THE JOY OF LIVING--AND WRITING ABOUT IT: JOHN ST. LOE STRACHEY
Twenty-five years ago, browsing among the second-hand book-shops of
Shaftesbury Avenue, my attention was arrested by a sombre volume
entitled “From Grave to Gay,” by J. St. Loe Strachey.
Until then I had not heard of Mr. Strachey, and though I admit it with
reluctance, I had not even heard of his famous cousin, Henry Strachey,
who was private secretary to Lord Clive. But the subtitle of his
book: “Concerned with Certain Subjects of Serious Interest, with the
Puritans, with Literature and with the Humours of Life, Now for the
First Time Collected and Arranged,” intrigued me. Those were the very
subjects, I had convinced myself, with which I was concerned, for did
they not give spice to life and make for surcease of its burdens? “Now
for the First Time Collected and Arranged” I construed to be a belief
on the part of the writer that from time to time he could substitute
for the word “first” the other numerals in progressive order. Whether
or not he has been able to do so, I have not determined, but every
one knows that he became “editor and sole proprietor” of the London
_Spectator_ and has occupied a conspicuous place in journalism for
the past quarter of a century. And now he recounts his life, or such
parts of it as seem to him will permit others to understand how and
why he has carried on, and he calls it “The Adventure of Living: A
Subjective Autobiography,” stressing “the influences that have affected
my life and for good or evil made me what I am.” He emphasises that the
interesting thing about a human being is not what he is, but how he
came to be what he is, which naturally includes what he does and why he
does it.
Mr. Strachey came to be what he is from his heredity, aided and
guided--after it had formulated itself in the organism to which, a few
months later, the name John St. Loe was given--by Mrs. Salome Leaker,
the family nurse. Once the reader gets her name out of the realm of
risibility, he falls in love with her. A face radiant with a vivid
intelligence, a nature eager and active, a fiery temper--reserved
almost entirely for grown-ups--an appreciation for good literature and
art, which, although she had been brought up in illiteracy, she had
developed by self-education and “threw quotations from the English
classics around her in a kind of hailstorm,” supplemented a genuine
love of children and abounding common sense.
“There was no nonsense in her nursery as to over-exciting our
minds or emotions, or that sort of thing. She was quite prepared
to read us to sleep with the witches in 'Macbeth' or the death
scene in 'Othello.' I can see her now, with her wrinkled, brown
face, her cap with white streamers awry over her black hair
beginning to turn grey. In front of her was a book, propped up
against the rim of a tin candlestick shaped like a small basin.
In it was a dip candle with a pair of snuffers. That was how
nursery light was provided in the later 'sixties and even in
the 'seventies. As she sat bent forward, declaiming the most
soul-shaking things in Shakespeare between nine and ten at
night, we lay in our beds with our chins on the counterpane,
silent, scared, but intensely happy. We loved every word and
slept quite well when the play was over.”
The pen picture of Mrs. Salome Leaker, and the photograph, are of the
book's best. It is not unlikely that Mr. Strachey owes his worldly
success and pleasure quite as much to his nurse as to “the famous men,
and our fathers who begat us,” of whom his father, “though without a
trace of anything approaching pride, was never tired of talking.”
[Illustration: J. ST. LOE STRACHEY] From a drawing by _W. Rothenstein._
In his early childhood he was subject to occasional experiences--a
sense of spiritual isolation with poignancy amounting to awe. Although
he devotes several pages to them he does not succeed in describing
his sensations, but in characterising them. One day while standing
in a passage he suddenly had a sensation of being alone, not merely
in the house, but in the world, the universe. With this came a sense
of exaltation and magnification of personality so ample that it was
difficult to describe. He felt then, though he was only six, that his
soul had become naked. The effect on him was intensely awe-inspiring,
so much so as to be disturbing in a high degree. Though not terrified,
he experienced a kind of rawness and sensitiveness of soul, such as
when a supersensitive mucous membrane is touched roughly by a hand or
instrument. In addition to this awe and sensitiveness, was a sudden
realisation of the appalling greatness of the issues of living, not
only of the imminence but of the ineffable greatness of the whole of
which he was a part. He felt that what he was “in for” as a sentient
human being was immeasurably great. It was thence that the sense of
awe came, thence the extraordinary sensitiveness, thence the painful
exhilaration, the spiritual sublimation. “As a human being I was not
only immortal but _capax imperii_,--a creature worthy of a heritage so
tremendous.”
