PART I: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

But all the world’s coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main account:

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped:

All I could never be,

All men ignored in me,

This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

RABBI BEN EZRA.

THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT BIOGRAPHY

_Part I: Biography and Autobiography_

I

BIOGRAPHY

Biography is the story of a life, told by the man who lived it or by

the student of it. Biography does not consist solely of a record of the

events and adventures that constitute the actual and visual side of

existence. It is not merely a chronological narrative of happenings,

from which the reader may divine the inner and hidden qualities of the

subject: it is primarily a statement of the subject’s thoughts and

strifes, ambitions and realisations--and, as thoughts and ambitions

condition action, behaviour and achievement, that which we call the

“life” of a man flows from them. Biography presents a picture of a

mind, a soul, a heart; of an environment; of successes and failures

that make, or seek to make, the subject immortal. Biography strives to

make the subject as real as a character in fiction; actually, it makes

him as real as life. This, of course, applies to good biography, to

that sort of writing which may be classed as a branch of literature,

are not to the formless productions that are often labelled “biography”

and “autobiography.”

The art of living has always been man’s preoccupation, and has afforded

him constant and unlimited interest. This interest is increased by

the opportunities he has of looking into the past, and of learning

how others “turned the trick” called living. From biography man gets

moral, physical, mental and emotional assistance; he sees where others

have failed and why; he recognises avoidable obstacles and handicaps;

he learns the value of health and its relation to happiness; and he is

made to see that material prosperity does not always spell spiritual

welfare. He appreciates the meaning of culture and its influence on the

individual and his time; he runs the gamut of emotions that are aroused

by all good biographies; he suffers vicariously, or enjoys objectively

with the subject. His own life therefore becomes happier and more

complete because of his intimate sojourn with a successful predecessor.

To some readers, biography affords the opportunity of gleaning

historical facts without hard work; as a matter-of-fact much might be

said about the similarity of the two arts. It is safe to presume that

Voltaire would say about biography what he said about history: “a lie

agreed to.” Less stress, however, can be laid on the “agreed to” in

regard to biography, because whereas history is officially admitted

to be true, biography, not dealing exclusively with facts, is the

stepping stone between fiction and history. Indeed, the fictionist

is a biographer; when he creates a type of individual, he becomes

his biographer, all the more so since the type exists only in his

imagination. To blow the breath of life into the nostrils of a statue

as Aphrodite did in answer to Pygmalion’s prayer is a remarkable

achievement, but to lay bare the human soul so that he who walks

leisurely may read, compares favourably with it. When a biographer

studies a character in real life, or when a man writes his own life, he

has opportunity, by masterful handling of the theme, to push into the

darkness characters that have been built by the fancy of the novelist,

and to make them appear by contrast lifeless and stilted; for he deals

with the very essence of life; it is a real heart which palpitates

under his hand, real nerves that tingle and thrill. The novelist must

be content to deal with the children of his mind, the biographer with

the children of God.

As an art, biography is older than the invention of writing. Doubtless

it has existed since the creation of man. In ancient times, it took the

form of tradition, transmitted by word of mouth, which later became

the foundation of legends and mythology. It has now reached a high

degree of development; this is the best proof that man is unable to

build his life on the present alone, or on hope of the future. He must

still refer to the past for encouragement and stimulation. To begin at

the beginning, the masters of the remote ages had left to the world

great treasures of biographical matter; from Xenophon we know about

the philosophers, especially Socrates. The life of Alexander the Great

is set down in immortal words by Quintus Curtius; Tacitus has left a

biography of Agricola, familiarity with which is part of the classical

education; and to go back still further, to an authority that has lost

none of its prestige as centuries succeed centuries, the Old Testament

abounds in biographies.

Plutarch is the parent of biographical art. His _Lives of Famous Men_

is the source from which all later biography has flown. His conception

of the art is the one we have to-day, save that he, like all other

biographers of antiquity, sought to include an era in his studies.

There was constant competition in the importance between his subjects

as individuals, and the epochs in which these subjects lived. The

tendency then was to put man a little in the shadow in order that

his time might stand out clearly; as a result, biographies of olden

times were more concerned with principles of truth and morals than

with men; they were treatises through which the writer could expound

his doctrines and principles. Soon, however, fortunately for the art

under discussion, writers discovered that man alone is not big enough

successfully to compete with his epoch, and in the Middles Ages,

biographers realised that their task should be narrowly confined

between two events: the birth and the death of their subject. Outside

events, revolutions, and world affairs must be reduced to the point

where they could not diminish the importance of the person whose

biography was written. It was then that biographies became the sort of

literature they are to-day. They grew more subjective, more personal,

more deserving of the definition Thomas Fuller gives the art of

biography: “To hand down to a future age the history of individual men

or women, to transmit their exploits and characteristics.” The man as

implicit self, explicit in action, the person and his personations, are

what biography aims to depict.

The Greek’s conception of personality as we understand it was most

rudimentary. It consisted in the abundance of things which a man did.

A recital of deeds by a chorus was an adequate reflection of the

personality of a hero. It was not until Christianity put in practice

its principle of self-analysis that consciousness of personality became

dominant. Then it was made to embrace the abundance of things which a

man is--and might have been.

When a biography is all that it should be in form and subject, it may

be said to be the surest means of safeguarding a memory from oblivion.

As Jacques Aymot, the first translator of Plutarch, said: “There is

neither picture nor image of marble, nor triumphal arch, nor pillar,

nor sepulchre that can match the durableness of an eloquent biography

with qualities which it should have.” Regrettably, there are few such

biographies and, judging from the output of the past two or three

years, there is small encouragement for believing that we shall ever

have another Boswell. Like clothing, biographies of to-day look better

than the old ones, but they do not wear so well.

Biographies are written for many reasons, but the chief one is a

genuine desire to help others to live successfully. Now and then an

author seeks egotistically to perpetuate his own name, to identify

himself with some feature of immortality, but as a rule the creation

of such work is a response to the commemorative and altruistic urges.

Man works, builds, suffers, progresses, thinks and hopes--then death

comes before he has had time to finish a task which could never be

completed, should he live a thousand years, the task of perfecting the

world in the measure allotted to him. The only means at his disposal of

passing on to future generations the wisdom he has so dearly learned is

to write the story of his life, or to leave records and memoranda of it

that some one else may write it.

Relatives and debtors of great characters should not undertake to be

their biographers. Few have been successful in a gesture which is

usually dictated by loyalty to the dead or by piety. Most of such

works are written to order by widows profoundly appreciative of

their departed husband’s virtues and attainments; or by children or

colleagues who would have their benefactor’s virtues perpetuated. There

are a few, however, which are definite contributions to personality

studies--such as George Herbert Palmer’s _Life of Alice Freeman Palmer_

and René Valléry-Radot’s _Life of Pasteur_, his father-in-law; and

there are others which are important personality documents--such as

_The Life of Olive Schreiner_ and _The Letters of Olive Schreiner_,

edited by her widower, and _Out of the Past_, by Margaret Vaughan,

daughter of John Addington Symonds.

Biographies are read for many reasons: the chief one is to be found

in the nature of man; neither angel nor demon, neither beast nor god,

he is fascinated by his fellow men; and their actions and reactions,

which can generally be paralleled with his own or with those of his

acquaintances, become part of himself and excite sentiments in him that

the record of the life of an angel or of a demon could not arouse.

Then, too, it is one of man’s most dominant traits to show an untiring

interest in the affairs of his neighbours, and as a rule, neighbours

are delighted to show the inside of their houses, the manner in which

they are cared for, and the preoccupations of those living in them.

In reading biographies and autobiographies, we cherish the hope of

discovering some hidden and monstrous secret, of finding enlightenment

about the soul and its motives. If the subject has been a magnate in

business, we expect to find an easy way to make a success in life; if

he is a Martineau, we look for a formula for shouldering burdens; if

the writer is a Papini, we seek for help to withstand failure.

All biographers do not use the same method to achieve their ends.

All physicians do not use the same method to diagnosticate disease.

Some do it by painstaking analysis of the symptoms; others by process

of elimination. One biographer reveals the spiritual and physical

development of the individual by narrating his conduct, relating his

successes and failures and by giving detailed accounts of his forebears

and environment; another takes the individual, endows him with certain

distinctive qualities and then proceeds to analyse, and later to

synthetise them for our approbation, admiration, or amazement.

Stories of individuals’ lives have the fascination for adults that

fairy tales have for children. They engender a variety of emotional

states; most of them pleasurable and consequently beneficial. When we

come upon one that excites anger or disgust or anything approaching

it, there is no law or convention that compels us to continue reading

it. Next to poetry, biography is the most satisfactory reading for all

ages: instructive to youth, inspiring to maturity, solacing to old

age. Its human interest, its preoccupation with man, brings it close

to our understanding and to our emotions: “Truth,” said Stevenson,

“even in literature must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it can

not tell its own story to the reader.” Hence good biographies are

more entertaining and more edifying than books of theory or precept.

It is not astonishing that the reading world should be constantly

concerned with the manifestation of personality; in no literary field

can such manifestation reveal itself more conspicuously, display

itself more freely, explain itself more fully than in biographies and

autobiographies.

