The Diaries of Beatrice Webb

Chapter One

The Search for a Creed

* * *

September 1873-December 1882

The diary begins when Beatrice was fifteen. It was her father's custom, whenever he inspected his railway interests in Canada and the United States, to take some of the family with him. On this occasion he took Beatrice, her sister Kate, and Arthur Playne, who was married to her sister Mary.

We left England on the 13 September, two days after Georgina's marriage. I only enjoyed our passage pretty well, the people not being anything particular....

25 September

We landed at New York.... I was delighted with New York, there is such a cleanliness and elegance about the town, with trees all down its streets and no smoke, and then Central Park is so lovely, beats all our town parks to pieces....

1 November

Salt Lake City is not to be compared with any town in England or America; it is so utterly different from anything I have ever seen. The streets are very wide, and on both sides of them flow beautiful streams of crystal water brought from the mountains ten to twenty miles off. It is through this water that Brigham Young and his few followers transformed this sandy desert into a fertile farm.... The houses are for the most part low, built rather in the French style, and of wood whitewashed over, with green shutters and doors. This gives the city a fresh innocent appearance, especially as ... each house has its garden and orchard. The Tabernacle is by far the most important building ... then come Brigham's two houses, `The Lion' and `The Beehive', and a very pretty villa he is building for Mrs Amelia Young, his last and most beloved wife. Most of his other wives either live in one of his two houses, or else have small houses round them in his garden.... In the afternoon we went to hear Anson Pratt, an Apostle, and one of the original founders of the Mormon creed. The congregation was mostly of the working men's class. They seemed to be very attentive and earnest in their devotions. I noticed here particularly the dejected look of the women, as if they had continually on their mind their inferiority to their lords and masters....

Chicago. Arrived 6 November, left 3 December

Four weeks spent in getting through scarlet fever and measles, accompanied by a severe attack of rheumatism ... nursed by Kate, spoilt by Papa, feared by everybody except a stranger.

Tuesday -- the day before we leave New York! ... It seems a long time since I passed through the hall at Standish, feverish with excitement and longing to see the world, with sisters kissing us, and giving us a tearful goodbye, and with a file of wedding guests on each side.... I wonder if I have altered? And if altered, whether for the better or the worse. I shall find my own level when I get home, that is one good thing in a large family.... Hitherto I have lived a great deal too much apart from my sisters, partly from indolence and partly from my unfrank disposition. Dear Kitty, I have got quite fond of her, she has been such a dear, kind devoted sister. I can't imagine why she does not get on better at home....

* 1874 *

Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was a German romantic novelist and poet. Miss Mitchell was a governess in the Potter household. Joaquin Miller (1837-1913), American poet of frontier life, had a great success in England with Songs of the Sierras (1871). Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) founded the doctrine of `eugenics'.

18 January. Standish

I am now busily engaged in studying. I am translating Faust and reading a novel of Tieck's. [Goethe's] Faust is wonderfully fever and often very beautiful. Putting the introductory piece out of the question, which is fearfully blasphemous, it might almost have been written by a good man, as a satire of the philosophers of the present day.... I have left off music almost entirely. I practise exercises and scales for half an hour, half because Mother wishes it, and half because I do not want to leave it off entirely. Drawing is what I should like to excel in, and now in the evenings before I go and read Shakespeare to Miss Mitchell, I make a point of copying one of the patterns in the School of Art book ...

Maggie and Blanche are very much improved the last four months. Maggie has become much softer and much more charitable towards the world. Blanche is now a practical, kind, cheerful girl, working hard at German and becoming quite useful in household matters. Theresa is as dear a girl as ever ...

25 January. [Standish]

I am not thoroughly contented with the way that I have passed this week. I have been extremely irregular in all my duties. I have not worked as much as I ought to have done, I have been lazy about my religious duties, I have been lazy in getting up; altogether I have been totally devoid of any method. Now I must really try and be more regular, go to bed early, get up early, practise and not be lazy about my drawing, else I shall never get on. I don't think it hurts at all, now and then to read some of St Paul's life, instead of studying German, say twice a week.... I am in a complete muddle about politics. I think they are one of those things of which you cannot see the 'right' or the 'wrong'. I can't help having a sort of sympathy with the Radicals, they are so enthusiastic, but I don't think that their time is come yet. They require a much more perfect state of society than that at present. But it is ridiculous for me to waste my time in scribbling about politics, when I am so ignorant on all those questions.

