LIKE CHARACTERS IN A NOVEL Lytton Stracheys Eminent Victorians and their changing reputations

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. Kenneth Clark: Civilisation (1969)

Cardinal Manning

Cardinal Newman

Florence Nightingale

Dr. Arnold

General Gordon

William Ewart Gladstone

For the generation that was sent into the carnage of the First World War, the Victorian emphasis on the idea of progress, with its optimism about the future, seemed utterly futile and erroneous. As troops were mobilising on the Continent, an article appeared in the New Statesman on 1st August 1914. Its author was Lytton Strachey and its subject was Matthew Arnold as The Victorian Critic. Strachey wrote of a strange fascination about the Age of Victoria. It was at once very near and very far off and resembled one of those queer fishes that one sees in an aquarium, before whose grotesque proportions and sombre menacing agilities one hardly knows whether to laugh or to shudder, but it riveted ones attention. The Age of Victoria was unaesthetic to its marrow-bones and therefore it will never loom through history with the glamour that hangs about the Age of Pericles or the brilliance that sparkles round the eighteenth century. As that war drew to its close, Lytton Stracheys Eminent Victorians was published on 9th May 1918. Strachey succinctly summarized both the body of the work, the choice of types and the manner in which it had been undertaken. But, in the lives of an ecclesiastic, an educational authority, a woman of action, and a man of adventure, I have sought to examine and elucidate certain fragments of the truth which took my fancy and lay to my hand. His ecclesiastic was Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold the educational authority, Florence Nightingale his woman of action and his man of action was Major- General Gordon. Strachey had expressed the hope that it would burst upon an astonished world. In the view of a leading article in the Daily Telegraph, the book illustrated in very vigorous and striking fashion the interval which seems to divide the twentieth century from nineteenth. His friend, David Garnett was later to write that Lyttons essays were designed to undermine the foundations on which the age that brought war about had been built. Whereas Lytton was a conscientious objector, his father had been a renowned Victorian lieutenant-general in India. In 2003, Oxford University Press heralded John Sutherlands new edition of Eminent Victorians as the only fully annotated edition. Sutherland singled out for special attention the importance of the books conditioning by its cataclysmic historical context. In doing so he concurred with Stracheys biographer Michael Holroyd that, for Strachey, the Great War filled the horizon wherever he went, blighting his days and troubling his nights. Eminent Victorians had been written between 1912 and 1918. The war provided a fitting, if Wagnerian, background. Sutherland maintained that hindsight allows us to view the four chapters as forming distinct chronological layers, with moods corresponding to the current state of hostilities. The End of Gordon, bleakest of the portraitswas written in the darkest year of the war,

1917. Without the Great Wars thunderous soundtrack the book would probably have expired largely unnoticed, like most books. Strachey saw his task to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye and to do so as the explorer of the past. In the Preface the individual human being is placed at the summit in the hierarchy of human values. Strachey made the point pithily: Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They are of first rather than last importance. He admitted that the task of the historian of the Victorian age was not an easy one and appeared cynical about it from the outset. Its history could never be written because we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits. In a review in 1909, Strachey had maintained, that the first duty of the great historian is to be an artist. To describe the function of the art in history, he drew the analogy of comparing it to the process of fermentation which converts a raw mass of grape-juice into a subtle and splendid wine. This was a position that he was to plead in 1928 in his assertion that history is an art, which relates facts rather than merely accumulates them. He used the analogy that the individual ingredients do not make an omelette but only when they are united together. For Strachey iconoclasm was pivotal to the role of the explorer of the past. He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall upon the flank, or the rear; he will shoot a sudden, revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hither-to undivined. He was critical of the two-volume standard biographies; asserting that the biographer should preserve a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant. The satirical Strachey encouraged a tendency towards the Victorians to be amused at their expense, to make fun of their cant and clutter. A biographer does not need to be complimentary but rather to maintain his own freedom of spirit. Holroyd showed quite clearly that Strachey knew where he was going before he began his research. He cited Ralph Partridges claim that Stracheys books were planned before reading up all the authorities on the subject. F. A. Simpson highlighted the novelty of Stracheys approach in that he allowed his victims to condemn themselves and made them make themselves ridiculous. By cunningly selecting from their writings just the half-page or half-sentence which, quoted in isolation, would sound supremely ludicrous; and having done so you almost audibly refrained from laughter. In Brixton Prison, as a conscientious objector, Bertrand Russell laughed so loudly that the prison officer had to remind him that prison is a place of punishment. The former Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, delivered his Romanes Lecture at Oxford on Some Aspects of the Victorian Age in the summer of 1918. He described Eminent Victorians as the most trenchant and brilliant series of biographical studies which I have read for a long time. The four figures Strachey had put on his canvas had been re-created for the English readers of the future (not in a spirit of blind hero-worship) by Mr. Stracheys subtle and suggestive art. Strachey credited Asquith with having helped to boost sales, by giving the book a most noble and high-flown puff. Strachey wrote in a new genre. In 1925 Osbert Burdett summarized the importance of Stracheys books in determining the popular view of his contemporaries towards the Victorians. H. G. Wells and Strachey had conspicuously helped in the process of definition and to remove from the determination of the Victorian period the illusion that it was exempt from dissolution. We feel that we may comprehend it at last. Edmund Wilson maintained that Lytton Strachey's chief mission was to dismantle Victorian pretensions to moral superiority forever. J. B. Priestley remarked in 1972: Ever since Stracheys Eminent Victorians the earnest religious debates, the doubts and perplexities, of this age have been good for a giggle. After all, it cost Lytton Strachey 2

