When the King of the Chewing Gum Industry and the Czar of the Chain Cigar Stores—or some one able to write better than they—shall have related their lives and revealed the secret of their success, we shall know nearly everything we need to know about the business of life. Should Gerald Chapman have opportunity to publish his autobiography before he is hanged, we shall have a document rivalling in interest the greatest biographies of the past, for he would probably be able to display the sincerity of Jean-Jacques, the honesty of Benvenuto Cellini and the frankness of Dick Turpin. There seems to be no escape from the deluge, and it is probable that no escape should be wished for. There is no harm in writing one’s biography; it is the subject that one knows best and about which one is supposed to know more than any one else. But, alas, it is given to only one man in a million to be really self-revelatory. The only thing that can legitimately be wished is that the facile biographer should evince the same ardour for truth, sincerity and form that he does for approval, approbation and applause.
If only a few of the hundreds of biographies and autobiographies that are constantly appearing succeed in surviving, there will be one thing for which our age should be gratefully remembered. For, if we know what a man really feels and thinks, we know the man, and forgiveness flows from understanding.
However, a careful study of modern biographies, with all credit to the few which prove that the art is not lost and that it has disciples and followers, does not reveal the existence of biographies or autobiographies of genius. None of the recent ones comes up to the standard of many of the great ones of the past. It is true that these set up such a stage of perfection that it would be fatuous to hope that such performance can be repeated by every biographer. Now and then one comes upon a meritorious book such as Valléry-Radot’s Life of Pasteur, Charnwood’s Life of Abraham Lincoln, Cushing’s Life of William Osler, but they are few and far between. Of the hundred and more recent biographies and autobiographies that have been read in preparation of this volume, scarcely half a dozen have real claim to distinction, and none is worthy of comparison with the great predecessors.
Opinions differ widely as to which is the greatest biography and the greatest autobiography ever written. In all such matters, taste alone does not prevail; opinions are formed according to what one seeks in biographies, and to the measure in which one finds it. Few readers, however, can resist the charm of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, generally considered the greatest biography ever published. It is undoubtedly the most perfect portrait of a man ever painted with words; full-size, revealing all the blotches, pimples and blemishes and all the beauty in the complexion of the character. Boswell loved his subject, and then he studied it; love combined with critical perception, literary gifts blended with human understanding, beauty of form adapted to beauty of subject are the outstanding features of Boswell’s Life. It is a model biography inasmuch as it has set a standard for this sort of intimate personal narrative; his exact reproduction of the conversations in their original form gives to the reader the impression that he is living with Johnson instead of making his acquaintance through a medium. And the best proof of the value and quality of this biography is that, thanks to James Boswell, Samuel Johnson is one of the best known men in history. No other character study has ever attained the perfection that the Life has attained; there is a touch of genius in Boswell, and remarkable literary facility. The more we study him, and the more we compare him with other biographers, the greater his work and his genius appear. Fortunately for his memory, the picture that posterity preserves of him is the one he painted himself, not that sketched by Geoffrey Scott in The Portrait of Zélide.
Lockhart’s Life of Walter Scott may be said to be the most admirable biography in the English language, after Boswell’s Samuel Johnson. Lockhart had all the odds in his favour when he wrote his magnum opus. He had had the advantage of years of close intimacy with Walter Scott, who liked him as a writer of promise and achievement, before he loved him as a son; and Lockhart’s sensitive and impressionable mind was the best fitted receptacle for the genius of his father-in-law. He devoted years to the writing of the biography which made him famous, and he made it a labour of joy. It is at once objective and subjective; it includes all the characteristics of the great Scotch writer; it is criticism and biography combined. Trevelyan came near accomplishing a similar success in The Life and Letters of Macaulay, a most satisfactory biography. The Life of Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, by Monypenny and Buckle, an illuminating, accurate and complete account of a complex personality and of his ancestors, compares favourably with both of them. The modern biographies worthy to hold a place with these great ones are Sidney Lee’s Life of Shakespeare and Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria. There probably never was a more tangled jungle to explore, survey and stake out than that presented by the traditions, theories and conjectures that have grown around the greatest poet since Dante. Sir Sidney Lee succeeded in giving an exhaustive summary of everything credible that has been written about Shakespeare and he gave the coup de grâce to much that was not only fictitious but monstrous, particularly about the sonnets. There are few biographies that display such tact, insight, erudition, industry and judgment, and if popularity is in direct relationship to merit, it may be interesting to note that it has had ten editions since its first publication in 1898. The only one that rivals it is Strachey’s Queen Victoria, but Strachey’s task was much easier. It is, however, a great feat to have made known to her own people the Queen who reigned over them for nearly sixty years!