6 March. [Standish]

Sometimes I feel as if I must write, as if I must pour my poor crooked thoughts into somebody's heart, even if it be into my own. I am fascinated with that book of Joaquin Miller's ... It's queer after reading of nothing but the influence of civilization ... to hear a man boldly stand up and declare that civilization often is degradation, that the savage is often better, wiser and `nearer God' ... and that too from an American.

Dear me! my trip to America seems to have opened a new world to me, and into which I seemed to have had a glimpse, a glimpse long enough to make one wish for another.

13 March. [Standish]

... I am altogether unsettled and discontented. What if my trip to America has made me so? I think that the spoiling I received from Kate and Father has had something to do with it. Then I was the important person but now I am the least important of six or seven others, and naturally my interests and my health cannot be considered first, and I am a great fool to think so....

Now if I am a wise girl I shall go away at Easter, especially if F.G. [F. Galton?] comes -- ten to one if I see him again I shan't be able to resist making a lot of silly castles in the air about him; and that is what I want to avoid. And now, my dear friend, I want to tell you something seriously, because nobody else will have the chance of telling it you. You are really getting into a nasty and what I should call an indecent way of thinking of men, and love, and unless you take care you will lose all your purity of thought, and become a silly vain self-conscious little goose.... I often think you are something like Rosamund in Middlemarch .... Oh that I had thorough command over you.

24 March. [Standish]

What is this feeling between Mother and me? It is a kind of feeling of dislike and distrust which I believe is mutual. And yet it ought not to be! She has always been the kindest and best of mothers, though in her manners she is not over-affectionate. She is such a curious character I can't make her out. She is sometimes such a kind, good affectionate mother, full of wise judgement and affectionate advice, and at other times the spoilt child comes out so strong in her. But whatever she is, that ought not to make the slightest difference to my feeling and behaviour towards her....

3 August. [Standish]

It is a long time since I last wrote in my diary. [Since] then the whirl of the London Season [has] included me, though a schoolroom girl, in its rush. I enjoyed it immensely. It is seldom I have had so much pleasure in so small a space of time.... The theatricals were the climax of all the pleasure and excitement. The getting up of them was in itself great fun, though I was only a looker on. And then that tremendous excitement the week before them, the thought of my having to act Kate Hardcastle [in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer ] before two audiences of two hundred people! But, however, that never came to pass, Maggie got well in time and carried off the laurels. The Dance, oh how I did enjoy that! It was the first dance I had ever been at as a grown-up lady, and I felt considerably satisfied with myself, as I had two or three partners for each dance. Ah vanity! vanity! unfortunately for me my ruling passion....

27 September. [Standish]

Here we are alone, Mother, Blanche and myself. Poor Mother, she has two rather broken crutches to lean upon. Blanche is a dear good girl, but she is unpractical and rather inclined to bore you; and as for me, I am, as Mother says, too young, too uneducated and, worst of all, too frivolous to be a companion to her. But, however, I must take courage, and try to change, and above all I must guard against that self-satisfaction which I consider is one of my worst faults.... the only way to cure myself of it is to go heart and soul into religion. It is a pity I ever went off the path of orthodox religion, it was a misfortune that I was not brought up to believe that to doubt was a crime. But since I cannot accept the belief of my Church without inward questioning let me try and find a firm belief of my own, and let me act up to it. That is the most important thing. God help me to do it!

11 December. [Standish]

... Since I have been poorly this autumn I have been thinking of nothing but myself, and I am sure that it is the most unhealthy state of mind.... I have never felt so low spirited ... I have felt for the first time in my life how much unhappiness there is in life.... I have come to the conclusion that the only real happiness is devoting oneself to making other people happy....

