Eminent Victorians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Lytton Strachey and Diana Adams

"Discretion is not the better part of biography," Strachey warns us, and it is with this motto that he paints his portraits of Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General Gordon. The caricatures - which represent the world of religion, philanthropy, education, and politics - expose the high Victorian myths, and reveal a slightly darker truth about the leading figures of the era.

Some say that he led the world into the next generation, but that claim is essentially over inflated. What can be said is that the line between fiction and non-fiction was blurred. A new genre was born: literary biography.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411431041

Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) , one of the most famous writers of his time, was a pioneer of a new style of biography. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, he was best known for writing Eminent Victorians, a collection of biographies of Victorian heroes: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon. He is also the author of, among others, Landmarks, Elizabeth and Essex and Queen Victoria.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

IT is the end of the Victorian era, and the world is dealing with the impact of World War I. The stage is set. On May 9, 1918, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians is an immediate success that explodes Victorian values and slices through the myths of an era. Originally entitled Victorian Silhouettes, Strachey created short biographies of four leading figures: Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General Gordon. Discretion is not the better part of biography, Lytton warns us, and it is with this motto he paints his portraits. His writing style was in sharp contrast to the sober, colorless biographies of historians and academics. The four caricatures of leading Victorian figures in Eminent Victorians represent the world of religion, philanthropy, education, and politics. The biographies were written to expose the high Victorian myths and reveal a slightly darker truth. Michael Holroyd, the pre-eminent expert on Strachey, informs us, his ability combined a scholarly capacity for absorbing facts, with a novelist’s gift for presentation. It is with this novelist’s eye, then, that he exposes his subjects, employing caricature, exaggeration, and the compelling touch of drama. Some said that he led the world into the next generation, but that claim is essentially over inflated. What can be said is that the line between fiction and non-fiction was blurred. A new genre was born: literary biography. The extent to which artistic license distorted the real characters was a matter of great criticism. These criticisms did not detract from the success of the book, today or back in 1918. Eminent Victorians is a delightfully readable assembly, and it elevated biography to art.

Giles Lytton Strachey was born in 1880. He was a dominant member of the well-known Bloomsbury Group, and the group acted as a sort of test group for his works in progress. His biographical works include: Eminent Victorians (1918), Queen Victoria (1921), Elizabeth and Essex (1928), and Portraits in Miniature (1931). When he died in 1932, he left behind a substantial body of meticulously finished work, which was guarded in trust by his younger brother James Strachey. The Strachey family was well-educated, upper-middle class, and highly eccentric. Lytton Strachey did not have many happy school days, but when he finally landed at Cambridge, he found a place where he could be accepted for who he was and a place to nurture his true talents. It had been spotted in his youth that he possessed the potential for the high calling of literature.

At Cambridge, he was accepted into the secret Cambridge Conversazione Society, also known as the Apostles, who were an elite group of passionate thinkers. Unlike other societies, members remained Apostles even after they had graduated. Older and well-established members still attended and influenced and molded the group of freshmen. From the Apostles evolved famed Victorian social and artistic discussion circle The Bloomsbury Group. . It was in this clique of Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forester, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf that Strachey was able to voice and support behavior that had previously been condemned. He carried the ‘intellectual aristocracy of England.’ He was a homosexual and spoke for women in their struggle for equality. He was a conscientious objector to World War I, and he—uninhibited by convention—did not make excuses. In this climate, he would write Eminent Victorians, which deflated the figure heroes and icons of the Victorian era. It was not the pen of a historian he was using; he was far more inclined towards literature. Instead, he used great linguistic dexterity and brash caricature to bring the myths to light, to drag them down to a human level. Freed from the constraints of common biography, Lytton Strachey employed a great deal of freedom of interpretation that would mark his well-received later works, such as Elizabeth and Essex.

Eminent Victorians ’ great success was largely due to the fact that the biographies are so humorous. The famous mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who was in prison for anti-war activities, commented, It caused me to laugh so loud that the officer came to my cell. There were critics and leading historians, who were not so happy with his method of biography. It was, after all, a certain dark humor he was working with. The critics noted that Lytton Strachey wrote under the influence of the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky is known for extensive exaggeration and overly dark, dramatic scenes. This influence is apparent in Strachey’s own use of dark comedy and the heavy use of exaggeration. He skillfully added demons and drama to the biographies for artistic effect. He used these devices quite boldly, particularly in his depiction of Florence Nightingale: ... A demon possessed her, he tells us. However, the problem was that Lytton Strachey actually distorted facts and details so that they would fit in with his portrait.

