There have been those who, hearing me speak so of sight, have answered, “That is because you have never been able to see. You do not know what a blessing sight is, because you have never enjoyed it!” Sometimes I comfort myself with the thought that it is like that with our son. He can see, but he was born that way and he will never know the difference. Gradually he will grow used to looking upon things which I could not endure to behold. God has chosen to give him the harder part; may He grant him the strength to bear it!
I am, Sir, your sincere friend,
Noel Nightshade.
A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: I have long been an interested reader of your interesting periodical, though I have not hitherto presumed to address you, either personally or in your character as editor. I have ever had an aversion for that type of person who is constantly rushing into print to air personal troubles and casting upon the shoulders of the public the burdens which should rightly be borne upon his own. I have observed, however, that a great many of your readers do not scruple to address you in this respect and are quite in the habit of writing you for advice upon their personal affairs, and, since you do not appear to find this burdensome, I have determined to make known to you my own pitiable plight, in the hope that you, or some of your readers, may be able to suggest some method of relief; for, indeed, I am deep in trouble, from which I seem utterly unable to extricate myself by my own devices. Lest I weary you, I shall tell my sad story in the fewest possible words.
While yet a very young woman I fell in love with a poet. In this there was nothing especially noteworthy, since, I suppose, all women go through this experience at some time of life. The unfortunate feature of my own affair was that it ended quite as I wished it to end—in my marriage. I soon learned that the qualities which make the poet so satisfactory a suitor do not always appear in so favorable a light when he has become a husband. I found it very sweet and charming during our courtship that my lover should be concerned with my spiritual welfare and that his thoughts should never descend to the common affairs of life. It would have seemed almost like sacrilege to ask him to consider with me the sordid problems which are commonly inflicted upon young men of grosser clay when they have proposed marriage to a young woman. So certain was I that any mention of such trivialities would mortally offend my fiancé that I would permit neither my father nor my brothers to question him upon the subject of his financial condition. For this sentimental whim I very nearly paid with my happiness, for I found soon after we had been wed that these questions must inevitably be considered sooner or later, and whereas it had formerly been only a question of the expediency of my marriage, it was now become a matter of vital importance.
Fortunately, I have always been of an excellent wheedling disposition, so much so that my father used to say I could coax a Scotchman into extravagance or a politician into honesty by merely smiling upon him. I turned this natural gift to account in the case of my husband by inducing him to constitute me his business agent. I then went about among the editors selling his verse, and in this I was so successful that he was soon supplying no less than a third of the current verse which was printed in the six or seven leading monthly magazines published in this city. No doubt you have often heard poets express surprise at the amount of rather mediocre poetry which finds its way into the columns of standard publications. You may understand this more readily when I tell you that several other writers of magazine poetry, learning of our own arrangement, immediately set about acquiring handsome and attractive wives, to whom they turned over their output, never appearing at the offices of the editors in person but always sending their wives as their representatives.
In this way we managed very well for several years, though latterly I have encountered one or two editors who were apparently either very near-sighted or peculiarly unsusceptible. We were doing very well, however, and my husband had acquired a wide reputation, so that he was often invited to lecture before associations of one sort or another and to give readings at entertainments in private dwellings. This added to our income, but both of us by now being under the necessity of always appearing dressed in the very neatest and most attractive fashion, we soon found that whatever sum we had left over from current living expenses went for keeping up appearances; so that we were able to live very well but were by no means enabled to lay by a competence for the future.
It was at this stage of our career, which is to say some three years gone, when we were doing better than we ever had before, that the sad blow fell upon us which has cast a shadow over our household, and which has left me, at the age of forty, a widow in all but name and a pauper in anticipation, if not already one in fact. My husband had been invited to speak before a certain literary club or society, and as was always his custom, had accepted without hesitation. Little did he realize, when he carelessly mentioned this appointment to me, that it would be his last public appearance for a long time to come—perhaps forever! Little did I know when he left our apartment that evening, looking so debonair and engaging in his faultless evening attire, that I should next behold him a pitiful wreck—a driveling idiot! Yet, Mr. Idler, this was, alas! what befell your wretched correspondent. He came back to me from that reading a man without understanding, a mental incompetent, a man who, despite his stalwart frame and glowing health of body, exhibited all the symptoms of senile decay! A man who could scarcely scrawl his own name in legible fashion, to say nothing of inditing sonnets, quatrains and ballads.