Beatrice was now sent for a short time to Stirling House, a fashionable Bournemouth school for girls, where she spent much time `in lonely study and religious meditation'. Here she briefly found `mental security in traditional Christianity' and decided to be confirmed. When the Potter family was in London for the Season it was Richard Potter's habit to take his daughters to hear the most interesting speakers on Sundays, whether they were in a Catholic church, a Nonconformist chapel or a Positivist meeting-room. `Except for this eclectic enjoyment of varieties of metaphysical experience', Beatrice wrote years later, `the atmosphere of the home was peculiarly free-thinking'.

* 1875 *

27 March. Easter Eve. [Stirling House]

The day before I receive for the first time the holy sacrament. The last month or two has been a very solemn epoch in my life, and may God grant that I may never cease remembering the vows which I have made before God and man, that I intend to become a true Christian, that is, a true disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, making Him my sole aim in life.... There are many things which remain still mysteries to me, like the doctrine of the Atonement. The idea that God demanded that some innocent person should die for the sins of men ... is repugnant to me. I firmly believe that Jesus Christ has and will save the world, but not so particularly by His death, as by His Word ...

11 July. Stirling House

... The first weeks here were not very happy ones, though I think I might have been more contented. But now that I have a room to myself I do not think there could be a happier and more peaceful life. I have enjoyed the little reading I have been able to do immensely ... Though I have hardly read Jane Eyre carefully enough to be able to judge of it fairly, I must say it impresses me disagreeably. I do not think it a pure book. The author's conception of love is a feverish, almost lustful passion. Her hero is frankly speaking a bad and immoral man, whom she endeavours to render attractive by giving him a certain force of character and much physical and intellectual power.

19 September. [Standish]

I must confess I am much more sorry to leave Standish than I expected.... But I hope at Bournemouth to grow much stronger ... I must try and not become egotistical in my thoughts, for that is a great danger when one leads a solitary life, for my life with regard to thought is completely solitary at Stifling House.... I must also above everything endeavour not to think myself superior to the other inmates ... because I have been brought out more by circumstances and encouraged to reason on subjects which other girls have mostly been told to take on faith.... But perhaps the mistake I felt most was joining gossiping conversations. And [to correct] this is certainly most difficult because it in a great way necessitates keeping myself aloof from the girls' society.

21 September. [Stirling House]

The first day at Stifling House. I must confess I feel rather wretched. I feel wrenched from a home which for the first time this year agreed with me and where I have been thoroughly happy, and a family who I was beginning to appreciate and love.... The continual din of the pianos, the want of interesting conversation, the absence of small comforts, and the little restraints on one's actions are all circumstances which require to be got accustomed to. On the other hand I have a greater certainty of health and have perfect peace and very little responsibility. These advantages I hardly appreciate, because my family knowing that I should soon leave them made rather a pet of me.

But if I compare my life here for the next thirteen weeks with my life last autumn at Standish I shall see how much happier I am. Then I ... had all the responsibility of Mother's happiness on my shoulders, at the same time continuing lessons with Mademoiselle with whom I did not agree. I shall never forget the agony I suffered; the dreadful feeling of unfitness and incompetency for the work which was forced upon me ... that period between Father's return and going to Bournemouth was a black blank. No health, no God, no love, nothing but moping, wounded vanity, desperation....

4 October. [Stirling House?]

Lied again today. I will make a practice of noting these lies, by putting a cross for every one to the day of the month. I am quite convinced that it is a most disagreeable habit.

There are, in fact, no `lie' crosses in the succeeding entries.

9 December. [Stirling House]

The reason why I tell so many stories is pride and vanity. It is very often from the wish that people may think me or my people better in one way or another that I exaggerate so fearfully....

17 December. [Stirling House]

I hope when I return home I shall not lose the little earnestness I have gained; that I shall be diligent in the study of religion. I do not want to `come out', and I hope I shall have enough determination and firmness to carry my point. The family does not really want another come-out member; they are almost too many as it is....