Cardinal Manning, the first and the longest of the four portraits, was an attack on a leading Evangelical figure of the Victorian era. In the first paragraph of the biography, Lytton tells us, He belonged to that class of eminent ecclesiastic—and it is by no means a small class—who have been distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability. It was Strachey’s account of Manning’s interview with Pope Pius IX, prior to his conversion to Catholicism, which received the most criticism. In the light of later years one would be glad to know what precisely passed at that mysterious interview of his with the Pope, three years before his conversion. Lytton Strachey has us believe there was, in fact, ‘mystery’ in the meeting; however, historian F.A. Simpson points out that Manning did in fact keep a journal that detailed the meeting with the Pope, and there was no mystery involved at all. Early in the biography, Lytton comments, Such questions are easier to ask than to answer. The question is skillful, as the answer has been implied throughout this most severe biography.

As previously mentioned, artistic license runs rampant in the portrait of Florence Nightingale. The myth of the saintly nurse, the lady with the lamp, is told to children as an example of charity and selflessness in the face of tragedy. On the first page of the biography, we are presented with: ... she worked in another fashion towards another end, she moved under the stress of an impetus. ... A demon possessed her. These are very strong words for a model lady of Victorian England, who was idealized for her modesty and self-sacrificing contributions to the Crimean War.

His method of caricature is employed physical descriptions. Nightingale is the perfect lady, however there was sign of power in the dominating curve of the nose. It is with the pen of a fiction writer that he takes things one-step further. The death of Sir Sidney Herbert, who aided Nightingale in her charitable works, is described, If Miss Nightingale had not been so ruthless, Sidney Herbert would not have perished. . . . It was her demon that was responsible. Strachey has us almost believe that she killed him herself. Strachey alternates between respecting Nightingale’s drive and criticizing her as a frenzied demon. For this reason, Strachey’s attack on Nightingale is criticized for its divided attitude.

Lytton Strachey was besieged with illnesses in his youth, and he was sent to several schools that were unsuccessful in cultivating his unique intelligence. His unhappy school days were probably at the root of his attack on Dr. Arnold, who was appointed the headmaster of Rugby to make educational reforms in the school system. After Dr. Arnold, no public school could venture to ignore the virtues of respectability, Lytton tells us, and went on to criticize Dr. Arnold’s liberalism for being the founder of the worship of athletics and the worship of good form. Another writer, Thomas Hughes, was to graduate and criticize the Arnold regime in his novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, giving the public a most severe depiction of life inside Rugby College. In this biography, Strachey was particularly hostile, resorting to snide personal remarks, such as describing Arnold: . . . his legs perhaps shorter than they should have been. Michael Holroyd explains, In fact Arnold and Strachey were about the same height, although the former looker shorter and the latter taller. Working with only one sourcebook on Arnold as a reference, Lytton Strachey resorted to complete caricature to delineate the life of Dr. Arnold.

Charles Gordon was a great British general in the nineteenth century. During the Taiping Rebellion in China, which had destroyed hundreds of cities, Gordon took command of the army and put a halt to the rebellion. He opened up large portions of the Nile and, in 1877, was appointed governor of the Sudan. General Gordon, in the final biography, is somewhat spared the Strachey invective because Strachey was working without any sourcebooks at all. Still, Lytton drops his clues skillfully as to the nature and character of the general: ... his soul revolted against dinner parties and stiff shirts, and the presence of ladies—especially fashionable ladies filled him with uneasiness. He describes the general’s drinking habits: For months he would drink nothing but water; and then the water that was not so pure. Strachey made repeated references to brandy—or b. and s. Many critics asked, What right had a sickly scribbler to criticize the hero of Khartoum? They looked closely to see if there was any validity to the colorful depiction of the general’s habits. The truth was revealed; the general may have enjoyed a brandy or two, but there was nothing to support Strachey’s account that the Holy Bible was not his only solace. The idea of the general’s drinking had come from mere gossip; a column in the Academy had mentioned water with whiskey. Lytton had used this trivial mention to his own ends and fabricated a whole life.

The biographies were specifically written as an attack on Victorianism. They were anarchist texts that exposed the mores and pretensions of the era. Instead of relating historical facts, Lytton Strachey employed a method of biography that leaned heavily on artistic devices and humor to drive home the point. He freely interpreted the human lives of the Victorian myths. Walter Raleigh commented, Nothing can make your book undelightful. Sigmund Freud was a supporter of Eminent Victorians: As a historian you show that you are steeped in the spirit of psychoanalysis. Despite the inexactness of details in the biographies, he still maintained high ranking supporters. There were many detractors as well. The fact was that the art of biography changed with Lytton Strachey. He created a new genre: literary biography. His works became the pilot of all modern biography. It was, after all, his role as a writer to recreate the lives as he saw fit. The fact that he did so boldly—without excuses and with great wit—can be seen as an argument against the repressive, prudish culture of the Victorian era. The writings of Lytton Strachey were a relief and delight to the artists and intellectuals of his day, and the reason why the works, in the spirit of the enfant terrible, are still wickedly enjoyable today.

