Didn't know which way to turn.
MY dear sir, if ever there was a miserable woman in this world, it is the poor creature who now takes up her pen to tell you how wretched she is. I have not slept a wink all night. I must tell you my husband is dreadfully suspicious, and so am I—and the best of women at times; but still I never could have suspected he would have suspected me in the abominable suspicious manner he has lately done. Will you believe it, sir, he declared last night that he could plainly see I wanted to "pisen him." The fact is, we had for supper some mushrooms and a lovely pie just warmed up with a little steak in it, for I thought I would give him a treat—and nicer mushrooms, or a tenderer steak, I think I never tasted in all my life—when what does my fine gentleman do but turn up his fine nose! Only first I must tell you that he ate a very 'arty supper, and had his whisky toddy all nice and comfortable—for I must have mixed him six glasses if I mixed him one—and smoked his pipe, though I have told him over and over again I would not allow any such filthy practices in my house, especially the parlour. But kindness is thrown away upon some men; for what does my Mr. Smellfungus do, but he turns round upon me, and because he feels a big pain in his side, accuses me on the spot of wishing to "pisen him." Those were his very words. Oh! that I should have lived to have heard them; but it is not the first time by ever so many that the suspicious creature has dared to turn round upon me in this bumptious manner. The first time he degraded himself in my eyes with these low suspicions was when he had been eating pies at Twickenham, and we were returning home in the steamer, when all of a sudden he called the whole cabin to witness that he was sure "I had pisened him." Oh, dear! I was so struck that I No, that I didn't; but I told him, once for all, if ever he dared to bring such a heavy charge against me I would make him pay for it dearly, that I would, even if it cost me my life. Here the monster laughed, and dropt the poison, but he brought it up again soon afterwards; for I recollect it was on a Friday, and we had a most lovely giblet pie for dinner, though not a morsel as big as a pin's head could I touch, for I was busy all the while picking bones with my wretch of a husband, and I really thought I should have choked, I was in such a way with him. He had no sooner emptied the dish than he threw the "pisen" again in my face; and he did it also another time when we had a quince pie—and a nice delicious squince, in my eyes, is worth a Jew's eye any day; but my dainty lord and master could see nothing but pisen at the bottom of it, and complained of cholera and pins and needles in his inside, and I don't know what else. So this morning I packed up my bandbox, and asked him boldly what he had got in his head lately? and that his low base suspicions had completely poisoned my existence, and that I would jump into the Thames as sure as I was born sooner than be suspected any longer. When my brazen monster, who is known for not
STICKING AT TRIFLES,
draws his chair close up to mine, and laughs in my face, which made me so boil over that, in the heat of the moment, I threw the teapot at him, and then the slop-basin, and after that the milk-jug. I did not spare the crockery, or the brute either, for I was not going to be accused for nothing, I can tell you; but the more cups I broke, the more saucily he laughed, till the big drops ran down his fat face, and he asked me, with a nasty grin I didn't half like, "Whether I thought he belonged to a burial society for nothing?"
Oh! sir, the truth flashed all at once across my two eyes, for I knew my husband had been reading these horrible newspapers lately, and I felt instinctively they had poisoned his mind, so I ran out of the house without my bonnet, and—will you believe it?—my hair still in curl-papers, and got into a cab, vowing I would never put my foot in it again until he had gone down upon his bended knees and confessed I was a poor injured wrongly-suspected woman. I would sooner be a widow at once than be thrown about in such a way. Oh! sir, I ask you if it is not infamous, after being married to a man these fifteen years and more, to be suspected of giving him his gruel with a spoonful of arsenic, and of wishing to hurry him out of this world on a nasty toadstool instead of a fine mush-room? But, sir, it's these infamous papers. I wish they were all burnt of a heap, for I can plainly trace every bit of my pretty Smellfungus's suspicions to those atrocious "Poisonings in Essex," which have lately given the public such a turn. Since they have been published, every husband suspects that his darling wife wishes to kill him in order to receive the filthy bonus for burying him. I cannot tell you how many poor suffering wives are separated at the present moment from their brutes of husbands because they have had this abominable poison flung in their teeth every day for the last two months. The poor innocent injured dears of men dare not now for their lives take a single meal in their houses, for fear it should be their last! It's quarrelling with their own bread and butter, to say the very least of it.
I remain, sir, at my hotel (the "Two Magpies"), till my cruel good-for-nothing lord and master chooses to come and fetch me.
Yours, in despair, crying my eyes out,
An Innocent, Loving, but Shamefully