i Bloomsbury Scientists ii iii Bloomsbury Scientists Science and Art in the Wake of Darwin Michael Boulter iv First published in 2017 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press Text © Michael Boulter, 2017 Images courtesy of Michael Boulter, 2017 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Michael Boulter, Bloomsbury Scientists. London, UCL Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350045 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 006- 9 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 005- 2 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 004- 5 (PDF) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 007- 6 (epub) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 008- 3 (mobi) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 009- 0 (html) DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787350045 v In memory of W. G. Chaloner FRS, 1928– 2016, lecturer in palaeobotany at UCL, 1956– 72 vi vii Acknowledgements My old writing style was strongly controlled by the measured precision of my scientific discipline, evolutionary biology. It was a habit that I tried to break while working on this project, with its speculations and opinions, let alone dubious data. But my old practices of scientific rigour intentionally stopped personalities and feeling showing through. They cannot work here where there is so much colour in the uncertainty. So my old style had to go. Curiously, it was much harder to find facts from this 100- year- old history of local human culture than from the 50-million-​­ year- old sediments of the European Tertiary. At first, that made me feel even less secure. So I would like to thank Rebecca Stott, professor of lit- erature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, for her help in trying to crack this old nut. I hope that it reveals a softer centre. I really enjoyed our teatime tutorials at the British Library. Others who helped with earlier stages of the whole work were Biddy Arnott, Robert Harding, Gavin McCrea and Stephen Masty. Stephen Phillips, Geoffrey Vevers, Jane Simpson, Ann Steuve, Martin Pick, Raphe and Cathy Kaplinsky, Julia Tracey, Christopher Hourmouzios and Derek Winterbottom gave help with smaller parts of the story. Jon Gill made me aware of the reincarnation of UCL Press, and Chris Penfold has been at the front of a wonderful team there. I thank them all for their hard work. Liz Hudson was a wonderfully vigilant copy-editor. Very belatedly, I would also like to thank two of the long- deceased schoolmasters at my Leicester grammar school, Alderman Newton’s: Bert Howard and the headmaster Hector Gaskell. vii viii ix Contents List of figures x Chronology xi Introduction xiv 1. Two funerals, 1882– 3 1 2. Lankester takes over, 1884– 90 19 3. Eccentric campaigners, 1890s 37 4. Insiders and outsiders, 1890s 58 5. A new breed of professional, 1890– 1904 72 6. A new breed of biologist, 1900– 10 87 7. The rise of eugenics, 1901– 14 102 8. Old habits die hard, 1901– 14 115 9. Time passes, 1914– 18 135 10. The one culture, 1920s and 1930s 146 Postscript 159 Notes 162 Bibliography 167 Index 173 ix x List of figures Note: dates where known. 1.1 Edwin Ray Lankester 5 1.2 Francis Galton 14 1.3 Richard Strachey 16 2.1 Thomas Henry Huxley 27 2.2 Edward Aveling (1880) 35 2.3 Eleanor Marx (1886) 36 3.1 George Bernard Shaw (1889) 38 3.2 Karl Pearson 45 3.3 Olive Schreiner 48 3.4 Samuel Butler 51 3.5 Benjamin Kidd (1898) 54 4.1 Roger Fry, self- portrait (1928) 63 4.2 H. G. Wells 67 5.1 Leslie Stephen (1902) 75 5.2 Marie Stopes (1904) 83 7.1 Bertrand Russell (1907) 109 8.1 Virginia Woolf (1902) 122 8.2 Ottoline Morrell (1902) 126 x xi Chronology 1871 Lesley Stephen appointed editor of The Cornhill. 1878 Alfred Wallace joins Spiritualists in Upper Bedford Place. 1880 Thomas Huxley lectures on science education and social class. 1880 Ray Lankester, Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism. 1882 Lesley Stephen and The Tramps have tea with Charles Darwin. 1882 Charles Darwin’s funeral. 1882 Matthew Arnold lectures on literature and science. 1883 Francis Galton Anthropometric Laboratory collects data. 1884 The Fabians are founded. 1884 Ray Lankester appoints Karl Pearson at UCL. 1885 Karl Pearson, Olive Schreiner and Bryan Donkin start the Men and Women’s Club. 1885 Samuel Butler finishes The Way of All Flesh. 1887 Roger Fry elected to the Apostles. 1888 Roger Fry and H. G. Wells graduate in biology. 1889 Ray Lankester appoints Raphael Weldon at UCL. 1889 Julia Stephen signs Appeal against Female Suffrage. 1889 Arthur Tansley begins biology studies at UCL. 1890 William Booth, Darkest England. 1890 H. G. Wells publishes two magazine articles comparing art and science. 1890 Francis Oliver appointed professor of botany at UCL. 1891 Ray Lankester leaves UCL for Oxford University. 1892 Havelock Ellis, The Nationalisation of Health. 