How happy were our fathers who had something to believe in! And, more than that, something to disbelieve, something to fight against!
Refections of this sort are bound to occur to many readers of “Salt and his Circle” by Stephen Winsten (Hutchinson 16s.) for it is the story of men and women in revolt – revolt against the respectable Victorian world.
On February 28, 1888, the “Pall Mall Gazette” published Henry Salt’s “Song of the Respectables” which began with the following lines:
Respectable are we
And you presently shall see
Why we confidently claim to be respected;
In well-ordered homes we dwell
And discharge our duties well
Well dressed, well fed, well mannered, well connected…
Very neat! This lines in our own time might well indeed have been written by Noel Coward for a revue, with the stalls filled by highly respectable people. But Henry Salt aimed his shaft seriously and it was partly because of him that Victorian respectability was brought low.
Who was this Mr. Salt, now the subject of a biography which has a preface by Shaw., the last thing he wrote before the accident that proved fatal? Salt was born in 1851, went down from Cambridge to become a master at Eton, left because of his Socialism and founded the Humanitarian League.
His creed
His outlook was never better expressed than in a passage of the funeral address which he wrote for himself.
“I wholly disbelieve in the present established religion; but I have a very firm religious faith of my own—a Creed of Kinship I call it—a belief that in years yet to come there will be a recognition of brotherhood between man and man, nation and nation, human and subhuman, which will transform a state of semi-savagery, as we have it, into one of civilisation, when there will be no such barbarity of warfare, or the robbery of the poor by the rich, or the ill-usage of the lower animals by mankind.
“Such is my faith; and it is because I hold all supernatural doctrines taught under the name of religion to be actually harmful in diverting attention from the real truths, that I believe them to have a tendency, as Ingersoll expressed it, to petrify the heart….”
Other creeds
Well, there was a time organised religion had the power to shock, and Henry Salt suffered for his opinion. He was actually the least flamboyant member of a circle concerned with the salvation of the world for it was a time when men believed that the world could be saved. Everybody had a different nostrum for the ills of mankind.
“John Burns was convinced that one of the greatest curses of Society was love. Prince Kropotkin insisted that the main evil was government; Frank Harris thought it was journalism; William Morris urged it was machinery; Jim Joynes knew it was religion, and Shaw put everything to ignorance.”
It was the age of vegetarianism and sandal-wearing, but there was no more unanimity in personal habit than in doctrine. The Socialist leader Hyndman always appeared in a frock coat and silk hat, which aroused Shaw’s mockery.
“ You’ll go down in history as the last of the gentlemen, Hyndman.’ This for Shaw was the ultimate term of abuse.
“‘My dear man,’ said Hyndman, ‘I do more for the movement by wearing my Stock Exchange clothes than you with your Norfolk suit. I do not want the movement to be a repository of odd cranks; humanitarians, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, arty-crafties and all the rest of them. We are scientific Socialists, and have no room for sentimentalists. They confuse the issue. By your intervention in the Socialist movement, Show, you have put us back twenty years at least.’” To which Shaw is alleged to have replied : “If I have done that I have done a good turn to the world.”
Big men
Whatever you think of the achievements of these characters, they are certainly big. Ostensibly believing in egalitarian Socialism, their energies seemed bent to the task of making their own personalities extraordinary.
“It is strange,” said Edward Carpenter, “that our movement, which aims at simplicity in speech, attire and habits, should contain within it the most histrionic of people who prefer to stand on their heads than on their feet.” Shaw once preached to the Salts on the necessity to make themselves more presentable: “The brilliant red-bearded creature you see before you was once awkward, self-conscious, ugly and the transfiguration is the result of effort, conscious effort, to make myself presentable.”
Shaw above all
Because personalities is more mysterious than abstract principles it is Shaw not Salt who dominates this book. In fact, Mr. Winsten often seems to have abandoned the idea of making the modest nature-lover, Henry Salt, the central figure. The example of Salt’s work here reprinted is on Shaw; it is Shaw in his preface who bluntly states that what was wrong with the Salts was that theirs was not a real marriage. And, as we read the book that has been put together with considerable skill, we are always watching for the reappearance of Bernard Shaw.
And that makes us feel even sadder when we think of his death last year. The last of the giants has gone and nobody believes in crusading any more.
Birmingham Gazette, September 26, 1951, p. 4
Book Reviewed: Salt and His Circle