Mr. Strachey defines his state as one of _isolement_, and further
defines it as ecstasy. The latter term has probably been borrowed from
current psychoanalytic terminology. It is purely a subjective term, and
as this is a subjective autobiography, satisfies his needs, though it
puts us only a little way on the road to understanding.
No objective description of this state has been worked out. A
scheme for it would be elaborate and require more patience than the
behaviourists have so far displayed. They know some things in an exact
way about organic reactions to simplified laboratory situations. They
have never followed out the life history of any of the reactions
they describe, either exactly or in tentative descriptive terms.
Autobiographic writings furnish rich material for an objective
psychologist. Mr. Strachey, for instance, has an unusual memory,
has never suffered any serious breaks in his reaction system, and
would seem not to be subject to any wealth of parallel reactions.
The objective psychologists may, in the not distant future, work
out a description of _isolement_ in terms of organic reactions, and
their life histories in terms of organic memory. I do not see how a
highly organised intelligence in such a setting--reminiscent father,
tradition-ladened background, cultivated and uncultivated mysticism of
his nurse--could have failed to develop some such moments.
It is quite likely that the main outlines of Mr. Strachey's
intelligence as a working mechanism had been laid down, even at this
early age. It was said of him that when a little more than two and a
half years old, when his family was starting on a long journey to Pau,
he insisted that his father should take with him Spenser's “Faerie
Queene!” He must have had in late childhood a rich freight of memories.
An elaborate and delicate set of reaction mechanism, spontaneously
called forth these definite movements of detachment in the interests
of further internal organisation. Moreover, it seems to me entirely a
normal experience, in view of the fact that there was so much incentive
to fantasy and so little progress beyond mere normal ecstasy.
It is a fearsome thing to contemplate how little fruit the arrival of
powers of abstraction bring with them. Immediately Mr. Strachey was
plunged into the artificial region of letters and politics, he made no
effective contacts with scientific and social thinking of his period.
His whole mental career from this standpoint was a gradually elaborated
detachment, significant mainly for its richness, brilliancy, and
generally prevailing consistency.
One other psychic experience he records, a dream during an afternoon
nap: His wife came to him with a telegram in her hand which related
that his son had been killed in a hunting accident in France. The
incident of this telepathic dream from the objective standpoint is not
very significant. The dreamer had plenty of reasons for apprehension
over the welfare of his son, who was in a country where hazards were of
frequent enough occurrence to make some time identity between dream and
occurrence possible. The form of the hazard in the dream could probably
have been traced at the time to some recent event or hearsay, and was
gratuitously attached to the state of apprehension which came to the
surface in the dream state.
The story of one who for a third of a century has been in British
journalism while the world was being recast and remoulded must of
necessity be rich in the raw material of “human interest,” as well as
of history and politics. But it is not this material which the author
of the subjective autobiography has chosen to present. It is with the
adventure of his own life that he would interest the reader. He says,
“Every life is an adventure, and if a sense of this adventure
cannot become communicated to the reader, any one may feel sure
that it is the fault of the writer, not of the facts.”
He quotes Sir Thomas Browne's advice to a son about to write an account
of his travels in Hungary
“not to trouble about methods of extracting iron and copper from
the ores, or with a multitude of facts and statistics, but not
to forget to give a full description of the 'Roman alabaster
tomb in the barber's shop at Pesth.'”
The alabaster tomb in the barber's shop, rather than high politics
or even high literature, is the goal which he has set before him in
writing this book. The test by which he invites judgment of it is the
power to enthrall the imagination of the reader with the sense of
adventure.