Each age has its joys and preoccupations; each epoch its dominant

tendencies and interests; these are displayed in contemporary writings

more convincingly than in any other heritage that comes down to us,

and the reading of biographies and autobiographies can do more toward

giving us a clear and general vision of an epoch than any other

study can do. In Plutarch’s time, when oratory was prized equally

with statesmanship, the great men who were to figure in the _Famous

Lives_ were chosen almost exclusively from those whose eloquence and

whose diplomacy had made them prominent among their contemporaries.

“Belles-Lettres” were a sign of culture then; beautiful expression of

speech an art; hence, the biographies of famous men included especially

orators and statesmen.

Later, when the world was engrossed in long periods of wars and

conquests; when Mars was more venerated than the Muses; and when

honours and glories went to those who distinguished themselves on

the battlefield, crusaders and conquerors received the homage of

mankind. Their lives and deeds were set down for posterity. Then came

the long years of the Renaissance; the time when men’s eyes were

turned toward artistic possessions and achievements which heretofore

had been neglected and which, as a result of familiarity with other

countries, they had now learned to appreciate. They saw tendencies and

realisations which theirs did not possess; they envied the artistic

superiority of their neighbours and they steeped themselves and their

children in the new beauty which had been revealed to them. The

dominant passion of the cultured class--the class to which writing

and reading were more or less familiar pleasures--was an adoration

of art which had become the glory of the period. Small wonder that

the greatest biographies and autobiographies of these times were

of artists. Vasari wrote of painters, sculptors and architects and

Plutarch was his model and his master.

At a time when England was free from external and internal

disturbances, a draper with literary bent solaced his old age with

writing, and consequently we have in Izaak Walton’s _Life of Richard

Hooker_ and of _John Donne_ and three other friends, the first really

great biography of modern times. The outstanding charm of Walton’s

_Lives_ is that they reveal the author more clearly than the subject.

With the exception of Walpole and Pepys, and possibly Boswell, no

biographer, letter-writer or diarist has left his measure to posterity

with such completeness and accuracy as did Walton.

The period of sophistication which the late seventeenth century saw

in Europe is revealed especially by the Memoirs which abounded at the

time. Saint-Simon and Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Motteville and Louis

XIV, while embracing all contemporary history, give minute details of

the famous men and women of that period. Later, when sophistication

had been replaced by frivolity, and when the morals of the great

nations of Europe had lost their decorum, free love and its pleasures,

irresponsibility and antinomy became the fashion. The _Confessions_ of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau testify to this fact, although his preoccupations

were subjective and introspective. He was determined to unveil himself

so that the features of his life would be as clear to men as they

had been to God. And there was a challenge in his gesture: he would

expose all his vileness and then dare any one to say “I am a better

man!” He wrote his autobiography at a time when his mental balance

was not what it had been; but that is one of its greatest merits.

It is a common impression among sane persons that the writings of

psychopaths are without value or interest. They are usually of greater

merit artistically, and far more informative and suggestive than those

of the equilibrated. What Rousseau did for himself, lesser men were

tempted to do for others, and thus from its most famous life-history,

biographical writing got its first great stimulus in France. As time

progressed and artistic achievement became less important, biographies

were replaced by contributions “useful” to civilisation. Biographies

and autobiographies then grew less concerned with ideals and became

mirrors of personalities. Always a sign of the times, they were never

more so than when they shed some of their introspection, and took on

universality and externalisation.

Our conception of personality confronted with modern scientific

analysis becomes less specific. We can not define self, we can describe

it; it is so chameleon-like that the self of one day or one year is

not like the one of the day before or the year after. In view of the

tremendous and increasing interest in personality due to an awakening

of the sense of personal responsibility, to the increasing interest

in human immortality, and to the widespread and searching study of

abnormal manifestations of personality, it is not to be wondered that

biographical writing which aims at revealing personality is so popular.

The time has now come when every one writes biography or autobiography,

and from every corner of the earth, and from every branch of human or

divine activity, there pour forth studies of the lives of prominent

representatives. Musicians, poets, novelists, artisans, actors,

playwrights, moving-picture stars and would-be stars, unfrocked

clergymen, prize fighters, puzzle-makers, chess players, tennis

champions, dethroned monarchs, manufacturers and jazzers have followed

the movement, and as a result biographies are enjoying a great

vogue. Soon people will make their living, not by taking in each

other’s washing as Mark Twain predicted, but by selling each other’s

biographies.

When the King of the Chewing Gum Industry and the Czar of the Chain

Cigar Stores--or some one able to write better than they--shall have

related their lives and revealed the secret of their success, we shall

know nearly everything we need to know about the business of life.

Should Gerald Chapman have opportunity to publish his autobiography

before he is hanged, we shall have a document rivalling in interest

the greatest biographies of the past, for he would probably be able

to display the sincerity of Jean-Jacques, the honesty of Benvenuto

Cellini and the frankness of Dick Turpin. There seems to be no escape

from the deluge, and it is probable that no escape should be wished

for. There is no harm in writing one’s biography; it is the subject

that one knows best and about which one is supposed to know more than

any one else. But, alas, it is given to only one man in a million to be

really self-revelatory. The only thing that can legitimately be wished

is that the facile biographer should evince the same ardour for truth,

sincerity and form that he does for approval, approbation and applause.

If only a few of the hundreds of biographies and autobiographies that

are constantly appearing succeed in surviving, there will be one thing

for which our age should be gratefully remembered. For, if we know what

a man really feels and thinks, we know the man, and forgiveness flows

from understanding.

However, a careful study of modern biographies, with all credit

to the few which prove that the art is not lost and that it has

disciples and followers, does not reveal the existence of biographies

or autobiographies of genius. None of the recent ones comes up to

the standard of many of the great ones of the past. It is true that

these set up such a stage of perfection that it would be fatuous to

hope that such performance can be repeated by every biographer. Now

and then one comes upon a meritorious book such as Valléry-Radot’s

_Life of Pasteur_, Charnwood’s _Life of Abraham Lincoln_, Cushing’s

Life of _William Osler_, but they are few and far between. Of the

hundred and more recent biographies and autobiographies that have been

read in preparation of this volume, scarcely half a dozen have real

claim to distinction, and none is worthy of comparison with the great

predecessors.

Opinions differ widely as to which is the greatest biography and the

greatest autobiography ever written. In all such matters, taste alone

does not prevail; opinions are formed according to what one seeks in

biographies, and to the measure in which one finds it. Few readers,

however, can resist the charm of Boswell’s _Life of Samuel Johnson_,

generally considered the greatest biography ever published. It is

undoubtedly the most perfect portrait of a man ever painted with

words; full-size, revealing all the blotches, pimples and blemishes

and all the beauty in the complexion of the character. Boswell loved

his subject, and then he studied it; love combined with critical

perception, literary gifts blended with human understanding, beauty

of form adapted to beauty of subject are the outstanding features

of Boswell’s _Life_. It is a model biography inasmuch as it has set

a standard for this sort of intimate personal narrative; his exact

reproduction of the conversations in their original form gives to the

reader the impression that he is living with Johnson instead of making

his acquaintance through a medium. And the best proof of the value and

quality of this biography is that, thanks to James Boswell, Samuel

Johnson is one of the best known men in history. No other character

study has ever attained the perfection that the _Life_ has attained;

there is a touch of genius in Boswell, and remarkable literary

facility. The more we study him, and the more we compare him with other

biographers, the greater his work and his genius appear. Fortunately

for his memory, the picture that posterity preserves of him is the

one he painted himself, not that sketched by Geoffrey Scott in _The

Portrait of Zélide_.

Lockhart’s _Life of Walter Scott_ may be said to be the most admirable

biography in the English language, after Boswell’s _Samuel Johnson_.

Lockhart had all the odds in his favour when he wrote his _magnum

opus_. He had had the advantage of years of close intimacy with Walter

Scott, who liked him as a writer of promise and achievement, before he

loved him as a son; and Lockhart’s sensitive and impressionable mind

was the best fitted receptacle for the genius of his father-in-law. He

devoted years to the writing of the biography which made him famous,

and he made it a labour of joy. It is at once objective and subjective;

it includes all the characteristics of the great Scotch writer; it is

criticism and biography combined. Trevelyan came near accomplishing

a similar success in _The Life and Letters of Macaulay_, a most

satisfactory biography. _The Life of Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield_,

by Monypenny and Buckle, an illuminating, accurate and complete account

of a complex personality and of his ancestors, compares favourably with

both of them. The modern biographies worthy to hold a place with these

great ones are Sidney Lee’s _Life of Shakespeare_ and Lytton Strachey’s

_Queen Victoria_. There probably never was a more tangled jungle to

explore, survey and stake out than that presented by the traditions,

theories and conjectures that have grown around the greatest poet since

Dante. Sir Sidney Lee succeeded in giving an exhaustive summary of

everything credible that has been written about Shakespeare and he gave

the _coup de grâce_ to much that was not only fictitious but monstrous,

particularly about the sonnets. There are few biographies that display

such tact, insight, erudition, industry and judgment, and if popularity

is in direct relationship to merit, it may be interesting to note that

it has had ten editions since its first publication in 1898. The only

one that rivals it is Strachey’s _Queen Victoria_, but Strachey’s task

was much easier. It is, however, a great feat to have made known to her

own people the Queen who reigned over them for nearly sixty years!

