Marrying Men of Genius.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 860, 24 August 1888, Page 4

Marrying Men of Genius.

There is an interesting article in the Spec, tator on Leslie Stephen’s astonishing generalization as to the misery that awaits women who marry mea of genius. The truth is that the woman who marries a genius plays a game of double or quits. ‘ Geniuses make either singularly good husbands, or husbands of the most disastrous kind.’ It also depends quite as much upon the wife whether the ‘sensitive egotism and self-will often found combined with genius ’ wreck the home or merely form the shadow to a back-ground of domestic bliss. Statesmen, the Spectator things, are larger minded than literary men, more self-controlled, and, over and above all, they are not so much at home. Onr contemporary mentions a few instances of the marriages of genius which tell on either side ; Unhappy—Coleridge, Byron, Shelly, Dickens, Carlyle. Happy - Scott, Longfellow, Southey, Miss Bront6, Jenny Lind, Tho lists might be indefinitely continued. It was not the genius, but the opium in Coleridge’s case that played the mischief, and vpith Carlyle’s digestion the dullest clod-happe? would have been ag uncomfortable tp fils wife as the philosopher of Ohejsea.—Fall Mall Gazette.