1893 Thomas Huxley gives Jack and the Beanstalk lecture. 1893 Ray Lankester begins Evolution Committee at the Savile Club. 1893 Benjamin Kidd meets Roger Fry and John McTaggart at Cambridge. 1893 H. G. Wells publishes first book,Textbook of Biology. 1894 Roger Fry appointed art critic for the Burlington Magazine. 1894 H. G. Wells, The Time Machine. 1894 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution. xi xii 1894 Ray Lankester engagement to marry is broken. 1895 Virginia Stephen becomes secretary of Stephen Entomological Society. 1895 Ray Lankester arrested in Piccadilly. 1898 Ray Lankester appointed director of British Museum (Natural History). 1899 Marie Stopes begins botany studies at UCL. 1900 Ray Lankester writes congratulations to H. G. Wells. 1900 William Bateson rediscovers Mendel’s manuscripts. 1901 Arthur Tansley starts ecology journal, New Phytologist. 1901 William Bateson criticises Karl Pearson’s manuscript. 1901 William Booth and Beatrice Webb collect data on London poverty. 1902 Marie Stopes graduates at UCL. 1903 George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman. 1903 Brown Dog vivisection affair at UCL. 1904 Ray Lankester concerned at Eugenics Record Office in Gower Street. 1904 The four Stephen orphans move into 46 Gordon Square. 1906 Ottoline Morrell moves into Bedford Square. 1907 George Bernard Shaw describes Karl Pearson as a failure. 1907 Ray Lankester resigns from Natural History Museum. 1908 E. M. Forster at the Working Men’s College, Great Ormond Street. 1908 Agnes Arber and Gwen Raverat suffer sexual discrimination. 1910 Walter Sickert painting workshop fearing sex, race, degeneration. 1910 Ottoline Morrell and Roger Fry explore modern art in Paris. 1910 Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead publish Principia Mathematica, vol. 1. 1910 Maynard Keynes and Herbert Darwin begin Cambridge Eugenics Society. 1910 Ray Lankester begins Easy Chair column in Daily Telegraph. 1910 Dreadnought hoax. 1910 Roger Fry’s Monet and the Post- Impressionists exhibition. 1910 T. H. Morgan, New York geneticist, finds genes on chromosomes. 1910 ‘On or about December 10th human character changed’, Virginia Stephen. 1911 Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf. 1911 Rebel Arts Centre, 38 Great Ormond Street, Wyndham Lewis and Jacob Epstein. xii CHRONOLOGY xiii 1911 Henri Gaudier- Brzeska and Henri Bergson at Rebel Art Centre. 1912 International Congress of Eugenics, Hotel Cecil, Westminster. 1912 Ray Lankester frequent guest of Wells in Essex, Anna Pavlova in Hampstead. 1912 Second Roger Fry Post- Impressionist exhibition. 1912 Roger Fry and Ray Lankester contribute to H. G. Wells’s Socialism in the Great State. 1913 UK Mental Deficiencies Act. 1913 Ronald Fisher’s equations support gradual evolutionary change. 1913 Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out. 1913 Adrian Stephen and Karin Costello at Rebel Art Centre. 1920 The Memoir Club founded. 1920 Marie Stopes, Radiant Motherhood. 1922 George Bernard Shaw’s Lamarckian polemic Back to Methuselah first performed. 1926 Ray Lankester attacks Conan Doyle’s History of Spiritualism. 1928 Gip Wells appointed an assistant in zoology, UCL. 1931 Julian Huxley, Gip Wells and H. G. Wells publish Science of Life. 1931 Tots and Quots begins meeting, Great Portland Street. 1932 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. 1932 Julian Huxley appointed secretary, Zoological Society. 1937 Theo Dobhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species. 1942 Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species. 1942 Julian Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. CHRONOLOGY xiii xiv Introduction This is the story of the network of artists and scientists living in a square mile of London just before and after the First World War. The group included men and women who made hard discoveries in biology while others created different kinds of art. It was a time of unexpected oppor- tunities from new disciplines such as genetics and ecology, from the new art of post- impressionism and from a style of writing called the stream of consciousness. New technology was transforming family life just when more women were reacting to Victorian rules and influencing a new soci- ety. The physical sciences had already done well to improve standards of living and many asked whether it was the turn for biology to make another kind of impact. Big social changes were also under way as power was being trans- ferred from the landed oligarchy to some of the high achievers who had both ability and an education in science. New movements support- ing socialism and nationalism were growing in response to the spread- ing urban poverty and a declining empire, but the controls in breeding that were being suggested by some members of the Eugenics Education Society were not going to be popular with many of these artists and sci- entists who were then in Bloomsbury.