nothing to be elaborately ironical, whereas it cost Maurice (1) his professorship to make an honest statement; and many other men, whether they moved towards Rome or rationalism, risked even more than he did. Elizabeth Longford concluded: He had a gift for making the illustrous departed look foolish: Cardinal Manning leaving behind only a dusty red hat, Dr. Arnold bequeathing nothing but athletics and good form to the public school system, General Gordon going a little off his head and Florence Nightingale reporting in a whisper her senile gratitude. Walter Houghton wrote that for Strachey in the full tide of reaction it was impossible to achieve a detached and broad perspective. In Eminent Victorian Women, Lady Longford began by comparing her perspective with that of Strachey. She would not try to ape his intensely personal attitude toward the great. He could find little to admire in his four chosen subjects Perhaps he was too close to the Victorian age. Florence Nightingale died less than ten years before he set about her. Stracheys claim to write dispassionately, impartially and without ulterior intentions had not seemed to his readers to be borne out. In 1989 A. N. Wilson published his Eminent Victorians as a companion volume to his television series. The intervening passage of time afforded A. N. Wilson the very different perspective of not being close enough to the Victorians to feel superior to them. In his final chapter on Julia Margaret Cameron, Wilson returned to Bloomsbury (2) through the family tree. Mrs. Camerons niece, Julia Jackson, was the mother to both Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Wilson pointed out the impact upon them of growing up under the shadow of Victorian values and into an emancipated post-Victorian world, of the emotional havoc of strict family upbringings supplemented by the public school system which owed so much to Dr. Arnold. Adrian Hastings viewed Stracheys mocking of Victorian religion as another way of facing up to the ghosts of the nursery. For A. N. Wilson what separated him from Strachey were the ages in which they lived. The Bloomsbury air of sniggering superiority had been replaced by a realisation of the sheer bigness of the great Victorians, which it is impossible to laugh off. A more distant perspective revealed figures of a stature not easily rivalled in the post-Strachey years . That diversity and stature of such Victorians had not been recognized by the Bloomsbury generation. Peter Ackroyd asserted that they reduced the Victorians into those stereotypical images of Victorian decorum and propriety which twentieth century writers like Lytton Strachey did as much to manufacture and to pillory. Strachey slurred the reputations of those no longer able to defend themselves. Canon Elliott-Binns referred to certain imaginary statements of Lytton Strachey, which falsely represented Mannings attitude to his dead wife. He concluded that no one has the right to give currency to damaging statements unless he knows them to be true. Macaulay wrote of the perfect historian that he relates no facts, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient evidence. Owen Chadwick regarded Stracheys work as conditioned by the doctrine that men and women are worse than their reputations. Let us then enjoy demolishing those reputations. Paul Levy has pointed out that by the time Strachey wrote Eminent Victorians he was a militant atheist; for whom all religion was harmful, a cause of conflict rather than a solution to the problems that divide people from each other. Sigmund Freud regarded Eminent Victorians as a treatise against religion. It has also been credited as the first biographical study in England to employ Freudian psychology. John Gardiner contrasted the Victorians discreet, laudatory, multi-volume lives of their contemporaries with the new biography, which had been inaugurated by Eminent Victorians. The latter emphasised brevity, objectivity and psychological penetration. While they revealed their Victorians as flawed individuals, they at least brought them back into real human perspective. In introducing Manning to his 3

readers, Strachey stated baldly what he perceives are the two only reasons why his readers should be interested: His life was extraordinary in many ways, but its interest for the modern inquirer (sic) depends mainly upon two considerationsthe light which his career throws upon the spirit of his age, and the psychological problems suggested by his inner history. That last sentence demonstrates his debt to Freud. His brother, James, was Freuds pupil and translator. As John Sutherland concluded, Strachey was steeped in the theories of psychoanalysis. Stracheys original idea, in 1912, had been for a volume of Victorian Silhouettes with about a dozen extremely condensed biographies. The sheer amount of material about the object of his first assault convinced him that the brevity required for the silhouettes would be impossible. That first assault was on an ecclesiastic who had not only found prominence in the Established Church but had risen to be the highest-ranking English Roman Catholic Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. Through the complexities of so curious a story, at once potentially instructive and amusing, he launched his assault on institutional religion. He portrayed the Church of England in the eighteenth century as comfortable and slumbering. In the eighteenthirties its privileged constitutional position seemed under threat. It was then that the awakening came, as the Oxford Movement (3) proclaimed the new strange notion of taking Christianity literally. It ended with the secession of the Churchs most distinguished, its most revered member, John Henry Newman. He took with him his intellectual gifts, his devoted ardour, his personal celebrity'. Strachey confined his sources merely to published material. For Manning, this was pre-eminently the unsystematic and shapeless Life in two volumes by Edmund Sheridan Purcell (1824-1899), as Shane Leslies more positive biography would not be published until 1921. Leslie showed how one-sided Purcell had been and that this was partly due to the limited sources that were available to him. Purcell showed signs of suspecting that all the arrows were not in his quiver, or he would not have felt constrained to overshoot the mark. Purcells was a flawed and inaccurate biography. Hugh Trevor-Roper called it a devastating book that was packed with dynamite. Cardinal Vaughan, Mannings successor remarked: I do not recognize the portrait of him with whom I had been in constant communication for forty years. According to Edward Norman: Purcells effect was to portray Manning as an ambitious fixer. It was a very inaccurate impression, which was refined still further by Lytton Strachey. Mannings nephew, Ignatius Ryder, concluded that Purcell never manifests the slightest sympathy with anything Manning says or does. Purcell presents a portrait of Manning as one in whom two motivations are in constant conflict. Sheridan Gilley wrote of Purcells depiction of Manning as as a sort of Jekyll and Hyde with a double voice, divided between the claims of the highest holiness and a ruthless all-devouring ambition. The young Antonia Fraser managed to find a dusty edition of E. S. Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning and discovered how much of the material Strachey had used - and twisted. When, in 1881, Purcell had written his eulogy of Newman in Celebrities of the Day, Newman had disowned it as inaccurate and fulsome. Also high on Stracheys bibliography was F. Warre Cornishs The English Church in the Nineteenth Century. In the only passage, which could have provided Strachey with a portrayal of Mannings character, Warre Cornish summarized those positive and negative aspects that demonstrated to him that Manning had the faults as well as the merits of the priestly type a character so complex as to baffle analysis. The faults have a close resemblance to Stracheys portrayal. Yet Strachey did list J. E. C. Bodleys Cardinal Manning (1912). Manning had wanted John Edward Courtney Bodley (1853-1925), 4

