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John, Viscount Morley?s Recollections is a two-volume reminder that public men of the old world did not merely have careers; they had eras, acquaintances, principles, letters, offices, controversies, friendships, enemies, and eventually enough memory to require MacMillan to provide two handsome containers. Published in 1917, these volumes look back over a long Victorian and Edwardian life in politics, letters and public argument, from a man who had been close to many of the central figures and debates of his age. Morley was not some decorative peer idly remembering dinner. He was a writer, editor, Liberal politician, biographer, cabinet minister, thinker, and one of those nineteenth-century intellectual public men who seem to have moved between literature and government with alarming confidence, as if running an empire and writing about Burke were adjacent desk tasks. He wrote lives of figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Cromwell and Gladstone, served as Chief Secretary for Ireland and Secretary of State for India, and generally inhabited the period when British liberalism still believed prose, principle and parliamentary stamina might improve the world if only everyone would listen for long enough. These recollections move through the political and literary atmosphere of their time: Gladstone, Liberalism, empire, Ireland, reform, argument, public duty, private judgement, and the vanished art of men writing letters that sound as though they had been dressed by a valet. It is a book from a period when memoir did not mean ?my truth? accompanied by a publicity tour, but a deliberate ordering of memory, reputation and history while Europe was busy demonstrating, in 1917, that civilisation had perhaps overestimated itself. There is a particular irony in Morley looking back on Victorian confidence from the middle of the First World War. Here is a man formed by liberal belief, moral seriousness, books, speeches and constitutional argument, publishing recollections at a moment when the old world was being shelled into new shapes. The pages carry the weight of a lifetime, but also the shadow of an ending. One can almost hear the nineteenth century clearing its throat while the twentieth kicks the door in. As objects, this two-volume set has exactly the sort of presence one wants from old political memoirs. Half-bound leather, gilt top edges, proper 1917 dignity, and the calm suggestion that the owner may have opinions on Ireland, India and the moral responsibilities of statesmen. These are not paperbacks to be stuffed into a bag beside a sandwich. They are books that expect a shelf, a chair, perhaps a lamp, and someone prepared to meet memory in a waistcoat. Fine condition, as sold by Crappy Old Books. Both volumes have been classed as Fine because, frankly, there appears to be nothing wrong with either of them, which is mildly suspicious in books old enough to have survived two world wars, several governments, and the general incompetence of households. Half-bound in leather, with gold page edging to the top: dignified, handsome, and very much from the age when books still dressed for dinner. Please note that the set may require additional postage due to weight, because two volumes of statesmanship, memory and leather-bound self-possession do not travel like a single nervous paperback. A fine old set for collectors of political memoir, Victorian and Edwardian history, Liberal statesmen, handsome bindings, or books that improve a shelf simply by standing there looking as though they once knew Gladstone.
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