The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-04
A PORTUGUESE MCFARLAND.


A PORTUGUESE MCFARLAND.
From the NJ Y. World.
a small country reads us a great lesson on
a great subject. This is not surprising. Says
old Ben Jonson:-
at is not growing like tree
IN bulk, doth make men better be-
And if not men, not nations. A Portuguese
husband, much more certainly and plainly
wroneed in his affections than the dull crea-
ture Mcfarland, has just given the world an
infinitely higher and more equitable type of
coniugal vengeance than he. This Lusitanian
"Othello, D'Aveira by name, a man of ex-
cellent social position, was married to young
Brazilian beauty only nineteen years old,
whom he is described as loving with a fervor
usual, perhaps, with husbands in Lisbon. 1t
is the frequent fate of husbands married to
charming young ladies of nineteen to possess
intimate friends of their own sex who fully
appreciate the destinations of their wives.
Senior D,Aveira had not escaped this fate.
His intimate friend was certain Senior Gar
rett, conspicuous member of Lisbon society,
and q man of letters alike in public and in pri-
vate. The Paris Figaro, in commenting upon
the appearance of Lord Cole as a correspondent
in the recent Mordaunt case in London, oddly
mistook the meaning of the phrase, and
pointed out, to the amazement of all French
men, that puritanical severity of British
morals which makes correspondence" on
the part of q married woman with any man
but her husband criminal offense Not even
in England is correspondence" in such cir
cumstances as yet crime But in and out of
England it is worse than crime--for it is q
blunder. SO it proved in Portugal.
The husband of Senhora D'Aveira Disco
vered his wifes correspondence with his
friend Garrett, forced from her full and
fatal confession of all that he most dreaded
vat 6afarn1ipad tO baar onH fheraurnp
proceeded-to murder the guilty lover? Not
at ali. His first act was to put to death his
wife, which he did in the most considerate
possible way; first stupefying her with chic
reform, and then strangling her with his
hands. Othello would doubtless have done
as much had anesthetics been known in his
time, for his use of the bolster was clearly
intended to have the same effect on Des-
demona which chloroform had on Senhora
D'Aveira.
The lady once out of the way her lord sent
word to the false friend that he longed to
send him after his paramour. Senior Gar
rett, struck with horror and remorse, refused
point blank to meet his injured friend in the
way customary among gentlemen" He in
formed Senior D'Aveira, however, that on
given day, at a given time, he should leave
Lisbon forever by the train to Paris, and that
if Senior DAveira designed to shoot him an
nimity had it's effect. Instead of repairing
with a revolver to the railway station aud
blowing out the brains of Garrett, D'Aveira
got into cab, went to the police Office, and
gave himself up as the murderer of his wife.
The murdered lady was buried amid
the tears and flowers of the
capital The murderer lies in Jail
awaiting his trial. The self-exiled lover has
gone TO France to enter a Trappist monastery,
,bar ha do ha}uy
ging his own grave and praying for pardon,
and where he will only be allowed to speak
with his fellow-creatures once a week, on
Thursdays, and then for the cheerful purpose
of bidding them remember death" Here
are all the materials of genuine tragedy:
but it is not upon the literary or the senti-
mental aspects of the case that we just now
care to dwell. What we desire to insist upon
is the dignity and the logic of these proceed
ings of the Portuguese husband as compared
with the low, selfish, and cowardly conduct
of the slayer of Richardson. The suffering
which alone can excuse man for taking the
life of man who has inflicted it upon him
should be SO intense as to make life unendur-
able by the sufferer himself. DAveira
in surrendering himself to justice, courts
the death which Mcfarland so eagerly
sought to escape. In killing Richardson
rather than his wife, Mcfarland insulted the
latter by the implication that, though she had
betrayed him, it was only because she was the
tool of a superior nature. The Portuguese
| gentleman exhibited q much finer feeling of
respect for the capacity and the response
bility of woman. Nor can the behavior of
the paramount, Garrett, be pronounced other
than delicate and refined The whole story,
in short, reveals a social order so much supe-
rior to that hot and ugger-muggering inco-
herence of the conjugal system which was ex-
hibited to us by the history of Richardson
and the McFarlands, and applauded by the
Beechers and the Frothinghams, that one is
tempted to hope Portugal may give herself
the trouble of sending out to us missionary
enterprise for the reform of Boston matri-
mony and Indiana divorces.