[Arthur Pendennis made his entry into literature by writing these verses
for Mr. Bacon's "Spring Annual." The Hon. Percy Popjoy, a regular
contributor to that fashionable publication, had sent in a poem which Mr.
Bacon's reader condemned as too execrable to inflict upon the public. To
take its place, at George Warrington's suggestion, Pendennis was invited
to turn off a copy of verses to accompany an engraving which showed a
damsel entering a church porch, with a young man watching her from a
near-by niche. The poem printed below was the result.]
Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Ofttimes I hover:
And near the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.
The minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout
And noise and humming:
They've stopped the chiming bell;
I hear the organ's swell:
She's coming, she's coming!
My lady comes at last,
Timid, and stepping fast,
And hastening hither,
With modest eyes downcast;
She comes--she's here--she's past--
May heaven go with her!
Kneel undisturbed, fair saint!
Pour out your praise or plaint
Meekly and duly;
I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.
But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute,
Like outcast spirits who wait
And see through heaven's gate
Angels within it.
World-Famous Bachelors.
At a Time When Contemporary Writers Are Pointing Out the Men Who
"Have Been Made By Their Wives," a List of a Few Men Who
"Made Themselves" May Prove Worth While.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
"He travels the fastest who travels alone," sings Kipling. In other words,
the bachelor has the advantage in the race for fame and fortune. The truth
or falsity of this viewpoint depends upon the road which a person travels;
it also depends upon his harness mate--who very often helps him along much
faster than he could go by himself. Even were it universally true, the
average man would undoubtedly prefer to jog along comfortably with a mate
beside him.
It is worth while, however, to note that many great men have remained
single; some from choice, some from indifference, some because of early
disappointment. Especially among those whose work requires the most
concentrated reasoning is the single state frequent. In the following
nutshell biographies of famous bachelors it will be observed that a
majority of the men named are philosophers. The great philosopher seldom
marries--for is not the experience of Socrates a warning?
BARUCH DE SPINOZA (Holland--1632-1677).
Baruch Spinoza was by nature unfitted for matrimony. An aggressive
thinker, he led a troubled life. Of Portuguese Hebrew parentage, he was
accused of heresy at an early age and narrowly escaped assassination.
Quitting Amsterdam he took up his abode at The Hague, where he remained
until he died. Having no private fortune he earned his living by polishing
spectacles. His needs were few, and he refused with equal equanimity a sum
of two thousand florins, which his friend, Simon de Vries, presented to
him, and the offer of the chair of philosophy in the University of
Heidelberg.
Fame was not his object, and of all his writings a theologico-political
treatise was the only one published during his life. A storm of
disapproval greeted it, and the author decided not to provoke the public
any further. He did not cease to labor, however, and after his death his
friends found that a mass of manuscripts were ready for the press.
RENE DESCARTES (France--1596-1650).
Another thinker, over whose life no woman seems to have exercised any
influence, is Rene Descartes. He took part in the siege of La Rochelle in
1629 and then sought solitude in Holland and remained there for twenty
years. During this time he published his metaphysical works and made a
great name for himself. The Princess Palatine became his warm friend, and
Christine of Sweden invited him to her court. He declined her invitation
at first, but finally, finding that his theological opponents were
determined to suppress him, he fled from Holland and took refuge in
Stockholm, where the rigorous climate soon carried him off. Christine,
whose counselor and warm friend, in a Platonic sense, he had been for
years, mourned sincerely for him. So did other notable women who dimly
recognized in him the Socrates of the seventeenth century.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON (England--1642-1727).
Very similar was the fate of the great Sir Isaac Newton. Born in 1642, he
entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1660, and thenceforward gave
himself up to the study of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Making his
home at Woolsthorpe, where he possessed a fine property, he spent his
remaining years there, taking occasional trips to London and Cambridge. In
1672 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1688 he
represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament. In 1703 he was
elected president of the Royal Society, and held the position until his
death in 1727.
Why he never married is not clear. It is supposed, however, that he was
crossed in love in his youth and on that account abandoned all thoughts of
matrimony.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (Sweden--1688-1772).
A mystic from his cradle, Swedenborg blossomed first as a man of letters
and a poet and won considerable popularity in Stockholm and throughout
Sweden. Then he became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences
and broached his famous atomic theory. Finally, at the age of fifty-four,
he cast off all mortal interests and became the expounder of new religious
doctrines, claiming that the truths he gave out were secured through
direct inspiration.
His disciples founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, which spread
rapidly, and to-day has offshoots in England, India, Africa, and this
country.
IMMANUEL KANT (Prussia--1724-1804).
Another man of monastic temperament was Immanuel Kant, the eminent founder
of German philosophy. Born at Koenigsberg in 1724, he lived there all his
life. He did not travel; he did not even take flying trips to the great
universities; the old city on the Pregel was good enough for him, and
there he stayed and worked.
An honorable, dignified man, he was practically dead to the world and
lived only that he might do honor to his goddess, Philosophy. Womankind
seems to have had no attraction for him, and from social pleasures he
rigidly abstained. His proper place was in a cloister, and no ascetic ever
lived who apportioned out his time more regularly or did more
conscientious work during the twenty-four hours of each day.
FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE (France--1694-1778).
Turning from the recluse to the men of the world, where can we find a more
distinguished bachelor than Voltaire? Born in 1694, this witty Frenchman
lived his memorable life among the gayest men and women of the world, and
yet when his last hour came there was no wife to close his eyelids, there
were no children to follow him to the tomb.
A weakling from birth, he was not baptized until he was nine months old.
