THE SORROWS OF A SUCCESSFUL GOLD DIGGER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1102, 8 June 1883, Page 3

THE SORROWS OF A SUCCESSFUL GOLD DIGGER.

The great end fur which thousands of good men and true are at present “ u)ibn<> and moiling” in Australia and New Z;a land is a fortune—not mere competence, but sufficient wealth to enable th 111 to return to the dear old home in England or Scotland and settle down amongst envious neighbors and astonished acquaintances as successful gold-diggers or sheep farmers with “ lots of ra. ney.” At first sight this seems a reasonable enough ambition, an I one which any energetic man might fairly expect to ripen into fruit'on. Experience however, teaches us that the returned colonist is seldom if ever, quite happy in England. Again and again an Australian Croesus comes proudly b ok to the land of his birth, full ot high hopes and pleasurable anticipations ; and again and again “ society” shuts the door, and he finds the dream of long years Dead Sea fruit. Very often, too, the end of a hard life, which should be respectable and quiet proves merely a prolonged carouse. Croeaus can return to the co'onial town where his mine is a household word, and seek solace tordisappointment in pe'ty poli'ics ; hot the laboring man who saves £701)0 or £8 )00 at Grahamstown or Ballarat, and conics home to spend his money in his native ail'age, has no resources, and S() n i ne times <uc of ten he takes to drink. The troubles of such an one have been exposed in a Court of law, and are significantly related in the Daily Telegraph of 17th April. The writer oegms by ooserving that the case of S ephens v. Shelton, lately tried in the P obate Division of the Huh Court of Justice, wool! form an admirable text for a homily on the miseries of being rich when the affluence is accompanied by total i deness. “ It was,” he sivs, “altogether a curious will case. There die I in July last, at Prince’s Bisborougb, near Aylesbury, Mr James Shelton, a p rson of presumably .humble extraction, who had emigrated in ea-ly life to Australia, and by working at the gold diggings gathered a * paculinm’ of between £7OOO and £BOOO sterling. In 186n he came home with his 1 pot of money and settled at Prince’s Risborough, resolve I to * live like a gentleman’ for the rest, of his days. In 1872 he executed a will by which the bulk of his property was bequeathe 1 among his brothers ami sisters. In 1880 he married a female named M try West • and in August 1881, he made another will’ and codicil, in which the whole of his pro perty was left to his wife for her life. After her death between £2OOO and (3 101) wis o go to her family, and the remamder to h.,nephews and nieces. According to the counsel for the plaintiff, the ex-digger was not satisfied with the manner in which he had disnosed of hia wealth, since, in Octo her, 1881, he went alone to his lawyer and executed a third will, which largely benefited his nephews and unices, while to his wife only an allowance of £1 a week was left. The document was executed in duplicate—one copy being retained by the solicitor, and the other lodged in the testator’s bank. His wife, however, discoverel that he had made a fresh will, and contiived to obtain possession of both copies. After the death of Mr Shelton, in July, 1882, neither the last will nor its duplicate, in which Mrs Shelton was left only a pittance of £1 a week, could he found. The widow stated that her husband had destroyed both documents, with the intent of a revocation thereof ; hut it was c< ntended by the other side that if he had destroyed the pap-rs bo had done so under the undue influence ot his wife, and not of hia own free will, and that the revocation would not consequently be legal. So Mr Stephens, as executor, propounded the draft, of the will executed in October, 1881, by the solicitor at Aylesbury —the will by which the major part of Mr Shelton's money went, not to bis widow, bat to his nephews and neioes.

