Fabian Essays, the work of seven writers (George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Sydney Olivier, Sydney Webb, William Clarke, Hubert Bland, Graham Wallas) all of them far above the average in ability, some of them possessing individuality now recognised as exceptional is a book and not a collection of essays. Bernard Shaw was the editor, and those who have worked with him know that he does not take lightly his editorial duties. He corrects his own writings elaborately and repeatedly, and he does as much for everything which comes into his care.

None of us at that time were sufficiently experienced in the business of authorship to appreciate the astonishing success of the venture. In a month the whole edition of 1,000 copies was exhausted. With the exception of Mrs. Besant, whose fame was still equivocal, not one of the authors had published any book of importance, held any public office, or was known to the public beyond the circles of London political agitators.

William Clarke in explaining the Industrial Basis of Socialism assumed that the industry would be rapidly dominated by trusts - then a phenomenon - with results, the crushing out of all other forms of industrial organisation.

It is in my temperament, however passionate beneath the surface - and, as Edith used to say, "restless underneath" to be reasonable and cautious, hesitant in action, not apt to be moved by impulse or to reveal the impulse I feel. But on this or other accounts, I should perhaps say here, there were many to whom I scarcely seemed a desirable husband. Some of Edith's friends, and even of mine, when she announced to them her approaching marriage, exclaimed, actually or in effect: "That man!" One or two, not indeed speaking from any definite knowledge of me, warned her against the marriage. This must have been a little disconcerting to her. But she was far too true and deep, too independent as well, to be moved by these protests, though, later on, there were moods in which she recalled to me the warnings she had once received.

There was another discovery, I may here remark, which she made in the course of these announcements of her marriage: one or two men friends, with whom she had been good comrades without being in the least in love, had apparently been in love with her. This seems to have been so with William Clarke, the finest journalist of that day in the advanced Liberal and Democratic camp, and a Fabian economist as well. He had been interested almost from the first in the New Fellowship though he never actually joined it.

He knew and admired Thomas Davidson, and when Davidson died he wrote one of his best articles in the Spectator (later included in the posthumous volume of his miscellaneous writings) on A Modern Wandering Scholar. I had met him and known him from the day of his first meeting with Davidson when I walked away from the house with him afterwards. From that time he took much interest in me and in my work; in the Echo, a few years later, after my first book appeared, he published an article on me as one of the men of the day, the first of that sort I ever received. I, on my side, had invited him to contribute a book on economics to the Contemporary Science Series, though, being a busy journalist, he eventually had to hand this over to his friend, J. A. Hobson. Edith doubtless began to know him when she became secretary of the Fellowship. He was nearly ten years older, a man of neurotic temperament somewhat like her own, a creature of moods, of profound depressions, of frequent illnesses, with an organism full of toxins, probably with high blood pressure such as she later showed, and dying ultimately of the same disease of diabetes. Their social ideals and aspirations were singularly alike, and held with a like fervour and sincerity. But her temperament was much more buoyant, inspiring, and genial in personal intercourse. It was therefore natural that he should often come and spend hours in her rooms, frequently arriving in the deepest dejection and going away a totally different man. There was no suggestion of love; into her mind at all events the idea had never entered. But when one day she met him in Gray's Inn and gaily announced her approaching marriage he suddenly changed countenance, she told me, and seemed to have been struck a great blow. From that moment he ceased to seek to meet her, and he avoided me; I believe I never saw and scarcely heard from him again, and he no longer took any friendly interest in my books, though it is not likely that my later books would in any case have appealed to him. Edith heard indirectly, a little later on, that he had been suffering from "an emotional shock". He never married and died ten years later.