And now comes his daughter to say tactfully and deferentially that her father was not at all the kind of man that his friend the Venetian historian depicted; at least she wants to tell the world that there were important facets of John Addington Symonds’ nature that were not revealed by it. Out of the Past is a fascinating biography and it should succeed in reviving interest in an unusual personality who wore the mantle of Pico della Mirandola with grace and distinction.
Another satisfactory biography is Henry Morley’s Life of Jerome Cardan. Jerome Cardan would seem to have been the last man to appeal to the fancy of an Englishman. He was versatile and unreliable; he had the qualities and the charm of his race, but few of its defects; his life was a constant pursuit of something ethereal and unreal, with, however, definite achievements as its basis. Henry Morley understood and interpreted his subject as though there were not between him and it the almost impenetrable wall of difference of nationality. Regardless of the admiration one may have for a foreigner, one can never get as close to him as to a countryman; the wall prevents it, and love does not always bridge it. Then, there was between them the wide span of time; almost three hundred years had passed since the death of Jerome Cardan, during which the Italian race had suffered more changes than the British race. All these did not render the biographer’s task easier, but Morley’s biography shows neither strain nor effort. It is written gracefully and emotionally, as becomes the biography of one of Italy’s most graceful and most sensitive children.
Yet it is not this Morley, but one of his name, John, Lord Morley, who has gained a permanent position in biographic literature. The latter’s series of studies on the literary preparation for the French Revolution, and his books on Burke, Cromwell and Gladstone entitle him to rank as the first critical biographer of his time.
His Life of Gladstone, though by no means a satisfactory biography of the man who was called the day he died, and not by an Englishman, “the world’s greatest citizen,” is a monument to his industry and an enduring testimonial to his literary distinction. But it is the life of the statesman, and Gladstone was not that alone—he was a moralist, a theologian, a prophet, and now, a generation after his death, a writer publicly brands him libertine and hypocrite! Man or superman, he had positive views about literature which he often expressed dogmatically. It may quite well be that the lasting substance of his fame is dependent upon his performances and ideals as statesman, but readers seeking instruction and diversion from biography want to be told of the facets of his personality. They would gladly exchange some of the debates and divisions, speeches and bills, for information about him on the personal rather than on the public side; they are as interested in a great Christian as they are in a great statesman, perhaps more so; they want him interpreted as a sign of his time just as they want Lincoln, or Cavour, or Bismarck interpreted.
Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, after many vicissitudes, has taken a place among the great biographies. Soon after its publication about seventy years ago, it was alleged by many to be unsound, untruthful, unjust, but time has shown it to be a remarkably accurate picture of a humourless genius who was sensitive, shy and temperamental, and whose statements were sometimes founded in fancy rather than in fact.
Biography-writing has been influenced, as novel-writing has been, by the researches and discoveries of modern psychology, particularly by the teachings of Freud, and to a lesser extent of the behaviourists. The most prominent representative of this “new” kind of biography is Gamaliel Bradford. He is not, however, a Freudian, but a sane, temperate, laboriously trained writer who has a profound regard for facts, great industry in unearthing them, and much skill in serving them daintily and appetisingly, seasoned with fancy, to the reading public. Mr. Harvey O’Higgins has swallowed the doctrines of the Viennese mystic, bait, line and sinker, and in The American Mind in Action he has attempted to show how well he has digested and assimilated them. A journalist by training, he has mastered the Freudian jargon, and he writes it with the same ease that James Joyce writes of the subconscious distillation and conscious crystallisation of Mr. and Mrs. Bloom. He is the Técla of biographers, but he offers his goods to the trade as genuine. They do not deceive experts. He is attempting to do for biographies what Dr. George M. Gould did a few years ago in his biographical clinics. Only he substituted the Œdipus-complex for Eye Strain.
Œdipus Redivivus will have a longer day in court than Eye Strain had and more spectators, and there is a salaciousness about the testimony elicited that the elicitors and the audience like, but the verdict in both cases will be similar.
A form of biography that is apparently finding great favour is represented by such books as The Divine Lady, Ariel, The Portrait of Zélide, The Nightingale, Glorious Apollo. It is an elaboration of the variety popularised by Mr. Gamaliel Bradford which he calls psychographs. These are psychographs and somagraphs flavoured with time-denatured scandal. They are easy reading, mildly instructive, and moderately diverting. They are a good substitute for fiction and a fairly acceptable one for history, and they are infinitely to be preferred to biographic fiction such as He Was a Man, the life of Jack London, by Rose Wilder Lane.
They do things differently in France, and to point out the difference between their point of view and ours in most matters that have to do with artistic or literary manifestations, is not to show partisanship for either side. But books like Ariel, The Divine Lady, Zélide, must be admitted to be nothing more nor less than tales of love, under guise of historical veracity. This pretence soothes the sense of decorum of the American public which would be outraged if the books were openly and unreservedly published as “romances.” The French adopt the opposite policy. And one of the most respectable and ancient publishing houses in Paris has recently commissioned several prominent authors to write the biographies of the “loves” of great historical characters. The series opened with Marcelle Tinayre’s La Vie Amoureuse de Madame de Pompadour, and continued with that of Talma, by André Antoine; Louis XIV, by his great biographer, Louis Bertrand; Casanova, by the coming great poet, Maurice Rostand; and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, by the Goncourt Academician, Lucien Descaves. The amorous life of Joséphine has also appeared, written in the delightful style and sensitive vein of Gérard d’Houville, the wife of Henri de Régnier. More are coming, and they all bear the general name of Leurs Amours. It is a new sort of biography which is bound to be popular. Although it might be misunderstood in this country, it is not in France where love and lovers are not taboo, even when they concern great characters. These books purposely neglect historical facts, except insofar as they relate to the love-lives of their subjects or as they are necessary to the guidance of the reader. The object of the series is to portray various personages solely in their relation to love; and, so far, the experiment has been successful.
The Portrait of Zélide, by Geoffrey Scott, is the best fictional biography that has been published in English. It is the story of an eighteenth century Dutch belle, Isabelle Van Tuyll, who, after she married her brother’s tutor, Monsieur de Charrière, developed a reputation for wit, wilfulness and culture that extended far beyond her native or her adopted country. She had the artistic temperament associated with unusual intellectual endowment, remarkable facility of expression and a great fascination for men. A friendly critic told her that she wrote better than any one known to him, not even excepting Voltaire; and Sainte-Beuve, the greatest critic of the day, said that she had the “authentic tongue of Versailles.” She wrote a brief description of herself which she called “The Portrait of Zélide,” and which, as literary self-portraiture, has rarely been surpassed: