For there—in the larger of the drawing rooms, of Mrs. Buff, the while a ball gaily ensued, in a near wing of the house, there I first heard Elisha’s robust baritone voice, and thrilled to its manly prowess, all unknowing in my virgin simplicity (tho’ advanced in years, as the coarse world would adjudge: being in my forty-first year, & much accustomed to sophisticated society, as well as flatterers & sycophants of every hue, as a consequence of my Kiddemaster blood, & my renown as an authoress)—all unknowing, I say, in my innocence & ignorance, who had imagin’d herself immune, to both male fortune-hunters, and to the tumultuous contingencies, of her own heart.
Cruel, & insufferable!—that so much pain should ensue, & such folly, from a haphazard visitation to the Buffs, at their elegant ancestral abode (Mrs. Amanda Buff being an old friend, from careless girlhood days, in the Philadelphia Seminary for Young Ladies, some years before); nay, from a haphazard visitation to that very drawing room, so tastefully decorated by Amanda Buff’s discerning hand, in rococo-style carved pieces, of pleasing grace, and luxurious velvet drapes of that hue later to be known as Sebastapol blue, and a craved marble mantel, from out a pagan Turkish palace, inherited from Amanda’s family! For there, in that elegant retreat from the merry but o’erexuberant sounds of musical revelry, in the ballroom, there it was my fate to o’erhear Captain Elisha Burlingame of the Union Forces (then on furlough, to visit his invalided mother, in Albany) zealously, yet with a conscious sensitive touch, singing the Schubert melody, whilst one of Amanda’s elder sisters played the piano.
Alas, to hear; and to feel my heart pierced; and to know almost beforehand, what pain would ensue. . . .
For here was the dashing Captain Burlingame, well over six feet of heighth, with his thick manly torso, and his powerful neck & countenance, that earned for him the fond appellation of his men, The Bull, for both his vigorous appearance, and his bold behavior under fire. Captain Burlingame was then in his early thirties, tho’, for purposes of courtship, so far as the foolish Edwina Kiddemaster was concerned, he gave out his age as being somewhat older—not wishing to appear an inappropriate choice, for her husband. He wore a Union costume that had been, by special permission, modified, that it cut a showier figure, with a smart crimson necktie, and fuller sleeves; and his hair—ah, the very Devil himself could not have conspired, to create a more winning picture of masculinity, & angelic charm!—his hair fell in red-burnished curls & ringlets, to his muscular shoulders. Was there ever a warrior—not even excluding the comely Boy General, George Armstrong Custer—who cut a more compelling figure on the raging battlefield, or in Society’s bastions?
I know not whether my frame shudders, even now, with revulsion for the recollect’d song, or (may God forgive me!) ignoble hapless sentiment: but this was the seductive verse, of the song’s numerous verses, that most enthralled me—
Adieu! ’tis love’s last greeting,
The parting hour is come!
Yet dare I mourn when Heaven—
Has bid thy Soul be free?
A fresher life has given
For all ETERNITY.
Adieu! Adieu! Adieu! to self-respect, & rational discourse, & all pretensions as to sanity, let alone the moral fibre of a lady’s being.
Thus—the lamentable meeting occur’d & the confirmed spinster Edwina Kiddemaster, tho’ on the brink of that age, at which romance, let alone childbearing, is commonly deemed hazardous, fell prey—I know not to what. A poignant & haunting melody, or a skilled blackguard, of such charm, & acumen, & practice, as to make an outright thespian blanch in envy. . . .
It is true, it is too true, that Amanda Buff, & certain of her concern’d relatives, sought to warn me; & to dissuade me, & I did in fact doubt the Captain’s seriousness, at the very first. (Well knowing myself of an age, & of a reputation, that must take especial care, not to be deceiv’d.) Yet—I know not how, or why, or the precise steps—yet I fell: fell, I state openly, with as much stormy ignorance, & ludicrous hope, as the lowest servant girl, her ears gratefully blushing to hear all the prevarications, of which the masculine gender is capable!
I do not—indeed, cannot, in acquiescence to God’s will—stint my words on this matter: I heard, & saw, & was in a matter of days enthralled, & secretly betrothed, & FELL.
