W. R. S.

RALSTON (1828-89): SCHOLARSHIP AND SCANDAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

BARBARA McCRIMMON

O N E of the best-known members of staff in the British Museum in the late i86os and early 1870s was William Ralston Shedden Ralston (fig. i), an expert on Russian life and literature who was both a translator for, and a friend of, Ivan Turgenev. Ralston was respected in the Museum for his linguistic ability, unusual for his day, and most useful for the cataloguing of the Slavonic books in the collections. He was known outside the Museum as a lecturer on Russian history and literature, and a raconteur of Russian folk-tales, for both public and private audiences. He could have continued in a distinguished career if he had not let his temper overcome his better judgement by allowing an East-European friend to take advantage of him to make a strong public protest about the administration of the Museum. This resulted in his abrupt departure from his place of employment and a cloud on his good name. Ralston, although it had been given him and belonged in his family, was an assumed surname, for he had been born Shedden, a name that had been made notorious by a lawsuit. Five years before his birth, which occurred in London on 4 April 1828, his father, William Patrick Ralston Shedden, had made a discovery that to a large extent decided the son's fate. Returning to England from India, where he had become very wealthy in trade, W. P. R. Shedden went to visit his cousin, Robert Patrick, in Ayrshire, and there read, in a history of the county families, that his father was listed as the last of his line. Shedden angrily declared himself to be the rightful heir to the Ralston estates, to which his father had been entitled, and which were now in the possession of the Patrick family as the recognized inheritors. Meeting with resistance from them, he decided to try to prove his claim in court. His case rested on slim grounds. His father had entered into a marriage without benefit of clergy, and though the state of New York, where he resided, recognized the marriage as legitimate, the English courts were not so generous. In 1798, when he felt death approaching, the elder Shedden had written to his cousin, William Patrick, father of Robert, asking him to act as guardian to Shedden's two children, Jean and William, adding that he had finally gone through a proper wedding ceremony in order to legitimize his wife and family. This would have been acceptable in Scotland, where Shedden claimed residence through his putative ownership of the Ayrshire lands; but the English courts deemed him a foreigner, resident in the United States, and would 178

B. t-"'. C. P Fig, I. W. R. S. Ralston, from a portrait engraving originally published in Pchela, no. 37, 1875

not recognize his children as legitimate. Therefore, on his death the Ralston estates passed on to the Patricks, descendants of his mother's family. The son, W. P. R. Shedden, had to prove his birth to have been legitimate under English law, and this he was unable to do, despite persistent efforts in the courts over several decades. His entire fortune was used up in this Bleak House-Mkt quest. His daughter, Jean, continued the appeals after the father's death, carrying them to the House of Lords in vain.^ Meanwhile her brother, William Ralston Shedden, was growing up with this unfortunate inheritance of notoriety rather than property. The family lived in Brighton during his early years, and he was sent to a small boys' school in Devon. At eighteen he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received 179

a B.A. degree four years later. He prepared for the bar and was called, but when in 1852 his father's suit was decided unfavourably, he realized that he must earn a more secure living and, as W. R. S. Ralston, applied for a position in the British Museum. He entered as an Assistant in the Department of Printed Books on i September 1853. A slender young man, at six-foot-six he stood out among his peers. His pleasant face was adorned with a beard which, by 1871, 'waved down to his waist'.^ His constitution was described as 'weakly' and his nature 'extremely sensitive',^ yet he could call on an abundant supply of energy when needed, and his temperament tended to be alternately lively or morose. To his many friends, however, he was 'warmhearted and enthusiastic','^ a charming companion and conversationalist. He became well-known and liked in literary and social circles, including the Pre-Raphaelites, and from 1865 was a member of the Arts Club, where he consorted with painters, musicians, poets, writers, and critics. During these early years in London Ralston devoted many hours to those less fortunate than himself, by caUing on people in the poorer sections of the city and praying with them, as a Church of England 'district visitor'. In the depths of his despair over his lost legacy, he converted to Catholicism, but before long he abandoned that too, finding that he could not accept all Roman Catholic beliefs. He retained a lifelong sympathy for working people, especially the downtrodden, and he studied their lives and beliefs. He also admired those Europeans who espoused the cause of freedom, many of whom were obliged to flee to England as a result of engaging in activities on behalf of the lower classes whom they claimed to represent. Thus he associated with the privileged, and the underprivileged and their champions, and made a good impression on them all. His work at the British Museum started with the required two years' apprenticeship at copying titles for the new manuscript catalogue of printed books inaugurated under Panizzi in 1838, and Ralston progressed steadily, showing keen intelligence and ability. On I October 1857, after two years of more challenging work, he was promoted to the first class of Assistants, and after ten years more at that rank, on 9 February 1867, to the upper section of the first class, passing over Richard Garnett, one of his seniors who was eventually to have a more distinguished career in the Museum. He took his place as last in the upper section, and two years later he had moved up only one step in the order, for advancement was very slow. However, each promotion carried an increase in salary: in 1866 he was earning ^310, with an annual increment of IsThe probable reason for his second advance was that he had realized the need for a cataloguing specialist in Slavonic materials, and had set out to fill that need by studying Russian. With the encouragement of Panizzi, who admired his zeal, he tried memorizing pages of the Russian dictionary, and in a remarkably short time he acquired a good working knowledge of the language. He was then given Russian books to catalogue, and he became interested in Russian literature, one of the first Englishmen to study it intensively. His first published work in this field was a review of the lyric poems of peasant life
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of A. V. Koltsov, in which he gave translations of four of the poems, in the Fortnightly Review for 15 September 1866. Ralston sent a copy of the magazine to Ivan Turgenev, who was then living in Baden-Baden, and in an accompanying letter revealed his hope of bringing Russian writers to the attention of the British reading public through translation. He asked for a list of the best authors, and, projecting a trip to Russia on his next summer vacation, expressed a desire to meet Turgenev, whose worksand whose liberahsmhe admired. He received a cordial reply, in which Turgenev offered to arrange a welcome for Ralston in Russia, even though he himself would not be there in the summer.^ Ralston went during his holiday in 1867 and returned to England with many new ideas, the first results of which were translations of ninety-three of the two hundred fables of Ivan Andreevich Krylov. The translations were published in 1868 as Krilofand His Fables. They were described by the Times reviewer as 'bitter and cynical stories' that reflected the harsh Napoleonic times Krylov had lived through.^ This genre of tale was one that appealed to Ralston, who liked folk stories and was not disturbed by the Russian emphasis on the unseen world of ghosts and spirits. Further indications of Ralston's concern for the working class and their supporters among the intelligentsia emerges in two more publications of 1868: 'The Poor of Paris', published in Strahan's Contemporary Review in June, and a review of the recollections of a Russian exile for Macmillan's Magazine in December. Of greater significance was the acceptance by the Edinburgh Review of a long article in the series 'The Modern Russian Drama' reviewing the collected works of Ostrovsky, and including translations of several scenes. Ralston returned to Russia each summer for the next three years, and in 1869 met Turgenev, with whom he quickly became friendly. He had gained favour, first by an article on Turgenev's novels for the March 1869 issue of the North British Review; next by 'a savage attack'*^ in the Pall Mall Gazette on an inept translation of Turgenev's Smoke, published by Bentley in 1868; then for his own sensitive translation of Turgenev's Nest of Gentlefolk as Liza., the name of the heroine. The author considered this novel as 'especially well translated'^ by Ralston, and thereafter relied on him for the interpretation of his work in Britain. There followed Ralston's translations of two stories by Turgenev, 'The Dog' and 'The Idiot' for Temple Bar, in the spring of 1870, and when Ralston again visited Russia that summer, he had the signal honour of being invited to Turgenev's estate at Spasskoye. Ralston stayed for two weeks; a village entertainment of songs and dances was arranged for his benefit, and he called at the huts of the serfs to learn domestic vocabulary by writing down the names of household furnishings. The serfs were struck by Ralston's resemblance to their master, his nowwhite mane and beard making him seem to be a double from another world. When it was time for him to leave, they apparently packed their wagons and gathered in the road, thinking that they were to be sent away with the Englishman as punishment for their unsatisfactory behaviour.^ Turgenev had always favoured the emancipation of Russia's serfs (and was indulgent toward his own), so that he had found it best to live abroad, in Germany or France
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and continued to do so for most of each year after the serfs were freed in 1861, for he admired Western culture and had close friends to ^tay with. He visited London briefly several times, and retreated there in 1870, when Paris was besieged by the Prussians. On this occasion Ralston became his guide, taking him to the Arts Club, where he successfully proposed him for membership, and also to the homes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Carlyle, George Lewes and Mary Ann Evans, and Ford Madox Brown. The Londoners were impressed with Turgenev, who knew English quite well, and they began to lionize him. This was slightly embarrassing to the modest novelist, who disliked adulation. Partly for this reason, he began to have reservations about Ralston: 'Intellectually, Turgenev could not give him his entire confidence, and would not recommend him for the vacant post of English correspondent on the Vestnik Yevropy.'^^ He seems to have been willing to use Ralston as a loyal follower and helper without actually being contemptuous of him. When Ralston secured for Turgenev a paid assignment to write a book review for The Academy in 1871, Turgenev took the opportunity to praise the third, enlarged, edition of Krilofand His Fables,^^ and although the polished English of the review, and that of a shorter one later,^^ hinted at help with the composition by Ralston himself, the gesture by the great man was a generous one. On 5 May 1870 Ralston spoke on Russia to an audience of over five hundred at the Royal Institution, under the patronage of William Spottiswoode; and on 18 December he addressed the Sunday Lecture Society at St George's Hall on the recent reforms in Russia. Turgenev was present to hear this 'long and detailed exposition of the past and present state of Russia',^^ with an emotional description of the sad lot of the serfs in the old days, and praise for Alexander II for freeing them. There was also a less serious aspect to Ralston's public appearances; he gave 'story-telling lectures'^'^ based on folktales, often to help raise money for charity, especially in the East End of London. The popularity of these public readings was such that he was invited to tell stories to the children of the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House, among other private engagements. He developed a reputation as a specialist in international folklore, writing reviews of books on Russian ghost stories, Norse folk-tales, Sicilian fairy-tales. South Siberian stories, and Russian proverbs, the last for the prestigious Quarterly Review. In 1872 he published Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life. Turgenev saw that a review copy was sent to a mutual friend of his and Ralston's in Russia, with the suggestion that he review it favourably, as it had been 'compiled from the sources very conscientiously, and we Russians ought to encourage this work in every way'.^^ It is a major treatment of the subject, the only one in any Western language, covering mythology, traditional characters, sorcery and witchcraft with chapters on mythic and ritual songs, marriage songs, and funeral songs^ The approach is literary, rather than musical, and includes descriptions of rites and games With a subject index, it fills 439 pages- The book is well printed and bound in marbled boards with gilt tooling, the edges of the pages also marbled. Turgenev called Smith, Elder & Co. brought out Ralston's Russian Folk Tales, described by 182