who was Charles Dilkes secretary, to be his official biographer. Bodley questioned the justice of Purcells dichotomy and found it incomprehensible why Manning's hostility to Newman should be imputed to him as a sin, while Newman's hostility to Manning is held to be a virtue. With Stracheys assistance, this dichotomy soon found its way into the public imagination. Bodley believed that the real conflict was between the self-effacing Cardinal Archbishops objective vision and Newmans subjective mind, which focussed upon the saving of his soul. In the late seventies I researched a collection of letters that Manning had written to the novelist Frank Bickerstaffe-Drew. The Anglican layman became a convert, a priest and, in the year of the Cardinals death, a monsignor. The letters portray Manning as a man with a deep pastoral care and spirituality; for whom it was a consolation to know that God uses any word of mine to bring a Soul to Him. He assured Drew: God has guarded you from Childhood in a special way and kept you for Himself. He has called you from grace to grace and from light to light, nearer and nearer to Himself. As Manning himself was nearing the end of a long life, once again he wrote: My belief is that God has guarded you and watched over you and guided you to Himself in a special way. The Cardinal urged Drew to keep this one thought before you: To be wholly on Gods side in this world, & to work for Him, speak for Him, write for Him, and speak with Him every morning in the Holy Mass is what I suppose St. Paul meant For me to live is Christ . George William Erskine Russell (1853-1919) had first met Manning in 1833 and was honoured by his friendship during the last ten years of the Cardinals life. He described Manning as a man who combined in singular harmony the qualities of philanthropy and of statesmanship. Russell reviewed Purcells perfectly candid biography for The Commonwealth in 1896. He recalled the Manning he knew as a man who was a priest in every fibre of his being; who was utterly devoted to the Will of God, and to the Church; which, for him, was the organ of that Will; who served it through a long life of absolute and calculated sacrifice. David Newsome has written a highly acclaimed study of the two Convert Cardinals, in which he maintained that Purcells tarnishing of Mannings reputation was compounded, in some ways even more culpably, by Lytton Strachey What made Stracheys caricature so unpardonable was that he dredged up charges that he must have known were untrue. His bibliography lists the titles of books in which the charges were refuted. Like so many others my initial interest in the Oxford Movement was sparked off by reading Geoffrey Fabers Oxford Apostles, first published in 1933. His great-uncle was Frederick Faber, who had followed Newman into the Roman Catholic Church and had founded the Brompton Oratory in Kensington. His grandfather became a Fellow of Magdalen in 1834 and had known and corresponded with Newman. Faber drew on that correspondence in his portrayal of Newman. Geoffrey Faber became interested in the Movement and the remarkable personalities of those who guided it. He soon discovered the travesty of Stracheys portrayal of Newman as the ineffective dreamer, the gentle artist manqu and that a very little first-hand knowledge blew to pieces Stracheys cynical estimate of the Movement as a game of make-believe. Stracheys Gallic method in biography failed to try to understand the recent past, instead of treating it as an amusing period piece. A. N. Wilson denied that Strachey got it right in implying that Newman was essentially a poet who had become sidetracked by theology. It was transparently obvious to any serious student of Newman that Strachey got it wrong and how through and through, how monomaniacally churchy Newman was. Newmans religious preoccupations were not forced on him at Oxford but had possessed him ever since he had been a schoolboy at Ealing. Responding to Augustine Birrells criticism, Strachey admitted that his own twin motif of Manning as the eagle and Newman as the dove was melodramatic. He acknowledged that he had over-sentimentalized Newman as a foil for the other Cardinal. Strachey had contrasted the humble, gentle, self-effacing and truthful Newman with the ambitious and at least partially worldly Manning. The latter belonged to that 5

class of eminent ecclesiastics distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability and his long and strange career bore fruit in a Princedom of the Church. At the end of his life, the ageing Cardinal Archbishop had, according to Strachey, the mysterious glamour lingering about him of the antique organisation of Rome and yet this Prince of the Church might have passed as a leader of the Salvation Army. This was probably a sniggering aside on Mannings support for the Temperance Movement, which, like the Salvation Army, sought pledges of abstinence in response to the growing social menace and evil of drunkenness. Hilaire Belloc wrote in 1935: Manning did seem to me (and still seems to me) much the greatest Englishman of his time. In conversation with Lionel Tollemache, shortly after the publication of Purcells Life, Gladstone called Manning a great Ecclesiastical statesman. Mannings successor, Cardinal Vaughan, was an infinitely smaller man. I am reminded of Cannings lines - comparing the first two Prime Ministers to face Napoleon Bonaparte: Pitt and Addington. Pitt is to Addington As London is to Paddington Gladstone wrote a letter to Purcell about Manning, which was published in the Times on 14th February 1896.The immense gifts of his original nature and intense cultivations, his warm affections, his life-long devotion, his great share in reviving England, but, above all, his absolute detachment, place him on a level such that from my plane of thought and life I can only look at him as a man looks at the stars. Huge crowds filed past Mannings body and flocked to his Requiem Mass. Lionel Johnson, then a recent convert, expressed briefly his thoughts in his poem- At the Burial of Cardinal Manning. Manning was the saint and knight, who sought to know how to make poor mens sorrows cease. David Newsome wrote that both Henry Manning and his brother-in-law, Samuel Wilberforce, possessed extraordinary gifts. They were men of unassailable greatness; yet each - curiously has been remembered by posterity largely for their faults. Deck chair critics like Strachey evidently had little time for what many of the Cardinals contemporaries saw as the mark of his greatness. Strachey could only snigger at his practical ability. Manning threw himself into causes in such a way that they became personal crusades. He had a chain of poor schools erected in his diocese. Schools before Churches was a nationwide success in raising 350,000 as the means to provide schooling for 70,000 children. In twentyfive years within his own diocese, he established schools for 23,000 children, 10,000 workhouse children were placed in Roman Catholic schools and over 450,000 homeless and destitute were found homes Manning lamented the lack of Roman Catholic involvement in the major contemporary issues of social concern, that all of the great works of charity in England had begun outside the Roman Catholic Church. For Alec Vidler Manning was the lonely pioneer of Social Catholicism in England. Manning himself regarded the domestic life of the people to be vital above allfar beyond anything that can be sold in the market. He was appalled by the working conditions of those whose hours of labour destroyed family life and resulted in the neglect of children, to turning wives and mothers into living machines, and of fathers and husbands intocreatures of burden. The Cardinal placed the Roman Catholic Church in the vanguard of movements for social and political reform. Manning crossed denominational barriers in support of the temperance movement, of the Agricultural Workers Union, in the denunciation of the Russian pogroms and in applauding the Salvation Army for its social work, remarking that the spiritual desolation of London alone would make the Salvation Army possible. Bramwell Booth, the son of their founder, believed that he had never met a man who more uncompromisingly brought his religion into everything he touched, wrote, planned. He did it with the most exquisite tact, and without the slightest suggestion of putting himself forward, but he did it. David Edwards wrote: His true glory was his sympathy with the poor. Shane Leslie was of the same opinion. Wherever there was suffering he lifted 6

