Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in WomenEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in Women
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
relationships with Rosenthal, who was a man of fragile
organization and health. Sacher-Masoch united himself to Hulda
Meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded
but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly
accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost
maternal devotion. No doubt there is truth in both descriptions.
It must be noted that, as Wanda clearly shows, apart from his
abnormal sexual temperament, Sacher-Masoch was kind and
sympathetic, and he was strongly attached to his eldest child.
Eulenburg also quotes the statement of a distinguished Austrian
woman writer acquainted with him that, "apart from his sexual
eccentricities, he was an amiable, simple, and sympathetic man
with a touchingly tender love for his children." He had very few
needs, did not drink or smoke, and though he liked to put the
woman he was attached to in rich furs and fantastically gorgeous
raiment he dressed himself with extreme simplicity. His wife
quotes the saying of another woman that he was as simple as a
child and as naughty as a monkey.
In 1883 Sacher-Masoch and Hulda Meister settled in Lindheim, a
village in Germany near the Taunus, a spot to which the novelist
seems to have been attached because in the grounds of his little
estate was a haunted and ruined tower associated with a tragic
medieval episode. Here, after many legal delays, Sacher-Masoch
was able to render his union with Hulda Meister legitimate; here
two children were in due course born, and here the novelist spent
the remaining years of his life in comparative peace. At first,
as is usual, treated with suspicion by the peasants,
Sacher-Masoch gradually acquired great influence over them; he
became a kind of Tolstoy in the rural life around him, the friend
and confidant of all the villagers (something of Tolstoy's
communism is also, it appears, to be seen in the books he wrote
at this time), while the theatrical performances which he
inaugurated, and in which his wife took an active part, spread
the fame of the household in many neighboring villages. Meanwhile
his health began to break up; a visit to Nauheim in 1894 was of
no benefit, and he died March 9, 1895.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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