Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe

by Bart Schultz

Pemble (London: Macmillan, ). My paper on that occasion, “Truth

  and Its Consequences: The Friendship of Symonds and Henry Sidgwick,”

  was a distillation of much of my work following an earlier conference,

  Henry Sidgwick as Philosopher and Historian, organized by me and held

  at the University of Chicago in May of  – work that later appeared in

  revised, extended form as my collection Essays on Henry Sidgwick (New

  York: Cambridge University Press, ). A special thanks to the many

  reviewers of this last volume.

  Much of the preparatory work for this project was conducted at

  Cambridge University, Sidgwick’s home for most of his adult life. My visits

  there always involved trips to the beautiful Wren Library, Trinity College,

  to consult the Sidgwick Papers. Working in the shadow of Lord Byron

  proved inspirational, and it is a great pleasure to thank David McKitterick,

  the librarian; Ronald Milne, the former sublibrarian; Jonathan Smith, the

  archivist; and former archivist Diana Chardin for making these visits so

  enjoyable and productive. Without their help – and without the gen-

  erous assistance of many other staff members as well, notably Andrew

  Lambert – my work could not have prospered. A special thanks goes to

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  Acknowledgments

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  Diana Chardin for tracking down one of Sidgwick’s (all-too-few) lecture

  manuscripts and to Jonathan Smith for vital aid with my references and

  the cover photo. My most grateful acknowledgment goes to the Master

  and Fellows of Trinity College for allowing the reproduction of various

  manuscript materials from the Sidgwick Papers.

  The Modern Record Centre at King’s College, Cambridge, also proved

  to be an invaluable resource. It contains a great quantity of important cor-

  respondence and manuscript material, including the correspondence with

  Oscar Browning and eight volumes of student notes taken from Sidgwick’s

  lectures on the history of ethics. Jacqueline Cox, the archivist, has been

  extraordinarily helpful and efficient, along with her assistant, Elizabeth

  Stratton. I am very pleased to thank the Master and Fellows of King’s

  College for allowing the reproduction of various letters.

  My visits to Newnham College were also inspirational; Newnham sim-

  ply lives and breathes the spirit of the Sidgwicks, what they stood for prac-

  tically and philosophically. It was during my first visit to Cambridge, while

  meditating by the Sidgwick fountain at Newnham, that the resolution to

  write this book formed in my mind. My thanks go to the Newnham Col-

  lege Library and Archives, especially to Elisabeth van Houts, the former

  archivist; Anne Thompson, the current archivist; and Deborah Hodder,

  the librarian, who have been unfailingly pleasant and helpful. I happily

  acknowledge the Principal and Fellows of Newnham College for allowing

  reproduction of certain materials herein.

  At University Library, Cambridge, which also holds a significant body

  of Sidgwick material, I received much aid and information from Mark

  Nichols and Godfrey Waller, for which I am most grateful; my thanks

  go to that remarkable institution for allowing the reproduction of various

  materials herein.

  Thanks also go to the staff members at Darwin College Library, the

  Philosophy Library, the Library at Gonville and Caius College, the Social

  and Political Library, the Library at Downing College, the Marshall

  Library, and the Library at Girton College (where Kate Perry was es-

  pecially helpful). Special thanks go to the people at Clare Hall, partic-

  ularly Dacea Smith, for their hospitality during some of my visits to

  Cambridge.

  At Oxford University, the Bodleian’s Helen Langley, in Modern Politi-

  cal Papers, very generously gave of her time and expertise, doing much to

  expedite my work. Thanks also go to Colin Harris, in Modern Papers, for

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  Acknowledgments

  his valuable assistance. Grateful acknowledgment goes to the Bodleian

  Library for supplying microfilm copies of the Bryce correspondence

  (especially valuable for analyzing Sidgwick’s handwriting) and the cor-

  respondence between Symonds and Roden Noel and for allowing various

  reproductions of their materials.

  Katharine Thompson, the modern manuscripts assistant at Balliol Col-

  lege Library, was quite helpful in fielding my inquiries about Sidgwick

  holdings. And I would like to thank the library at Harris Manchester

  College for supplying me with a missing Metaphysical Society paper and

  graciously allowing the reproduction of various parts of Sidgwick’s papers

  for the Society. Ms. Pauline Adams, at the Amelia B. Edwards Archive,

  Somerville College, also supplied me with some most helpful information

  about their archival holdings.

