After his marriage in 1838 he continued to employ himself as a notary in Milan till his death on the 10th of December 1853.
His Life by Cantu appeared at Milan in 1854.
GROSSMITH, GEORGE (1847– ), English comedian, was
born on the 9th of December 1847, the son of a law reporter and
entertainer of the same name. After some years of journalistic
work he started about 1870 as a public entertainer, with songs
and recitations; but in 1877 he began a long connexion with the
Gilbert and Sullivan operas at the Savoy Theatre, London, in
The Sorcerer. For twelve years he had the leading part, his
capacity for “patter-songs,” and his humorous acting, dancing
and singing marking his creations of the chief characters in the
Gilbert and Sullivan operas as the expression of a highly original
individuality. In 1889 he left the Savoy, and again set up as an
entertainer, visiting all the cities of Great Britain and the United
States, but retiring in 1901. Among other books he wrote The
Reminiscences of a Society Clown (1888); and, with his brother
Weedon, The Diary of a Nobody (1894). His humorous songs
and sketches numbered over six hundred. His younger brother,
Weedon Grossmith, who was educated as a painter and exhibited
at the Academy, also took to the stage, his first notable success
being in the Pantomime Rehearsal; in 1894 he went into management
on his own account, and had much success as a comedian.
George Grossmith’s two sons, Laurence Grossmith and George
Grossmith, jun., were both actors, the latter becoming a well-known
figure in the musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre,
London.
GROS VENTRES (Fr. for “Great Bellies”), or Atsina, a
tribe of North American Indians of Algonquian stock. The
name is said to have reference to the greediness of the people,
but more probably originated from their prominent tattooing.
They are settled at Fort Belknap agency, Montana. The name
has also been given to other tribes, e.g. the Hidatsa or Minitari,
now at Fort Berthold, North Dakota.
GROTE, GEORGE (1794–1871), English historian of Greece,
was born on the 17th of November 1794, at Clay Hill near
Beckenham in Kent. His grandfather, Andreas, originally a
Bremen merchant, was one of the founders (1st of January 1766)
of the banking-house of Grote, Prescott & Company in Threadneedle
Street, London (the name of Grote did not disappear
from the firm till 1879). His father, also George, married (1793)
Selina, daughter of Henry Peckwell (1747–1787), minister of the
countess of Huntingdon’s chapel in Westminster (descended
from a Huguenot family, the de Blossets, who had left Touraine
on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes), and had one daughter
and ten sons, of whom the historian was the eldest. Educated
at first by his mother, George Grote was sent to the Sevenoaks
grammar school (1800–1804) and afterwards to Charterhouse
(1804–1810), where he studied under Dr Raine in company
with Connop Thirlwall, George and Horace Waddington and
Henry Havelock. In spite of Grote’s school successes, his
father refused to send him to the university and put him in the
bank in 1810. He spent all his spare time in the study of classics,
history, metaphysics and political economy, and in learning
German, French and Italian. Driven by his mother’s Puritanism
and his father’s contempt for academic learning to outside
society, he became intimate with Charles Hay Cameron, who
strengthened him in his love of philosophy, and George W.
Norman, through whom he met his wife, Miss Harriet Lewin
(see below). After various difficulties the marriage took place
on the 5th of March 1820, and was in all respects a happy union.
In the meanwhile Grote had finally decided his philosophic and political attitude. In 1817 he came under the influence of David Ricardo, and through him of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. He settled in 1820 in a house attached to the bank in Threadneedle Street, where his only child died a week after its birth. During Mrs Grote’s slow convalescence at Hampstead, he wrote his first published work, the Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform (1821), in reply to Sir James Mackintosh’s article in the Edinburgh Review, advocating popular representation, vote by ballot and short parliaments. In 1822 he published in the Morning Chronicle (April) a letter against Canning’s attack on Lord John Russell, and edited, or rather re-wrote, some discursive papers of Bentham, which he published under the title Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind by Philip Beauchamp (1822). The book was published in the name of Richard Carlile, then in gaol at Dorchester. Though not a member of J. S. Mill’s Utilitarian Society (1822–1823). he took a great interest in a society for reading and discussion, which met (from 1823) in a room at the bank before business hours twice a week. From the Posthumous Papers (pp. 22, 24) it is clear that Mrs Grote was wrong in asserting that she first in 1823 (autumn) suggested the History of Greece; the book was already in preparation in 1822, though what was then written was subsequently reconstructed. In 1826 Grote published in the Westminster Review (April) a criticism of Mitford’s History of Greece, which shows that his ideas were already in order. From 1826 to 1830 he was hard at work with J. S. Mill and Henry Brougham in the organization of the new “university” in Gower Street. He was a member of the council which organized the faculties and the curriculum; but in 1830, owing to a difference with Mill as to an appointment to one of the philosophical chairs, he resigned his position.
In 1830 he went abroad, and, attracted by the political crisis, spent some months in Paris in the society of the Liberal leaders. Recalled by his father’s death (6th of July), he not only became manager of the bank, but took a leading position among the city Radicals. In 1831 he published his important Essentials of Parliamentary Reform (an elaboration of his previous Statement), and, after refusing to stand as parliamentary candidate for the city in 1831, changed his mind and was elected head of the poll, with three other Liberals, in December 1832. After serving in three parliaments, he resigned in 1841, by which time his party (“the philosophic Radicals”) had dwindled away. During these years of active public life, his interest in Greek history and philosophy had increased, and after a trip to Italy in 1842, he severed his connexion with the bank and devoted himself to literature. In 1846 the first two volumes of the History appeared, and the remaining ten between 1847 and the spring of 1856. In 1845 with Molesworth and Raikes Currie he gave monetary assistance to Auguste Comte (q.v.), then in financial difficulties. The formation of the Sonderbund (20th of July 1847) led him to visit Switzerland and study for himself a condition of things in some sense analogous to that of the ancient Greek states. This visit resulted in the publication in the Spectator of seven weekly letters, collected in book form at the end of 1847 (see a letter to de Tocqueville in Mrs Grote’s reprint of the Seven Letters, 1876).
In 1856 Grote began to prepare his works on Plato and Aristotle. Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates (3 vols.) appeared in 1865, but the work on Aristotle he was not destined to complete. He had finished the Organon and was about to deal with the metaphysical and physical treatises when he died on the 18th of June 1871, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a man of strong character and self-control, unfailing courtesy and unswerving devotion to what he considered the best interests of the nation. To colleagues and subordinates alike, he was considerate and tolerant; he was unassuming, trustworthy in the smallest detail, accurate and comprehensive in thought, energetic and conscientious in action. Yet, hidden under his calm exterior there was a burning enthusiasm and a depth of passion of which only his intimate friends were aware.
His work may best be considered under the following heads:
1. Grote’s Services to Education.—He took, as already stated, an important part in the foundation and organization of the original university of London, which began its public work in Gower Street on the 28th of October 1828, and in 1836, on the incorporation of the university of London proper, became known as University College. In 1849 he was re-elected to the council, in 1860 he became treasurer, and on the death of Brougham (1868) president. He took a keen interest in all the work of the college, presented to it the Marmor Homericum, and finally bequeathed the reversion of £6000 for the endowment of a chair
