Old Mortality Society

BOOK REVIEWS worthwhile bit of information in itself, enhanced by Wertheim's correction of Christopher Benfey's speculations about the format of the verse in Crane's book. One might add to this impressive turn-of-the-century roll call such items as notices of Crane's publications in The Lady's Pictorial or the Gentlewoman, two British magazines aimed principally at female readership (though, interestingly enough, some of the reviews were male authored), which paid assiduous attention to Crane's works, chiefly those in book form, as they appeared. Both periodicals deplored Crane's language as generally too coarse and Americanly slangified to suit British tastes. Of course, were one to include all relevant information concerning Crane that has been, and is to be, gleaned from the milieu of British journalism, one would have to have had services of a large team of researchers over several lifetimes. Stanley Wertheim offers new perspectives on persons and things familiar in ELT contexts, whether his findings be full-fledged entries or the more compact illuminations ensconced therein. A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia appeals to anyone involved with Anglo-American literary currents and eddies during "transition" years. Crane was important in that transition, and as such he should not go unrecognized except as the author of either The Red Badge of Courage or Maggie—only those and nothing more. Wertheim makes us aware that there is plenty more. Benjamin F. Fisher ____________________ University of Mississippi Old Mortality Society Gerald Monsman. Oxford University's Old Mortality Society: A Study in Victorian Romanticism. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales:Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. ix + 121 pp. $69.95 IN NOVEMBER of 1856, John Nichol invited a few undergraduate friends to join him in his rooms at Balliol College. After cordial discussion they agreed to meet weekly for conversation upon and criticism of intellectual and cultural themes. Early the next year, a Secretary was appointed, rules and regulations adopted, and the keeping of minutes begun—and so the old Mortality Society was formally organized. They had chosen their name after the figure of Old Mortality, the graveyard caretaker who supplied Sir Walter Scott with the stories out of which he had fashioned his novel Old Mortality (1816). A subsidiary reason for their distinctive name was that each member, to one extent or 351 ELT 42 : 3 1999 another, was or had been lately in a weak or precarious condition of bodily health. The Old Mortals, as they dubbed themselves, were keenly aware of their frailty, though as their lives turned out they had far more vigor and good health than average. In their later years most of the Old Mortals were strenuously virile in leadership and creativity. The chief end of the Society was unfettered inquiry and complete freedom of discussion. As the early minutes note, the members would come together "for the purpose of affording one another such intellectual pastime and recreation as should seem most suitable and agreeable." The Society, furthermore, took "mortality for its style" because "mortality itself hath the seeds and peradventure even the form of Immortality." At their meetings they poured over the philosophical writings of Fichte, Mill, Spencer, and Comte and absorbed the implications of the scientific theorizing of Lyell, Chambers, and Darwin. They took sides in the struggle within the Anglican Church between the Romanizing influence of John Henry Newman and the views of Broad Church rationalists . Literary matters, political positions, concepts of ethics, service, family and friendship were seriously debated. Their most outstanding accomplishment may be that they participated directly in the process that shaped the emerging Victorian aesthetic-literary canons and were the seed ground for new social and religious paradigms. To read of the Old Mortality Society, accordingly, provides an opportunity to deal with the intellectual preoccupations of some of Britain's influential thinkers in their formative stages, to learn of remarkable young men who forged a future rather than being swept into one. Several scholarly studies have been devoted to the Cambridge Conversazione Society (better known as The Apostles, to which Tennyson belonged), the Oxford Union, the Hexameron Society, and other college clubs, but this is the first book-length treatment of the Old Mortality. Its first chapter records...