Diana Adams has studied under Canada’s leading man of letters, Austin Clarke.

PREFACE

THE history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. Concerning the Age which has just passed, our fathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would be submerged by it, and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it. It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. 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, hitherto undivined. He will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity. Guided by these considerations, I have written the ensuing studies. I have attempted, through the medium of biography, to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye. They are, in one sense, haphazard visions—that is to say, my choice of subjects has been determined by no desire to construct a system or to prove a theory, but by simple motives of convenience and of art. It has been my purpose to illustrate rather than to explain. It would have been futile to hope to tell even a précis of the truth about the Victorian age, for the shortest précis must fill innumerable volumes. 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.

I hope, however, that the following pages may prove to be of interest from the strictly biographical no less than from the historical point of view. Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal processes—which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake. The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England. We have had, it is true, a few master-pieces, but we have never had, like the French, a great biographical tradition; we have had no Fontenelles and Condorcets, with their incomparable éloges, compressing into a few shining pages the manifold existences of men. With us, the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing has been relegated to the journeymen of letters; we do not reflect that it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one. Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate the dead—who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They are as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and wear the same air of slow, funereal barbarism. One is tempted to suppose, of some of them, that they were composed by that functionary, as the final item of his job. The studies in this book are indebted, in more ways than one, to such works—works which certainly deserve the name of Standard Biographies. For they have provided me not only with much indispensable information, but with something even more precious—an example. How many lessons are to be learnt from them! But it is hardly necessary to particularise. To preserve, for instance, a becoming brevity—a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant—that, surely, is the first duty of the biographer. The second, no less surely, is to maintain his own freedom of spirit. It is not his business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case, as he understands them. That is what I have aimed at in this book—to lay bare the facts of some cases, as I understand them, dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior intentions. To quote the words of a Master—Je n’impose rien; je ne propose rien: j’expose.

L. S.

A list of the principal sources from which I have drawn is appended to each Biography. I would indicate, as an honourable exception to the current commodity, Sir Edward Cook’s excellent Life of Florence Nightingale, without which my own study, though composed on a very different scale and from a decidedly different angle, could not have been written.

CARDINAL MANNING

HENRY Edward Manning was born in 1807 and died in 1892. His life was extraordinary in many ways, but its interest for the modern inquirer depends mainly upon two considerations—the light which his career throws upon the spirit of his age, and the psychological problems suggested by his inner history. He belonged to that class of eminent ecclesiastics—and it is by no means a small class—who have been distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability. Had he lived in the Middle Ages he would certainly have been neither a Francis nor an Aquinas, but he might have been an Innocent. As it was, born in the England of the Nineteenth Century, growing up in the very seed-time of modern progress, coming to maturity with the first onrush of Liberalism, and living long enough to witness the victories of Science and Democracy, he yet, by a strange concatenation of circumstances, seemed almost to revive in his own person that long line of diplomatic and administrative clerics which, one would have thought, had come to an end with Cardinal Wolsey. In Manning, so it appeared, the Middle Ages lived again. The tall gaunt figure, with the face of smiling asceticism, the robes, and the biretta, as it passed in triumph from High Mass at the Oratory to philanthropic gatherings at Exeter Hall, from Strike Committees at the Docks to Mayfair drawingrooms where fashionable ladies knelt to the Prince of the Church, certainly bore witness to a singular condition of affairs. What had happened? Had a dominating character imposed itself upon a hostile environment? Or was the Nineteenth

Century, after all, not so hostile? Was there something in it, scientific and progressive as it was, which went out to welcome the representative of ancient tradition and uncompromising faith? Had it perhaps, a place in its heart for such as Manning—a soft place, one might almost say? Or, on the other hand, was it he who had been supple and yielding? he who had won by art what he would never have won by force, and who had managed, so to speak, to be one of the leaders of the procession less through merit than through a superior faculty for gliding adroitly to the front rank? And, in any case, by what odd chances, what shifts and struggles, what combinations of circumstance and character had this old man come to be where he was? Such questions are easier to ask than to answer; but it may be instructive, and even amusing, to look a little more closely into the complexities of so curious a story.

CHAPTER I

UNDOUBTEDLY, what is most obviously striking in the history of Manning’s career is the persistent strength of his innate characteristics. Through all the changes of his fortunes the powerful spirit of the man worked on undismayed. It was as if the Fates had laid a wager that they would daunt him, and in the end they lost their bet.

His father was a rich West India merchant, a governor of the Bank of England, a Member of Parliament, who drove into town every day from his country seat in a coach and four, and was content with nothing short of a bishop for the christening of his children. Little Henry, like the rest, had his bishop; but he was obliged to wait for him—for as long as eighteen months. In those days, and even a generation later, as Keble bears witness, there was great laxity in regard to the early baptism of children. The delay has been noted by Manning’s biographer as the first stumbling block in the spiritual life of the future Cardinal: but he surmounted it with success.

