of the presentation copies of his work on _Political Economy_, he wrote
the following dedication:--"To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons
known to the author, is the most highly qualified either to originate or
to appreciate speculation on social advancement, this work is with the
highest respect and esteem dedicated." An article on the enfranchisement
of women was made the occasion for another encomium. We shall hardly be
wrong in attributing a much later book, _The Subjection of Women_,
published in 1869, to the influence wielded by Mrs. Taylor. Finally, the
pages of the _Autobiography_ ring with the dithyrambic praise of his
"almost infallible counsellor."
The facts of this remarkable intimacy can easily be stated. The
deductions are more difficult. There is no question that Mill's
infatuation was the cause of considerable trouble to his acquaintances
and friends. His father openly taxed him with being in love with another
man's wife. Roebuck, Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Austin, Miss Harriet Martineau
were amongst those who suffered because they made some allusion to a
forbidden subject. Mrs. Taylor lived with her daughter in a lodging in
the country; but in 1851 her husband died, and then Mill made her his
wife. Opinions were widely divergent as to her merits; but every one
agreed that up to the time of her death, in 1858, Mill was wholly lost
to his friends. George Mill, one of Mill's younger brothers, gave it as
his opinion that she was a clever and remarkable woman, but "nothing
like what John took her to be." Carlyle, in his reminiscences, described
her with ambiguous epithets. She was "vivid," "iridescent," "pale and
passionate and sad-looking, a living-romance heroine of the royalist
volition and questionable destiny." It is not possible to make much of a
judgment like this, but we get on more certain ground when we discover
that Mrs. Carlyle said on one occasion that "she is thought to be
dangerous," and that Carlyle added that she was worse than dangerous,
she was patronising. The occasion when Mill and his wife were brought
into close contact with the Carlyles is well known. The manuscript of
the first volume of the _French Revolution_ had been lent to Mill, and
was accidentally burnt by Mrs. Mill's servant. Mill and his wife drove
up to Carlyle's door, the wife speechless, the husband so full of
conversation that he detained Carlyle with desperate attempts at
loquacity for two hours. But Dr. Garnett tells us, in his _Life of
Carlyle_, that Mill made a substantial reparation for the calamity for
which he was responsible by inducing the aggrieved author to accept half
of the L200 which he offered. Mrs. Mill, as I have said, died in 1858,
after seven years of happy companionship with her husband, and was
buried at Avignon. The inscription which Mill wrote for her grave is too
characteristic to be omitted:--"Her great and loving heart, her noble
soul, her clear, powerful, original, and comprehensive intellect, made