FELL: in such humiliating wise, as I cannot bring myself to recount, reasoning that very little of a fructifying nature can come of it, save as a warning to the young ladies amongst us, who would, in defiance of their elders’ warnings, & deeming it but a lightsome escapade, slip away from a chaperon. For thus I did: submitting to Captain Burlingame’s blandishments, that I accompany him, alone, by phaeton, to the races at Saratoga Springs, some distance to the North . . . during the course of which wild journey, securely lock’d in the handsome canary-yellow vehicle, the impetuous Union Officer seized my defenseless hand in his great-sized hand, &, bringing it violently to his lips, bestowed so vehement a kiss upon it, that—
(Alas, I cannot continue: save to state, with as much frankness as decorum allows, that, upon that paralyz’d instant, I FELL, & ne’er was a virgin again.)
This unspeakable episode having transpired, it was swiftly succeeded by a secret betrothal (for I knew full well, the rage of my brother Godfrey should he learn), &, on the very eve of Elisha’s departure for the War, a secret & shameful wedding.
All of which—I am greatly reliev’d now to confess—tho’ witnessed by only two of Elisha’s comrades, was nonetheless in compliance with the Law of the Land; & duly recorded, in the books of the Justice of the Peace, for Saratoga Springs, one darksome day in the autumn of 1862. I shall not pose Our Saviour’s question, as to who, in our midst, is so blameless of sin, as to “cast the first stone”: for I am beyond all such strategies, in seeking to alleviate my guilt. Yet—I cannot resist querying, who, in our midst, is so hardened of heart, as to be immune to Romance, in its numerous masks & costumes?
So it was, I went to dwell with my bridegroom in a “honeymoon cottage” of sorts, having given out the false information—for which lie, may God forgive me—that I had sailed away to the British Isles, to live for some time in solitude, for authorly purposes.
Alas, very soon afterward, e’en the foolish bride had no choice but to be disabused, of her airy notions: for her dashing Captain exhibited scant patience, for feminine decorum, or recalcitrance; & made bold to request—nay, to demand—cash for his insatiable vices, in which he freely indulged himself, the while the very War was waging!
Tear-dimm’d as those days & months have become, I yet recall the boisterous shouts of my husband, & the trembling cords that stood out, in his powerful neck, as, in great scorn of my condition, he did not shrink from corporeal abuse; & the spouting of such words, as to make my elderly ears burn crimson, at the mere recollection. For, tho’ the descendant of a noble house, in Warwickshire, & indeed the grandson of the much-loved Sir Reginald Burlingame, Elisha was yet no gentleman; & it was not difficult to comprehend, why, at the age of seventeen, he had been encouraged to leave his native land, & seek his “fortune” in the New World, eager to become a citizen of the States, & to give free rein to his barbaric lusts, in those ranks of the Army that dealt with the question of the Indians, in the territories of Kansas & Nebraska, & elsewhere. (These heathenish natives, amongst them “Cheyennes” & “Sioux,” yet evoking in my heart some measure of pity, for the great losses they sustained, & the persistent butchery, on the part of such patriotic warriors as Captain Burlingame!)
The War itself continuing, my villainous husband, now assisting General Sheridan, led vengeful cavalry charges upon the thinn’d ranks of rebel units, in the Shenandoah; & boasted that he “had no pity to spare,” for the Confederate traitors, nor e’en for those civilians, whose misfortune it was to cross his path. When, on leave from these sanctioned slaughters, The Bull betook himself to Washington (in shameless disregard of his ignor’d bride, at this time sequestered, with a very small household staff, in a small village on the Hudson—the
while her deceiv’d family thought her to be touring Europe), it was yet to indulge himself in his vices, with as much angered frenzy, as he expended in the heat of battle. (Must Vice have a name?—a specific title? Drinking—gambling, at poker & at the racetrack—consorting with females, of the most rank & promiscuous station—drunken brawling with his own comrades: such were the absorptions of my husband, & the father-to-be, of an innocent baby girl!)
That Almighty God did not forsake me, in my time of deepest despair, is evident in the fact that my confinement, tho’ prolonged for some fifteen agoniz’d hours, & hideously interrupted by the emergence of the blackguard into the downstairs of the dwelling place (where, for some unfathom’d reason, he rode his neighing & snorting & stamping stallion into the foyer, thus injuring the old parquetry—the action of a drunken brute!), this confinement, with its extreme suffering, both of the spirit and the flesh, ne’ertheless resulted in the birth of a perfectly-form’d INFANT GIRL.
AN INFANT GIRL SUBSEQUENTLY CAST ASIDE, BY HER DESPAIRING MOTHER.
