THE
DESERTED WIFE.
BY
EMMA D. E. NEVITT SOUTHWORTH,
AUTHOR OF
“RETRIBUTION, OR THE VALE OF SHADOWS.”
“Various the ways in which our souls are tried;
Love often fails where most our faith relied;
Some wayward heart may win without a thought,
That which thine own by sacrifice hath bought;
Whilst thou, forsaken, grieving, left to pine,
Vainly mayst claim his plighted faith as thine;
Vainly with forced indulgence strive to smile
In the cold world, heart-broken all the while,
Or from its glittering and unquiet crowd,
Thy brain on fire, thy spirit crushed and bowed,
Creep home unnoticed, there to weep alone,
Mocked by a claim that gives thee not thine own,
Which leaves thee bound through all thy blighted youth
To him whose perjured soul hath broke its truth;
While the just world beholding thee bereft—
Scorns—not his sin—but _thee_, for being left.”
MRS. NORTON’S DREAM.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY.
PHILADELPHIA:
GEO. S. APPLETON, 164 CHESNUT-STREET.
M DCCC L.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1850,
BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
TO
DOCTOR WILLIAM ELDER,
OF PHILADELPHIA,
WHOSE CONSTANT ASSISTANCE AND KIND ENCOURAGEMENT
CHEERED, INSPIRED, AND SUSTAINED HER
THROUGH THE TOILS AND TRIALS OF HER VOCATION,
This Book is Inscribed,
AS AN ASSURANCE OF GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE, BY
THE AUTHOR.
WASHINGTON, JUNE 3, 1850.
INTRODUCTION.
MARRIAGE.
“Marriage is a matter of more worth
Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.”
_Shakspeare._
“The bloom or blight of all men’s happiness.”
_Byron._
In no other civilized country in the world is marriage contracted, or
dissolved, with such culpable levity as in our own. In no other
civilized country (except, perhaps, in France, just at present), can
divorce be obtained with such facility, and upon such slight grounds.
And it may be the very ease with which the sacred bond may be broken
that leads many people into forming it so lightly. An obligation so
easily annulled may be carelessly contracted. I remember an anecdote in
point:—“Take care—this contemplated marriage of yours is a hasty
affair—and when consummated, it is for _life_, you know—‘’Till death do
you part,’” said a young man to his friend, who was about to enter into
the “holy state.” “Oh, no! not necessarily—there are such things as
_divorces_, recollect,” laughingly replied the perspective bridegroom—a
handsome hero, of black eyes and white teeth—and his black eyes flashed,
and his white teeth gleamed, as though he had been saying the wittiest
thing in the world. The youth was in love—therefore his speech could not
be taken seriously. He was jesting. _Still_ his words betrayed—that even
then, in the heyday of his passion, a future contingency was present to
his mind. That future contingency _arrived_—would _never_ have
arrived—had he not known beforehand of its remedy. He married—lived with
his young bride eighteen months. She became the mother of a little
girl—fell into ill health—lost her beauty and attractions. He left
her—to travel in Europe—he said—but years passed, and he never returned
or wrote. He left her broken in heart; broken in health, injured in
reputation; exposed to the misconstructions of the world; to the
miseries of poverty; to the temptations of youth, of isolation, and of
warm affections; to the pursuit of the licentious; to the calumny of the
wicked or the thoughtless; and worse than all to bear up against—the
doubts and suspicions of the good. She was destitute of mental
resources—in delicate health—morbidly sensitive, and she sank—sank—under
the accumulating miseries of her position—and died—in the twenty-second
year of her age, and in the fourth of her wretched marriage.
I was about to cite another case—a _second_ case—when the memory of a
third; a fourth; a fifth; a _dozen_ aggravated instances of desertion,
presented themselves to my mind, and pressed upon me, and, reader, I
cannot trouble you with the whole of them. The evils of _misalliance_
are irremediable, at least by foreign interference; and the miseries of
desertion are well nigh incurable, or, “the cure is worse than the
disease.” Let us look at the _causes_ and the means of _prevention_, of
unhappy marriages. Yet, if you read only for the story, just skip the
whole of this chapter, and commence at the _next_, which opens the
drama.
To go back to the beginning—a primary cause of unhappy marriage is a
_defective moral and physical education_. In our country intellectual
education is on a par with that of other enlightened nations of the
earth—not so moral and physical education. Prudence, fortitude, truth,
reverence, and fidelity, are not inculcated here as they should be.
Industry, activity, and enterprise are our national good points of
character, and these are impressed upon children by example, rather than
by admonition; and our virtues, generosity, hospitality, courage, and
patriotism, are the virtues of constitution and of circumstance, rather
than of education.
