KIND WIVES MAKE GOOD HUSBANDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 79, 27 December 1940, Page 44

KIND WIVES MAKE GOOD HUSBANDS

Kubelik's Views on Marriage WEEK or two ago the world lost one of its greatest performing musicians in the person of Jan Kubelik, the Czechoslovakian violinist. So brilliant was his playing that it established the fame of his teacher, Sevcik. The life story of this poor marketgardener’s son is in fact one of the romances of modern times, and that he should die at the comparatively early age of sixty while his country is under the heel of the German Nazis is one of the tragedies of the present war for human liberty, The humble father’s cottage could have been paved with gold had he exploited his son as an infant phenomenon. But Kubelik senior knew that. doing this would ruin his boy’s future, so he refused all offers, and, setting stoically to work, he toiled and slaved as never before to amass, penny by penny, the money for his son’s educa- | tion, — But the biggest event in Kubelik’s life was his lucky marriage to the Countess Marianna Csaky-Szell in 1903. They were about the same age, 23, Madame Kubelik was wise enough to know that es the artist ever remains a child, she must be both lover and |mother to her husband,

It is not therefore surprising to read that after twenty-five years of married life Kubelik was able to write the following: "I married when I was°23, and ours has been a happy union. I am very glad that I did not listen to the cynical wiseacres who hold that an artist married is an artist spoiled, And when my twin girls arrived (in 1904), and I could play with them as children, I discovered a rare and priceless thing-a second youth, a youth of joy and frolic. Much of the time that I am not on tour I spend with my wife and family in our home near Abbazia in Italy. All my children are musical, and the eldest of them, the twin girls, are performing in public. The peace of private life only confirms me in my view that marriage is the best solution of the love problem for an artist. My wife is good enough to tell ‘me that those who maintain that artists make trying husbands have no monopoly of wisdom: Her view is that kind wives make good husbands. The only thing that an artist’s wife has to remember is that an artist’s life belongs not solely to himself, nor to ‘her, nor to: the home, but mainly to» his art, Looking back on my youth; I must be grateful enough to admit that fame came to me rapidly indeed. I have been helped very much by the audiences I have played to in so many countries, from fashionable gatherings in the great capitals, to moujiks in Russia and miners in the United States.: If a kind wife makes a good husband, an appreciative and responsive audience makes a confident and courageous violinist."

B.

W.