Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1899-05-30
MAKE MEN FAMOUS.
Recognition is Given the Influence of
Many Great Mems Wives.

Many Great Mems Wives.
It is unhappily rare to find in the life
records of successful men anything like
adequate justice to the wives who, by
their sympathy and encoura cement, have
done so much to make great careers pos
slble; and yet there are comparatively
few men of note who do not ungrudging-
~ pay a high tribute to the helpfulness
Of their wives.
Few men have more gracefully accord
ed this credit to their wives than Charles
Kingsley, the great preacher and writer,
who professed to owe to his wife every
thing good that he had ever done, and
whose tender worship of her was, per-
haps, the most beautiful thing in a beau
tiful life.
People talk" he wrote to his wife, 'of
love ending at the altar. Fools. l sit at
the window all morning, thinking of
nothing but home | never before felt
the loneliness of being without the be-
loved being whose every look and word
and motion are the keynotes of my life"
On one occasion when a friend who was
dining at the rectory was speaking in
high praise of his latest work, Kingsley
said, please do not say that to me. |
am only the hand; there pointing to his
wife) is my Inspiration
1t was one of the best features of Lord
Beaconsfeld that he was always as gen
was chivalrOus in his attentions to her.
and this. although she had, in the words
of an unklnd critic. neither birth, brains
nor beauty to win a mans homage.
Still, the eccentric widow was the
most slavishly devoted of wives, and
cherished and cared for her Dizzy as
II he We're the rarest jewel on earth. 1t
was her devotion and her money that
made Il great career not only possible but
easy for her ambitious husband.
y touching proof of her self-obliteTa-
tiOn was when while accompanying her
husband to the House of Commons on
the eve of a great speech her hand was
damned iii the carriage door. Although
she was suffering intense pain, the brave
woman said nothing of the accident for
fear that it might disturb her husband;
and 1t was only when Dizzy" laS she
loved to call HIM was safe i'll the House
that her control failed her, and she faint
ed away.
Bismarck was sustained through a
crowded and ambitious life by the devo-
ton Of his wife, and vowed that he
would rather share n peasants hut with
her than rule the world with another"
There has seldom been more Ideally
happy married life than that of Mr.. and
Mrs. Browning, whose joint existence
was a poem of sustained beauty. Chiv-
airy on his part and Alteration on hers
marked their last years together as much
as the days when she penned her Son
nets from the Portuguese in his honor,
and he wooed her on a bed of pain. How
they mutually inspired each other the
world knows to its profit, for without the
other each life record would have been
sadly incomplete.
Keble had q wife who was almost as
delicate as Mrs. Browning, and she equal
y was her husbands strength. He de-
ferred to her in everything, and she was
not only the inspiration of his life, but
in his own words, his conscience, his
memory and his common sense"
Perhaps no man ever had Il more de-
voted and helpful wife than Mr. Glad
stone, or ever recognized her help in Il
more chivalrous way. From the far
away day sixty years ago, when he led
her to the altar. to the last sad parting
Mrs Gladstone lived in and for her hus-
band, and he paid many touching trib-
ute to the care she took of him, and the
courage with which she inspired him.
There has rarely been anything more
pathetically beautiful than the way in
which the late Mr. Fawcett, the blind
ically and morally. She was his chief
counselor, and he generously admitted
that her political judgment was sounder
than his own, and that she had saved
him from many political pitfal, if not
from worse.
Golden used to say that he owed any
success he had achieved in life to his
wife, the ignorant Welsh girl" whom
his friends looked on with so much sus-
piciOn as an unsuitable helpmate for
him. The union, begun in romance and
indiscretion," was cemented by a long life
of mutual sorrow and struggle, through
which Mrs. Cobdens bright spirit
buoyed her husband into success.
But the list of helpful wives is almost
as long as the list of successful men.
The old stories are being re-enacted today
in every field of mans endeavor. Lord
Salisbury owes more than the world
knows to his wife, who has been his
guardian angel since the days when they
wrote together for the press in a Strand
by-street. Sir William Harcourt found
a fortune of helpfulness n Motley's gift
ed daughter. Mr.. Chamberlain has a
spur to his ambition in the Puritan
maiden he married eleven years ago. and
what nobler or more devoted wives have
men ever had than the Queen, the ex-
Empress Frederick. and the loving and
Inflated princess Alice"