Scope and Content Note
The papers of Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) span the years 1760-1946, with the bulk from 1883 to 1938. Family correspondence in the collection consists of letters written by Smith to members of his family, including his father and mother, noted nineteenth-century religious reformers, Robert Pearsall and Hannah Whitall Smith, and his sisters, Mary Logan Smith Berenson and Alys Pearsall Smith Russell. Smith was an American Quaker expatriate who followed his family to England in 1889, and who, after attending Balliol College, Oxford, 1889-1891, established permanent residence. In his letters to his family, Smith preserves the social context and cultural milieu of late nineteenth-century Oxford.
Smith’s interest in art theory and literary criticism brought him in contact with many important personalities of his day. From 1882 until 1886, the year Smith’s parents emigrated to England, Walt Whitman was a frequent visitor to their house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Letters written by Smith, concerning Whitman, dated 1886-1887, are contained in the collection.
In letters to members of his family, Smith stakes out positions on standards of art, art history, and the aesthetic appreciation of art; defends his theses on theories of literature and philosophical principles; and transmits information and gossip about friends and world figures in the arts and humanities. The scope of these topics becomes interrelated, and letters written by Smith concerning his brothers-in-law, Bernard Berenson and Bertrand Russell, make these connections clearer. Smith also had contact with members of a colony of avant-garde British artists and writers who flourished in the early decades of the twentieth-century at Bloomsbury. Letters concerning Roger Eliot Fry, painter and critic, are contained in the papers, and personal correspondence includes letters and transcripts of letters between Smith and Virginia Woolf. Smith also counted Edith Wharton and Robert Seymour Bridges among his friends. The former is mentioned in family letters by Smith, and the latter is discussed in letters written to Smith by Henry James. Transcripts of letters by Bridges to Smith are also in the collection.
Henry James and George Santayana were friends and working colleagues of Logan Pearsall Smith. James’s letters to Smith are dated from July 1892 to May 1914 and contain remarks of an ordinary social nature as well as critical discussion of contemporary literary and artistic figures. Of Aubrey Beardsley, James writes on November 7, 1913, “ I knew Beardsley a little–and found him personally pleasing and touching, though I detested his work–which made me sick–and still does.”
The letters from Santayana are dated from May 1917 to October 1938, and are fuller in content than the James letters. In a letter dated December 2, 1921, Santayana writes about the past development and possible future course of American civilization. Other topics of discussion include Santayana’s thoughts and observations about World War I and the Russian Revolution and the effect of each upon the socio-political framework of Western Europe. General comments on the state of society, the development of literature, and the practice of philosophy provide rewarding perspectives of Santayana’s cultural and societal views. Santayana also chronicles the progress towards completion of the publication of his work, as well as a joint publishing effort in collaboration with Smith entitled Little Essays.
A books and articles file in the collection contains notes and typewritten and holograph manuscripts for the titles represented.