Lord Byron, one of the most astonishing figures of the nineteenth

century, found an exceptional biographer in Ethel Colburn Mayne. Byron

had the qualities of his defects and the defects of his qualities to

an extraordinary degree. There was such disparity between his nature

and his actions, his personality and its manifestations that it is a

difficult task for any biographer to plumb his depth and reveal his

intricacies. Although Moore wrote a life of him that has great merit,

he did not succeed in doing this. Miss Mayne has, and her book is the

best personality portrait of Byron that we have, and E. Barrington has

not jeopardised its claim with _Glorious Apollo_. She played the double

rôle of biographer and novelist, the latter a little too convincingly.

It is gratifying to note that she changed her point of view in regard

to Trelawny after reading Mrs. Olwen Campbell’s _Shelley and the

Unromantics_.

Biographers do not like to admit flaws in their heroes, and so Miss

Mayne finds excuses for Byron’s faults, passes lightly over his frailty

and is extremely reticent concerning the great mystery of his life. She

presents the facts of the “Astarte” question as they have been made

known by Byron’s grandson, Ralph, Earl of Lovelace, who died in 1906.

Every person interested in literature knows that the book “Astarte”

was written to vindicate the character of Lady Byron, who left her

husband, alleging that he had had meretricious relationship with his

half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and that he was the father of the child,

Medora. Miss Mayne’s comment is interesting: “Only pity will avail for

understanding of this household and we need but know the future of the

husband, the wife and Augusta Leigh for pity to constrain our heart.”

Hero-worship is one of the necessary factors of good biographies. At

the service of critical ability, and kept within the limit of facts,

it may result in such seductive reading as Mr. Charles Wheeler Coit’s

_The Royal Martyr_. Charles I, of England, his tragedy and its causes

are there rendered in their true light. A martyr he was, indeed--and

modest like most martyrs. Mr. Coit has done historical biography a

great service, because his book is more than readable--it has charm.

His display of erudition is nowhere overwhelming, but his fine use of

English and the poetical turn of his prose make literature of what

might have been a textbook. Love and loyalty to King Charles do not

blind him to his weaknesses--but he finds apologies for them, and he is

convincing. “The Royal Martyr” is one of the finest biographies, in the

more serious line, that has recently come out of England. For the king,

it will make hero-worshippers, and, for the biographer, admirers.

The best personality portrait with which I am familiar is that of

John Addington Symonds, sketched and painted by himself and finished

by his friend Horatio F. Brown. It is a model psychological biography

which concerns itself particularly with the nature and display of

the temperament of a man who was a strange mixture of mysticism and

practicality, scepticism and credulity, piety and sensuousness,

emotion and intellect; and who had, with it all, extraordinary energy,

painstaking industry, tireless application. Practically a life-long

invalid, and without the spur of poverty, he accomplished a stupendous

amount of literary work of the first order: biography, essays,

criticism, poetry, translation--which is likely to be more familiar to

coming generations than it was to his own. His history of the Italian

Renaissance, his translation of Benvenuto Cellini’s _Memoirs_ and his

version of the sonnets of Michael Angelo give him a permanent place in

literature.

Any one who would fit himself to recognise the neuropathic

constitution, the manic-depressive personality, the artistic

temperament, the hedonistic attitude, the religious nature, can do so

by reading comprehensively Horatio Brown’s splendid biography of John

Addington Symonds. Possessors of the phlegmatic temperament may get

neither profit nor pleasure from reading it, but all others will, and

many will get nourishing food for thought.

And now comes his daughter to say tactfully and deferentially that her

father was not at all the kind of man that his friend the Venetian

historian depicted; at least she wants to tell the world that there

were important facets of John Addington Symonds’ nature that were not

revealed by it. _Out of the Past_ is a fascinating biography and it

should succeed in reviving interest in an unusual personality who wore

the mantle of Pico della Mirandola with grace and distinction.

Another satisfactory biography is Henry Morley’s _Life of Jerome

Cardan_. Jerome Cardan would seem to have been the last man to appeal

to the fancy of an Englishman. He was versatile and unreliable; he had

the qualities and the charm of his race, but few of its defects; his

life was a constant pursuit of something ethereal and unreal, with,

however, definite achievements as its basis. Henry Morley understood

and interpreted his subject as though there were not between him and it

the almost impenetrable wall of difference of nationality. Regardless

of the admiration one may have for a foreigner, one can never get as

close to him as to a countryman; the wall prevents it, and love does

not always bridge it. Then, there was between them the wide span of

time; almost three hundred years had passed since the death of Jerome

Cardan, during which the Italian race had suffered more changes than

the British race. All these did not render the biographer’s task

easier, but Morley’s biography shows neither strain nor effort. It is

written gracefully and emotionally, as becomes the biography of one of

Italy’s most graceful and most sensitive children.

Yet it is not this Morley, but one of his name, John, Lord Morley,

who has gained a permanent position in biographic literature. The

latter’s series of studies on the literary preparation for the French

Revolution, and his books on Burke, Cromwell and Gladstone entitle him

to rank as the first critical biographer of his time.

His _Life of Gladstone_, though by no means a satisfactory biography

of the man who was called the day he died, and not by an Englishman,

“the world’s greatest citizen,” is a monument to his industry and an

enduring testimonial to his literary distinction. But it is the life of

the statesman, and Gladstone was not that alone--he was a moralist, a

theologian, a prophet, and now, a generation after his death, a writer

publicly brands him libertine and hypocrite! Man or superman, he had

positive views about literature which he often expressed dogmatically.

It may quite well be that the lasting substance of his fame is

dependent upon his performances and ideals as statesman, but readers

seeking instruction and diversion from biography want to be told of

the facets of his personality. They would gladly exchange some of the

debates and divisions, speeches and bills, for information about him

on the personal rather than on the public side; they are as interested

in a great Christian as they are in a great statesman, perhaps more

so; they want him interpreted as a sign of his time just as they want

Lincoln, or Cavour, or Bismarck interpreted.

Mrs. Gaskell’s _Life of Charlotte Brontë_, after many vicissitudes,

has taken a place among the great biographies. Soon after its

publication about seventy years ago, it was alleged by many to be

unsound, untruthful, unjust, but time has shown it to be a remarkably

accurate picture of a humourless genius who was sensitive, shy and

temperamental, and whose statements were sometimes founded in fancy

rather than in fact.

Biography-writing has been influenced, as novel-writing has been, by

the researches and discoveries of modern psychology, particularly by

the teachings of Freud, and to a lesser extent of the behaviourists.

The most prominent representative of this “new” kind of biography

is Gamaliel Bradford. He is not, however, a Freudian, but a sane,

temperate, laboriously trained writer who has a profound regard for

facts, great industry in unearthing them, and much skill in serving

them daintily and appetisingly, seasoned with fancy, to the reading

public. Mr. Harvey O’Higgins has swallowed the doctrines of the

Viennese mystic, bait, line and sinker, and in _The American Mind

in Action_ he has attempted to show how well he has digested and

assimilated them. A journalist by training, he has mastered the

Freudian jargon, and he writes it with the same ease that James Joyce

writes of the subconscious distillation and conscious crystallisation

of Mr. and Mrs. Bloom. He is the Técla of biographers, but he offers

his goods to the trade as genuine. They do not deceive experts. He

is attempting to do for biographies what Dr. George M. Gould did a

few years ago in his biographical clinics. Only he substituted the

Œdipus-complex for Eye Strain.

Œdipus Redivivus will have a longer day in court than Eye Strain had

and more spectators, and there is a salaciousness about the testimony

elicited that the elicitors and the audience like, but the verdict in

both cases will be similar.

A form of biography that is apparently finding great favour is

represented by such books as _The Divine Lady_, _Ariel_, _The Portrait

of Zélide_, _The Nightingale_, _Glorious Apollo_. It is an elaboration

of the variety popularised by Mr. Gamaliel Bradford which he calls

psychographs. These are psychographs and somagraphs flavoured with

time-denatured scandal. They are easy reading, mildly instructive,

and moderately diverting. They are a good substitute for fiction and

a fairly acceptable one for history, and they are infinitely to be

preferred to biographic fiction such as _He Was a Man_, the life of

Jack London, by Rose Wilder Lane.

They do things differently in France, and to point out the difference

between their point of view and ours in most matters that have to do

with artistic or literary manifestations, is not to show partisanship

for either side. But books like _Ariel_, _The Divine Lady_, _Zélide_,

must be admitted to be nothing more nor less than tales of love, under

guise of historical veracity. This pretence soothes the sense of

decorum of the American public which would be outraged if the books

were openly and unreservedly published as “romances.” The French adopt

the opposite policy. And one of the most respectable and ancient

publishing houses in Paris has recently commissioned several prominent

authors to write the biographies of the “loves” of great historical

characters. The series opened with Marcelle Tinayre’s _La Vie Amoureuse

de Madame de Pompadour_, and continued with that of _Talma_, by

André Antoine; _Louis XIV_, by his great biographer, Louis Bertrand;

_Casanova_, by the coming great poet, Maurice Rostand; and _Marceline

Desbordes-Valmore_, by the Goncourt Academician, Lucien Descaves.

