DAME FAWCETT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20789, 7 August 1929, Page 8

DAME FAWCETT.

Mrs Millicent Garrett Fawcett, whose death at an advanced age has been announced,-was the wife of a distinguished man, the continuance of whose fame is helped by personal eirCfumstances of a peculiar and pathetic kind; but her own distinction and claim to remembrance are not confined to the circumstance of this relationship. She was >a thinker, publicist, and propagandist of no slight notability, and her independent work during’ the long period of her widowhood; had a separate-and recog-, nised valtte. As political econfjmist, social reformer, and champion of what used to be known as women’s rights, she consistently displayed fully, adequate qualities of intellect and purpose. She would probably have made a name in the world even if she had not married Henry/ Fawcett, the bliiid philosopher and politician. Nevertheless husband and wife, as both would have , wished, will always appear side by. side in the history of economic studies, and social advancement; for, whether together or apart, they worked on essentially similar, not to say identical, lines. The wife assisted’ the husband in the preparation of most of his books, and the story of their interdependence, delicately yet touchingly told in Sir Leslie Stephen’s Life of Henry Fawcett, suggests the ideal of “ two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.” . It lias been observed that “in the great affliction of his youth Fawcett bore himself with a fortitude which it would be difficult to parallel. The effect of his blindness was, as the event proved, the reverse of calamitous. It brought the great aim and purpose of his life to maturity at an earlier date than would otherwise have been sible, and it had a mellowing influence upon his character of an exceptional and beneficent kind.” One incidental advantage of the disability consisted in the full scope which it gave to the devotion of the gifted woman who was the partner of his thoughts, aspirations, and activities. •