  The London Library, which holds the original manuscript of the

  Symonds memoirs, is a remarkable institution, and I am most grateful

  to the staff there for welcoming me and providing expert help with my

  research.

  I am also delighted to thank the Department of Manuscripts at the

  University of St. Andrews, especially Norman Reid, who was a wonder-

  ful fund of helpful information and of crucial importance in allowing

  the reproduction of Sidgwick’s letters to Wilfrid Ward in the InteLex

  database. Thanks also go to Paul Johnson for his help with the final check

  of the transcriptions of that correspondence. It is a pleasure to acknowl-

  edge the University of St. Andrews for allowing me to use this material.

  A warm thank-you goes to Richard Freeman, the owner of the Foxwell

  Papers, for graciously allowing their reproduction in my database and

  aiding my research in other ways as well.

  Liz Waxdoff, the archivist at Knebworth, and the staff at the Hertford-

  shire Record Office, especially Kathryn Thompson, helped track down

  some important correspondence and were most generous in lending their

  efforts to this project. I am of course delighted to express my thanks

  to Lord Cobbold for kind permission to reproduce Sidgwick’s letter to

  Robert Lytton, from the Knebworth House Collection.

  Sincerest thanks also go to Michael Richardson, in Manuscripts at the

  University of Bristol Library, for expertly and enthusiastically fielding any

  number of inquiries about the Sidgwick and Symonds material held in the

  collection there and supplying me with some very important material. It

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is a pleasure to thank the University of Bristol Library for permission to

  reproduce the letters from Sidgwick to Symonds.

  And another sincerest thanks goes to Brian Dyson, the university

  archivist, in Archives and Special Collections at the Brynmoor Jones Li-

  brary, University of Hull; his help, and that of his assistant, Angela Quinby,

  in dealing with the Roden Noel letters to Sidgwick was invaluable, as was

  his aid in contacting Desmond Heath, the author of Roden Noel: A Wide

  Angle and the husband of Sylvia Putterill, one of Noel’s descendants. I am

  delighted to thank the library at the University of Hull for allowing me to

  use some of this material. And I am delighted to thank Desmond Heath

  for supplying me with a complementary copy of his book and valuable –

  very rare – additional correspondence from Sidgwick to Noel, not only

  granting me permission to use it, but gifting it to me. I eagerly look for-

  ward to continuing work with him to bring to light more Sidgwick–Noel

  correspondence.

  The British Library has been another happy and rewarding retreat,

  with particular thanks going to C. J. Wright, J. Conway, Zoë Stansell, and

  Michael Boggan, of the Department of Manuscripts, for helping me in

  various ways, notably by expediting receipt of a microfilm copy of the

  Sidgwick–Balfour correspondence. I am grateful to the British Library

  for permission to reprint selected letters from this collection, and to Lord

  Balfour, who has always been very cordial and helpful in responding to

  my inquiries. Jane Hill and the staff at the Historical Search Room of the

  Scottish Records Office, Edinburgh, where most of the Whittingehame

  Balfour papers are now held, were also singularly patient and helpful in

  responding to my many questions.

  The staff at the Sheffield Archives, Sheffield City Libraries, have also

  been a valuable resource, supplying me with important material from the

  Carpenter manuscripts in their possession; I gratefully acknowledge their

  permission to use some of the letters of Edward Carpenter and Horatio

  Brown in their possession. A sincere thanks goes to Franc¸ois Lafitte, the

  literary heir to Havelock Ellis, for graciously and helpfully responding to

  my inquiries.

  Naturally, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, UK National Reg-

  ister of Archives, was a most useful resource, and I have often availed

  myself of it; warm thanks go to the many staff members there who have

  aided my efforts, particularly Dr. A. P. Lewis, in the Curatorial Office, who

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  Acknowledgments

  supplied me with much information about Horatio Brown’s manuscripts

  and correspondence.

  The staff at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the

  University of Texas, Austin, has been a rich resource, both personally and

  electronically.

  Grateful acknowledgment also goes to the staff in Special Collections

  and Archives at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at The Johns Hopkins

  University, particularly to Joan Grattan, who helped discover the (pre-

  sumed lost) letter from Sidgwick to John Stuart Mill. It is a pleasure to

  thank the Milton S. Eisenhower Library for allowing the reproduction of

  this important document.