The amorous life of _Joséphine_ has also appeared, written in the

delightful style and sensitive vein of Gérard d’Houville, the wife of

Henri de Régnier. More are coming, and they all bear the general name

of _Leurs Amours_. It is a new sort of biography which is bound to be

popular. Although it might be misunderstood in this country, it is not

in France where love and lovers are not taboo, even when they concern

great characters. These books purposely neglect historical facts,

except insofar as they relate to the love-lives of their subjects or

as they are necessary to the guidance of the reader. The object of the

series is to portray various personages solely in their relation to

love; and, so far, the experiment has been successful.

_The Portrait of Zélide_, by Geoffrey Scott, is the best fictional

biography that has been published in English. It is the story of

an eighteenth century Dutch belle, Isabelle Van Tuyll, who, after

she married her brother’s tutor, Monsieur de Charrière, developed a

reputation for wit, wilfulness and culture that extended far beyond

her native or her adopted country. She had the artistic temperament

associated with unusual intellectual endowment, remarkable facility of

expression and a great fascination for men. A friendly critic told her

that she wrote better than any one known to him, not even excepting

Voltaire; and Sainte-Beuve, the greatest critic of the day, said

that she had the “authentic tongue of Versailles.” She wrote a brief

description of herself which she called “The Portrait of Zélide,” and

which, as literary self-portraiture, has rarely been surpassed:

“Compassionate in temper and liberal by inclination,

Zélide is patient only on principle; when she is

indulgent and easy, be grateful to her, for it costs her

an effort. When she prolongs her civility with people

she holds in small esteem, redouble your admiration: she

is in torture. Vain at first by nature, her vanity has

become boundless; knowledge and scorn of mankind soon

perfected that quality. Yet, this vanity is excessive

even to her own taste. She already thinks that fame is

worth nothing at the cost of happiness, and yet she would

make many an effort for fame.

“Would you like to know if Zélide is beautiful, or

pretty, or merely passable? I can not tell; it all

depends on whether one loves her, or on whether she

wishes to make herself be loved. She has a beautiful

neck, and displays it at some sacrifice to modesty.

“Excessively emotional, and not less fastidious, she can

not be happy either with or without love. Perceiving

herself too sensitive to be happy, she has almost ceased

to aspire to happiness and has devoted herself to

goodness. She thus escapes repentance and seeks only for

diversion.

“Can you not guess her secret? Zélide is somewhat

sensuous. Emotions too vivid and too intense for her

organism, and exaggerated activity without any satisfying

object, these are the sources of all her misfortunes.

With less sensibility, Zélide would have had the mind of

a great man; with less intelligence, she would have been

only a weak woman.”

Sensuous she may have been, but sex never clamoured very loudly for

appeasement. Her emotions were too vivid and intense for her organism

and she lived in perpetual warfare with herself. Profoundly egotistic

she delighted in revealing herself. Her self-esteem did not permit her

to soften a defect or enhance a quality. In spite of her egotism she

gave out more than she received because of her abounding vitality of

mind and body. Her early love affairs were purely cerebral--indeed all

of them were until she met Benjamin Constant. She married without love,

because her mind told her that having reached the age of twenty-eight

it would be unwise to delay. Monsieur Hermenches, an older man, was

her first friend--one could scarcely call him lover. He had had

success with women, but she could not accept a master. When she was

twenty-three she met Boswell and for nine months she amused herself

at his expense. He was so assured of his own charm that he believed

Zélide was in love with him, and if he could reform her, he intended

to marry her. But Zélide had no desire or intention to reform. After

endeavouring in vain to support the boredom of life at Colombier,

whither she had gone with her conventional and unemotional husband,

she became ill and was sent to Paris for a change. There she met

Benjamin Constant, the nephew of her early friend Hermenches. He was

twenty, she was forty-seven. The attraction was mutual and immediate;

disparity of years was ignored; they spoke a common language and felt

that they had each found an _alter ego_. Constant, despite a most

unattractive exterior, appears to have made powerful appeal to women;

during his long association with Zélide, he had many _amours_ of which

she was cognisant. They did not arouse in her the slightest feeling of

jealousy. She feared only intellectual rivalry. Her love affair with

Constant lasted many years and was interrupted and finally shattered by

the advent of Madame de Staël. Constant was unable to withstand Madame

de Staël. Possibly he was tired of being completely understood and may

have craved the companionship of some one who would idealise him. He

met her at the psychological moment. Her strong personality, combined

with great sensuality, attracted him and obscured her limitations.

There was not room in his heart and mind for two women and Zélide had

to give way. She accepted the situation quietly and reasonably, but

never recovered.

Her death was tragic for she realised that she had failed to accomplish

that which she had set out to do. She was a great character to whom

truth made a profound appeal. Illusions and shams were abhorrent to

her. She showed this in her dispassionate description of herself;

her power of separating herself from her subject is extraordinary.

Above all her predilections, she sought reality. In a world where

the majority prefer illusions, it was difficult for her to find

congeniality. For a while she believed that she found it in Benjamin

Constant but it was transitory. She died alone, solitary in death as

she had been in life.

Some day a psychologist will explain why the artistic temperament is

inimical to happiness. Madame de Charrière had health, beauty, charm,

wealth, a complaisant husband, an ardent lover, an indulgent conscience

and withal ability which was loudly applauded and remotely echoed, but

she was not happy. Perhaps she would not have gone all the way with

Anatole France who said that he had never had a happy day in his life,

but she would know just what he meant to convey.

Beauty, fame, love and riches are seldom synonymous with happiness. The

case of Zélide is only one instance of the truth of this statement; she

has sisters in all races, in all times, and Yang Kuei-Fei, whom Mrs.

Shu-Chiung introduces to Western civilisation under the name of _The

Most Famous Beauty of China_, is another of those whom the gods loved

and tortured.

Then there is the form of biography that is not a portrait of the

soul or of the body, nor is it exactly fictional biography. It stands

midway between the psychographed and the idealised life. A conspicuous

practitioner of this branch of art is Meade Minnigerode. He calls his

latest book _Lives and Times, Four Informal American Biographies_.

Mr. Minnigerode has at his service a keen--almost too keen--fictional

sense. He seems to have less regard for truth and facts than for

incidentals that make a good picture and enhance a story; and in his

painstaking and careful selection of material, he uses only whatever

assists him in building characters and situations. He has searched not

so much for that which reveals character as motives in higher relief.

As a result, we know less accurately what the four characters really

were, than what Mr. Minnigerode thought they were--almost what he

thought it would be interesting for them to be.

The book, however, is convincing and that may be its greatest danger.

Whatever one’s cool judgment may be, it carries; and this success

is probably due to the many vivid scenes and to the clever, if not

profound or necessarily true, characterisations.

_Lives and Times_ will delight most persons who are interested in early

New York, because it is an attempt to do for that City what Dickens did

for London. “That funny little town” as it first appeared to Jumel, and

Philadelphia where Citizen Genêt suffered, are described in all their

arrogance, pathos, bustle and absurdity. And it is done with neither

sympathy nor indulgence, but with a smart dart which pricks through

every page. No one very young and no one very old should read it. The

young are too prone to look lightly on the generally respected portions

of society, and the old would be angered. But most of all, no one

without a sense of humour should read it; and to a sense of humour must

be added perspective and a knowledge of the writing motives of the day.

Let him read it who will not take it too seriously. Such an one will

be entertained and will acquire a feeling for the seethe and churn and

moil of the early days of the Republic which will be a real addition to

his sense of what early America was--or may well have been--if it was

as interesting as all that.

Yet, Mr. Minnigerode’s book does not contribute to the sum total of

our knowledge of human personality, and that because it does not get

behind the scenes; the whole action is played on the footlights and no

preparation is ever visible. Characters must take their place in the

scenery and are so overwhelmed with the details of the machinery that

they fade from the picture. They are lost in their time. The author

had a chance to work out the drives and conflicts going on back stage

in the mind of Aaron Burr, for instance. But he neglected it; little

is added to our real sense of what the man was. We know how he met

situations, but not why. We know what he seemed to desire, but we

never touch the spring of that desire. And the same thing is true of

Theodosia. The picture is always charming and rendered with delightful

observations and turns of expression. But none of the questions that

rush to our mind as we read of her are answered. Her death is moving;

yet we are stirred not by the loss of a character we have known, but

merely by the disappearance of one whom we have seen move gracefully

across the page.

And the other two characters, William Eaton and Genêt seem even less

real. The study of Jumel is the most penetrating of the biographies,

though it may be the most blameworthy from the point of view of the

“gossip urge in man.” But at least the man becomes real and known,

and we can appreciate the strange loyalty that bound him to his own

destruction. He holds together, grows and develops, reaches the climax

of his own possibilities and goes down to an end which is convincing.

There is a picture of desolation in his solitude which is a literary

contribution if not strictly a biographical one.

It is not entirely just to Mr. George S. Hellman to put his biography

of _Washington Irving_ in the category defined for Mr. Minnigerode’s

book, but it fits there more accurately than elsewhere. It is

laden with personalities and generously interspersed with gossip;

particularly about Irving’s love affairs, perhaps the most interesting

thing in the world about which to gossip and to conjecture: “It seems

perhaps a cruel thing to say, but I am convinced that if Mathilda

Hoffman had lived, the man of letters that the world of literature

knows as Washington Irving would never have come into being.” Perhaps

“cruel” is not the most felicitous adjective that the author might have

used. No doubt many will find Mr. Hellman’s interpretation of Irving’s

amativeness very entertaining, but it will scarcely add anything to his

reputation as the greatest pioneer of American literature.

