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:

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.