Fuzzy family portrait

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 17

Fuzzy family portrait

Remarkable Relations. The Story of the Pearsall Smith Family. By Barbara Strachey. Gollancz, 1980. 314 pp. Notes and index. $34.95. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) This is the tale of three generations of a talented, articulate and-unusual family. Barbara Strachey. as the eldest of her generation of the family, inherited the vast and fascinating Pearsall Smith archives — letters, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs and journals. She has used them to tell the story’ of the family as a whole, trying to knit together strands which have appeared separately in other books dealing with the many famous people connected with this close-knit and controversial family. Hannah Whitall Smith was the matriach (in a family where the female line was always considered more important). Born into the orthodox Quaker community of Philadelphia in 1832. she became famous as a writer and preacher of unorthodox ideas. In 1888 she moved her family (husband Robert, son Logan, and daughters Mary and Alvs) to London upon Mary's marriage to an English barrister. Robert, also a well known preacher, was disgraced bv rumours that he was practising with female disciples the holy love he preached; Mary ran away from her husband and two small daughters to live and work with the noted art critic,' Bernard Berenson; Alys became Bertrand Russell’s first wife and was later cruelly rejected by him. Hannah's two granddaughters were equally original; Ray

became an active campaigner for women's rights (and married Lytton Stachey’s brother Oliver),' Karin and her husband Adrian Stephen became two of the first doctors in Britain to train as psycho-analysts. The claim of the title is true. Barbara Strachey did have remarkable' relations. One can understand her desire to show the family as a whole, while wondering if it was the best way to do justice to them. The book does give an impression of an energetic and strong minded family but space, and interest, is so dispersed among the different members that it becomes difficult to hold each personality in one's mind. (The complicated trees of English connections and American cousins given at the front and back of the book add to rather than disperse confusion.) Moreover, despite copious quotes from diaries and letters, many things remain unexplored, for example, Hannah’s relationship with her son Logan, or Karins standing with the Bloomsbury Group. Perhaps a short, connected biography of each individual, instead of the continual changing from one to another in each new chapter, could have, allowed a less fuzzy picture of these’ remarkable relations to emerge. The writing is adequate if uninspired, but the organisation of the enormous amount of material Barbara Strachey had at her disposal is less than adequate to hold the reader's attention. “Remarkable Relations” is a book which should have been fascinating reading, but which fails to live up to its promise.