The “supreme good luck to be born the second son of a Somersetshire
squire and to be brought up in a Somersetshire country-house” was
reinforced by the influence of parents to whose qualities he pays
tribute in a chapter devoted to memories of his parents, and in another
devoted to the stories told him as a child by his father. These stories
serve to cloak the genealogical facts that always flavour so keenly,
to the adventurer himself, the zest of his adventure. In this case
they leave the reader free to trace, should he possess a relish for
such a trail, through the rattling rust of ancient armour, the spell
of great country houses and other symbols of authority. One may also
trace Mr. Strachey's hereditary urge for literature, for there was a
certain ancestor who “almost certainly knew Shakespeare” and “had a
considerable amount of book-writing to his credit,” including “two or
three pamphlets written by him and published as what we should now call
'Virginia Company propaganda.'” No light is thrown upon the heritage,
guardian angel, or kind fate which was responsible for providing the
adventurer at the outset of his journey with the most fortunate of all
possessions, the temperament to “take the good the gods provide,” and
for relieving him of all encumbrances in the way of “inferiority” and
other complexes, which have become so fashionable a part of the modern
adventurer's equipment.
If, indeed, anything in the way of good fortune was wanting in the
gifts of fate to the author of the autobiography, he was more than
compensated by a disposition which made it easy for him to appreciate
the good qualities of others, even of his mother-in-law--that usually
most unappreciated of all human relations--and to live in unimpaired
serenity in her family. Of her we are told that
“she was an admirable talker and full of clear and interesting
memories. I had no sooner entered the Simpson house and family
than I found that there were a hundred points of sympathy
between us. She had known everybody in London who was worth
knowing ... and had visited most of the political country
houses in England on the Whig side, and most of the neutral
strongholds.”
Aside from the chapters on his parents and old nurse, only a few
glimpses are given of a normal and happy childhood passed in the
good old days when ladies still had time to cultivate the art of
correspondence--of which he says, “I have no time to dwell on my
mother's most intimate friendship with Lady Waldegrave and with their
habit of writing daily letters to each other.” The salient point of his
childhood seems to be that he was saturated with precocity and filial
piety. He was not quite so strong as other boys and was not sent to
public school, and “the irony of accident,” he says, “had designed my
mental equipment to be of a kind perfectly useless for the purposes
of the preliminary Oxford examinations.” Knowledge of literature, a
power of writing, a not inconsiderable reading in modern history, and
a commendable grasp of mathematics were of no use whatever for the
purpose of matriculation. So the youthful Strachey turned to Latin and
Greek and finally entered Balliol as an unattached student. The first
discord in the harmony of his relations with life was sounded when he
became a student at Balliol, where he did not get on well with the Dons.
“I can say truthfully that I never received a word of
encouragement, of kindly direction, or of sympathy of any sort
or kind from any of them in regard to work or anything else. The
reason, I now feel sure, was that they believed that to take
notice of me would have only made me more uppish.”
His recollections of Jowett, the Master of Balliol, are tempered by the
successes and the good fortune that have come to him in the intervening
forty years, but he remains convinced that “the Master of Balliol
evidently felt the Stracheyphobia very strongly, or perhaps I should
say felt it his duty to express it very strongly.” The sarcasm that
Jowett poured upon him on his return to Balliol after his first year
as an unattached student still rankles. But in those early days there
must have been an atmosphere of self-sufficiency, complacency, possibly
one might be justified in saying conceit, that dissolved the testy
Master's inhibitions.
Mr. Strachey is never tired of emphasising the good fortune of his
friendships.
“I have no doubt I was considered odd by most of my
contemporaries, but this oddness and also my inability to play
football or cricket never seemed to create, as far as I could
see, any prejudice. Indeed I think that my friends were quite
discerning enough and quite free enough from convention to be
amused and interested by a companion who was not built up in
accordance with the sealed pattern.”
Nothing better illustrates his mental endowment and his cultural
equipment as estimated by himself than this statement:
“In my day we would talk about anything, from the Greek feeling
about landscape to the principles the Romans would have taken
as the basis of actuarial tables, if they had had them. We
unsphered Plato, we speculated as to what Euripides would have
thought of Henry James, or whether Sophocles would have enjoyed
Miss ----'s acting, and felt that it was of vital import to
decide these matters.”
