Philip H. Wicksteed
Category
Photographs
Date
circa 1917
Materials
Photograph
Measurements
15 ins (h)11.25 ins (w)
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1274678
Summary
A photograph of Philip H. Wicksteed (1844-1927), the economist, Unitarian theologian, medievalist, and literary critic. Circa 1917. Half-length portrait seated in leather chair and holding a magazine. Wears dark suit, waistcoat and spectacles. Black and gilt moulded frame, glazed.
Full description
A photograph of Philip H. Wicksteed (1844-1927), the economist, Unitarian theologian, medievalist, and literary critic. Circa 1917. Half-length portrait seated in leather chair and holding a magazine. Wears dark suit, waistcoat and spectacles. Black and gilt moulded frame, glazed. Bernard Shaw first met the economist Philip Wicksteed in early 1885 at a meeting of the English Land Restoration League. (16 March 1885, see Stanley Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw The Diaries, 1885-1897, vol.1, p.70). They debated politics and economics, with Wicksteed succeeding in persuading Shaw to reconsider his views on Marxist value theory and turn instead to the ideas of the economist Stanley Jevons. Shaw would later call Wicksteed his “master in economics”, and he inscribed this message to Wicksteed in a copy of The Common Sense of Municipal Trading in 1904. (Quoted in C. H. Herford, Philip Henry Wicksteed: His Life and Work, 1931, p.123). Wicksteed’s most famous work The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910) can be found on the bookshelves in Shaw’s study (NT 3063351). The two men also shared a keen interest in the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, whose portrait rests on the mantelpiece in the dining room (NT 1274652). Shaw’s diaries record his attendance at lectures given by Wicksteed on Ibsen, and Wicksteed’s introduction to Lyrics and Poems from Ibsen can be found in Shaw’s library (NT 3155069). The photograph shows Wicksteed in old age in about 1917 (reproduced in Herford, Philip Henry Wicksteed, opposite page 181). Shaw’s admiration for Wicksteed was reflected in a letter he wrote to his eldest son Joseph H. Wicksteed upon his father’s death in 1927. Blake’s Vision of the Book of Job, with reproductions of the illustrations, written by Joseph Wicksteed, was sent in return bearing the inscription ‘given to George Bernard Shaw with thanks for a letter. Cf. Matthew ch.viii.vv.21.’ (NT 3061803). The Bible quotation refers to: ‘Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.’ Wicksteed’s younger son Alexander lived in Soviet Russia, and Shaw met him in Moscow in 1931. (His book Life under the Soviets is also in Shaw’s library NT 3063350). Philip Wicksteed became important to Shaw’s understanding of economic theory because he based his ideas on Jevons’s concept of ‘marginal utility’ rather than Marx’s theory of value. In The History of the Fabian Society, Shaw states: “I put myself into Mr. Wicksteed’s hands and became a convinced Jevonian”. (Edward Pease, The History of the Fabian Society, 1916, p.261). Following Jevons, Wicksteed argued that the more commodities are consumed, the value of any additional unit decreases. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wicksteed gave lectures at the home of the anarchist Charlotte Wilson with Shaw in attendance, and Shaw recalled the ‘impassioned disputes as to whether the value of Mrs. Wilson’s vases was fixed by the labour socially necessary to produce them, by their cost of production on the margin of cultivation, or by the “final utility” of the existing stock of vases.’ (Shaw, ‘Bluffing the Value Theory’, To-Day: A Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism, May 1889, p.129). During the 1940s, Shaw rearranged the study to reflect the impact of both William Morris and Wicksteed on his ideas: the Hollyer portrait of Morris was brought up from Whitehall Court to join the framed photographic portrait of Wicksteed, and these were placed either side of Shaw’s desk. This arrangement was changed by the National Trust in 2000 when the portrait of Wicksteed was moved to the opposite wall (next to the doorway), to allow the Aubrey Beardsley drawing to be positioned out of direct light for conservation reasons. (Alice McEwan, 2020)
Provenance
The Shaw Collection. The house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.