* 1876 *

Beatrice decided, after all, to `come out' that summer. `I joined my sisters in the customary pursuits of girls of our class,' she wrote in My Apprenticeship fifty years later, `riding, dancing, flirting and dressing-up, an existence without settled occupation or personal responsibility, having for its end nothing more remote than elaborately expensive opportunities for getting married.' With this round of `restless and futile activities', she lost her feeble hold on orthodox Christianity. Her intellectual curiosity led her to study the religions of the Far East and the `religion of science'.

16 August. [Standish?]

... I see now that the year I spent at Bournemouth I was vainly trying to smother my instinct of truth in clinging to the old faith. And now that I have shaken off the chains of the beautiful old faith, shall I rise to something higher or shall I stare about me like a newly liberated slave, unable to decide which way to go, and perhaps the worse for being freed from the service of a kind of master? Do I look on death and trouble with less calmness than I used?

* 1877 *

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the social philosopher, a friend of Beatrice's father, became her mentor.

19 March. [Standish]

As for my religious opinions they are as Mr Spencer's Social Statics left them. I am afraid I may say that I have no religion whatever, for I have not yet grasped the religion of science. Of one thing I am quite certain, that no character is perfect without religion.

31 March. [Standish?]

... I at present believe (by no means without inward fear at my audacity) that Christianity is in no way superior in kind, though in degree, to the other great religions ... That the idea of working out your own salvation, of doing good and believing blindly in order to arrive at eternal bliss is, through its intense selfishness, an immoral doctrine.... what seems to me clear is that we are at a very early period of man's existence and that we have only just arrived at the true basis of knowledge ...

15 December. [Standish]

Mr Spencer's First Principles has had certainly a very great influence on my feelings and thoughts. It has made me feel so happy and contented.... One has always feared that when the orthodox religion vanished, no beauty, no mystery would be left ... but instead of that each new discovery of science will increase our wonder at the Great Unknown and our appreciation of the Great Truth.

* 1878 *

8 March. [Standish]

The religion of science has its dark side. It is bleak and dreary in sorrow and ill-health. And to those whose lives are one continual suffering it has but one word to say -- suicide. If you cannot bear it any longer, and if no ties of duty turn you from extinguishing that little flame of your existence, depart in peace, cease to exist. It is a dreadful thought. It can never be the religion of a `suffering humanity'. The time may come, and I believe will come, when human life will be sufficiently happy and full to be unselfish. But there are long ages yet to be passed, and generations of men will still cry in their misery for another life to compensate for their life-long sorrow and suffering.

In June, Beatrice went with Mary and Arthur Playne and their adopted daughter Polly on an extended tour of Germany and Hungary. Carrie Darling was the governess for the Playne children and the first woman outside her family with whom Beatrice formed a friendship.

15 June. [Ems?]

Our life here is a modest one, but with the German lessons as a raison d'être pleasant, if one only had tolerable health. The people we know at present are decidedly dull; I don't know how the Americans will turn out. Mr Barclay has brought a certain amount of fun into the ménage . Yesterday evening we spent at Dr Geiser's drinking and smoking and talking and laughing in a very rowdy way. I had got up a mock flirtation with Mr Barclay, which Mary thought proper to reprove, in not the gentlest of language. However, she was right; one can't be too careful in this comical existence where half of one's time must be spent in considering and working for the good opinion of the little world mannikins that surround us. Thank Heavens one has books -- a society whose good opinion you need never consult, and which is always there and infinitely varied....

3 July. Marienburg [North Holland]

... I think on the whole at present I have settled that I am sorry to miss the Season. That the pleasure of seeing new countries does not compensate for the intimate companionship of one's family and the society of London. On the other hand, one must remember that, though I feel inclined for gaiety now and sorry on the whole to have missed it, yet it would most probably have knocked me up....

15 July. [Boppard, on the Rhine]

The last two or three days have been very amusing. We have made friends with all the inhabitants. It has been an odd experience, chumming with a set of people from all nations and classes. They certainly have very much better manners and understand sociability much better than the English. There is a nice feeling of unexclusiveness and general goodwill....

