The Bigamist Writes His Memoirs: 1870

“Seven Wives and Seven Prisons”

A young woman had continued to linger in the parental household until she had considerably passed the average age of marriage. Somehow the young men of her acquaintance had failed to appreciate her. Therefore it was all the more gratifying when a recent arrival in the community, a man of ingratiating appearance, began to pay her marked attentions. Her romantic impulses which had been subdued by untoward circumstances, could now be given full sway. Her admirer was impetuous and would hear of no delays, and they were soon married.

The historian does not furnish any details of the honeymoon nor how long it lasted, but it would appear that the bride, although of a clinging nature, was very curious as to her husband’s antecedents, and this, unfortunately, was the weak spot in his armour. The more the aforesaid antecedents were investigated, the more unattractive they proved to be and within a very short time the bride indignantly refused to have any further dealings with her husband, incidentally starting a line of inquiry with startling results; the man was apparently a bigamist.

With indefatigable zeal, the bride and her disgusted parents continued their investigations which soon resulted in the bridegroom being snugly established in the local jail.

Then followed a remarkable series of revelations. A wife was discovered at about every turn in the crooked path of the prisoner, who engaged a lawyer and resigned himself to the inevitable.

Some months were to elapse before a regular session of court and in the meantime the bridegroom found time hanging heavily on his hands. Apparently the game was up and, with the inordinate vanity of certain criminal minds, he decided to write an autobiography. In due course of time there appeared a remarkable book, entitled, “Seven Wives and Seven Prisons,” which created a sensation. It also aroused much local feminine indignation, because, in his desire to “get even” with his last wife, whom he regarded’ as responsible for his present misfortunes, the bigamist declared in his book that of all the wives he had ever had, she was not only the most disagreeable, but also the homeliest and the most generally unattractive.

Apparently masculine depravity could go no further.

New England Joke Lore: The Tonic of Yankee Humor, Arthur George Crandall, 1922: p. 49-51

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: While this sounds simply like an amusing anecdote, there truly was a book called Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Monomaniac. A True Story, by L.A. Abbott, 1870. The book, the story of a man who just couldn’t say no, complete with “spoiler-alert” chapter headings, has been classified as both a novel and as a memoir. Perhaps the most charitable thing Mrs Daffodil could say about it, is that it makes for compulsive reading.

There was no shortage of such matrimonial monomaniacs:

One James Flatherty was brought up before a magistrate for marrying six wives. the magistrate asked him “how he could be such a hardened villain?” please your worship,” says James, “I was trying to get a good one.” Vincennes [IN] Gazette 20 February 1868

A man in Zanesville, Ohio, who has buried three wives, has their photographs in a group, within which his own picture is the center figure, and underneath is this touching inscription: “The Lord will provide.” San Francisco [CA] Chronicle 12 November 1871: p. 2

A Marrying Man. —The Utica Gazette cautions ladies against one Hiram N. Barnes, a hatter. He has already had five wives. The Liberator [Boston, MA] 26 June 1846

One Robert Cleneay was recently arrested near Atlantic City, New Jersey on charge of having married a widow while he had five other wives living. He confessed he had had the wives, but said he thought they had all died of broken hearts when he ran away from them. Savannah [GA] Daily Advertiser 12 April 1871: p. 1

 

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.

The Face in the Mirror: 1870s

THE FACE IN THE MIRROR.

“Oh, Aunt Cassie, do you really intend to give it to me? That lovely antique mirror, with the frame of twisted coral, and the delicious old Neptune sitting with his trident, all in tarnished gold, on the top? Oh!” cried the bride-elect; “I would rather have that than all my other wedding presents put together. It will be so beautiful in my new drawing-room.”

Aunt Cassie, a silver-haired little old lady in black silk, and antiquated gold ear-drops, shuddered. “You are welcome to it, child,” she said. “I never liked the thing since–since I saw your uncle’s reflection in it the night before the news came of his death in Canada. The house servants say it is a ‘haunted glass.’”

“But, Aunt Cassie,” reasoned Letty Latrobe, “that was all your imagination.”

“Do you think so?” said Aunt Cassie, quietly.

And so the old mirror was carried up to the blue saloon, and put up with the bride’s other presents in the place of honor, where its dim surface reflected sets of silver, jewel-boxes, ivory toilet sets, glove-holders, and piles of rare lace and delicate embroidery. Miss Latrobe’s new maid, a handsome woman, with long gold ear-drops, and a scarlet bandanna handkerchief twisted around her head, viewed it with rapture. “I declare, miss,” said she, “I never saw such a glass in my life. I came into the room not thinking, like, and when I looked up–laws, miss; there was me a-pickin’ up the laces, and you standin’ behind me, all in your wedding dress”

“I!” cried Letty. “In my wedding dress! There you are mistaken, Ruby. I never have put on my wedding dress yet. Don’t you know it isn’t lucky?” The maid looked around with a startled glance.

“Then it was she,” she said, as if to herself. “And I can’t get away from her, do what I will.”

“Ruby,” exclaimed Letty, “what are you talking about?”

“Nothing, miss,” said Ruby. “It’s a way I’ve got, living a good deal by myself, talkin’ out just what my thoughts is.”

