A Widower Four Times: 1875

The Widower, Jean-Louis Forain

A Widower Four Times.

Our old friend Truegood, from Nevada, was in Los Angeles a week ago. Noticing his woebegone expression and observing an enormous crape on his hat, we were instant in our inquiries as to the cause of his sadness, when he informed us that his wife had died two weeks ago. We offered our condolence, with as much comforting advice as we could muster, on the loss of the partner of his youth. We had touched a tender chord, for he wiped his streaming eyes with an elegant silk handkerchief and sobbed “such a remarkable coincidence; she died on the anniversary of the death of my previous wife.’  We were surprised, and asked him how long he had been married to the dear departed. ” Six years,” he tearfully said, ” and I had been married only ten years to poor Sarah, her predecessor.” Knowing that our disconsolate friend had a son about thirty years of age, we asked an explanation. He said his oldest son, William, was a son of his first wife, while Mary, who had been married for six years, was a daughter of his second. “The last two wives,” he said, “had left him no children to comfort him in his old age.” Here he broke down and said he would go and see old Mrs. Jones, his mother-in-law by his first wife, who was a sympathetic, motherly old lady, and whose daughter Jennie, his sister-in-law by his first wife, could offer him some consolation. The survivor of four matrimonial engagements walked off, brushing the dust from his English crape, intent on seeking some balm for his connubial distress in the society of his mother-in-law and sister-in-law by his first wife. Truegood is still here, his crape has disappeared, his handkerchief reposes more comfortably in his capacious coat tails, and there is every prospect of mother-in-law No. 1 becoming mother-in-law No. 5, and sister-in-law No. 1 becoming wife the fifth.

Los Angeles [CA] Herald 3 November 1875: p. 2

Chris Woodyard is the author of 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.