His father was more careful in other ways.

His refinement and delicacy of mind were such [wrote Manning long afterwards] that I never heard out of his mouth a word which might not have been spoken in the presence of the most pure and sensitive,—except [he adds] on one occasion. He was then forced by others to repeat a negro story which, though free from all evil de sexu, was indelicate. He did it with great resistance. His example gave me a hatred of all such talk.

The family lived in an atmosphere of Evangelical piety. One day the little boy came in from the farmyard, and his mother asked him whether he had seen the peacock. I said yes, and the nurse said no, and my mother made me kneel down and beg God to forgive me for not speaking the truth. At the age of four the child was told by a cousin of the age of six that God had a book in which He wrote down everything we did wrong. This so terrified me for days that I remember being found by my mother sitting under a kind of writing-table in great fear. I never forgot this at any time in my life, the Cardinal tells us, and it has been a great grace to me. When he was nine years old he devoured the Apocalypse; and I never all through my life forgot the ‘lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. ’ That verse has kept with me like an audible voice through all my life, and through worlds of danger in my youth.

At Harrow the worlds of danger were already around him; but yet he listened to the audible voice. At school and college I never failed to say my prayers, so far as memory serves me, even for a day. And he underwent another religious experience: he read Paley’s Evidences. I took in the whole argument, wrote Manning, when he was over seventy, and I thank God that nothing has ever shaken it. Yet on the whole he led the unspiritual life of an ordinary schoolboy. We have glimpses of him as a handsome lad, playing cricket, or strutting about in tasselled Hessian top-boots. And on one occasion at least he gave proof of a certain dexterity of conduct which deserved to be remembered. He went out of bounds, and a master, riding by and seeing him on the other side of a field, tied his horse to a gate, and ran after him. The astute youth outran the master, fetched a circle, reached the gate, jumped on to the horse’s back, and rode off. For this he was very properly chastised; but of what use was chastisement? No whipping, however severe, could have eradicated from little Henry’s mind a quality at least as firmly planted in it as his fear of Hell and his belief in the arguments of Paley.

It had been his father’s wish that Manning should go into the Church; but the thought disgusted him; and when he reached Oxford, his tastes, his ambitions, his successes at the Union, all seemed to mark him out for a political career. He was a year junior to Samuel Wilberforce, and a year senior to Gladstone. In those days the Union was the recruiting-ground for young politicians; Ministers came down from London to listen to the debates; and a few years later the Duke of Newcastle gave Gladstone a pocket borough on the strength of his speech at the Union against the Reform Bill. To those three young men, indeed, the whole world lay open. Were they not rich, well-connected, and endowed with an infinite capacity for making speeches? The event justified the highest expectations of their friends; for the least distinguished of the three died a bishop. The only danger lay in another direction.

Watch, my dear Samuel [wrote the elder Wilberforce to his son] watch with jealousy whether you find yourself unduly solicitous about acquitting yourself; whether you are too much chagrined when you fail, or are puffed up by your success. Undue solicitude about popular estimation is a weakness against which all real Christians must guard with the most jealous watchfulness. The more you can retain the impression of your being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses of the invisible world, to use the Scripture phrase, the more you will be armed against this besetting sin.

But suddenly it seemed as if such a warning could, after all, have very little relevance to Manning; for, on his leaving Oxford, the brimming cup was dashed from his lips. He was already beginning to dream of himself in the House of Commons, the solitary advocate of some great cause whose triumph was to be eventually brought about by his extraordinary efforts, when his father was declared a bankrupt, and all his hopes of a political career came to an end for ever.