But after that Ruby avoided the old mirror.

Down stairs in the servants hall that very evening she made herself very sociable, and asked various questions about Miss Latrobe’s new bridegroom.

“He’s a brave, handsome gentleman,” said Phillis, the cook, warming to the subject as she brandished a stew-pan over the fire. “A bit older than our young missy, but–”

“Oh!” said Ruby. “Older, eh? A military gentleman, now?”

“Bless me,” said Phillis, “however did you know?”

“I think I heard it mentioned upstairs,” said Ruby. “A captain in the army, with a scar over one temple, as you’d hardly notice if you didn’t know of it.”

“Well, I declare,” said Phillis.

“Speaks very soft and has eyes as bright as diamonds,” said Ruby. “Yes, it’s the sort of a gentleman that the young ladies like. So the wedding is to be next week, and I suppose they’ll travel abroad. Dear, dear; it’s fine to be a young lady like Miss Latrobe, now, isn’t it?”

The next day when Letty was dressing in her room, she took a fancy to try the effect of a sort of old-fashioned pearls, which had been the wedding gift of her mother.

“Ruby,” said she, “go and get my pearls out of the blue velvet case on the little mosaic table.”

Ruby came back presently with a scared look.

“I can’t find ’em, miss,” said she.

Letty jumped up with her golden hair floating all over her shoulders.

“You must be blind,” said she. “I’ll go myself.”

There they lay perfectly in sight, close to the old mirror. With girlish interest Letty fastened the drops into her ears and clasped the string around her neck; and as she looked smilingly into the glass she became vaguely conscious that another figure stood there a little behind her, mantled in a soft haze, as if of distance–a young girl in orange blossoms and bridal veil, with something in her hand, which Letty at first construed to be a sparkling hilted dagger, held up to strike.

Involuntarily she recoiled.

“Ruby,” she called out to her maid. “Ruby! who is there? How dare you let anyone into the room while I am dressing, Ruby?”

The girl hurried in with a startled face.

“Did you call. Miss Latrobe?” said she.

“Ruby, come here,” cried Letty. “Stand close beside me. Look into the glass.”

“Yes, miss,” said Ruby, with the still troubled face.

“Do you see nothing, Ruby?”

“No, miss,” said Ruby, shivering and clasping her hands together very tight.

“Nor I, either, now,” said Miss Latrobe. “But it was there just now.”

“What, miss?”

“Tell me truly, Ruby,” said Letty, putting both hands on the girl’s shoulder, and looking into her face with large, terrified eyes. “Look at that glass. Do you see nothing there? Have you ever seen anything there?”

Ruby shrank back and burst into tears.

“It’s a young girl, miss,” she sobbed, “in her wedding dress, and a stiletto in her hand. It’s my young mistress, miss, as I lived with five years ago, at Malta, as was married to Capt. Hayes.”

Letty’s face grew pale. “Captain Hayes,” she repeated. “Married to him! Married to my betrothed husband! Ruby, think what you are saying!”

“If I was to be murdered for it, miss,” cried the girl, sinking on the floor, and covering her eyes with her bands. “I couldn’t say no different! Ask him if he remembers Anita Valloti, the commander’s daughter at Malta! Ask him if he knows anything of the mad-house at Madapolo Heights! There I’ve told it all now!”

“But, Ruby, what do you mean?” gasped Miss Latrobe,

“Ask him,” the girl reiterated, shaking and quivering all over in what seemed like a perfect tempest of fear and horror.

Letty sank down among the wedding presents, with her golden hair floating all over her shoulders, and looked with a pale horror into the antique mirror. There was nothing there now but her own fair reflection. “Ruby is dreaming,” she said to her self. “All this is a waking nightmare, neither more nor less.”

Capt. Hayes came that afternoon, dark, brilliantly handsome, full of wit, and for the moment his presence dissipated the dark clouds of suspicion which were beginning to settle around Letty Latrobe’s warm young heart.

“Oh, Robert,” she cried brightly when dinner was over. “I have received ever so many exquisite presents since last you were here. Do come into the blue room and look at them.”

All unconsciously she led him into the long apartment with the antique mirror at its end.

“First of all,” she said, “Aunt Cassie Revere gave me this. It is over two hundred years old, and”- –

She paused with a cry of terror. Close behind their two reflections was that of the pallid girl in the bridal dress and veil, holding the glittering-hilted dagger above her head. And in the same second she saw how deadly white and haggard Capt. Hayes’s face had become.

“Robert,” she cried. “what does this mean?” Then suddenly, remembering the maid’s words, “it is Anita Valloti, the commandant’s daughter at Malta! Robert, what is this terrible secret that you have hidden away from me?”

**

There was no wedding at Magnolia Hill that golden June. Ruby, the maid, revealed it–how Captain Hayes had wooed and won the beautiful young Spanish girl at Malta: how he had afterward become wearied of her childish loveliness, and seizing eagerly upon the pretext of some slight incoherence of manner or conversation, had incarcerated the poor little human butterfly in a private asylum on Madapolo Heights, some leagues from the city. Nor, confronted with all this evidence, did the captain dare to deny the story of his guilt.

