A Question of Time — Gertrude Atherton

Gertrude Franklin Atherton has certainly chosen an unusual subject for a novel when she makes her hero of twenty-two fall in love with a woman twenty-four years his senior, and marry her. Miss Atherton's story abounds in absurdities of which one would suppose Amelie Rives alone capable. The fact that her hero is a genius, with a capital letter which obtrudes itself on every page, may explain his eccentricities, and perhaps make intelligible his paying afternoon calls on entire strangers, accompanied by seven cats. The question whether a man should marry a woman older than himself is discussed at great length; the conclusion reached is that young geniuses should always marry women double their age-indeed, the older these are the better, since calmness and knowledge of the world are needed to counterbalance the intense temperament of the husband. The hero of "A Question of Time" is a striking example of this need. But the rule we presume to have been reached "a priori." Miss Atherton's book includes an amusing short story, "Mr. Pentleton's Four-in-hand," and it is dedicated "with apologies to the shade of Oliver Maddox-Brown."
-"The Literary World," Volume 22 1891]