tters no more
complete, happy, and altogether beautiful marriage than that of Jonas
and Thomasine Lie. The nearest parallel to it that I can think of is
that of John Stuart Mill and Mrs. Taylor, who later became Mrs. Mill.

Lie's friends accuse him of carrying his admiration of his wife to the
verge of idolatry. He will leave himself but little merit, but with an
air of candid conviction he attributes even his authorship to his
Thomasine. "Her name ought to stand next to mine on the title-pages of
my books," he has repeatedly declared. And again, "If I have written
anything that is good, then my wife deserves as much credit for it as
myself ... Without her nothing would have come of it except nonsense."

Even though that may be an exaggeration, pure delusion it is not. For
Mrs. Lie is, in a certain way, the complement to her husband. She
possesses what he has not; and he possesses what she, in her modest
self-extinction, would never dream of laying claim to. The spirit of
order, adjustment, and lucidity is strong in her; while he, in his
fanciful exuberance, is often overwhelmed by his material, and is unable
to get it into shape. Then she quietly steps in and separates the dry
land from the water in his seething and struggling chaos. She is one of
those rare women who, while apparently only listening, can give you back
your own thoughts clarified. Mr. Garborg relates most charmingly how she
straightens out the tangles in her husband's plots, and unobtrusively
draws him back, when, as frequently happens, he has switched himself off
on a side-line and is unable to recover his bearings. And this occurs as
often in his conversation as in his manuscripts, which he never
despatches to the publisher without her revision. She helps him
condense. She knows just what to omit. Yet she does not pretend to be in
the least literary. Her proper department, in which she is also a
shining success, is the care of her children and the superintendence of
her household. She understands to perfection the art of economy and has
a keen practical sense, which makes her admirably competent in all the
more difficult situations in life. And he, feeling her competence and
his own deficiency, frankly leans on her. Hence a certain motherliness
on her part (most beautiful to behold) has tinged their relation; and on
his an admiring and affectionate dependence. Each prizes in the other
what he himself lacks; and the husband's genius loses none of its