Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 7.djvu/27

JULY 1917

DISTINGUISHED Scotchman said once. "Whenever I hear of a great man I always ask who his mother was." Sometimes it is equally wise to ask who his wife was, for wives have exercised a wonderful influence over great men's lives. Mrs. Gladstone's undying conviction that nobody but William could make the world go round, led Mr. Gladstone to do his best not to fall below his wife's ideal.

Dr. Lyman Abbott, in his "Reminiscences," says that for fifty years his wife was the best part of him. She inspired him to do his best, and encouraged him when he seemed doomed to failure. Even after she had passed away out of the shadow into the perfect light he could say, "I do not think her dead, nor have I lost her companionship. Her ambition for me keeps me young at seventy-eight; her faith in me still inspires me with faith in myself."

It is said that very few bachelors ever attain greatness. Mr. Arthur J. Balfour is believed to be lacking in nothing but a wife, but this is so serious a defect that he is likely to go down in history as the Great Indolent Arthur, who needed a wife to inspire him to something more than books and golf.

In the "Life and Letters of Sir Charles Tupper," edited by Dr. Saunders, the father of the author of "Beautiful Joe," we have a touching testimony from one of the greatest of Canadian statesmen as to the inspiring influence of his wife in making him what he was. At a great banquet at Ottawa, when Sir Charles was at the height of his political glory, he said: "But I am bound to the County of Comberland by a still closer tie than that of birth or political affection. Thirty-seven years ago I took a girl, with the bloom of Cumberland upon her cheeks, to be my wife. Gentlemen, that bloom is on my heart now, for I am only doing justice to my own feelings if I say that if I have been enabled to render my country any service, I owe it in large measure to her wise counsel."

Sir Charles was deeply indebted to his distinguished father, the Reverend Charles Tupper, for getting a good start in life. At seven years old this precocious boy had read the whole Bible aloud to his father. When Dr. Andrew Bonar, the distinguished Scottish divine, for whom Andrew Bonar Law was named, remonstrated laughingly with a woman in his Bible Class who in reading the Scripture lessons had skipped some of the long Hebrew names, she replied, "Is it not better to do so than to misca' the gentlemen?" The seven year old boy, who was destined to make a great name for himself in the world, who was destined to become one of the most distinguished of that group of men who are known to-day as the Fathers of Confederation, as the Makers of Canada, was not allowed to skip any of the hard Bible names, nor was he allowed to misca' the gentlemen.

When Sir Charles was a small boy his father, who was a great linguist and read the Bible in eight languages, started him at Latin, and offered him as a reward a halfpenny for every page in the reader he succeeded in translating correctly. Like his father, he had a marvellously retentive memory, which enabled him to acquire languages readily. When he was eighty-four he and his favourite granddaughter began the study of Italian at Rome, and Sir Charles was not long in learning to read the Italian newspapers, and when Bishop Cameron, of Antigonishe, Nova Scotia, who happened to be in Rome, presented him to the Pope, he was able to address His Holiness in Italian.

Sir Charles had no opportunity of getting a college education, for clergymen in that day, like many of the brethren to-day, were not embarrassed with worldly wealth, but in some way his father succeeded in scraping enough together to send his son to Horton Academy, a famous preparatory school of that day. Judge Longley, in his valuable life of Sir Charles, recently published, refers to a tradition that he eked out his scanty means by working at a shoemaker's bench. It was not long after this that Edward, Prince of Wales, was learning the shoemaker's trade, not to get an education by it, but to make a life, We have no record that when they met, as they did many times in later life, the talked over this common experience of their boyhood, or that they regretted that they had not stuck to their lasts.

ONG ago the story was current in Nova Scotia, especially amongst Dr. Tupper's political opponents, that he, when a young man, had become engaged to marry a girl in Amherst, who furnished him with the money necessary to pursue his medical studies in Edinburgh, but when he returned he jilted her that he might marry the woman be loved.

A good many years later, when Dr. Tupper was a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature, a political opponent twitted him with his infidelity to his first love. If duelling had not gone out of fashion, something tragical might have happened, for Sir Charles was a man of war from his youth. As it was the member of Parliament who made this irritating insinuation was never so bethumped with words since he first called his brother's father, Dad, as the great word-wizard has expressed it in "King John."

Judge Longley refers to this story, and leaves the reader in doubt as to whether there were any truth in it or not. Dr. Saunders quotes Sir Charles as saying that his Uncle Nathan made it possible for him to pursue his medical studies in Edinburgh. It looks as if this statement was made with the express purpose of discrediting the old story which some people have never forgotten.

For about ten years after Dr. Tupper’s marriage with Miss Frances Morse, of Amherst, Nova Scotia, he practised his profession in Cumberland County. During that time he made for himself a great name as a medical man, and his wife made for him a kind of heaven of a home, the thought of which made many a long tiresome journey over rough country roads almost enjoyable. He knew that there was always one waiting and watching for his return and ready to minister to him in the most loving way.

T first this devoted wife was not much in sympathy with her husband's political aspirations. She thought that Sam Slick, the cute Yankee who dealt in wooden clocks and soft sodder, was right in saying that politics, like crowsfoot and whiteweed, flourished too abundantly in Nova Scotia, and that there were cleaner things to handle and pleasanter to smell.

Mrs. Tupper believed that her husband, who was the most skilful medical man in that part of the country, was doing a great work—was engaged in a ministry of healing which had an akinness to the work of the "greatest Man that e'er wore earth about him, the first true Gentleman that ever breathed." But when nomination day came and she, seated at an open window near-by, heard her husband's magnificent speech in reply to Joseph Howe, the popular idol of the people, she experienced a sudden conversion, and from that day entered into his life-work with all the happy inspiration of one who was capable of seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

When the election of 1855 was over and Dr. Tupper had beaten Joseph Howe, the most popular man who ever played a part on the political stage of that Province, the Honourable J. W. Johnstone sent him the following message: "I congratulate you and sympathize with your wife in your triumph." It was not necessary then for any one to sympathise with Mrs. Tupper, for she had caught the political infection and was far more highly elated than the Doctor himself over his victory.

In the life of Sir Charles we find some beautiful revelations of how completely he and his wife were bound up in the bundle of life together. With Goldsmith he could say:

Once when crossing the Atlantic, he dreamed that his wife was dangerously ill. When he reached Liverpool, he wrote to her about the matter, telling her how troubled he was over it, for it seemed something more than a dream. On receiving a letter from home he learned that his wife had been seriously indisposed at the very time he was dreaming about her.

On another occasion, in later life, he dreamed in Paris that Lady Tupper was ill in England, where he had left her in perfect health. He returned at once to find that his dream was true.

Some of the most sympathetic students of psychical phenomena tell us that it is possible for two souls to be so completely in tune with each other that the thoughts and feelings of the one will, under certain circumstances, make an impression upon the other, it matters not how far apart they may be in space. This may be an explanation of Sir Charles' dreams.

The whole story of Sir Charles' wonderful life makes it clear that he made no mistake in marrying the girl he did, with the bloom of Cumberland on her cheeks, and an ever-increasing love in her heart for the man she married, for a happier union was never consummated.

After sixty-six years of married bliss, Lady Tupper passed behind the veil, and Sir Charles, at ninety-one years of age, came voyaging homeward from Bitain with his loved dead, that she might "sleep the sleep that knows not breaking" in the land that was so dear to her.

Three years afterwards, loved ones bore the body of Sir Charles to its last resting-place in Halifax, beside the one who had done so much to make his life a good success.

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