SORROWS OF THE SULLIVANS.
Mr. Daniel Sullivan, of Tottenham-court-road, green-grocer, fruiterer, coal and potato-merchant, salt fish and Irish pork-monger, was brought before the magistrate on a peace-warrant issued at the suit of his wife, Mrs. Mary Sullivan.
Mrs. Sullivan is an Englishwoman, who, according to her own account, married Mr. Sullivan for love, and has been "blessed with many children by him." But nevertheless, she appeared before the magistrate with her face all scratched and bruised, from the eyes downward to the very tip of her chin; all which scratches and bruises, she said, were the handiwork of her husband.
The unfortunate Mary, it appeared, married Mr. Sullivan about seven years ago; at which time he was as polite a young Irishman as ever handled a potato on this side Channel;—he had every thing snug and comfortable about him, and his purse and his person taken together were quite ondeniable. She, herself, was a young woman genteelly brought up—abounding in friends, and acquaintance, and silk gowns; with three good bonnets always in use, and black velvet shoes to correspond; welcome wherever she went, whether to dinner, tea, or supper, and made much of by everybody. St. Giles's bells rang merrily at their wedding; a fine fat leg of mutton and capers, plenty of pickled salmon, three ample dishes of salt fish and potatoes, with pies, pudding, and porter of the best, were set forth for the bridal supper; all the most considerablest families in Dyott-street and Church-lane were invited, and everything promised a world of happiness—and, for five whole years, they were happy. She loved—as Lord Byron would say, "She lov'd and was belov'd; she ador'd and she was worshipped;" but Mr. Sullivan was too much like the hero of his Lordship's tale—his affections could not "hold the bent;" and the sixth year had scarcely commenced when poor Mary discovered that she had "outlived his liking." From that time to the present he had treated her continually with the greatest cruelty; and, at last, when by this means he had reduced her from a comely young person to a mere handful of a poor creature, he beat her, and turned her out of doors!
This was Mrs. Sullivan's story; and she told it with such pathos, that all who heard it pitied her—except her husband.
It was now Mr. Sullivan's turn to speak. Whilst his wife was speaking, he had stood with his back towards her, his arms folded across his breast to keep down his choler, biting his lips, and staring at the blank wall; but, the moment she ceased, he abruptly turned round and, curiously enough, asked the magistrate whether Misthress Sullivan had done spaking?
"She has," replied his worship; "but suppose you ask her whether she has anything more to say."
"I sholl, Sir!" exclaimed the angry Mr. Sullivan.—"Misthress Sullivan, had you any more of it to say?"
Mrs. Sullivan raised her eyes to the ceiling, clasped her hands together, and was silent.
"Very well, then," continued he—"will I get lave to spake, your honour?"
His honour nodded permission, and Mr. Sullivan immediately began a defence, to which it is impossible to do justice; so exuberantly did he suit the action to the word, and the word to the action. "Och! your honour, there is something the matter with me!" he began; at the same time putting two of his fingers perpendicularly over his forehead to intimate that Mrs. Sullivan had played him false. He then went into a long story about a "Misther Burke" who lodged in his house, and had taken the liberty of assisting him in his conjugal duties, "without any lave from him at all." It was one night in partickler, he said, that he himself went to bed betimes in the little back parlour, quite entirely sick with the head-ache. Misther Burke was out from home; and when the shop was shut up, Mrs. Sullivan went out too: but he didn't much care for that, ounly he thought she might as well have staid at home, and so he couldn't go to sleep for thinking of it. "Well, at one o'clock in the morning," he continued, lowering his voice into a sort of loud whisper; "at one o'clock in the morning, Misther Burke lets himself in with the key that he had, and goes up to bed—and I thought nothing at all; but presently I hears something come, tap, tap, tap, at the street door. The minute after, down comes Misther Burke, and opens the door, and sure it was Mary—Misthress Sullivan that is, more's the pity—and devil a bit she came to see after me in the little back parlour at all, but upstairs she goes after Misther Burke.—'Och!' says I, 'but there's something the mather with me this night!'—and I got up with the night-cap o' th' head o' me, and went into the shop to see for a knife, but I couldn't get one by no manes. So I creeps upstairs, step by step, step by step, (here Mr. Sullivan walked on tip-toe all across the office, to show the magistrate how quietly he went up the stairs,) and when I gets to the top, I sees 'em—by the gash (gas) coming through the chink in the windy-curtains—I sees 'em; and 'Och! Misthress Sullivan!' says he; and 'Och! Misther Burke!' says she—and 'Och botheration!' says I to myself, 'and what will I do now?'" We cannot follow Mr. Sullivan any further in the detail of his melancholy affair; it is sufficient that he saw enough to convince him that he was dishonoured; that by some accident or other, he disturbed the guilty pair, whereupon Mrs. Sullivan crept under Mr. Burke's bed, to hide herself; that Mr. Sullivan rushed into the room and dragged her from under the bed, by her "wicked leg;" and that he felt about the round table in the corner, where Mr. Burke kept his bread and cheese, in the hope of finding a knife.
"And what would you have done with it if you had found it?" asked his worship.
"Is it what I would have done with it, your honour asks?" exclaimed Mr. Sullivan, almost choked with rage—"Is it what I would have done with it!—ounly that I'd have dagged it into the heart of 'em at that same time!" As he said this, he threw himself into an attitude of wild desperation, and made a tremendous lunge, as if in the very act of slaughter.
To make short of a long story, he did not find the knife, Mr. Burke barricadoed himself in his room, and Mr. Sullivan turned his wife out of doors.
The magistrate ordered him to find bail to keep the peace towards his wife and all the king's subjects, and told him if his wife was indeed what he had represented her to be, he must seek some less violent mode of separation than the knife.