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Henry S. Salt: A
Personal Recollection
by John Davies
The interest of the Thoreau
Society in Henry Salt rests of course mainly in the fact that he wrote a
biography of Thoreau, a biography, it may be added, that is still regarded
by many as the best account of Thoreau considered as the man who had
somewhat to say to his fellows on the important question of whether their
lives need to be as desperate as they are.
It is not difficult
to see why Salt should have been so profoundly attracted to Thoreau’s
writings as to take up the task of publishing the life of an author then
so little known and read in England.
The fact is that the
two men showed marked similarities in character, outlook and aim, and
oddly enough in the means available to them for the carrying out of that
aim. Salt, like Thoreau, having graduated at a university, tool up school
teaching, and when apparently well-set fore a successful academic life,
comfortably protected from the rude outside world, finding himself in
disagreement with the educational system, with characteristic refusal to
compromise, resigned his mastership at Eton, and settled with his wife in
a small country cottage in Surrey, there to follow his literary and
political bent, and from then on to the end of his life to live in a quite
humble circumstances as regards outward conditions.
Mentally and
intellectually, however, and here also the resemblance to Thoreau will be
noted, Salt enjoyed the company and friendship of many of the most notable
writers and thinkers of his date, including Shaw, Edward Carpenter, and W.
H. Hudson, and, as secretary for many years of the Humanitarian League, he
met, and had the friendly support of Russell Wallace, Thomas Hardy, George
Meredith, G. K. Chesterton and many other writers and thinkers.
More than anything
else, Salt was a man of letters, and from leaving Eton at the age of 33,
he deliberately set about the business of authorship, achieving, as his
many publications prove, considerable skill in lucid expression.
Besides the life of
Thoreau, his writings include an excellent biography of Shelley --
"Poet and Pioneer," lives of Richard Jeffries, James Thomson (B.
V.), the writer of "City of Dreadful Night;" DeQuincey and
others. "Seventy Years among Savages" sounds as if it might be a
treatise on anthropology, but, as "The Times" critic wrote,
"The savages, gentle reader, are you and I." The book is
virtually an autobiography written after he had reached seventy years of
age. Other works are translations from Lucretius and of Virgil’s "Aenid;"
"Memories of Bygone Eton;" "Animal Rights;" "The
Logic of Vegetarianism," and, written at nearly the end of his life,
"The Creed of Kinship." This last may be said to sum up Salt’s
matured and considerable views, indeed, an address which was read at his
funeral service, and that he had written for that purpose contains the
following: "And when I say that I shall die as I have lived,
rationalist, socialist, pacifist and humanitarian, I must make my meaning
clear. I wholly disbelieve in the present established religion; but I have
a very firm religious faith of my own -- a Creed of Kinship I called it --
a belief that in years yet to come there will be a recognition of the
brotherhood between man and man, nation and nation, human and sub-human,
which will transform a state of semi-savagery as we have it, into one of
civilization."
There can be little
doubt that Salt’s literary reputation suffered from his having felt
himself compelled to devote himself to a few particular causes such as
Socialism and Humanitarianism, but that was the urge he felt and it was
not in his nature to compromise. Thoreau says, "No way of thinking or
doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof," and Salt
couldn’t help challenging a number of venerable ways of thinking and
doing with which he did not see eye to eye.
No note on Salt
would be complete without an emphasis on his sly humor a never-failing
source of delight to his visitors. Once when we called on him when he was
about 85, he related how, earlier that day he had had the annual visit
from the representatives of the commercial concern by whom his annuity was
paid, adding, "The nice young man tried to conceal his disappointment
at finding me still alive." In his last few years, he made frequent
references to his having outstayed his time, and having become a burden to
all his friends, and once playfully suggested that one of us should
arrange for an euthanasia, adding regretfully, "But of course nothing
kills the vitality of a salt." Again, when discussing the
justification for his title "Seventy Years among Savages," he
said, "But I suppose we have reason to be thankful that they have
given up cannibalism."
Salt never tired of
discussing Thoreau and trying to get the essential meaning of his
writings, and it is an instance of his unfailing modesty hat he would ask
for, and give his whole attention to opinion on points which he was
clearly more competent to judge than his friend.
Henry Stephens Salt
was born in India in 1851, the son of a Colonel of Artillery. Brought at
an early age to England, he went to Eton and later to Cambridge, where he
hailed a first class in the classical tripos of 1875 and won a gold medal
for Greek epigram. That he was quite a notable scholar is shown by his
appointment to a mastership at Eton, and there is no doubt that he would
have gone far in the academic career if he had chosen to stay in it. He
died on 19th April 1939.
Conscious of course
of his privileges of birth, education, and intellectual associations,
there was never the slightest sense of superiority; he early espoused the
then unpopular cause of Socialism, being one of the first members of the
Social Democratic Federation. He dressed as a "no account man"
and could never be induced to put on anything special for an occasion. At
a time when so many of our unemployed, receiving weekly pay from the
Ministry of Labour under the jibes in our press as "on the
dole," he often asserted that he himself was on the dole, the chief
source of his income being unearned.
A thoroughly
satisfactory occasion was that on which with Salt beside him on the
platform, Gandhi related to a large London audience gathered under the
auspices of the London Vegetarian Society, how as a young student in
London he had been influenced by a book written by Salt to mend his ways
in the matter of his diet. It was through another little book edited by
Salt that Gandhi first became acquainted with Thoreau’s essay
"Civil Disobedience" which so influenced the great champion of
Indian freedom in his resistance movement.
He was a cultured
sane and charming man, and so amicable a host as to make those frequent
trips from London to Brighton to see Henry Salt even when towards the last
months of his life he was ill and frail, among the most cherished of
life’s memories.
Editor’s Note: Mr. John Davies
of Caterham, Surrey, England, was one of Henry Salt’s closely friends in
his last years. We are greatly indebted to him for these reminiscences to
add to our series of tributes to Thoreau pioneers.
Since many of you
will not undoubtedly want to read more of the books of Henry Salt, I would
like to call your attention to a bibliography, "The Books of Henry S.
Salt 1887-1937," published by the president of our society, Raymond
Adams, at chapel Hell, N. C., in December, 1937. It lists 65 titles or
editions of Salt’s books. I would also like to call your attention to A
GROUP OF UNPUBLISHED LETTERS BY HENRY S. SALT TO JOSEPH ISHILL, published
by Mr. Ishill at the Oricle Press in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, in
1942. This group of forty-one letters from Salt gives a warm insight into
his character. Its typography, incidentally, will delight any
booklover’s heart.
I would like to add
here excerpts from two unpublished letters from Henry Salt to Raymond
Adams:
I have lately been re-reading my own
biography of Thoreau. Much has happened in the forty or fifty years
since I wrote; and I should now say that the chief fault of my book
was the extreme deference paid in it to the authority of Emerson. The
great value of his friendship to the youthful Thoreau is of course no
questioned; but I feel that the time has come when the hard fact has
got to be faced, without respect to persons, that the author of WALDEN
was (in the long run) the greater man of the two.
January 1, 1935
I am still alive, though physically very
weak. It is a curious fact that, in intellectual matters, I find
myself the young person, as compared with most acquaintances
here. They are the "old stagers" some half-century or
century later, as regards their views in what relates to ethics or
"religion." I suppose they will overtake me in time!
March 1, 1936
A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in The Thoreau Society Bulletin (Number 29, October
1949) pp. 1-2.
-
Source: The
Thoreau Society Bulletin (Number 29, October 1949) pp. 1-2.
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