From the Reeves* collection, this study of the slightly neglected writer L.P.Jacks (Lawrence Pearsall Jacks 1860-1955). His best known book was probably Mad Shepherds and Other Human Studies from which the drawing of 'Snarley Bob' comes (below.) There is an excellent article on him in Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography and Gutenberg have the entire text of Mad Shepherds.L.P. Jacks. A potential distinction was presented unknowingly to the citizens of Nottingham in 1860, the year when the eminent Lawrence Pearsall Jacks was born. I have a notion that he was a delicate child and frequently a trial to his parents; but I am sure that I am one among thousands to whom he has given hours of delight, either in speeches or in his fascinating literature.
Indeed I sometimes feel that he would have been much better known to the general public had he been nothing but a professional journalist, instead of one of the leading Unitarians of his long career; for his reminiscences are so well written and so fascinating that I often pay him the compliment of a second or third reading. I browse among his memoirs as frequently as those of Harold Nicolson's letters and diaries and Frank Swinnerton's autobiographies; for there is a touch of magic and intensity in his recollections which keep many a mesmerized reader fighting against sleep on numerous occasions. His was the vivid phrase, the unmistakable meaning, the frank opinion, the distilled
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| 'Snarley Bob' (by L. Leslie Brooke) |
He was rather small in stature but was recompensed by an unusually attractive face and a very intelligent expression. True he was somewhat nervy when making a speech, but his forceful, explicit presentation rarely failed to create the lecturer's great hope: persistent attention.
Few people whom I have met have been so enthusiastic in their appreciation of the great men to be found controlling the destinies of Oxford undergraduates, and Jacks, owing to his long years working with and meeting wardens, professors and dons, probably
