GREAT MEN'S WIVES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4895, 28 September 1901, Page 4

GREAT MEN'S WIVES.

Joshua Barnes, the Hellenist and professor at Cambridge, was unquestionably a great scholar, in spite of Bentley's 'sneer — ' Barnes knows Greek like a cobbler of Athens.' The preeminence, oy even emmeace, of a man is Dot determined by his minor attainments and qualities, . but by bis major ones. Well, wfcen Barnes brought out his edition of Homer, he had to extort the consent of his wife to the investment of her fortune in that work by representing the ' Iliad ' as tha composition of King Solomon. (My wife is an admirable woman,' said Benjamin Disraeli, of the ere-while widow of his Parliamentary colleague Wyndham, and whom the world knew best as the Countess of Beacouefield ; 'my Wife is an admirable woman, but she does not know who come first in history, the Greeks or the Eomans.'

The fame of the English statesman and of the English Bcholar was no factor in the affection tbeir wives bore them, and if the lives of the majority of great men's helpmeets were carefully analysed a similar ignorance of, or, at any rate, indifference to, the greatness of their spouses would be found to prevail in at least 90 per cent, of all ascertaiuable cases. The novelist who depicts the vicariously ambitious woman inciting her life's companion to great deeds does not exactly paint the exception, but a member of the very small minority. Zangwill was better advised in ' The Mantle of Elijah ;' he portrayed a type. ' Marry him,' said a prosperous lawyer to hiß daughter, referring to a rising young barrister, who was a suitor for band ; ' marry him — he will be Lord Chancellor of England one day.' ' I do not want a Lord Chancellor, father,' was the answer. ' I want a sweetheart who will remain a sweetheart after we are married, no matter how old. we may grow together.'

Posterity will probably bestow the adjective of « great ' on Paul Kruger ; and this is not the place to discuss khe justness of posterity's probable decision. It is very certain, though, that Mrs Kruger had a moat limited conception of her husband's greater aims — that is, the absolute independence of the South African Eepublic and the supremacy of the Afrikander throughout the whole of that still partly dark continent. The stipend and the consequent wealth accompanying the Presidential dignity were unquestionably most gratifying to her, but simply for the purposes of hoard* ing. Like Mrs Barnes, she kept the purse-strings very tight ; the allowance for coffee accorded by the State — namely, dB3OO per annum — almost entirely defrayed the expenses of toe Presidential establishment ; the rest waß put by for her children and grandchildren. She was old-fashioned to the core, and had neither social nor fashionable aims. Sjie was not the ideal wife of a 'great man,' but Bhe was infinitely- superior, from a moral point of view, to, at any rale, one of the spouses of William the Silent, with whom Kruger has been often and so erroneously compared. Her name will be remembered with more profound respect thau that of either of tne wives of the greatest man o£ ibe nineteeDlh century. Josephine de Beauharnois and Marie Louise were conscious of the greatness of the First Napoleon, yet had he been the merest jackanapes they could not have loved him . less.' — < Illustrated London JSews.'