Therefore there was no wedding in the lonely homestead. And instead of going on her bridal trip with Captain Hayes, Letty Latrobe persuaded her father to take her to Malta, and visited the famous Maison de Sante at Madapolo.

“I should like to see it for myself,” she said, softly.

Fra Antonio, one of the gowned brotherhood in attendance, looked a little surprised when they asked for La Signora Hayes, or as her name was entered there, “La Signorina Anita Valloti.”

“Did you not know?” he asked. “The poor young signora is dead. She died on the nineteenth of last June.”

The nineteenth of June! Mr. Latrobe and his daughter looked at one another. It was on the nineteenth of June that they had seen the strange reflection in the antique mirror–it was on the nineteenth of June that the marriage at Magnolia Hill was broken off.

So they laid fresh roses on the simple cross that rose above the poor young thing’s last resting-place, and came away with wet eyes and tender hearts.

The Saturday Evening Press [Menasha WI] 20 April 1882: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  A narrow escape for Miss Latrobe and possibly a narrow escape from plagiarism charges for the author, who seems to have been heavily influenced by  Jane Eyre.

 

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.

An Unpleasant Meeting over Shawls: 1877

Dramatic wool shawl, 1870s, Scottish http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/157139?sortBy=Relevance&ft=shawl+1870s&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=7

An Unpleasant Meeting.

Not long ago two ladies stood at the shawl counter of one of the two leading dry goods stores in St. Louis. They were unknown to each other, but were each intent in the examination of shawls. One of the ladies was finally handed something that struck her fancy. She turned the article over and over, with admiring eye upon it, and asked its price. She was told what is was, and with a sigh laid it down again. ‘I like it,” said she; ‘it suits me perfectly, but I can’t afford it. My husband tells me that we must retrench as much as possible.’

The sympathetic saleswoman was about replacing the shawl upon its shelf when the other lady spoke: ‘You do not intend to take the shawl, then, Madame?’

‘No,” was the response.

‘Then I think I’ll take it. It suits me, too, and I was only waiting for your determination.’ Then, turning to the saleswoman, the last speaker told her to do up the purchase, adding, ‘Charge it to Mr. ___.’

The effect the name had upon the lady who was unable to buy the shawl was electric. ‘That’s my husband!’ she shrieked, and there was a scene upon which the curtain did not fall at once by any means.”

Kentucky Advocate [Danville KY] 16 February 1877: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil had thought to commend the two ladies for not falling into a petty squabble or even fisticuffs over the shawl, as some women do at the bargain counter and that curious ritual known as the Running of the Brides, but when a husband is at the centre of the squabble, one really can do nothing more than retire to a safe corner to watch the altercation and possibly lay a wager on the outcome.

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.

 

Miss Georgine’s Husband: A Gothic Tale, Part Two

Hand and rose coffin furniture.

Part one is here.

In a minute all the consequences rushed on my mind, but I couldn’t help that. We took him and put him to bed in our best room, and as soon as the light fell on his face, I saw it was marked for death. I sat up with him all night. He didn’t sleep much, and seemed to want to talk, and I knew it could not make much difference, so I let him have his way. He told me he had written home by every mail for more than a year after he stopped getting any letters in return. From all I could make out he had gone on just in his old way, trying first one thing and then another, always thinking he was just going to make a great fortune.

“But I never was unfaithful to Georgine, not for one moment,” said he. “I always loved her and I never distrusted her. When my health failed, and I knew I must die, I felt I must see Georgine once more. I landed in New York, and there I heard she was married, and saw her walking with her husband.”

And then he begged me to ask Miss Georgine to come and see him if only for a moment, before he died.

“I will never betray her!” said he. “No one will think it strange that she should come to see me. But oh, mammy,”—he used to call me mammy,— “I can’t leave the world till I see her once more.”

The next morning at breakfast-time I went up to the house, and told the Judge and Miss Georgine that Mr. Bogardus was at my house; that he hadn’t many hours to live, and would take it kind if they would come and see him.

“Poor young man, is he so low?” says the Judge. “He should have come to us; but he was always fond of you, Dolly. I will certainly come over, and you must take anything he needs from the house.” And then he turns to his daughter and says, “You will go to see your poor cousin, Georgine?”

“Why no, I think not!” says she, pouring out her coffee as unconcerned as could be. “I never took any special interest in your clerk, papa, and I am not fond of doleful scenes. I don’t think I could endure to be in the house with a dying person.”

I saw Mr. Livingstone look at her as she said these last words, and he answered her very gravely: —“Sometime, Georgine, you will have to be in the room with a dying person.”

“Time enough when it comes!” said she lightly. “Of course I am sorry for the poor man, but it is quite out of the question that I should go to see him. He is nothing to me! ”

I wasn’t going to be put off like that. I followed her to her room and says I to her, “Mrs. Livingstone, what answer am I to carry to that dying man?”

“Tell him I will not see him!” said she, speaking hard and slow. “He is nothing to me, nor I to him.”

“Won’t you send him your forgiveness?” I asked her.

“No!” she cried passionately. “I will never forgive him—never. Tell him that, if you like.”

