Others have
assisted according to their abilities and opportunities, but to the
Fabian Essayists belongs the credit of creating the Fabian Society.
For several years, and those perhaps the most important in the history
of the Society, the period, in fact, of adolescence, the Society was
governed by the seven Essayists, and chiefly by four or five of them.
Mrs. Besant had made her reputation in other fields, and belonged, in a
sense, to an earlier generation; she was unrivalled as an expositor and
an agitator, and naturally preferred the work that she did best. William
Clarke, also, was just a little of an outsider: he attended committees
irregularly, and although he did what he was persuaded to do with
remarkable force--he was an admirable lecturer and an efficient
journalist--he had no initiative. He was solitary in his habits, and in
his latter years, overshadowed by ill-health, he became almost morose.
Hubert Bland, again, was always something of a critic. He was a Tory by
instinct wherever he was not a Socialist, and whilst thoroughly united
with the others for all purposes of the Society, he lived the rest of
his life apart. But the other four Essayists, Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw,
Graham Wallas, and Sydney Olivier, then and for many years afterwards
may be said to have worked and thought together in an intellectual
partnership.[18] Webb and Olivier were colleagues in the Colonial
Office, and it is said that for some time the Fabian records--they were
not very bulky--were stored on a table in Downing Street.
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