There is a saying that behind every great man is a great woman. Lew Wallace would likely agree wholeheartedly with that statement. Even as a young man, before he was aware of Susan Elston, he pondered how his life would play out. Ever the romantic, Lew wrote: “I have always found the enthusiasm of love the wildest, while that of ambition is the steadiest in men’s hearts. My noblest dream of life has been one of fame, but my holiest of her whom Fate shall give me for a wife. She must have high qualities to command me. In my aspirations her spirit must follow mine in my war for the world’s bubbles, not as a squaw her savage husband, but by my side, a woman’s yet an equal spirit.” He continued: “She is waiting for me somewhere in the cool shadows of to-night, and I wait for her. She will love me and I shall make her famous by my pen and glorious by my sword.”
Lew met, fell in love, and married Susan Elston. In their 53 years of marriage, he did make her famous by his pen and glorious by his sword. Beyond his great love and admiration for Susan, Lew commented: “I would like it clearly understood how profound my respect and reverence are for good women. The feeling is owing, perhaps, to my falling so often into the care of so many of them.”
Lew, commented on Susan many times: “Fifty years and more! I can blow the time aside lightly as smoke from a cigar, and have return to that evening with Miss Elston, and her blue eyes, and wavy hair, fair face, girlish manner, delicate person, and witty flashes to vivify it.” He also wrote: “Her gentle soul has controlled me and bent me to her wishes, but unselfishly, and always for my good, and always so deftly that I was as one blind to the domination. My temper has never been so hot she could not lay it. She decided me in doubt, defended me against interruptions, saved me my time at the sacrifice of her own, cheered me when down at heart, lured me back to my tasks when the tempter would have whisked me away, held my hand in defeat and rejoiced in my triumphs . . . Her faith in me began with the beginning, when I was unknown and uncertain of myself, and the world all too ready to laugh at my attempts. . .What success has come to me, all that I am, in fact is owing to her.”
Lew was not the only person to recognize the impact that Susan had on him. On October 21, 1895, the Indianapolis Journal picked up a short article from the Philadelphia Press on Susan. It demonstrated how much she impacted him personally and professionally. Entitled: A Wife’s Persistence, the article noted: Mrs. Lew Wallace Never Allows Her Husband to Procrastinate. Mrs. Lew Wallace, like many another wife; of a man of letters, has been the shield-between her husband and the thousand small annoyances of the every-day world. She has served as a constant spur to her husband in his literary work and her pride in his genius and desire that he should make the most of It have impelled her to urge him on when he might otherwise have halted for a space. The same energetic spirit has always been carried into every detail of her life.
Procrastination is her abomination, nor is it easy for her to hate the sin and love the sinner in this regard; she is stone deaf to excuses for the delayed performance of duties and is given to quoting Horace Greeley’s saying: “The only way to do a thing is to do It.” Mrs. Wallace went through some thrilling experiences of border ruffianism in New Mexico when her husband was there. He had set determinedly about breaking up some of the worst gangs of desperadoes with the ” natural result of gaining their deadly enmity”. One young fellow of twenty-one who boasted that he had killed a man for every year he had lived staked his honor as a ruffian that Governor Wallace should be his next victim. It happened one night that Mr. and Mrs. Wallace and the youthful murderer took lodgings at the same hotel. It was a hot summer night and after going to bed Mrs. Wallace arose and opened the door of the room, speaking of the increased comfort given by the current of air. General Wallace quietly remarked. “Better leave it locked. R Is in the house watching his chance to shoot me.” One can imagine the celerity with which the door was shut and the fear and trembling in which the night was passed by Mrs. Wallace, if not by her intrepid husband.
Susan was most often viewed as a woman of quiet dignity and reserve. She was far more comfortable with her books and writing than socializing. Her favorite book was reported to be Pilgrim’s Promise (surely after Ben-Hur). Ostentatious display apparently did not mean a great deal to her. She often said of herself: “I am nothing if not practical.” The home that Lew and Susan built on Wabash Avenue in the late 1860s when they had little money outside her family fortune was the home they lived in until the end of their lives despite the great wealth they enjoyed after the success of Ben-Hur. Her niece, Rose Blair Marsh wrote of her aunt: “Hers was a match for love, to a poor man, and for years she lived in a most humble way, doing her own work. And afterwards, when fame and wealth were hers, she looked back on those early years as the happiest of her life. . .”
Although she was reserved, Susan did have a sense of humor. According to Wallace, when he finished Ben-Hur he told his wife that it was dedicated to her and she was, therefore, the one to supply the inscription. Susan wrote the words: “To The Wife Of My Youth.” As the book became more popular, Wallace began receiving notes of sympathy and questions as to how and when Mrs. Wallace died. Apparently, these inquiries didn’t bother Wallace at first—he even found some humor in them—but as the condolences added up, he decided something needed to be done. As he later recorded, he told his good woman, that she got him into this mess with her original inscription so now it was up to her to get him out of it. How Susan responded to his directive is not recorded, but in all subsequent printings of the book, her very succinct (and practical) addition to the original dedication was: “who still abides with me.”