“Mrs. Livingstone,” said I, “you will bring down the judgment of Heaven on your head!” And with that I left her. I wasn’t afraid of her, whoever else was.

It was hard to go back to Mr. Bogardus with such a message, but he would have me tell him her very words. He groaned, and was silent for a few minutes, and then says he, “Dolly, tell her she shall see me, alive or dead!” And then he fainted, and I had hard work to bring him to. Later in the day Judge Cleaveland and Mr. Livingstone came down. Mr. Bogardus didn’t say much to them, only thanked the Judge for his goodness to him, and begged forgiveness if he had ever injured him. The Judge said everything that was kind—he was a good deal softened in those days. Then Mr. Livingstone asked Mr. Bogardus if he should read and pray with him, and Mr. Bogardus said yes. So Mr. Livingstone read a chapter, and made a beautiful prayer. He was a very religious man in his quiet way, which made it the more strange that he should be taken with Miss Georgine. When he got up from his knees, Mr. Bogardus stretched out his hand to him.

“Thank you, Livingstone; you have done me good!” said he, squeezing his hand hard. “I want to tell you that there is no bitterness in my heart toward any human being. It is all washed away. God bless you! ”

Honey, it did me good to hear him speak in that way to the man who was, as you might say, standing in his shoes. The minute they were gone Mr. Bogardus fainted once more. I thought he would never breathe again, but he did, and seemed to brighten up a good deal. Zack thought he was better, but I didn’t. I had seen too many people die, not to know the lighting up for death. About midnight, when we were both sitting by him, he asked to be raised up and have his head laid on my breast, and then he asked Zack to get him some fresh water from the spring. When we were alone together, he looked up in my face and says he, —“Mammy, tell Georgine that I have never been unfaithful to her, and I shall be faithful still. She must see me, alive or dead.”

Says I, “Oh, Mr. Bogardus, my dear boy, you mustn’t bear malice now.”

“I don’t!” said he. “I told Livingstone true when I said that all bitterness was washed away. But it is borne in on my mind, that for her own sake, alive or dead, Georgina must see me, and you must tell her so. Will you? ”

“I will!” says I. I never mistrusted that he meant anything but that she should come and look at him after he was dead.

“That ’s all! ” said he. “Kiss me, mammy. You ’ve been more like a mother to me than any woman was before, and you won’t lose by it, I know.”

Then I kissed him, and he just laid his head on my breast and with one sigh he was gone.

Never mind me, Miss Bessy, honey! You see I loved him dearly, with all his faults, and dying on my breast and all . . .

We laid him out, Zack and I, and though I’ve done the same for many a one, I never saw a sweeter smile on the face of man, woman, or child, than rested on his. As soon as it was time in the morning, I went up to the house and told them as they sat at breakfast.

“So he is gone, poor soul!” says the Judge, wiping his eyes. “Take no trouble about the funeral, Dolly; I will arrange it all. Georgine, can you find some mourning for Dolly? I dare say she will like to wear it.”

“I should be much obliged if you would, Mrs. Livingstone,” says I.

She told me to come to her room and she would see. So I went up after breakfast, and she pulled out a couple of nice black dresses and a black bonnet and crape veil which she had worn a year before in mourning for her grandma.

“There, you may have those!” said she, in a careless, contemptuous way, “though I don’t see why you should wear mourning. But I suppose you think it’s genteel.”

She always riled me when she spoke in that way, but I kept myself down, and after I had thanked her for the things, I told her Mr. Bogardus’ message. She winced a little in spite of herself, and the scared look came into her eyes again, but it was gone in a minute, and she said coldly, —“Dolly, there has been enough of this! If you mention that person’s name to me again we shall quarrel! ”

I had no call to mention it again, for I had cleaned my conscience, and that was enough. Mr. Bogardus was buried next day from the church, the weather being warm and our house small. Mr. Livingstone sent the carriage for Zack and me, and Zack and Mr. Livingstone, and some gentlemen from the village, were the bearers. It was quite a large funeral, and the coffin and everything was as nice as one could wish to see.

The next morning Judge Cleaveland and Mr. Livingstone went down to the city to some convention, expecting to be gone a week. That very day the cook they had brought from New York took offense at something, and she and the other woman packed up and went over to the village, leaving Miss Georgine alone. So she sent down to ask if Zack and I would come up and stay, because she was expecting company; so we went, of course. I found everything at sixes and sevens—no cake in the house fit to look at, all the summer fruit spoiling to be done up, and so on. I sent for my niece Car’line to come and help, and we soon got things in order.

The second night, I sent Zack and Car’line off to bed, and sat up till late, attending to some plum cake I had in the great oven. It was a fancy of mine when I had any special baking, to do it late in the evening, when I had the kitchen to myself. Well, I got my cake done to my liking — I little knew what kind of party I was baking for— and then I thought I would take a look through the house and see that all was right, as I used to do when I lived there before.

The house was an odd one in its shape. A long, wide hall ran through the front part. When it got to the back it turned in an L, as they say now, and went on to a side door, and in this side hall were the stairs. At the top of them was Miss Georgine’s own room, and at the foot a door leading by a passage to the kitchen. Half-way from this door to the front was the library door, with a narrow glass window over it.

