Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, the British scholar and writer, was born August 6, 1862, in London; he died August 3, 1932, in London.
EditLife and Career
==Early Life==Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson's mother was Margaret Ellen Williams, daughter of William Smith Williams who was literary advisor to Smith, Elder & Company and who discovered Charlotte Brontë. His father was Lowes Cato Dickinson (1869-1908) who was a portrait painter. When he was a year or so old the family moved to The Spring Cottage in Hanwell, which was then a country village. He had a brother, Arthur, who was three years older. He had an older sister, May, and he also had two younger sisters, Hester and Janet.
In his autobiography he describes the beginning of his fetishism for boots which stayed with him all of his life. When he was ten or eleven he was sent to a day school in Somerset Street, Portman Square. When he was about twelve he was sent to Beomonds boarding school in Chertsey.Between the ages of 14 and 19 he was at Charterhouse School in Godalming where his brother Arthur had already preceded him. He was aware of homosexual activities in a ‘hothouse of vice’ but he was not interested in it and took no part in it. He continued to gain satisfaction from his boot fetish. Although his years at school were not happy he did enjoy seeing the plays put on by companies of actors that visited Charterhouse. He also played violin in the Charterhouse school orchestra.
==Education - University==During this time his family moved home from Hanwell to a house behind All Souls Church in Langham Place. Also during these years his mother developed asthma from which she would die. In 1881 he went to King’s College, Cambridge as an exhibitioner and linked up with Arthur who was already there. Towards the end of his first year he received a telegram saying that his mother had died. He felt that after the grieving he changed and began to know himself better. In 1884 he was awarded the chancellor’s English medal for a poem on Savonarola. A strong influence was his tutor Oscar Browning. He also developed a close friendship with fellow King’s College student
C R Ashbee. In the summer of 1884 Goldsworthy Dickinson was awarded a first class in the classical tripos.
He then took a trip abroad, the first part with C R Ashbee and they went through Amsterdam and Dordrecht. Goldsworthy Dickinson then went south to the Oldenwald to stay with a friend for a week or two. He then went to stay in Heidelberg and spent his time reading Plato. He returned to Cambridge towards the end of 1884 and was elected to the Cambridge Conversazione Society which is usually called the Society of Apostles. After a year or two he became part of the circle of friends that included Roger Fry, J. M. E. McTaggart, and Nathaniel Wedd. In the summer of 1885 he went to Craig Farm at Tilford near Farnham in Surrey to work on a co-operative farm which had been started by Harold Cox. This was an experiment in engaging in the simple life and Goldsworthy Dickinson was proud of his efforts in hoeing, digging, and ploughing.
In the Autumn of 1885 he started public lecturing under the University Extension Scheme and covered Carlyle, Emerson, Browning, and Tennyson. He toured the country and lived for a term at Mansfield and then for a second term at Chester and Southport. His tour finished in the spring of 1886.After spending some contemplative time in Wales he felt the need to do something practical. He wrote to his father and got him to agree to fund him to take a degree in medicine. He arrived back in Cambridge in October 1886 and started his course but he became dissatisfied with it and almost dropped out. However he persisted and passed his first M.B. examination in 1887 and his second in December, 1888, but he then admitted to himself that medicine was not for him.
==Work and Relationships==In March 1887 he was elected into a fellowship at King’s College with a dissertation on Plotinus. He then travelled with C R Ashbee to Italy and stayed in Rome. It was during Roger Fry’s last year at Cambridge in 1987-8 when Goldsworthy Dickinson fell in love with him. This was the first time that he had fallen in love with someone of his own sex. It was the first of five intense relationships that he would have, and all with men who were heterosexual but who showed affection to varying degrees. Roger Fry was heterosexual but did rest his feet on Goldsworthy Dickinson as he lay on the floor. After Roger Fry left Cambridge Goldsworthy Dickinson visited him at his homes in London. They also went on trips together to the Dorsetshire coast. After bathing at Weymouth they lay naked together on the sand with Goldsworthy Dickinson holding Roger Fry’s hand. They shared beds and embraced, and although Roger Fry suggested that they could go further Goldsworthy Dickinson would not let it do so. This intense phase of their relationship last for a year or two but they then remained lifelong friends.
Roger Fry became an important art critic and leading member of the
Bloomsbury Group.Roger Fry had been at Clifton School at the same time as Jack McTaggart and Ferdinand Schiller, and Goldsworthy Dickinson became intimate with them both. He got to know Ferdinand Schiller after he had left Cambridge and when he spent an evening with Goldsworthy Dickinson at All Souls Place. In the summer of 1888 Goldsworthy Dickinson, Roger Fry and Jack McTaggart went to stay with Ferdinand Schiller’s family at Gersau on the lake of Lucerne. Goldsworthy Dickinson returned for another holiday with Ferdinand Schiller there in 1893. In 1895 they spent the summer together in Kandersteg. In 1899 Goldsworthy Dickinson spent the summer with the Schillers at Sils Maria in the Engadine, and every night Ferdinand Schiller kissed him good night.
