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W.H. Mallock
Cheriton Bishop, 1849 - 1923, Wincanton
LC Heading: Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell), 1849-1923
Biography:
Mallock, William Hurrell (1849–1923), writer, was born on 2 February 1849 at Cheriton Bishop, Devon, the eldest son of the Revd William Mallock, rector of Cheriton Bishop, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Ven. Robert Hurrell Froude, archdeacon of Totnes, Devon. His father was a member of an old Devon gentry family, the Mallocks of Cockington Court, and his mother was the sister of Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), William Froude (1810–1879), and James Anthony Froude (1818–1894). He grew up in the traditional world of the local gentry, whose tory and high-church sympathies he was to share fully. He was educated at home and at the school of the Revd W. B. Philpot of Littlehampton, Sussex. In 1869 he went up to Balliol College, Oxford. His academic career was only modestly successful: he took a second in literae humaniores in 1874. However, he had spent his time constructively in writing poetry, winning the Newdigate prize in 1871, and in meeting prominent men of letters such as Browning and Swinburne. At Oxford, his interest in religious controversies was awakened by his antipathy to the broad-churchmanship of Benjamin Jowett, the master of Balliol.
At Oxford Mallock had begun work on a satirical novel which portrayed the contemporary state of intellectual and ethical life. After serialization, this was published as The New Republic in 1877, winning him immediate acclaim. The novel, set at a country-house party in Devon, took the form of a symposium on issues of religion and morality, Mallock claiming as his models Plato, Petronius, and Peacock. Although the tone was one of ironic humour, he intended it as a serious critique of various bien-pensants. It attracted most attention, however, for its skilful parodies of the views of Matthew Arnold, Pater, Huxley, Jowett, and Tyndall in thinly disguised characterizations.
Mallock's later fiction did not really confirm the reputation earned by The New Republic. All his novels dealt with the manners and morals of the leisured classes, blending political and religious comment with explorations of romantic love. The best-known of these were A Romance of the Nineteenth Century (1881); The Old Order Changes (1886), a ‘condition of England’ novel; and A Human Document (1892), a romance set in Hungary. He also produced more satirical works such as the anti-Bloomsbury novel The Individualist (1899), and The Veil of the Temple (1904), which returned to the symposium format to defend revealed religion. Although he brought considerable talents of social observation and satiric wit to his fiction, the plots of his novels could be contrived and the characterization superficial. As a result, these works attracted less favourable reviews from the critics.
For most of his life Mallock was best-known as a conservative political and religious polemicist. He was a prolific contributor to the periodical press, sometimes under the pseudonym Wentworth Moore, and was particularly associated with the National Review. He had already attacked secular humanism, and Christian compromises with it, in The New Republic, but Is Life Worth Living? in 1879 established him as a forceful defender of dogmatic Christianity. Mallock berated ‘positivists’, a term he used for both Comtists and scientific naturalists, for failing to provide a persuasive secular morality to counteract the scepticism unleashed by their ‘scientific’ criticisms of revealed religion. He argued that the attempt to draw ethical rules from essentially materialist phenomena was doomed, because such phenomena gave equally compelling reasons for cynicism and hedonism. Only supernatural religion could guarantee adherence to moral sanctions.
Mallock believed that political affairs were also being altered by modern materialism. He saw in democratic and socialist thinking the same degree of wishful thinking about the malleability of mankind. Yet the success of Henry George and the land-reformers in the early 1880s convinced him that left-wingers had found attractive arguments, expressed through statistics and sociology, to appeal to a mass audience. Troubled by the intellectual torpor of Conservatives, he proposed a ‘scientific’ Conservatism to refute egalitarianism, encompassing sociology, psychology, and economics, which was capable of comprehension by both politicians and electorate.
From the publication of his first political work, Social Equality, in 1882, and continued in many other works, Mallock was to set out probably the most systematic critique of socialism in pre-1914 Britain. At its heart was a defence of an entrepreneurial élite's contribution to wealth creation. This group possessed a quality of ‘ability’, which included the qualities necessary to innovate, co-ordinate, and direct industry, and it became progressively more important as capitalism developed. He was disdainful therefore of socialist claims, expressed in labour theories of value, that wealth creation was dependent on the increasing skill and self-organization of the workforce, which was unfairly exploited by passive capitalists. He insisted that on the contrary production was essentially an oligarchic process, while the masses best exercised their influence by stimulating demand. He insisted that great inequalities were inherent in the system because they stimulated entrepreneurs to imagine new possibilities for wealth creation; the leisure class fulfilled a valuable function in encouraging this. His political and economic credo is best summarized in A Critical Examination of Socialism (1907).
Mallock's critics, such as Bernard Shaw and J. A. Hobson, cared little for such arguments. They insisted that he had overstated the distinction between manual and mental labour, while disingenuously defending rentiers. It was felt that he exaggerated material motivations and ignored possibilities of democratic co-operation. He, in turn, felt gratified by the increasing socialist acceptance of ‘rents of ability’ as a factor in production, but he maintained that they lacked a sufficient explanation of how entrepreneurial talent could continue to be selected in a socialist society. He was also interested in the practical side of politics, producing numerous statistical leaflets and diagrams for Conservative central office and anti-socialist pressure groups about the ownership and distribution of wealth. However, although he was briefly Conservative candidate for the St Andrews burghs in 1884, he did not feel inclined to enter parliament.
