One hundred years ago
We cannot see the special `hardship' to Lord Durham upon which some of our contemporaries are so eloquent. It is a terrible misfortune for any man to see his wife become incurably insane; and we are not unwilling to admit that it is, in one way, harder for a wealthy Peer than for any one less highly placed in the world, because it is so important to him and his family that he should have heirs. But, after all, Peers are not exempt from the fate which to some households denies children and to others gives only daughters, and there are irreparable misfortunes to be borne in every long-continued relation in life. A cruel father, a bad son, a vixenish daughter, a swindling partner, are not the rarest of evils, and have to be borne, like chronic disease, bodily deformity, or blindness, with what of resignation one may have grace to feel. There is no cure, save death, and neither is there for a luckless marriage. To say, as to our great surprise the Observer and the Echo and several other journals do say, that insanity in wife or husband is so unendurable that it should be full ground for divorce, is to alter, and, as we think, debase the institution of marriage altogether.
Spectator, 14 March 1885
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