The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1894-01-14

( has beea the exception. Burns was in
teFnrerstr, AZ we're nearly all sco:ehmen
OF his dsy. ba; bis wife. Jean Armour.
who long survived him. testifles that he
vas . sweet. gentle, sffsetionsfe, unseifsh
and chivaIrous husband. With the excep-
ton Of Byron, who married \ woman
whose openly expressed supercilioGs con-
tempt for poetry as worthless scrib-
bling" would have provoked saint, and
Coleridge. there are very fes instances OF
men Of genius in English literature who
were not good husbands. DR.. Johnson,
Burke. Fox, Moore, Wordsworth. De
ouincey, Carlyle, Scott, Sir Samuel ROM
lily, Tennyson, D;sraeIi, Grote, RHskin.
were alI good husbands. Macaulay and
Keats we're bachelors. but men OF pure
lives and most affsctionate, domestic ma
lures. Shelley made a school boy AID
school girl marriage which turned out
sadly. but the marriage of his maturity TO
Mary Goodwin was q true marriage. and it
Is not pretended that Shelley ever led
other than personally chsste and unset
fish life.
The only man of genius of the Victorian
age Of English literature who was . bad
husband was Charles Dickens, who de-
Hberately separated from the wife of his
youth and poverty after she had borne
him seven children. not because she had
any mental infrmity or had disgraced
him in any way, but simply. a. Dickens
says with coarse frankness in his pub
lished letter concerning it, because 'sMrs.
Dickens, though an amiable and excellent
woman. bored him." In other words, the
genius of Dickens carried him into circles
where his wife could not go, and he grew
rapidly in mind and tastes while his poor
wife. who stayed at home, had no chance
by attrition to grow mentally and keep up
with him, so that she became uninterest-
ing and domestic bore to her husband,
who, unlike his great cotemporary.
Thackeray, was not a gentleman by birth
or breeding. but a man of genius with
very selfish, ENJOYABLE nature. Anybody
can see by reading Dickens works that he
never knew, much less loved, really
noble woman. He was great humorist,
or rather great caricaturist, but he was
essentially man of nelodramatic quality.
He had q genius for the stage. and he
described women of sentimental or gro-
tesque types with the superficial accuracy
of a gifted Bohemian. but sentimentalisns,
rather than real sentiment, was the
strength of Dickens; he could not carry his
cross like manly. affectionate Englishman
as Thacksray did he was too vain, egotisti-
cal. selfish and vulgar at bottom to refrain
from 30 frightfui wrong as to separate
from good woman, the mother of seven
children, on the heartless ground that
"Mn Dickens bored him" He had with
his genius and his magnificent opportuni-
ties outgrown the poor lady who had dur
ing twelve years of poverty been faithful
and fond wife to him. Dickens was
meaner and more heartless than Napoleon
when he divorced Josephine. for Napoleon
wanted to found dynasty; Josephine
was seven years older than himself, and
the cast off mistress of Barras at that
On the whole, 1t may be said that the
notion that men of genius make as q rule
bad husbands Is popular fallacy. There
Is no man Of genius of the Victorian age in
England who made q bad husband save
Charles Dickens: there Is no man OF
genius in the United States who made a
bad husband save Poe, and in Great
Britain the only men of genius who for
$50 years have been rated as bad husbands
were Byron, Coleridge and Dickens. We
leave ont the case of Bulwer Lytton, the
great novelist, whose wife was certainly q
virago.
1t is easy TO see how the popular fallacy
arose. Suppose young man knew moth.
ing of the married state save what he
learned by hearing the trial of divorce
suits; in that case he never would marry,
bat the young man finds out that there
are thousands of happy marriages; they
do not proclaim their happiness by public
proclamation any more than a sensible
man stops to assure everybody that he
loves his wife; the happily married are
silent because they have no complaint TO
make. but We always know who the un-
happy married are. because they are the
wounded birds that fiutter their way into
divorce courts. So it is with men of
genius; the vast space they fill makes
their private life of the utmost conse-
quence. If Coieridge had not been n man
of genius the fact that he was an opium
eater and a shiftless husband would have
excited little attention; if Byron had been
young Lord Muttonhead of the court of
Prince Regent his divorce from or his de-
sertton OF his wife would have excite ed no
more attention than the marital pranks OF
twenty or more of the nobility of the court
of Queen Victoria. who have either de-
serted their wives or furnished them with
ample grounds for divorce