Arthur Helps - Writings

Writings

His first literary effort, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835), was a series of aphorisms upon life, character, politics and manners. One of these aphorisms is quoted by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, Chapter Two: "The Deep slumber of decided opinion."

His Essays written in the Intervals of Business had appeared in 1841, and his Claims of Labour, an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, in 1844. Two plays, King Henry the Second, an Historical Drama, and Catherine Douglas, a Tragedy, published in 1843, have no particular merit. Neither in these, nor in his only other dramatic effort, Oulita the Serf (1858) did he show any real qualifications as a playwright.

Helps possessed, however, enough dramatic power to give life and individuality to the dialogues with which he enlivened many of his other books. In his Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon (1847-1859), Helps varied his presentment of social and moral problems by dialogues between imaginary personages, who, under the names of Milverton, Ellesmere and Dunsford, grew to be almost as real to Helps's readers as they certainly became to himself. The book was very popular, and the same expedient was resorted to in Conversations on War and General Culture, published in 1871. The familiar speakers, with others added, also appeared in his Realmah (1868) and in the best of its author's later works, Talk about Animals and their Masters (1873).

A long essay on slavery in the first series of Friends in Council was subsequently elaborated into a work in two volumes published in 1848 and 1852, called The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen. Helps went to Spain in 1847 to examine the numerous manuscripts bearing upon his subject at Madrid. The fruits of these researches were embodied in a historical work based upon his Conquerors of the New World, and called The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and the Government of Colonies (4 vols, 1855, 1857-1861). But in spite of his scrupulous efforts after accuracy, the success of the book was marred by its obtrusively moral purpose and its discursive character.

The Life of Las Casas, the Apostle of the Indians (1868), The Life of Columbus (1869), The Life of Pizarro (1869), and The Life of Hernando Cortrés (1871), when extracted from the work and published separately, proved successful. Besides the books which have been already mentioned he wrote: Organization in Daily Life, an Essay (1862), Casimir Maremma (1870), Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871), Thoughts upon Government (1872), Life and Labors of Mr Thomas Brassey (1872), Iras de Biron (1874), Social Pressure (1875).

After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria turned to Helps to prepare an appreciation of her husband's life and character. In his introduction to the collection (1862) of the Prince Consort's speeches and addresses Helps adequately fulfilled his task. Some years afterwards he edited and wrote a preface to the Queen's Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands (1868).