Mis-mated : the principles of incompatibility of temperaments in marriage and family life; with an analysis of the marriages of John Milton, Paul Verlaine, Moliere, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Heinrich Heine, Richard Wagner, and others / by John F. Peters.

  • Peters, John F.
Date:
1938
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Mis-mated : the principles of incompatibility of temperaments in marriage and family life; with an analysis of the marriages of John Milton, Paul Verlaine, Moliere, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Heinrich Heine, Richard Wagner, and others / by John F. Peters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    34 MIS-MATED of great unhappiness in later life. A good example is that of Heinrich Heine, who was about three years older than his sister. His wife (formerly his mistress) was a mal-conditioned only child—a sprightly little grisette named Mathilde Mirât—and towards the end of his life she caused him a great deal of worry and mortification through her light behaviour. I shall have more to say on this subject in the chapter devoted to the incompatibles of the only son: I mention it here because it is an instance of the risks run by partially conditioned only sons with younger sisters in the important business of choosing a life-companion. It is hardly necessary for me to add that when the girl is more than four years younger than her elder brother no trace of her influence is apparent in either his appearance or his behaviour. Prediction of Sex At this stage it will be necessary for me to encroach upon the province of the biologist, and write down a series of observa¬ tions which I have made concerning the prediction of the sex of unborn children. It must be clearly understood that my conclusions in this matter are those of an empiric, and that they may be without justification from the professional biologist's point of view. As they are drawn from the study of about two thousand cases, however, and are germane, in some measure, to my principles of incompatibility in marriage, I feel that I may venture to set them before the reader. They are as follow :— (i) A man who is an eldest child tends to beget a sequence of children that is more or less identical with that of his own family. A good example is that of a man who is the eldest of three sons, with a daughter following the youngest. This man may beget two sons and a daughter, or three sons and a daughter. (ii) As a general rule, men with younger brothers next to them in the family tend to beget sons before daughters, and men with younger sisters next to them in the family tend to beget daughters before sons. (iii) If the first two children are of the same sex, and present a marked contrast in features and general appear-