Good old days, indeed! We can imagine what the fate of the student at
Harvard, let us say, would be today if he shaped his talk to indicate
that “the most important thing in the world” was talk of this kind.
At an early age Mr. Strachey yielded to the urge of poetry writing, and
even had a book of verses printed by a local publisher, of which he
says:
“The thing that strikes me most, on looking back at my little
volume of verse, is its uncanny competence, not merely from the
point of view of prosody, but of phraseology and what I may
almost term scholarship.”
_Omne ignotum pro magni-_ (or _miri_) _fico_. In spite of this he felt
no great desire to adopt poetry-making as his profession.
“Possibly I thought the trade was a bad one for a second son who
must support himself. It is more probable that I instinctively
felt that although it was so great a source of joy to me,
poetry was not my true vocation. Perhaps, also, I had already
begun to note the voice of pessimism raised by the poets of the
seventies, and to feel that they did not believe in themselves.”
“The pivot of my life has been _The Spectator_, and so _The Spectator_
must be the pivot of my book.” His connection with it began when he was
about twenty-six, after he had settled in London to study for the Bar.
The book opens with an account of the spectacular success of his first
adventure of writing for this journal. Armed with a formal introduction
from his father, who had been a friend of the joint editors, Mr. Hutton
and Mr. Townsend, and a frequent contributor to the paper, Mr. Strachey
called at _The Spectator_ office in Wellington Street and listened to
the well-worn story--no less true thirty years ago than it is today--of
“more outside reviewers than they could possibly find work for,” and
received, out of friendship for his father alone, the choice of five
volumes to notice. One of them was an edition of “Gulliver's Travels,”
and it was destined to play a leading rôle in the adventure of John
St. Loe Strachey. Nothing daunted by the indifferent encouragement,
he promptly despatched the completed reviews, and in due time again
presented himself at the office for the sole purpose of returning the
books. Great was his amazement when, instead of a lukewarm reception,
he was immediately asked to select anything he would like to review,
from a new pile of books. When he protested that he had not come to ask
for more books to review, he learned that the position of the editors
had been entirely changed by the review of “Gulliver's Travels,” and
“they hoped very much that I should be able to do regular work for _The
Spectator_. I was actually hailed as 'a writer and critic of the first
force.'” Even a stronger head might have been turned by such praise
from such a source.
This, however, was only the first chapter of his successful adventure
with _The Spectator_. Shortly afterwards, he received a letter from Mr.
Hutton asking him to write a couple of leaders a week and some notes
while Mr. Townsend was away for a holiday. His first leader brought a
delighted response from Mr. Townsend, who requested him to remain as
his assistant while Mr. Hutton was away, and soon afterward suggested,
“with a swift generosity that still warms my heart, that if
I liked to give up the Bar, for which I was still supposing
myself to be reading, I could have a permanent place at _The
Spectator_, and even, if I remember rightly, hinted that I
might look forward to succeeding the first of the two partners
who died or retired, and so to becoming joint editor or joint
proprietor.”
His second political leader, entitled the “Privy Council and the
Colonies,” brought down even bigger game than the first. Fate, always
the ally of Mr. Strachey, so arranged that Lord Granville, then
Colonial Secretary, had been prevented by a fit of gout from preparing
a speech which he was to deliver when he received the Agents-General of
the self-governing Colonies, and he supplied the hiatus by beginning
his speech with the words: “In a very remarkable article which appeared
in this week's _Spectator_”--and then going on “to use the article as
the foundation of his speech,” with the result that Mr. Hutton was
“greatly delighted, and almost said in so many words that it wasn't
every day that the editors of _The Spectator_ could draw Cabinet
Ministers to advertise their paper.”