up his handsBy thirty years of social action on the side of the working people, by his support of the just strike as permissible in modern Christian civilisation, and the acceptance of both by the Church through his direct influence, Cardinal Manning stands in history. To Manning, David Newsome asserted, the poor had to come first; their plight was desperate. This was the constant theme of his Pastorals (italics his). The combination of anticlericalism and secularism in France once again ended in bloodbaths in 1871, as the Paris Commune held secular and religious priests as hostages and then shot them. Georges Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, had raised his hand and given his executioners his blessing. Manning went over to Paris to kneel on the exact spot of Archbishop Darboys murder. He wrote letters to Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister. He feared that faith had gone from society as such; morals are going. The Paris Commune had served to point towards a final, stark choice between anarchy and despotism. My belief is that Society without Christianity is the CommuneWhat hope can you give me?. He feared also that the development of organised secular trade unionism might become politicised, for the soul is not there. Dermot Quinn drew a parallel in the political experience of Gladstone and Manning, in going from youthful conservative to elderly radical. Manning realised that the country had been through political and social transformations since his youth. The 1832 Reform Act had appalled both of them and yet Manning urged upon Disraeli the reality behind his, the second, Reform Act of 1867 - that the future was now in the hands of the millions who have the Parliamentary vote. Both were no longer afraid of popular legislation, yet Gladstone would have concurred with Manning that legislation without principle is in the strict sense anarchy. Shane Leslie noted that Archbishop Manning set out afresh on the task of winning Democracy back to the Church. As the cries of Labour became more articulate, he advanced into the uncertain stream. Leslie wrote of Mannings first plunge as a motion of sympathy with the agricultural labourers at the great meeting in their support at Exeter Hall in 1872. Sidney and Beatrice Webb contrasted Mannings sympathy for the plight of the striking farm labourers with the attitude of the bishops of the Established Church. While Dr. Ellicott, the Evangelical Bishop of Gloucester, derided them as agitators, Archbishop Manning was the only ecclesiastic to appear on the platform at Exeter Hall. He urged upon Gladstone to address the real issues behind the strike. My belief is that some energetic and sympathetic act of the Government would avert great dangersWhy cannot you do these things for the labourer? Prohibit the labour of children under a certain age. Compel the payment of wages in money. Regulate the number of dwellings according to the population of parishes. Establish tribunals of arbitration in counties for questions between labour and land. The octogenarian Manning actively supported the London Dockers Strike of 1889, in which the dockers demanded a daily minimum wage of sixpence (two and half decimal pence). His face appeared on banners alongside those of Marx in the worlds first May Day procession. Strachey sought to satirise his speech in a schoolroom in the poor East End of London on 10 September. He twisted the tone of the contemporary account by his selection and omissions from an enthusiastic eye-witness. Smith and Nash wrote the contemporary account of the strike. They recalled an address which deeply moved his hearers, in which Manning reviewed the arguments on both sides. The Cardinal solemnly urged them not to prolong one moment more than they could help the perilous uncertainty and the sufferings of their wives and children. When he sat down all in the room knew in their own minds that he had won the day, and that so far as the councils were concerned that was the end of the strike - the Cardinal's peace. One of the strikes leaders, Ben Tillett described Manning as, in the best sense of the word, the guide and father of our movement. He acknowledged Mannings part as the dockers friend, to whom their demands were reasonable and moderate. His diplomacy was courteous and he endorsed with a sense of responsibility the two main claims of the dockers for the 6d. minimum, and recognition of the Union. In contrast, Tillett noted that almost all the Nonconformist (4) leaders were conspicuous by their lukewarmness. According to Ian Randall, Mannings part in the resolution of the dispute was a challenge to evangelicals to seek a 7

broader framework for their social thought. Archbishop Benson noted in his diary for September 17 th: Cardinal Manning has done well in London. But why has my dear Bishop of London gone back and left it to him? Are the Dockers on strike Roman Catholics all? His part in the arbitration earned him the appellation of the Great Cardinal from Sidney Webb. Tom Mann, who became the president of the Dockers Union, recalled that Manning spoke to the dockers in such a quiet, firm and advising fatherly manner, that minute by minute as he was speaking one felt the mental atmosphere changing. The London Trade Councils resolution acknowledged that his tender sympathy for the poor, and his fearless advocacy of justice, especially for the poor, his persistent denunciation of the oppression of the workers, has endeared his memory to the heart of every true friend of Labour. In September 1997 George Carey became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to address the Trade Union Congress. He spoke of Cardinal Manning as one who became a great hero of the Labour Movement and a key influence in establishing the great body of social teaching set forth by successive Popes. Cardinal Manning allied himself also with W.T. Steads exposure of child pornography and juvenile prostitution. He wrote to Stead, encouraging him with St. Pauls assurance that all things work together for good to them that love God. You have served Him with a single eye. Whatsoever it may be in my power to do shall be done. Manning supported Josephine Butlers campaign for the repeal of the notorious Contagious Diseases Acts (5). Before the Butlers left on a promotional tour of Europe, he wrote a letter commending her mission to all the Catholic clergy of Europe. This lady has undertaken a difficult and very needful mission. No Catholic who fears God can refuse to give his allegiance to the sacred cause which she has espoused. The controversy surrounding over the Contagious Diseases Acts also embroiled Florence Nightingale in a furious row with the Armys Medical Department in 1862. According to Cecil Woodham-Smith, she was passionately opposed to the adoption of the Continental system of forced inspections of prostitutes as morally disgusting, unworkable in practice, and unsuccessful in results. Miss Nightingale signed Josephine Butlers manifesto for the Acts repeal in 1869. While Doctor Livingstone was caught in a whirlwind of publicity on his first return visit home from Africa in 1857, he commented that he admired the quiet example of Miss Nightingale. Lord Shaftesbury recorded her return in his diary for August 19th 1856: Miss Nightingale is returned to England quietly, and neither receiving nor, so far as we can see, wishing a triumphant entry. She is worthy of honour, and may she have it to her hearts content. The Queen had written to Miss Nightingale in January 1856: You are, I know, well aware of the high sense I entertain of the Christian devotion which you have displayed during this great and bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you how warm my admiration is for your services. She expressed the wish to make the acquaintance of one who has set so bright an example to our sex. When the war was over, Florence Nightingale was invited to Balmoral. The Queen was impressed by her rare presence, very simple, gentle and ladylike and modest to the degree. At the same time she has a mans intelligence. One can see how much she has gone through. One of Victorias daughters, Princess Alice, who married the Grand Duke of Hesse, entered into a correspondence with Florence Nightingale, for advice on medical reforms and her own nursing schemes and activities. Florence Nightingale was Stracheys woman of action. In a letter to Henry Lamb, he spoke of beginning to attack Florence Nightingale. Im not quite sure whether the damned thing will be possible. He read Cooks official biography in January 1914 and wrote to his brother: the Victorian Age is fairly reeking all over it. He admitted to Virginia Woolf that he found Florence N. rather a hard nut to crack. At the root of his dilemma lay what Strachey referred to as the popular conception. The Times (30th October 1854) had considered there is not one of England's proudest and purest daughters who at this moment stands on so high a pinnacle as Florence 8

