It is not always the younger members of a family who are the black sheep. Sometimes it is the father—the mother—the husband—the wife.
In the days when a great music-hall star was at the height of his fame, and had fortune at his feet, I saw him in his charming home with his boy and his two little girls. The star had been an actor, and was a man of culture and education. He had been separated from his wife for some years. She had left him in circumstances which entirely released him from any moral responsibility with regard to her.
His early married life had been wrecked by this woman, who had become a dipsomaniac. After she left him he devoted himself to his three children. His delight was in them and in his home.
One night I was passing the music hall at which he was starring. His brougham was waiting for him at the stage door, and a little crowd had gathered to see him come out. He came, and there was a cheer, and at that moment a dissipated-looking woman, with a battered bonnet on her untidy hair, with tom dress and bedraggled skirts, reeled forward and caught him by the arm.
"Hulloa!" she shouted. "It's you, is it?"
The "star" went very white as he looked into the drunken woman's face. He shook himself free from her clutch and stepped hurriedly into the brougham.
The drunken woman yelled a volley of abuse after him as he drove away.
Then she turned to the crowd and exclaimed—
"I'm his wife—his lawful wife—curse him!—and that's how he treats me."
For ten years the terror of meeting this woman embittered the life of a great popular favourite. It was useless for him to give her money. It went in drink. He had once after she left him given her a home for herself. In six weeks she had sold every stick, and during that time she had twice been locked up and fined for being drank and creating a disturbance in the street.