Mr. Hellman says, “The present volume has been called ‛Washington

Irving, Esq.,’ and it is in the life of a great and lovable gentleman

that we are far more interested than in the easily ascertainable

achievement of the writer whose works have long been the subject of

critical evaluation.” If he had added to this that he had also wanted

to give Irving’s first biographer, his nephew, a black eye, and to

include a lot of letters which Irving had written from Spain, chiefly

to the State Department, it would have been a perfect description of

the motive for writing the book.

There are so many recent biographies that fall short of the ideal

that it would seem prejudiced distinction to make mention of one and

to point out with some specificity its shortcomings. But Mr. Ernest

Brennecke, Jr., had an unusual opportunity, an inspiring subject,

and a waiting public for his work. His _Life of Thomas Hardy_ must

be reckoned a failure. The reader who can glean a concept of the

personality of the famous English novelist and poet, whom George Moore

has recently derided, from Mr. Brennecke’s book has great perspicacity.

The narrative itself is clumsily composed and awkwardly arranged;

the material obtained from personal contact with Mr. Hardy is used

maladroitly; gossip, anecdote and puerile information clog the wheel

of the story; and the backgrounds of “origins” and “The Soil” take up

nearly a third of the volume. In a foreword, the author says, “There

is little spice and perhaps too little story in this book.” I would

not say so, but there is too little style, substance and sequence; too

much irrelevancy and not enough form and finality. If Mr. Brennecke had

given to Mr. Strachey one of the ten years that he devoted to Mr. Hardy

he might have written a more acceptable book.

The picture of Thomas Hardy which I should prefer to keep is neither

that which George Moore has slashed irreverently nor that which Mr.

Brennecke has muddled with too much reverence, but that traced by James

Barrie in his famous rectorial address: “The pomp and circumstance of

war will pass, and all others now alive may fade from the scene, but

I think the quiet figure of Hardy will live on.” As an antidote, I

suggest to those who have not found Dr. F. A. Hedgcock’s _Thomas Hardy_

sufficiently informative and appreciative that they read the chapter

entitled “The Builders” in Miss M. P. Willocks’ recent book called

_Between the Old World and the New_.

Another biography which should be discouraged is _James Elroy Flecker_,

by his friend Douglas Goldring. Critics of poetry who fulfil all the

requirements set forth in Flecker’s Essay on “The Public as Art Critic”

say that he has a permanent place in English literature. We should

like to forget that his obscenity amounted to a gift; that one of Mrs.

Peachum’s many descendants taunted him at a dinner party that his

swarthiness would succumb to “soap and water” and that he thought our

boys should not neglect the _Cortigiano_; whether he had one or several

moustaches during his early manhood does not seem to be essential

for our understanding of his emotions or our comprehension of his

intellectual remains.

Flecker was a champion of beauty. One who knows him only from his

friend’s “appreciation” could scarcely believe it.

For years Henry Fairfield Osborn, a distinguished naturalist of New

York, has been publishing a variety of biography somewhat after the

manner of the “Roadmakers” series of Small, Maynard and Co. It deserves

praise and imitation. _Impressions of Great Naturalists_ are made up of

reminiscences of Darwin, Huxley, Cope and other great men with whom he

was once intimate. Each verbal portrait is prefaced by a brief legend

which summarises the author’s relationship to, or contact with, the

subject.

Professor Osborn does not attempt to portray the whole man but a

principal aspect of each life, and as such aspect is always pleasant

and inspiring, he has only praise for his subjects. Some will find

him too laudatory, too uncritical. But he maintains with the French

author that if love is blind, friendship will not see faults; and when

friendship is engendered by the admiration and veneration that every

one should have for such benefactors of science, petty faults of life

and trifling defects of nature are forgotten.

Thus we read of the superiority of Francis Balfour, of the impression

he gave of living “in a higher atmosphere, in another dimension of

intellectual space” and of the great lessons of the balanced daily life

he gave to his disciples. We learn that Thomas Huxley had a delightful

sense of humour, combined with a spirit of sacrifice to education which

gained him popularity and gratitude. Mr. Osborn draws an interesting

contrast between John Burroughs and John Muir who had in common their

Christian names, their love of nature and “to a certain extent, their

powers of expression”; but they were unlike in almost every other

respect; and their variations are attributed to racial differences. The

author’s studies of ethnology make him competent to feel the influence

of race and of blood, and he applies his knowledge to understanding of

the soul.

The best sketch in the book is that of Pasteur, “the greatest

benefactor of mankind since the time of Jesus Christ,” in which love is

as visible as admiration.

Similar commendation may be given to the series of biographies now

being published by Henry Holt & Co., called _Writers of the Day_. They

have the rare merit of brevity and they are done by authors who know

how to write; one of the recent issues, _Bernard Shaw_, by Edward

Shanks fulfils nearly every requirement of biography. It does not dwell

upon the facts or data of his life, the scenery surrounding his boyhood

home, his self-imposed dietetic restrictions or his partiality for

the Automobile Club, but it does throw an illuminating light on the

character, personality and intimate thoughts of the extraordinary man

who has courage, understanding and humour.

Ivor Brown was not so successful in his presentation of a man who has

been up to his chin in the life of his time, because he pitched his

song of praise in too high a key. H. G. Wells has diverted many and

instructed some, but few will agree that when Woodrow Wilson lost his

sovereignty over the minds of men, it was transferred in no small

measure to him who would rather be called journalist than artist.

The accolade must be given to a Bishop. William Lawrence has written

one of the best biographies that have appeared in America for many

a year. His subject is Henry Cabot Lodge, a life-long friend. It

fulfils all the requirements of biographical writings, and it does

more: it gives a picture of the author: big heart, good mind, simple,

sincere, sympathetic, and above all tolerant and understanding. And

the picture of Lodge! With paint a Velasquez might rival it. It gives

his intellectual and emotional measurements, his compulsions and

restraints; his possessions and his limitations in just the way a

priest should know how to reveal them.

The student and general reader who want to learn about Samuel Butler

should turn to his own books, and especially to _Alps and Sanctuaries_,

_Luck or Cunning_, rather than to Mr. Jones’ ponderous biography. In

the former, Butler is to be seen as he was in the flesh, whimsical

and wise, cranky and crabbed, sensitive to beauty but fearful of

betraying it, arrogant in characterisation but weak in manner, urbane

in speech and demure in looks. Painfully aggressive himself, he loathed

aggressiveness in others and could not abide in his fellows the quality

that he possessed so abundantly: cleverness. He prided himself that

he was like the priests in the Sanctuary of S. Michelo, “perfectly

tolerant and ready to extend to others the consideration they expected

themselves,” but he was as unlike them as any one imaginable. He had

a first-class double-track mind, and although he lacked heart, he had

humour.

Demand unquestionably governs, in some measure, supply in biographic

literature. There would not be so many lives of prize fighters, “screen

artists,” singers and actors of a day’s reputation if publishers

did not have a market for them, or if experience had not taught

writers that the public is keen to hear the details of their lives.

Biographies pander to the urge that is so important to our progress

and welfare: curiosity. They ward off the poisoned arrows of ennui,

and they prevent the shells of boredom from exploding. Practically all

biographies and autobiographies are of individuals who have “succeeded”

or “arrived.” Men who make failures of their lives rarely have their

biographies written. It is to be regretted, for they would be helpful.

We learn more from our mistakes than from our ten strikes.

When the dominant determination of man seems to be to speed up life

so that we can do, or have done for us, in a day what formerly took

a month, it seems paradoxical that biography should continue to be

what Mr. Lytton Strachey says it is: “Two fat volumes with which it is

our custom to commemorate the day--who does not know them, with their

ill-digested masses of material, their slip-shod style, their love of

tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment,

of design?” Biographies have fallen so far behind the bandwagon of

progress that their makers can not even hear the music. We should like

to have our boys know about Willard Straight, but it is too much to

expect that they should read a ponderous volume of six hundred pages

to find out about the making of a young American, even though he was

a credit to his country. It is not fair to the boy, and it is unjust

to Miguel Cervantes. And much as one might like to travel through

Asia and Africa with A. Savage Landor, his two fat volumes make one’s

eyes turn lovingly to the thin, caressable _Religio Medici_ or to the

latest novel of Sheila Kaye-Smith. The great biographies, are they not

very long? They are, and that is the pity of it. No one reads them now

save a few bookworms and those who became acquainted with them before

tabloid nutriment was discovered.

Biography must be reformed, first in length, and then in substance.

What most of those now rolling off the presses need is form and

brevity. The man whose picture can not be painted with a hundred

thousand words does not exist.

II

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

“Human life is not to be estimated by what men perform,

but by what they are.”

J. A. SYMONDS.

It is generally accepted that the relation which exists between

autobiography and biography is so close that so far as purpose

and quality of form and subject are concerned, the words are

interchangeable; that is to say, the average person thinks the unique

difference between the two is that one is written in the first person,

the other in the third. No greater mistake could be made. One is first

hand information, the other second, or even third. As Trudeau puts it:

to recount the actions of another is not biography, it is zoology. Both

have points in common, as all works of art must be founded on art and

beauty, but the qualities that make biography great are not those that

autobiography needs to achieve perfection.