the Times reviewer as very revealing of the true 'internal life' of the Russian people. These tales were said to be 'more wild and bloodthirsty and horrible' than Teutonic ones, where strength and good triumph. Fate is in charge in the Russian stories, with an aura of'gloomy melancholy' in the subservience of the people to supernatural powers, dominated by ogres and vampires. ^^ The review was flattering, and Ralston's fame increased. During this time he was working on a far more ambitious project, a large historical and descriptive work on Russia, and had contracted with Cassell & Co. for its publication. 'At the last moment',^"^ however, after considerable research and composition, he deferred to Donald Mackenzie Wallace, foreign correspondent of The Times, whose Russia was published by Cassell in 1877. Ralston was associated with The Times as an occasional reporter and letter-writer, so it may have been friendship, or merely respect, for Wallace that kept Ralston from going further with his own plan. The work he had already done was not wasted, however, for he was invited to give four lectures, from January to March of 1874, at the Taylor Institution at Oxford, under the bequest of Lord Ilchester for Slavonic studies. He spoke on early russian history, and the lectures were published later in the year. He could also boast of corresponding membership of the Imperial Geographical Society and the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. All this public favour made Ralston feel that he deserved promotion in the British Museum. Opportunities for promotion came so rarely that they were highly prized, and Ralston was near enough to the top to entertain hope of rising to the Keepership of Printed Books, when an opening should occur. But the personnel policies, if such they may be called, at the Museum were not conducive to rewards for external accomplishments. Panizzi, while Principal Librarian, but also after his retirement in 1866, kept a tight rein on promotions in the Department of Printed Books, where he had been Keeper for nearly twenty years. He preferred to raise loyal workers for long and adequate, not necessarily brilliant, service to the Department, and his successor as Principal Librarian, John Winter Jones, followed his wishes even when they conflicted with his own. On 9 September 1869 the Keeper of Printed Books, Thomas Watts, died suddenly from the effects of an accident suffered the previous month. Ralston considered himself a suitable person to replace him, and wrote to Panizzi asking for his recommendation. Many years later William Brenchley Rye wrote of the matter to Richard Garnett: 'at the time that [Panizzi] showed me Ralston's letter he read me his own answer, which I thought rather harsh and unforgiving'.^^ Apparently Ralston needed to be forgiven merely for his audacity, because until then he had been distinctly in Panizzi's favour for his expert cataloguing. The new Keeper was, however, to be Rye, the Senior Assistant Keeper, and first in the normal line of succession. He was not much of a writer, having as his publications only some works edited for the Hakluyt Society; Ralston thought that library positions ought to go to distinguished scholars, among whom he obviously placed himself. However, Panizzi had awarded to Rye the honour 183

