The national forum., 1910-09-24
A MISMATED POET
The Tardy Marriage OF Fltz'
gerald and Lucy Barton.
A UNION PITIFUL, YET COMIC


The Couple Were Utterly unsuitsd to
One Another, and He Fled From Her
During tho Haneymoon--A Reunion
That Failed to Reunite. l
The incidents leading up to and those
following the marriage Of Edward
Fitzgerald, translator of the "Omar
Khayyam," We're Of ludicrous and at
the same time somewhat serious char
acter. Mr.. Francis Grlbble gave the
facts In the Fortnightly Review: 4
"The Lucy Barton story is very pitt.
full but 1t is also rather comic. She
was Quaker's daughter, who had
joined the Church of England as
means, one imagnes, of climbing the
social ladder, and she was just the
sort of person whom Fitzgerald would
esteem, but detest-prim, pious, me-
thodiaal, fussy. not quite lady and
yet in weird provincial way world
ly, 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 to 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
prietorial airs and insisted that her
husband should pay afternoon calls
with her and dress for dinner That
was the last straw, though very likely
1t was also the first.
Fitzgerald supposed apparently that
in marrying Lucy Barton he had mere
ly 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.
at would not have mattered, Of
course, If he had married for love and
If his bride had been a woman of
grace and charm. Such one would
have changed all that like fairy wav
ing 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 female drill SER
geant, conventional, stiff and starched,
yet with pretenslons.
Her flow or fussy smuli uaiR was Il
nuisance, and her interruption of Fitz-
gerald's medltations with the demand
that he should shave and wear clean
linen assumed the proportion Of a
tragedy in his eyes.
"He stood 1t for fortnight and then
fed, leaving the honeymoon unfinished,
going off to stay with friends, bolting
like a rabbit for its 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 letteEs home OF
a boy who is being bullied iN school,
81 believe he 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 comfortable dressing
gown into a starched shirt with high
collars.
"That fact was symbolcal 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 certain
garden path for hours together calling
himself fool, and when in later years
he met his wife again he first put out
his hand and then changed his mind
and turned his back"
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