‘Kindred Particles’

Abstract

From a letter by Lord Olivier to Archibald Henderson, 8 June 1931, in Henderson, Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet (London and New York: D. Appleton, 1932) pp. 144–5. Sydney Haldane Olivier, later Baron Olivier (1859–1943) entered the Colonial Office after graduation from Oxford, topping the entry competition (Sidney Webb was second). He subsequently held many important public service positions. He joined the Fabian Society with Webb on 1 May 1885, and was secretary from 1886 until 1890. Shaw wrote of him: ‘Olivier was an extraordinarily attractive figure, and in my experience unique; for I have never known anyone like him mentally or physically: he was distinguished enough to be unclassable. He was handsome and strongly sexed, looking like a Spanish grandee in any sort of clothes, however unconventional’ (‘Some Impressions’, a Preface to Sydney Olivier: Letters and Selected Writings, ed. Margaret Olivier [London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948] p. 9).