Mallock was a short, portly, dapper figure. He never married, and lived mainly in London and Devon, wintering on the French riviera. He travelled widely and enjoyed visiting old castles and stately homes. At country-house parties he preferred informed conversation to field sports. He earned his living almost entirely from writing, producing over thirty books on a range of subjects, his last book being Memoirs of Life and Literature, published in 1920. He was a skilful writer, with gifts for parody and epigram. His political works were always powerfully argued, if repetitive in substance. Philosophically he was a pessimist, whose yearning for religious faith did not entirely succeed in overcoming his intellectual scepticism. He became increasingly sympathetic to Roman Catholicism in later life, but did not convert. Mallock died suddenly on 2 April 1923 at the infirmary, Wincanton, Somerset, and was buried at Wincanton.
J. N. Peters
Sources W. H. Mallock, Memoirs of life and literature (1920) · J. N. Peters, ‘Anti-socialism in British politics, c.1900–1922’, DPhil diss., U. Oxf., 1992 · J. Lucas, ‘Tilting at the moderns: W. H. Mallock's criticisms of the positivist spirit’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 10 (1966), 88–143 · M. Cowling, Religion and public doctrine in modern Britain, 2 (1985), 296–308 · J. M. Patrick, introduction, in W. H. Mallock, The new republic (1949) · D. J. Ford, ‘W. H. Mallock and socialism in England’, Essays in anti-labour history, ed. K. D. Brown (1974), 318–42 · A. V. Tucker, ‘W. H. Mallock and late Victorian conservatism’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 31 (1962), 223–41 · A. Adams, The novels of W. H. Mallock (1934) · Wellesley index · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1923) · register, Cheriton Bishop, 1849, Devon [birth] · The Times (5 April 1923) · private information (2004) [family; friends]
Archives NRA, corresp. and literary papers
Likenesses Spy [L. Ward], chromolithograph caricature, NPG; repro. in VF (30 Dec 1882) · engraving (after Elliott & Fry), NPG [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Adams, Novels of W. H. Mallock · process print (after photograph by Elliott & Fry), NPG
Wealth at death £238 9s. 9d.: administration, 9 June 1923, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
© Oxford University Press 2004–15
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press
J. N. Peters, ‘Mallock, William Hurrell (1849–1923)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/34845, accessed 28 Oct 2015]
Mallock, William Hurrell (1849–1923), writer, was born on 2 February 1849 at Cheriton Bishop, Devon, the eldest son of the Revd William Mallock, rector of Cheriton Bishop, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Ven. Robert Hurrell Froude, archdeacon of Totnes, Devon. His father was a member of an old Devon gentry family, the Mallocks of Cockington Court, and his mother was the sister of Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), William Froude (1810–1879), and James Anthony Froude (1818–1894). He grew up in the traditional world of the local gentry, whose tory and high-church sympathies he was to share fully. He was educated at home and at the school of the Revd W. B. Philpot of Littlehampton, Sussex. In 1869 he went up to Balliol College, Oxford. His academic career was only modestly successful: he took a second in literae humaniores in 1874. However, he had spent his time constructively in writing poetry, winning the Newdigate prize in 1871, and in meeting prominent men of letters such as Browning and Swinburne. At Oxford, his interest in religious controversies was awakened by his antipathy to the broad-churchmanship of Benjamin Jowett, the master of Balliol.
At Oxford Mallock had begun work on a satirical novel which portrayed the contemporary state of intellectual and ethical life. After serialization, this was published as The New Republic in 1877, winning him immediate acclaim. The novel, set at a country-house party in Devon, took the form of a symposium on issues of religion and morality, Mallock claiming as his models Plato, Petronius, and Peacock. Although the tone was one of ironic humour, he intended it as a serious critique of various bien-pensants. It attracted most attention, however, for its skilful parodies of the views of Matthew Arnold, Pater, Huxley, Jowett, and Tyndall in thinly disguised characterizations.
Mallock's later fiction did not really confirm the reputation earned by The New Republic. All his novels dealt with the manners and morals of the leisured classes, blending political and religious comment with explorations of romantic love. The best-known of these were A Romance of the Nineteenth Century (1881); The Old Order Changes (1886), a ‘condition of England’ novel; and A Human Document (1892), a romance set in Hungary. He also produced more satirical works such as the anti-Bloomsbury novel The Individualist (1899), and The Veil of the Temple (1904), which returned to the symposium format to defend revealed religion. Although he brought considerable talents of social observation and satiric wit to his fiction, the plots of his novels could be contrived and the characterization superficial. As a result, these works attracted less favourable reviews from the critics.
