Romance of Blighted Love.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 146, 27 August 1872, Page 7

Romance of Blighted Love.

The New York Times tells the following curious but lamentable story :—A short time ago there died in San Francisco, one of the most singular residents of the Pacific Slope. His name was William Hewer, and he was English by birth, and a surgeon by profession. The Golden City has long been known as a kind of Mecca for eccentric people : but of all the oddities who have found their way thither, Dr Hewer was perhaps the most remarkable. He was Timon and Shylock and Kotzque'a Stranger rolled into one. For f <tarteei> years no living soul has been allowed to ente*' the room ho occupied. In it he appeared to live ? Jifo of abject poverty ; and in it'were feundj after hia death, cash and securities to the extent of thousands, besides a rich store of precious gems. This strange man was born at Exeter, England, in 1788. He studied medicine, and got his degree from the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, in 1810. Soon after, he obtained a commission in an artillery regiment. He was a man of fine powers and delicate imagination ; warm sympathies and sensitiveness endowed him with the susceptibility both to pleasure and pain, common to the possessors of such qualities, and which makes the issue of their lives so critically doubtful. Hewer fell in love with a beautiful girl, who at first returned his passion, but who seems to have been as capricious as she was fair. A few years of happiness followed, and then came bitter sorrow. Mrs Hewer went off with a'' friend" of her husband's, an officer in the same regiment, and the husband was never thereafter j the same man. He became a misanthrope and a wanderer on the face of the earth. Withdrawing from society, he lived for the most part in gloomy seclusion, enlivened at times by outbreaks of furious revelry. Only one thing besides drink alone appeared to have any charm for him ; and that was to ship as surgeon on vessels bound for long passages. It was in this way that he came to San Francisco. He arrived there in the Agincourt, just after the time of Captain Sutter's memorable discovery, and when the whole Western world was aglow with the rage for gold. The vacant place in his heart was ever after filled by an aim at insane avarice. He began to lend money for usury on diamonds, watches, and other valuables, j and he hoarded \ip his treasures with the jealous cunning of a magpie. Virtually, he became a pawnbroker, although he disdained the appellation, and would haughtily resent its being applied. When strav Englishmen of education turned up in San Francisco, the recluse would sometimes emerge from his den, and embark with them in frantic orgies that neither age nor shame ever restrained. When thus excited, he would occasionally exhibit huge diamonds and pearls, Yuba river gold of the finest quality, and strange oldfashioned jewels. In these accumulations he took the greatest pride ; and although it was notorious that he possessed them, oddly enough he never was robbed. Probably he took unusual precautions to guard his property, and, in truth, quite a magazine of arms was found in hj s room at the last. The s :ene in that room when Hewer's body was discovered, would make a terrible and impressive subject for a painter. The old man's body, ; clothed in quaint, particoloured rags, was found bent backwards over an old chair—the dead eyes open and staring upwards, the ; white hair sweeping the ground. He had : been gloating over a box of trinkets, and there was a burnt-out lamp by its side. All I round was a strange medley of filth and finery. Broken spittoons and rich bits of j c irpets, dried herrings and diamonds ; pieces of brass and iron, and silver-plate emblazoned i with armorial bearings, strings of onions and | of pearls, beer bottles and Etruscan vases, pawntickets, commissions, uniforms, and foul rlatters, were all mingled in wild confusion. Besides all these there was one oil-picture—-that of a lovely woman— she, no doubt, who was the cause of all this wreck and waste—the sign and token of a perverted nature, a crushed heart, and a broken life.