The Abbe de Chateauneuf, a cynical relative, gave him his first lessons
in atheism and introduced him to Ninon de l'Enclos, the famous beauty.
Ninon was so charmed with the boy that she left him a considerable sum of
money in her will, with instructions that it be spent in furnishing his
library.
The youth soon made his debut as a poet and wit, but his father, who
abhorred verses, was vexed at his notoriety and sent him to Holland. There
the lad got entangled in a love affair and was promptly summoned home
again. His father's next move was to banish him to the country, but he was
again disappointed in thinking that his son would reform. Voltaire began
to write an epic poem on Henry IV, and, his talents as a satirist being
known, was suddenly arrested on the charge of lampooning Louis XIV, and
imprisoned in the Bastile.
When he came out he began to write for the theaters, and as a playwright
and a merciless critic of creeds and other cherished beliefs his life was
spent. He was a favorite in society, and the fair sex petted him to his
heart's content, yet he never married.
Mme. Denis, his niece, for whom he had a great affection, looked after his
house at Ferney, near Geneva, and with her he spent his last days. It was
she, too, who accompanied him to Paris in 1778 and who watched by his
bedside when, overcome by the fatigues of his reception in the French
capital--the greatest triumph of his life--he lay calmly, waiting for the
angel of death to call him.
HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD (England--1717-1797).
Another distinguished man of letters who never entered the bonds of
matrimony was Horace Walpole. Born in 1717, he entered Cambridge
University, and there became intimately acquainted with the poet Gray. In
1741 he became a member of the House of Commons, but won little
distinction there, his time and thoughts being almost wholly devoted to
the study of art and literature. In 1765 he took a trip to Paris, and at
this period the romance of his life began. He became attached to Mme. du
Deffand, and in her society passed the pleasantest hours of his life.
Walpole was a polished gentleman, a charming conversationalist, and a
letter-writer of the first rank. He wrote French as well as English, and
it may be that his thorough knowledge of French aided him greatly in
making his English letters the masterpieces that they are. There was in
him, too, much of the Gallic temperament. Bachelor though he was, we
discover in him no moroseness, and see only the gay man of the world, who
knows how to enjoy life in a rational manner.
EDWARD GIBBON (England--1737-1794).
Born in 1737, Gibbon studied at Oxford, and at the age of fifteen became
so zealous a student of history that he undertook to write an account of
the reign of Sesostris. It was at Rome in 1764 that he conceived the idea
of writing a history of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The
entire work, however, was not finished until 1788. Five years previously
he had gone to Lausanne, in Switzerland, and there he stayed until he was
brought home to die.
A severe student, whose views about religion were the reverse of orthodox,
he was by nature much of a recluse and seems never to have shone in
society. Only one woman is known to have inspired a deeper feeling than
friendship, and the fates were against their marriage. The lady
subsequently became Mme. Necker. That Gibbon was sincerely attached to her
is certain, and that had it not been for untoward circumstances she would
have married him seems to be almost equally certain. Their paths in life,
however, were divided; her fate was to become a shining light in the
French capital and his was to spend the noon and evening of his life in
solitude at Lausanne.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (England--1540-1596).
A renowned man of action and a celibate was Francis Drake, the navigator
and discoverer. The sea was his mistress, and fighting the Spaniards was
his lifework. Queen Elizabeth crowned him with honors, and he repaid the
compliment by capturing stores of Spanish gold and taking possession of
California in her name. In 1595 he waged his last attack against the
Spanish colonies in America, which proved unsuccessful, and in which both
he and Sir John Hawkins died of fever.
Honored throughout England as a courtier and a seaman, Drake ever
maintained his high reputation. Constantly at sea, he had really no home
on land. No woman had a nest ready for him after his travels; no children
looked out for his home-returning ship. For fifty years he waged a good
fight against England's foes and then rested forever from his labors.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Germany--1770-1827).
Great artists have much of the recluse in them, and Beethoven, the
composer, was no exception to the rule. For art he lived, and the joys and
sorrows of domestic life he never knew. Yet the story goes that he was
once deeply in love and that his unconquerable shyness alone prevented him
from becoming a happy lover and husband.
Indeed, his aversion to society was abnormal. Melancholy and morose, he
shunned his fellows and found pleasure only in his music. Monarchs
showered compliments and gifts on him, but to the imaginative eye he
appears always solitary and abstracted. Seated in a reverie before his
piano, in his silent, gloomy chamber, he wrote passionate love music for
others, but he won no woman's love for himself.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States--1807-1892).
In America, also, there has been no lack of bachelors who have achieved
fame. The poet Whittier is, perhaps, the best known.
The son of a Quaker farmer, his boyhood was spent mainly upon the farm,
but he early displayed a talent for verse, and learned the art of
slipper-making to support himself while improving his education. In 1829
he was made editor of a Boston paper, and soon, aside from his poetry,
became a real force in the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts.
Yet in all his long and active life as editor, author, legislator,
reformer, and poet, he had no thought--so far as we can tell--of marriage.
SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States--1814-1886).
There is perhaps no better example of the bachelor statesman in America
than Samuel J. Tilden.
The story goes that he was once deeply in love with a Southern lady, but
that fate, in some form, intervened. He never married, however, nor did he
allow disappointment to interfere with his career. He became governor of
New York, and later was nominated for president, being defeated by one
electoral vote (though he was the popular choice by a majority of two
hundred and fifty thousand). At his death he left more than five million
dollars, chiefly to philanthropic purposes, of which the Tilden Foundation
Fund of the New York Public Library received about one half.