Nightingale. The Observer (5th November 1854) recorded that moved by the sufferings of her countrymen in the East, she resolved to follow the sublime example of our Sisters of Charity. David Newsome considered her the Crimean Wars one celebrated heroine. To Churchill she gave the women of the nineteenth century a new status. Longfellow had given to poetry that vision of her heroic womanhood as the Lady with the Lamp in his poem Saint Filomena. Dr. Jowett assured her in 1879 that countless lives in hospitals, among soldiers and among the natives of India had been saved by the energy of a sick lady who can scarcely rise from her bed. Woodham-Smith recorded the steady growth of her legend and so that the image of her lived with vivid life. Not only in England but in the United States of America, in Turkey, Japan, in Brazil, her name had a magic possessed by no other. When she died, on Saturday, 13th August 1910, the obituary writer in the Manchester Guardian regarded Florence Nightingale as memorable for her work as organiser and inspirer of the Crimean War nursing service. Her task had been nothing less than to save the British army. Without her, or at least the work she undertook, our generals would soon have been left without a single man. Her efforts were proportioned to the greatness of the occasion. She worked under the terrible pressure of a constant race with death. Winfried Baumgart has undertaken the major task of editing twelve volumes of diplomatic documents relating to the Crimean War. In his book on the war, Professor Baumgart asserted that Miss Nightingale improved all aspects of hospital life, from cleaning the latrines, introducing diets for cholera and dysentery patients. By the spring of 1855 the vastly different situation in British hospitals was reflected in the lowering of mortality rates to a degree that nobody thought possible, a suitable tribute to her superhuman efforts. Elizabeth Longford credited Strachey with succeeding in restoring, through a varnish of irony, the formidable character of a hitherto sentimentalised angel of mercy. Mark Bostridge speaks for the twenty-first century biographers, who will owe something to Stracheys far-reaching attempt to demystify the Lady with the Lamp. Hugh Smalls Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel has provided a compelling case for his assertion that the false picture of her supposed success at Scutari during the war obscures the fact that the relative failure of Scutari was due to failings in British society as a whole, and Nightingales real victory was in changing that society root and branch after the war - a magnificent achievement. Strachey was keen to dismiss both the myth and the legend. To Frances Partridge, it was absurd to describe Stracheys essay as complete debunking as he attributed strength, gentleness, forethought and unflinching courage to this remarkable woman. Nevertheless Mark Bostridge summarised Stracheys treatment of his subject as one that went beyond demythologising. Far from being the saintly and self-sacrificing maiden of national legend, Strachey portrayed Nightingale as deeply manipulative and possessed of a demon. Only with Cecil Woodham-Smith's Florence Nightingale three decades later did a more balanced view of Nightingale begin to assert itself. Lady Longford observed that Stracheys rationalism deprived Miss Nightingale of any mystical relationship. Florence Nightingale defined Mysticism in 1873 as the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition. It was a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within. She maintained: All I mean by mystical theology is what Christ meant. She once said If I could give you the story of my life, it would be to show how one woman of ordinary ability had been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in his name what He has done in her. And, if I could tell 9

you all, you would see how God has done all and I nothing. I have worked very hard, that is all, and I have never refused God anything. Evelyn Underhill asserted that the national value of Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale and General Gordon was directly connected to their spiritual consciousness; their intensely practical energies were the flowers of a contemplative life. Yet for Strachey Nightingale performed the function of an administrative chief in the Crimea and did so as a terrible commander. For this, old age brought the proud woman her punishment senility. With the offer of the Order of Merit in 1907, there was a universal burst of enthusiasm a final revivification of the ancient myth. Propped up by pillows, she dimly recognised that some compliment was being paid her. Too kindtoo kind, she murmured; and she was not ironical. Elizabeth Longford remarked on this passage: Her words sound on Stracheys page a note of mild farce. Mary Adelaide Nutting, the feminist and nursing historian, recalled in 1939 her impressions of meeting the elderly Florence Nightingale. One forgot the invalid and saw only the aged and beautiful face, the unfaded keen eyes, the cheerful smile, the eager listener. One noted most the surprisingly strong full voice. Geoffrey Faber took issue with Stracheys handling of Nightingales friendship with Benjamin Jowett. Faber claimed also that Strachey did no serious research for this essay, with only nine books in its bibliography. From the Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, he retained nothing of value. From Sir Edward Cooks Life of Florence Nightingale, he dug what suited his purpose, ignoring or misreporting what did not. Whereas Cook relied largely upon Florence Nightingales papers, Strachey once again relied on published sources. Strachey regarded Cooks two-volume biography as an honourable exception to the current commodity and admitted without Cook his own study, though composed on a very different scale and from a decidedly different angle, could not have been written. Dr. Arnold of Rugby was to the late Victorians the architect of their Public School system, an icon of the values of muscular Christianity. Strachey portrayed him as one who strove to make his pupils Christian gentlemen according to the principles of the Old Testament. He would treat the boys at Rugby as Jehovah had treated the Chosen People: he would found a theocracy; and there should be Judges in Israel. The severe formality of his demeanour showed itself in the expulsions and floggings of his pupils. For Strachey, Arnolds enduring legacy to the Public Schools was one of respectability, for which Strachey had little time. Strachey had, once again a strongly formed prejudice against Arnold and he expressed it forthrightly to his mother in 1915: He is a self-righteous blockhead, but unlike most of his kind, with enough energy and determination in him to do a good deal of damage- as our blessed Public Schools bear witness. Dr. Moberly, as Arnolds contemporary as Headmaster of Winchester, testified to Stanley that a most singular and striking change has come upon our public schools This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect to piety and reverence. He attributed that change mainly to Dr. Arnolds personal earnest simplicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influence, and piety. For Dr. Moberly he was the first. While Thomas Arnold was still a schoolboy at Winchester, Sydney Smith wrote his article on Public Schools for the Edinburgh Review in 1810. The vital and essential part of a school is the master; but, at a public school, no boy, or, at the best, only a very few, can see enough of him to derive any considerable benefit from his character, manners and information. That was in stark contrast to the picture of Arnold as Headmaster, as portrayed by Norman Wymer. Arnolds predecessors had reigned in the study in School House in autocratic majesty, summoning boys to it only for a reprimand. Arnold ordered the building of a flight of steps up to the study, to allow the boys privacy in coming to see him. A flagstaff was erected. When the flag was flying, it was a signal that Arnold was at home and that he would be pleased to see any boy who wished to talk to him. No prior appointment was necessary. He invited boys of all ages, and chatted with them about subjects 10