of collecting the precious volumes of Thomas Grenville's library from his house and of arranging, and partially cataloguing, them at the Museum. This was Panizzi's proudest acquisition: and for his other great achievement, the round, domed reading room of 1857, Rye had been entrusted with the choice and placing of the reference books shelved round the walls for easy access by readers. Rye had been made an Assistant Keeper in 1857 and was clearly due for promotion in Panizzi's eyes, and therefore in the eyes of the Trustees. Ralston could not muster such support. Ralston's hopes were again ignored in a further round of promotions in 1870. In February George W. Porter was made Assistant Keeper and Richard Garnett was raised to the upper section of the Senior Assistants; in July, Edward A. H. J. Warren, who had entered the Museum five days later than Ralston in 1853 and had been promoted to first class a full year after Ralston, was raised to the upper section and made supervisor of the Transcribersnow called Junior Assistants, while Robert Edmund Graves, next in line below Warren, and therefore two places below Ralston, was also promoted. Then in February of 1871 a new Assistant Keeper was named: Eugene Armand Roy, an older man of slight education who knew French and Italian, a mere Transcriber from 1846 to 1853 who had then taken over the music collections. Panizzi thought Roy deserved reward for his dependable service and had him put in charge of the General Catalogue work, to supervise the amalgamation of the entries from the old reading room catalogue with the newly transcribed titles. Jones could not recommend Roy so highly,^^ but he was outvoted and had to accept the decision of the Trustees. Ralston, forgetting that he himself had been promoted over the head of Richard Garnett in 1867, chafed under these slights to his professional competence, and his zeal in cataloguing began to decrease. He had been given the very responsible task of finally revising the entries for the General Catalogue in alphabetical order, and there was great pressure from without as well as within the library for progress in its compilation. In 1874 a bottleneck developed in the flow of cataloguing when Ralston simply stopped work between February and August. He continued to appear at the Museum, for he took only eighteen days of annual leave and one day's sick leave during that time; but he made no progress with his revision of the titles under the letter R, which meant that those titles could not be transcribed and entered in the new catalogue. When this lapse was discovered, three Junior AssistantsJames Hornblow, Edmund Gosse, and Sidney Wells Abbotwere assigned to complete his work. The reasons for Ralston's sudden neglect of his duties must have been both complex and powerful. His resentment over his failure to achieve a higher status in the Department over the past five years, when his eminence in the world outside the Museum was growing apace, was hardly excuse enough for complete refusal to continue. Even his preparation for the Ilchester Lectures and a long article on 'Russian Idylls' for the April issue of the Contemporary Review need not have occupied him during his usual working hours. However, a sad loss to the Department of Printed Books had apparently preyed on his mind. The death of Emanuel Deutsch a few months before had been a shock to all those on the staff who had liked and admired him. He was a scholar of Jewish religion 184

and the classics who had come to the Museum in 1855 from Berlin, on the recommendation of the bookseller Adolphus Asher, one of Panizzi's favourite agents. He had been given important tasks involving a knowledge of several ancient languages. During his free time he wrote for reference works, and he composed an article on the Talmud for the October 1867 issue of the Quarterly Review which brought him immediate recognition. He was asked to give courses of lectures at the Royal Institution and elsewhere, including the United States, and he received a special invitation from the Viceroy of Egypt to attend the opening of the Suez Canal in the autumn of 1869. At first the authorities of the Museum took a dim view of such an unusual request for leave, but they finally consented to his going. Deutsch found the trip exciting, but also exhausting, and he returned to England with the realization that he had cancer. His doctor advised an operation that resulted only in constant pain and a life as a semi-invalid, dependent on drugs. Still he insisted on writing all night and appearing at the Museum in the mornings, without having eaten, struggling to earn his salary. At last he was unable to work at all. Ralston, who knew Deutsch through the Arts Club Deutsch had seconded Turgenev for membership in 1870helped him to move close to his doctor so that he could quickly secure aid when it was needed. There Deutsch was befriended by a neighbour, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, the incumbent of St James, Marylebone, who, with his wife, kept in constant touch with the invalid, and finally they took him into their own home. In July 1871 Deutsch felt able to return to the Museum, his leave of absence having been extended twice, and he tried to hide the severity of his condition for fear of being dismissed. However, he asked for special amenities in the workroom and was distressed when they were not provided; he complained to Haweis that the kind of books he had been hired to catalogue had been given to others, while he was restricted to more mundane work, albeit still earning his full pay of 300 (though he thought that this should have been increased by ^20). In fact, he felt severely and unjustly persecuted by his superiors.^^ Rye had a quite different view of the case. He reported to the Trustees that Deutsch had been due for promotion when he became too ill to work, and in his absence, the place had been given to Russell Martineau. When Deutsch returned to his desk, 'his work as a cataloguer [was] not very satisfactory, whether from over-haste or from an imperfect apprehension of the rules of cataloguingthe observance of which is so extremely important'.^^ The first thing expected of a cataloguer was that he follow the 91 rules that Panizzi had made the basis of the new General Catalogue. By the summer of 1872 Deutsch knew that he could no longer do any kind of work and was on the point of asking to be retired when he was given leave to go to Egypt for his health. He left at the end of the year and travelled for several months; but on 12 May 1873 he died in hospital in Alexandria. Eighteen months later a second Assistant in the Department of Printed Books died, at the age of thirty-eight, and his death was linked to that of Deutsch in criticism of the Museum administration. Edward Warren, the supervisor of the ten Junior Assistants and twelve Attendants and Binders, all of whom worked in a bleak basement room,

had developed a disease which was said in a letter to The Times to have been 'aggravated, perhaps even induced, by the unwholesomeness of the apartment assigned to him for his daily work'.^^ This room was a long, narrow enclosure below ground on one side of the reading room, the only light filtering down through the iron gratings in the floors above. The air was dank and stagnant, and there was much illness among those who spent their time in the room, which they called the 'Den' or 'Tank'. Edmund Gosse, who worked there from 1867 to 1875, called it 'a singularly horrible underground cage, made of steel bars, called the Den . . . a place . . . where the transcribers . . . were immured in a half-light'.^^ In 1872 the Junior Assistants had petitioned the Trustees for better ventilation, and as a result, three windows had been cut in the outside wall to let in both air and light. While the construction was going on, the men were allowed to work in a room upstairs, but once the windows were installed, they had to return to the cellar. Then the chill wind of winter blew in, causing more discomfort and sickness. When Warren came down with a respiratory ailment that grew progressively worse, he brought his physician to view the room and secured his opinion that it was unhealthy. In April 1874 the Assistants petitioned again, but Rye was not sympathetic, claiming that their absences had not been caused by the room. Warren died in November 1874, and the British Medical Journal published a report that 'the Tank' had been 'directly connected' with his death. The Times reprinted the article under the heading 'Causes of the Death of Warren and Deutsch'.^ Ralston, who worked in a better environment upstairs, had great sympathy for the Junior Assistants, fearing that two others would follow Warren to the grave if they were not removed from the basement. He took advantage of acquaintance with one of the Trustees to beg him to act on the matter. On 15 February 1875 Rye gave his support to a third petition by the Junior Assistants, and in response the Trustees sent a committee to inspect the notorious room; on 27 February they recommended that the Assistants be given space in the North Wing, which was quickly done. The Times reported: 'We learn, with great pleasure, that speedy redress is to follow the representations which it was our duty to make recently . . . the "tank" is condemned, and the assistants to be removed to healthier quarters'.^^ The newspaper publicity was no doubt effective in bringing about this desirable result, but an even stronger impetus had been given on the very day that Rye had had his change of heart. Hawkers had appeared in Great Russell Street, before the gates of the Museum, carrying placards with the words: 'The Clique-Gross MismanagementWaste of Public Money'. They were selling a pamphlet entitled The Actual Condition of the British Museum. A Literary Expostulation published by Henry Sidney Warr for the author Stefan Poles. In it Poles said he had 'endeavoured to point out . . . the principal abuses and diseases which choke the life of the most glorious of English institutions'. He acknowledged 'the support of others' and the 'insight to be derived from a late article by the Rev. H. R. Haweis in the Contemporary Review'. This article 'Emanuel Deutsch: A Memorial', was a polemic against the authorities of the British Museum for what Haweis saw as the calculated neglect of Deutsch during his illness. 186

