Wedded for a Week; or, The Unseen BridegroomMay Agnes FlemingLondon: Milner, [n.d.]
248 pages
We begin on a dark and stormy November night at a ball hosted by Mrs Walraven, matriarch of the New York Walravens, at her Fifth Avenue mansion. Prodigal son Carl is in attendance, having recently returned from two decades spent in parts unknown. A greying thirty-nine-year-old, he still attracts the ladies, and not only because he is sole heir to the Walraven fortune. This Gilded Age-adjacent evening with its alabaster lamps and belles in silk, pearls, and diamonds – so many diamonds – is nearly spoiled by the appearance of a haggard woman dressed in rags, soaked with rain, who insists on speaking with the son of the hostess.
Carl Walraven knows better than to turn her away. This woman, Miriam, whom he'd believed long dead, holds something over him, but what exactly? The more Miriam speaks, the further the mystery grows. This line is key:
"Mary Dane's daughter lives not twenty miles from where
we stand. Justice to the dead is beyond the power of even
the wealthy Carl Walraven. Justice to the living can yet be
rendered, and shall be to the uttermost farthing."
The haggard figure – is "hag" inappropriate? – demands that Carl bring the girl into his home, "educate her, dress her, and treat as your own child."
The second chapter – "Cricket" – finds the Walraven heir seated in a smelly provincial theatre for a performance of Fanchon the Cricket, the lead being played by "distinguished and beautiful young English actress, Miss Mollie Dane."
Carl, who one assumes has been around and has seen a thing or two, finds the sixteen-year-old golden haired actress enchanting:
The stars in the frosty November sky without were not
brighter than her dark, bright eyes; no silvery music that the
heir of all the Walravens had ever heard was clearer or
sweeter than her free, girlish laugh; no golden sunburst ever
more beautiful than the waving banner of wild, yellow hair.
Mollie Dane stood before him a beauty born.
Mollie Dane's talent and good looks make it all the easier to do as Miriam instructed and treat the girl as his own. Carl pays off theatre manager Mr Harkner, takes her home, and introduces the young actress to his mother: "'Here’s a granddaughter for you, mother,' said Mr. Walraven – 'a companion to cheer and brighten your future life.
My adopted daughter – Mollie Dane.'”
The matriarch is pleased. Weeks earlier, she'd been a lonely, old widow; now her newly returned bachelor son has adopted a daughter. No need to ask questions. Besides, young Mollie Dane is so very, very pretty.
Mollie Dane is also quite the coquette. Be be it on the stage or in the dining room, she really knows how to captivate an audience. Her debut in New York society takes the form of a dinner party at the Fifth Avenue mansion with physician Guy Orleander, the artist Hugh Ingelow, and "eminent young lawyer" Joseph Sardonyx.
Just how young is Joseph Sardonyx? I'd wager he has several more years than Mollie's sixteen.
While male guests fixate on the girl, Carl Walraven has eyes only for Blanche Orleander, the doctor's cousin.
And Blanche Orleander?
All night long, her dark eyes cast daggers at Mollie Dane.
Is Carl Walraven in love with Blanche? I wasn't convinced, though I understood the attraction. A statuesque, elegant woman, she moves through the novel in the finest silk and satin gowns, and with the greatest poise.
Carl proposes, Blanche accepts, and the two marry quickly in a ceremony marred by the sudden appearance of apparition-like Miriam:
“I forbid the marriage!” exclaimed Miriam. “Clergyman, on your peril you unite those two!”
As it turns out, Miriam had mistakenly thought that Mollie was the bride. Once corrected, the hag apologizes and makes her departure, but not before checking in with Mollie, who assures that "guardy," Carl Walraven, is treateing her like a queen.
Sadly, the marriage between Carl and Blanche never achieves a firm footing. The first misstep belongs to the groom for insisting that his adopted daughter come along on the honeymoon. And so, the trio set out for Washington, DC:
Mr.
Walraven had had a surfeit of Europe, and Washington, this
sparkling winter weather, was at its gayest and best. The
Walraven party, with plethoric purses, plunged into the midst
of the gayety at once.
