For poor Hans was afflicted with what
has been the moral and social ruin of many a better, if not greater man
than he--a froward, shrill-tongued wife. Luckily, however, the great
scholar and philosopher, Erasmus, went into retirement at Bale, in 1521;
and he soon recognized the genius of Holbein, and became his admirer and
friend. By his advice, and at the solicitation of an English nobleman,
and, poor fellow, seeking refuge from the temper of his wife, whom even
the sweet cares of maternity could not mollify, Holbein determined to
leave Bale for England. What was the great cause of Frau Holbein's
tantrums,--whether Hans's ears were pierced with conjugal clamors, as
poor Albert Duerer's, the other great German painter's, were, because
he could not supply all his wife's demands for money, to enable her,
perhaps, to exhibit herself at church on holy days in one of those
precious pulpits, splendid in velvet and jewels, to the discomfiture of
the other painters' wives,--we do not know; but whatever was the cause
of her oft-recurring outbreaks, they made him not unwilling to put
France and the English Channel between himself and her, his children,
and the home of his childhood.
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