In the first place, the chief merit of autobiography is to be found

in veracity and sincerity; these qualities are more important than

style or grammar. One of the most illuminating autobiographies of

recent years is _The Letters of Olive Schreiner_; they are as devoid

of style and as disdainful of grammar as an apache is of culture.

Biography on the other hand must display literary qualities which

are not indispensable in autobiography, provided truth is absolute.

Cellini’s _Memoirs_ which, in its original edition, showed the lack of

literary culture of its author, is nevertheless one of the greatest

books of its kind. It is not only the story of a man, it is the

history of his time. Such a man and such times! If the style of the

writing had been perfected by its admirable translator, it would have

lost much of its charm. If the same style had been used by Boswell in

his _Life of Samuel Johnson_, no amount of veracity and of sincerity

would have redeemed it. We think of biographers as “littérateurs,” but

there has never been a great biographer who was not a great artist.

Autobiographers have something to say or to give to the world in the

manner they know best.

The biographer must be objective; he must be able to perceive quickly,

to understand readily, to grasp, gather and evaluate facts, to fuse

his material into a homogeneous mass, to stamp it with style, and

mix with his literary qualities a certain amount of hero-worship.

Self-consciousness has no place in his work; he may efface himself as

much as he wishes, and recent biographies have proved that the more he

does it, the greater his achievement.

To use a well-known and often told legend, the biographer may be

compared to the swan which Ariosto believed to be gliding on the

surface of the river Lethe--the river for which Byron sighed and to

which he called in one of his poems. Ariosto’s theory was that when

man comes to the end of his life, Death cuts the thread. At the end of

that thread is a medal which Time throws in the waters of the Lethe,

where it disappears. Occasionally, it falls on a passing swan and

nestles between its wings. Gracefully and swiftly the swan carries it

to a temple where it is kept for ever. The swan of the allegory is

the biographer who, by gathering the deeds and characteristics of his

subject, carries them to immortality.

The autobiographer, on the other hand, must be subjective above all.

His glance and his attention must be turned on himself; his critical

powers and his gift of observation must be directed on his own

character. As John Addington Symonds truthfully said: “Autobiographies

written with a purpose are likely to want atmosphere.” A man when he

sits down to give an account of his own life, from the point of view of

art or accomplishment, passion or a particular action is apt to make

it appear as though he were nothing but an artist, lover, reformer, or

as though the action he seeks to explain were the principal event of

his existence. To paint a true portrait, he must supplement the bare

facts of his existence. He must reveal himself emotionally as well as

intellectually. It is the emotional revelation that gives atmosphere

to his story. Naturally such “atmosphere” should not exclude a certain

amount of objectivity; if the writer is too introspective, his memoirs

may prove stimulating and illuminating for the student of behaviour,

but will scarcely interest the general reader who is not content with

deductive and inductive ratiocination, but wants action mixed with

sentiment.

The biographer is not a judge, but a witness; the autobiographer may

be both. The former should have no preconceived idea of his hero. His

efforts should be concentrated on presenting him to posterity as he

appeared to his contemporaries, to himself and to those among whom

he lived, acted, enjoyed and suffered. Such restrictions can not be

imposed on the autobiographer who has a much wider field in which to

push his investigations on personality; whatever he chooses to say

or reveal must be accepted at its face value, and his judgment upon

himself must be impersonal--and there are no judgments so fallacious as

self-judgments. Biographies should study both sides of an individual;

what he did and what he was, since his notions are determined by

his personality characteristics; autobiographies need not deal with

achievements which, if they are worth while, make their own publicity;

the stress should be placed on the manifestation of personality--on

motives, passions, experiences, failures, and accomplishments.

Long before it was the fashion as it is to-day to write the biography

of men during their lifetime Voltaire said: “We owe consideration to

the living; to the dead we owe truth only.” He foresaw with remarkable

keenness the danger of such endeavour; and to-day, overwhelmed with

biographies of living subjects, we deplore the fashion. There are

certain truths that no one likes to be told, but that is what we must

insist upon from the biographical art: truth, and more truth. Man is

not big enough to look at his contemporaries without partiality, and he

must allow a voice to his likes and dislikes. For instance, it would

have been as unwise for Mr. Alexander Woollcott to write anything

in his biography of Irving Berlin that might have made the composer

appear in a light less brilliant than that of semi-genius, as it would

be for a newspaper editor to write articles against the policy of his

newspaper. We must agree with Sir Sidney Lee that “no man has ever

proven to be fit subject for biography until he is dead.”

Finally the main difference between autobiography and biography, a

difference which is a _résumé_ of these reflections, is that the

former works from within outwards, while the latter works from without

inwards; and the autobiographer is successful only in proportion to the

self-absorption he reveals; his is a selfish and personal work. The

biographer, on the other hand, is successful only in proportion to the

self-effacement he shows.

Amiel is perhaps the best example of introspection that can be found

in a diarist, as Proust is of the novelist. They and Barbellion, the

author of _The Journal of a Disappointed Man_, lived within themselves,

and the outside world was for them merely an abiding place. A contrast

of great interest could be drawn between Amiel, Cellini and Rousseau.

Amiel’s diary would be a model of introspection, Cellini would head the

list of Memoir writers whose principal quality is to be found in the

wholesomeness of their objectivity. He was no student of inner nature.

Life for him was a great battlefield, where one could garner beauty and

trophies, achieve triumphs of art, and at the same time kill those who

stood in the way; Jean-Jacques would hold a place between these two;

he sought interior motives and the explanation of his sentiments, but

the life he led was not especially conducive to reasoning and internal

debate. So his _Confessions_ are as far above those of Cellini as above

the _Journal of Amiel_, in quality, in form and in subject, and are

still the best example of autobiography that has ever been published.

Facts are as necessary to autobiography as they are to biography. Even

when they are tampered with, as Marie Bashkirtseff tampered with those

of her life, they have their importance and interest and nothing that

is true should be allowed to remain in the darkness. Olive Schreiner

wrote, “There can be no absolutely true life of any one except written

by themselves and then only if written for the eye of God.” Marie did

not write hers for the eye of God, but it is the closest approach to a

true life since Jean-Jacques’.

If a life is worth writing at all, no consideration of personal feeling

or convention should deter the writer from setting down the facts;

for on them truth, the greatest quality of art, is founded. Marie’s

_Journal_ is a work of art in the full sense of the word; it reveals

a soul and a personality, it shows the extraordinary gift of its

youthful author for writing, painting and music, but it also shows the

disequilibrium of an imagination untutored and untrained.

It is doubtful if any Anglo-Saxon will ever parallel the feat of

Cellini, of Rousseau, of Bashkirtseff. There is a vein of reticence in

the emotional nature of the Anglo-Saxon that the publicity drill can

not penetrate, save in exceptional instances and even then the hole is

never large enough to permit the implantation of sufficient dynamite

to explode both the conscious and the unconscious, and thus reveal the

entire personality. The autobiographies of these three did reveal the

entire personalities of their authors. Marie Bashkirtseff’s _Journal_,

though fictional in execution, impresses the reader as containing more

forced draught, than Cellini’s or Rousseau’s. Marie is romanticism

itself and her imagination is the battleground on which there is a

perpetual struggle between the real and the fanciful. Early in life

she created a picture of herself and her ambition was to live up to it

to the end. Reality was not æsthetical for her, and life without the

æsthetic element was not tolerable, so she set up a stage and as she

was to be the central figure upon it, she must be the most eloquent,

the most colourful part, the undeniable centre of attention. She

could accomplish her object only by distorting facts and by weaving

around herself situations which are highly improbable, but which are

self-revelatory despite their distortion.

Her desire was for fame and her cast of mind made the sham, the

mediocre, the ordinary things of life as hateful to her as beef gruel

is to one whose taste turns naturally and by cultivation to chartreuse.

She was equal to her desire, and her mental keenness and her emotional

avidity demanded material which would satisfy her. Not always finding

it in her surroundings, she created it and made it part of herself.

She displayed mental hunger early in life and sought to find the thing

that would appease it. Through her literary interest and tastes, which

were the result of thought and not of ready-made judgment, Marie

reveals her mental life--a conscious life and yet unconscious. She

is forever reaching toward a goal which will fulfil her intellectual

hopes, and in the effort of reaching she improved her mind, added to

her artistic talent and enlarged her vision. The reader who accompanies

her in her journey through life must feel the restlessness of her

youth, the sincerity of her demand for death rather than nonentity,

the tragedy of her soul too big for her body. The inequalities and

contradictions of her character could never be brought into harmony,

and finally the soul won. But it is not the Marie of whom one reads

that is convincing, but the creator of that Marie--just as any writer,

when he shows himself as the force behind his characters--is more real

than these characters.

Behind all her stage settings, her literary effects, her hunger for

fame and her conscious effort to act always as one would in public,

and a carefully chosen public at that--there is the writer tense, at

times bored, restless, enthusiastic and depressed, giving a picture

of herself, of her own sublimely dissatisfied spirit. The picture is

successful in its large lines and in its small details; it reveals a

mentality more than an existence, but all Marie’s real life was lived

unseen by the eye, and nothing would really be true of her that did not

take its source and find its origin in her unconscious self.