For most of his life Mallock was best-known as a conservative political and religious polemicist. He was a prolific contributor to the periodical press, sometimes under the pseudonym Wentworth Moore, and was particularly associated with the National Review. He had already attacked secular humanism, and Christian compromises with it, in The New Republic, but Is Life Worth Living? in 1879 established him as a forceful defender of dogmatic Christianity. Mallock berated ‘positivists’, a term he used for both Comtists and scientific naturalists, for failing to provide a persuasive secular morality to counteract the scepticism unleashed by their ‘scientific’ criticisms of revealed religion. He argued that the attempt to draw ethical rules from essentially materialist phenomena was doomed, because such phenomena gave equally compelling reasons for cynicism and hedonism. Only supernatural religion could guarantee adherence to moral sanctions.
Mallock believed that political affairs were also being altered by modern materialism. He saw in democratic and socialist thinking the same degree of wishful thinking about the malleability of mankind. Yet the success of Henry George and the land-reformers in the early 1880s convinced him that left-wingers had found attractive arguments, expressed through statistics and sociology, to appeal to a mass audience. Troubled by the intellectual torpor of Conservatives, he proposed a ‘scientific’ Conservatism to refute egalitarianism, encompassing sociology, psychology, and economics, which was capable of comprehension by both politicians and electorate.
From the publication of his first political work, Social Equality, in 1882, and continued in many other works, Mallock was to set out probably the most systematic critique of socialism in pre-1914 Britain. At its heart was a defence of an entrepreneurial élite's contribution to wealth creation. This group possessed a quality of ‘ability’, which included the qualities necessary to innovate, co-ordinate, and direct industry, and it became progressively more important as capitalism developed. He was disdainful therefore of socialist claims, expressed in labour theories of value, that wealth creation was dependent on the increasing skill and self-organization of the workforce, which was unfairly exploited by passive capitalists. He insisted that on the contrary production was essentially an oligarchic process, while the masses best exercised their influence by stimulating demand. He insisted that great inequalities were inherent in the system because they stimulated entrepreneurs to imagine new possibilities for wealth creation; the leisure class fulfilled a valuable function in encouraging this. His political and economic credo is best summarized in A Critical Examination of Socialism (1907).
Mallock's critics, such as Bernard Shaw and J. A. Hobson, cared little for such arguments. They insisted that he had overstated the distinction between manual and mental labour, while disingenuously defending rentiers. It was felt that he exaggerated material motivations and ignored possibilities of democratic co-operation. He, in turn, felt gratified by the increasing socialist acceptance of ‘rents of ability’ as a factor in production, but he maintained that they lacked a sufficient explanation of how entrepreneurial talent could continue to be selected in a socialist society. He was also interested in the practical side of politics, producing numerous statistical leaflets and diagrams for Conservative central office and anti-socialist pressure groups about the ownership and distribution of wealth. However, although he was briefly Conservative candidate for the St Andrews burghs in 1884, he did not feel inclined to enter parliament.
Mallock was a short, portly, dapper figure. He never married, and lived mainly in London and Devon, wintering on the French riviera. He travelled widely and enjoyed visiting old castles and stately homes. At country-house parties he preferred informed conversation to field sports. He earned his living almost entirely from writing, producing over thirty books on a range of subjects, his last book being Memoirs of Life and Literature, published in 1920. He was a skilful writer, with gifts for parody and epigram. His political works were always powerfully argued, if repetitive in substance. Philosophically he was a pessimist, whose yearning for religious faith did not entirely succeed in overcoming his intellectual scepticism. He became increasingly sympathetic to Roman Catholicism in later life, but did not convert. Mallock died suddenly on 2 April 1923 at the infirmary, Wincanton, Somerset, and was buried at Wincanton.
J. N. Peters
Sources
W. H. Mallock, Memoirs of life and literature (1920) · J. N. Peters, ‘Anti-socialism in British politics, c.1900–1922’, DPhil diss., U. Oxf., 1992 · J. Lucas, ‘Tilting at the moderns: W. H. Mallock's criticisms of the positivist spirit’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 10 (1966), 88–143 · M. Cowling, Religion and public doctrine in modern Britain, 2 (1985), 296–308 · J. M. Patrick, introduction, in W. H. Mallock, The new republic (1949) · D. J. Ford, ‘W. H. Mallock and socialism in England’, Essays in anti-labour history, ed. K. D. Brown (1974), 318–42 · A. V. Tucker, ‘W. H. Mallock and late Victorian conservatism’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 31 (1962), 223–41 · A. Adams, The novels of W. H. Mallock (1934) · Wellesley index · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1923) · register, Cheriton Bishop, 1849, Devon [birth] · The Times (5 April 1923) · private information (2004) [family; friends]
Archives
NRA, corresp. and literary papers
Likenesses
Spy [L. Ward], chromolithograph caricature, NPG; repro. in VF (30 Dec 1882) · engraving (after Elliott & Fry), NPG [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Adams, Novels of W. H. Mallock · process print (after photograph by Elliott & Fry), NPG
Wealth at death
£238 9s. 9d.: administration, 9 June 1923, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
© Oxford University Press 2004–13
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press
J. N. Peters, ‘Mallock, William Hurrell (1849–1923)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34845, accessed 6 Aug 2013]
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