At de Selby's 89th birthday celebration, Figgie, his wife of 63 years, told the assembled relatives and friends that she had never read a word her husband had written. No one, not even the press, responded at the time. No one knew what to say. Later several friends speculated that de Selby's wife might be illiterate, so of course she'd read little. One historian suggested that Figgie suffered from erotomania.
de Selby himself found it difficult to process the new information, which the unkind might see as a dismissal of his life's work as a prominent scholar and exemplar of wisdom. But he soon realized that Figgie had deliberately set him free to write anything he wanted about her. He'd never mentioned her in print. Figgie valued her privacy. Now he could write whatever he pleased, and she would never read it. This was the last great sacrifice of a loving partner, maybe.
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