THE WIVES OF GREAT MEN.

Southland Times, Issue 652, 3 April 1867, Page 2

THE WIVES OF GREAT MEN.

Mr George Dawson, of Birmingham, has delivered a popular lecture iv London, taking for his subject " The "Wives of Great Men," — once at the lecture-hall of the Walworth Mutual Improvement Society, aud once in the theatre of the London Mechanic's Institute, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. Mr Dawson commenced his lecture by referring to the estimate which had been formed of woman during the whole of the literary history of England, from Chaucer downwards, throughout which, he observed, would be found a golden thread of praise of the female sex. If, however, leaving the book of history, in order to get. a true estimate of woman, the pages of biography relating to the marriages of great men were turned over, some of those marriages would be found to be noble and true, many disastrous, many tragic, many farcical, and many absurd. If anybody needed a guide in this matter — if, indeed, anybody should be capable of guidance — they should seek some principle which would prevent the disastrous, tragic, farcical, aud. absurd results which have followed some marriages. The principle which he laid down on this subject in starting was, that there could be no true relation in life between man and man, or between man and woman, unless there were involved in it, in addition to whatever else there might be, a true element of friendship ; and he used the word " friendship" in its old, true, real, and deep sense, and not in the modern, common, and vulgar sense in which many people now seemed to understand it. He considered as his friend not the man whom he invited to dinner because he was obliged to do so, nor the man whom he called his friend in accordance with the usages and customs of society ; but his friend was the man whom he drew to himself, either by reverence or by love, or by some common purau.it — in iact, the mm whom he elected to be his cqb>

panion and friend, and who would be his glory and his crown of .rejoicing. Many of his relations were not loveable ; they were thrust upon him ; he had no choice in the matter ; he looked upon them as part of his fat -e,, either his fortune or his misfortune; he bore /tbejra^as his burr den ; they might be /his ■' Mends, or they might not. He had not the choice of his relatives, but lie had tHe choice of his friends ; and in all the , relationships of life, to make them tLee'jfand true, there, must be this element of friendship, as he had described it. Passing on to apply this principle . to . the question of marriage, Mr Dawson sajd there, never had been a true, real, noble, ,. great, or genuine marriage in this world 'yet between man and woman unless the wife could have been a true " friend " to her husband, supposing he had never married her. "Whenever a man -had married a woman who could be his "friend;" his marriage had been a happy one, but in other cases the most lamentable and disastrous consequences had resulted. To make a happy marriage, there must be a sympathy "between the man and wife; there must be some common object, whether books or business, or whatever else it might be. After instancing the wives of Pliny, ' Budoeus, and Samuel ,.. Clarke, as specimens of true wives according, to the principles he laid down, Mr Dawson next referred to the wives of great divines, for the purpose of seeing how such men had fa-red in the matter of marriage. First in order came the marriage of Luther, which Mr Dawson declared to be one of the. greatest and most important the world had ever witnessed, and before it the marriages of king's and princes sank into their native nothingness. All Catholics were, . of course, shocked by this marriage, and believed it would bring a judgment ou Europe. The judgment, however, did not come, and if they wanted to see a marriage that was in all ways noble, they must go to the chateau at Wurtemburg, where Luther and his wife lived. Luther's biographer had given a picture of his married life, and broke oufc into a eulogy upon it. The woman^ was entirely and thoroughly Luther's friends The books he loved she loved ; his enthusiasm she shared ; she surrounded him with the gentle. atmosphere of love; and altogether the marriage was one of the sweetest, noblest and teaderesfc on record. Very different was the of Eichard Hooker, the author of that splendid work — "Ecclesiastical Polity." On one occasion two friends. of Hooker (Sanderson and Cranmer) were visiting him. All three were sitting in his study talking ; and what a conversation it must have been ! They had not gone far, however, when Mrs Hooker put . her head in and told I her husband to go and rock the cradle, and the great scholar was obliged to give up his | argument and go. Eichard w.ent : back to ! his friends, but was called away again. What a fool the woman ■ must have been to have interrupted such conversation as that with such frivolities ! Why not have left the cradle unrocked, or have rocked it herself ? So it went on, and all that the, "judicious" Hooker said was, that in this world the saints had many afflictions, and that he must not repine at what a gracious. Providence had allotted him. This was very pretty, but when they came to hear how he got his wife they wouldbe of opinion that he had much better never have said it, because when a man had made a great fool of himself he had no business to talk of what Providence '■ had done for him. Hooker was a retired studious maa living at Oxford ; and on one occasion went to London to preach at Paul's Cross. Near Paul's Cross was a house at which the different preachers'. stayed when they went there to preach, aud, as it was kept by a woman, it naturally came to be called the " Shunammite, : House." When Hooker arrived he was very ill, and it was feared he would not be able to preach ; but the Shunammite nursed him, and on the following day he was well enough to preach. Before he went on the Monday the woman fell into discourse with him, and told him that he had a very delicate constitution, and a tender frame, and that the only thing that could possibly save him was a good wife. Hooker, forgetful that " the .. children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light," premised that if she would look him out a wife he would come, up from the university and marry her at once. A short time , after news came that a woman had been:-! found, and Hooker — the " judicious " Hooker — went and married her! She was one of the greatest dunces in England; and surely, after that, Hooker had better have said nothing about the lot which Providence had appointed him. He might have been judicious iv regard to ecclesiastical polity ; but that title could never be applied to him in regard to his domestic polity. Then there was the case of poor John Wesley, a most talented man, and one who could have been king of men anywhere, but whose dealings with women were moat disastrous. Everybody knew of the affair in Georgia, where he became acquainted with a.young lady, and undertook to be her tutor, pastor, and lover. She cut off her curls to please Wesley, and gave up balls and parties ; but when marriage came to be talked of, Wesley did the most foolish thing in the; world — he went and consulted the Moravian elders about it. Of course the lady did not like this, and her hair grew longer directly. A rupture took place between them, and the lady married some one else, Wesley excommuuicated her, and whereupon hep husband brought an action against Mm . for defamation of character, After his return to England, Wesley preached one day in London against marriage, and soon after, as might naturally be expected, he. married a widow. They both agreed that Wesley was not to preach one sermon tho less, nor travel a mile the less for having married, and for a time things went very well; but the woman had not Wesley's enthusiasm or zeal — was not in truth nia friend — >and thus trouble camo. He wan always over the country pre&citf ug at efffiy r

