Seven Wives and Seven Prisons / Or, Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Monomaniac. A True Story

by L. A. Abbott

Then came the old tempter in a new form, and my matrimonial monomania, which I hoped was cured forever, broke out afresh. One day, at the public house where I lived, I saw a fine girl from New Hampshire, with whom I became acquainted—so easily, so far as she was concerned—that I ought to have been warned to have nothing to do with her; but, as usual, in such cases, my common sense left me, and I was infatuated enough to fancy that I was in love.

Mary Gordon was the daughter of a farmer living near Keene, N. H., and was a handsome girl about twenty years of age. She was going, she told me, to visit some friends in Bennington, and would be there about a month, during which time, if I was in that vicinity, she hoped I would come and see her. We parted very lovingly, and when she had been in Bennington a few days she wrote to me, setting a time for me to visit her; but in business in Brattleboro was too good to leave, and I so wrote to her. Whereupon, in another week, she came back to Brattleboro and proposed to finish the remainder of her visit there, thus blinding her friends at home who would think she was all the while at Bennington.

Our brief acquaintance when she was at the house before, attracted no particular attention, and when she came now I told the landlord that she was my cousin, and he gave her a room and I paid her bills. The cousin business was a full cover to our intimacy; she sat next to me at the table, rode about with me to see my patients, and when I went to places near by to sell medicine, and we were almost constantly together. Of course, we were engaged to be married, and that very soon.

In a fortnight after her arrival I went home with her to her father’s farm near Keene, and she told her mother that we were “engaged.” The old folks thought they would like to know me a little better, but she said we were old friends, she knew me thoroughly, and meant to marry me. There was no further objection on the part of her parents, and in the few days following she and her mother were busily engaged in preparing her clothes and outfit.

I then announced my intention of returning to Brattleboro to settle up my business in that place, and she declared she would go with me; I was sure to be lonesome; she might help me about my bills, and so on. Strange as it may seem, her parents made no objection to her going, though I was to be absent a fortnight, and was not to be married till I came back. So we went together, and I and my “cousin” put up at the hotel we had lately left. For two weeks I was busy in making my final visits to my patients acquaintances, she generally going with me every day.

At the end of that time we went back to Keene, and in three weeks we were married in her father’s house, the old folks making a great wedding for us, which was attended by all the neighbors and friends of the family. We stayed at home two weeks, and meanwhile arranged our plans for the future. We proposed to go out to Ohio, where she had some relatives, and settle down. She had seven hundred dollars in bank in Keene which she drew, and we started on our journey. We went to Troy, where we stayed a few days, and during that time we both concluded that we would not go West, but return to Keene and live in the town instead of on the farm, so that I could open an office and practice there.

So we went back to her home again, but before I completed my plans for settling down in Keene, Mary and I had several quarrels which were worse than mere ordinary matrimonial squabbles. Two or three young men in Keene, with whom I had become acquainted, twitted me with marrying Mary, and told me enough about her to convince me that her former life had not been altogether what it should have been. I had been too blinded by her beauty when I first saw her in Brattleboro, to notice how extremely easily she was won. Her parents, too, were wonderfully willing, if not eager, to marry her to me. All these things came to me now, and we had some very lively conversations on the subject, in which the old folks joined, siding with their daughter of course. By and by the girl went to Keene and made a complaint that she was afraid of her life, and I was brought before a magistrate and put under bonds of four hundred dollars to keep the peace. I gave a man fifty dollars to go bail for me, and then, instead of going out to the farm with Mary, I went to the hotel in Keene.

The well-known character of the girl, my marriage to her, the brief honeymoon, the quarrels and the cause of the same, were all too tempting material not to be served up in a paragraph, and as I expected and feared, out came the whole story in the Keene paper.

This was copied in other journals, and presently came letters to the family and to other persons in the place, giving some account of my former adventures and marriages. Of this however I knew nothing, till one day, while I was at the hotel, I was suddenly arrested for bigamy. But I was used to this kind of arrest by this time, and I went before the magistrate with my mind made up that I must suffer again for my matrimonial monomania.

It was just after dinner when I was arrested, and the examination, which was a long one, continued till evening. Every one in the magistrate’s office was tired out with it, I especially, and so I took a favorable opportunity to leave the premises. I bolted for the door, ran down stairs into the street, and was well out of town before the astonished magistrate, stunned constable, and amazed spectators realized that I had gone.