^be '* Spectator" auC» iRicbarC Jefferies. 



The Spectator has been described as "the leading liteiary 

 or^^an of the day," and its correspondence columns as "always 

 inreresting" owing to the fact that they are "open to the most 

 varied shades of opinion," and that there is *' no boycott." Is 

 there not ? Out of my own recent experience I can assure the 

 writer of this gratifying testimonial that, if he should become 

 engaged in correspondence with the leading literary organ of 

 the day on such a subject as the alleged return of a dying Free- 

 thinker to orthodoxy, he will have cause to modify his judgment. 

 There is at least one "shade of opinion" which the Spectator is 

 not ashamed to boycott, and that is the views of those who 

 question the story of the "conversion" of Richard Jefteries. 

 The following letter, addressed by me to the editor of the 

 Spectator, and promptly "declined with thanks," will tell its 

 own tale : — 



SlK,_I am sure you have no more desire to claim Jefll-ries unfairly 

 as a Christian than I to claim him unfairly as a FreeihinUer. As, 

 therefore, you have allowed Mrs. Mackintosh to repeat m your columns 

 (May 6lh, 1905) the account of Jefferies's "conversion' which she 

 contributed, sixteen years ago, to the GirVs Oivn Paper— 11 story which, 

 in another form, is familiar 10 readers of Besant's Eulogy— I presume 

 vou will grant me the usual courtesy of a reply. 



' Now, oliviously, only those who were present with Jefieries at the 

 end can speak of wliai then happened. It is not ihe facts, but the 

 interprelation of the facts, that we question : and here it is that a con- 

 sideration of Jefferies's own avowal of his creed becomes essential to 

 the discussion. To say that he was "at times inclined to sceptical 

 views" is to understate the case somewhat ludicrously, seeing that in 

 his Sloty of My Heart, published only four years before his death, and 

 with the prospect of death confronting him, he solemnly referred to the 

 opinions there expressed as his "most serious convictions," for seven- 

 teen years " continually thought of and pondered over," and that in 

 his Hours of Spring, which appeared only fifteen months before he 

 died, the same freelhinking views were reiterated. Here, then, is 

 indubitable evidence that the change in Jefferies's belief, if change there 

 were, took place towards the very close of his life— at the time, that is, 

 when he was physically and mentally a wreck. Surely, without offence 

 to his surviving relatives, we may doubt the intellectual value attaching 

 to a *' conversion" of that kind t 



But how, I have often been asked, can I reconcile this contention 

 with Sir Walter Besant's earlier statement, that at the end " the simple 

 old faith came back to him"? I trust thai in fairness you will permit 

 me to quote from a letter which Sir Walter Besant addressed to me 

 privately in 1S91, three years after the publication of his Eulogy. 



"Now here," he said, "is an important point. I stated in my 

 Eulogy that he died a Christian. This was true in the sense of outward 

 conformity. His wife read to him from the Gospel of St. Luke, and he 

 acquiesced. But / have since been informed [the italics are Sir W. 

 Besant'sJ he was weak, loo weak not to acquiesce, and his views never 

 changed from the time when he wrote the Siory of My Heatt,^^ 



You may dismiss me. Sir, if you will, as a biographer who " airs 

 opinions of his own " (whose but his own should he air?) and who "does 

 not know his duty " ; but vou will not so easily dismiss the fact that the 

 writer of the Eulogy of Richard J efferies, who first lent authority to the 

 story of the death-bed conversion, himself came to regard that incident 

 as of little significance or weight.— Yours faithfully, 



May 9th, 1905. Henry S. Salt. 



The above letter the Spectator suppressed, and was content to 

 leave its readers under the totally false impression that I had 

 no answer to make to the statement which it described in 

 an editorial note as "disposing finally of the allegation that 

 Jefferies did not return to the Christian faith." Such are the 

 methods to which " the leading literary organ of the day" will 

 condescend, when there is a "religious" motive for dishonesty. 



Henry S. Salt. 



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-Reprinted from the LlTERAKV V^TlW^Y. for June. ^' ^ . 



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