Now, I wouldn't have thought that Washington was all that, but to hear Mollie go on about it New York can't compete:
"I like this sort of thing," said Mollie to her guardian; "the theater, and the opera, and a ball, and two or three
parties every night. I like dancing until broad daylight, and
going to bed at six in the morning, and getting up to breakfast at one. I like matinees at three in the afternoon, and
dinners with seventeen courses, and going to the White
House, and shaking hands with the President, and sailing
around the East Room, and having people point me out as the
beauty of the season. It's new and it's nice, and I never get
tired, or pale, or limpy, like most of the girls. I never enjoyed myself so much in my life, and you would say the same
thing, guardy, only you're in your honey-moon, and not capable of enjoying anything."
Carl, Blanche, and Mollie are invited to a presidential ball also attended by Sir Roger Trajeuna, a Welsh baronet "worth nobody knows how many millions, and with castles by the dozen
in his own land of mountains.”
Sexagenarian Sir Roger is smitten with the sixteen-year-old; so smitten that despite "asthmatic and rheumatic afflictions," he proposes marriage. Mollie is so smitten with the idea of becoming Lady Trajeuna and living in a Welsh castle that she accepts. She then has her hoary-haired fiancé promise to keep the engagement a secret for the time being:
Miss Dane returned to New York "engaged," and with
the fact known to none save herself and the enraptured
Welshman:
“There is no need to be in a hurry,” the young lady said
to her elderly adorer; “and I want to be safely at home before I overwhelm them with the news. There is always such
fussing and talking made over engagements, and an engagement is dreadfully humdrum and dowdyish anyhow.”
That was what Miss Dane said. What she thought was entirely another matter."
"I do want Doctor Oleander and Mr. Sardonyx to propose;
and if they discover I've accepted the baronet, they won't.
I am dying to see the wry faces they will make over 'No,
thanks!' Then there is Hugh lngelow–”
The thought of Hugh brings an expression of remorse to Mollie's dark blue eyes: "Ah! what a pity all the nice men, and the handsome men, must be poor!"
Mollie achieves her objective and more on the first evening the newlywed couple are "at home" in the Fifth Avenue mansion. Blanche is "superb in her bridal robes," but is shown up by Mollie "in shimmering silk that blushed as she walked, and clusters of water-lilies drooping from her tinseled curls." Before the evening is out, Mollie receives three marriage proposals, the first being from Orleander, then Sardonyx, and then Ingelow. The last is unexpected. Mollie mentions nothing about her betrothal to Sir Roger, instead leads them on, telling each to visit the next morning for her answer. They arrive apart and wait in separate rooms, each unaware that his was not the only marriage proposal. Eventually, the men are ushered into the dining room, where they are surprised to see each other, old Sir Roger, and Mollie. The girl delights in revealing that she'd already agreed to take wealthy Welshman's aged hand in marriage.
The wedding day arrives nearly as quickly as it had for Carl and Blanche. Bridesmaids abound and the reverend and groom await. Mollie is completing her toilette when she receives a letter from an unknown person who offers to reveal the mystery of her origins. All the girl has to do is leave immediately and accompany the mysterious woman who had served as courier. This she does.
At last, we'll know the secret of Mollie Dane and why Carl Walraven adopted her!
Wedded for a Week being my sixth May Agnes Fleming read, this being chapter six of twenty-nine, I knew better than to expect the answer to that mystery in chapter seven. Mrs Fleming's plots are nowhere near so simple. That said, what happened next was entirely unexpected, plunging the story into a deeper hole.
A woman escorts Mollie to a carriage in which sits a man in disguise. The girl is bound, blindfolded, gagged, and whisked off on a nightmarish journey that leads to a silk padded room. Along the way, the disguised man – black mask, faux beard, flowing wig – explains:
"Why this deception – this abduction? Who am I? Where are you being taken? When are you to be restored to your friends?
This is what you would ask, is it not? Very well; now to
answer you. What does this mean? Why, it means that you
have made an enemy, by your atrocious flirting, of one whom
you cruelly and shamefully jilted, who has vowed vengeance,
and who knows how to keep that vow. Why this deception – this abduction? Well, without deception it was impossible to
get you away, and we know just enough about you to serve
our purpose. Miriam never sent that note; but Miriam exists.
Who am I? Why, I am that enemy – if one can be your
enemy who loves you to madness – a man you cruelly taught
to love you, and then scornfully refused. Where are you
being taken? To a safe place, my charming Mollie – safe as 'that deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat’ which you
have read of. When are you to be restored to your friends?
When you have been my wife one week – not an instant
sooner.”
Mollie rejects the condition, of course, standing firm until the seventh day, on which the abducted bride and disguised groom are married by an abducted clergyman. A week later, the girl reappears at the Walraven mansion.
