STATISTICAL STUDY OF EMINENT WOMEN 607 



married four times. Though the numbers are small, it is of interest 

 to note that 42 per cent, of the group of women who became eminent 

 because of political influence or ability were married more than once. 

 Of the total group of musicians, 30.6 per cent, had more than one 

 husband. 



Eminent women have not, on the whole, made particularly success- 

 ful wives, since 11.6 per cent, of the 781 unions of which we have 

 record have ended in separation or divorce. 36 of the 91 cases of dis- 

 solution occurred in families where both husband and wife were famous. 



Divorces have been most frequent among distinguished women of 

 German birth. It is barely posible that we have found these results, 

 not because of actual conditions, but because the German encyclopedias 

 are more inclined to give details of domestic life than are those of 

 other nations. The German divorce rate, however, is known to be high. 

 Though much is said about the alarming increase of the rate of divorce 

 in America, it does not hold in the case of eminent women (3 cases). 



I have tried to discover whether divorce has been more or less fre- 

 quent when the husband and wife have been engaged in the same occu- 

 pation than when their interests were more or less diverse. I hoped 

 to learn whether a singer has been more apt to run into matrimonial 

 shipwreck if she married a composer than if she chose a lawyer for a 

 husband. Has it been safer for a literary woman to marry a scholar 

 or a banker? My figures are not very conclusive, owing to the small 

 number of cases in each occupation, but where a conclusion is war- 

 ranted, our table tends to show that artists and musicians are safer 

 matrimonially when married to men whose interests are in fields dif- 

 ferent from their own. In other words, it is better when the husband 

 and wife are not both engaged in an activity which is controlled by 

 temperament and inspiration rather than by reason. In the case of 

 actresses, the percentage of divorce is just the same when the husband 

 is an actor as when he is engaged in some other occupation. With 

 writers, the divorce rate is slightly smaller when the husband is a lit- 

 erary man. 



Eoyal divorces are recorded as remote as the fourth century before 

 Christ. Eminent women not of aristocratic birth have obtained di- 

 vorces only in the last three centuries. 



It has been impossible to discover at what age these women became 

 eminent, but in 670 cases I have been able to ascertain the age at death. 

 Curve IV. represents the age distribution graphically. Both ends of 

 the curve are interesting. Nine women died before they were twenty; 

 nineteen lived to be over ninety. The average length of life is 60.8 

 years. The slight rise in the curve for eminent women in the twenties, 

 and again in the forties, tends to confirm Galton's conclusion that 

 " among the gifted men there is a small class who have weak and 