I had opened the passage door, and had just turned down the lamp that always burned at the foot of the stairs, when I saw that there was a light in the library. Thinks I, “What in the world is Miss Georgine doing in the library at this time of night?” Before I could move I heard some one’s hand on the lock, and stood still to see who it should be. Miss Bessy, as sure as you sit there, I saw the appearance of Mr. Bogardus, just as he used to look when he was a young man and worked in that library for Judge Cleaveland. I wasn’t scared, that I know of, but I couldn’t move. He came straight toward me, but didn’t look at me, and passing as close to me as I am to you he walked rather slowly up the stairs to Miss Georgine’s room. When he reached it, he turned and looked at me, holding up his hand in a warning kind of way, and then he opened the door and went in.

I couldn’t go up-stairs — something held me back. I sat down on the bottom stair and listened a long time, but I didn’t hear a sound, and by and by I crept away to bed, my teeth chattering as if I had an ague fit.

The next morning I was in the dining room when Miss Georgine came down. Child, I shouldn’t have known her! She was gray as ashes, only with a purple spot in each cheek, and her face was all drawn and sunken. She looked thirty years older than when she went to bed.

Says I, “Mrs. Livingstone, are you sick?”

“I have a headache, but the air will drive it off,” says she, proud to the last. “I think, Dolly, that as our friends have written to put off their visit, I will go down to the city to Mr. Livingstone. I need a little change, and I suppose you won’t mind staying here a few days with Car’line for company,” says she. “You won’t be afraid without your husband, will you?”

Well, I was,—a little, —after what I had seen, there is no denying it; but I felt that somehow she ought to be with her husband; so I said, “Oh no, I wasn’t afraid, I had Carline for company, and the gardener could sleep in the house.” I helped Miss Georgine put up her things, and dressed her. She was quiet and gentle-like for her, but when I said, “Mrs. Livingstone, I ’m afraid you ain’t well enough for such a long ride all by yourself,” she just laughed that hard laugh I hated so to hear.

“You’re nervous yourself, Dolly!” says she. “I have only a headache, but you know that always makes me look ghastly. It will all be gone in an hour.”

I didn’t say any more, but I knew better. On the steps she turned to me and held out her hand.

“Good-by, Dolly,” said she. “You’ve always been good to me, and I’m afraid I have sometimes been cross to you, but don’t remember it against me.”

Child, I was always glad she said that. I watched the carriage away, and then I went back to her room and put it all in nice order with my own hands. I felt full of anxiety, and I kept myself as busy as I could. Zack didn’t come back the next day, nor the next; but the morning of the fourth day, Car’line looked out of the window when she got up, and says she, “Aunt Dolly, Uncle Zack’s coming on horseback as hard as he can drive. Something must have happened! ”

Something had happened, sure enough. Zack had been riding ever since midnight, and he could hardly speak, he was so tired; but at last he got it out. Miss Georgine had died in a fit the night before, and the body was to be brought home that day.

“What time did she die?” I asked presently.

“It was just half-past eleven when she took the first fit,” said he; “and she died at the same hour last night.” Then I knew.

Well, they brought her home in her coffin and laid her in the front parlor, and when all was done, I went to the Judge and told him I was going to watch myself, and nobody else would be needed. You see, I didn’t know what might happen, and I didn’t want stories going all over the country. I told Zack he might take a blanket and lie down on the sofa in the back parlor, and I would sit up.

About half-past eleven, I went into the room where the corpse lay. I had half a mind to call Zack to go with me, but I knew how tired he was, and I let him sleep. There was a shaded lamp in the room, and I had a candle in my hand that I set down on a table nearby, and stood a few minutes looking at her. She wasn’t a pleasant corpse to look at. Those same purple spots were on her cheeks, and a dark frown on her forehead; but the worst was that her eyes wouldn’t stay shut. I had tried every way to close them, and the doctor had tried, but they wouldn’t stay shut!

I turned away and went to the window, when something, I don’t know what, made me look round. Then I saw him for the second time — saw Mr. Bogardus looking into his wife’s coffin, with just the same sad, sweet smile that was on his face when he bade me goodbye. As I stood looking—for I had no power to move –the appearance stooped down, and seemed to kiss the corpse, and then it vanished away, and I saw it no more.

I was like one turned to stone for a few minutes. When I came to myself, Miss Bessy, there was a change! Her eyes were shut, closed as naturally as a sleeping babe’s, with the long curled lashes resting on her cheeks. The ugly purple spots had faded away; the face was like fine marble, and the pale lips had a meek, peaceful look, such as I had never seen them wear since the days that she and Mr. Bogardus were lovers.

That’s all the story. Poor Miss Georgine was buried next day, alongside the only man she ever really loved. I can’t but hope it was well with both of them, poor unlucky children. The doctor, he talked learnedly about contraction of muscles and what not, but doctors don’t know everything, and he hadn’t seen what I had. My own opinion is that she wasn’t free to go till it was made up, and that they made it up then.