It recounted the details of Deutsch's last days with pathos and spared no criticism of those who might have eased the poor man's pains. Haweis was noted for his exaggerated style of writing and his strictures had an air of overstatement, although doubtless factually correct. His article appeared in the April issue of the Contemporary, but Poles had seen it, in proof or in manuscript, in January.^^ Haweis was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, a good violinist, a prolific writer on music and other topics, and an unconventional preacher. He had begun his ecclesiastical career as a curate in a parish in the East End of London, which may have brought him into contact with Ralston. Certainly he knew Ralston through Deutsch. He held services at St James's Hall, Regent Street, where Ralston gave some of his readings of Russian stories, and he wrote for newspapers that were critical of Winter Jones. Jones was seen as one of the opposition by those civil servants who were agitating for higher pay, and the Junior Assistants at the British Museum, who came under civil service conditions, had joined with their brothers in other government offices to seek benefits they considered their due. They also blamed Jones for failure to correct the conditions under which they worked. The author of the pamphlet that brought 'the great scandal of the Den' and other matters of 'disgrace' in the Museum to public notice called himself Stefan Poles. He was a refugee from political turmoil in Poland during the sixties who had gone to France, become involved in the Paris Commune of 1870, had been imprisoned by the Versailles government under Adolphe Thiers, and had come to England after his release in 1871. He had obtained a reader's ticket for the British Museum library, where he claimed to have read widely in English literature, and while in the reading room, had become privy to 'occasional rumours that all was not quite as it should be in this grand institution'. He had already published a pamphlet on the Polish insurrection of 1863, in which he had participated, and it is interesting to note that Ralston had reviewed a book on the same subject by an Englishman for the Fortnightly Review in 1865. The enemy of the Polish people was Russia, Ralston's chief subject of study, but he was a champion of underdogs in general, and was in accord with their struggle for freedom. It happened that Ivan Turgenev and two Russian friends, who were all in London in 1871, had 'tried to help . . . a couple of emigre Poles, [neither] of whom could find employment in England'.^"^ One of these could have been Stefan Poles, who did find a place as assistant to a photographer, and it is possible that he met Ralston through Turgenev, thus achieving a valid recommendation as a reader at the Museum. Poles came into conflict with the authorities of the library when he discovered that a pamphlet that had been printed and circulated in London in 1874, ^^ld that contained what he considered libels about his activities, had been acquired by the Department of Printed Books. He had successfully sued the author and the printer of the pamphlet, and he now made a verbal protest to Winter Jones, accusing the Assistant John Theophilus Naake, who was of Slavonic descent, of bringing the copy into the Museum 'by deliberate fraud or culpable neglect', since no publisher was named on the pamphlet making it 'illegal'. The interview with Jones having no result, Poles sent a letter to the 187

Trustees, who referred him back to Jones. A series of letters was exchanged by these two men in late 1874, Poles demanding 'an immediate inquiry' into the behaviour of Naake and some form of punishment for his dereliction. Jones replied that he had sequestered the pamphlet and saw no need for an inquiry. Poles's subsequent threat to appeal again to the Trustees, 'backed by numerous English friends', had no effect on Jones and was never carried out. But on i February 1875 Poles wrote to Jones to complain that he had been denied access to the Report of the Royal Commission on the British Museum, published in 1850, which he needed for his 'work on the present condition and management of the British Museum', until, after repeated requests, the report was suddenly brought to him from the Keeper's office.^^ For Poles, these incidents 'awakened suspicions . . . of the incompetence and jobbery' that characterized the administration of the library departments, and he found his suspicions confirmed by 'Englishmen, who have found it impossible to hold their tongues concerning the abuse to be found rife' in the British Museum. Poles was setting out to reveal 'the real hidden canker at the core of all'. He began by reviewing the deaths of Warren and Deutsch, blaming both in the most vituperative terms on the officers of the Department of Printed Books and of the Museum as a whole. He felt that Deutsch, when fatally ill, should have been provided with a fire to warm him and hot tea or broth 'whenever he wanted it'. The other men who worked in 'the Den' were also made sick by the foul atmosphere of the room, but their pleas had been ignored by Rye, who was 'in full and direct control' of the situation. He was castigated by Poles as occupying his lofty position by having been
raised over the heads of men of superior merit and longer service. . . . He is a man who seems to like nobody and whom nobody likes; but he works very well with Mr. Jones, for they are kindred spirits, and are cordially hated by all except their few spies. . . . [These two] could never comprehend the advantages of gaining the sympathy of the weak. T h e weak! Why do we feel for them.^ They are the prime cause and perpetual nourishment of self-denial and devotion.

To Poles, the basic duty of the head of a department such as that of the library was to care tenderly for his charges, especially when in need. His rhetoric echoes the deep concern of Ralston and Haweis for the weaker members of society, among whom the Junior Assistants belonged, since they had no influence upon those who could alleviate their discomforts. The chief object of the pamphleteer's disgust was John Winter Jones, but his barbs were slyly levelled at Panizzi, Jones's mentor, who was referred to throughout the text as 'Signor Panizzi'. It was common knowledge that Jones was only nominally responsible for the advancement of Rye, Roy, Porter and Graves, as well as John Taylor, who had been assistant to Panizzi as Principal Librarian and had been retained by Jones. These men were designated by Poles as 'The Clique', and Panizzi was mentioned in association with them as their real ruler. Jones, who was the mildest of men, was accused of having been 'curt' in response to Poles's 'calm and confident' request for disciplinary action against Naake, but, in a later interview, of having displayed a 'fawning courtesy' such 188