hours, and constantly receiving letters from women — of ; course on spiritual matters ; but all tnis Mrs "Wesley did not like. She grew jealous, searched his pockets, and when he was going to a town to preach got there before him to see who came with him. Wesley wrote letters to her of such a kind as to be most unlikely to bring about a reconciliation between them. At last, after one-and-twenty years of misery, she left him ■ and then John Wesley opened his diary, and wrote the pithiest Latin sentence that had been written since the famous despatch of Caesar, Veni, vidi, viei. Wesley wrote, Nonreliqui; mm dimissi; non revocabo ; \ which means in English, "I did not | leave the woman; I did not send her away; I shall not send for her back." One-and-twenty years of misery did Wesley endure, because this woman was not, and could not be his friend. Par happier was the marriage of Richard Baxter, who was, perhaps, the greatest man of the Nonconformist body. Baxter married comparatively late in life. He was preaching at Kiddennnister, and a young lady went to hear him who had been a pleasure loving girl, but who was deeply affected by what she heard. While listening, a Ufctle earthly love crept into her heart together with the love of Q-od, and she found herself deeply in love with the ascestic, sickly faced, learned divine. How Baxter found it out was not known, for he was too great a gentleman to tell how it came out ; but they were married, and a noble marriage it was — late in the day with him, but still early for her; and he wrote upon her one of the most manly eulogies that had ever been written on woman. She made his poor withered heart glad, and they lived together in unbroken peace. When the High- Church party came ; into power, and Baxter's sufferings commenced, his wife still cheered and comforted him, and, when he was hunted from jail to jail, always went with him. No other person could share his sorrows ; and at last she left this weary world long before he did, leaving a more forlorn and lonely man than ever. What a contrast between the marriage of [Richard Hooker and the marriage of Eichard Baxter. The principle laid down was clearly shown in these cases: — Baxter married his friend ; Hooker did not marry his friend ; — and they both had their reward. Passing from divines, one came to the marriage of Dr Johnson with the widow Mrs Porter, who, the first time she saw Johnson, said he was the most sensible man she had ever seen, and thus found out in one evening what took the stupid British public twenty years to find out. JohnBon married his friend, and lived happily with her; and his prayers and meditations forty years after her death showed how deep was her place in his heart. Another beautiful* instance of a man marrying his friend was the case of Maxman, the sculptor. When Flaxman married, Sir Joshua Reynolds told him he was ruined ; but the result proved that he owed all he ever did to the friend whom he had married. On the other side of the picture there was the marriage of Sir Thomas More — witty, genial, loving Sir Thomas More. More was married once, and had two daughters ; but his wife died, and then he married his housekeeper, a woman" who kept his house at Chelsea in beautiful order — and that was all she could do. By-and-by he gave up the Chancellorship for a matter of conscience ; but he did not tell her, because he knew she could not understand anything about it. When More was put on his trial and requested to acknowledge the headship of Henry the Eighth, he would not do it, and was therefore carried to the Tower. His wife, the Chelsea housekeeper, went to see him, and began complaining of his being there in such a nasty dirty, place. More replied that it was as near heaven as anywhere else ; to which she replied, " Tilly-vally, man J You have a nice house and everything you want at Chelsea, and why should you stay here because you will not say a few words ?" The woman's only thought was of pots, pickles, and pans — pickles and pots ; and so she went back to Chelsea, but went to see her husband no more. It was not the Chelsea woman who became to him his companion, his fellow student, his lover, his friend ; but it was his daughter, Margaret Eoper. It was not the Chelsea woman who visited and cheered him, but his daughter. It was not the Chelsea woman who attended him to the last, but his daughter. It was not the Chelsea woman who begged for, and took home, his head after it had been taken off, but his daughter. And when that daughter died she was buried with her father's great head upon her bosom, and corruption never saw a fairer sight than when one of the greatest of English heads, pillowed on one of the truest of English bosoms, went down to the grave. In striking contrast to this was the marriage of Lord William Eussell, whose wife was one of the noblest and truest of women. She was her husband's true friend — attended him on his trial, and up to the time when he was beheaded, and then devoted her to the training of her children, and had left a name which had never yet ceased to be one of the great names of this country; for the name of Russell had been great in this country from those days even down till now. In more modern times many instances might be cited, but they would one and all establish the principle with which the lecture commenced — that, in order to make a happy marriage, a woman must be a man's friend M well as his wife, and that where this had not been the case the consequences had been most wretched, miserable, and tragic. Mr Dawson was loudly cheered in many parts of the lecture. — The Christian World.