The Story of the Dead Seal.
AMONG Lord Kames’s session papers there are two informations or written pleadings upon the competency of an action of damages. The law point was strange enough, but the facts set forth in explanation were much more so, amounting indeed to a story so unprecedented, that I cannot help being surprised how they have escaped the curiosity of those who love “to chronicle the strong beer” of human life and action. Mr John Dalrymple, merchant, had passed his honeymoon with his wife (whose maiden name was Jean Bisset) in his house in Warrender’s Close, and was about to proceed next morning to Glasgow, to execute some commission business. They had a cheerful supper; they were both young, both healthy, and both hopeful, and surely if under these conditions they could not extract some sweets out of the orange of life, they might have little chance afterwards, when the pulp would diminish to the bitter skin which is inevitable. But the truth is, they had both very good powers of suction, and will enough to use them; and if it were not that death and life play upon the same string, one might have said that the new-married couple stood no apparent risk of any fatal interruption to their happiness.
It was accordingly in very good spirits that Mr Dalrymple set forth in the morning on his journey. We might perhaps say, that the inspiration of her love lent force to his mercantile enterprise, for somehow it would seem that all the actions of man beyond the purely selfish play round the great passion, just as the gaudy petals of the flowers are a kind of acted marriage-song round what is going on in the core of the plants; and so having arrived in Glasgow, he would be thinking about his Jean, to whom, when he got home again, he would recount the wonderful triumphs he had achieved over his competing worshippers in the Temple of Mammon. He was to be eight days away, and no doubt, according to a moderate calculation, they would appear as so many months, were it not that his business engagements would keep these days to their normal length. He was to write her every day, but as he did not know at what inn he might put up, she was not to write to him until she knew where to address him. On the day after his arrival he accordingly sent her a very loving letter, containing, we presume, as many of those kisses à la distance as is usual in such cases, and which in our day would make some noise in the post-office receiving-box, if they were endowed with sound. Having performed this loving duty, he continued his exertions re-inspired with the hope of receiving an answer on the morning of the day following. Then—as happy people, like the other animals, are playful—he amused himself at intervals, by conjecturing as to what kind of a letter he would get, how endearingly expressed it would be, how many “dears” there would be in it, what warmth of feeling the words would convey, and how many sighs had already been wasted for his return. We might smile at such frivolities if we were not called to remember that the most of our pleasures, if looked at through the spectacle-glass of Reason, would appear to be ridiculous.
The morning came; and, according to the statement of the waiter, the letter would arrive about breakfast time. He would thus have two or three pleasures rolled up in the same hour; he would sip coffee and nectar at the same time; his ham and egg would be sweetened by ambrosia; the pleasures of sense would be heightened by those of the fancy. All which were promises made by himself, and to himself, while he was dressing, and we cannot be sure that he did not make himself more sprightly, that he had to appear before the letter of his dear Jean. Did not Rousseau blush in presence of the great lady’s dog? Do what we may, we cannot get quit of the moral influence exercised over us by even inanimate things having the power of suggesting associations. But the breakfast was set, all the eatables and drinkables were on the table, and the last thing served by the waiter was the communication that the postman had passed and had left no letter.
The circumstance was rendered more than awkward by his prior hopes and anticipations, and it had the effect, moreover, which it surely ought not to have had upon a sensible man, of taking away his appetite. That it was strange there could be no doubt, for where is the loving wife who at the end of the honeymoon would allow a post to pass without replying to a loving husband’s letter?—but then he contrived to make it more strange by his efforts to satisfy himself that it was not strange at all. His reasons did not satisfy him; the humming of a Scotch air carried no conviction and produced no appetite; and the result was increased anxiety, evidenced by the hanging head and heavy eye. Again the main argument was that his or her letter had miscarried,—how could there be any other mode of accounting for it?—and then he hummed the air again—the breakfast standing all the time. All to be again counter-argued by the fact that during all the period he had corresponded with Glasgow, there had been no miscarriage of a letter, either to or from him. This was the doctrine of chances in the form of a stern logic, and the effect was apparent in another relapse into fear and anxiety. But Mr Dalrymple, though made a moral coward by the intensity of his affection, was withal a sensible man—a fact which he gave a good proof of, by placing more faith in brandy than logic, for having called for a little of that cordial, he put a glassful into his coffee, and thereupon felt, almost as soon as the liquor had got into his stomach, that there was really a great deal less to fear than he had thought, if the whole affair was not a mere bugbear; and what was not less remarkable, if not fortunate, the brandy, by dismissing his fears, brought back his appetite, and although he required a little longer time, he contrived to make nearly as good a breakfast as if he had been favoured with the ambrosial accompaniment which he had so hopefully promised himself.
Nor was this a small matter, for the meal served as ballast to enable him to encounter something very different from the slight adverse wind he had experienced for the last hour. He was still sitting at the table, rather pleased that he had triumphed over morbid fears, and laying out his scheme for the day, when the words, coming from behind, “A letter, sir,” struck his ear as if by a slap. His hand nervously seized the proffered gift, his eyes “flew” as it were to meet the superscription. He did not know the handwriting. It was directed to the care of Messrs Robert Fleming & Co., one of the houses with which he had been doing business. So far he was relieved, even when disappointed by the absence of his wife’s hand on the address. He turned it with the view to break it open, and then stopped and trembled as his eye fixed itself on a large black seal, exhibiting the death’s head and cross-bones of a funeral letter. Even this he soon got over, under the supposition that it was an invitation to some acquaintance’s funeral sent through to him, likely, by the recommendation of his wife before she had received his true address. At length he broke it open, and read the following words:—
“Dear Sir,—I am sorry to be under the necessity of informing you that your wife died this afternoon, between three and four, from the bursting of a blood-vessel in the lungs. You will see the propriety of starting for home as soon as you receive this melancholy intelligence.—Yours,