COMFORTED WIDOWERS.
A Cold-Blooded Dissertation on Fickle-Hearted Man.
It always tickles us—yes, tickles is the word—to see a widower when he is beginning to get comforted.
The time when this takes place varies in different individuals. We have seen it set in vigorously in less than week after the “partner” was buried; sometimes it is prolonged for years—the period of mourning; and occasionally there is a man so different from all the world of men, that he never becomes comforted, but goes on to the end of the chapter, getting his stockings at the store, and hiring a housekeeper to cook his breakfast, and keep his buttons in tune.
When a widower begins to be comforted he always commences to talk about lonely he is—how sad his home is—how neglected his children—how shipwrecked his life! He had the best of wives, he will tell you—such a saint upon earth!—such a heavenly temper!—never gave him a cross word in her life—never even looked cross at him; and as for his conduct toward her, why, bless you! The man was a male angel!—let him tell it.
No black looks about bread burned and nauseous coffee; no fuss when the cat made a bed for her kittens—seven of ‘em—in his Sunday coat; no grumbling when he came home some cold winter day, and found his wife to the sewing society, to make petticoats for the heathen on the equator, and the first out, and no supper and the children cutting kindlings with his best razor and the mercury at zero.
Never a cross word passed between them; and he will put his handkerchief to his eyes, and sigh, and tell you that Betsy was a treasure; and that never—no, never!—shall he find any one to take her place!
Well, who said anything about anybody’s taking her place? Nobody at all. The thought was born in the man’s own mind and he has seen some pretty girl, young enough to be his daughter, all curls, and ruffles, and furbelows, and he has imagined her in Betsy’s place. That’s what’s the matter with him!
In one respect widowers are invariably forty! If they have buried a wife aged fifty, they want to have a number two wife aged anywhere from sixteen to twenty.
A young woman is what your elderly widower is looking for.
And, if he marry her, she will have a fuss with his grown-up daughters in a week, and if the family remain together, that house, most of the time, will be too hot to hold the father of the flock.
When the widower begins to be comforted, he does not take his children abroad with him quite so much. He looks too venerable, surrounded by those pledges of his dead wife’s love. It is better, he argues, for children to stay at home, and be learning something.
And he puts on his Sunday clothes when he goes to Friday night meeting, and he stands around the church door with the young men, and looks at the single women as they pass in, and sighs—for he remembers Betsy. Oh yes!
He concludes to take the crape off his hat, when he gets pretty well comforted. He tells his family that it is getting rusty, and makes his hat look bad, and he becomes particular about his shirt bosoms, and gets his boots a size smaller than the comfort of his corns justifies—and when a widower gets to pinching his corns, you may be sure that he has left off mourning for his lost Betsy.
When he has committed himself, and she has said yes—behold the man! He is a new being. He is literally born again! He forgets he ever had rheumatism. Speak to him of the gout and he will laugh at you. He has had new hinges put into him throughout, and he moves with the ease and rapidity of a sewing machine just oiled.
He is so lively that you would not be surprised to see him playing leap-frog with the boys, or flying a kite from the top of the meeting house.
A young man, with the tantrums of first love in full operation is nothing to him: a four-year-old colt in a pasture is not more lively; and you cannot help feeling a thrill of joy that so much life, and spirit and friskiness should be doomed to be shortly broken to harness by a second wife, and a second wife always drives with a curb bit and a tight rein.
The Nebraska State Journal [Lincoln NE] 24 September 1911: p. 28
Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
The Victorian Book of the Dead 