In December 1888 Goldsworthy Dickinson went for a few weeks to Paris with Roger Fry, and they took a room in the Rue de Tournon, close to the Luxembourg. Roger Fry was studying art, and Goldsworthy Dickinson was visiting museums and galleries and attending lectures at the Collège de France. Goldsworthy Dickinson then settled down at Cambridge with an income of £80 a year. He started again to lecture in the University Extension Scheme, travelling from Cambridge to Newcastle, Leicester, and Norwich.He turned to elucidating the practical problems of humanity and began to write on modern history. His fellowship was permanently renewed in 1896, and it was as an historian. He also devoted himself to his first love, Plato and the ancient Greeks, and expressed his appreciation of the Greek genius in
The Greek View of Life, (1896). He went on to produce a series of dialogues in the Socratic tradition.In 1890 he joined the Society of Psychical Research and was a member of its Council from 1904 to 1920. In 1897 he made his first trip to Greece, travelling with Nathaniel Wedd, Robin Mayor, and A. M. Daniel.
In 1901 his brother Arthur was transferred to New York by his accountancy firm Price Waterhouse, and Goldsworthy Dickinson planned a trip there with his expenses paid by delivering a series of lectures. On August 25, 1901, he sailed from Tilbury to New York on a cargo ship, the Atlantic Transport Line. He first visited his brother in New Jersey, and after a day or two travelled to San Francisco, taking a week or so by train. After giving lectures at Berkeley, and visiting Yosemite valley, he travelled to Strong City, Kansas to visit his friend Plump Hughes who he had known at the day school at the age of ten. After visiting Niagara he returned to England and, on the crossing met Russell Loines who became a good friend. In 1903 he helped to found the
Independent Review, with the first issue appearing in October under the editorship of Edward Jenks. Members of its editorial council were Goldsworthy Dickinson, F. W. Hirst, C. F. G. Masterman, G. M. Trevelyan, and Nathaniel Wedd. Roger Fry designed the front cover.
Over the subsequent years Goldsworthy Dickinson contributed a number of articles to it, some of which were reproduced in
Religion. A Criticism and a Forecast, (1905) and in
Religion and Immortality, (1911). In 1908 Oscar Eckhard arrived in Cambridge as a young student and Goldsworthy Dickinson immediately took to him. They went riding together and became close companions.In December 1908 Goldsworthy Dickinson’s father died. In the spring of 1909 he made a second lecture tour of the USA where he delivered the Ingersoll Lectures at Harvard. His relationship with Oscar Eckhard was renewed in the autumn of 1909, but as it became more important to Goldsworthy Dickinson, Oscar Eckhard became more distant. Over the following years the relationship oscillated with Oscar Eckhard sometimes avoiding Goldsworthy Dickinson and sometimes allowing a kiss or an embrace in bed. It came to an abrupt end in 1922.
In 1912 he became the first holder of the Albert Kahn travelling fellowship. He first travelled to Egypt with his old friend J. M. Furness who was then the head of a large school in Cairo. After a fortnight he went to Port Said and on 11th. October he joined the boat that had brought his travelling companions from England. These were
E. M. Forster, and the poets R. C. Trevelyan and G. H. Luce. They got to know a young officer, Kenneth Searight, who was beautiful, gay, and in love with a young man. The four friends reached India, and after a few days in Bombay Goldsworthy Dickinson and R. C. Trevelyan went to Ellora to see the cave temples. E. M. Forster joined the group when they went to visit Kenneth Searight at Peshawar and he took them up the Khyber Pass as far as Ali Masjid. Travelling by Lahore, Delhi, and Agra they reached Chhattarpur and were introduced to the Maharajah (to whom
Joe Ackerley later became secretary). E. M. Forster then left the group to return westwards, while the rest visited South India and Ceylon (later called Sri Lanka) on the way to Singapore and Java.
They returned to Singapore and while waiting for a boat east they visited Sumatra. They then sailed to Hong Kong and then travelled to Canton. From there Goldsworthy Dickinson travelled alone to Shanghai, and after a fortnight of visiting people he took a steamboat up the Yangtse to Ichang, and then a house-boat up the rapids. Returning from the Yangtse he went to Peking and the neighbourhood. He took a trip to Shantung and the mountain of Taishan. In July he went to Japan, travelling via Kobe to Kyoto. After travelling around Japan he returned via the Siberian railway and Moscow to Berlin, Paris, and London. He admired China and had already celebrated it in
Letters from John Chinaman, 1901. He returned to Britain with a mandarin’s cap which he wore indoors for the rest of his life.
==WW II==The onset of the Second World War in 1914 undermined his hopes for humanity, but within a fortnight he had had drafted schemes for a ‘League of Nations’. He also played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, which became the nucleus of the League of Nations Union. He continued to work hard on promoting his ideas and attended a pacifist conference in The Hague in 1915. He also produced a large number of books and pamphlets.