So the “first two leaders had done the trick.” Still, as the young
adventurer was soon to learn, it was possible for an aspirant to
success to get by both editors, and even a Cabinet Minister, and
still fail of entire recognition from the most critical member of
_The Spectator_ staff. Even this distinction, however, Mr. Strachey
was destined promptly to achieve. “The last, the complete rite of
initiation at _The Spectator_ office,” occurred one day as he was
talking over articles, when
“a large, consequential, not to say stout black tom-cat slowly
entered the room, walked around me, sniffed at my legs in
a suspicious manner, and then, to my intense amazement and
amusement, hurled himself from the floor with some difficulty
and alighted upon my shoulder.... The sagacious beast had
realised that there was a new element in the office, and
had come to inspect it and see whether he could give it his
approval. When that approval was given, it was conceded by all
concerned that the appointment had received its consecration.”
And so, having received the unqualified endorsement of the office cat,
the future “editor and sole proprietor” of _The Spectator_, within a
few weeks of his introduction to the office, had his career mapped
out for him. That Mr. Strachey has been content with that career this
subjective autobiography is likely to convince the most sceptical.
Two chapters are devoted to an estimate of Meredith Townsend, who was
successively his chief, his partner, and later--after Mr. Strachey
became “sole proprietor and editor-in-chief”--merely leader-writer for
_The Spectator_. The sketch of Mr. Townsend, which will undoubtedly
appeal more to British than to American readers, is vivid and
sympathetic, bringing into high relief the rather picturesque side of
an altogether lovable and thoroughly practical personality--although
any weak points which he may have displayed as leader-writer are not
blurred over. His fairness, both toward his junior partner and toward
those who differed with him, is emphasised, as well as his sound
philosophy, his wit, his capacity for felicitous epigram, and his
mental directness and forcefulness.
Mr. Strachey has the same pleasure in recalling his early days with
_The Spectator_ that the aged courtesan is alleged to have in telling
of her youthful _amours_.
“When an occasion like this makes me turn back to my old
articles, I am glad to say that my attitude, far from being one
of shame, is more like that of the Duke of Wellington. When
quite an old man, somebody brought him his Indian dispatches to
look over. As he read, he is recorded to have muttered: 'Damned
good! I don't know how the devil I ever managed to write 'em.'”
When Mr. Strachey became “proprietor, editor, general manager,
leader-writer, and reviewer” of _The Spectator_ he naturally asked
himself: “What is the journalist's function in the State, and how am
I to carry it out?” After reflection and deliberation he decided that
the journalist must be the watch-dog of society, and this in full
recognition of the fact that the watch-dog is generally disliked, often
misunderstood, and burdened with a disagreeable job, even with its
compensations. He defends the watch-dog for barking,
“in a loud and raucous way, even for biting occasionally. It is
good for the dog and it is good for the one who is barked at or
bitten, though the latter, like the boy who is being flogged for
his good, neither sees it nor admits it.”
Mr. Strachey recites a specific instance of his watch-dog methods in
dealing with Cecil Rhodes, whose methods of expanding the British
Empire seemed to _The Spectator_ dangerous and inconsistent with the
sense of national honour and good faith. He therefore
“warned the British public that Rhodes, if not watched, would
secretly buy policies behind their backs and that the party
machine, when in want of money, would with equal secrecy sell
them. And I proved my point, incredible as it may seem.”
Mr. Strachey says that he could, of course, mention other examples of
the way in which this particular watch-dog gave trouble and got himself
heartily disliked, but recounting them would touch living people. Mr.
Strachey does not bow the knee to archaic conventions like “_De mortuis
nil nisi bonum_.”
Next to the watch-dog function of the journalist is that of publicity.
Publicity is one of the pillars of society, and while this has long
been recognised in America, Mr. Strachey says, it is only very recently
that it has come to be thoroughly appreciated in his country. Publicity
is as important a thing as the collection and preservation of evidence
at a trial, but it is not the whole of journalism. Comment is an
important part, and infinitely more important apparently in Britain
than in this country. The journalism of comment may be divided into two
parts: judicial, and the journalism of advocacy. It is the former that
Mr. Strachey has practised or that he has meant to practise.
On the ethics of newspaper proprietorship he thinks that it makes for
soundness that newspaper proprietors should be pecuniarily independent.
It is also most important that they should be men whose money is
derived from their newspapers, and not from other sources. A great
newspaper in the hands of a man who does not look to it for profit, but
owns it for external reasons, is a source of danger. In view of this
opinion, it is interesting to recall that the control of the greatest
newspaper in the world has recently passed, in great part, into the
hands of a man who possesses a considerable portion of one of America's
greatest fortunes.
