The memoirs of James Stephen

About this book

"When James Stephen, the great-grandfather of Virginia Woolf, sat down on June 6th, 1819, to begin writing these memoirs, he could look back upon 61 years of a life that, although difficult in its beginnings, had been a successful one. He was a Master in Chancery and an M.P., the friend and, by his second marriage, the brother-in-law of William Wilberforce, whom he had strongly supported in the anti-slavery campaign. He intended a complete autobiography up to the time of his retirement from the House of Commons in 1815, but he wrote only the story of his first 25 years until his marriage in 1783. The story was written for his children and their descendants, that they might know the kind of man he was and might, as he thought, read in the vicissitudes of his life the lesson of Divine Providence. Stephen vividly portrays his father, who produced a large family for whom he had little means of support, being unable to keep any job for long, and who with his wife spent much time in prison as a debtor. He gives a most interesting account of a chequered school carreer, marked by bad teaching and worse bullying, which included two terms as a day boy at Winchester. He was for a year at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he encountered much better teaching and many interesting personailities. Later he held a job on The Morning Post, and reported debated in the House of Commons. Though a fundamentally religious man, constantly battling between moral duty and temptation, conscience and sinful desire, Stephen was of a most amorous disposition; he reveals himself quite openly and unashamed, and is frequently filled with remorse and terror at what he terms 'gross offences against my Divine and ineffably gracious Benefactor.' James Stephen bequeathed to prosperity a candid and fascinating self-portrait, and a remarkable picture of life and thought in the late 18th century." -- Book jacket.