It was at this time that Manning became intimate with a pious lady, the sister of one of his College friends, whom he used to describe as his Spiritual Mother. He made her his confidante; and one day, as they walked together in the shrubbery, he revealed the bitterness of the disappointment into which his father’s failure had plunged him. She tried to cheer him, and then she added that there were higher aims open to him which he had not considered. What do you mean? he asked. The kingdom of Heaven, she answered; heavenly ambitions are not closed against you. The young man listened, was silent, and said as last that he did not know but she was right. She suggested reading the Bible together; and they accordingly did so during the whole of that vacation, every morning after breakfast. Yet, in spite of these devotional exercises, and in spite of a voluminous correspondence on religious subjects with his Spiritual Mother, Manning still continued to indulge in secular hopes. He entered the Colonial Office as a supernumerary clerk, and it was only when the offer of a Merton Fellowship seemed to depend upon his taking orders that his heavenly ambitions began to assume a definite shape. Just then he fell in love with Miss Deffell, whose father would have nothing to say to a young man without prospects, and forbade him the house. It was only too true; what were the prospects of a supernumerary clerk in the Colonial Office? Manning went to Oxford and took orders. He was elected to the Merton Fellowship, and obtained through the influence of the Wilberforces a curacy in Sussex. At the last moment he almost drew back. I think the whole step has been too precipitate, he wrote to his brother-in-law. I have rather allowed the instance of my friends, and the allurements of an agreeable curacy in many respects, to get the better of my sober judgment. His vast ambitions, his dream of public service, of honours, and of power, was all this to end in a little country curacy agreeable in many respects? But there was nothing for it; the deed was done; and the Fates had apparently succeeded very effectively in getting rid of Manning. All he could do was to make the best of a bad business. Accordingly, in the first place, he decided that he had received a call from God "ad veritatem et ad seipsum; and, in the second, forgetting Miss Deffell, he married his rector’s daughter. Within a few months the rector died, and Manning stepped into his shoes: and at least it could be said that the shoes were not uncomfortable. For the next seven years he fulfilled the functions of a country clergyman. He was energetic and devout; he was polite and handsome; his fame grew in the diocese. At last he began to be spoken of as the probable successor to the old Archdeacon of Chichester. When Mrs. Manning prematurely died, he was at first inconsolable, but he found relief in the distraction of redoubled work. How could he have guessed that one day he would come to number that loss among God’s special mercies? Yet so it was to be. In after years, the memory of his wife seemed to be blotted from his mind; he never spoke of her; every letter, every record, of his married life he destroyed; and when word was sent to him that her grave was falling into ruin: It is best so, the Cardinal answered; let it be. Time effaces all things." But, when the grave was yet fresh, the young Rector would sit beside it, day after day, writing his sermons.

CHAPTER II

IN the meantime a series of events was taking place in another part of England, which was to have a no less profound effect upon Manning’s history than the merciful removal of his wife. In the same year in which he took up his Sussex curacy, the Tracts for the Times had begun to appear at Oxford. The Oxford Movement, in fact, had started on its course. The phrase is still familiar; but its meaning has become somewhat obscured both by the lapse of time and the intrinsic ambiguity of the subjects connected with it. Let us borrow for a moment the wings of Historic Imagination, and, hovering lightly over the Oxford of the thirties, take a rapid bird’s-eye view.

For many generations the Church of England had slept the sleep of the . . . comfortable. The sullen murmurings of dissent, the loud battle-cry of Revolution, had hardly disturbed her slumbers. Portly divines subscribed with a sigh or a smile to the Thirty-nine Articles, sank quietly into easy livings, rode gaily to hounds of a morning as gentlemen should, and, as gentlemen should, carried their two bottles of an evening. To be in the Church was in fact simply to pursue one of those professions which Nature and Society had decided were proper to gentlemen and gentlemen alone. The fervours of piety, the zeal of Apostolic charity, the enthusiasm of self-renunciation—these things were all very well in their way—and in their place; but their place was certainly not the Church of England. Gentlemen were neither fervid nor zealous, and above all they were not enthusiastic. There were, it was true, occasionally to be found within the Church some straitlaced parsons of the high Tory school who looked back with regret to the days of Laud or talked of the Apostolical Succession; and there were groups of square-toed Evangelicals who were earnest over

Reviews for Eminent Victorians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eminent Victorians is a seminal work of biography that elevated the genre to the status of fine art. The biographical project was liberated by Strachey's humour, iconoclasm, and narrative flair, which replaced veneration with cynicism. For a decade, his images of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon transformed people's conceptions of Victorians.When Lytton Strachey's biographical articles on four "great Victorians" were published in 1918, they sent a shockwave through Victorian England. It was the beginning of the modern biography, elevating the genre to the status of high literary art. Strachey used his iconoclastic wit and cynicism to approach his themes rather than devotion.

[operaman_22 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The initial chapter (on Cardinal Manning) was exceedingly tedious, especially if one had no knowledge of who Cardinals Manning and Newman and some of the other major players were. The remaining chapters, if you managed to persevere through the first, picked up a bit, especially the final chapter on General Gordon.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Lytton Strachey years ago and felt this book had been overhyped, but rereading it in my late sixties, I found myself admiring his use of telling facts to open up the iconic facades of his four subjects and reveal something true about each as a human being rather than as an archetype or Victorian exemplar.

[teckelvik · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book many years ago, maybe in college, and enjoyed it. It was a quick, easy read. I was familiar with the subjects, admittedly, least so with Cardinal Manning. It felt brisk and light-hearted. Years later, I read a review which stated that Strachey began the modern tendency to tear down and mock public figures, and gave this book as the start of the decline of public morals. I was a bit surprised at how much animosity the author had towards this slim little volume. So, when I saw it on the "Recommended" shelf at my local library, I picked it up to see if I had missed anything.I had. After years of reading serious, scholarly biographies, the agenda in this work jumped off the pages. Strachey was a very angry man, and he channelled his anger into a passive aggressive tour de force. I ended up going back to the library for more detailed biographies of all four figures, just to get some context. (Since Strachey was writing sketches, about 50 pages or so, there was very little context.) Each of the serious biographies I read explicitly addressed Strachey's portrait, usually arguing very strongly that he misinterpreted things, ignored extenuating circumstances, etc. All of these works were published much more recently than Eminent Victorians, and it says something about the power of Strachey's writing that his versions of people has survived, even as his work is read less and less frequently.Strachey published this in 1918, just after the end of WWI. He was part of the generation that saw their world ripped apart by the war, and they were all bitter and traumatized. He attacked these public heroes of the Victorian age as a way of drawing attention to the disaster that followed from their examples, their policies, their worldview. He had a definite agenda - to put an end to the entire corrupt, incompetent, murderous system. His light tone, and sly, snarky authorial voice were intended to make the whole thing so ludicrous that it would collapse of its own weight.I don't know that he succeeded in that. Contra the earlier review I read, I don't think he personally started the fabled "decline in public morals." This is a fun book, and interesting book in the history of ideas, and is more interesting, the more you know about the subjects, the author, and the circumstances of its writing and publication.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Four British personages, Florence Nightingale, George Gordon, Thomas Arnold and Cardinal Manning are skewered by the wit of Strachey. He holds them - among others - responsible for a legacy that had embroiled England (slightly before and through WWI) in controversial positions. The Victorian era government is held up to ridicule. Nightingale is portrayed as an obsessive, demanding and intolerant woman. Gordon is an egotistical general who was hardly as competent as his public image, Cardinal Manning is seen as a jealous rival of Cardinal Newman a convert to Catholicism, and Arnold was responsible for the wholly inadequate educational system that stressed sports ahead of science and discipline before common sense. In all, it is a book of enlightenment on the Victorian era often depicted in a romantic, heroic way. A good read.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eminent Victorians is a truly interesting book of biography, which, however, appeals less and less to modern readership. Its remarkable and unique quality depends on the literacy of its readers, and as the Victorian Age is now quite remote, most of the sublime power of the book is obscure to the general readership.To a general readership, Eminent Victorians may appear rather boring, as it presents four, short but rather dense biographies. The biographies of these four people, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Thomas Arnold and General Charles George Gordon, are barely informative enough to learn the most basic biographical facts about their lives. Instead, each biography tries to debunk the myth surrounding each of these people.To Edwardian and early modern readers (the book was published in 1918), these figures of the Victorian Age would have been household names. To modern contemporary readers of the early Twenty-First Century, however, most are unknown, with the exception of Florence Nightingale. The original appeal and interest of Eminent Victorians will merely exist for readers with a more than broad interest and knowledge of the Victorian Age, but even for them it is of interest to know what to look for in the book.The most accessible two biographies, which are still largely self-contained are the biographies of Florence Nightingale and General Gordon. Almost everyone had heard of Florence Nightingale, who is mainly remembered for her unrelenting devotion to care for the sick and wounded. However, as Lytton Strachey shows, this is a myth, a reputation based on a false image. Shattering that image, as Strachey shows Florence Nightingale in a much better light. In fact, Ms Nightingale benefits from Strachey more truthful description. The image that had been created around the popular figure of Florence Nightingale was that of a caring nurse, basically the ideal stereotype of the Victorians for women, an image that did no justice to Ms Nightingale as an oustanding organizer and manager. Lytton Strachey's revaluation of Florence Nightingale, ahead of emancipation and feminism, lifts Ms Nightingale in our esteem, the realization of which forms quite a remarkable chute.In a similar way, the heroic General Gordon is shown to be a buffoon. This becomes entirely evident from reading Strachey's short biography as all elements to make that deconstruction are contained within the text.The biographies of Cardinal Manning and Dr Thomas Arnold are written along similar lines, but possibly less accessible as these figures appeal less to our imagination, and are less well remembered.Each of the four biographies has a length of about 50 pages. A short-cut to understanding and appreciation of reading Eminent Victorians might be achieved by only reading the biographies of Florence Nightingale and General Gordon.

[thatotter-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

From this book I learned that there is a Catholic saint called Pantaloon.

I like Strachey's writing. I've seen it described as "bitchy," but I don't think that's right at all. I would call it unstinting. I also liked how Arthur Clough randomly wandered through all four narratives (and Gladstone, too, but that seems a bit less random to me).

The stories about Khartoum were horrible in so many ways. Augh!

