UNHAPPY MARRIAGES OF FAMOUS MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 181, 4 September 1909, Page 3

UNHAPPY MARRIAGES OF FAMOUS MEN.

''Xo sun warmed my roof-tree; Hie marriage was a blunder; she was nine years my senior." Seldom did the last of the great Victorian novelists, George Meredith, refer to his first marriage, in 184!), with Mary Ellen Xicholls, widow of Lieutenant Xicholls and daughter of Thomas Love Peacock. But on one occasion he broke the silence coneem.ng that unhappy episode in his life with the foregoing pathetic words. It is some satisfaction to know that when the first Mrs. Meredith died, in 1880, this great writer enjoyed some twenty years of much happier domestic life with Hiss Vulliany, a lady of French descent, whom he married in 1864, and who died twenty-four years a"o. Several.other men of genius contemporary with George Meredith had reason to regret the matrimonial yoke. John Ruskin, for instance, after falling in love as a boy with a beautiful French girl, I whom he wooed with poems, romances, dramas, and mute Worship, receiving nothing in reply bat chilly indifference and lively ridicule, married, at the age ef twenty-nine, a lady of great beauty, Euphemia C. Grtiy, of a family long intimate with the Euskins. The marriage, we are told, was arranged by the parents I of the couple, was a somewhat hurried act, and brought no happiness to either. Kuskin was immersed in his studios 'ind projects, while his wife was devoted to society, and six years after the marriage she left him, obtained a nullification under Scotch law, and ultimatelv became the wife of John Everett Millais. MISS ELLEN TERRY'S FIRST MARRIAGE.

Then there was George Frederick Watts, the famous Royal Academician,! who, when he was forty years of age, married Miss Ellen Terry, who was not then out of her teens. As might have been anticipated, the union of two such artists, only one of whom was permitted to pursue his art,, was tempting disaster, and after a short time the marriage was dissolved. Subsequently Watts married a Scotch lady with whom he lived for years in great happiness . CARLYLE. BYRON, AND SHELLEY. Tragic in t!ie extreme was the marriage of Carlylc to Jane Welsh, whose heart had been to Edward Irving; but the gifted orator was engaged t« a Miss Martin, and was held to his vow. The absence of love, coupled with the bad temper anil irritability of the famous historian, led to much unhappiness both for himself and his wife, who confessed that the years were to her the "bitterness of death."

Most of us have read of the unfortunate union of Lord Byron to Miss Milbanke, the only daughter andMieiress i of Sir Ralph .Milbanke, a wealthy baronet, and how, after the birth of a child, Lady Byron went to her father and refused to return to her husband. Subsequently a formal deed of separation was signed. Then there was Shelley, who married the sister of a schoolfellow without being really in love, lie separated from his wife, and ultimately married a second time, after his first wife had committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. HITTER ENEMIES. In the annals of literature, however, it would be difficult to find, even in fielion s a more amazing example of enmity letfween husband and wife than that which existed between Lord Lytton and Rosina Wheeler, a beautiful Irish girl, whom he married in 1827, despite the protests of his mother. It was a most unhappy marriage, and even after the separation, in 1836 they referred to ono another in the most embittered tones., One day when Lord Lytton called at a certain house he found the mistress deeply engaged in a bdok. "What have you got there that interests you so much?" he asked. "The School fortiusbands," she answered. "You don't mean to,say," he replied, "that you consider life long enough to waste it on *ich unmitigated trash." "Oh, but I assure you, Sir Edward. I consider it very clever, very smart; and wittv. You should look at it again, and von would discover that you have quite" misapp-e----ciated it." "No, thank you. I have neither read nor do I intend to read that wretched book; and you may rely upon it, if you have found any sense within the covers, those pages are not by the supposed author." (The author in question was Lady Bulwer:) And Lady Lytton did not mince words when speaking of her husband. She never neglected an opportunity to teil all and sundry ivhat her opinion of him was, so much so, in fact, that people were inclined to sympatlii-.n with her in the first place ultimately changed their views and opinions as to who really wis the cause of this matrimonial failure.— Tit-Bits.