The Widow on the Train: 1888

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

See also The Woman in Black, the Conductor, and the Abandoned Infant, for the seductive “Widow on the train” motif.

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.

“A nasty, wicked, malicious face:” 1847

 

Having been much gratified at the notice which has been taken of my short story, entitled “A True Ghost Story,” which was published in the last July Number of The Strand Magazine, and even more so at the many letters I have received concerning it, from unknown friends, who, one and all, seemed struck by the stamp of truth which they kindly assert is impressed upon the narrative, I have ventured to offer to the public another curious experience, which, though shorter and less sensational than the “True Ghost Story,” is, I beg to assert, equally true and, to my mind, equally mysterious.

In the year 1847, we —that is, my mother, my step-father, myself, and my younger sister —were living in Dresden. We had come to that quaint and picturesque-town a year before, for German masters, and with the object of generally finishing our education— that is, my sister’s and mine; for we were very young then–I being just sixteen, and my sister a year younger.

We lived at the Hôtel d’Europe, in the Alt-Markt—an hotel which, I am told, still exists. We occupied the first floor, and my sister and I slept together in a room at the back of the hotel, which looked into a courtyard, round which all the bedrooms were built.

It was a great amusement to my sister and myself at that time to sit at our sitting-room windows and watch the country-people, in curious costumes, who, twice a week, tramped miles and miles to the market, carrying thither all kinds of commodities, and incommodities, too, one would think—for one day we saw a peasant woman carrying a dead bear (!) in her chiffonnier-basket on her back, while her husband walked, quietly smoking, by her side.

The articles for sale in the market were not always very pleasing to the olfactory organs, for sauer-kraut (in pails ) and roe-deer fleisch were there! Mercifully, both articles were very popular among the peasants, and were soon sold out, in fact, quite early in the day. One night I had a dream. I did not remember the next morning (nor could I ever remember afterwards !) what I dreamt. I could only bring to mind, with a shudder, a Man’s Face, and do what I would, I could not forget it! When I rose from my bed in the morning, my sister (we were most tenderly attached) remarked I looked very pale; and she asked, was I ill? I answered no, but that I had had a bad dream.

“What did you dream about?” asked my sister.

“I don’t know!  I can only remember a Man’s Face.”

“What was it like, to frighten you so?”

“Well! It was like—a Man’s Face. A nasty, wicked, malicious face. ”

“But, bless me! Child! Who was it like? Come! Tell me, darling! What did you dream about it?”

“I can’t recollect ”

“Oh !” quoth my sister, impatiently, “what a dull, stupid, uninteresting dream ‘” Nothing more was said about it then, and the day’s avocations put it out of my head for the time; but that night, and two or three following nights, I dreamt again and again of the Man’s Face—and told my sister so.

Soon afterwards we left Dresden. There were few railroads in Germany at that time, so we travelled in our own carriage, accompanied by a fourgon for the luggage, in which vehicle the servants rode.

On one never-to-be-forgotten day we crossed the beautiful Stelvio and entered smiling Italy!

That was a pleasant time, and calculated, one would have thought, to charm away all grisly fancies. We visited most of the principal Italian towns — Milan, Venice, Florence, in which latter place we remained for a month before settling in Naples, to which enchanting spot we travelled by sea from Leghorn.

At Naples we lived on the Chiaja, our abode there (No. 127) being known as the “Casa Corby,” it being the property of an English lady, a Mrs. Corby. We lived on the Primo Piano, and we had a charming balcony, looking out upon the Chiaja (with the Villa Reale Gardens beyond), whence we could (after the approved dolce far niente fashion) watch the Neapolitan élite driving, riding, and otherwise disporting itself.

In those days, everything English was much the fashion among the Neapolitan aristocracy; the carriages, horses, and even the coachmen were generally English; and one afternoon, as I was sitting working on the balcony, I beheld the greatest novelty I had yet seen, in the form of an English four-in-hand. It was coming at a great pace towards us. My sister chanced at that moment to have gone, for some reason, into the drawing-room, so, calling her hastily, I said: “Make haste, dear, or it will have passed, and you won’t see it!”

“See what?” from within.

“A four-in-hand! Do come!’

She dashed into the balcony, and we both stood eagerly watching, as the vehicle came clattering by.

As we leant over the balcony, the driver, evidently a gentleman, leant forward in a marked manner, and looked steadily at us.

“What a horrible face!’ exclaimed my sister, and as she spoke she looked round at me.

“Darling !” she said, tenderly, “what is the matter ?”

But I had nearly fainted, and a cold, sick shudder came over me. “Oh M__ ,” I ejaculated, “that is the Man’s Face in my dream!”

I was so terrified that we both left the balcony, and for the rest of the day I was cold, and deadly sick. I did not, however, dream of the face that night, nor did I see it again in Naples, although I sat every afternoon in the balcony, conscious of a shrinking fascination in the thought that I might do so!

After stopping some months in Naples we went to Paris, where I was permitted (being by that time seventeen years of age) to mix a little in society.