  And it is a special pleasure to express my indebtedness to Harvard

  University, the vast scholarly resources of which have been invaluable to

  my work. I am especially grateful to the Houghton Library, particularly

  to Leslie Morris, and to Bay James, the James heir, for permission to

  reproduce parts of Henry and Eleanor Sidgwick’s letters to William James.

  Thanks, too, go to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at

  Yale University, for their helpful reception while researching Sidgwick’s

  letters to George Eliot.

  I am also delighted to thank the Library at the University of Wales,

  Aberystwyth, especially Jackie Woollam, for help with my inquiries and

  for generously and speedily supplying me with a copy of the unabridged

  version of “The Pursuit of Culture.”

  Over the years, many other institutions and individuals have been very

  generous in furthering my research. With apologies to those I may in-

  advertently omit, I would like to record my thanks to the staff in Special

  Collections at the University of Edinburgh and the staff in Special Collec-

  tions at the University of Glasgow. In the United States, I have also been

  helped by the staffs in Special Collections at the Joseph Regenstein Li-

  brary at the University of Chicago, the Bancroft Library at the University

  of California–Berkeley, the Sterling Memorial Library at Stanford Uni-

  versity, the Butler Library at Columbia University, the New York Public

  Library, and numerous others. The Regenstein Library, I should add, has

  been a source and second home to me for more than twenty-five years.

  The Theosophical Society, with its U.S. national headquarters in

  Wheaton, Illinois, responded to some of my inquiries.

  Lord Rayleigh and the Rt. Honorable Guy Strutt were most gracious in

  allowing me to visit Terling Place, where the Sidgwicks spent so much of

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  their time (and are buried), and to do research on the estate. Their aid and

  hospitality was and is deeply appreciated, and I gratefully acknowledge

  their efforts and generosity. My feeling for the atmosphere in which the

  Sidgwicks lived gained much from this truly memorable visit.

  A visit to the Sidgwicks’ house in Cambridge, “Hillside,” was also fas-

  cinating, and my thanks go to the students who now inhabit it for allowing

  me to look around, wandering and wondering in incomprehensible reverie.

  Last, but very, very far from least, my research and travels have ben-

  efited immeasurably from the aid and sympathy generously given by

  Ms. Ann Baer, Sidgwick’s great-niece, a descendant of Arthur Sidgwick,

  who supplied me with much useful information about the Sidgwick fam-

  ily tree. My profound thanks go to her and to the other members of the

  Sidgwick family – especially the philosopher Andrew Belsey – for being

  so supportive of my research and encouraging the publication of the fruits

  thereof. Ann Baer was also kind enough to put me in touch with Roberta

  Blanshard, who was eager to aid my search for various Sidgwick materials

  that had once been in the possession of her late husband, Brand Blanshard,

  a founder of the Sidgwick Society.

  As this record should suggest, the voyage producing Henry Sidgwick:

  Eye of the Universe has been a long one. And it could well go on forever,

  given how much research remains to be done. Sympathetic understanding,

  contemporary or historical, is hard work.

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  Abbreviations

  References to and citations of Sidgwick’s major works are given paren-

  thetically in the text using the following abbreviations. All works were

  published by Macmillan and Co., London, except for the pamphlet “The

  Ethics of Conformity and Subscription” (London: Williams and Norgate)

  and Practical Ethics (London: Swan Sonnenschein). A space separates ab-

  breviation and page number. If the reference is to an edition other than the

  last, the number of the edition is placed immediately after the abbreviation

  and before the space. Thus, (ME ) refers to The Methods of Ethics, first

  edition, p. .

  ECS

  “The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription,” .

  ME

  The Methods of Ethics, st ed., ; nd ed., ; rd ed., ;

  th ed., ; th ed., ; th ed., ; th ed., ; Japanese

  translation, ; German translation, ; Italian translation,

  ; French translation, . Sidgwick also published A Sup-

  plement to the First Edition of the Methods of Ethics () and A

  Supplement to the Second Edition of the Methods of Ethics (),

  containing the changes made to each of those editions.

  PPE

  The Principles of Political Economy, st ed., ; nd ed., ;

  rd ed., .

  OHE

  Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers, st ed., ;

  nd ed., ; rd ed., ; th ed., ; th ed., ; Italian

  translation, .

  EP

  The Elements of Politics, st ed., ; nd ed., ; rd ed., ;

  th ed., .

  PE

  Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays, st ed., ;

  nd ed., .

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