as no gentleman of culture and refinement would exhibit. In fact, Jones thought Poles unhinged, and had great difficulty maintaining his poise during their confrontations. 'From a literary point of view [Jones] has no right whatever to hold the high position of Principal Librarian to the British Museum', said Poles, ignoring the fact that literary prowess had never been a qualification for that office. A more valid criticism was that Jones had unjustifiably acceded to Panizzi's wishes by recommending the two sons of George Fagan, a member of the British Legation in Italy and then in Argentina, for places on the Museum staff. Fagan had helped Panizzi during the early 1850s in his efforts to free political prisoners in Naples, and Panizzi, in gratitude, had taken charge of the fourteen-year-old Louis Fagan when he was sent to school in England. In 1869, returning from helping his father in South American diplomatic matters, Louis was given a position in the office of the Secretary of the Museum, even though he had failed the standard examination for entrance. After a few months he was promoted to the Department of Prints and Drawings, 'over the head', said Poles, 'of an able young man, Mr. Donoghue . . .'. (Edward Thomas Donoghue had entered the Museum in March of 1864 under a small cloud of doubt about his qualifications.) Nevertheless, Fagan soon became persona non grata to his keeper, George W. Reid, because of his hasty temper and some pompous mannerisms based on his relationship with Panizzithat of an adopted son. The appointment rankled with others on the staff as well, and the unpleasantness was compounded when Louis's younger brother, Charles, was given Louis's former position in the Secretary's office. Poles fulminated, what guarantees [are there] against the irruption of an army of adopted sons? The paternity of adoption has no natural restraints, and fancy England having to provide for a whole quiver full of Fagans.' The Secretary's office, an adjunct to the office of the Principal Librarian and an essential part of the machinery of the institution was another object of the pamphleteer's wrath. Poles contended that its work appears to consist mainly in the multiplication of useless labour. The staff are occupied chiefly in exchanging reports upon reports, and letters upon letters, with keepers who are to be found in the next room . . . the great work of the office [being] a constant and minute examination of the diaries [individual workers' attendance records], which . . . have . . . been previously and sufficiently examined by the heads of the respective departments. Poles called the appointment of Arthur William Kaye Miller, the future editor of the printed catalogue and later Keeper of Printed Books, another case of undue influence by Jones, Miller being, in Poles's eyes, 'a man of about average knowledge and ability . . . [with] no qualifications . . .'. Even so, Poles was at pains to disavow any rancour against the Trustees, who were, he said, 'systematically deceived by Mr. Jones', letting him sway them without their consulting other members of the staff or investigating complaints independently. Poles's eagerness to find fault was matched by his naivete about the techniques of administration.

For evidence of 'mismanagement*, his second topic, Poles quoted an article from The Athenceum which deplored the security arrangements of the library as too restrictive, on the argument that persons who were 'well-known to all literary London' should be trusted to take care of hbrary materials and should not have to submit to scrutiny of the books they returned to the reading room desk at the end of the day, to make sure that the books matched the issue slips. Nor should such persons have to show a reader's ticket when they came to readno one should be expected to remember to bring the ticket every time they went to the British Museum, or to be denied entrance for losing one. Poles quoted some unsolicited advice on the operation of the reading room that had been offered in The Times, the Evening Standard, and Building News, and claimed that failure to heed these sources had resulted in a decline in the number of readers. So ran the indictment. Then, in a fanciful piece of satire entitled 'Examination of the Catalogue', Poles imagined cross-questioning the catalogue, which revealed its own faults and delays and declared itself 'almost useless to the public' because it had no subject index. The criticism was supplemented by a statement that the authorities of the Museum had neglected the purchase of 'Polish, Hungarian, Russian, and Scandinavian books' since the death of Thomas Watts, who had been an expert in Slavonic languages and a promoter of the acquisition of foreign books. This accusation was emphatically denied by the Assistant Richard Garnett in his annotations to a copy of The Actual Condition of the British Museum.^^ Garnett, even though he had twice been passed over for promotion under Panizzi's direction, remained loyal to Panizzi, Jones, and Rye. He was enough of a linguist to have been directed to select Hungarian, Austrian, and Slavonic books'as fully as I can', he said, 'and I sometimes think more fully than I ought'. He also stated that 'Large libraries of both Hungarian and Polish books have been purchased since the death of Mr. Watts', a statement supported by another assistant, Robert Cowtan, in his Memories of the British Museum of 1872.^^ Even more revealing of the identity of one of Poles's informants was his protest that, despite Ralston's noteworthy Slavonic scholarship. Rye had given the cataloguing of the Slavonic accessions to an Assistant Keeper, George Porter, who knew a mere smattering of Russian. Cowtan confirms that the work was in Porter's hands,^i while Garnett stated that it was Ralston's task to 'catalogue or revise the Slavonic books . . . unless when one or the other of these operations is performed by Mr. Naake, a born Slavonian, or Mr. Martineau, a good Slavonic scholar'. Here is a hint of Ralston's chief grievance against his superiors: he wanted to undertake all the cataloguing of Slavonic materials, not merely to revise the work of others he considered less qualified than he. ^ .r. . , . , , , u- u The pamphlet ends with a short section on 'The Waste of Public Money , in which various sums are mentioned as being extravagant. Poles even begrudged the binding bills and the salaries of the window cleaners, and declared that Jones had spent an unconscionable amount on office furnishings in 1872-3, 'just as Deutsch was dying for want of common necessaries'. , u u^ As a final thrust, Poles reported the comment of a lady of 'cultivated taste who had
190

read the proofs of his pamphlet and predicted that the affair would surely be glossed over and an 'address of loyal devotion to Mr. Jones' would be drawn up, signed by the staff, and presented to the Trustees, who would continue to 'uphold' the Principal Librarian and to ignore 'that spiteful foreigner'. Jones, of course, continued in office, but there were repercussions from the publicity generated by the pamphlet, and the Trustees were not oblivious to it. Rye sent a copy of The Actual Condition to a Mr. Brooke, with a letter of 27 March 1875 which has since been bound into the copy.^^ He managed to take a philosophic view of the pamphlet, which he referred to as
a right good slather against the B M [sic] and its administration. . . . The author is a great scampa Communist who was imprisoned at Versailles & is allowed the privilege of a Reader But you will see what vile traitors there must be within the campmy copy has been annotated by a well-disposed assistant.

(In the letter he also noted that his vision had improved only slightly after an operation, and that it was 'useless as regards reading or writing even with a magnifying glass', so that he was able to do very little work; there was indeed some grounds for complaint against the effectiveness of his Keepership in its last phase.) It should be said that Poles denied being a Communard, but he admitted having been in Paris during the Commune and having known some of the leaders of the movement. He claimed to have learned of the Communards' plan to burn the town house of Thiers, and to have visited the president in Versailles and offered to remove valuable papers and mementoes from the house before the incendiaries took over. Receiving permission, he entered the house, bought a few items from the official in charge, and then was accused by Thiers of trying to extort a large sum of money for his trouble. When Paris was retaken by the Versailles government Poles was arrested and imprisoned for six months, until he bribed his jailer and escaped to England. In January of 1873 The Times published a letter from its Paris correspondent, Eneas Sweetland Dallas, accusing Stefen Polhes, as he was then called, of impersonating him to Thiers and of sending threatening letters to Thiers from England, demanding 3^14,000 as compensation for his imprisonment and to prevent the publication of compromising documents taken from the house. Poles, maintaining that he had accurately described himself to Thiers as secretary to Dallas, that he had taken no papers nor tried to blackmail Thiers, sued the newspaper for libel and won a judgement of ^f 50 in February of 1874.^^ Thus he was no stranger to litigation and was extremely sensitive to criticism. Rye's friend Mr Brooke wanted to see the pamphlet that Poles had complained of as libellous. On 22 April 1875 Rye wrote-^ to explain that it was
a poem in Polish, a copy of which came into the Library, but Poles, who was dreadfully abused in it, prosecuted the printer, & the author bolted. Our copy was ordered by the trustees to be locked up, & there is not the slightest chance of meeting with a copy, as the whole no. [sic] was suppressed; but being in Polish perhaps you will not longer care to possess a copy. Poor Naake, who was called in to interpret on the reception of the pamphlet, has been terribly persecuted by this Pole, who calls him 'perjurer'. 191