Adieu!—adieu: an innocent babe, & its rampaging father!
Elisha Burlingame, a captain of cavalry never advanced, save for a few weeks, when, due to the exigencies of the War, he was given the brevet rank of Lieutenant-Colonel—then, to his shame, promptly demoted, as a consequence of carousing & brawling; a self-proclaimed patriot of his adopted country, who so mistreated the soldiers in his regiment, he ordered deserters shot without trial, & wounded men, who, for some incalculable reason, had earned his displeasure, forbidden medical treatment (& how the vainglorious Captain had boasted of his soldierly skills, one day to earn him the rank of General!)
Adieu!—Captain Elisha Burlingame, with your coarse yet handsome face; your flaring nostrils; your tumbling red-brown curls; your bristling whiskers! Adieu, treacherous husband, mounted so arrogantly upon your thoroughbred stallion, your broad-brimmed gray hat rakish upon your head, your crimson scarf astir in the breeze, your laughter loud, zestful, & pitiless!
“Ugly as sin! All a wager! Go away! Allow me to wake up!”—thus the drunkard husband stormed, scarce knowing what he said, upon returning to his home, very late one night, from an officers’ club, an Indian scalp (cured & tanned, he afterward claimed) askew on his head, beneath his captain’s hat. “Allow us to wake,” the bulging-eyed villain shouted, “from this gangrenous nightmare!”
Adieu, husband; adieu, baby; adieu—love.
For it was not long after the birth of the despised child, that the father died: in a quarrel, it was said, in a camp near Stafford, Virginia, where cavalry & infantry were stationed, prior to that great battle of the War to be fought at Gettysburg—the which Captain Burlingame never saw. A quarrel over cards—or over the favors of a female camp-follower, of teenage years—or out of surly drunkenness: culminating in a duel of sorts, tho’, by all accounts, hardly more than a murderous assault, in which two well-matched bullies, my husband & a twenty-eight-year-old Brigadier-General, so grievously wounded each other, both died within hours.
Adieu!—’tis love’s last greeting.
The infant daughter, tho’ blameless, was cast aside by her betrayed mother; & given out to secret adoption, by a childless couple, who were said by all who knew them, to be God-fearing, frugal, & industrious—yet, such was my delirium, & my zeal for revenge against Elisha, that I cannot claim to have greatly cared, as to the fate of the child. Nay, I cannot claim to have contemplated it at any length, save as an affliction, a badge of shame, to be eradicated with as much dispatch as possible, thus freeing me to leave the scene of my ignominy behind, & sail for England. (It is not altogether accurate, to say that my status as Mrs. Elisha Burlingame remained secret: for, at the extreme of my distress, I had need of the counsel & support of my elder brother Godfrey, who, surprising in his anger’d sympathy, once seeing that revenge against a dead man was pointless, gave me invaluable advice as to the future; &, tho’ keeping free himself of the particulars, saw to it that a worthy & close-mouthed lawyer was retained, to aid me in the legal technicalities my unfortunate predicament had engendered. It was this lawyer—now long deceased, alas—who made careful inquiry, as to the very best home for my baby; and this lawyer, who arranged for Mr. Herman Bonner to be employed, on a clerical or managerial level, at one of my brother Vaughan’s most prosperous factories. And—such are the glorious omnipotencies, of the Law!—it was this well-practic’d lawyer who arranged for so thorough an eradication of my status as Mrs. Elisha Burlingame, that I was able to resume, with all propriety, my maiden name, as if the unspeakable marriage had never taken place.)
And so it seemed!—and so I deluded myself, for upward of thirty years!
The while, I absorbed myself in my worldly career, & acquired a reputation of some strength, & sufficient monetary reward, to make the sustained effort more than an idle lady’s amusement. An authoress whose works are, I am told, read & enjoyed by one out of every four Americans; precious for their close instruction, in the difficulties of social intercourse, & in moral comport, in these troubl’d times. (I know not whether proper etiquette be an art, or only a craft: that it is difficult, there is no doubt. And, as it cannot be acquired by instinct, it must be learned.)
