MOTHERS OF GREAT MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15769, 18 November 1914, Page 11

MOTHERS OF GREAT MEN.

NOTABLE WOMEN.

It is interesting at this time, when so much conspicuous bravery is being shown by our men in the fighting line, to note what kind of women were the mothers of great men who have fought and won in epoch-making battles' of bygone years. Certain it is that no truly great man_ ever had a weakling for a mother and the way in which Englishwomen to-day are meeting the crisis of war proves that they, too, are worthy mothers of brave soldiers.

The history of the mother of Napoleon shows that she possessed in notable degree the courage and fortitude reflected in her greatest of sons. She accompanied her husband on many a danger-fraught expedition in Corsica as a girl-bride of sixteen, arid later as a mother gave her devoted love and tender care to her family. " Every low sentiment, every ungenerous affection," said Napoleon later, was discarded, discouraged; she suffered nothing but what was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful understandings. She abhored falsehood, was provoked by disobedience. She passed over none of our faults."

As the widowed mother of five sons and three daughters left without guide or support, she took on herself the management of everything with splendid courage, and piloted them gallantly through poverty and difficulty, having, her son said often, "the head of a man on the shoulders of a woman." And later, as the mother of the conquering Emperor, raised from indigence to affluence with a Government allowance of a million francs, she filled with splendid dignity the position of "Madame la Mere," mother of the great man who never ceased to regard her with the ut most reverence and affection.

Mother oi the " Protector." So, too, did the mother of Oliver Cromwell make for herself a place by the side of her famous son, who from her inherited his spirit and untiring energy, his religious instincts, his patience and strong, calm persistence, his honesty and plainness and domestic tastes, in fact, nearly all the qualities for which his memory is most honoured. Contemporary accounts picture her as a woman of strong and vigorous personality, of sterling goodness and simple, quiet tastes; homely, provident, devout; the same woman, whether in their simple home at Huntingdon, working hard as wife, and later as a widowed mother of a family striving to provide with dowries her five daughters, or amidst the statelygrandeur of the Palace at Whitehall. A stirring and strange destiny was hers, and she experienced and witnessed many and great changes in her ninety years, but nothing made her swerve from the simple steadfast loyalty to the things that are pure and honest, true, and of good report. Doubtless the distinction of the Protector's Court as exacting morality and purity from men as much as from women was attributable in large measure to this fine woman and her influence upon the j son who loved and revered her so deeply. Maternal Influence. The influence of mothers upon their sons is no less apparent in the history of men great in the arts of peace than among the mothers of those who have gained fame by the sword. One of the most notable instances is that of Monica, mother of Augustine, the reckless libertine who finally became one of the Fathers of the early Church, his life entirely reformed and regenerated by the ceaseless prayers and never-failing love of his saintly mother.

Among great writers and poets, as well as among men of action and religious leaders, we find tributes to maternal influence, hereditary and personal. Raskin declared that he owed much of his taste in literature and his power of taking pains to his mother. Browning's mother was a woman of singular beauty of nature and rare serenity of spirit,- and her son's loving admiration of her was, we are told, almost a passion. She was of an artistic temperament which found its chief satisfaction in music, and to a less degree in poetry, and it was her playing which first awakened in her son, as a small boy, the musicianly, artistic soul. Her sympathy and appreciation were very inspiring to Browning in the early days of writing, and her- gift to him of the works of Shelley (who had just died), obtained only with considerable trouble at that time, had a great effect on his poetic genius, which thenceforth blossomed rapidly.