Mary and I are very good friends now that I let her lead the conversation and follow. In order to get on with her you must be content to talk of nothing but personalities, particularly about those individuals who are nearest to her. We have really led such different lives, have lived in such a completely different atmosphere, that it is impossible for us to talk on any serious subject. When I attempted to do it, we disagreed, and disagreed without understanding each other. Mary's great fault is jealousy and vanity. She has a grudge against `intellectual people' and `learning' because she feels that she is `inferior' or, rather, that they think her inferior. She has the same grudge against the family, particularly Mother. In spite of that, she is a charming woman, and most kind and considerate. She is also a clever, shrewd woman. Had she been led by a fine strong character and brain instead of leading a weak one, she would probably have lost that self-complacent jealousy which prevents her from taking a true and just view of the people surrounding her.

9 November. [Wiesbaden]

Our party is broken up. Arthur and Mary left this morning and, as is usual where the feeling has not been quite what it should be, when one has parted one begins to regret not having made more of the opportunities for friendship.... On the whole, this trip to Germany was a mistake, that is to say from a worldly point of view -- but still the last two months I have enjoyed, and I was wise to stay once I had missed the London Season. At any rate I can read German quite easily.

Poor Arthur has been miserable and Mary has not enjoyed herself nearly as much as she expected. How she can be happy with such an inferior man I cannot understand. Still, he is a most affectionate devoted husband and I suppose love covers a multitude of sins.... Miss Darling is a dear little woman, a person it is impossible not to be intimate with....

Rusland Hall, in Cumberland, was taken for a time as a holiday home convenient to Barrow-in-Furness where there was a branch of the timber firm which was the foundation of Richard Potter's fortune. Beatrice was much affected by Goethe's autobiographical novel Wilhelm Meister . Her interest in drawing and watercolour led her to a study of John Ruskin.

30 March. Rusland Hall

... The first two months after my return I was altogether wrong -- and the quiet and perfectly lonely life here was not calculated to shake me right again. The old story of anaemia; want of employment, which makes life almost torture, a silent misery, all the more painful because apparently causeless. But the last month has been spent very happily with my dear Goethe and my dearest old Father in quiet reading and long rambling walks in this lovely country. I feel I am not appreciating this time of perfect freedom and without care.... I shall look back on these days, in a happy home, with envy and regret that I had not been more content to enjoy the simple pleasures of living....

14 December. Rusland

This autumn has been a very happy one for me. And the secret of my happiness has been plenty of occupation of a varied description.... I do believe, independently of being in better health, I have started on a brighter path of existence ... I have gained immensely by taking up drawing and music with a spirit of love instead of with a spirit of jealous ambition; and this I owe to Ruskin and to Goethe....

Some parts of this autumn have been very sweet. We three sisters have seen much of each other, and Maggie and I particularly have had a perfect communion of pursuits and ideas. We had a delightful little trip among our sublime little hills, and read through the first two volumes of Modern Painters together, and this little experience has inspired us with a wish to go [on] sketching and reading tours together, should we remain lonely spinsters....

One thing is clear. Goethe wishes to impress on his reader the advantage of liberty, of unrestrained liberty in thought and deed.... it is better to develop the whole of your nature, looking upwards to a noble ideal, and allowing perhaps some ugly weeds to grow, than to repress the good with the bad.... you should seek a really congenial career, as a life occupation, and then you should keep your heart and mind open to the outer world.... Until you have found this career you should wander up and down regarding no place as too low and dirty, no society too licentious or too frivolous -- perhaps in the lowest society you may light on some human soul who will impart to you some vital truth....

20 September. [Standish?]

The London Season passed with a happy result, and Theresa and I are left to divide the honours of the Potter sisterhood!...

In October, after the marriage of her sister Margaret to Henry Hobhouse, Beatrice embarked on a six-month trip to Italy. An elderly couple, the Cobbs, and a Mr Watson were travelling companions for the first part of the journey She then met Theresa and the Hobhouses, who were honeymooning in Italy. During the winter, Beatrice was ill with congestion of the lungs. She joined her parents on the Riviera in the spring.