We fail to impress the duty of PRUDENCE upon our children, and hence
rash and culpable mercantile speculation, ending in insolvency—and hence
hasty, inconsiderate marriages, ending in bankruptcy of heart, home, and
happiness. We fail to impress the duty of FIDELITY upon our children,
and hence irregularity and unfaithfulness in business, embezzlement of
funds, &c., and hence broken marriage faith and deserted families.
We fail to inculcate the duty of FORTITUDE, and hence, when obligations,
professional or matrimonial, become painful, they are too often
abandoned.
But it is PHYSICAL EDUCATION, in its relation to the happiness of
married life, that I wish to discuss. We are still more thoughtlessly
neglectful, and I was about to say, _fatally_ neglectful of physical,
than of moral education. _Fatally_, because no moral education can be
completely successful, unless assisted and supported by a good physical
training.
An instance—preach patience for ever, yet a dyspeptic _will_ be
ill-tempered.
Another—preach industry for ever, yet the weak and languid _will_ be
lazy and idle.
A third—inculcate the necessity of courage, presence of mind, by
eloquent precept, and by the example of all the heroes and heroines of
history, yet the nervous _will_ start if a door claps.
One might go on _ad infinitum_.
A defective physical education is one of the primary causes of
unhappiness in the marriage relation. A girl cannot be a useful or a
happy wife, and she cannot make her husband and her children happy, or
even comfortable, unless she be a healthy woman. In Great Britain, a
girl in delicate health never expects to be married, and her friends
never desire it for her. American girls are proverbially delicate in
organization, and frail in health, and their mothers were delicate
before them, and their children will be still more delicate after them,
unless there is a great reform in physical cultivation. Such a reform is
happily beginning in the North. It is yet unthought of here, and in the
West and South. Daily exercise by walking, skipping rope, calisthenics,
horseback riding, which bring all the limbs and muscles into play; daily
bathing in cold water on first rising in the morning; fresh air, simple,
plain food, the disuse of coffee and tea, comfortable clothing, the
disuse of tight ligatures, corsets, tight-waisted dresses, tight shoes,
&c., are the best features of this excellent system of physical
training. I believe that a young person with a good constitution to
commence with, faithfully following these means for the preservation of
health, with the blessing of God, will not fade or break until she is
fifty, nor die until she is an hundred years old. I believe that youth,
health, beauty, strength, and life can be greatly prolonged beyond their
present average, and that we were all intended to live twice or three
times as long as with our sad mal-treatment we do live.
American children (with the exception of a very few, whose parents know
and practise better) grow up drinking hot tea and coffee, eating hot
meats and rich gravies and pastries, never bathing, taking little
exercise, confined in crowded school-rooms or close house-rooms, and
become narrow-shouldered, hollow-cheeked, pale, sickly, nervous, and
fretful; they marry early companions as pale, sickly, nervous, and
fretful as themselves, and have children _twice_ as pale, sickly,
nervous, and fretful as their parents, and discord and other domestic
miseries are such inevitable results that we _must_ pity, and can
scarcely blame the victims. They cry out in their agony for separation,
divorce, for reform in social laws, when the truth is, no reform would
cure their evils without a reform in their personal habits; such a
reform as would give health, consequently good humor, and lastly,
happiness.
Few people consider how much our _moral_ as well as our _physical_
health depends upon exercise, cleanliness, and temperance. How much our
happiness depends upon a free circulation, unobstructed perspiration,
and a good digestion. How much domestic discomfort is caused by the
querulousness of ill health. Many a man of weak and unsettled principles
is driven to dissipation and vice, and it may be to crime, by the
discomforts of his home, of his sickly and nervous wife, fretful and
troublesome children.
Another prominent cause of unhappy marriages, is the too unguarded and
unrestrained association between young persons of opposite sexes in the
same rank of society. If the dress and address of a young man are
passable, if his conduct is unimpeachable, and his _prospects fair_,
however otherwise unknown and untried, he may be admitted at once to the
intimacy of a young lady, and after a brief courtship, _too_ brief to
give either a knowledge of their own or each other’s hearts, take the
last irrevocable step—_marriage_. And this youth of fair manners, fair
appearance, and fair conduct, may turn out to be, if not positively
depraved, yet weak, unstable, untried, possessing the _best reputation_,
based upon the morality of externals, rather than the tested, sound
integrity of heart; with the most _defective character_, totally unfit
to guide himself, still less another, through the shoals and quicksands
of life.
