Helen Palmer Geisel met her future husband, Ted “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, in class at Oxford. She had a profound influence on his life, starting with her suggestion that he should be an artist rather than an English professor. She later said, “Ted’s notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him; here was a man who could draw such pictures; he should be earning a living doing that.” They married in 1927. Helen committed suicide In 1967 after a series of illnesses spanning 13 years. She wrote, 

“Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don’t know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, ‘failure, failure, failure…’ I love you so much … I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you … My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed … Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years …”

Secretary Julie Olfe called Palmer’s death “her last and greatest gift to him.”
And now you know why Ted had a dark side. – Indy Beagle