It seems that Naake did not bring the poem to the Museum, but had merely been asked to translate it, although Poles thought that Naake knew the author. A reply to The Actual Condition was written by the Rev. Lewis Page Mercier and published by Spottiswoode, printer to the Museum;^^ but it was decidedly ineffective as a rebuttal. In general it agreed with many of the complaints about the reading room service, the regulations for readers, and the catalogue. The last seven, of twenty-seven, pages took issue with the mathematics employed by Poles to illustrate his comments on expenditure, and refuted his conclusions. In one place Mercier noted: 'The Pamphleteer is wisely cautious. Here he had no statistics, even second hand. His informants, whoever they were, knew no more than he did'; in another he wrote 'but we leave this gentleman, whoever he may be, to take his choice between utter ignorance or deliberate falsification', and presumed the fault to be the former. Garnett obviously believed it to be the latter, for his annotation of The Actual Condition is laced with such phrases as 'a lie!' and 'a tissue of falsehoods!' It was clear that at least one insider had provided the information about the personnel and conduct of the Museum. Behind Poles's name lay an accumulation of bitterness and frustration that had been experienced by someone on the staff; it was not hard to guess that it might be Ralston, and in due course Ralston did the honourable thing by confessing contritely to Winter Jones that he had even paid for the printing of the pamphlet.^^ He had not expected the virulence with which Poles had attacked the Museum authorities and denigrated Ralston's fellow-members of staff, and he was acutely embarrassed by the scandalous tone of the text. Both Ralston and Haweis had broken their friendship with Poles. This led Poles to produce a second pamphlet entitled Parson, Lawyer, and Layman: A Budget of Letters from Various Hands, published for private circulation. In this work Haweis was the parson and the lawyer was Haweis's, trying to protect the preacher from Poles's demands; Poles himself was the layman. The pamphlet prints letters of all three, in an attempt to show how Poles had been abused. Ralston does not appear by name, but in the guise of'A.F.', sharing Haweis's views of The Actual Condition. Just one letter from him is printed over these initials, an avowal of support for Poles in the matter of the original libel, despite subsequent events. The letters reveal Poles himself as wily, selfimportant, and vicious when crossed. In his first pamphlet he had inflicted serious damage to the institution he professed to revere, as well as to his two friends, who now wanted to dissociate themselves from him, but whom he insisted on betraying. Ralston's rashness in entrusting Poles with such explosive material brought shame on his own head, while his apology for his role in the pamphlet came too late to prevent a grave public affront to the British Museum, of which he had been a part for twenty-two years. , At the time of the publication of his two pamphlets, Poles was known to be ill, and according to Rye he died soon after Parson, Lawyer, and Layman appeared. Yet everyone at the Museum knew that Ralston had contributed most of the information and the personal opinions in the first pamphlet, and he could not escape criticism for such a
192

dastardly attack on his superiors, his fellows, and on the revered Panizzi. His own health began to weaken under the stress of the situation, and he resigned on io April 1875In the Department of Printed Books, Rye was left to cope with the results of Ralston's rebellion. Unfortunately, he found that the space available for the Assistants in the North Wing was insufficient for the 'enormous number of boxes containing titles' they had to work with, and the move itself had caused delay in the cataloguing, yet produced no decrease in the number of illnesses reported.^^ Nevertheless, on 11 March he wrote to the Trustees about another 'cold, gloomy' room where the senior Assistants Robert Kennaway Douglas and Ernst Haas worked on the Oriental books. It, too, was skylit, but had a stone floor and was cold in winter and hot in summer. Rye suggested that two windows be added and the furnishings rearranged to make it more comfortable. He probably felt that he had done all he could to pacify the grumblers; but now, beset as he was by his own physical infirmitiespartial vision and rheumatism in his legs that had kept him from his officehe was called upon by Jones to make a report on the progress of the new General Catalogue. He Dear Sir, With respect to the present state of the Catalogue and of the titles finally revised, about which you inquired the other day, I was not at the time able to give you a very exact answer, but as I am now in possession of a statement which has been prepared by Mr. [Stephen John] Aldrich [supervisor of the Junior Assistants in succession to Warren], I beg leave to furnish you with more precise details. From this statement it appears that the number of titles of the General Catalogue yet remaining to be finally revised amounts to 277,590a total which I must confess has surprised me. The titles from the point at which Mr. Ralston left off, viz. Saunders to the end of the alphabet, amount to 146,220; the remainder is made up of queries, of accumulations [of titles from A to R needing to be compared to those in the old catalogue] and of partially revised cross references. The heading upon which Mr. Ralston was engaged when he resigned was Saunders, but several previous headings under letter S had been passed over unrevised, the titles for which, contained in three boxes, are still awaiting revision. The titles finally revised under letter S amount to about 4000 [Ralston's work], but none of them have been yet transcribed. With surprise and regret I notice in Mr Aldrich's statement that certain large and important headings of letters which came under revision long ago have been laid aside and remain unrevised at the present timefor instance "Netherlands" 550 titles, "Paris" 1080 titles, "Rome" 650 titles. As it is most desirable that there should be no further delay in placing before the readers the entries under these three headings, it will be necessary to place the work at once in the hands of competent assistants. The continuance of the work of final revision formerly performed by Mr. Ralston I have assigned to Mr. Roy, one of the Assistant Keepers, and I have directed Mr. Miller, an Assistant, to work with him and under his direction upon it. I may add that the transcription of the letter R of the New Catalogue was suspended during several months of last year owing to the slow progress of the final revision. Rye's attempts to make up for the time lost by Ralston's defection were certainly late and inefficient, and his report may indicate some justice in Poles's accusation that the Keeper was always too busy with other things to exercise any supervision over the 193