In the old times of chivalry, a knight must have proved his prowess
before he could successfully aspire to the hand of his lady love. The
days of knight-errantry are long past, but in the age of man, or of the
world, the days of moral warfare are never over; never over with the
world while it exists; never over with man until death; and I would have
some better proof of moral force in an untried young man, than a few
weeks of acquaintance, popularity, and mere amiability of manners would
give, before I could trust the temporal and eternal welfare of my
daughter to his keeping. When a young girl’s heart is lost and won, it
is too late for these prudential considerations; in this case, as in
every other, the old proverb holds good—_Fidarsi è bene, e non fidarse e
meglio_. The conversational acquaintanceship should be prevented from
maturing into the dangerous intimacy. Yet do not misunderstand me; I
would not have you pain or repulse a young heart by the coldness of
suspicion. I would not have you shut yourselves up in a dark distrust,
and close your doors, and guard your girls with Eastern jealousy; far
from it, one need not run upon Scylla in avoiding Charybdis. “Moderation
is the golden thread that holds together the bead-roll of the virtues.”
I would have you take the middle course—“the golden mean” between
jealous surveillance and dangerous neglect. In all other civilized and
enlightened society in the world, young ladies are carefully guarded and
guided, chaperoned through the mazes of life. In countries of the
Eastern continent this system of surveillance is excessive; here, it is
reprehensibly deficient; in England it is perfect. I confess I would
have our manners resemble the English in _this_ respect.
Still another primary cause (I speak only of _primary causes_ here,
deeming discord, tyranny, drunkenness, infidelity, and desertion so many
_effects_), still another primary cause of unhappiness in the marriage
state, is that marriage is contracted too early in life. American girls
are proverbially married too young; at an age at which even a hearty
robust Englishwoman would scarcely be permitted to enter upon the
responsibilities of marriage. How much more improper then must it be for
an American girl, with her national extreme delicacy of organization, to
take upon herself the heavy burdens and onerous duties of matrimony,
before her feeble constitution is mature, or her frail strength
confirmed. But our girls, with all these natural disadvantages, are
married early, and hence the early (_proverbially_ again) wasting of
health and life; the failing of beauty, decline of grace, and loss of
attractions in the women; and hence the vexatious, nervous irritability
so common in young mothers, so destructive to domestic harmony and
happiness. How can it be otherwise with the continued tax of a young and
increasing family upon the immature strength of the youthful wife and
mother? Our girls are extremely fragile at best, and will ever be so,
aye and will grow more so, unless a better system of physical education
is generally adopted. When these delicate girls prematurely assume the
cares and burdens of a family, they break down under it, become thin,
pale, sickly, nervous, and fretful; no longer attractive, almost
repulsive; and the husband, father, if his disposition be benevolent and
protective, as is the nature of most American men, suffers martyrdom,
devotes himself a living sacrifice to his sickly wife and large family.
I know hundreds of such devoted men, all unconscious of their
self-devotion, passing their lives in dull counting-houses, dark stores,
dingy offices, dirty work-shops, or crowded school-rooms, so cheerfully!
to provide a comfortable or a luxurious home where their wives and
children ever live, but where they only come to snatch a hasty meal, or
late at night to sleep. This, I think, is what Dr. Dewey calls “The
Religion of Toil.” But if on the other hand this husband of the sickly
wife, this father of the peevish children, this victim of early marriage
and other abuses, happens to be selfish and unprincipled, he becomes,
more or less, tyrant or reprobate, or he sometimes quietly _leaves_,
goes to the West or South, to sea, or to parts unknown, and is never
heard of again. If he be licentious as well as selfish, his wandering
fancies fix upon some younger, fresher, fairer, or some _new_ form; then
comes the thought of the possibility, the probability, the almost
certainty, if he pursues it, of getting a legal enfranchisement from his
matrimonial bonds. And this is naturally suggested by the facility with
which divorces are granted; true, he cannot legally repudiate his wife
while she remains faithful, but he _can_ oblige _her_ to release him, or
break her neck, or her heart, or desert and starve her into compliance
with his measures; or he can wrest her children from her, and make their
restoration to her bosom the price of his release. I am not
exaggerating, reader; if you live in a city, and will look about you,
you will find that I speak truly. But to conclude, I reiterate, and
insist upon this point, that the fundamental causes of unhappiness in
married life, are a defective moral and _physical_ education—and a
premature contraction of the matrimonial engagement.
THE DESERTED WIFE.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD MANSION HOUSE.
All day within the dreary house,
The doors upon their hinges creak;
The blue fly sings in the pane—the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot creeps,
Or from the crevice peers about.
TENNYSON.
