Logan Pearsall Smith (18 October 1865 – 2 March 1946) was an American-born British essayist and critic. Harvard and Oxford educated, he was known for his

aphorisms An aphorism (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often hand ...

and

epigrams An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two millen ...

, and was an expert on 17th Century

divines Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...

. His ''Words and Idioms'' made him an authority on correct English language usage. He wrote his autobiography, ''Unforgotten Years'', in 1938.

Early life

Smith was born in

Millville, New Jersey Millville is a city in Cumberland County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the city's population was 28,400,Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

Robert Pearsall Smith Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898) 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'' (1870) is one of the foundational works of the Holiness movemen ...

and

Hannah Whitall Smith Hannah Tatum Whitall Smith (February 7, 1832 – May 1, 1911) 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. She was also active in ...

, and a descendant of James Logan, who was William Penn's secretary and the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania in the 18th century.Logan Pearsall Smith. ''Unforgotten years''. Little, Brown and Company; 1939.Robert Allerton Parker.
A Family of Friends: The Story of the Transatlantic Smiths
'. Museum Press; 1960. His mother's family had become wealthy from its glass factories.Barbara Strachey. ''Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Women''. Universe Books; 1980. . He lived for a time as a boy in England. In his 1938 autobiography, Smith describes how in his youth he came to be a friend of

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) 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 t ...

in the poet's latter years. Smith's sister Alys was the first wife of philosopher

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

. His sister

Mary Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

was married twice, first to the Irish barrister Benjamin Conn "Frank" Costelloe. Their two daughters were

Ray Strachey Ray Strachey (born Rachel Pearsall Conn Costelloe; 4 June 188716 July 1940) was a British feminist politician, artist and writer. Early life Her father was Irish barrister Benjamin "Frank" Conn Costelloe, and her mother was art historian Mary ...

and Karin Stephen, in-laws to

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...

and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

, respectively. Mary later married the art historian

Bernard Berenson Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large h ...

Education

Smith attended The William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia,

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

, and the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

.Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years; Edwin Tribble (ed.), A Chime of Words: The Letters of Logan Pearsall Smith Smith later studied at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, where he graduated in 1891.

Career

Smith employed a succession of young secretary/companions to help him. This post was

Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...

's first job in 1925 and he was to be strongly influenced by Smith.

Robert Gathorne-Hardy Hon. Robert Gathorne-Hardy, (31 July 190211 February 1973) was a British writer, botanist, and horticulturalist. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Robert was the third of four sons of Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 3rd Earl of ...

succeeded Connolly in this post.Jeremy Lewis.
Cyril Connolly: A Life
'. Random House; 29 February 2012. . Smith was an authority on 17th century divines. He was known for his

and

, 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 autobiography ''Unforgotten Years'' (1938). He was much influenced by

Walter Pater Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, art critic and literary critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His first and most often reprinted book, ''Studies in the History of the Re ...

. He was a devotee of Jane Austen's fiction and referred to himself as a "Mansfield Parker." As well as his employees listed, his followers included

Desmond MacCarthy Sir Charles Otto Desmond MacCarthy FRSL (20 May 1877 – 7 June 1952) was a British writer and the foremost literary critic, literary and dramatic critic of his day. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, fro ...

, John Russell, R. C. Trevelyan, and

Hugh Trevor-Roper Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of ...

. He was, in part, the basis for the character of Nick Greene (Sir Nicholas Greene) in Virginia Woolf's ''

Orlando Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures rele ...

''.M.H. Whitworth, "Logan Pearsall Smith and Orlando," Review of English Studies 55 (2004)

Personal life

He settled in England after Oxford with occasional forays to continental Europe and became a British subject in 1913. He divided his time between Chelsea, where he was a close friend of

and

Rose Macaulay Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, (1 August 1881 – 30 October 1958) was an English writer, most noted for her award-winning novel ''The Towers of Trebizond'', about a small Anglo-Catholic group crossing Turkey by camel. The story is seen as a spiritua ...

,Logan Pearsall Smith; Edwin Tribble. ''A chime of words: the letters of Logan Pearsall Smith''. Ticknor & Fields; March 1984. and a Tudor farmhouse at

Warsash Warsash is a village in southern Hampshire, England, situated at the mouth of the River Hamble, west of the area known as Locks Heath. Boating plays an important part in the village's economy, and the village has a sailing club. It is also home ...

near the Solent, called Big Chilling. Gathorne-Hardy described Smith as "a largish man with a stoop that disguised his height".

Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...

further wrote "His tall frame, hunched up, with head thrust forward like a bird, was balanced unsteadily on vestigial legs". Politically he was a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

, having been converted by

Graham Wallas Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Biography Born in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, Walla ...

, a founder of the

Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fa ...

. His portrait, made in 1932 by

Ethel Sands Ethel Sands (6 July 1873 – 19 March 1962) was an American-born artist and hostess who lived in England from childhood. She studied art in Paris, where she met her life partner Anna Hope Hudson (Nan). Her works were generally still lifes and ...

, is at the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

.''(Lloyd) Logan Pearsall Smith.''
Your Paintings: Ethel Sands. BBC. Retrieved 18 January 2014.

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 Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...

'' *1920 (ed.). ''Donne's Sermons: Selected Passages with an Essay'' *1920. ''Stories from the Old Testament retold''.

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and now ...

*1921. ''More Trivia'' *1923. ''English Idioms'' *1925. ''Words and Idioms'' *1927. ''The Prospects of Literature''.

*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'' *1936. ''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 Edward is an English language, English given name. It is derived from the Old English, Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements ''wikt:ead#Old English, ēad'' "wealth, fortune; prosperous" and ''wikt:weard#Old English, weard'' "gua ...

, ed.) ''Logan Pearsall Smith''. Anthology.

Notes

References

*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'' *Robert Allerton Parker (1959), "The Transatlantic Smiths" *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'' *Hugh Trevor-Roper (2012) ''The Wartime Journals'', ed. R. Davenport-Hines, London : I.B. Tauris

External links

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Biographical sourceQuote source
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'Four romantic words
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Logan Pearsall 1865 births 1946 deaths American essayists British essayists Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Writers from New Jersey Aphorists People from Millville, New Jersey Harvard College alumni Haverford College alumni Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Humboldt University of Berlin alumni