WIVES NOT WORTH HAVING.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 532, 2 March 1889, Page 7

WIVES NOT WORTH HAVING.

IT is a consoling fact to all men that the women who make the worst wives are pretty equally distributed among great and small alike. Some of the greatest men the world has ever seen have known the meaning of ' henpecked,' and a few have been martyrs to domestic infelicity. Haydn, the great composer, had a vixen for his wife. His temper was easy and cheerful, but hers, we are told, was ' difficult and dismaL She passed easily from mass to mischief-making, and from beads to broils. ' Haydn gave her a fair trial, and when he could stand it no longer, sent her about her business on a liberal allowan:e. Lord Byron's life was blighted through marriage. He took unto himself an heiress, being deeply in debt. About a year after marriage she left him to go to see her father, and refused to return. To Byron's amazement she said she thought him insane, and not safe to live with. Thus Byron lost his wife and kept his debts. Milton, the illustrious poet, was deserted in a similar hasty manner. But he married hastily, too, the courtship lasting only a month. His wife was a magistrate's daughter, and being accustomed to a gay life she found his poetic melancholy too much for her, and like Byron's wife went to see her father. Letter after letter sent to her imploring her to return were ignored, and a messenger despatched to fetch her by force was unceremoniously dismissed. Joseph Addison is said to have ' died of his wife.' He aimed high, and married a middleaged shrew, who treated him like she treated her footman. But Addison had an aggravating disposition, and ' her jibes were met by his courtliest smiles, her haughty laughter by his humblest bow. 1 All the same Addison felt his position, and after marriage was said to ' increase ' his quantity of wine, and double the number of j his visits to Button's.' Button's was a well- ! kuown coi'fee-shop, where his wife dare not I follow him. | Drydsn, the pcet, made the same mistake of ! marrying f.'bove his station. His wit's could never forgive him for having relatives in the tobacco and stationery line, and woman-like, was constantly reminding him of her superiority to himself. Things got to such a pass eventually that they parted, and Mrs Dtyden was the loser. On the other hand, the poet Shelley married too far beneath him, though that might not have mattered much if his wife had been a sensible woman. But she wasn't ; and after spoiling his happiness for some time she drowned herself. Dr. Samuel Johnson, like Joseph Addison, was miserably ' sat on 'by his partner. He was twenty-six when he married, and she forty-eight. Garrick says she was ' very fat, with cheeks coloured both with paint and cordials, flimsy and fantastic in dress, and affected in manners.' Her illustrious husband was treated with contempt, and, antiquated beauty as she was, she flirted before his eyes, but lie returned her scorn with elaborate deference. Bishop Hooker consenting to his landlady chosing a wife for him, that lady palmed on him her own daughter, who spent his money with amazing liberality, and was a drag on the remainder of his life. Few men would care to follow the example of the ancient philosopher, Socrates, who married the worst-tempered vixen he could find, on the principle that if he was capable of bearing her insults, there was nobody in the wide world with whom he could not live. The lady of his choice, in an excess of ra?e and fury, once met him in the street, toie oft 1 his cloak, and emptied a pot of dirty water upon his head, and the only remark the insulted sage made was that 'So much thunder must needs produce a shower.' The two divines, John Wesley and Wycliffa, both married widows in mid life, and were both abused in such a manner that they could only find peace in separation. William Wycherley, the English dramatist, also married a widow, but she was thoughtless young, and rich. Besides being exceedingly iil- | tempered, she was so extravagantly jealous that when her husband met his friends in the Cock Tavern, opposite his own house, he was obliged, to leave the window open, in order that her ladyship might be satisfied that no woman was of the party. The wife of purer, the ' father of German painters, 1 was violet, haughty, mean, and covetous. She got into her head that starvation threatened her, and gave her husband no rest from work, but kept a constant watch upon him, until the poor fellow was driven half out of his senses and finally died wretchedly. His celebrated engraving ' Melancholy ' is supposed to have had its origin in his treatment by his wife. And so we might go on enumerating the cases of the famous Duke of Marlborough, Sir Thomas More, a former and celebrated Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and a score of other illustrious character^' who wfiv tormented with vixenish wives, a::d .Wfire living i examples of henpecked husbands.