C R Ashbee also supported the ideals of the League of Nations and made the suggestion that
Laurence Housman, Goldsworthy Dickinson, and himself should go on a lecture tour of the USA advocating the League of Nations. They all went to discuss the proposal with Sir Edward Grey of the Foreign Office and he gave them advice about the proposal. Goldsworthy Dickinson set off for his lecture tour of the USA in January 1916.
During the War he was visiting Roger Fry and met a 16-year-old, Peter Savary, who was the nephew of a Swiss woman who was teaching Roger Fry’s children. Peter Savary was sent to the Friends’ school at York and Goldsworthy Dickinson visited him there from time to time. On finishing school Peter Savary moved to London and tried various jobs until finally taking employment with the Friends’ Relief Committee. After the War Goldsworthy Dickinson returned to his primary interests in Plato, poetry, and the pursuit and truth. While he was in Lyme Regis in the spring of 1919 writing
The Magic Flute, E. M. Forster stayed with him. In March 1922 Goldsworthy Dickinson saw
Joe Ackerley play the part of Achilles in a production in Cambridge of
Troilus and Cressida and was struck by his good looks. They met for lunch in Pall Mall the following day and talked into the afternoon about their proclivities. They met again during the August bank holiday, and in the autumn Goldsworthy Dickinson visited Joe Ackerley in London. Then Joe Ackerley visited Goldsworthy Dickinson at his home in Hanover Terrace. In November Joe Ackerley stayed with Goldsworthy Dickinson in King’s College. At the end of the visit Joe Ackerley kissed Goldsworthy Dickinson. Despite their difference in ages there seemed to Goldsworthy Dickinson to be the possibility of a relationship with a gay man, but Joe Ackerley did not reciprocate.
In the spring of 1922 Peter Savary fell ill with influenza and Goldsworthy Dickinson took him to Brighstone on the Isle of Wight. Peter Savary agreed to kiss and embrace, but no more. In 1923 Peter Savary took up the post of secretary and guide to conduct parties on fortnightly trips to Samoens in the French Alps, not far from Geneva. At the time Goldsworthy Dickinson was at the League of Nations on the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation. After he finished he went to meet Peter Savary at Samoens for a month or so. When Goldsworthy Dickinson returned to Geneva in September for the meeting of the Assembly he was able to get Peter Savary the place in the League of Nations Office in London. With the close of the Assembly they went to Italy for a week or two. The last of the heterosexual men with whom Goldsworthy Dickinson fell in love was Dennis Proctor.
“Though I was having my own love affairs with girls (into which Goldie entered with sympathy and understanding) and had no homosexual tendency, I loved him too; and since it has always come naturally to me to give expression to my affection for anyone I am fond of, I did so quite spontaneously with him. This, so he sometimes told me in very moving terms, gave him a happiness he had not known before - simply because he found in me a reciprocity which others had not been able to supply. There was never any ‘trouble’ for him in our relationship. For me it was pure gain to have the intimacy of such a man.”
Dennis Proctor in the Introduction toThe Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, page 31.
In 1929 he was invited by the Talks Department of the BBC, where
Joe Ackerley worked, to give the first and last talks in a series called ‘Points of View’. Goldsworthy Dickinson then became a regular broadcaster on BBC radio and delivered several series of talks on various topics including Goethe and Plato.He had a home in London at 11 Edwardes Square, and a Blue Plaque put up there by private subscribers.A lecture delivered at a Cambridge summer school in August 1932 and this was published as
The Contribution of Ancient Greece to Modern Life, (1932).He went to hospital for a prostate operation and appeared to be recovering from it before he died. Memorial services were held in King’s College Chapel, and in London. In London Roger Fry read from Spinoza, and in Cambridge Dennis Proctor read from Goldsworthy Dickinson’s
After Two Thousand Years. A portrait of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson as a child in 1869 by his father Lowes Cato Dickinson is in the National Portrait Gallery. There is a portrait of him by Roger Fry in 1893 in the National Portrait Gallery.
EditWork
Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, 1892. The Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century, 1895. The Greek View of Life, 1896. The Meaning of Good, 1901. Letters from John Chinaman, 1901. A Modern Symposium, 1905. Justice and Liberty, 1908. Religion. A Criticism and a Forecast, 1905. Religion and Immortality, 1911. The European Anarchy, 1916. The Choice Before Us, 1917. The Magic Flute, 1920, a poetic fantasy. The International Anarchy 1904-1914, 1926. After Two Thousand Years: a Dialogue between Plato and a Modern Young Man, 1930. Plato and his Dialogues, 1931. The Contribution of Ancient Greece to Modern Life, 1932. The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson: an other unpublished writings, 1973, edited by Dennis Proctor, published by Duckworth, 287 pages, ISBN 0 7156 0647 6 (hardback).
EditBibliography
Elliman and Roll, (1986), pages 60-61. E. M. Forster, (1934), “Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson”, edited by L. G. Wickham Legg, London: Edward Arnold, 277 pages, (hardback). P. D. Proctor, (1949), pages 225-227 in “The Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940”, edited by L. G. Wickham Legg, London: Oxford University Press, 968 pages, (hardback).