* 4 The legal gentleman who drafted the ; will which itself, with its duplicate, is un- > discoverable, testified that in October, 1881, i when the deceased came alone to'give him instructions, lie was of sound mind ; but that wh u n some ’ time afterwards Mr Snelton came acounp inid by his wife to demand the will back again, he appeared to be iu a drunken condition, and not to know what he was doing. The testator, indeed, did not survive the interview with his legal adviser many months, and for some previous to his death w a in an utterly brokendown and virtually hopeless condition, owing, as it was alleged, entirely to strong drink. In fact, as a witn ss, and former boon companion of the decased, deposed on oath, the testator, so far as his personal experience of him went, was ‘always drunk.* Tin's candid witness follows the useful and indeed indispensable avocation of a journeyman baker, and stated that he had had a months’ ‘furlough’ .with Mr Shelton, and that they were ‘on the drink ’ the whole time. It is likely enough that the torrid atmosphere of the oven may have led the journeymen baker to the conviction that the moistening of his normally over-heated clay by cooling draughts of beer drawn mild was in every way desirable, for with touching frankness he admitted that ‘he should like to have such another time now ’ His foliobacchanalian, however, was probably in th» hi bit of imbibing some dong much stronger than beer; at all events, his continuous inebriety caused him m the end to he regarded as an unwelcome guest by the landlord of the public-house at Ilisliorough, where the testator and his friend the assistant baker had been lodging during the L tier's furlough. When ‘Roger the Monk.’ ‘in the ‘lngoldsby Legend,’ ■ got excessively drunk,’ the poet tells ua that ‘they put him to bed, and hey tucked, him in’; but the discreet Boniface of the Ilisliorough tavern declined to allow Mr Shelton and his crony any longer beds at his house. He turned them out of doors indeed ;• whereupon, in a con, vers- sense to the course adopted by the adventurous youth in ‘ Excel-inr,’ the bibulous Mr Shelton wen , not huh r, lint lower, in his pu suit of alcohol. Ejected from the public-house, he found shelter at a beer-shop. It had, indeed, an aspiring mine—i s sign being the Rising Sun ; anil its landlady. Mistress Mary West, must have been possessed of consid Table personal or intellectual attractions, lor he had only b.eu at the Rising Sun a few days, drinking heavily all the while, when a marriage was arranged between the ex-digger and the amllady of the beer-shop. It was in London that the nuptial knot was tied ; hut there seems to have been some difficulty in getting the bridegroom up to town. A new suit of clothes for him was sent for to the •Metropolis ; but the garments did not fit, so the bride elect, equal to all emergencies, pr. cured an old su t of clothes from her papa, and in these, with the addition of a new necktie, Mr Shelton, according to the baiter's assistant, looked quite spruce The wedding party took their rtepartuie from Hisboro ign in great style - cocoa-nut matting being laid from the Leer-house door to the carriage which conveyed the happy couple to the railw. y station, and the baker accompanying them as the bridegroom’s “best man.” Arrived in London, they proceeded to Dootor’s-commons for a license and James Shelton was duly married at St. Mary’s, Bryansk e square. If the baker’s evidence is to he held as entirely unimpeachable, the bridegroom was druok when he left Risborougb, drunk during the railway j mruey to town—for they took bottles of wine and brandy with them—and drunk when he was man ied. The assistant baker, it must be admitted, had ‘pulled himself together’ sufficiently to counsel the purchase of a ‘ spare rib’ of poi k to furnish torth the ■ marriage ' table ; hut while the bride elect was 'coking after the license the bridegroom and his ‘ b st man,’ just to show that there was no animosity between them, strolled out of the Commons and had ‘ a drop of something to drink.’ On the morning following the weddiug day Mi Sheltou was in a maudlin and miserable condition. He pined' for his Bucking! amshire home, so the trio returned to Risborough. All the expenses weie paid hv Mrs Shelton, the prudent ilam« having no weakness b r the maddening wine-cup, hut her husband aud his fi ieud were penniless. “ After his return home the ex-cligger continued to tipple ; in truth, it seems to ha-e been, for an indefinite period, ‘the same drunk’in his case. Another witmss, who gave the carious definition of himself that tie was ‘ part of an omnibus proprietor,’ explaining subsequently that he was an ‘ outsioer,’ whatever they may mean iu this particular instance, testified . that the testator was iu the habit of taking I his ‘lotion,’ or liquor, ‘according to hia tioubles.’ A witness of a much more seemly kind than the convivial baker and the genial outsider was the manager of the Loudon and County Branch Bank at Aylesbury, who gave evidence to the effect that when Mr .Shelton and his wife came to the bank to obtain possession of the original ot the will deposited there, the testator was not sober, and was told by the manager that if he did not alter his intemperate habits the bank would decline to keep his account any longer. Ultimately the Court decided in favour of the will drawn up in October, 1881, ami subsequently dest eyed, being of opinion that the testator did not m end to revoke it. The moral of the entire affair is that there could scarcely nappi-n to an illiterate man a greater misfortune titan to become possessed of what, in James Shelton’s ease, may fairly be called wealth. Ho was conscious that he ba l money enoiuh to be quite independent of the world. Independence, however, unsweetened by love of any ennobling pursuit, begot gross to eness, and habitual-indolence engendered a comiiifoil of shiftlessness and vve.iiiiie-.» of vvhich the a most inevitable consequence was a chronic slate of drrtkenmss, drilling from stage • o stage of degralation to bodily nmscratioii and mental decay