ART AND THE WIFE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 781, 2 April 1910, Page 9

ART AND THE WIFE.

Fact and fiction are, it is agreed, contiguous territories, and one does not kiiow whether one is in the one region or tho other which one reads of the lady who;, the other day, separated from her husband, who is an operatic'tenor, on the ground that he was so absorbed in his art that her home life was cold and joyless. "In the competition between art: and wife," she said, "the winner is always art. Tho wifo piues neglected, forgotten, and ignored in her desolate home till her heart breaks." There is a note of- truth in this, and the situation is, perhaps, not uncommon even in the- realms of other than vocal art. Inactual life, however, people are sufficiently matter-of-fact to grin and bear it, and it is only when the husband's pursuit of tho ideal ends by impoverishing the household that the question of what it is his duty to do arises. John Davidson lias discussed the latter situation in two poems written before the hiry charm of the "Eclogues" had died away and the sombre and sinister nieta- . physics of. tbn "Testaments" set in. lii.the "Ballad of Heaven" ho tells ofa musician who is so engrossed in the j composition of a masterpiece that, to his astonishment, he finds that his wife and children have in the meantime starved-to death. In the other world lie beholds his wife nnd children beatified, and although he himself naturally expects to bo.relegated elsewhere, he is agreeably- surprised to find that ho is to be beatified also. In the'"Ballad of an Artist's .Wife", the tlicnio is similar. This time it is a painter, who, alarmed at the apparent impending destruction of tho world, bethinks him that lie- has as yet created no work which would enable him "unconcerned lo die." So be throws himself into his task of |iaint- ] ing. and hero again wife and children starve. Hero again, too, when tbo end I of the world doea come, he shares with

liis family their "ineffable beatitude." If some of tho workmanship of those two ballads .is very lino, their teaching is just a little obscure, but it is apparently different . from the -teaching of Davidson's illustrious felkw-country-inan, Burns, who described the maintenance of a happy, "fireside clime for weans and wife" to be the "true pathos and sublimo of human life." .'..lf it differs also from the doctrine of the lady already mentioned',' who simply holds that.great-artists should not marry-at all, yet perhaps, she might have. Mr. Sidney Low on her side....Mr. Low, it will be remembered, discussed recently' .the .question whether men of. genius' made good husbands, and after'examining the Jives of sixty-eight, typical English, men of letters, found.that twentyfive had remained single, and of the remaining forty-three twenty-three had made unhappy marriages.—"Manchester Guardian." '..- .. '~';"•. ;