People From London

"After his very early days, when he gambolled with an ornate and consciously absurd vocabulary, he wrote supremely well. His essay on Venice, originally an article in the Daily Mail, is a model not only of imaginative observation but of variety of structure. It is, I believe, the best travel sketch ever written."

"How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness—his passion, so to say, for passion itself—his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital “D” Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence’s qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of “unquestionable genius,” felt it necessary to add, “he never realized, don’t you know—he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer.”"

"Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up."

"To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself."

"It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait."

"Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter."

"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed."

"In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests."

"No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt."

"I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him."

"All fantasy should have a solid base in reality."

"Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example."

"The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play."

"Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me."

"Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful."

"A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."

"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason."

"She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like.""

"It is so much easier to covet what one hasn’t than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn’t."

"Death cancels all engagements."

"Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loath to regard his doom as trivial. Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic."

"He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself."

"One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes — possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her."

"The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end."

"For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun’s bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer.”"

"He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else."

"She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as the motes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future."

"Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint."

"There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content."

"Only the insane take themselves quite seriously."

"Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir, Albeit to see you I’m unglad."

"The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends."

"As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal."

"The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner."

"I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable."

"To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine."

"Most women are not so young as they are painted."

"The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all."

"Heard poor old Ld Russell was dead, having died last night. He had been ill for the last 3 weeks, & his memory quite gone. He was nearly 86. A man of much talent, who leaves a name behind him, kind, & good, with a great knowledge of the constitution who behaved very well, on many trying occasions; but he was impulsive, very selfish (as shown on many occasions, especially during Ld Aberdeen's administration) vain, & often reckless & imprudent. He was a link with the past, & was one of my first Ministers 41 years ago."

"As long as the abolition of slavery was not openly announced, as he thought it ought to have been, as one of the main objects of the war on the part of the Federals, he felt no warm sympathy with their cause. But after President Lincoln's proclamation it was quite different, and no man rejoiced with deeper thankfulness than he did at the final triumph of the Northern States, for no man held slavery in more utter abhorrence."

"Colonial reforms, educational schemes, the "liberties of the subject", public press and public meetings, enthusiasm for war and yearning for peace—all of them were but false pretences for Lord John Russell. The whole man is one false pretence, his whole life a lie, all his activity a continuous chain of petty intrigues for the achievement of shabby ends—the devouring of public money and the usurpation of the mere semblance of power. No one has ever illustrated more strikingly the truth of the biblical words that no man can add one cubit unto his stature. Placed by birth, connections, and social accidents on a colossal pedestal, he always remained the same homunculus—a dwarf dancing on the tip of a pyramid. History has, perhaps, never exhibited any other man—so great in pettiness."

"The sham power Lord John Russell periodically wielded was not only sustained by the influence exerted by the family of the Duke of Bedford, whose younger son he was, but also by the absence of all the qualities which generally fit a person to rule over others. His Lilliputian views on everything spread to others like a contagion and contributed more to confuse the judgment of his hearers than the most ingenious misrepresentation could have done. His real talent consists in his capacity to reduce everything that he touches to his own dwarfish dimensions, to diminish the external world to an infinitesimal size and to transform it into a vulgar microcosm of his own invention. His instinct to belittle the magnificent is excelled only by the skill with which he can make the petty appear great."

"He brought into public life, and he carried through it unimpaired, the qualities which ennoble mankind—truth, justice, fortitude, self-denial, a fund of genuine indignation against wrong, and an inexhaustible sympathy with human suffering."

"[H]e had for the last few years done nothing, but injure a brilliant reputation."

"A great reputation built itself up on the basis of splendid public services for thirty years; for almost twenty it has, I fear, been on the decline. The movement of the clock continues, the balance weights are gone."

"Lord John Russell has that degree of imagination, which, though evinced rather in sentiment than expression, still enables him to generalise from the details of his reading and experience; and to take those comprehensive views, which, however easily depreciated by ordinary men in an age of routine, are indispensable to a statesman in the conjunctures in which we live. He understands, therefore, his position; and he has the moral intrepidity which prompts him ever to dare that which his intellect assures him is politic. He is consequently, at the same time, sagacious and bold in council. As an administrator he is prompt and indefatigable. He is not a natural orator, and labours under physical deficiencies which even a Demosthenic impulse could scarcely overcome. But he is experienced in debate, quick in reply, fertile in resource, takes large views, and frequently compensates for a dry and hesitating manner by the expression of those noble truths that flash across the fancy, and rise spontaneously to the lip, of men of poetic temperament when addressing popular assemblies. If we add to this, a private life of dignified repute, the accidents of his birth and rank, which never can be severed from the man, the scion of a great historic family, and born, as it were, to the hereditary service of the State, it is difficult to ascertain at what period, or under what circumstances, the Whig party have ever possessed, or could obtain, a more efficient leader."

"But, my Lord, how thunderstruck must be our visitor when he is told to recognise a Secretary of State in an infinitely small scarabæus;—yes, my Lord, when he learns, that you are the leader of the English House of Commons, our traveller may begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped—AN INSECT."

"Your aim is to reduce every thing to your own mean level—to degrade every thing to your malignant standard. ... In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long mortified spirit suddenly invested with power,—the struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble intellect."

"Busied with the tattle of valets and waiting-maids, you accidentally omitted in your Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe all notice of its most vast and most rising empire. This luckless production closed your literary career; you flung down your futile pen in incapable despair; and, your feeble intellect having failed in literature, your strong ambition took refuge in politics."

"My confidence in England rests partly on the honourable character of the statesmen to whose hands the reins of power are committed—on Lord John Russell and on Lord Palmerston. Lord John Russell, I will say it openly, at the risk of being considered more and more an Anglo-maniac, is the most liberal Minister in Europe."