Amongst the English residents in Paris that year, who were very hospitable, and entertained largely, were Mr. and Mrs. Tudor. The Tudors were rich and very kindly, and even now the memory of their hospitalities is kept green in the French capital.

One night they gave a ball, and as I was standing by my mother, waiting and looking eagerly for my partner amid the crowd, I saw – at the other end of the room—the Face which had so strangely haunted me! The eyes were watching me, and the man approached me, as though I were his one aim and object I felt faint and very cold, and I saw Mr. Tudor coming towards line.

“The Duca di ­­­__ is anxious to know you.”

I scarcely had the presence of mind to bow. I heard the man say something about a dance, but I turned to my mother and said:

“Mamma, take me away! I am ill!” I could not walk unassisted out of the room, but Mr. Tudor gave me his arm, and as we were waiting for the carriage, I saw the man still looking at me with evident amusement; and I heard Mr. Tudor tell my mother that it was a pity I would not dance with the Duke—that he was the head of one of the oldest Italian families—that he had been much struck by me, and that he was very anxious to obtain an English wife.

But I never saw the man again, either in dreamland or in everyday life; we were told, however, that he started for England the next day, and soon afterwards we heard of his death. He was succeeded by his son, who also, eventually, developed a wish for, and obtained, a beautiful English wife, whom he treated, we were told, with but scant kindness.

The Strand Magazine, Vol. 11, January 1896: pp. 113-115

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Ah, that well-known stage melodrama villain, “The Duca di blank.” Thick moustachios, narrow eyes under lowering brows, an arrogant nose, and an indefinable aura of menace. Other than those traits, you may know him by his immaculately tailored wardrobe and lavish silk vests. Mrs Daffodil fancies that he carries an ivory-tipped cane and that his cigarette case has a double lid, which conceals a compromising picture in highly-coloured enamels of a well-known member of a noble family, which he keeps as insurance.

Wilhelmina FitzClarence, Countess of Munster, known to the family as “Mina,” was the daughter of the Hon. John Kennedy-Erskine and Lady Augusta FitzClarence, an illegitimate daughter of William IV. She married her cousin, William FitzClarence, 2nd Earl of Munster, also a grandchild of King William IV–the Earl was the son of King William and his long-time mistress Dorothea Jordan, who had ten children together.  Most cosy and convenient!

The Countess of Munster wrote novels and ghost stories, including sightings of the family ghost “Green Jean,” at Wemyss Castle. She also wrote an engaging memoir, although modern critics have called her ghost stories “melodramatic” and “forgettable.”

 

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.

Letters from the Grave: 1850s

 

Romney, George; A Hand Holding a Letter; Kendal Town Council; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/a-hand-holding-a-letter-143151

The curtain has but recently fallen on a touching drama of society, whose hero’s name I could give you if I chose. Though I suppress the chief actor’s name, the play has naught of fanciful construction, being really a natural series of terrible facts.

The personage in question, who is in the enjoyment of a high social position, a handsome establishment and a large fortune, had, as a consequence of a youthful folly, a natural daughter, whose mother died a few years after her seduction. The seducer, afterwards marrying, had not force of character enough to confess to his young wife the existence of this poor child, and having long confined himself to a mere mercenary care of the latter, he finally neglected her altogether.

The aged mother of this parvenu, being cognizant of the circumstances, was deeply moved by this abandonment, though she herself was barely supported by her snobbish son, in lodgings respectably distant from his own sumptuous hotel. But Madame N—–, the mother, who had in days gone by pinched herself to pay for her son’s education, and having nothing but the little pension she now received from him, nevertheless took all possible care of the forsaken child. And the child grew up to be a fine young girl capable of taking up some occupation. The occupation chosen was art.

Hortense, that was the girl’s name, applied herself to it with all her mind and heart, and struggled bravely against the many difficulties which society stupidly puts in the way of unmarried women in their efforts at self-support. She thus reached her twentieth year, her grandmother her seventy-eighth. While the father of one, the son of the other, gave magnificent balls, delicious dinners, vain fêtes in his rich hotel, the young girl and the old woman suffered the most cruel privations—the requests for a little supplementary aid from the rich man being often left unanswered.

One night the poor old woman died. At the simple funeral which he gave her the son necessarily came into contact with his daughter, and, glad of the chance to persuade himself that she now had a livelihood, departed, leaving her a trifling pecuniary assistance. A few weeks rolled by, and society’s whirlpool engulphed him deeper than ever.

Winter came. He gave a ball one night, and the salons of his hotel were crowded with the fashionables of the court and of the city. The rooms were dazzling with the light, the rich toilets, the French and foreign uniforms, the decorations, the gilded ceilings, the polished mirrors, the everything that could lend a lustre to the scene. The conservatory, lit up by colored lanterns, afforded little mysterious corners, where beautiful and romantic Polish women listened to the whisperings of love. The English ladies present danced with untiring gaiety; the daughters of Italy, listlessly extended on the sofas, kept up their flowery chat; the Parisiennes, with a Frenchwoman’s eye to good things, began to look for the magnificent supper which was to be served by Chevet. The rich man had the world in his salons. He revelled in ostentation and vanity, he was intoxicated with the great names announced at his door, his cup of pride was filled to the brim, and when ministers of state, with waistcoats bedizened with honorary orders, came to shake him by the hand, his delirium was not far from that when Cæsar, at the culmination of unheard-of power, exclaimed, “I feel myself a god.” Our parvenu mentally said, “I feel myself a duke.”

A group of guests had surrounded him, loading him down with praises of his fête as they sipped his delicious sherbets. A great foreign lady complimented him upon the completeness of his conservatory; an ambassador told him that his ball was the thousand and second night. The rich man, crammed with vanity, was fast losing his senses, when suddenly a valet de chambre enters, passes through the aristocratic circle, and presents to his exalted master a large letter on a golden salver.

The rich man, brusquely awakened from his dream, followed into his empyrean of pride, deprived of his aureole of glory, and nettled at being brought down to earth again by so vulgar a matter, exclaimed,

“You stupid rascal, idiot, donkey! could you not choose another time!”

And he pushed away the salver with an angry movement; but as the servant resisted a little, his eyes fell upon the peaceful cause of the disturbance, the letter, and in an instant he turned frightfully pale.

By his half-stifled cry, by the haggard eyes which he could not remove from that mysterious letter, every one about him saw that something extraordinary had occurred.

The guests politely drew aside, whispering to themselves, exchanging looks and words of surprise. Soon our Crœsus found himself alone with the valet in the middle of the salon, and still before his face the obstinately presented letter.

He had recognized in the address the handwriting of his mother, who had been dead eight months!

He seized the letter with a trembling hand and succeeded with difficulty in reaching the adjacent library, where he locked himself in, to the great surprise of his guests, who had followed his movements with wondering eyes. There he fell, rather than sat down on a sofa and looked at this terrible letter, sent him from the grave and bearing the unmistakable trace of a hand long since cold in death.

He summoned up all his strength, excitedly broke the black seal of the letter, and read as follows:

“My son, your daughter is suffering! her ill-requited labor does not suffice to keep want away from her door. In the midst of your opulence remember her. Your mother begs you to do it; your mother who is now looking upon you and knows what is passing in your heart.”

Then followed the signature.

In intense excitement the gentleman rang a bell; a servant answered it.

“Who brought this letter?” he asked.

The lackey replied that it was a young girl poorly clad, who had been nearly run over by the equipage of a Russian count, as it dashed into the courtyard of the hotel.

The host returned to his salon with a pale and troubled face; a cloud had settled over his fête, and his guests saw it without understanding the reason.

He retired early, before the party had broken up, but could not sleep, so strong a hold did the ghostly features of this demand from his dead mother take upon his imagination.

In the morning he sent two hundred francs to the young artist, who, in point of fact, had not money enough to buy bread to eat nor colors to work. What would this miserable sum do to rescue her from such distress? But the gentleman probably thought he had been very generous.

The winter past, he went to Italy.

Months went by, and the circumstance became erased from his mind. One evening at Naples, he had just returned with a brilliant company of tourists from an excursion to an island near by. As he entered his room he discovered on a table a letter bearing the Paris postmark. He opened it carelessly, continuing his chat with his friends. But suddenly he became agitated, turned away and left the room. It was another call from the grave; it was his mother again imploring aid for his child. Finally, several months after, in Paris, at his own house, as he was just stepping into his carriage for a drive in the Bois, another letter was handed him, another appeal, and this time more earnest, more imperious, more solemn than ever before.

He now determined to rid himself at once of the annoyance; he was becoming blasé to the emotion. He went to his lawyer and constituted in favor of Mademoiselle L—–, artiste, a life pension, just sufficient, if not to live on, at least to keep her from starving— exacting at the same time that he should have handed over to him in a lump all the letters which might yet remain in the hands of her who had received this trust so admirably conceived, so terribly made use of!

In fact, as you have, perhaps, all ready divined, the poor old mother dying had foreseen the future miseries of the young girl, for she well understood the character of her precious son. Hence, she had the sublime inspiration of the letters, and, thanks to them, the maiden—that child of love, protected by death—was snatched from a poverty so full of perils to one of her age—her sex, and, above all, her abandonment. 

Frank Leslie’s Weekly.22 October 1859.

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  What a pity that the shock occasioned by the letters from beyond the grave was not fatal. His daughter would then have had a claim upon his estate and could have lived happily ever after without repeated calls upon the cold charity of such a heedless father. A life pension “sufficient, if not to live on, at least to keep her from starving,” suggests that he had not learnt anything from the salutary letters. Mrs Daffodil hopes that his mother decided to appear in person, preferably in a state of advanced decomposition in a bloody shroud, a visit which might have proved more effective than writing.

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.