Character — Ch 11d - Companionship in Marriage, cont.

We have spoken of the influence of a wife upon a man's character.

There are few men strong enough to resist the influence of a lower character in a wife.

If she do not sustain and elevate what is highest in his nature, she will speedily reduce him to her own level.

Thus a wife may be the making or the unmaking of the best of men.

An illustration of this power is furnished in the life of Bunyan.

The profligate tinker had the good fortune to marry, in early life, a worthy young woman of good parentage.

"My mercy," he himself says, "was to light upon a wife whose father and mother were accounted godly.

This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be [20not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both], yet she had for her part, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died."

And by reading these and other good books;

helped by the kindly influence of his wife, Bunyan was gradually reclaimed from his evil ways, and led gently into the paths of peace.

Richard Baxter, the Nonconformist divine, was far advanced in life before he met the excellent woman who eventually became his wife.

He was too laboriously occupied in his vocation of minister to have any time to spare for courtship; and his marriage was, as in the case of Calvin, as much a matter of convenience as of love.

Miss Charlton, the lady of his choice, was the owner of property in her own right; but lest it should be thought that Baxter married her for "covetousness," he requested, first, that she should give over to her relatives the principal part of her fortune, and that "he should have nothing that before her marriage was hers;" secondly, that she should so arrange her affairs "as that he might be entangled in no lawsuits;" and, thirdly, "that she should expect none of the time that his ministerial work might require."

These several conditions the bride having complied with, the marriage took place, and proved a happy one.

"We lived," said Baxter, "in inviolated love and mutual complacency, sensible of the benefit of mutual help, nearly nineteen years."

Yet the life of Baxter was one of great trials and troubles, arising from the unsettled state of the times in which he lived.

He was hunted about from one part of the country to another, and for several years he had no settled dwelling-place.

"The women," he gently remarks in his 'Life,' "have most of that sort of trouble, but my wife easily bore it all."

In the sixth year of his marriage Baxter was brought before the magistrates at Brentford, for holding a conventicle at Acton, and was sentenced by them to be imprisoned in Clerkenwell Gaol.

There he was joined by his wife, who affectionately nursed him during his confinement.

"She was never so cheerful a companion to me," he says, "as in prison, and was very much against me seeking to be released."

At length he was set at liberty by the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, to whom he had appealed against the sentence of the magistrates.

At the death of Mrs. Baxter, after a very troubled yet happy and cheerful life, her husband left a touching portrait of the graces, virtues, and Christian character of this excellent woman--one of the most charming things to be found in his works.

The noble Count Zinzendorf was united to an equally noble woman, who bore him up through life by her great spirit, and sustained him in all his labours by her unfailing courage.

"Twenty-four years' experience has shown me," he said, "that just the helpmate whom I have is the only one that could suit my vocation.

Who else could have so carried through my family affairs?

--who lived so spotlessly before the world?

Who so wisely aided me in my rejection of a dry morality?....

Who would, like she, without a murmur, have seen her husband encounter such dangers by land and sea?

--who undertaken with him, and sustained, such astonishing pilgrimages?

Who, amid such difficulties, could have held up her head and supported me?....

And finally, who, of all human beings, could so well understand and interpret to others my inner and outer being as this one, of such nobleness in her way of thinking, such great intellectual capacity, and free from the theological perplexities that so often enveloped me?"

One of the brave Dr. Livingstone's greatest trials during his travels in South Africa was the death of his affectionate wife, who had shared his dangers, and accompanied him in so many of his wanderings.

In communicating the intelligence of her decease at Shupanga, on the River Zambesi, to his friend Sir Roderick Murchison, Dr. Livingstone said: "I must confess that this heavy stroke quite takes the heart out of me.

Everything else that has happened only made me more determined to overcome all difficulties; but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength.

Only three short months of her society, after four years separation!

I married her for love, and the longer I lived with her I loved her the more.