The chapters of Mr. Strachey's book which should have been most
interesting are those entitled “Five Great Men,” in which he discusses
Lord Cromer, John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Cecil Rhodes, and Joseph
Chamberlain. Many will find them the most disappointing, particularly
those who knew in the flesh any of these great men. They would be less
disappointing, perhaps, if they were not so palpably self-laudatory.
Mr. Strachey had a profound admiration for Lord Cromer and he shared it
with thousands of his countrymen and Egyptian well-wishers the world
over. Recalling a visit to Lord Cromer in Cairo, he says:
“Inexperienced as I then was in public affairs, it was a matter
of no small pleasure and of no small amount of pride to find my
own special opinions, views, and theories as to political action
plainly endorsed by an authority so great. In not a single case
was I disappointed or disillusioned either with what had been my
own views or with what were Lord Cromer's.”
This reminds strangely of Mr. Strachey's opinion of the Dons in his
youthful days at Oxford. Future biographers of Lord Cromer will have
to note the fact that “he was, with the single exception of my cousin,
Lytton Strachey, the most competent reviewer I ever had,” and that
“he wrote a review every week for _The Spectator_ on some important
book,” also that “he took an immense amount of trouble to realise and
understand _The Spectator_ view, and to commit me to nothing which he
thought I might dislike.”
In the same way, Mr. Strachey tells with great relish how he won the
approval of Roosevelt with his tact and discretion when the President
invited him to be present at one of his Cabinet meetings, and of
Roosevelt's admiration when Mr. Strachey went with him in floods of
rain for a ride on a dark November evening. In curious contrast to his
statement that on this occasion he was mounted on a superb Kentucky
horse procured from the cavalry barracks, “a creature whose strength
and speed proved how well deserved is the reputation of that famous
breed,” is the photograph of Mr. Strachey on his pony at the end of
the chapter, from which one would not readily gather that he had been
selected by Mr. Roosevelt to accompany him “on these afternoon winter
rides” as a test of men.
Mr. Strachey says that the bed-rock of his political opinions is a
whole-hearted belief in the principles of democracy, and he defines
his conception of democracy as being
“not devotion to certain abstract principles or views of
communal life which have the label 'democratic' placed upon
them, but a belief in the justice, convenience and necessity of
ascertaining and abiding by the lawfully and constitutionally
expressed Will of the Majority of the People.”
He states his belief in the referendum
“in order to free us from the evils of log-rolling and other
exigencies of the kind which Walt Whitman grouped under the
general formula of 'the insolence of elected persons.'”
He admits, however, that a whole-hearted belief in the democratic
principles need not prevent one from having strong views on special
points of policy, and one of his special points of policy is in regard
to Ireland.
“I objected to Home Rule as bad for the Empire, bad for the
United Kingdom, and bad in an even extremer degree for Ireland
herself. If, however, it should be determined that some measure
of Home Rule must be passed, then the existence of the two
Irelands must be recognised in any action which should be
determined upon. When, therefore, the support which the Unionist
party decided on giving to Mr. Lloyd George at the end of the
war made some form of Home Rule seem almost inevitable, I
strongly advocated the division of Ireland as the only way of
avoiding a civil war in which the merits would be with Northern
Ireland.”
One who comes to this delightful narrative as an admirer of the author
may feel, on taking leave of it, that what Mr. Strachey has said of a
famous fellow editor, William T. Stead, might also be said of him:
“Stead, though a man of honest intent, and very great ability,
was also a man of many failings, many ineptitudes, many
prejudices and injustices. Further, there was an element of
commonness in his mental attitude, as in his style.”
Yet this would not be quite fair or accurate. Mr. Strachey is a man
of honest intent and very great ability, but there is no element of
“commonness” in his mental attitude. His admirers would not admit that
he is a man of many failings and many injustices. The word “some”
should be substituted for “many,” in any case. But then there are his
pronunciamentos on Ireland and his recollections of Cecil Rhodes.