SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

William Downing’s response, not surprisingly, begins with the assertion of his own
respectability. He had been, he said, a well-known and respected member of the Clay Center
community since his birth. After a failed first marriage and a spell of “discouraged loneliness,”
he had been drawn to the older woman because she was “strong and vigorous.” He even claimed
that he saw her failed marriage as something of an asset: given her long experience as a wife, he
believed that she would be fully committed to their union. But the rest of Downing’s story
tended to undercut any sense of a marriage between two grown adults separated by age but
united by mature commitment. Instead, he chose to portray himself as an innocent seduced by a
conniving older woman and, in the process, revealed himself as either a hopelessly naïve young
man, or a cynical gold digger, or both. His account of the beginning of their relationship is
significant:
When in the month of July 1896 after urgent solicitations and of repeated
invitations from said plaintiff he took up his residence at plaintiff’s residence. He
was flattered …by plaintiff and made to believe that his virtues and attainments
physical and social were such that plaintiff would gladly support him without
expenditure of the toil so frequently the lot of man. In this way plaintiff obtained
an influence and command over defendant that made him virtually her slave. 146
Susanna’s divorce from her first husband had been granted only a month before; it would not be
final (and Susanna free to remarry) until December of 1896. It appears that, during this six-
month period, Downing began to suspect that he would not enjoy a life free of toil after all.
Instead of a position as a sort of gentleman farmer, he found himself treated more like a hired
man. Tired of the chores and odd jobs that Susanna assigned him, he evidently grew restless
with the arrangement. At that point, he claimed, Susanna enticed him with a new prospect:
146 Downing v Downing, Clay Center District Court, Case No. 4549, State of Kansas (Answer by Defendant).
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