Thus I deluded myself; & was not, in truth, unhappy. For I enjoy’d the company of the most worthy members of Society; I took pleasure in my travels, & speeches before divers assemblies, & literary friendships, with such persons as Mrs. Sigourney, and Mrs. Ann Stephens, and the Reverend Hargreave Tupper (author of the excellent Proverbial Philosophy), and many another star in our firmament. Such was my self-esteem, & contentment in my work, that the uncanny coincidence that my very own daughter should be adopted by my niece and her husband, & brought to dwell within a mile of my own home, did not impress me at the time as more than a minor vexation. For, tho’ I knew that “Deirdre Bonner” was in fact my own child, sent away nameless from my side, to be baptiz’d by strangers, & tho’ I believed it to be a mistake of judgment (alas, a not atypical lapse, in the Zinns’ household), that she be adopted into our family, I did not feel any deep or tumultuous stirring, of emotion. That the adoption was a mistake, seemed to many of us patently clear: not because of the identity of the orphan, but because of the grave & chronic financial uncertainties, of that household calling itself, with some small smugness, the Octagonal House—tho’ known amongst the Kiddemasters, & I believe in the village as well, by such less flattering appellations as “Dog-Hutch,” “Crank-Cottage,” & “Zinn’s Folly.” (My canny-minded brother Godfrey, tho’ rarely lacking in generosity, oft stated that making loans to his son-in-law was but “throwing good cash down a rat hole—the rat hole, & the rats within, possessing a perpetual appetite”—this acerbic jest being lost, to those unfamiliar with the heroic toil, of many years, of our Bloodsmoor inventor, in his pursuit of the chimerical perpetual-motion machine.)
It is amazing to me now, in my enlighten’d state, that I could not perceive the hand of Almighty God, in that autumn of 1873, when my niece and her son-in-law brought home my very own daughter!—to dwell in their midst, amongst their own four girls, as Deirdre Zinn, late a pathetic orphan, cast upon the waters of Fate, by her adoptive parents’ deaths. Nay, was I blind?—was I mad?—was I so puff’d up with the false splendors of my station in Society, & with my e’er-increasing literary fame, that I could not discern Our Lord’s intention?
A mystery to me now—& one that does not, perhaps, repay too close a scrutiny, if I am to be left with any shred of self-respect, & belief in my own ratiocinative powers.
Yet I cannot truly think that I was blind; or mad; or even greatly absorbed by the public reputation of “Miss Edwina Kiddemaster,” or by her increasing wealth—the which, as I had no need for it, was simply channeled into the family’s investments, there to healthfully grow, in both times of boom & recession. Nay, I believe I was naught but deficient in feeling: hollow of heart: sterile of soul: penurious in spirit.
For which, I pray my once-despised daughter will
forgive me: as God has only recently indicated, He has forgiven me.
Thus, by this Last Will & Testament, I, Edwina Kiddemaster, once the fool bride of Elisha Burlingame, do seek to make amends: as, Mr. Basil Miller will presently indicate, that great gentleman Sir Reginald Burlingame, the grandfather of Elisha, & consequently the great-grandfather of that child known as Deirdre Zinn, sought to make amends for his grandson’s villainy, by bequeathing, on his deathbed, a substantial portion of his English properties, including partnerships in divers London, Birmingham, & Liverpool businesses, & some modest share of stock in an India-trade shipping line, & his ancestral home Burlingame Hall, in Warwickshire—all to the lost child, by way of a clause entrusting the fortune to me, for safekeeping. (That unparallel’d gentleman comprehending how, during my lifetime, I should be greatly distressed, by any disclosure of my shameful past, the which would surely have been uncovered, by gossipers, backbiters, & rabid journalists, should he have left this fortune directly to my daughter.)
These various bequeaths are made in full cognizance, I must make clear, of the unhappy fact that past sorrows cannot be erased, by present actions, however generous: & that the spirited bitterness of the spurned child, who guessed, in her heart, something of the loss she had endured, was, in the eyes of God & man, entirely justified. And yet—it is my fervent prayer, as, I believe, it was Sir Reginald Burlingame’s, that the penury of soul exhibited by myself, and, perhaps, others amongst Kiddemasters & Zinns, can yet be forgiven, by an action of Christian charity, springing forth from within the heart of the lost child.
Thus, this Last Will & Testament, & this trifling literary attempt, not for publication, but only for private perusal, “The Confession of a Penurious Sinner,” are offered as both legal documents, & heartfelt prayers, that, her faith in familial love having been so sorely tested, my daughter, Deirdre Zinn, shall yet (for it is not too late) experience that awakening of emotion, in the human breast, that is known by the wise as love—& too quickly cast aside, by the ignorant, reckless, & vainglorious, as mere weakness, to which the female sex is in particular prone.