Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Smith, Reginald John
SMITH, REGINALD JOHN (1857–1916), barrister and publisher, was born at Brighton 30 May 1857, the second son of John Smith, of Britwell House, Oxfordshire, by his wife, Emily Jane, daughter of George Frederick Cherry, of Denford, Berkshire. A colleger of Eton and scholar of King's College, Cambridge, he took a first class in the classical tripos (1880) and a degree in law; he was then called to the bar from the Inner Temple. In addition to some casual journalism, from 1886 to 1894 he ‘devilled’ for Sir Charles Russell (afterwards Baron Russell of Killowen) [q.v.] and, amongst other cases, acted as his junior in the defence of Mrs. Maybrick (1889). In this, as in all his legal work, he was distinguished for his painstaking care, lucid arrangement of material, and invincible courtesy.
In 1893 Smith married Isabel, youngest daughter of George Smith [see the memoir now prefixed to the first volume of this Dictionary], whose publishing firm of Smith, Elder, & Co., he joined in 1894. On leaving the bar he was granted the farewell distinction of silk. In 1899, the other partners having retired, he assumed sole control of the firm, and in 1901 took as his literary adviser Mr. Leonard Huxley. Smith had already in 1898 succeeded Mr. St. Loe Strachey as editor of the Cornhill Magazine. In 1904–1905 and again in 1916 he was president of the Publishers' Association, in 1905 strongly opposing the Times Book Club's threat to the book trade in selling off new books at second-hand prices. From the first Reginald Smith was in close sympathy with his father-in-law. Without equalling the older man's speculative dash, he shared his ideal of the publisher—in literature a trustee of the public, in business the actual partner and trustee of the author. Aiming at quality rather than quantity in his business, he rendered ‘the other man’ not only justice, but countless services not in the bond. The possession of independent means enabled both men to show more concern for good literature than for mere profit-making.
Smith's salient characteristic was consideration for the sensitive race of authors. Remembering Smith Williams's letter to Charlotte Brontë, he regularly sent, in his own or his lieutenant's hand, a letter of kindly criticism with each rejected manuscript. He delighted in telling young authors the private praises given by established writers. It was part of his genius that almost invariably the business client became the personal friend, and though he rarely wrote for the press, his friends recognized the soundness of his literary judgements. He continued his father-in-law's friendships with the families of Thackeray, Browning, and Mrs. Gaskell, and with Mrs. Humphry Ward; among his many newer friends special mention may be made of Dr. A. C. Benson and the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, both of whom he introduced to their English audiences, and of the Antarctic explorers, Robert Falcon Scott [q.v.] and Edward Adrian Wilson [q.v.]. No fewer than six such friends dedicated books to him, ‘whom to have known’, wrote Sir E. T. Cook, ‘was, in itself, a liberal education in human kindliness, in thoughtful courtesy, and in love of letters’.
As editor of the Cornhill, Reginald Smith resolutely maintained its literary quality, undismayed by the competition of the illustrated sixpennies which had crushed other magazines, and setting literary prestige against financial loss. His warmest publishing interest attached to the centenary editions of Thackeray and Browning, the Brontë and Gaskell definitive editions, the Antarctic books of Captain Scott, the disposal of the Brontë relics (among which he secured Branwell Brontë's portraits of his sisters for the National Portrait Gallery), and the thin paper edition of the Dictionary of National Biography (1908). This he initiated in consultation with Mrs. George (M.) Smith, and carried it through with untiring attention to the complex details. All corrections, including those published in the volume of errata (1904), were incorporated in the text under the editorship of Sir Sidney Lee; the original sixty-six volumes were reduced to twenty-two, each three being fused into one and the pages renumbered. Ultimately, in 1917, Mrs. Smith's representatives gave the Dictionary to the university of Oxford, to be continued by the Clarendon Press.
Elsewhere the name of the ‘Reginald Smith ward’ commemorates his long connexion with the Poplar Hospital, as a member of the committee from 1910 onwards, and treasurer in 1915–1916. During the European War his unsparing exertions broke down his health, and death came suddenly on 26 December 1916, at his home in Green Street, Park Lane. He left no children. In appearance Reginald Smith was dark and very tall; in face and figure almost austerely spare; and a certain formality of address made him somewhat formidable to strangers upon first acquaintance. A bronze statuette by Lady Scott (Mrs. Hilton Young), in the possession of Mrs. Reginald Smith, shows him sitting in a characteristic attitude.
[Leonard Huxley, The House of Smith, Elder, privately printed, 1923; private information; personal knowledge.]