Lucy Ellen Guernsey.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 34, 1874

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Lucy Ellen Guernsey was a writer of moral fiction, with titles such as Rhoda’s Education; or, Too Much of a Good Thing and Myra Sherwood’s Cross, and How She Bore It. This tale seems rather an anomaly in her oeuvre, much of which was published by the American Sunday-School Union. Miss Guernsey never married.

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.

 

Miss Georgine’s Husband: A Gothic Tale, Part One

1869 blue wedding gown http://rammcollections.org.uk/content/catalogs/ramm/decorative-art/clothing-and-accessories/dress-bodice-75-1965-1.ashx

MISS GEORGINE’S HUSBAND.

—Did I ever see a ghost? I don’t know just what you mean by a ghost, Miss Bessy, but if you mean the appearance of a person after I had seen him die with my own eyes, and laid him out with my own hands .’

I don’t exactly know about telling you the story. You see, it’s a true story, and a very solemn one, and I shouldn’t like to have it laughed at, or to have any one tell me I didn’t see what I did see. But you was always a pretty-behaved young lady, and you know I can’t refuse you anything, so if you will sit down quiet and take your work, I’ll tell you all about it, my dear.

You know, honey, I’m a very old woman, and when I was young I was a slave to old Judge Cleaveland, over on the Flats. There were slaves in York State then. I was born down in Maryland, but the Judge moved up to these parts when I was very small, and brought his servants with him. We were well enough treated. Judge Cleaveland was a hard, high-tempered man, and used to have awful ugly fits sometimes, but, like most folks of that kind, he could keep his temper well enough when it suited him, and he knew it was easy enough for his servants to run away if they didn’t like their treatment. When I was eighteen I married Zack Davis, the coachman, and after that we lived mostly in a house of our own. We were free by that time, and we bought a nice little log-house and some land for a garden, but we worked up at the house all the same.

The old Judge was a widower when he moved up here, but very soon he married a pretty young lady from the Mohawk Valley. She was only eighteen, and a sweet child as ever I saw. The Judge meant to be good to her, I guess, but she never seemed very happy. When the second little girl was born the Judge was dreadfully disappointed. I suppose he wanted a son, to inherit his great estate and keep up the family name. He never was the same to his wife after that. He was polite to her, especially before company, but he had a kind of cold, sneering way with her that I could see cut her to the heart. Her health failed, and she went home to her father’s house for a change, and there she died. The Judge seemed a good deal cast down by her death — more than I should have expected. I dare say some things came back to him when it was too late. After the funeral he shut up the house and went abroad. He was in foreign parts or down in New York for ten years and more. The young ladies, Miss Anna and Miss Georgine, stayed with their grandma some years, and then they were put to school in New York. All that time Zack and I lived in the old house, to take care of it. It was lonesome enough sometimes, especially in winter, but though I used to go all over the great rooms alone by day and by night, I never saw anything then — not a thing.

Well, when the young ladies were sixteen and seventeen, the Judge wrote and told me to clean up the rooms, and have everything ready, for he was coming home. His wild land was growing very valuable, and there was no one to see to it properly, and for that and other reasons he had decided to come home to the Flats to live. So at the time set they came, with loads of new furniture and carpets and what not, and a very nice widow lady for housekeeper. She had a son, an officer in the army and a very fine man, who would willingly have supported her, but she preferred to do for herself.

I expected to see Miss Anna the favorite, as she was the elder, and Miss Georgine had so disappointed her pa by not being a boy; but I soon found out it was the other way. Miss Anna was not pretty. She looked like her ma, and had just such a quiet, gentle way with her. She was afraid of her father, too, as her mother had been, and with some reason — and she was afraid of her sister. She didn’t care much for company, but liked best to sit down and sew or read. Miss Georgine was like her father, and had just his free, bold way. She wasn’t afraid of anything at all except that she should not be first in everything. She was very handsome, with regular features, and beautiful wavy black hair, and long curled eyelashes. I don’t know that I ever saw a handsomer girl, but for real goodness and truth she was no more to be compared to Miss Anna than a great red woodpecker is to a little sweet bluebird. She always contrived to get the best of everything, and if she got into any trouble or mischief, she generally made her father believe it was Miss Anna’s fault. She made a great show of openness and saying what she thought, but she didn’t think all she said, by a great deal.

When Miss Anna was about eighteen, Mrs. Gracie’s son came to visit his mother, and a very fine, sober, nice young man he was. Everyone liked him, especially the Judge, who could not make enough of him till he found that the captain and Miss Anna were taking to each other; then he began to cool off. Captain Gracie stayed at the tavern in the village, and called most every day to see his mother, and before he left he asked the Judge for Miss Anna. Then there was a time. The Judge went into one of his furious rages, ordered both mother and son out of the house, and shut Miss Anna up in her room. Miss Georgine was as bad as her father, and the way they treated that poor girl was shameful. But Miss Anna had got her spunk up, and she contrived — I never knew how —to send word to Captain Gracie. A few days after, when the Judge was out about his land, Captain Gracie drove up to the door, and asked for Miss Anna. She must have expected him, for she came down in her traveling-dress, and with her bag in her hand. Miss Georgine stormed and scolded and sent all ways for her father, but nobody could find him, and in fact I don’t think anybody tried. Miss Anna bade her sister a kind farewell and got into the carriage, and that was the last we saw of her for many a year. They were married that same day in the city, and went away wherever his regiment was. Captain Gracie sent her father his address and a copy of his marriage lines, but the Judge never took any notice; only he handed me the paper and told me to pack up her clothes and things and send them to her. I don’t approve of runaway matches as a general thing, but I can’t say I blamed Miss Anna one bit.

