STATISTICAL STUDY OF EMINENT WOMEN 



605 



Rosa Bonheur and Antoninus Pius are accorded the same number of 

 lines. Thirteen eminent women are less distinguished than King 

 Ilakon of Norway, the least eminent of the husbands. We have here 

 an exact means for telling whether Robert Browning is more or less 

 eminent than his gifted wife, and how much; whether the joint sov- 

 ereigns of England, William and Mary, are equally distinguished; 

 whether Cornelia, the mother, and Tiberius Sempronius, the father, of 

 the Gracchi are equally famous; and whether Otto Goldschmidt is more 

 or less distinguished than Jenny Lind. 



The two hundred and fifty-nine eminent women who married men 

 of sufficient distinction to come within our criterion of eminence were 

 natives of thirty-one different nations, but France, England, Germany 

 and Rome produced the larger number of them. Julia Ward Howe, 

 Julia Marlowe and Elizabeth Drew Stoddard are the only noteworthy 

 American women who married husbands sufficients eminent to be 

 included in our list. 



The average age at which eminent women have married (based on 

 459 cases) is 23.4 years. This means, in each instance, the age when 

 married for the first time. Three of the women wen 1 married under 

 ten years; thirty were married before they were fifteen; five married 

 later than fifty. The youngest bride was Joan of Naples, who at the 

 age of six was married to Andrew, Prince of Hungary. The oldest 

 bride was Angela Burdette-Coutts, who at sixty-seven married Mr. 

 Ashmcad-Bartlett. 



The following table shows a fairly regular tendency through the 

 centuries to postpone marriage from 16.2 years in the twelfth century 

 to 26.2 years in the nineteenth. The range of age of brides has also 

 varied, particularly in the maximum limit. Through the twelfth, 

 thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries no eminent woman was 

 married Later than thirty. In the last four centuries the maximum 

 limit has varied from forty- three to sixty-seven. In other words, we 

 may say that the maximum age of marriage during the last four cen- 

 turies (nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth, sixteenth) averaged 53.3 

 years; for the preceding four centuries (fifteenth, fourteenth, thir- 

 teenth, twelfth) it averaged 25.8 years. 



Age at Marriage in Different Centuries 



