He married, for the first time, at one-and-twenty, his choice being the daughter of an impoverished “county” family, a girl neither handsome nor sweet-natured, but, as it seemed, much in sympathy with his humanitarian views.  Properly speaking, he did not choose her; the men who choose, who deliberately select a wife, are very few, and Jerome Otway could never have been one of them.  He was ardent and impulsive; marriage becoming a necessity, he clutched at the first chance which in any way addressed his imagination; and the result was calamitous.  In a year or two his wife repented the thoughtlessness with which she had sacrificed the possibilities of her birth and breeding for marriage with a man of no wealth.  Narrow of soul, with a certain frothy intelligence, she quickly outgrew the mood of social rebellion which had originated in personal discontent, and thenceforward she had nothing but angry scorn for the husband who allowed her to live in poverty.  Two sons were born to them; the elder named Daniel (after O’Connell), the second called Alexander (after the Russian Herzen).  For twelve years they lived in suppressed or flagrant hostility; then Mrs. Otway died of cholera.  To add to the bitterness of her fate, she had just received, from one of her “county” relatives, a legacy of a couple of thousand pounds.

This money, which became his own, Otway invested in a newspaper then being started by certain of his friends; a paper, as it seemed, little likely to have commercial success, but which, after many changes of editorship, ultimately became an established organ of Liberalism.  The agitator retained an interest in this venture, and the small income it still continued to yield him was more than enough for his personal needs; it enabled him to set a little aside, year after year, thus forming a fund which, latterly, he always thought of as destined to benefit his youngest son—­the child of his second marriage.

For he did not long remain solitary, and his next adventure was somewhat in keeping with the character he had earned in public estimate.  Living for a time in Switzerland, he there met with a young Englishwoman, married, but parted from her husband, who was maintaining herself at Geneva as a teacher of languages; Jerome was drawn to her, wooed her, and won her love.  The husband, a Catholic, refused her legal release, but the irregular union was a true marriage.  It had lasted for about four years when their only child was born.  In another twelvemonth, Jerome was again a widower.  A small sum of money which had belonged to the dead woman, Jerome, at her wish, put out at interest for their boy, if he should attain manhood.  The child’s name was Piers; for Jerome happened at that time to be studying old Langland’s “Vision,” with delight in the brave singer, who so long ago cried for social justice—­one of the few in Christendom who held by the spirit of Christ.