A good wife, and a good, brave, kindhearted mother was she, deserving all the praises you bestowed upon her at our parting dinner, for teaching her own and the native children, too, at Kolobeng.

I try to bow to the blow as from our Heavenly Father, who orders all things for us....

I shall do my duty still, but it is with a darkened horizon that I again set about it."

Sir Samuel Romilly left behind him, in his Autobiography, a touching picture of his wife, to whom he attributed no small measure of the success and happiness that accompanied him through life.

"For the last fifteen years," he said, "my happiness has been the constant study of the most excellent of wives: a woman in whom a strong understanding, the noblest and most elevated sentiments, and the most courageous virtue, are united to the warmest affection, and to the utmost delicacy of mind and heart; and all these intellectual perfections are graced by the most splendid beauty that human eyes ever beheld."

[2017] Romilly's affection and admiration for this noble woman endured to the end; and when she died, the shock proved greater than his sensitive nature could bear.

Sleep left his eyelids, his mind became unhinged, and three days after her death the sad event occurred which brought his own valued life to a close.

[2018] Sir Francis Burdett, to whom Romilly had been often politically opposed, fell into such a state of profound melancholy on the death of his wife, that he persistently refused nourishment of any kind, and died before the removal of her remains from the house; and husband and wife were laid side by side in the same grave.

It was grief for the loss of his wife that sent Sir Thomas Graham into the army at the age of forty-three.

Every one knows the picture of the newly-wedded pair by Gainsborough--one of the most exquisite of that painter's works.

They lived happily together for eighteen years, and then she died, leaving him inconsolable.

To forget his sorrow--and, as some thought, to get rid of the weariness of his life without her--Graham joined Lord Hood as a volunteer, and distinguished himself by the recklessness of his bravery at the siege of Toulon.

He served all through the Peninsular War, first under Sir John Moore, and afterwards under Wellington; rising through the various grades of the service, until he rose to be second in command.

He was commonly known as the "hero of Barossa," because of his famous victory at that place; and he was eventually raised to the peerage as Lord Lynedoch, ending his days peacefully at a very advanced age.

But to the last he tenderly cherished the memory of his dead wife, to the love of whom he may be said to have owed all his glory.

"Never," said Sheridan of him, when pronouncing his eulogy in the House of Commons--"never was there seated a loftier spirit in a braver heart."

And so have noble wives cherished the memory of their husbands.

There is a celebrated monument in Vienna, erected to the memory of one of the best generals of the Austrian army, on which there is an inscription, setting forth his great services during the Seven Years' War, concluding with the words, "NON PATRIA, NEC IMPERATOR, SED CONJUX POSUIT."

When Sir Albert Morton died, his wife's grief was such that she shortly followed him, and was laid by his side.

Wotton's two lines on the event have been celebrated as containing a volume in seventeen words: "He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died."

So, when Washington's wife was informed that her dear lord had suffered his last agony--had drawn his last breath, and departed--she said: "'Tis well; all is now over.

I shall soon follow him; I have no more trials to pass through."

Not only have women been the best companions, friends, and consolers, but they have in many cases been the most effective helpers of their husbands in their special lines of work.

Galvani was especially happy in his wife.

She was the daughter of Professor Galeazzi; and it is said to have been through her quick observation of the circumstance of the leg of a frog, placed near an electrical machine, becoming convulsed when touched by a knife, that her husband was first led to investigate the science which has since become identified with his name.

Lavoisier's wife also was a woman of real scientific ability, who not only shared in her husband's pursuits, but even undertook the task of engraving the plates that accompanied his 'Elements.'

The late Dr. Buckland had another true helper in his wife, who assisted him with her pen, prepared and mended his fossils, and furnished many of the drawings and illustrations of his published works.

"Notwithstanding her devotion to her husband's pursuits," says her son, Frank Buckland, in the preface to one of his father's works, "she did not neglect the education of her children, but occupied her mornings in superintending their instruction in sound and useful knowledge.