commensurate with their age. As a father might talk to a son, he discussed their future, inquired into their home life, and displayed an intelligent interest in their hobbies. In Tom Browns Schooldays, Thomas Hughes entitled the final chapter as Finis. It is set in the summer of 1842, when Tom Brown joins friends for a fishing ramble in Scotland. While they are fishing, a reading man calls out very abruptly: Hullo, Brown! Heres something for you. Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead. Brown felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. The shock was intensely painful in what was the first great wrench of his life. Hughes noted that Brown had to learn that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon human prop, however strong, and wise, and good. Thomas Babington Macaulay feared that Arnolds death boded ill for the school. He wrote to his sister. But poor Arnold! I am deeply grieved for him, and for the public. It is really a great calamity, and will be felt as such by hundreds of families. There was no such school: and I fear the place is likely to be filled by somebody of very different spirit. Arnold was to be succeeded by Archibald Campbell Tait, whose sister recorded the sight of boys filling the carriages of the train, all silent and sad. These were the young gentlemen of Rugby. Their hushed voices and subdued look told evidently how suddenly the blow had fallen, and how it had affected each one of them . On the day before his election to the headmastership, the future Archbishop of Canterbury wrote: if it were in my power to keep up that system which Dr. Arnold has begun, I should certainly think my life well spent. Both G. M. Trevelyan and Basil Willey objected particularly to Stracheys portrayal of Arnold. Willey asserted that Arnold, and Arnolds Rugby, were easy targets for the anti-Victorian sniper Strachey leaves us with an Arnold who is high-minded, but a blundering and conventional prig. Michael Mc.Crum has been a master at Rugby, Headmaster of Tonbridge and Eton and Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was therefore well placed to assess Arnolds record as Headmaster. He pointed out that Strachey had suffered much at three minor public schools (italics his). He believed that he was taking revenge by portraying Arnold as an impostor and a clown. Mc.Crum echoes Willey in calling Eminent Victorians a shameful exercise in falsification. Stracheys Arnold is too extreme a caricature. His essay is now generally considered ludicrously exaggerated, distorted, and unfair. In the preface to Tom Brown at Oxford, Thomas Hughes wrote of his deep feeling of gratitude to him, and reverence only for his memory. Archbishop William Temple was at Rugby and his father had been the schools headmaster. According to his biographer, the young Temple held the strong conviction that Thomas Arnold was the greatest Englishman of the nineteenth century. In 1916, he wrote that the great glory of Rugby is the incomparably high level of usefulness reached by its average products. First, there is Arnold, who first clearly put character before brains as the aim of education, and made the senior boys his colleagues for securing it. With Arnold begins the process of founding schools. Copley has drawn a direct line of descent from Arnold, through Temple, to the Education Act of 1944, which introduced universal free and full-time secondary education. William Temples vision of the religious nature and intention behind all true education found its way into the Act. Copley viewed the Act as pure Arnold, a third generation on. In 1947, Spencer Leeson, Headmaster of Merchant Taylors, wrote of Arnold: his work for the schools stands unchallenged and unchallengeable. Strachey derided Arnolds educational reforms as tentative and few and the boys main study remained the dead languages of Greece and Rome. Dr. Arnold was in fact the first headmaster of a Public School to appoint a German master. He also gave his own reason for his continued emphasis on a classical curriculum: The history of Greece and Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten institutions but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the statesman and citizen. Arthur Hugh Clough outlined for an American magazine the 11

immense amount of classical reading he had undertaken under Arnolds supervision in the sixth form and how consequently he had found the standard at Oxford very disappointing. James Bryce wrote in 1903 that Stanleys Life of this eminent headmaster had continued to provide the model of a great teacher and ruler of boys stimulating the intelligence of his pupils and even more concerned to discipline and mould their moral natures. Thackeray reviewed Stanleys Life for the Morning Chronicle. Every man whose own schooldays are not very distantrecallingthe misery, the vice, the folly which were taught along with the small share of Latin and Greek imparted to himwill be apt to think, as we imagine, Why had I not Arnold for a master? Stanley considered it his duty to abstain from any personal judgment and from expressions of approval or disapproval, for he believed that Dr. Arnolds character is far better expressed by his own words, and deeds, than by the representation of others.

Stanley praised Matthew Arnolds poem Rugby Chapel and included it as an appendix in the hope that this tribute to such a father by such a son will be the best conclusion of the whole work. Matthew Arnold wrote the poem in response to an article in the Edinburgh Review by Virginia Woolf's uncle describing his father as a narrow bustling fanatic. Matthew Arnold edited the posthumous publications of his fathers sermons. Thus the reader will have brought before him the habitual teaching of one whose tender love and anxiety for those committed to his care ended only with his life. Thomas Arnolds sermons were to have an impact on those who heard them that would be with them for the rest of their lives. The sixteenyear-old Stanley wrote to his sister: Whatever happens in the week to diminish my respect for him, it always comes back on the Sunday when I hear him preaching. Gladstone read thirty of Arnolds sermons between 1st May and 10th June 1829 and read them aloud in December 1829. In a letter to William Wyndham, written from Oxford in 1830, Gladstone spoke of Arnold as a most superior man and added: Should you see his sermons look at them and blame me if you do not find them worth the trouble. When Thomas Arnold was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, his inaugural lectures had to be moved to the Sheldonian Theatre, as numbers far exceeded expectations, more than those addressed by any professor in Oxford since the Middle Ages. Audiences were estimated between four and five hundred for each lecture. Richard Church, the future Dean of St. Pauls, wrote a glowing report of them to Frederic Rogers. The great lion at present is Arnold and his lectures, which have created a great stir in the exalted, the literary, and the fashionable world of Oxford. people look forward to his lectures in the theatre, day after day, as they might to a play. G. M. Young remarked: I cannot doubt that if Arnold had not been a schoolmaster he would have been a very good historian. Dr. Arnold oversaw the translation of Berthold Georg Niebuhrs works into English. Gooch observed of Arnolds own History of Rome that his strength grows as he advances, and the third volume is as superior to the second as the second to the first. Niebuhrs friend, Chevalier (later Baron) Christian Charles Bunsen, praised Arnolds ambitious plan to extend it to the coronation of Charlemagne. Arnold produced a notable commentary to his own massive three-volume edition of Thucydidess History of the Peloponnesian War. He testified that his own strong love for history had been working in me so many years and saw its ultimate worth in the truths it teaches. Paul Turner asserted Arnolds judgements of fact were clearly influenced by his faith that history showed Providence at work. Charles Raven upheld that Arnolds greatest achievement is in the development of historical method of study, and in its application to the Bible. In an age when biblical scholarship in England was on the defensive, with an almost universal belief in scriptural infallibility and literalism, Arnold sought to apply historical method to the Bible and demonstrate the progressive and preparatory nature of revelation in the Old Testament. 12

Sir Joshua Fitch wrote in his preface to the Teachers Edition (1901) of Stanleys Life of Arnold that it showed how the career of a schoolmaster may connect itself with the politics, the religious interests, the literature and the corporate life of the community. The young Arnold had attended Bucklands lectures and was renowned for his familiarity with geological matters. In 1869 Matthew Arnold wrote to his mother about his father that, owing to his historic sense, he was so wonderfully, for his nation, time and profession, European, and thus so got himself out of the narrow medium in which, after all, his friends lived. In 1949 Willey wrote of that filial observation that today it seems nearer the mark than the mocking ironies of Lytton Strachey. Trilling accused Strachey of a fundamental untruth in translating Arnolds seriousness into sedentariness; actually the man was electric with energy and his conversation was mercurial. He was in love with the world and its history; he held it to be the duty of a schoolmaster to know the world. T. W. Bamford believed that the reason for considering him a great headmaster might really lie in the fact that his pupils knew him to be a great man in the world of men as distinct from the world of children. John Stuart Mill praised Arnold as one of the most enlightened and liberal of our clergy. Bamford had lamented that as a social thinker he was soon forgotten completely. In a recent study of Victorian Political Thought, H. S. Jones contended that Arnolds vision of the ethical state was the key to understanding his educational and ecclesiastical activities and their place within his broader commitment to national reform. It had far-reaching implications for the concept of citizenship. In his inaugural lectures, Arnold had asserted the moral theory of the state to be the foundation of political truth. While being difficult to place politically, Arnold was more progressive than conservative. He sought the intellectual and moral improvement of mankind. According to Stephen Neill, Arnolds famous warning of 1832, that the Church as it now stands, no human power can save, was not about spiritual destitution but the impossibility of defending ancient privilege. Edward Norman drew attention to Arnolds contribution to the later development of Christian Socialism as a major intellectual source and as a man of quite extraordinary social vision. Arnold had written of the Scriptural vision of the Church: The direct object of Christian co-operation was to bring Christ into every part of common life; in scriptural language, to make human society one living body, closely joined in communion with Christ, its head. Bamford wrote of Arnolds reaction to the crisis of Chartism. Reform was such a part of him that he wanted the results of revolution without any of its violence- namely, the production of maximum reform in minimum time without truncation of the social system. Arnold wanted a society organized for drawing public attention to the state of the labouring classes throughout the kingdom. Elizabeth Longford raised the important issue that the Victorianism of Stracheys team has never been questioned, though Manning was already thirty when Victoria came to the throne and Arnold forty-one: Arnold indeed lived for only five years under Victoria. While A. O. J. Cockshut affirmed that Dr. Arnold was a great headmaster, he contended that he was not a Victorian, but he trained Victorians. His son was one of the most eminent of all Victorians. His pupils changed the face of education. J. P. Parry asserted his unquestioned importance in leading generations of teachers to teach pupils to develop a personal spiritual relationship with God. He demonstrated how wide his influence became through those he had taught. H. Wakeman recalled that Arnolds disciples went forth from the school of Arnold determined to bring the consecration of religion into every act of their daily lives. Doctor Arnold had maintained that it was the most fatal error to acquaint the mind with the truths of religion in a theoretical form, leaving the application of them to be made afterwards. He taught his pupils that Christianity was to be practiced and applied. According to George Kitson Clark the strong social conscience which Arnold developed in his boys can be seen in Rugbeians who went to Cambridge, such as D. J. Vaughan, F. J. A. Hort and Richard Assheton Cross. The last of these three became Disraelis Home Secretary and the instigator of his 13

programme of social reforms. G. M. Young referred to him as a Rugbeian of Arnolds time and questioned whether any measures ever placed on the Statute Book have done more for the real contentment of the people than those championed by Cross. For the Victorians, Major-General Charles Gordon had been the exemplar of military heroism, Chinese Gordon, the hero of Khartoum. The Story of Chinese Gordon referred to the living Gordon as not merely heroic, but unique among men. Its author, A. Egmont Hake, went on to edit General Gordons Journals. When Cassells published its Celebrities of the Century in 1887 Hake wrote the article on Gordon. He concluded that Gordon might at any time have escaped, but that he had pledged himself to the cause of the people, and felt himself bound in honour to share their fate. The Editors of the Observer admitted on 28th June 1885: we have never joined in the chorus of vulgar idolatry which has been brayed over the grave of General Gordon. They were clearly surprised by how they had been affected by the publication of Gordons Journals- that for the first time we are now able to fully appreciate Gordons real greatness of character and convince ourselves that in spite of his flightiness and eccentricity he was a man not only of fiery genius but of commanding intellectual power. For Florence Nightingale, whose friend Gordon had become, his death had shown the triumph of failure, the triumph of the Cross. With him, all is well. On 17th July 1885 she wrote to Miss Rachel Williams, the Superintendent of nurses at Suez: It was his constant prayer- first for Gods glory, then for these peoples welfare, and his own humiliation- that is, that he should feel the more, himself being humbled, the indwelling God in himself. The following year she gave her own assessment of Gordon: General Gordon was the bravest of men where Gods cause and that of others was concerned, and his courage rose with loneliness. He was the meekest of men where himself was concerned. You could not say he was the most unselfish of men: he had no self. Lord Salisbury concurred on Gordons selflessness. One of the characteristics of General Gordon was the extreme negation of his nature. Tennyson had written in his Epitaph to General Gordon: Warrior of God, man's friend, and tyrant's foe Now somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan, Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know This earth has never borne a nobler man. Alan Moorehead observed that Gordon died a national hero more loved and pitied than any other figure in the Victorian age, not even Livingstone exceptedThen, most unexpectedly, a quarter of a century after his death, a homosexual intellectual revives the story, and all at once Gordon takes on a new reputation in Lytton Stracheys detached and ironic essay in Eminent Victorians. Strachey claimed that ambition for fame and influence, for the swaying of multitudes was the essential motive in his life and that in the depths of Gordons soul egoism and renunciation melted into one another, where the flesh lost itself in the spirit, and the spirit in the flesh. According to Strachey, the great General was devoted to his Bible but also to his brandy. He was increasingly temperamental, eccentric, passionate, caustic and sarcastic. This was precisely the image that Lord Cromer had sought to promote about Gordon in order to justify himself in the aftermath of national hysteria that surrounded Gordons death. On 4th September 1898, the young Winston Churchill had been present at the Gordon Memorial Service, as a reporter for the Morning Post. Gordon was a major hero for him. In his despatch he wrote of Gordon as a great man, a Christian and a soldier, a gentleman as well as a General. While researching for his book The River War, Churchill travelled to Cairo in March 1899. He recorded Cromers comments about Gordon in a letter to his mother: 14

