The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.
Age and Death
Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.
Age and Death
I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Age and Death
What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?
Age and Death
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Art and Letters
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
In the World
To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober.
In the World
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!
Life and Human Nature
Logan Pearsall Smith was an American-born essayist and critic.
Smith was born in
Millville, New JerseyMillville is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2000 United States Census, the city population was 26,847. Millville, Bridgeton and Vineland are the three principal New Jersey cities of the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area which...
the son of the prominent
QuakerThe Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
s
Robert Pearsall SmithRobert Pearsall Smith was a lay leader in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in Great Britain. His book Holiness Through Faith is one of the foundational works of the Holiness movement...
and
Hannah Whitall SmithHannah Tatum Whitall Smith was a lay speaker and author in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
. His father's family had become wealthy from its glass factories. He lived for a time as a boy in England, and later attended
Haverford CollegeHaverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...
and
Harvard CollegeHarvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
; in his 1938 autobiography he describes how in his youth he came to be a friend of
Walt WhitmanWalter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
in the poet's latter years. Smith later studied at
Balliol College, OxfordBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, where he graduated in 1891. He then settled in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with occasional forays to continental Europe and became a British citizen in 1913. He divided his time between Chelsea, where he was a close friend of
Desmond MacCarthySir Desmond MacCarthy was a British literary critic and journalist.-Early life and education:MacCarthy was born in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he got to know Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell and G. E...
, and a Tudor farmhouse near the Solent, called "Big Chilling". Smith employed a succession of young secretary/companions to help him. This post was
Cyril ConnollyCyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
's first job in 1925 and he was to be strongly influenced by Smith. Robert Gathorne-Hardy succeeded Connolly in this post.
Smith was an authority on 17th century divines. He was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, and his
Trivia has been highly rated. He was a literary perfectionist and could take days refining his sentences. With
Words and Idioms he became a recognised authority on the correct use of English. He is now probably most remembered for his
autobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
Unforgotten Years (1938). He was much influenced by
Walter PaterWalter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
. As well as his employees listed, his followers included
Desmond MacCarthySir Desmond MacCarthy was a British literary critic and journalist.-Early life and education:MacCarthy was born in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he got to know Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell and G. E...
,
John RussellJohn Russell CBE was a British American art critic.-Life and career:John Russell was born in Fleet, Hampshire, England, in 1919. He attended St Paul's School and then Magdalen College, Oxford....
,
R. C. TrevelyanRobert Calverly Trevelyan was an English poet and translator, of a traditionalist sort, and a follower of the lapidary style of Logan Pearsall Smith.-Life:...
, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He was, in part, the basis for the character of Nick Greene / Sir Nicholas Greene in Virginia Woolf's
OrlandoOrlando: A Biography is an influential novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally considered one of Woolf's most accessible novels...
.
Gathorne-Hardy described Pearsall Smith as "a largish man with a stoop that disguised his height", while Whitworth characterized a "brooding figure wrought with a timbre of molasses".
Kenneth ClarkKenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
further wrote "His tall frame, hunched up, with head thrust forward like a bird, was balanced unsteadily on vestigial legs".
Smith's sister
AlysAlyssa Whitall Pearsall Smith was the first wife of Bertrand Russell.Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith, prominent figures in the Holiness movement in America and the Higher Life movement in Great Britain...
was the first wife of philosopher
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, and his sister
MaryMary Berenson née Mary Smith, was an art historian, now thought to have had a large hand in some of the writings of her second husband, Bernard Berenson.Her father was Robert Pearsall Smith, her mother Hannah Whitall Smith...
married the art historian
Bernard BerensonBernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...
.
Works
- 1895. The Youth of Parnassus, and other stories
- 1902. Trivia
- 1907. The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. Biography
- 1909. Songs and Sonnets
- 1912. The English Language
- 1919. A Treasury of English Prose
- 1920. Little Essays Drawn From The Writings Of George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
- 1920 (ed.). Donne's Sermons: Selected Passages with an Essay
- 1920. Stories from the Old Testament retold. Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press was founded in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond, in which they began hand-printing books....
- 1921. More Trivia
- 1923. English Idioms
- 1925. Words and Idioms
- 1927. The Prospects of Literature. Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press was founded in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond, in which they began hand-printing books....
- 1930 (ed.) The Golden Grove: Selected Passages From The Sermons and Writings of Jeremy Taylor
- 1931. Afterthoughts
- 1933. All Trivia. Collection
- 1933. Last Words
- 1933. On Reading Shakespeare
- 1936. Fine Writing
- 1937. Reperusals & Recollections
- 1938. Unforgotten Years
- 1938. Death in Iceland. Privately printed in Reading with Iceland: A Poem by Robert Gathorne-Hardy.
- 1940. Milton and His Modern Critics
- 1943. A Treasury Of English Aphorisms
- 1949 (ed.). A Religious Rebel: The Letters of "H.W.S." (Mrs. Pearsall Smith). Published in the USA as Philadelphia Quaker, The Letters of Hannah Whitall Smith
- 1949 (ed.). The Golden Shakespeare
- 1972. Four Words. Romantic, Originality, Creative, Genius
- 1982. Saved from the Salvage. With a Memoir of the Author by Cyril Connolly
- 1989 (Edward Burman, ed.) Logan Pearsall Smith. Anthology.
Sources
- Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1949) Recollections of Logan Pearsall Smith
- John Russell, ed. (1950) A Portrait of Logan Pearsall Smith drawn from His letters and Diaries
- Barbara Strachey (1980) Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Family
- Edwin Tribble, ed. (1984) A Chime of Words: The Letters of Logan Pearsall Smith
External links