The sterling value of her labours they now, in after-life, fully appreciate, and feel most thankful that they were blessed with so good a mother."

[2019] A still more remarkable instance of helpfulness in a wife is presented in the case of Huber, the Geneva naturalist.

Huber was blind from his seventeenth year, and yet he found means to study and master a branch of natural history demanding the closest observation and the keenest eyesight.

It was through the eyes of his wife that his mind worked as if they had been his own.

She encouraged her husband's studies as a means of alleviating his privation, which at length he came to forget; and his life was as prolonged and happy as is usual with most naturalists.

He even went so far as to declare that he should be miserable were he to regain his eyesight.

"I should not know," he said, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter."

Huber's great work on 'Bees' is still regarded as a masterpiece, embodying a vast amount of original observation on their habits and natural history.

Indeed, while reading his descriptions, one would suppose that they were the work of a singularly keensighted man, rather than of one who had been entirely blind for twenty-five years at the time at which he wrote them.

Not less touching was the devotion of Lady Hamilton to the service of her husband, the late Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh.

After he had been stricken by paralysis through overwork at the age of fifty-six, she became hands, eyes, mind, and everything to him.

She identified herself with his work, read and consulted books for him, copied out and corrected his lectures, and relieved him of all business which she felt herself competent to undertake.

Indeed, her conduct as a wife was nothing short of heroic;

and it is probable that but for her devoted and more than wifely help, and her rare practical ability, the greatest of her husband's works would never have seen the light.

He was by nature unmethodical and disorderly, and she supplied him with method and orderliness.

His temperament was studious but indolent, while she was active and energetic.

She abounded in the qualities which he most lacked.

He had the genius, to which her vigorous nature gave the force and impulse.

When Sir William Hamilton was elected to his Professorship, after a severe and even bitter contest, his opponents, professing to regard him as a visionary, predicted that he could never teach a class of students, and that his appointment would prove a total failure.

He determined, with the help of his wife, to justify the choice of his supporters, and to prove that his enemies were false prophets.

Having no stock of lectures on hand, each lecture of the first course was written out day by day, as it was to be delivered on the following morning.

His wife sat up with him night after night, to write out a fair copy of the lectures from the rough sheets, which he drafted in the adjoining room.

"On some occasions," says his biographer, "the subject of the lectures would prove less easily managed than on others; and then Sir William would be found writing as late as nine o'clock in the morning, while his faithful but wearied amanuensis had fallen asleep on a sofa."

[2020] Sometimes the finishing touches to the lecture were left to be given just before the class-hour.

Thus helped, Sir William completed his course; his reputation as a lecturer was established; and he eventually became recognised throughout Europe as one of the leading intellects of his time.

[2021] The woman who soothes anxiety by her presence, who charms and allays irritability by her sweetness of temper, is a consoler as well as a true helper.

Niebuhr always spoke of his wife as a fellow-worker with him in this sense.

Without the peace and consolation which be found in her society, his nature would have fretted in comparative uselessness.

"Her sweetness of temper and her love," said he, "raise me above the earth, and in a manner separate me from this life."

But she was a helper in another and more direct way.

Niebuhr was accustomed to discuss with his wife every historical discovery, every political event, every novelty in literature; and it was mainly for her pleasure and approbation, in the first instance, that he laboured while preparing himself for the instruction of the world at large.

The wife of John Stuart Mill was another worthy helper of her husband, though in a more abstruse department of study, as we learn from his touching dedication of the treatise 'On Liberty':--"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings--the friend and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume."

Not less touching is the testimony borne by another great living writer to the character of his wife, in the inscription upon the tombstone of Mrs. Carlyle in Haddington Churchyard, where are inscribed these words:--"In her bright existence, she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft amiability, a capacity of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart, which are rare.

For forty years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could, in all of worthy that he did or attempted."