ROGER FRY: A Biography. Virginia Woolf

      Lady Fry, Roger Fry’s mother

      Indeed, judging from Sir Edward’s own account of himself in his own autobiography, these early impressions were well founded. There were good reasons why he should inspire his son with a mixture of devotion, fear and bewilderment. He was a man of deep feelings and of many conflicts … I often thought that in no human being had the two contending elements of our nature “—the baser and the better—ever existed in stronger antithesis, or ever fought more fiercely for the victory,” he wrote: … doubts and difficulties about God and the other world: aspirations often vague and purposeless, that were perforce unsatisfied: fears for the future—of things both spiritual and bodily: the mystery of the world: a sense that ordinary life was full of triviality: a repulsion from the character and habits of many people: regrets for things said and done amiss, and especially for the outbursts of a temper that was always somewhat masterful—all these and manifold other things often gave me sad and painful thoughts”—it was thus that he described his character as a young man. Among the desires that were “perforce unsatisfied” was the desire for the life of a scientist. His natural bent was strongly scientific. As a boy at Bristol he spent his pocket-money on the bodies of dead animals at the Zoological Gardens which he dissected at home. His first published work was on the Osteology of the Active Gibbon; his second, On the Relation of the Edentata to the Reptiles. Bones and rocks, plants and mosses were far more congenial to him than the work of a clerk in a sugar-broker’s office. The life of a professor of science at one of the great universities would have suited him to perfection. But as a Quaker both Oxford and Cambridge were “practically shut” to him; and he chose the law, for which he entertained “no predilection”, because it gave him “a justification for asking for College”. The college—University College, London—was not Oxford or Cambridge, but it was better than no college at all. It was natural thus, that, though born and bred a Quaker and remaining a Quaker all his life, he was yet highly critical of the sect. He was one of the first to protest against Quaker “peculiarities” and in his old age he wrote that “miserable questions about dress and address and the disputes about orthodoxy produced a chasm in my feelings between myself and systematic Quakerism which I have never got over”. By temperament he was shy and despondent, and “had very little interest in the common run of humanity”. But he had a vigorous and critical intellect; was contemptuous of “anything morbid, sentimental or effusive”; merciless to inaccuracy; and so retentive of facts that in extreme old age—he scarcely knew a day’s illness till his last years and lived to be over ninety—he could supply precise information “whether as to the exact limits of the English Channel, the geographical distribution of animals, or the spelling of a word”. Such gifts, though the law was not the profession of his choice, naturally brought him to eminence. After a dreary time of waiting, “seeing the current of briefs flow in the Square below me”, longing “for more society and love”, longing too for the country and sometimes catching a whiff of hay and seeing above Lincoln’s Inn the distant hills of Hampstead, briefs came his way, and his practice steadily increased. But the life of a successful lawyer never satisfied him. Directly he became a Judge he told his clerk that he would retire when he was entitled to a pension; and much to the surprise and regret of his colleagues he kept his word. In the prime of life, but too late to become a serious scientist, he retired to the country to enjoy that “union of simplicity of life with the benefits of cultivation” that had always been his ideal. But like his ancestors he was a country gentleman with a difference. He never smoked; bowls and halma were the only games he tolerated; and he had no skill with his hands. He read aloud to his children, cultivated his garden, and served his country at the Hague and on the Bench. His shelves were well stocked, and the busts of great men ornamented the library; but for works of art he had no feeling whatsoever. His only recorded judgment of a picture was unfavourable because “the beautiful lady [in the portrait] … had borne a character not without reproach”. Mosses, on the other hand—the Hypnum, and the Tortulas and the Bryums—gave him a satisfaction that human beings failed to give. And if, as he said of himself, he lacked confidence in his own powers and had “a certain rather despairing way of looking at the future”, there was no lack of decision in the rulings he laid down either upon, the Bench or in his own house. The “scheme of Victorian domesticity” devised by him was rigid. The moral code might be “terribly complicated” to a small boy, but it was extremely definite. Even though he inspired his children, and his daughters in particular, with profound devotion, they “always realised that there were bounds not to be overpassed”. Perhaps, could they have ignored those bounds, he would have welcomed it. Perhaps he regretted as much as his son did the “alarmingness” which, as they grew older and the son developed his own individuality, drove them further and further apart. Sir Edward at any rate was deeply conscious of his loneliness. He had had much happiness, he wrote in his old age, and many friends. “But in spite of all this, there is a sense of solitude—aloofness from my fellows, which has clung to me through life, and which in looking back has, I feel, coloured my intercourse with my fellow men as a whole. How few of those with whom I have associated have really understood me! One may think of me as a lawyer, another as a botanist, and another as this or that, and how few feel one’s real self. … I was born alone; I must die alone; and in spite of all the sweet ties of home and love (for the abundance of which I thank God) I must in some sense live alone.”

      Naturally a child of seven could not enter into these solitudes; but he could, as Roger’s memory of the winter’s day on the pond at Ken Wood shows, feel the contrast between the father who, when he gave way for once to his passion for skating, was all laughter and high spirits; and the father whose large bright eyes suddenly clouded; and whose voice became one of awful severity as he accused him of sins which he could not understand. Moreover, there was another contrast which even as a child perturbed him. Whatever his father’s moral convictions might be, they lived a highly comfortable life in the small house at Highgate. There were perpetual compromises with the world of respectability and convention. A carriage and pair took his father to Lincoln’s Inn. The rights of property were respected; class distinctions were upheld; and the pond loafers, with their red neckerchiefs, blowing into their ugly hands, were not to be pitied but blamed. There was, he felt, “a want of simple humanity” in their upbringing. He revered his parents, his father especially; but they frightened him; and there was much in their way of life that puzzled him.

      Such impressions, however, though sharp enough to last a lifetime, and deep enough to cause much conflict, were of course momentary and exceptional. For the most part, there was nothing to perplex or to frighten. “ The black hen is still sitting. Mr Carpenter’s little girl came this morning to take the white kitten away. On Saturday Forty examined Mab and Kizzy and myself in Tables, Geography and Latin and he set Mab and Kizzy some sums while he examined me in French”—that is an average sample of daily life at Highgate in the ‘seventies. The garden with its hot-houses and its gardener played a great part in Roger’s day. He had his own garden, and a lily grew there which he drew in pencil for his grandfather in Lewes. He had his sisters to play with; and he ruled over them despotically and refused to let them borrow his toys. There was a wide connection of uncles, aunts and cousins, remembering birthdays and sending presents, often, for they were a highly scientific family, of a mineral or of a vegetable nature. He went up