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PARTISAN REVIEW
From the perspective of a later age and a different intellectual
climate, it may be possible to find him out. Some clues are present
in the excellent new biography,
Leslie Stephen,
by the young Oxford
don, Noel Annan.
l
Others are to be sought in that class and society
of Victorian intellectuals of which Stephen was so exemplary a
member.
To an American looking backward, the English intellectual of
the Victorian era appears as
the
intellectual, one who could lay claim
to the title and estate by what might almost be regarded as the prin–
ciple of legitimacy-the unimpeachable right of descent. It is with
some awe that an American, generally separated from his kind by
barriers of class, nationality and region, views those two great clans
of Englishmen, in which the bonds of birth and marriage reinforced
those of class and profession: the Macaulays, Trevelyans, Arnolds,
Huxleys, Darwins, Wedgwoods and Galtons; the Stephens, Wilber–
forces, Venns, Diceys, Thackerays, Fishers, Russells and Stracheys.
The English intellectual, moreover, had, until very recently, that ad–
ditional mark of legitimacy which stamped a career that was at the
same time dignified, remunerative and socially influential-a unique
combination of virtues to which the Herr Professor, the feuilletoniste,
and the American college teacher could never aspire. To be a man
of letters in England in the last century was to have access to the
high society of Holland House, to have hopes of making the family
fortune, or to be a serious contender for political power, all without
impugning the literary calling. Rarely was the Victorian intellectual
driven to the expedient of the typical American intellectual of the
same period-the expedient of a Melville in the customs house lead–
ing a double life, a tedious daytime existence of making a living, and
an exotic, surreptitious night-life of writing. There was nothing exotic
or surreptitious about the English intellectual in his Victorian
prime, for whom writing was thought to be as natural as breathing,
a faculty which was the birthright of every Englishman of honorable
(middle or upper-class) birth and respectable (public school or uni–
versity) education.
And yet, the very quality of legitimacy which confers upon the
Victorian the title of the perfect intellectual also, paradoxically, de-
l.
Harvard University Press. $5.00.