[mermind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was undoubtedly daring and iconoclastic when it was published. It skewers some Victorian sacred cows while exposing the worst characteristics of the Victorians, dourly cruel religiosity, ruthlessly cruel ambition, and stupidly cruel hypocrisy. The prose is deft and devastating.

[theampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read "Eminent Victorians" a few years ago, but I don't think I understood why it was considered an interesting or notable history. After this rereading, I think I might get it. It's not the biographical data it contains that makes it important: it's bibliography isn't exactly extensive, and, while Florence Nightingale is likely to be the only figure here that is still familiar to modern readers, all four of its subjects were extremely famous in their own day. In witty, strategically understated prose, Strachey argues that these four personages owed a great deal of their success to less-than-admirable character traits: a superficial morality that masked powerful ambitions, a constant tension between self-promotion and self-abnegation, a talent for organization and bureaucratic maneuvering, and an overweening self-confidence and, sometimes, an astonishing disregard for facts. I was, for example, amazed to learn that for all the work she did in sanitation and medical training, Ms. Nightingale wasn't convinced by Pasteur's germ theory. It should probably be noted that Strachey might have been writing with an agenda in mind; he belonged to a social set that sought to unmask what they saw as Victorian hypocrisy. Still, the portraits he presents here are largely convincing. He seems to have a talent for isolating the most revealing bits of the mountains of personal memoranda and personal docuementation that each of his subjects left behind. In any event, his book still serves as a valuable historical document: reading the self-lacerating diary entries of the thinkers involved in the Oxford Movement, or bits of General Gordon's manic, messianic account of the siege of Khartoum might tell you more about the Victorian mindset than an armful of Trollope. Especially recommended to those with a special interest in the Victorian period or in the Modernists who sought to overcome their Victorian origins and seek a new path.

[pjsullivan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although it sometimes comes at the expense of clarity, there is some artful writing here. Some examples: On public school education: "A system of anarchy tempered by despotism. A life in which licensed barbarism was mingled with the daily and hourly study of the niceties of Ovidian verse." On Monsignor Talbot: He could apply flattery with so unsparing a hand that even princes of the church found it sufficient." On Dr. Hall: "A rough terrier of a man who had worried his way to the top of his profession." On Cardinal Newman: "With a sinking heart, he realized at last the painful truth: it was not the nature of his views, it was his having views at all that was objectionable." If it is sardonic wit you want, you will find it here, in these four essays. Whether you will find these particular Victorians interesting is another matter. General Gordon, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Thomas Arnold, and Cardinal Manning are not as relevant today as they once were. But these psychological essays created quite a stir in their time, and even changed the course of the art of biography.

[rizeandshine · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think a lot of the ground-breaking irreverence and wit of Eminent Victorians was lost on me as a 21st century reader where our leaders and heroes are often presented warts and all. No one is so revered that he or she is not subject to some sort of ridicule and in fact I'd go so far as to say that dwelling on someone's faults tends to be the norm. At any rate, it was an informative read and I did find myself chuckling here and there at the author's cheek. I found the section on Florence Nightengale most interesting.