Lord Byron, one of the most astonishing figures of the nineteenth century, found an exceptional biographer in Ethel Colburn Mayne. Byron had the qualities of his defects and the defects of his qualities to an extraordinary degree. There was such disparity between his nature and his actions, his personality and its manifestations that it is a difficult task for any biographer to plumb his depth and reveal his intricacies. Although Moore wrote a life of him that has great merit, he did not succeed in doing this. Miss Mayne has, and her book is the best personality portrait of Byron that we have, and E. Barrington has not jeopardised its claim with Glorious Apollo. She played the double rôle of biographer and novelist, the latter a little too convincingly. It is gratifying to note that she changed her point of view in regard to Trelawny after reading Mrs. Olwen Campbell’s Shelley and the Unromantics.
Biographers do not like to admit flaws in their heroes, and so Miss Mayne finds excuses for Byron’s faults, passes lightly over his frailty and is extremely reticent concerning the great mystery of his life. She presents the facts of the “Astarte” question as they have been made known by Byron’s grandson, Ralph, Earl of Lovelace, who died in 1906. Every person interested in literature knows that the book “Astarte” was written to vindicate the character of Lady Byron, who left her husband, alleging that he had had meretricious relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and that he was the father of the child, Medora. Miss Mayne’s comment is interesting: “Only pity will avail for understanding of this household and we need but know the future of the husband, the wife and Augusta Leigh for pity to constrain our heart.”
Hero-worship is one of the necessary factors of good biographies. At the service of critical ability, and kept within the limit of facts, it may result in such seductive reading as Mr. Charles Wheeler Coit’s The Royal Martyr. Charles I, of England, his tragedy and its causes are there rendered in their true light. A martyr he was, indeed—and modest like most martyrs. Mr. Coit has done historical biography a great service, because his book is more than readable—it has charm. His display of erudition is nowhere overwhelming, but his fine use of English and the poetical turn of his prose make literature of what might have been a textbook. Love and loyalty to King Charles do not blind him to his weaknesses—but he finds apologies for them, and he is convincing. “The Royal Martyr” is one of the finest biographies, in the more serious line, that has recently come out of England. For the king, it will make hero-worshippers, and, for the biographer, admirers.
The best personality portrait with which I am familiar is that of John Addington Symonds, sketched and painted by himself and finished by his friend Horatio F. Brown. It is a model psychological biography which concerns itself particularly with the nature and display of the temperament of a man who was a strange mixture of mysticism and practicality, scepticism and credulity, piety and sensuousness, emotion and intellect; and who had, with it all, extraordinary energy, painstaking industry, tireless application. Practically a life-long invalid, and without the spur of poverty, he accomplished a stupendous amount of literary work of the first order: biography, essays, criticism, poetry, translation—which is likely to be more familiar to coming generations than it was to his own. His history of the Italian Renaissance, his translation of Benvenuto Cellini’s Memoirs and his version of the sonnets of Michael Angelo give him a permanent place in literature.
Any one who would fit himself to recognise the neuropathic constitution, the manic-depressive personality, the artistic temperament, the hedonistic attitude, the religious nature, can do so by reading comprehensively Horatio Brown’s splendid biography of John Addington Symonds. Possessors of the phlegmatic temperament may get neither profit nor pleasure from reading it, but all others will, and many will get nourishing food for thought.