Little Falls herald. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1889-1950, 1910-11-04

The 'Tardy Marriaoe Of i !: Fit I
gerald and Lucy Barton =
a UNION :PlTlFuL YET. COMIC

- VeSSON IlIV O11 6u&s OVuSO
she Couple Were Utterly Unsuitsd 10
@one Another, 5and He Fled From Her
During tho Honeymoon Reunion
That Failed TO ,Reunits. s.
j., The: incidents leading up to and those
following the marriage OF Edward
Fitzgerald. translator Of the Omar,
Khayyam,' were OF a ludicrous and at
the same time somewhat serious char
acter. Mr. Francis Gribble gave the
facts in the Fortnightly Review:
'The Lucy Barton story is very pitt.
full, but it is also rather comic. She
was a Quaker's daughter. who had
Joined the Church of England as a
means. one imagines. Of climbing the
social ladder, and She was just the
sort of person whom Fitzgerald would
esteem, but detest-prim, pious, me-
:hodical. fussy, not quite lady and
yet in weird provincial way world
~, the sort of person to whom it seems
equally important to teach in the Sun
day school and to be leader Of So,
ciety.
"Fitzgerald and she had known each
other for the greater part of their
lives and were both nearly fifty years
of age when marriage overlook them.
He did not even know that he was en-
gagged 60 her. BUT she told him that he
was, and he was too polite to contra
dict her.
"Politeness only broke down when.
after the ceremony, she assumed pro-
pictorial airs and insisted that her
husband should pay afternoon calls
with her and dress for dinner That
was the last straw. though very likely
it was also the first
"Fitzgerald supposed apparently that
In marrying Lucy Barton he had mere
~ acquired housekeeper who would
know her place, who would confine
her new dignity to her housekeeper's
room, leaving him as free as Of old to
slop about in slippered ease. unkempt,
unshaven. enveloped in a dressing
gown until the evening: with books
all over the floor, pipes all over the
mantelpiece and tobacco ash all over
his clothes.
1T would not have mattered, of
course. If he had married for love and
If his bride had been q woman of
grace and charm. Such a one would
have changed all that like fairy wav-
ing a magic wand. But Fitzgerald had
only married to oblige.' and Mrs. Fitz-
gerald was not in the least like a fairy.
She was more like a female drill SER
geant. conventional. stiff and starched,
yet with pretensions.
Her fow Of fussy small talk was a
nuisance. and her interruption of Fitz-
gerald's meditations with the demand
that he should shave and wear clean
linen assumed the proportion Of a
tragedy in his eyes.
HE stood it for a fortnight and then
fed. leaving the honeymoon unfinished,
going off to stay with friends. boiling
like rabbit for it's burrow:
There were reunion and an at
tempt at reconciliation. but in vain.
FitZgerald's letters to his friends at
this period are like the letters home of
boy who is being bullied at school.
~ believe be writes to Professor
Cowell. there are new channels fretted
. in my cheeks with many unmanly
tears, and there really is no evidence
that he had anything to cry about be-
yond the fact that he was being hus-
tied out of a comfortable dressing
gown into a starched shirt with high
collars.
'"rhat fact was symbolical of the
general discrepancy Of tastes and
points Of view. So we find him writ
ing again. Till see better how we get
on dare fix on no place to live or die
in and then before long came definite
separation and the drafting Of deed
of settlement.
"Fitzgerald. it is said. used long aft
erward to walk up and down a certain
garden path for hours together calling
himself fool. and when in later years
he met bis wife again be first put out
his hand and then changed his mind
and turned his back"