[dougwood57 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lytton Strachey is credited with reinventing the art of writing biographies in his brilliant Eminent Victorians. Strachey published the book in 1918, not long after the end of the Victorian Era. Rather than attempt a comprehensive history of the Victorian Era, which he viewed as impossible, Strachey instead wrote short biographies of four truly eminent Victorians that punctured the moral pretensions and historical myths of that famous era. Strachey's subjects are barely remembered today. I suppose Florence Nightingale's name has some small current familiarity because of its association with selflessly nursing injured soldiers. I found her biography to be the flattest of them all. She came from a privileged background, stubbornly resisted her parents' efforts to marry her off, and exerted remarkable energy, persistence, and fortitude to accomplish significant changes in military medicine (which previously languished in a horrific state). Strachey's Dr. Arnold is a cautious educational reformer at best, rather than the revered innovator who established the English Public School system. The education provided at Arnold's Rugby School was quite limited with a dreary focus on religion and the classics. The sciences were entirely neglected. He did establish the prefectorial system whereby the old boys terrorized the younger boys who in their turn got to terrorize the next batch. Readers of Flashman will recognize Dr. Arnold as the head of the school that produced Tom Brown (and kicked Flashman out for drunkenness). Strachey's treatment of the life of Cardinal Manning is fascinating although the subject is arcane. Even in 1918 when Strachey wrote his book he said that few remembered Manning. The Pope's recent visit to the UK highlighted one Manning's archrivals, Cardinal Newman. Both Manning and Newman had risen high in the Anglican hierarchy when the Oxford Movement gradually led them to doubt that Henry VIII had been divinely inspired when he founded that church. Both converted to Catholicism, but the politically astute Manning managed a meteoric rise to Cardinal (with the connivance of the Pope's top assistant) while Newman languished in obscurity. Newman had ideas and ideas were threatening and indeed essentially heretical to Pio Nono, Pius IX (the pope who formally decreed papal infallibility). Only in his dotage was Newman gifted the red hat when the Duke of Norfolk intervened with the Pope on his behalf. Strachey's life of Cardinal Manning is simply a treat of wonderful writing, wit, with a thorough skewering of papal pomposity. The highlight of Eminent Victorians, for me, was the final biography of General Gordon, in which Strachey blows apart the mythology surrounding Gordon and indeed the Empire. Gordon had been hired by the leaders of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion to lead the Ever Victorious Army, which as Strachey notes had been seldom victorious prior to Gordon's ascendancy. Gordon famously dispatched the rebels. Gordon later served as British governor-general of the Sudan, but more often worked as a mercenary. He had returned to England and relative obscurity when the Mahdi Revolt broke out in the Sudan (see Mahdi Revolt). Gladstone wanted nothing more than to exit the Sudan, but he needed someone self-effacing with diplomatic skill for the job. Conservative elements in Gladstone's own government hit upon Gordon as the ideal man for the job. It is difficult to imagine any person less suited for the task of withdrawing than the strong-willed, idiosyncratic, and mercurial Gordon. With the appointment made, the die was cast: Gordon arrived in Khartoum, decided he could not abandon those fine people, and ended up a martyr when the city was predictably overrun (refusing numerous opportunities to leave for safety). The Gordon biography is simply high art. Bertrand Russell described Eminent Victorians as "brilliant, delicious, exquisitely civilized". I agree completely. Read it.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ok. Monocle? Check. Queen Anne chair? Check. Glowing embers, hearth? Check. So then, camera, action! "There comes a time, as one explores British Literature more thoroughly, when one encounters the name 'Lytton Strachey' with increasing frequency. At some point a refererence is made to his innovations in the craft of biography. Or perhaps, as one learns of the Bloomsbury group, or the euphemism, 'the love that dares not speak its name,' one becomes intrigued, and indulges in a bit of the old Googly-Wikipee."Cough.Well, finally, I did get around to reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians, after many years of encountering his reputation. My motivation was to learn a bit more about the Victorian era. I attached an extra memory disk to my cerebral jack slot, and prepared for a bit of a slog. History, even when made more palatable by the spice of biography, can be a cross between beef jerky and a dog chewy. And it was not like I knew anything about Cardinal Manning, Dr.Arnold, or General Gordon. As for Florence Nightingale, somehow, over the years, her name had become all bollixed up in my storm ravaged brain with Jenny Lind, and it was a relief to be reminded that she had something to do with hospitals. I knew that...What a surprise! Turns out that Lytton Strachey is the grandfather of Kitty Kelley, and the great-grandfather of E! News. To simplify this review a tad, these Victorian Eminences were:- a clerical backstabber (Manning)- a prig of an educator (Arnold)- a mad dog of a military man (Gordon)- a workaholic do-gooder (Nightingale).Not that Strachey is quite so blunt. The section on Manning is an excellent introduction to the Oxford Movement, Tractarianism, Cardinal Newman, and the upheavals in the Anglican Church. The section on Arnold provides a picture of the possibilities of educational modernization and reform that were shelved for a generation. General Gordon illustrates how the British military, and by implication the Empire, grew more unwieldy, like an extended halberd, with its operations in China and Africa. Nightingale is treated in a kindly manner; her leadership in hospital reform, and heroic work with Crimean war wounded were commendable. But it took her monomaniacal personality to budge the inertia and chauvanism of the British bureaucracy.Strachey's style is colorful and clear. And after a mere 340 pages, he provides the reader with psychological portraits of four vivid and distinct Victorian personalities. But the genius of Strachey's masterpiece, is how, just as laser beams create a hologram, these four flawed personalities illuminate the Victorian era, recreating its dynamism and its confusion. In short, suggesting how an Empire came to be, and came to be lost.

[xine2009 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Strachey's intent is to criticize Victorian England by presenting humorously satirical biographies of the age's heroes. I think he is successful, except in the case of Florence Nightingale, who comes off as a great, brave woman in spite Strachey's revelation of her flaws (which seem to me rather typical of those who achieve great things in spite of huge obstacles). Now I want to read a good biography of Nightingale.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps more a literary classic than good history. Probably unfair to its subjects, but notoriously clever about saying it.

[ocianain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A little man's attempts to pull down his betters so as to salve his fragile ego; he fails. Maybe it just me, but what person with half a wit doesn't know everyone is screwed up somehow! This is news to Strachey? I just assume people are screwed up from the git go and then see what they do from there. I'm no Anglophile, but Strachey made Gordon a human character to me, I'm sure that wasn't his intent, just goes to show.