What I learned makes it necessary to considerably modify the earlier chapter dealing with the Gordon episode. Cromer was very bitter about him and begged me not to pander to the popular belief on the subject. He was so erratic, capricious, utterly unreliable, his mood changed so often, his temper was abominable, he was frequently drunk, and yet with all he had a tremendous sense of honour and great abilities, and still a greater obstinacy. Nevertheless, Churchill still clung to the belief that the long and glorious defence of the town of Khartoum will always fascinate attention the inspiration that flowed from the genius of one man, a European among Africans, a Christian among Mohammedans, turning notorious timidity into a vigorous resistance. It was an event perhaps without parallel in history. Strachey included The River War in his bibliography. Lytton Strachey saw Gordons attempts to suppress the slave trade in the Sudan as amounting to no more than palliatives. He claimed that since there was no way of knowing what happened in Khartoum in the last weeks of his life, his famous end was uncertain and involved in mystery and doubt. He was at least honest and preferable to the Mahdi with his daily floggings. Nevertheless he and the Mahdi were two fanatics. The poignancy of Stracheys narrative with its biting edge is well illustrated in the books final paragraph. Strachey imagined Gordon, in 1898, looking down on Major-General Herbert Horatio Kitchener, firstly at his victory over the dervishes at Omdurman and then at the Gordon Memorial Service at Khartoum. Gordon fluttering, in some remote Nirvana, the pages of a phantasmal Bible, might have ventured on a satirical remark. But General Gordon had always been a contradictious personeven a little off his head, perhaps, though a hero; and besides, he was no longer there to contradict. At any rate it had all ended very happilyin a glorious slaughter of twenty thousand Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring. In his biography of Gordon John Pollock remarked on the reactions of those who knew Gordon to Stracheys brilliant but flawed essay on Gordon. Surviving relatives and brother officers were outraged by what they considered a barely recognizable literary caricature; yet despite later scholarly biographies, using some of the family papers, Stracheys tarnished Gordon remains in the public mind. Pollock takes Strachey to task over his portrait of Gordon as a man with a drinking habit and a special liking for brandy, which found its way into the film Khartoum. Pollock demonstrated the unreliability of Chaille-Longs My Life in Four Continents. In a book of 1912 Long inserted a brandy bottle beside the Bible. The brandy bottle gave Strachey his cue. He pointed out that when Lytton Strachey in 1918 portrayed Gordon as addicted to drink, an outraged Regy Brett wrote to Sir Philip Sassoon: Its an absolute lie that Gordon drank! Nevertheless Stracheys portrait is proving hard to shake off. Denis Judd referred to 'Gordons equally strong taste for brandy and independent action in his book Empire, published in 1996. Pollock asserted that the rumour about Gordons drinking started with Cromer. There is an incontrovertible amount of evidence behind Angus Hawkins assertion that an outburst of intense public anger was directed against Gladstone for supposedly abandoning Gordon to the Mahdi. The Illustrated London News spoke of a painful revulsion of feeling at the news that Khartoum had fallen into the hands of the Mahdi and reported differing accounts of Gordons death. Kitchener wrote in Notes on the Fall of Khartoum: Never was a garrison so nearly rescued, never was a commander so sincerely lamented. The news of Gordons death and the fall of Khartoum boded so ill for the Government that Chamberlain wrote again to Morley on 14th February: I cannot see how we can survive it. Archbishop Benson met Gladstone five days later walking in the park, and looking perfectly lost. Benson reflected in his diary: There has never been so universal a sense of loss and danger in England. Asquith was later to recall that the melancholy story of the Governments handling of the whole affair and its ultimate failure was more responsible than any other single cause for the downfall of the Gladstone Government. According to Colin Matthew, Gladstones contemporary notoriety over the end 15

of Gordon lay in his failure to sense this central dimension of the Gordon mission. It was Gordon as symbol, as an icon of the age, that was important. Later - as a reflective Leader of the Opposition, Gladstone wrote in 1890: In the Gordon case we all, and I rather prominently must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was hero, and a hero of heroes It was unfortunate that he should claim the heros privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and intention with which he had left England, and for which he had obtained our approval. Clearly Strachey was looking at Gladstone in the context of what had gone down in history as one of his most spectacular blunders, when G.O.M. (Grand Old Man) became M.O.G. (Murderer of Gordon). As Gladstones youngest son, Herbert, was to point out in 1928: Recent critics are fond of alleging by assertion and innuendo that Mr. Gladstones political career was a series of errors. Apart from actions which were and still are matters of political opinion, Mr. Gladstones serious errors were remarkably few. Strachey believed it was easy both to worship Mr. Gladstone but also to detest him as a hypocrite, to despise him as a demagogue, and to dread him as a crafty manipulator of men and things for the purposes of his own ambition. Friends and enemies alike could justify their denunciations or their praises. Did his very essence lie in the confusion of incompatibles? Strachey tried to reduce Gladstone to the measure of his prototype of de-bunking; only to find that the true essence of the Grand Old Man was beyond his grasp and that the intervening years had not lessened the degree to which one was left baffled. Strachey was to be fairer to him in Queen Victoria. Lytton Stracheys real preoccupation was with looking back beyond the Victorians, as well as over the channel to France to the brilliance that sparkles round the eighteenth century. In doing so he brought to life the men he admired in those masterly miniatures; which have earned him his real place in literary history and criticism. He could identify with those miniaturists and diarists of an earlier age like Aubrey and Creevey, whose function it is to reveal the littleness underlying great events and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Holroyd and Levy found in these miniatures a quality beyond that of the iconoclast. Such miniatures display Stracheys feline skill at story telling, and a humorous tenderness and sympathy. G.K. Chestertons The Victorian Age in Literature was published in 1913. He sought to deal with the great Victorians by schools and streams of thought. It is a task for which I feel myself wholly incompetent write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. Chesterton saw that religion and politics were important for the Victorians and should therefore be treated as such when dealing with them. A year earlier Strachey had written to Virginia Woolf with his opinion about the Victorians already formed. They seem to me a set of mouthing bungling hypocrites. Tristram Hunt accused both Lytton Strachey and Margaret Thatcher of gutting the reputation of the Victorian era and condemning the 19th century to being considered a time of cloying evangelicalism, repression and illiberalism. Terence Copley was dismissive of Stracheys approach as self-confessed dilettante history at best, not serious history at all. John Gardiner has concluded that Eminent Victorians was a masterpiece as an intelligent engagement with Victorian era and casts its long shadow over the twentieth century. His overall verdict was a mixed one. It is bad history, and as far as written lives are deemed to require factual accuracy, questionable biography too; however, in its daring attitude towards the established method and tone of biography it was little short of revolutionary. Nevertheless Eminent Victorians was, in Gertrude Himmelfarbs phrase, more an expression of the personality of the author than of his ostensible subjects. Asa Briggs wrote in 2001, the centenary of Queen Victorias death: How we describe the Victorians reveals as much about ourselves as about them. We now take them seriously: we once did not.

16

FOOTNOTES

1.

Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-72) was an Anglican theologian and leading Christian Socialist, concerned with the application of Christian principles to social reform. He was dismissed from the professorship of theology at Kings College, London for what were deemed to be unorthodox views on eternal punishment. 2. The Bloomsbury Group comprised of unconventional artists, writers, intellectuals and their relations. Some had originally met at Cambridge, under the tutelage and influence of the philosopher G. E. Moore. In their writings and their complex network of heterosexual and homosexual relationships, they reacted against those social and sexual attitudes and restraints that they regarded as Victorian. Nevertheless they were perceived by some to be elitist. 3. The Oxford Movement campaigned for a revival of Catholic beliefs and practices in the Church of England, while emphasising its Catholic heritage and nature. It began in Oxford in 1833. Several of its adherents later joined the Roman Catholic Church. 4. Nonconformist was a term used for Protestants who did not conform to the Church of England and therefore joined alternative Protestant denominations. 5. The three Contagious Diseases Acts required the fortnightly internal inspection of females in certain (military) garrison and naval towns, who were suspected by the police of prostitution. They were to be compulsorily interned in hospitals if infected with sexually transmitted diseases. No requirement was made for such inspections of male patrons of prostitutes. Thus the acts maintained a double standard. Since male doctors usually carried out such inspections, the women suffered from the indignity of male interference.

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Lytton Strachey by Dora Carrington

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