Lloyd 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 and epigrams, and was an expert on 17th century divines. 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.Logan Pearsall Smith Manuscripts, 1881–1943, Kent State University. Accessed 11 February 2008, He was the son of the prominent Quakers Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith, 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 in the poet's latter years.
Smith's sister Alys was the first wife of philosopher Bertrand Russell. His sister Mary was married twice, first to the Irish barrister Benjamin Conn "Frank" Costelloe. Their two daughters were Ray Strachey and Karin Stephen, in-laws to Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, respectively. Mary later married the art historian Bernard Berenson.
Education Smith attended the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, Haverford College, Harvard College, and the University of Berlin.Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years; Edwin Tribble (ed.), A Chime of Words: The Letters of Logan Pearsall Smith Smith later studied Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1891.
Career Smith employed a succession of young secretary/companions to help him. This post was Cyril Connolly's first job in 1925 and he was to be strongly influenced by Smith. Robert Gathorne-Hardy 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 aphorisms and epigrams, 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. 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, John Russell, R. C. Trevelyan, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He was, in part, the basis for the character of Nick Greene (Sir Nicholas Greene) in Virginia Woolf's Orlando.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 Desmond MacCarthy and Rose Macaulay,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 near the Solent, called Big Chilling.
Gathorne-Hardy described Smith as "a largish man with a stoop that disguised his height".Robert Gathorne Hardy; Logan Pearsall Smith. Recollections of Logan Pearsall Smith. The Story of a Friendship. [With a Portrait]. London; 1949. Kenneth Clark further wrote "His tall frame, hunched up, with head thrust forward like a bird, was balanced unsteadily on vestigial legs".Kenneth Clark. Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait. Hamish Hamilton; 1974. .
Politically he was a socialist, having been converted by Graham Wallas, a founder of the Fabian Society.
His portrait, made in 1932 by Ethel Sands, is at the National Portrait Gallery, London.(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 1920 (ed.). Donne's Sermons: Selected Passages with an Essay 1920. Stories from the Old Testament retold. Hogarth Press 1921. More Trivia 1923. English Idioms 1925. Words and Idioms 1927. The Prospects of Literature. Hogarth Press 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. 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, 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
Biographical source Quote source "'Four romantic words"