Some parts of her _Journal_ are essentially biographical, and they

are not the most entertaining parts. She writes with sincerity and

quietness of the period which she devoted almost exclusively to work

and painting; she was real enough in those days, but we miss the Marie

who was neither peaceful nor fulfilled. We still feel, when we see

her at rest or when we see her at work before her easel, the bond of

æsthetic achievement between the creator and the created, between the

writer and the Marie of the _Journal_; but we miss the charm of the

Marie who flirts, dances, goes to balls where she looks like a Greuze

shepherdess, who captivates every man and outshines every woman in the

world.

Her response to life is such that we find it in every one of her moods:

whether she is romantic, analytical, hysterical or self-possessed,

she is always in a mood which is responsive to life and ready to give

all she possessed to life. All she demanded, in reality, was constant

change; no continuity of feeling or of sentiment was satisfying to

her; joy was sorrow if long and level; sorrow barbed with keenness was

joy, “... him whose strenuous tongue can burst Joy’s grape against his

palate fine;” Marie the writer is expressed in this sentence; pain was

welcome if it carried sharp sensations in its trend, if it gave her a

life more full and heady, foaming from the cup.

Her idea of love was as imaginary and as unreal as her conception of

life; no one but Marie could have been contented with the picture

she made of her emotional response to love. She darted through her

adolescent years rapidly and yet profoundly; she thought she knew

all she was to know about love before she had had much teaching; her

instinct and her intuition prompted her, inspired her conduct and

decided her actions. Her susceptibility to impressions was such that

on them she based her knowledge, and her flair for the dramatic and

the unreal made her prostrate herself before the tall, blond phantom,

and pretend to herself that this was love in its sublimest and most

convincing expression. She reveals herself as completely in her

dealings with love, as she does in her fierce demand for life; this

demand became more and more tenacious as death came nearer, and her

revolt and her despair as the final hour approached were coupled with

the sense of futility that made it almost welcome. She asked herself

the poignant questions that have troubled and upset mankind since its

creation: she suffered the inevitable struggle between spiritual hope

and intellectual denial. What has it all meant, and where is God? These

questions were not to be answered; if her genius was nothing but a

spent shadow, what was it? and why not prefer death to it? Strangely

troubling questions to a young mind. Marie was one of those about whom

Stephen Phillips wrote:

“The departing sun his glory owes

To the eternal thoughts of creatures brief

Who think the thing that they shall never see.”

The present generation has produced three extraordinary autobiographies

in the guise of fiction: James Joyce’s was entitled, _Portrait of the

Artist as a Young Man_. Dorothy Richardson called hers _Pointed Roofs_,

and Marcel Proust’s is included in _A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu_,

which extends through several volumes, two of which, _Swann’s Way_ and

_The Guermantes Way_, have been translated into English.

They are valuable documents, for they set forth with great frankness

the awareness and the development of consciousness, and the interplay

of what is now called the unconscious and the conscious mind. Proust’s

is the most elaborate and detailed, and when we shall have it in its

entirety, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s _Confessions_ may no longer be rated

the greatest autobiography in existence. These books have had detailed

consideration in _The Doctor Looks at Literature_.

Introspection and confession are unpopular to-day in this country. They

do not fit the times. Man is so busy acting that he has little time

for thinking, and if time were vouchsafed him, he would not have the

inclination. If one needed proof of it the legislators of Tennessee

could furnish it. This disinclination to thought and reflection

may be one of the reasons why this country has furnished few great

autobiographies. Another is that until recently we have been bound

by tradition of reticence and we have always found self-estimation

difficult. When Walt Whitman broke the convention and put a premium

on himself we were outraged. Our reticence was a manifestation of

self-consciousness incident to our youth and inexperience. The

American autobiographies of recent years that came nearest to being

satisfactory are _The Education of Henry Adams_ and _The Life of Doctor

Trudeau_, though Andrew Carnegie’s story of his life fulfilled some

requirements. Had the second half of Henry Adams’ book kept the pace

set by the first, it would likely be called the most satisfactory

autobiography of the century. But the account of his life after

1900 shows occasional bewilderment, frequent discursiveness, and an

inclination to profitless speculation. Henry Adams was a singularly

sane individual, free from ancestor-worship; neither beholden to

convention nor enslaved by tradition and environment; a potential

antinomian of artistic temperament who devoted his life studiously to

self-education from which he deduced a dynamic theory of history and an

amorphous one of education. The account of his childhood and youth, of

his early environment; of the people with whom he came into casual and

intimate contact; of his attitude toward and his reactions to formal

education, is an unusually brilliant personality study. His pilgrimages

in search of knowledge to Germany, Italy and France and his experiences

as a diplomat in England are precious human documents. It is doubtful

whether any American has ever seen the English with clearer eye, and

commented on their characteristics with rarer judgment than he did in

the chapters “Foes or Friends” and “Eccentricity.”

_The Education of Henry Adams_ is not only a revelation of a

personality, a brilliant example of self-analysis; it is a treasure

house of comment on and estimate of scores of individuals who wrote

their names more or less large in their time. If a better description

of Henry Cabot Lodge was ever written I have not encountered it, and

any one who knew Theodore Roosevelt will admit that he merited this

characterisation, “he more than any other man living within the range

of notoriety, showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to

ultimate matter--the quality that mediæval theology assigned to God--he

was pure act.”

No student of American history can escape study of this Memoir; no one

interested in behaviour will neglect it; and no one seeking instruction

and entertainment can afford to overlook it. Henry Adams is Boston’s

asset that Washington made permanent.

Dr. Edward L. Trudeau had a powerful personality and his book reveals

it. Fearlessness vied with honesty to be the predominant feature of his

nature and the closing lines of one of Browning’s most popular poems,

sung in his heart:

“With their triumphs and their glories, and the rest;

Love is best.”

Seized early in life with the disease that he did so much to make

conquerable, he laboured for forty years burdened and often prostrated,

in the Adirondack wilderness, and founded there a health centre which

radiates his influence throughout the world and which will perpetuate

his name.

Dr. Trudeau had an unusual gift, and he had it to an extraordinary

degree: the gift of friendship. He had exceptional power to attract

people to him, to interest them in his work, and in his play. He not

only attracted them, but enticed them to participation whether it

was building a church, equipping a laboratory or outwitting a fox.

For a quarter of a century, he radiated a benign, salutary influence

throughout the North Woods, and in the latter years of his life

throughout the whole country. He spoked the wheel of the juggernaut

tuberculosis as few save Koch have done. His presence inspirited

thousands bending beneath their burden; his courage heartened even a

greater number; and his conduct inspired countless colleagues who were

working at the very problem he sought to solve.

He knew the ingredients that one must have to make life a success; he

knew the amount of work and play, love and worship which must be used

and he knew how to blend them to make them acceptable to the eye and

to the palate; but what he knew best of all was that man can not live

by bread alone. Any one who does not know it may learn from the least

egotistic of autobiographies.

The most readable of recent autobiographies is Maurice Francis Egan’s

_Recollections of a Happy Life_. But it is not a self-revelatory book.

One gets vistas of life in Philadelphia as educated middle class

Catholics lived it three generations ago, glimpses of the society that

politicians and a few men of letters made in Washington, a generation

or two ago; and one gets the distinctive and agreeable literary and

bohemian atmosphere of New York at about the same time. There are

scores of pictures of people, famous and infamous, interesting and

commonplace, and these pictures vary from trifling vignettes to

carefully drawn and finished Gibsons. To justify the word infamous

it is only necessary to remind that Egan was Minister to Copenhagen

when Dr. Cook sold that government a gold brick. Egan knew every one;

most of them he liked and they all liked him, Matthew Arnold excepted.

After they had passed on and he had entered another field of activity,

he re-invoked for his diversion the memories of the first half of his

mature life and jotted them down. “God had given him memory so that he

might have roses in December.” He was arranging and ordering them when

his call came, but despite the fact that he did not have opportunity to

finish them, they are charming and entertaining.

But the reader must be what is called very psychic who can understand

the personality of Maurice Egan from his autobiography. The average

reader will gather that he was cheerful, charming, courteous,

companionable, kindly, generous, urbane--perhaps even a little vain.

But these are secondary virtues of prime importance mostly acquirable.

He had the cardinal virtues too: he had a good conscience and the urge

to assist and benefit others was greater than personal ambition. He was

gifted socially and intellectually; he was lucky and he had as much

money as a poet should have. He escaped the accident called disease

most successfully; he had a host of friends and he never put them to

torture by asking them what they thought of his reviews or of his

poems. Small wonder he had a happy life, and that now when it has taken

other display, his work continues to contribute to the happiness of

others.

Most autobiographies are written by individuals of artistic

temperament: musicians, painters, actors, clergymen, whose conspicuous

possession, after talent, is self-confidence which the average person

often interprets as conceit. There are few better ways of obtaining

a comprehensive idea of what is called the artistic temperament than

reading such an autobiography, and the _Life of Hector Berlioz_,

whose fame as a parent of music seems to be permanently established,

is as good as any. Berlioz was weird, contradictory, unreasoning,

improvident, impulsive, selfish, jealous, egocentric, amorous and

inconstant. He was devoid of humour and he lacked all religious

feeling. He was intemperate of speech and of strength. Despite all

these he gained and kept the affection and esteem of many of the great

men of his time. His book can scarcely be called an autobiography,

although he planned it to be one. He gives the bare facts of his life

up to the time he abandoned medicine for music, but after that, one

must gain knowledge of his character and personality from his letters.

