The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1888-10-25
STRANGE MARRIAGES.

Peter the Great married peasant, who
was his best counselor and truest friend.
NJ. de Lesseps married at the age Of 62 Mile.
de Braga, who was not quite 10 years OF age
The wife of Jeremy Taylor, the great
English divine, was the natural daughter OF
Charles |.
The countess of Waldegross has been mar
ried four times Her present husband IS the
famous Lord Collingsford.
Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway
was an example of inequality, both in age
and in intellect He was IS and she % when
they were married.
Milton married unfortunately, and his
wife's temper was not unlike that Of Mrs.
Wesley's, the wife of John Wesley, the
founder of Methodism.
John Howard, the philanthropiSt, married,
out of gratitude, lady twenty years his
senior She died in few years, and he mar
ried again. this time for love.
Lady Beaconsfield was thirty years older
than Disraeli, but the great premier did not
realize any difference in age, so remarkably
suited were they to each other.
The poet Browning has recently stated the
fact that Elizabeth Barrett was six years
older than himself at the time of theirsmar-
riage, she being 40, he 81 years.
Samuel johnson at 81 married a woman of
As. They lived together twenty-five years,
and when she died johnson refused to be con-
soled He never married again.
George Eliot married Mr.. Lewes, al
though his first wife was living and he had
but limited divorce from her. Soon after
LeweS died she married John Walter Cross,
who was much younger than she was
Baroness Burdett Coutts forfeited her in
terest in Coutts' bank by marrying William
Ashmead Bartlett. He is an American by
birth, and at the time of his marriage was 81
years Of age and his bride was 67, and the
richest woman in the world.
A most unequal marriage which turned out
happily, was that of Charles, second Duke of
Richmond and Sarah Cadogan, which was a
bargain to cancel gambling debt between
their parents, Lady Sarah being a co-heiress,
The duke was IS, the bride was Is.
A marriage that was unequal as to years,
was that of Mohammed and his wife. The
latter was twenty years older than the former,
but the union was a congenial one, as the
prophet had predicted it would be. lie out
lived his wife and mourned her loss until he
died.
The present Bonaparte family have made
some strange matches. Prince Pierre married
Mile. Riffin, poor sewing woman. Three
times the marriage ceremony was performed,
and each time at a different place, so as to
battle Napoleon III, who had it twice an
nulled.
The Princess Louise of England married
her social inferior and gentleman younger
than herself. Lord Lorne, it is claimed, had
royal blood in his veins, but the Duke of
Argyle, his father, made no such pretensions,
though the house of Argyle is the most arts
tocratic in England.
The beautiful widow, Fitzherbert, who
became the wife of George ", when
Prince of Wales, was SO years Of age when
she was secretly married to him. The in
equality of this marriage was in the differ
ence of station and not of ages, the husband
being a prince of the blood and the wife
subject
Hon. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton,
the granddaughter of Richard Briusley
Sheridan and sister to the Duchess of Somer-
set and the Countess of Dufferin, was the
divorced wife of the Hon. Chapel Norton.
At so years, when confined to her chair by
rheumatism, she married William Sterling
Maxwell, twenty years her junior. Strange
to say the match was happy one.