Sidney Webb the socialist dined here to meet the Booths. A remarkable little man with a huge head on a very tiny body … somewhat unkempt, spectacles and a bourgeois black coat shiny with wear; somewhat between a London card and a German professor. His pronunciation is cockney, his H’s are shaky, his attitudes by no means elegant — with his thumbs fixed pugnaciously in a far from immaculate waistcoat, with is bulky head thrown back and his little body forward, he struts even when he stands, delivering himself with an extraordinary rapidity of thought and utterance and with an expression of inexhaustible self-complacency.

BEATRICE POTTER wrote these words in her diary the day of her first extended meeting with Sidney Webb in February, 1890 over dinner with others at the Devonshire House Hotel in London. The wealthy heiress, already considered a spinster at 32, was not entirely repulsed by this déclassé figure, the son of a Leicester hairdresser. She added to the above: “But I like the man. There is a directness of speech – an open-mindedness and imaginative warm-heartedness – which should carry him far.”

Two years later, after her repeated refusals and an almost constant exchange of letters, they married. 

This unlikely pair became an influential force in British politics and culture. Founders of the London School of Economics and the weekly journal The New Statesman, they were the foremost proponents of Fabianism, the idealistic strain of socialism which shaped the modern Nanny state. 

They were “two second-rate minds,” as Beatrice put it, a judgment that has been amply confirmed by posterity, especially in light of their later enthusiasm for Stalinism and their support for eugenics. Nevertheless, these architects of modern collectivism, with its bureaucratic governance by experts and gradual permeation of all institutions, were intelligent and enterprising. Their romance and marriage was a strange melding of Victorian refinement and quasi-religious political fervor.

Beatrice Potter, born in 1858, was one of nine daughters of Richard Potter and Laurencina Heyworth. He was a wealthy railway investor who had an interest in philosophy, science and literary affairs and she was the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool merchant. She also had strong intellectual interests. The Potters were part of fashionable London during the social season. They traveled abroad frequently and lived in various residences in London and the country, particularly the large and imposing Standish House in Gloucestershire. Beatrice recorded in detail her formative experiences in her diaries, describing her mother’s cold withdrawal from her life and the warm and affectionate nature of her father.

Among the frequent visitors to Standish House was Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of social evolution. The daughters, known for being highly opinionated, were encouraged to read and debate freely. Their early influences included the views of Auguste Comte, with his Positivist religion of humanity. As her sisters married one by one, and she was left increasingly alone, Beatrice cultivated a strong interest in social work among London’s working poor, an interest which was common within elite circles at that time as the desire to contain and regulate urban poverty grew more passionate.

In 1882, one of the most important and decisive events in her life occurred. She began a halting and eventually disastrous courtship with Joseph Chamberlain, one of Britain’s most important political figures and father of Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain, a magnetic figure and captivating orator, had lost two wives in childbirth. Beatrice, who recorded a “whirlwind of feelings” in her diary, was drawn to him. Their relationship foundered, however, when he told her that he expected “intellectual sympathy” from any woman he married. Jeanne MacKenzie, author of A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb, quotes from Beatrice’s diaries the account of their conflict on the day when Chamberlin visited her father’s home and indirectly proposed marriage:

A dinner, after some shyness, we plunged into essentials and he began to delicately hint his requirements. That evening and the next morning till lunch we were on ‘susceptible terms.’ A dispute over state education breaks the charm. [Said Chamberlain:] ‘It is a question of authority with women, if you believe in Herbert Spencer you won’t believe in me.’ This opens the battle. By a silent arrangement, we find ourselves in the garden. ‘It pains me to hear any of my views controverted,’ and with this preface he begins with stern exactitude to lay down the articles of his political creed. I remain modestly silent; but noticing my silence he remarks that he requires ‘intelligent sympathy’ from women. ‘Servility’, Mr. Chamberlain thinks I, not sympathy, but intelligent servility… He tells me the history of his political career, how his creed grew up on a basis of experience and sympathy, how his desire to benefit the ‘many’ had become gradually a passion absorbing within itself his whole nature….

Ironically, Beatrice herself would eventually be overcome by a similar passion for “the many.” But at this point, she was uncertain of agreement. It is difficult to know from her words alone whether Chamberlain was a privately domineering man. To desire “intellectual sympathy” does not seem an extreme request. He said at a later point that he did not mind if his wife held different political opinions from his own but that he’d rather her not express them. He would have indeed made a difficult spouse if no contrary opinion could ever, even lovingly, be expressed. But one wonders, given her strong attraction to him, whether she might not have found a way to diplomatically express herself if she were his wife. For the fact was, she was in love with him, to the point of nervous prostration on various occasions. She remained in love with him for the next six years, tortured by regrets for refusing him on principle that day.

The strain of being celibate for the next 10 years altered Beatrice’s character, which was passionate by nature. At least, that is what I surmise from reading MacKenzie’s account and Gertrude Himmelfarb’s description of the Webbs in her books, Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians and Poverty and Compassion. Beatrice became increasingly disdainful of all sensuality. This revulsion played a significant part in her later philosophy. Only the benevolent and bureaucratic rule of experts, she believed, could save the lower classes from their animal natures.

 [Part II of this profile, which includes an account of the Webbs’ unusual courtship, will appear tomorrow.]

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