They reveal them as no formal autobiography could, for here are his

thoughts, feelings, aspirations and disappointments; his selfishness,

shallowness, fickleness and unreasonableness; here is the record of his

punishment by his disposition and disease. They show what a handicap

to happiness such a temperament is. Any one who thinks of choosing

parents from musicians should read the letters. Any one who doubts the

existence of Dante’s Beatrice or Petrarch’s Laura should also read

them, for Estelle Fournier was their sister.

A man of Berlioz’s temperament should not be judged according to

any standard but his own; his soul was too sensitive to radiate

happiness; his genius was of too fine a nature to leave place in him

for self-appreciation and optimism; his tempers revealed his weariness

of life and the extent to which life had conquered him; or rather

they would in any one but Berlioz whose personality could suffer no

comparison. M. Romain Rolland has attempted a parallel between Wagner

and Berlioz--all the advantage of the former if common measures are

adopted, but strangely contrasting in favour of Berlioz if we compare

his solitude, his unceasing pain and “unspeakable weariness” to “the

spectacle of Wagner, wrapped in silk and furs, surrounded by flattery

and luxury, pouring unction upon his own soul.”

The artistic temperament and the reformatory or uplift-urge are

antipodal. Those who possess the latter often write their lives. They

are sometimes instructive, rarely interesting; as an example of this

class, I select the _Autobiography of Harriet Martineau_ who, after

Mary Wollstonecraft, was the first doughty champion of “Rights of

Women.” Florence Nightingale said of her that she was born to be a

destroyer of slavery. It is an important historical document of social

evolution in England, and it serves as the perfect example of what an

autobiography should be, and should not be. In twelve pages appended

to the two fat volumes, the author makes an estimate of herself and of

her work which is quite ideal, but the descriptions of her nonsensical

and childish recollections scattered through the first volume are

fatiguing, and pages of irrelevant, inconsequent matter spoil the

second. Withal, the work is interesting and will always remain so

because of the brilliant thumb sketches it contains of famous persons,

such as Margaret Fuller, Carlyle, Coleridge, Malthus, Macaulay and

dozens of others; and because of the light it throws on what has come

to be called psychotherapy.

When Miss Martineau was approaching what Rose Macaulay calls the

dangerous age, she experienced a serious nervous breakdown. She found

plenty of doctors, apparently, to tell her she would not recover. One

meets them in literature so often and so rarely in the flesh! She

contracted the opium habit and to cure that she consulted a mesmerist.

He cured the habit and the disease, and she lived out the psalmist’s

allotment. An everyday occurrence now, it created a great stir in

England two generations ago.

Men and women who write their autobiographies are as a rule prompted

to such achievements by considerations other than the desire to leave

a legacy to the world or to attain immortality; some do it to clear up

their own problems; others do it to facilitate or effect reform; a few

like Benjamin Franklin do it altruistically.

Herbert Spencer wrote his autobiography to supplement his philosophical

work; it shows chiefly the anxiety of its author to state anew the

conclusions he had reached in his studies of ethics and sociology. It

is the picture of a man, engrossed in mental efforts, disregarding the

part played by emotions and affections, cold, didactic and impersonal.

It forms a striking contrast to the autobiography of Darwin which,

though not really a book at all, but a chapter included in his _Life

and Letters_, reveals the modesty, effacement and simplicity which

were the most lovable and conspicuous qualities of the epoch-making

scientist. _Far Away and Long Ago_, the story of the early life of

another English naturalist and one of the most delightful biographies

extant, was written to liberate a shut-in personality. It is strange,

in view of this book, that less was known about W. H. Hudson at the

time of his death a few years ago, than of any writer in Great Britain.

But he was the real “solitary-hearted.” Even to the small circle of his

literary friends, he was not communicative about himself. Had he lived

a half century earlier, he might have found Thoreau sympathetic.

Some autobiographies are written to purge the author’s conscience and

mind of sins of youth or of hallucinatory memories. St. Augustine’s

and Tolstoi’s _Confessions_ are typical of this kind of self-history.

St. Augustine dwells on the dissoluteness of his youth at such length

that it is difficult to obtain constructive thought from the narrative.

One would be tempted to believe that he found a certain pleasure in

recalling the lusts and concupiscences he had left behind when he

became converted, did not his later deeds and actions testify to the

contrary.

There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest sinners and one of

the greatest Saints of antiquity, but his _Confessions_ which reveal

exclusively his sins, are little help in aiding the conversion of a

soul--unless that soul was of such nature that it would have converted

itself; the _Confessions_ are the result of an imagination stirred at

the sight of sins and humbled by the telling of them. John Addington

Symonds has given a comprehensive characterisation of their author in

one of his letters:

“To treat the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine with the

same critical coldness of judgment that is brought to

bear upon ordinary works of art or literature would

be impossible. It stands alone among all the personal

Biographies that have ever been written. It speaks to

us, not like the ordinary narrative of a man’s life, but

like a deep cry of agony; which, once heard, resounds for

ever in our ears, imparting its own pathos to all music

that we hear, and confusing our utterance when we would

express the meaning that it wakens in our soul.”

The motive which prompted Huxley to write his autobiography is found

in his desire to set the facts of his life as straight as he knew

them, thus refuting what the malice, ignorance or vanity of others

might construe them to be. Franklin, on the other hand, was desirous

of showing how poverty could be overcome by thrift and shrewdness,

and his autobiography has been a model for students of all ages. It

is as valuable as a character-building book, as the autobiography of

John Stuart Mill is valuable in showing the waste there is in modern

education; the latter also wished to have his contribution serve

as a tribute to Mrs. Taylor, but both Franklin’s and Mill’s can be

classified under the heading of constructive writing, with an objective

which embraces a large portion of humanity.

These two works differ widely from the autobiographies of General

Grant and Trollope, both of which were prompted by personal motives:

the former to pay his debts, the latter to make money. Such motives do

not necessarily detract from the charm or merit of an autobiography.

Literary merit is not in direct relationship to moral or æsthetical

considerations, and an autobiography written in the hope that the world

will be improved by its perusal may not be worthy of comparison with

one written with obviously personal reasons as its motive.

Many men and women who have made a success of life have been inspired,

helped or guided by reading autobiographies during their plastic

years. It depends upon the individual’s outlook on life which one

helps him. If he is “practical” and material things appeal to him,

Franklin’s story does it; if he is beholden to ideals and the spiritual

side of his nature is dominant, he finds aid and encouragement in Mark

Rutherford’s _Autobiography_, and _Father and Son_, by Edmund Gosse; if

he is ambitious to be a mighty hunter and slay the wolf called want, he

may fortify himself by reading stories like Hamlin Garland’s _A Son of

the Middle Border_, or _Episodes Before Thirty_, by Algernon Blackwood;

if he is inclined to yield to the seductions of science and yet would

avoid becoming a human monster like Gottlieb of _Arrowsmith_ he would

do well to familiarize himself with _Memoirs of My Life_, by Francis

Galton; if he is “temperamental” and keen to know how the artistic

temperament conditions behaviour and how devastating egocentrism may

become, he can get enlightenment from _My Life_, by Richard Wagner. If

Samuel Smiles’ book appealed to him in his youth, he will like Mr. J.

J. Davis’s _The Iron Puddler_, or Mr. Roger Detaller’s _From a Pitman’s

Note-Book_; if recutting and revamping the social fabric intrigues

him, he will like Mr. Robert Smillie’s _My Life for Labour_, or the

_Autobiography of Samuel Gompers_; if within his heart there are graved

some lines setting forth that this is the land of the brave, the home

of the free, the arena of the ambitious, then Professor Pupin’s _From

Immigrant to Inventor_ is the book for him; if he is a pessimist and

wants to be cured, Sir Harry Johnston’s _Story of My Life_ will help

him accomplish it; if he is of a romantic turn of mind, _Everywhere_,

the Memoirs of A. Henry Savage Landor may be tolerated, and if his

vindictiveness has never been adequately appeased, Lady Oxford’s

_Memoirs_ and particularly those that she wrote when she was called

Margot Asquith will be satisfying to him, especially if he is keen to

attract and rivet the attention of all mankind: peer, superior and

inferior.

Few men to whom one of the fine arts or any branch of the humanities

appeal, escape pubescent inquiry concerning such things as the

meaning of life, the soundness of traditional religion, the value of

convention, the genuineness of the social fabric, the sincerity of

morality: and the resulting apprehension and depression in sensitive

natures amount oftentimes to despair and disorientation. John Addington

Symonds and William Hale White--particularly the latter--are the

doctors for such patients. _The Early Life of Mark Rutherford_,

contrary to its deserts, has never been a popular book here or in

England. It is a fine presentation of the artistic temperament trying

to persuade itself to wear the garments of Puritan dogma, shedding

them in moments of indignation and putting them on again when the

voice whispered that Puritanism gives the closest expression of

the truth about life; it shows the agony of the imaginative genius

struggling with the problems of practicality, while in spiritual

travail. It appeals especially to the sad and solitary; to those

dazed by the glamour of the modern world; to those who, dismayed by

its pretentiousness and disgusted by its speciousness, clamour for

simplicity or belief. But it has a message for every one who thinks too

much of himself, or who is out of alignment with his fellows and the

world.