About this time Judge Cleaveland found out that he needed a clerk. or secretary as he called it; so he sent for Mr. Bogardus, a cousin of his wife’s, to come and live in his house and attend to his business. Mr. Bogardus was a fine, handsome man, about thirty, very grave and sober; but with beautiful manners—a real fine gentleman. The Judge made much of him in his pompous, condescending way. Miss Georgina began by being very cold and scornful, but she soon changed her tone when she found her cousin did not take any particular notice of it or of her, and began to be very polite to him. He had a fine voice, and played beautifully on the violin, and she used to ask him to sing and play with her, especially when they had company; but he almost always excused himself and would often stay in the library till midnight, writing or reading. He seemed like a smart man, and yet he never accomplished anything for himself. He was one of the unlucky ones, poor fellow.

But the more Mr. Bogardus kept out of Miss Georgine’s way, the more she courted him. That was her fashion. If there were ten men in the room and she had nine of them around her, she didn’t care anything about it till she got the tenth. She always had plenty of sweethearts, being such a beauty and a great heiress besides. Mr. Bogardus resisted a good while, but by and by l saw a change. He began to be more attentive to his cousin — to sing with her evenings, and sometimes to go out riding and walking with her. Miss Georgina was altered too. I never saw her so gentle and so — “lovable?” yes, that’s just the word, my dear! as she was that summer; and I thinks to myself, “My beauty, you ’re caught at last, but I wonder what your father will say.” For you see he looked on Mr. Bogardus only as a kind of upper servant, for all he was Mrs. Cleaveland’s own cousin.

The Judge didn’t seem to notice for a while, but by and by I think he got his eyes open. He went down to New York for a week or two, and when he came back, he called Mr. Bogardus and told him he had found him a fine position with a gentleman who was going out to Brazil to set up some kind of manufactures, — a place of great trust, and where he would make a fortune in no time. Mr. Bogardus was much pleased. He was always ready to take up any new notion, and he thought he should make himself rich directly. But Miss Georgine had a bad headache that day, and she wasn’t well for a week afterward.

The very day Mr. Bogardus left, I was sitting in my own door, and as I looked up I saw Miss Georgine walking across the field toward my house. I was rather surprised, for she wasn’t fond of walking, and almost always rode her pony wherever she wanted to go. She walked in a weary kind of way too, and when she came near, I saw she looked very pale. I got out the rocking-chair for her, and made much of her, but she sat down on a little stool and put her beautiful head in my lap, as her poor mother had done many a time, and says she, bursting out crying, .

“Oh, Aunt Dolly! My husband’s gone!”

Honey, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I couldn’t think what she meant at first, and thought she had got light-headed from being out in the sun.

“Child!” says I, “you don’t know what you are saying!”

“Yes I do—too well!” says she; and then she told me between her sobs that she and Mr. Bogardus had been privately married while her father was away, the day that they went down to the city together, and that they meant to keep it quiet till Mr. Bogardus made his fortune.

“I never meant to tell anybody,” says she, “but, Aunt Dolly, I couldn’t bear it all alone, and I knew I could trust you!”

Well, I could have wished she had chosen someone else, but I tried to comfort her as well as I could. Presently I said, “Ah, child, you can feel for your poor sister now!”

“That was very different!” says she, lifting up her head as proud as could be; “I haven’t disgraced myself as Anna did. My husband is a gentleman — not a servant’s son! ”

When she said that, Miss Bessy, I knew she had more yet to suffer.

Says I, “Miss Georgine, I shall never betray you, you may be sure, but you ought to tell your pa. Suppose he finds it out: what will he say, and what will you do? ”

“He won’t find it out!” says she, “and if he does, I shall know what to do.” But then she put her head down in my lap again, and oh, how she did cry! I couldn’t but pity her, though she showed such a wrong spirit; and I tried to tell her of a better comfort than mine, but she wouldn’t hear a word of that. She didn’t want any cant, she said. By and by I made her some tea and coaxed her to drink it and to eat a little, and when the sun got low, I walked home with her. She was always gentler with me after that, and whenever she got a letter from Mr. Bogardus she would come and tell me about it. I was on thorns for a while, and watched her as a cat watches a mouse; but everything went on as usual, and nobody but our two selves knew or mistrusted anything about the matter.

Miss Georgine got her letters pretty regular for about six months, and then they stopped, and she never had another. At first she pined a good deal, and l was afraid she was going into a decline; but presently I saw a change. Her old proud self came back, only harder and colder than before. She was handsomer than ever, and more fond of company and admiration. One day I ventured to ask her if she had heard any more of Mr. Bogardus.

