, owing to the lapse of time, but not much. And for that matter, the wedding dress had to be made over, too, because it was almost a year before Mary married again.
This time the bridegroom was named J. S. Mason, and he was from Brocton, and was a contractor. It is said that the roses did not take the trouble to peep this time, as it was becoming an old story to them, and the minister only looked in a moment and said, “Consider yourselves married,” and hurried away. The life insurance companies withdrew their policies on the life of J. S. Mason, and the honeymoon began. Fourteen months later he fell off scaffold. The fall was fatal He was five miles away from home, but in some mysterious way the hired girl felt that something was going to happen, and when the messenger came she was dusting off the mourning with a whisk broom. A dressmaker came that afternoon and fixed it over a little, putting in those high-top Gothic sleeves, and so forth, and again Mary Mason put it on.
She now announced that she should not marry again. She was still young, only twenty-two. She had always regretted leaving school so soon–she had left a year before her class had graduated–and now that she had seen her four poor, dear husbands in the only place where husbands can really be trusted, she determined to go back to school and finish the course. This she did, graduating with high honors. But after this was over the idea of marriage again occurred to her. Her schoolmates were marrying, why should not she do the same?
Joseph Armstrong, of Philadelphia, came and wooed her, and she consented. Two days ago, she became Mary Armstrong. The minister sent word that it was all right, and that he would call the next day with the certificate. The servant-girl folded up the mourning and put in some tar-camphor to keep away the moths for a few months. The bridegroom’s friends shook hands with him and sadly turned away. He is now busy arranging his business affairs. At the request of the bride he has made his will. She told him that this had been customary in the past, and he complied. New York Tribune.
The Kansas Chief [Troy KS] 2 April 1891: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: To paraphrase Mr Oscar Wilde, to lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose four husbands looks like carelessness–or worse. Certainly one cannot blame Miss Spottswood. She seems far too young and inexperienced to engineer a skittish horse, smallpox, an exploding beer keg, and a fall from scaffolding. If the four husbands had all succumbed to gastric trouble, one might rightly look askance. One does wonder, however, about the hired girl’s prescient brushing of the mourning clothes and Mrs Armstrong’s request for the “customary” will. Perhaps the best we can say of her is that she is, to use the vernacular, a “hoodoo.”
A feature of interest in this story is the packing away of the lady’s mourning. It is widely believed to-day that Victorians thought that keeping mourning in the house after the expiration of the mourning period was unlucky. The author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, an assiduous researcher into mourning customs, has been looking into the matter and assures was pleased to find confirmation in this otherwise melancholy story of bereavement that mourning was not always immediately discarded.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 