Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (romantic novels in english .txt) 📕
Description
Eminent Victorians consists of four short biographies by Lytton Strachey of Victorians who were famous in their day: Cardinal Manning, a powerful cleric; Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing; Thomas Arnold, founder of the modern-day English public school style; and General Gordon, a popular officer of the British Army.
In Strachey’s day, these people were considered heroes and paragons of Victorian morality and ethics. But instead of lengthy, glowing biographies, Strachey opts for short, witty, and biting biographies that skewer their subjects. All of the subjects are portrayed with their human flaws and moral contradictions on full display, implicitly knocking down the sanctimonious visions of these former heroes (perhaps with the exception of Nightingale, who, while portrayed as an often-cold and mercilessly-driven taskmistress, nevertheless escaped with her reputation enhanced).
The biographies are not only interesting for their wit, humor, and readability, but because of the windows they open to the issues of the age. Manning’s biography occurs against the backdrop of a time of upheaval in the English Catholic church, with concepts like Papal Infallability entering the picture; Nightingale’s biography shines light on the appalling conditions of war; Arnold’s biography is a lens on the development of formal education and schools; and Gordon’s biography reveals England as an empire growing more unsteady, whose ability to influence and control faraway lands is not as certain as it might think.
Eminent Victorians took six years to write and was met with glowing reviews on its publication. It made Strachey famous and cemented his name in the list of top-tier biographers.
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- Author: Lytton Strachey
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But Sir Evelyn Baring was inaudible, and Gordon now cared very little for his opinions. Is it possible that, if only for a moment, in his extraordinary predicament, he may have listened to another and a very different voice—a voice of singular quality, a voice which—for so one would fain imagine—may well have wakened some familiar echoes in his heart? One day, he received a private letter from the Mahdi. The letter was accompanied by a small bundle of clothes.
“In the name of God!” wrote the Mahdi, “herewith a suit of clothes, consisting of a coat (jibbeh), an overcoat, a turban, a cap, a girdle, and beads. This is the clothing of those who have given up this world and its vanities, and who look for the world to come, for everlasting happiness in Paradise. If you truly desire to come to God and seek to live a godly life, you must at once wear this suit, and come out to accept your everlasting good fortune.”
Did the words bear no meaning to the mystic of Gravesend? But he was an English gentleman, an English officer. He flung the clothes to the ground, and trampled on them in the sight of all. Then, alone, he went up to the roof of his high palace, and turned the telescope once more, almost mechanically, towards the north.
But nothing broke the immovability of that hard horizon; and, indeed, how was it possible that help should come to him now? He seemed to be utterly abandoned. Sir Evelyn Baring had disappeared into his financial conference. In England, Mr. Gladstone had held firm, had outfaced the House of Commons, had ignored the Press. He appeared to have triumphed. Though it was clear that no preparations of any kind were being made for the relief of Gordon, the anxiety and agitation of the public, which had risen so suddenly to such a height of vehemence, had died down. The dangerous beast had been quelled by the stern eye of its master. Other questions became more interesting—the Reform Bill, the Russians, the House of Lords. Gordon, silent in Khartoum, had almost dropped out of remembrance. And yet, help did come after all. And it came from an unexpected quarter. Lord Hartington had been for some time convinced that he was responsible for Gordon’s appointment; and his conscience was beginning to grow uncomfortable.
Lord Hartington’s conscience was of a piece with the rest of him. It was not, like Mr. Gladstone’s, a salamander-conscience—an intangible, dangerous creature, that loved to live in the fire; nor was it, like Gordon’s, a restless conscience; nor, like Sir Evelyn Baring’s, a diplomatic conscience; it was a commonplace affair. Lord Hartington himself would have been disgusted by any mention of it. If he had been obliged, he would have alluded to it distantly; he would have muttered that it was a bore not to do the proper thing. He was usually bored—for one reason or another; but this particular form of boredom he found more intense than all the rest. He would take endless pains to avoid it. Of course, the whole thing was a nuisance—an obvious nuisance; and everyone else must feel just as he did about it. And yet people seemed to have got it into their heads that he had some kind of special faculty in such matters—that there was some peculiar value in his judgment on a question of right and wrong. He could not understand why it was; but whenever there was a dispute about cards in a club,
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