Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters—Breakers on a Matrimonial Lee Shore—He is Grounded in Divorce Shoals.
Aforetime, when the mariner was entirely dependent on the winds and the tides to make his voyage, he was, as everybody knows, a peculiarly impulsive, generous, faithful and credulous mortal in his love affairs. Once ashore, he spliced the main-brace, sneered oathfully at land-lubbers, hitched up his trousers and ran alongside the first trim-looking craft who angled for his attentions—and his money. These fine salt-water impulses, begotten of a twelve or fifteen-months' voyage, have mostly vanished. Steam has greatly revolutionized Jack's sweet-hearting. He comes to port every fortnight, or so; he wears dry goods and jewelry of the latest mode; and he marries a wife, or divorces a wife, with the same conventional sangfroid of any mercantile "drummer" who travels by railroad. The conjugal history of that distinguished son of Neptune, Captain Oliver Perry Hazard, now to be related, haply has a delectable smack of mercantile jack's old-time methods, mingled with the shrewder utilitarianism of the steamship Jack of to-day.
Up in the estuary called the Y, and at the mouth of the river Amstel, lay, some years ago, the good American ship which had safely borne young Hazard across the Atlantic. He was a handsome, a tall, and a lively young man of five and twenty; and, with a vivacious young mariner's curiosity, he went ashore to sample the "Holland," for which the Dutch are so famous, to stroll across the two hundred and ninety-odd bridges, and to take an observation of the pretty girls that loomed up in sedate but ample old Amsterdam. There, in a saloon where the gin was a most divine Hippocrene, and the cigars fragrant, Oliver beheld a tight little craft, and straightway ran up his flag as a salute. She was a brunette, with as pretty a form as the sun had ever kissed. Her dark, dark eyes were large, lustrous and superb. Oliver shares Lord Byron's weakness for handsome eyes. He's very fond of them. The name of the Amsterdam divinity was Marie. He resembled the same illustrious poet in his predilection for the name of Mary or Marie. He thought there was a sweetness in it. And so he sank into the quicksands of Eros, right over his tarry toplights, and, nothing loth, Marie accompanied him in the Avernian descent. Every morning that he lay in the Dutch port our mariner squared his yard-arms and trimmed himself for bringing-to alongside Marie. Every night the tics were getting tauter, and when he proposed that she should cross with him to England there was no pitching on her part worth speaking of. And so they voyaged to Albion and to several ports in Gaul; and there was no lee-way in their love, but still the tics were getting tauter, evidencing strong probabilities of a life cruise together.
A year or two after, both Oliver and Marie were in New York, and, according to the affidavit of Captain Hazard's mother, Marie called upon the matron and told her "that she had been living with her son Oliver; that she had first met him in Amsterdam, and had traveled with him as his wife in England and in France, and that he had brought her to America." Marie assured the old lady that she loved him dearly, that she had been faithful and true to him ever since their intimacy, and hence she was anxious that Oliver should marry her and make her an honest woman in the eyes of the law and of the world. Whereupon, the mother persuaded the son to marry the pretty, young, gazelle-eyed girl, who could speak American and write like a born citizen.
Oliver's own account of this momentous event, as chronicled in his affidavit, is not materially different. He affirms that he first met Marie in a liquor store in Amsterdam, "which she was in the habit of frequenting. At this time she was of loose character;" she "lived with him and traveled to England and France, and he was going to send her back to Holland, when his mother urged him to marry her, which he did reluctantly."
In what way or to what extent, if any, the relations between the young mariner and his wife were affected after Hymen had stepped in and chained them together, there are data for determining. If we are to unqualifiedly accept the averments of the captain's affidavit we should come to the conclusion that Marie's nature and disposition were woefully transformed when she could legally designate herself, "Mrs. Captain Oliver P. Hazard." She then discovered "a jealous disposition" and "an ungovernable temper." When he returned from his various voyages she "did not receive him kindly;" but, contrariwise, sometimes received him on the side of "a poker," on the end of "a dirk" or at the muzzle of "pistol." Moreover—and this is dolefully comic—"she repeatedly left this deponent imprisoned in the house for hours under lock and key!" What a situation for a foaming mariner, accustomed to roam the vastness of the majestic, the free, the uncontrollable deep! Probably the next arraignment is still more exasperating. "She kept a servant to act as a spy and treat this deponent with disrespect." With the lapse of years, and with the peculiar hue which strife assumes in its backward prospective, his once happy-home and connubial comforts wore a jaundiced and sickly aspect. He ceased to recall the days when his heart was linked unto Marie's as a rosebud is linked to its stem.
Mrs. Hazard possessed some letters, written to her by her whilom amorous husband, which will enable the reader to form a pretty correct idea of the estimation in which, until quite recently, the captain held his pretty wife. For example, one Fourth of July, he writes from "On board the U. S. Steamer John Rice," from Fortress Monroe to "My own dear and precious wife," informing her that the ship has been landing troops, that he feels rather seedy and low-spirited, and wishes he was at home to spend "the glorious Fourth" in her company. In a postscript he blazes into amorous enthusiasm and exclaims, "Write your dear Olly!" and in the bottom left-hand corner, within a sort of fairy circle, about the size of the orifice of a quart-bottle neck, appeared the gushing invitation, ("Kiss me.")
Nearly a year afterward he writes from Havana, "On board the steamer Liberty, May 6, 1865," to "My own dear precious wife," informing her that he is safe from New Orleans, with other personal matters not necessary to rehearse. He subscribes himself, "Your affectionate and loving Olly." Over ten years afterward we find the captain writing another letter from on board the same steamer, October 13, 1875, lying in Savannah, to "My darling beloved wife," in which he graphically tells her the sort of dog Jocko is. "Jocko came on board all serene," writes the captain, "He is asleep under my sofa all the time when he is not hunting beef, and I keep my room very warm. So that is the kind of dog Jocko is. If he was a half decent dog I would keep him on board, but he is asleep all the day under my sofa, and hates to be on deck. So he is good for nix, the worse cur I ever saw. I will leave him with a good keeper, and glad to lose sight of him."
At this period Mrs. Captain Hazard was in the habit of sub-letting a portion of her house; and in the tail-end of the letter from which we have just quoted reference is made thereto. "Have you advertised in the Tribute yet? Try fifty cents' worth for two days, you may catch a sucker. May God, in his infinite mercy, ever bless, protect and make you well and successful, my darling wife, is the prayer of your ever-loving and affectionate husband, Oliver P. Hazard." In the usual corner appears the magic circle, with the imperative ("Kiss me.")
In the early portion of the year 1876, he had so persistently coaled up the fires of his love boilers that he couldn't wait until the steamer sailed, but plunges into glowing correspondence as soon as he reaches "Pier 2." He is now the captain of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company's vessel, San Jacinto, and on April 22 he writes, "My own darling good wife," before sailing, advising her to take good care of herself. The usual circular, hieroglyphic and osculatory invitation appears at the lower left-hand corner.