HIS WIFE. 



99 



rights and feelings of her husband ; 

 and mainly that he might have her 

 as a tutor to prompt or coach him, 

 to make a better show before the 

 world ; which effect it did have, as 

 he afterwards admitted. Mill was 

 anything but candid or straightfor- 

 ward in his account of his relation 

 with this lady, for, as a writer in 

 Eraser's Magazine, for December, 

 says : 



" It is but right to add that, accord- 

 ing to the concurrent testimony of his 

 friends, Mr. Taylor disapproved of the 

 intimacy ; that, indeed, it embittered 

 the latter years of his life a fact of 

 which Mill could not have been igno- 

 rant." 



And a writer in the Edinburgh 

 Review, for January, says : 



" From the moment he devoted him- 

 self exclusively to what he calls ' the 

 most valuable friendship of my life/ 

 these ties were broken. Whatever may 

 have been their regard for Mill, these 

 ladies found it impossible to countenance 

 or receive a woman who had placed her- 

 self in so equivocal a position. , . . 

 Mill, of course, took her part, and in- 

 deed was absolutely governed by her; 

 and the consequence was a total inter- 

 ruption of intercourse with some of 

 those who had been to him through life 

 the kindest of friends. So bitter was 

 his own feeling on the subject, that 

 under no circumstance would he allow 

 this intercourse to be renewed, even by 

 letter " [as if he had been the greatly 

 injured man]. 



This writer in the Edinburgh Re- 

 view little more than hints at the 

 quarrel between Mill and his friends, 

 Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Charles Buller, 

 and Mrs. John Austin, on Mrs. 

 Taylor's account. It would appear 

 that he had attempted to obtrude 

 her acquaintance upon them, and 

 that they naturally objected to her 

 company under the circumstances. 

 It is said that 



" She, like all women who find them- 

 selves at war with society, and who 

 have braved its prejudices and fts laws, 

 resented the exclusion she had drawn 

 upon herself, *he more so as it was al- 



ways maintained that there was nothing 

 criminal in her intercourse with Mill '' 

 [of which she gave the world no guaran- 

 tee]. 



As a matter of course, Mill took 

 her part, and in turn resented the 

 exclusion. This was quite in keep- 

 ing with his idea and theory of 

 "liberty," propounded in his writings, 

 that he and Mrs. Taylor, and all like 

 them, should do or advocate pretty 

 much what they pleased, without 

 any one having the right to find 

 fault with them, or decline their so- 

 ciety, under the charge of oppres- 

 sion. If they had kept aloof from 

 society, and let society come to 

 them on their own terms, and said 

 nothing about the matter, there 

 would have been some reason in 

 their action ; but to attempt to 

 break down the laws of society in so 

 delicate and important a matter as 

 marriage and the relation of the 

 sexes, was to upset the very exist- 

 ence of society itself. Such things 

 are to women the breath of their 

 nostrils, and the guardians of every 

 domestic virtue. In this matter 

 both Mill and Mrs. Taylor showed 

 that they were very deficient in the 

 finer feelings of human nature, and 

 really regarded nothing but their 

 convenience and selfishness in their 

 behaviour; and particularly when 

 they advocated such anti-society 

 doctrines in their writings. Civil- 

 ization, indeed, consists mainly in 

 renouncing the exercise of some 

 of our natural rights in favour of so- 

 ciety, while we find Mill claiming 

 what nature had never given him, 

 viz : the right to " lead about " an- 

 other man's wife. This is but one 

 commentary on all his boasting of 

 what he and the lady in question 

 did for " human improvement." 



As I have already said, Mrs. Tay- 

 lor seems to have been a woman of 

 no religious belief, for, with his usual 

 indefiniteness of language, Mill 

 speaks of " her complete emancipa- 

 tion from every kind of superstition 

 (including that which attributes a 