Fig. 2. Ralston (centre, holding a sheaf of papers labelled 'Russian folk tales') with other wellknown readers in the Reading Room of the British Museum. Detail from a cartoon published in Punch, 1885

cataloguing. Rye resigned on 14 June. The senior Assistant Keeper, George Bullen, took his place, despite Ralston's apparent statement, in his letter of confession to Jones, that Bullen too had helped Poles with The Actual Condition. It is quite possible that Bullen may have provided either Ralston or Poles with facts in ignorance of the use for which they were intended. At any rate, Bullen never suffered the opprobrium that attached to Ralston's name within the Museum. Richard Garnett was appointed to Bullen's former place, for which Ralston had been next in line. For a while Ralston continued to write on Russian literature, myths, songs, and fairy tales (fig. 2). His most significant work at this time appeared in 1879: an article on the novels of Tolstoy for the Nineteenth Century. Turgenev had been promoting Tolstoy's works and had recommended them to Ralston, who wrote to their author to ask for biographical data for his review. He was seconded in this request by Turgenev in a letter written from France on i October 1878, in which he called Ralston 'my friend' and expressed confidence in his reliability as a translator and critic.^^ Tolstoy, however, declined to co-operate. The Nineteenth Century was Ralston's chief outlet at this time; it had been founded in 1877 and was edited by the former editor of the Contemporary Review, James Thomas Knowles. Knowles was one of the originators of the Metaphysical Society, a group 194

dedicated to exploring the basis of morality, and many distinguished English intellectuals joined in its discussions. Ralston was probably a member; certainly he was supported by the periodical at a time when he needed a source of income from writing. Turgenev, who returned to London several times, continued to play a part in Ralston's activities. In early 1874 Ralston had offered to try to arrange for the University of Oxford to confer an honorary degree on Turgenev, but Turgenev declined. Then in 1879 the Russian accepted a D.C.L. degree upon the nomination of the Master of Balliol College, Benjamin Jowett, who had entertained him the year before. In 1881 Ralston was host at a small dinner arranged so that Turgenev could meet Anthony Trollope, Walter Besant, and other writers he had not before encountered. In a letter to a friend""^ Turgenev professed to have been
very glad when it was all over, . . , Ralston even wants to arrange a big banquet (!!?) [in my honour] partly from sympathy with me and mostly (as he confessed to me himself) because he wants the English to regard him as the chief authority on Russian literary mattersbut Vd rather cut off my nose than agree to such nonsense! Why a banquet to me in England?

In Russia it would have made sense, Turgenev thought, but not abroad, and he was embarrassed by Ralston's excessive enthusiasm. Although Ralston continued to promote Turgenev and his works, he did not entirely achieve the status of national Russian expert which he desired. He now had rivals, and his fount of inspiration was drying up, along with his desire to make any more significant translations of Russian works. Yet during his productive years, he had managed to bring Russian literature to the attention of a wide British reading public. (He was later followed in this by Constance Garnett, daughter-in-law of his erstwhile rival in the Department of Printed Books.) After 1883 Ralston retreated more and more into himself His last article was pubhshed in January of 1883. (Turgenev died on 3 September of that year.) Robert Kennaway Douglas, a colleague at the British Museum, said of him at this
the absence of settled employment intensified the defects of a highly impressionable and volatile temperament. For weeks together he would remain, a victim of acute mental depression, in his rooms in Alfred Place, and then would suddenly reappear in his old haunts with all and more than his youthful elasticity of spirit.

Somehow he managed to get himself engaged to a Miss Vizetelly, but it was too late for marriage for Ralston. He was found dead in his bed on 6 August 1889, aged sixtyone. It was suspected that he had committed suicide."*^^ However, none of the events described above are reflected in the official record of Ralston's departure from the Museum. At that time his friend George Bullen was acting as Keeper, in the absence of Rye. In forwarding to the Trustees Ralston's letter of resignation (which was accompanied by medical certificates from four doctors), Bullen '^^ that he was
exceedingly grieved that the Trustees should lose the services of such a distinguished Scholar 195

and Man of letters as Mr. Ralston is well known to be. . . . In the compilation of the Catalogue he performed the duties of Final Reviser, for which he was peculiarly qualified both by his intimate acquaintance with the Catalogue rules, and his various and extensive reading . . . Mr. Ralston's health, however, has been for a long time very precarious, . . . it is almost a matter of self-preservation for him to retire at once from the onerous duties which he has been called upon to fulfil in the British Museum.

The Trustees accepted both the resignation and Bullen's suggestion that they should recommend to the Treasury that Ralston be given a pension. At Ralston's death the obituary printed in The Athenceum echoed this official view:
His various activities taxed his strength, and finding the sedentary life imposed on him by his duties at the British Museum impaired his health, he retired in 1875. . . . He was a man who never spoke an unkind word of anyone.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF W. R. S. RALSTON

BOOKS

Krilofand his Fables (London, Strahan & Co., 1869). Liza; by Ivan Turgenev, tr. Ralston, (London, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1869). The Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life (London, Ellis & Green, 1872). Russian Folk Tales (London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1873). Early Russian History: Four Lectures Delivered at Oxford in the Taylor Institution (London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1874). Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources, tr. from the Tibetan of the Kah-Gyur by Anton von Schiefner; tr. into English from the German, with an introduction, by Ralston (London, Trubner & Co., 1882).
ARTICLES

'The Polish Insurrection of 1863', [Review of The Private History of a Polish Insurrection, from Official and Unofficial Sources, by H. Sutherland Edwards, late correspondent of The Times in Poland], Fortnightly Review, iii, pp. 277-98 (issue of 15 December 1865). 'A Russian Poet', [Review of a Moscow edition of the poems of A. V. Koltsov], Fortnightly Review, vi, pp. 272-88 (15 September 1866). 'The Roman Moliere^ [Plautus], Fortnightly Review, n.s. i, pp. 661-77 Qune 1867). 'The Poor of Paris', Contemporary Review, viii, pp. 234-45 (June 1868). 'The Modern Russian Drama, Art. VI: Works of A. N. Ostrovsky', [Review of 4 vols. published in St Petersburg. 1859-67], Edinburgh Review, cxxviii, pp. 158-90 (July 1868). 'The Experience of a Russian Exile', Macmillan's Magazine, xix, pp. 107-114 (December 1868). 'Russian Literature, II: Turgenief's Novels', North British Review, n.s. xi, pp. 22-64 (March 1869). , , 'The Legend of the Princess Tarakanof, Macmtllan's Magazine, xx, pp. 311-20 (August mgh 'Muscovite Sketches', [Review of a book 'By An English Governess'], Temple Bar, xxvii, pp. 62-71 (August 1869). 196