24 October. [Florence?]

A glimpse of Paris -- a perfect modern city.... The morning we spent in Notre-Dame. It a little disappointed me. The building is beautiful, but after the romantic vision I had formed of it, from Victor Hugo's description, it seemed more like other cathedrals, and not so devotional in its feeling as some.... I was struck very much by Paris itself with its peculiar and unique charm. So much that one had felt about the French character was here pictured....

I can't help smiling at finding myself settled down with this very elderly trio, with none of whom have I had the slightest previous connection. They are none of them persons to whom I should naturally have taken. They are exceedingly kind, and I think they like me, which is pleasant, but I do not feel as if I were one of them.

That feeling has disappeared. One cannot be in the constant companionship of kindly people, with sincere and warm-hearted natures, without a tie springing up between you and them....

7 November. [Rome]

The journey to Rome was not pleasant for me nor the first few days there, but the idea of being actually in the Eternal City sustained me through the worst of it. On Sunday we had a delicious drive out on the Campagna. The view looking towards the Alban Hills, with the broken line of aqueduct arches and stone pines, was very lovely. There was a sweet, soft feeling in the air, the birds were singing, butterflies flying, and flowers blooming. Yet we were surrounded by the tombs of Roman, Jew and Christian. In their great city, crowded with the memories and memorials of bygone worlds, the great mystery of the why and the wherefore seems ever more pressing....

Sunday, 14 November [Rome]

I cannot write down what I felt on this Sunday morning watching the silent mass in St Peter's. Perhaps there was a good deal of mere emotion in it but it made me look back with regret on those days when I could pray in all sincerity of spirit to my Father in Heaven.... My intellectual or logical faculty drives me to the conclusion that, outside the knowledges of the relative or phenomenal, I know nothing except perhaps that there must be an absolute, a something which is unknowable. But whether the very fact that it is unknowable does not prevent me from considering it ... is a question which Mr Spencer's logic has not set at rest. My reason forces me to a purely negative conclusion, but I see very darkly before me and feel that my logical faculty is very insufficient to the task I set it. Nor do I feel that its present decision is a final one. But I possess another faculty, the emotional, which is the dominant spirit in all my better and nobler moments. This spirit unceasingly insists that there is something above and around us which is worthy of absolute devotion and devout worship.... Could not the agnostic, if he felt that his nature was not sufficiently developed to live without an emotional religion, could he not renounce his freedom to reason on that one subject....

21 November. [Rome?]

Our party has broken up and the first chapter of my Italian trip is finished! It seems but yesterday since we four were feeling miserable together in that very stuffy hotel at Dover.... With Mr Cobb I soon became fast friends. It is always so much easier to get on with men; they seldom criticize a girl who is willing to make herself pleasant to them. And then their wider knowledge of human nature makes them more interesting as companions, and enables one to be freer in one's conversation with them. With a highly respectable matron I always feel rather conciliatory and frightened lest I should let loose any of my bohemian sentiments. That feeling of constraint on my part soon passed away with Mrs Cobb when I felt that she was certain that I was not insincere.... One can never have too many true friends in one's own class, even if they are not so attractive or as well bred, as bohemian friends.

28 November. [Florence]

Settled with Theresa in this very airy house, looking over the golden and brown-tiled roofs of Florence.... Henry and Margaret are here, silently happy. One would hardly know her to be the same woman as the discontented, original, interesting young person who used to be so fascinating to me. As these books are more or less an autobiography I ought to have mentioned the great influence she has had on my life, for good chiefly, but also for evil. With a powerful nature like hers, her influence on a weaker one was complete, even when one secretly knew that she was mistaken. But on the whole, her principles of life were strong and wise, and she had a vigorous and straight intellect. Now she has found in Henry Hobhouse just the man to complete her, a man utterly without worldliness or power to compromise with evil....

19 December. [Florence]

The time has flown while we have been at Florence. I have hardly enjoyed it as much as I ought to have done; my health has been bad, and I have not been able to give the enthusiasm and time to the glorious works of art that I should if I had been quite up to the mark.... This is the close of the second chapter of my Italian trip.... Rome again is before me, with its entangled net of interests and associations.

(Continues...)