The wild wind sweeps across the old damp floors,
And makes a weary and a wailing moan,
All night you hear the clap of broken doors,
That on their rusty hinges grate and groan;
And then old voices calling from behind
The worn and wormy wainscot flapping in the wind.
MILLER.
The character of the first settlers of Maryland and Virginia is known to
have been very different from that of the Pilgrim Fathers—as opposite as
the idle, gay, and dissolute cavalier to the stern, laborious, and
self-denying Puritan. Their purpose in seeking the shores of the Western
World was also widely different from that of the first settlers of New
England—the object of the latter being spiritual liberty; the end of the
former, material wealth. And their history since the first settlement of
the country has been as broadly diverse. The children of the Pilgrim
Fathers have reached the highest seats in the temples of Fame and
Fortune—the descendants of the first aristocratic settlers of Maryland
and Virginia have seen themselves outstripped in the path of success and
honor by the children of the very menials of their father’s house. This
is emphatically the case in Maryland. Among the friends and partizans of
Lord Baltimore, who sought with him an Eldorado among the rolling hills
and lovely vales, and beside the broad and beautiful rivers of Maryland,
came many younger sons of the decayed old English nobility and gentry,
who thought out of the wealth of the New World to found a name and a
family here, that should rival, in power and splendor, the house from
which they sprang. They seemed to overlook the fact that this coveted
wealth was as yet unreclaimed from the wilderness—that nothing but
energy, labor, and perseverance could receive and appropriate it; and
even if at first they had observed this, it would have availed them
little, for unlike the Pilgrim Fathers, they were deplorably destitute
of these natural and necessary qualifications for success in a new and
unsubdued world.
With all their old ancestral pride, they also brought to these shores
those habits of idleness, dissipation, and reckless expenditure which
had been so destructive to their fortunes in the old country. Many
succeeded in securing from the wilderness large estates, and upon them
they erected handsome edifices,—the bricks, glass, and other materials
for which were mostly imported from England to Baltimore, and brought
down the Potomac or Patuxent rivers to the site selected for building
(so little available then to these settlers were the fine resources of
the country). Some of these old mansion houses are yet standing,[1] but
like the families that own them, much decayed, and remaining merely as
memorials of past grandeur. The descendants of these first settlers of
Maryland and Virginia are the proudest, and _some_ of them, alas! the
poorest of the citizens of these States. These people are _sui
generis_—unlike any other people I ever saw or read of. Each planter on
his own estate, great or small, productive or barren, is prouder, and
more thoroughly convinced of his own immense personal importance, than
any throned, crowned, and sceptred monarch in Christendom or Heatheness.
With all this, they are brave, generous, gallant, and hospitable, even
to extravagance. It has been entered as a complaint against the older
counties of Maryland and Virginia, that the taverns are wretched, and
how can it be helped? Tavern-keeping is a poor business there, because
the doors of every planter’s house fly open to receive the traveller who
passes near his gates—and a welcome is extended to him with the
cheerful, genial warmth of a country gentleman to whom the exercise of
hospitality is a delight as well as a duty. It is a very common thing to
see a perfect stranger ride up to the gate of a Maryland or Virginia
planter’s farm yard, with the purpose of remaining all night—or a week,
if his convenience requires it—and he is sure of a welcome, as long as
he pleases to stay—for him the “fatted calf” is killed, for him the butt
of cordial broached.
Footnote 1:
We have one in Washington. It is an old ruin—some hundred years older
than the city—and stands near the junction of the Potomac and
Anacostia. It is haunted, of course.
Northern and Western men who occasionally happen to travel through the
lower counties of these States, put up at poor taverns, and go away to
abuse the half savage state of society there. They should rather present
themselves at some planter’s house, where they would be received with
the best, as a matter of course, and invited, if it were spring, to a
fish feast upon the banks of the nearest river, or, if it were autumn,
to a deer hunt. Let idlers who are _ennuyés_ to death with the
common-places of their daily life, just take a country road tour through
the lower counties of Maryland and Virginia, and they will find
themselves transported to the associations of two centuries ago, among
the oldest-fashioned people, with the oldest-fashioned houses,
furniture, and manners in the world.
