“The late lamented ” has been a favourite subject of comedy and farce and the lighter fiction from time immemorial. Second marriages are not an uncommon thing, but, oddly enough, they are usually looked at askance by the, people who have no opportunities of making one. Widows who abandon their widowhood are designing females–(Mr Weller, senior, only gave concrete expression to a popular belief)–widowers who do likewise are disposed of with a shrug and the remark, “No fool like an old fool.” And possibly the widows and the widowers have often themselves to blame for this common but it is to be hoped mistaken feeling. The dead hand in questions of property is not infrequently a serious inconvenience; in matters matrimonial it sometimes becomes a positive cruelty. Persons marrying a second time do so presumably without any abatement of respect for their former partners, but the judicious man or woman may be expected to have the good taste and the discretion to allude as seldom as possible to the past. When the new partner is reminded that “the late Mr__ was always at home before ten,” or that “the late Mrs __ would never have dreamt of asking so frequently for a new bonnet,” the domestic atmosphere is pretty certain to become electrical.
A certain Mr Swain–name of amatory omen–has just realised in what a delicate position a man is placed who chances to meet a second ‘”twin soul” a few months after the first one has left this lower sphere. Mr Swain’s experience as a sorrowing widower was of the slightest, when he happened to go up to London on business from Leicester, where he resides. He there met Miss Minnie Wright, a teacher, of some personal attractions, and “became much struck with her.” So much had he been struck indeed that within a month in May of last year he took to writing letters of “an amorous nature,” to which the young lady responded with equal warmth. Mr Swain felt that Miss Wright had a “loving soul which is in sympathy with mine.” He had secured “the love of the one’ woman whom it is to be my fond endeavour to live for.” No wonder, then, that he found himself “living in a new atmosphere,” and that he “soliloquised many times,” the text of his soliloquy being, “I have a living soul in sympathy with mine, one who will always be ready to speed me onward with letters and words of encouragement.”
But, though Mr Swain had a new atmosphere thus turned on, he had a strange hankering after the atmosphere of his past life. He had, it is true, abandoned the trappings and the suits, of woe when he became engaged to Miss Wright, and, lest the public of Leicester should fail to realise that he had left off wearing mourning, he sported white ties, showing a delicate desire to keep his neighbours up to date on his affairs which did him honour. That was all very well so far, but Miss Wright discovered that her lover wore a mourning ring in memory of Mrs Swain No. 1. She asked him to lay this sad emblem away; but Mr Swain was firm. He had taken the crape off his hat, he had hung up his sable suit, but he declined peremptorily to part with his ring. Little wonder, then, that the mourning ring caused, as the learned counsel happily expressed it, “a little rift in the lute,” and ultimately became “a bone of contention.”
But worse remained behind. Miss Wright honoured her lover with a visit at his lodgings, and what did she find? She saw the walls covered with a dozen photographs of what–? No, not of ladies of the ballet–that might have been forgiveable–but of the late Mrs Swain!
“Really,” exclaimed the young lady, with much emotion, “I think Mr Swain’s conduct heartless in the extreme.”
And so these loving hearts have been sundered. Miss Wright carries with her into her retirement £75, which a sympathetic jury awarded as a salve to her wounded soul.
Mr Swain will probably resume his mourning suit, and fill up any blanks on his walls with more photographs of “the late lamented.” Should he ever again meet a “twin soul,” his recent experience will probably have convinced him that it will be well to keep the dead hand out of the contract.
Glasgow [Glasgow, Scotland] Herald 26 April 1897: p 6
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 on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.
The Victorian Book of the Dead 