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The Unseen Bridegroom; or, Wedded for a Week
May Agnes Fleming
Chicago: Donahue, 1895 |
Mollie will disappear again through her longing for the man who abducted her. Absurd, I know, but I found it plausible. This may have something to do with having bought and read The Strange Case of Patty Heart as an eleven-year-old.
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The Strange Case of Patty Hearst
John Pascal and Francine Pascal
New York: Signet, 1974 |
Lest you think that the story ends there – or thereabouts – I rush to add that Mollie's second disappearance too is an abduction. This time out the abductor disguises himself as the original disguised man. We've now reached midpoint. I don't spoil the plot in revealing that a disguised woman will soon be introduced. Miriam will tell a fantastic story of drunkenness, adultery, and murder that is worthy of a novel itself. One marriage will end in bitterness and betrayal, while another will begin anew. Oh, and Mollie will disappear a third time. Such is the author's talent that the reader gets caught up in it all. The world she creates is real, so real that I finished the book worried for Hugh Ingelow.
Three days later, my concerns remain.
Favourite passage:
Mrs. Walraven descended to breakfast at half past ten, and announced her intention of spending the remainder of the morning shopping.
Mollie, in a charming demi-toilet, and looking as fresh as though she had not danced incessantly the whole night before, heard the announcement with secret satisfaction.
“Are you going, too, Mollie?” asked her guardian.
“No,” said Mollie; “I’m going to stay at home and entertain Sir Roger Trajenna. He is coming to luncheon.”
“Seems to me, Cricket,” said Mr. Walraven, “Sir Roger Trajenna hangs after you like your shadow. What does it mean?”
“It means — making your charming ward Lady Trajenna; if he can, of course.”
“But he’s as old as the hills, Mollie.”
“Then I’ll be a fascinating young widow all the sooner.”
“Disgusting!” exclaimed Mrs. Carl Walraven. “You are perfectly heartless, Mollie Dane!”
Trivia I: In my copy, Hugh Ingelow mentions the year as being "eighteen hundred and sixty," yet in the text of the 1895 Donahue edition available
here at the Internet Archive and
here at Project Gutenberg. Hugh states that the year is "eighteen hundred and ninety."
The original year suggests the presidential ball attended by Carl Walraven, Blanche Walraven, Mollie Dane, Guy Orleander, Hugh Ingelow, Joseph Sardonyx, and Sir Roger Trajeuna would have been hosted by James Buchanan.
Gee, if only there'd been a White House ballroom.
Trivia II: A second honeymoon is mentioned in the novel, this on the next to last paragraph of he novel. Unlike Carl Walraven and Blanche Orleander, these newlyweds are very much in love. This second couple – no names as I don't want to spoil – take their honeymoon in "the Canadas," a reference to Canada East and Canada West.
Trivia III: Fanchon, the Cricket, the play in which Mollie stars was a real thing. Based on George Sand's 1849 novel Le Petite Fadette, the novel has been adapted to the English-language stage at least three times, once by way of a German adaptation. Hollywood took it on in 1915 with a feature starring Toronto girl Mary Pickford. Of her 245 films, Fanchon, the Cricket was Pickford's favourite as the only one feature her siblings Lottie and Jack. A lost film at the time of her death in 1979, it has since been found and restored.
Object and Access: An attractive book bound in brown boards. The novel itself is followed by eight pages of Milner's other offerings, including May Agnes Fleming's Heir of Charlton and The Midnight Queen. Also included: Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. My copy was purchased three year ago from a UK bookseller. Price: £19.00.
It once belonged to Edith Smith of 16 Asylum Street, Leicester. The street has since been renamed Gateway. Her home has since been razed. Though I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole, the only concrete thing I have to add is that the head of the household in 1899 was a man named John Smith.
Sarah Dorwald's invaluable
'Working Bibliography of Texts by May Agnes Fleming' has it that the novel was first published in 1869 as
The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded for a Week by New York publisher Munro. It would seem that American readers knew it only by this title. I expect this Street and Smith undated early twentieth-century paperback edition was the last.
A UK bookseller has a Fair copy of the Milner edition listed online at £20.00. A New York State bookseller is offering a 1895 American edition, this one published by Donahue, priced at US$28.00. A Street and Smith copy is listed on eBay at US$19.95.
Wouldn't you prefer an attractive19th-century copy to a 21st-century print-on-demand monstrosity like this?
