the man's name, so dead is he. But inasmuch as the brilliant Helena
Fourment, second wife of Rubens, whose picture was so often painted by
her artist-husband, married again, why shouldn't Madame Van Dyck follow
the example?

It is barely possible that Charles Lamb was right when he declared that
no woman married to a genius ever believed her husband to be one. We know
that the wife of Edmund Spenser became the Faerie Queene of another soon
after his demise, and whenever Spenser was praised in her presence she
put on a look that plainly said, "I could a tale unfold."

My own opinion is that a genius makes a very bad husband. And further, I
have no faith in that specious plea, "A woman who marries a second time
confers upon her first husband the highest compliment, for her action
implies that she was so happy in her first love that she is more than
willing to try it again."

I think the reverse is more apt to be the truth, and that the woman who
has been sorely disappointed in her first marriage is anxious to try the
great experiment over again, in order if possible to secure that bliss
which every daughter of Eve feels is her rightful due.

Maria Ruthven lived to rear a goodly brood of children, and Samuel Pepys
records that she used to send a sort o' creepy feeling down the backs of
callers by innocently introducing her children thus: "This is my eldest
daughter, whose father was Sir Anthony Van Dyck, of whom you have
doubtless heard; and these others are my children by my present husband,
Sergeant Nobody." Van Dyck's remains are buried in Saint Paul's
Cathedral. A very fine monument, near the grave of Turner, marks the
spot; but his best monument is in the examples of his work that are to be