The Colvins and Their Friends
by . New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1929. 8vo. x+354 pp. Illus. $5.00.
THIS is a gracious volume, taking one, by means of both the text and the numerous portraits, into the pre-war world of Victorian England. It is made up of fragmentary narrative, and many letters, sketches, and passages from published articles, together with much material never before printed, notably letters from Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, and others, and an admirable account by Hugh Walpole of the social life of the Colvins. Familiar figures of a great era step across the pages — Victor Hugo, Ruskin, George Eliot, Browning, Meredith, Burne-Jones. Andrew Lang, Rossetti, Henley, Henry James, and many more, thrown into new light by revealing word or gesture. Sidney Colvin had many friends, and in thisinformal presentation one has the feeling of being behind the scenes, encountering now Henley in a rollicking fit of humor, now BurneJones, not ‘palely loitering’ among evanescent figures, but cracking hearty jokes. One hears Henry James wistfully voicing a fear lest Stevenson may have ‘forgotten a fellow, or sacrificed one wholly to cannibal friendships.'
Though the treatment of the material is haphazard in the extreme, the result is vivid. As one follows the central figure, Colvin, through his years of toil, and reads the records of his intellectual friendships, one gets many a glimpse of literature in the making, and hears much literary discussion, repartee, and bits of pungent, informal criticism. It was a life of diverging opinions, deep affections, and hard work. The closest friendship was with Stevenson; from the graphic sketch of Stevenson at twenty-two, through his years of illness and incessant work to his sudden death, the record shows how much he owed to Colvin and to Lady Colvin, the former his lifelong friend, mentor, and literary agent, the latter the most potent influence in shaping his character.
The story of Sidney Colvin’s friendships helps in understanding him as critic, showing the same sympathy and disinterestedness which we find in his studies of men and of books. It is of interest to know that he cherished through the years of his youth a longing to write a lile of Keats; this deep desire may in part account for the rare quality of his interpretation of Keats, apparent, both in his early volume in the English Men of Letters series and in the later, longer study. Scholar, interpreter, with the great gift of self-effacement, nothing can shake his position as the best historian of Keats.
This longer Keats is the crowning work of a life spent in the service of beauty, from Sidney Colvin’s early discipleship to Ruskin, through the years of his Slade Professorship at Cambridge, and the years of work as Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Admiration for him as a critic is enhanced by knowing more of his human quality its revealed in this volume, and of the generous hospitality, both practical and spiritual, exercised by him and Lady Colvin. Here is evidenee of ’life as a fine art, deliberately practised in the spirit and familiar company of artists.'
MARGARET SHERWOOD