HIS WIFE. 



97 



society and reading, not omitting re- 

 ligion, however much that seemed 

 to be foreign to Mill's nature ; one 

 or all being administered, as the 

 case called for. In other words, the 

 cultivation of a little versatility in 

 mind and body, and a " shaking-up 

 generally," was what he required. 



IV. 



HIS WIFE. 



John Stuart Mill's Autobiography 

 begins thus : 



" It seems proper that I should prefix 

 to the following biographical sketch, 

 some mention of the reasons which 

 have made me think it desirable that 

 I should leave behind me such a me- 

 morial of so uneventful a life as mine. 

 . . . But a motive which weighs 

 more with me than either of these, is a 

 desire to make acknowledgment of the 

 debts which my intellectual and moral 

 development owes to other persons ; 

 some of them of recognized eminence, 

 others less known than they deserve to 

 be, and the one to whom most of all is 

 due, one whom the world had no op- 

 portunity of knowing " (p. 2), [viz., his 

 wife]. 



He says he was introduced to her 

 in 1830, when he was in his twenty- 

 fifth, and she in her twenty-third 

 year (p. 184), and he was married to 

 her after a friendship of twenty-one 

 years. But it was " years " after his 

 introduction to her before his " ac- 

 quaintance with her became at all 

 intimate or confidential," although 

 he "very soon felt her to be the 

 most admirable person he had ever 

 known " (p. 185). He seems to have 

 fought shy of her at first, and it is 

 difficult to think how he could have 

 got so far as he' did, unless the na- 

 ture of things was reversed by her 

 forcing the acquaintance to a head. 

 He told us of the solicitude of his 

 father in keeping him from the " cor- 

 rupting influence which boys ex- 

 ercise over boys," and the conse- 

 quent "contagion of vulgar modes 

 of thought and feeling," as well as 

 the " demoralizing effects of school 

 7 



life," but nothing of the refining or 

 seductive influences of girls or fe- 

 male society. There seems every 

 reason to think that this acquaint- 

 ance, from the date of its commence- 

 ment in 1830, till the death of his 

 father in 1836, or at least the influ- 

 ence which the lady exercised over 

 him, was kept secret from his jeal- 

 ous and despotic parent ; for it is 

 hardly possible that he would have 

 tolerated any one, and especially a 

 woman, the wife of another man, to 

 come in between him and his son in 

 the formation of his mind. Mill's 

 acquaintance with female society at 

 that time must have been exceed- 

 ingly limited, and it seems to have 

 continued so till the end. Hence 

 the adoration he lavished on Mrs. 

 Taylor, as we have seen, making her 

 memory his religion, and almost ex- 

 hausting the English language in her 

 praises. She seems to have been a 

 woman of decided talent and orig- 

 inality, tact and accomplishments, 

 sufficient at least to have enabled her, 

 in many things, to turn him round 

 her little finger. But we must de- 

 duct a large indeed an extraordi- 

 narily large discount from the draft 

 he has drawn on posterity in favour 

 of her capacity and divine qualities 

 no, not divine qualities, for she 

 (like himself) apparently recognized 

 nothing as divine. However, it is 

 time to introduce the goddess her- 

 self. Mill says that she was 



" Married at an early age to a most 

 upright, brave, and honourable man, of 

 liberal opinions and good education, but 

 without the intellectual or artistic tastes 

 which would have made him a compan- 

 ion for her, though a steady and affec- 

 tionate friend, for whom she had true 

 esteem, and the strongest affection 

 through life, and whom she most deeply 

 lamented when dead " (p. 185). 



" Her intellectual gifts did but minisr 

 ter to a moral character at once the no- 

 blest and the best balanced, which I 

 have ever met with in life. Her unsel- 

 fishness was not that of a taught system 

 of duties [was it inspired ?], but of a 

 heart which thoroughly identified itself 