* * * * *
Down on the western shore of Maryland is a heath containing about five
hundred acres—upon which stands an old mansion-house, in ruins, both of
which I wish to describe. This heath is bounded on the North by the
river P., on the South by Sachem’s Creek, on the West by a deep, dense
forest, and on the East by the Chesapeake Bay. The heath rises gradually
from the bay, and is relieved by clumps of pine and cedar trees,
standing between the swells of ground as it rolls back from the water
towards the forest, while towards the North the ground rises and
sharpens into a steep promontory, sticking out between the junction of
the river with the bay. Crowning the summit of this promontory, is a
large, square, red brick old mansion-house. Around this house wave tall,
gloomy old Lombardy poplars—like sable plumes around a hearse. Around
the shores of the promontory runs a half-ruined low brick wall,
inclosing the garden attached to the mansion. This garden is grown up
with weeds and thistles. This estate was known by the name of The Heath,
or Heath Hall, and had continued in the possession of the Churchill
family since the first settlement of Maryland.
On the opposite point of the mouth of the river was the struggling
little village of Churchill Point,—a great colonial seaport town,
withered in the germ—now only an occasional depot for tobacco raised in
the immediate neighborhood, and shipped thence to Baltimore by the
little packets that traded up and down the river, and sometimes stopped
there to take in freight. A large old barn of a storehouse, where
produce was left till carried away—a large, old, white-framed tavern,
half-furnished, where passengers went to meet the packets, a
blacksmith’s shop, a country merchant’s store, a post-office, kept by
the widow of the late post-master, a few cottages, tenanted by wool,
cotton, and flax dyers, by domestic counterpane and carpet weavers, and
other country laborers, made up the staple of the village. About a
quarter of a mile back from the village, in a clearing in the forest,
stood the Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion. Divine service was
performed here only once a fortnight, as the pastor had two parishes
under his charge.[2]
Footnote 2:
This is frequently the case, even at this day, in remote counties of
Maryland.
To return to Churchill Hall. This estate had once been highly valuable,
both as to size and productiveness. Running over its natural boundaries,
it extended beyond the river and creek, and for miles into the forest
behind—and for fertility it was called the garden spot of Maryland. But
many acres had passed from the possession of the family, and what was
left was worn out by that wretched system of agriculture which has
ruined the once highly productive lands of Maryland. I mean the
continual drain upon the resources of the soil, without ever giving it
rest or food; sowing a field years at a stretch, without giving it the
repose of a single season, or the nutriment of a single bushel of
manure. All that was left of the once beautiful farm was the sterile
heath and ruined Hall I have described, when the estate, by the death of
his father, passed into the possession of Ignatius, the last heir of the
Churchills, who, and his two sisters, Sophie and Rosalie, were the only
remaining members of the family. His poverty and his incumbrances did
not prevent him from loving and marrying a beautiful girl in his
neighborhood, Agatha Gormon, who left a luxurious home to share his
poverty in the ruined Hall at the Heath; nor could his love save her
from death, when, in the second year of her marriage, she passed away,
leaving an infant daughter of a day old. He had loved her with an
exclusive, absorbing passion, and from the hour of her sudden death he
pined away, and in less than a year thereafter was laid in her
grave—opened to receive him. The orphan heiress of a ruin and a desert,
the infant Agatha—or, as from her wild, dark beauty, she was nicknamed,
_Hagar_—was left in charge of his sisters. These ladies, though poor,
were quite comfortable. The lower rooms of the old house were kept in
tolerable order. Their table was supplied by the garden, the dairy, and
the river, which afforded excellent fish, crabs, and oysters—while their
pocket money was supplied by the hire of several negroes owned by them.
The girls were beautiful—and, poor as they were, it was thought not
impossible that they might marry well. The elder sister, Rosalie, was a
merry, plump, golden-haired, blue-eyed lassie, with a complexion that
the country beaux compared to strawberries and cream—she was the first
to fulfil the happy auguries drawn for her. She was seen by a young
merchant of Baltimore, who happened to have business at Churchill’s
Point, and after rather a short courtship, she was wedded and carried
off to the city home of her husband. Sophie Churchill, now bereaved and
alone at seventeen, devoted herself with all the enthusiasm of her
ardent, loving nature, to the care and education of her infant niece,
and little Hagar grew passionately fond of her aunt. Her sole domestic
was an old woman, a pure Guinea negress, who, seventy years before, in
her childhood, had been torn from her native coast, brought to this
country, and sold. She had served the Churchill family for three
generations, and was nearly eighty years old—yet with the strong
tenacity of life distinguishing the native African, she still kept up
and at work, seemingly in all her mid-life vigor. Now, reader, I am
telling you no invented story—so do you not think that there was
something slightly romantic about the position of this young girl, left
with the charge of an infant, living in an old ruin, on a bleak shore,
and having no other companion or attendant but the old Guinea negress?
_Real life_ is full of the picturesque and the romantic. I have never
yet needed to cull flowers from the fields of imagination. The gardens
of memory and tradition will furnish materials for a life of romance
writing.