Oh, how her eyes flashed as she said, “Never mention that man’s name to me again! He has shamed and deserted me!” says she.

“You don’t know that,” says I; “he may be dead.”

“He isn’t dead!” she answered. “My father heard he was married to a rich Spanish widow up at the mines.”

“I don’t believe it!” says I boldly. “It isn’t a bit like him.” For you see I had come to know him pretty well. I had nursed him in his sick turns, of which he had a good many, and though I didn’t approve of the secret marriage, I liked him and felt like standing up for him.

“Never mention his name to me again, Dolly!” says she, and I didn’t for a long time, till the day came that I had to do it.

Well, the time went on, year after year in much the same way. Our folks spent the summers on their own estate, and the winters in New York or at the South with the Judge’s family, spending a deal of money and seeing a deal of fine company. It was nine years that very spring since Mr. Bogardus went away, when, after they had been home a couple of days, Miss Georgine rode over to see me. She brought me a fine gown and some other things from New York, and after she had showed them to me, says she, speaking proud and careless like, —

“Aunt Dolly, I want you to come up to the house next week, to make my wedding cake and keep house a while, because I am going to be married.”

Miss Bessy, I couldn’t believe my ears; and says I, “Miss Georgina, I don’t know as I quite understand you.”

“You are growing stupid, Dolly!” says she pettishly. “I’m going to be married to Mr. Philip Livingstone, and I want you to make the cake.”

I don’t know what made me, but I spoke right out. “Mrs. Bogardus,” says I, “have you told your pa and Mr. Livingstone about your first marriage?”

“How dare you call me by that name?” says she, and her eyes fairly blazed. “No, I have not told them and I shall not. You can, if you choose!” says she. “How much do you mean to ask me as the price of keeping the secret I was fool enough to tell you?”

Then I flared up. “Mrs. Bogardus,” says I, “there’s the door. Please walk out of it, and don’t come insulting a woman in her own house that thinks as much of herself as you do, if she is black! If that’s what you think of me, you may get someone else to make your cake! ” says I.

Well, she saw she had gone too far. Like her father, she could command her temper well enough when she chose, and she knew she couldn’t get any one to make such cake as mine, if she went down on her knees to them. Besides, I knew all the ways of the house, and they couldn’t do without me. So she came down and said she was sorry, and she did not mean anything, and so on, till she coaxed me round, and I promised to do all she wanted.

“But if it was the last word I ever spoke, I do say you ought to tell Mr. Livingstone,” says I. “What if Mr. Bogardus should come back some day?”

I knew I was doing right, but I felt sorry for her when I saw how pale she turned. long ago,” says she, “ and if he were not, it is nearly nine years since I heard from him, and that is enough to release me. But you’ll be glad to hear,” says she, “that I have coaxed my father to write to sister Anna, and ask her and her son to the wedding. You know she is a widow now, and there is no use in keeping up the quarrel any longer.”

So then I agreed to make the cake, and keep house for her father while she was away. They were coming back to spend the summer at home. But I didn’t feel happy. I knew she was doing wrong, and that harm would come of it.

The wedding went off nicely. Mr. Livingstone was a fine, handsome man, a good deal older than Miss Georgine. He looked good and sensible, and it was easy to see that he fairly worshiped his wife. My heart ached for both of them, because I knew as things were they never could be happy. You see I felt sure Mr. Bogardus wasn’t dead.

How did I feel sure? Well, it was just like this. Whenever any of my folks had died away from me, I had always seen them in my dreams that same night. I saw my own brother, who was drowned in the lake, and my aunt with her baby, and Miss Georgine’s mother. Now Mr. Bogardus was fond of me. He said once that l was more like a mother than any one had ever been to him, and I knew he wouldn’t die without coming to let me know.

Miss Anna, that was, and her boy were at the wedding and stayed a fortnight after. She wore her deep widow’s weeds, and looked thin and worn, but she had a sweet, placid, happy look, worth more than all her sister’s beauty. She told me that through all her trials, in sickness and loneliness, and losing her husband and her children, she had never regretted her marriage, not one minute.

The boy was a fine, manly fellow, the image of his father. The Judge took to him greatly, and wanted Mrs. Gracie to come home to live; but she excused herself and said she must take care of her husband’s mother, who was feeble and needed her. She told me privately that she didn’t think such a life would be good for her boy, and I dare say she was right.

The bride and bridegroom came home after a month and settled down with us for the summer, and the day she came home, I noticed a scared look in Miss Georgine’s face that I never saw there before.

That night I was sitting in my own house (and glad enough I was to get back to it), when someone knocked softly at the door. Zack opened it, and the minute he did so, he cried out, “Lord ’a’ mercy!” I jumped up, and then I thought surely I saw a ghost, but I didn’t. It was Mr. Bogardus himself, but oh how thin and pale, and with his beautiful hair white as snow!

“Will you take me in, Dolly?” says he. “I am sick to death, old friend, and I have come to die with you.”

[To be continued tomorrow at this link. Mrs Daffodil, who understands the impatience of some modern readers with the leisurely progress of nineteenth century fiction, assures those readers that there will be a ghost.]

Lucy Ellen Guernsey.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 34, 1874

 

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.