John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections
John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections
John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections
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FRIENDSHIP WITH MRS. TAYLOR.<br />
advice. He took a great deal of trouble in recommending<br />
such articles to editors ; and thus helped to start not a few<br />
men in a literary career. It was, I think, G. H. Lewes that<br />
mentioned sending something to him, as he had often done<br />
before ;<br />
the paper was abruptly returned <strong>with</strong>out explanation.<br />
It will no doubt go down to posterity as one of his charac<br />
teristic traits, that he refused to see our two Royal Princesses<br />
(the Crown Princess of Prussia and the Princess Alice), who<br />
earnestly sought an interview, and proposed to go to Avignon<br />
for the purpose. We cannot attribute the refusal to haughti<br />
ness or pride, which was entirely foreign to him ; but, in the<br />
absence of the real explanation, I prefer to give no opinion<br />
on what would seem an uncalled-for discourtesy.<br />
I am bound to take notice of what he calls the greatest<br />
friendship of his life ; his relation to Mrs. Taylor, which began<br />
in 1831, and led to his marrying her, twenty years later, when<br />
her first husband was dead.<br />
When I went te London in 1842, the friendship had lasted<br />
eleven years. It was the familiar talk of all the circle. On<br />
his first acquaintance <strong>with</strong> Mrs. Taylor, he introduced her to<br />
some of his friends, but chiefly, I think, to Carlyle, whom she<br />
continued to visit for a considerable time, being, as we are told,<br />
one of his great admirers. <strong>Mill</strong> and she attended together<br />
Carlyle s courses of Lectures.<br />
The connexion soon became known to his father, who taxed<br />
him <strong>with</strong> being in love <strong>with</strong> another man s wife. He replied,<br />
he had no other feeling towards her, than he would have<br />
towards an equally able man. The answer was unsatisfactory,<br />
but final. His father could do no more, but he expressed to<br />
several of his friends, his strong disapproval<br />
163<br />
of the affair.<br />
Some attempts at remonstrance were made by others, but <strong>with</strong><br />
no better result. Nothing, it was said, drew down his resent<br />
ment more surely than any interference, or any remarks that<br />
came to his ear, on the subject. When I first knew him, he
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