'The Dog', by Turgenev, tr. Ralston, Temple Bar, xxviii, pp. 474-88 (March 1870). 'Alexander Hertzen', [Russian refugee who had lived in London and who had died in Paris on 21 January 1870], Temple Bar, xxix, pp. 44-58 (April 1870). 'The Idiot', by Turgenev, tr. Ralston, Temple Bar, xxix, pp. 249-66 (May 1870). 'Russian Ghost Stories', CornhtU Magazine, xxvi, pp. 202-12 (August 1872). 'New Tales from the Norse', [Review of a collection by Moe], Fraser's Magazine, vi, pp. 62940 (November 1872). 'South Siberian Stories', Cornhill Magazine, xxix, pp. 127-42 (January 1874). 'Russian Idylls', [Poetry of Koltsov and Nikitin], Contemporary Review, xxiii, pp. 734-45 (April 1874). 'Russian Proverbs', Quarterly Review, cxxxix, pp. 493-525 (October 1875). 'Sicilian Fairy Tales', Fraser's Magazine, xiii, pp. 423-33 (April 1876). 'Russian Idylls', Contemporary Review, xxvii, pp. 746-63 (April 1876). 'Bulgarian Popular Songs', Cornhill Magazine, xxxv, 221-33 (February 1877). 'Turkish Story-Books', Nineteenth Century, i, pp. 23-36 (March 1877). 'Russian Revolutionary Literature', Nineteenth Century, i, pp. 397-416 (May 1877). 'Forest and Field Myths', Contemporary Review, xxxi, pp. 520-37 (February 1878). 'Henri Greville's Sketches of Russian Life', Nineteenth Century, iv, pp. 408-22 (September 1878). 'Beauty and the Beast', Nineteenth Century, iv, pp. 990-1012 (December 1878). 'Count Leo Tolstoy's Novels', Nineteenth Century, v, pp. 650-69 (April 1879). 'Cinderella', Nineteenth Century, vi, pp. 832-53 (November 1879). 'Puss in Boots', Nineteenth Century, xiii, pp. 88-104 (January 1883). 'Russian Operas' [A letter.] Reprinted from the Morning Post of October 15, 1888 (London, Arliss Andrews, 1888). Ralston is also said to have contributed copiously (but anonymously) to the Athenceum, the Saturday Review, and the Pall Mall Cazette. Ralston also wrote introductions or prefaces for: How to Learn Russian, by Henry Riola (London, Trubner & Co., 1878). Indian Fairy Tales, collected and translated by Maive Stokes (London, Ellis & White, 1880 [first published in Calcutta privately, 1879]). Portuguese Folk-Tales, collected by Consiglieri Pedroso, tr. by Miss Henriqueta Monteiro (London, published for the Folk Lore Society by Elliot Stock, 1882).
1 Details taken from accounts of the trial in The Times, November and December of i860 and March, May, and June of 1861. 2 Edmund Gosse, Collected Essays, vol. I: Portraits and Sketches (London, 1912), p. 131. A portrait of Ralston appears as no. ioA in Patrick Waddington, Turgenev in England (London, 1980). He is also depicted in a Punch cartoon of 28 March 1885, showing the British Museum reading room with prominent readers in the foreground. Ralston stands in the centre of the drawing holding a sheaf of paper on which is printed 'Russian Folk Tales' (see fig. 2 below for detail). The whole cartoon is reproduced on the dust-jacket of the present author's Power, Politics, and Print: The Publication of the .British Museum Catalogue, 1881-jgoo (London, 1981), and in P. R. Harris, The Reading Room (London,
1979)1 P- 25.

3 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Ralston. 4 The Athenceum, no. 3224 (10 August 1889), P- 193-

197

5 Turgenev to Ralston, 7/19 October 1866, David Lowe (ed.), Turgenev Letters (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983), vol. ii, p. 33. 6 The Times, 4 October 1869, p. 4, col. 4. 7 Waddington, op. cit., p. 155. The British Library copy of the 1869 works of Turgenev has the author's presentation inscription to Ralston. Press-mark oi2264.i.6. 8 Turgenev to P. P. Vasiliev, 5 June/22 July 1869, Lowe, ed. cit., vol. ii, p. 73. 9 Michael Killigrew (ed.). Your Mirror to My Times: The Selected Autobiographies and Impressions of Ford Madox Ford (New York, 1971), pp. 84-5. Ford here recounts a story told to him by bis mother, and to her by Turgenev. 10 Waddington, op. cit., p. 158. 11 The Academy, ii, pp. 151-2 (issue of i March 1871). 12 Ibid, ii, p. 345 (issue of 15 July 1871). 13 Waddington, op. cit., p. 157. 14 DNB. 15 Turgenev to V. V. Stasov, 1/13 March 1872, Edgar H. Lehrman (ed.), Turgenev's Letters: A Selection (New York, 1961), p. 242. 16 The Times, 7 April 1874, p. 5, cols. 5 and 6. 17 DNB. 18 Rye's letter, dated 6 March 1897, is tipped in at the end of Garnett's copy of Stefan Poles, The Actual Condition of the British Museum (London, 1875). BL, Archives of the Department of Printed Books, 9a. Box 3.(4.); Edward Miller, Thai Noble Cabinet: A History of the British Museum (London, 1973), p. 288. 19 Alec Hyatt King, Printed Music in the British Museum (London, 1979), P- 89. 20 Details taken from H. R. Haweis, 'Emanuel Deutsch: A Memorial', Contemporary Review, xxiii (1875), pp. 779-9821 Rye to the Trustees, 4 March 1872, British Museum Central Archives. 22 The Times, i December 1874, p. 10, col. 4. 2^ Gosse, pp. cit. n. 2 above, p. 130. 24 The Times, 14 January 1875, p. 4, col. 3. 25 Ibid., 6 March 1875, p. 5, col. 6. 26 Poles to Haweis, 13 January 1875, in S. Poles, Parson, Lawyer, and Layman: A Budget of Letters from Various Hands, 'Published for Private Circulation Only', (London, [March] 1875). P- 527 Waddington, op. cit., pp. 156-7-

28 The letters are printed as appendices A and B to The Actual Condition of the British Museum, PP- [5i]-5429 See n. 18 above. 30 Robert Cowtan, Memories of the British Museum (London, 1872), p. 410. 31 Ibid., p. 411. 32 Press-mark C.i34.b.ii.(i.); Garnett's annotations have been transcribed into this copy. 33 The Times, 10 February 1874, p. 11, cols, i and 2; II February, p. 11, col. i. Also in S. Poles V. the Times Newspaper: Action for Libel in Reference to the Secret Papers of M. Adolphe Thiers and Mademoiselle Felicie Dosne (London, 1874). Tbe latter was Thiers's 'sister-in-law and constant companion'; Encyclopaedia Britannica, n t h edn., vol. xxvi, p. 849. 34 Letter bound into the back of the Department of Printed Books copy of The Actual Condition of the British Museum. See n. 32 above. 35 M.A. [Revd. L. P. Mercier], The British Museum: An Impartial Statement in Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled 'The Actual Condition of the British Museum', London, 1875. 36 Rye to Garnett, 6 March 1897. See n. 18 above. 37 Report of Rye to the Trustees upon leaving office, 14 July 1875, Department of Printed Books Archives, DH 2/16. 38 Rye to Jones, 5 June 1875, Department of Printed Books Archives, DH 2/16. 39 Lehrman, ed. cit., p. 313. 40 Turgenev to Leonid Polonsky, r November 1881, in David Magarshack, Turgenev: A Life (London, 1954), p. 303' 41 DNB. Some of Ralston's papers, together with a series of letters written during his last years and shedding light on his mental and physical condition, are in the Pushkin House of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Leningrad; M. P. Alexeyev, 'William Ralston and Russian Writers of the Later Nineteenth Century', Oxford Studies, xi (1964), pp. 82-93. The author is grateful to Dr C. G. Thomas for drawing her attention to this article while the present study was in the press. 42 Killigrew, ed. cit. n. 9 above, p. 82. 43 Department of Printed Books Archives, DH 2/16. 44 The Athen(Eum, no. 3224 (10 August il P- 193-

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