‘Great Artists’ series. By this time everybody knew that Dobson had the eighteenth century by heart, and in 1883 John (afterwards Viscount) Morley persuaded him to write the Fielding for the ‘English Men of Letters’ series. He next wrote Thomas Bewick and his Pupils (1884) and biographies of Steele (1886) and Goldsmith (1888). In 1890 he reprinted, under the title Four Frenchwomen, essays on Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princesse de Lamballe, and Madame de Genlis, which had appeared as early as 1866 in the Domestic Magazine. Then came a memoir of Horace Walpole (1890), with an appendix giving the books printed at Strawberry Hill, an extended memoir of Hogarth (1891), and a series of Eighteenth Century Vignettes (1892-1894-1896). In 1902 he published Samuel Richardson and in the next year Fanny Burney, both for the ‘English Men of Letters’ series. From this time onwards any publisher intending to reissue an eighteenth-century work went to Austin Dobson for an introduction. Altogether, some fifty such volumes with Dobson’s editorial superintendence are catalogued. Of complete prose works, over and above his Handbook of English literature, there are to his credit eight biographies and ten volumes of collected essays.
Austin Dobson’s immense knowledge of eighteenth-century literature and art should have made the past live again in his biographies, but his achievement varied, and perhaps the slighter the interest of his main subject the better the result. His Fanny Burney shows him at his best, Fielding at his least good. His style, though simple, serviceable, and pleasant, never for an instant suggests a poet’s prose. Perhaps indeed he never was a poet, but only a most accomplished writer of verse. No one ever exceeded his mastery of artificial rhythms, and no verses are more likely than his to appeal to those who care little about poetry. But at his lightest he lacks gaiety; at his gravest he lacks weight; his sentiment is perilously near the mawkish, and he is always a little shocked by the elegance of the French eighteenth century, from which he derived so much enjoyment. In short, what Dobson lacked to be a poet was personality: there is nowhere any strong vibration of his nature. Yet nobody can read the best of his verses—and at least fifty pieces are of his best—without delight in the exquisite finish, the witty invention, and the ease of movement. And for any one with whom he can ‘assume a common taste for old costume, old pictures, books’, Austin Dobson will always be a favourite author.
Dobson died at Ealing 2 September 1921. He married in 1868 Frances Mary, daughter of Nathaniel Beardmore, civil engineer, of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and had five sons and five daughters.
There is a portrait of Dobson by Sylvia Gosse in the National Portrait Gallery.
[The Times, 3 and 5 September 1921; Alban Dobson, Preface to Austin Dobson: An Anthology of Prose and Verse, 1922; private information.]
DOHERTY, HUGH LAWRENCE (1875-1919), lawn-tennis player, the third son of William Doherty, of Oakfield, Clapham Park, was born 8 October 1875. Like his elder brother, Reginald F. Doherty (1872-1911), with whom he was intimately associated in his lawn-tennis triumphs, he began the game young in life, and at the age of fifteen won the most important junior event of that time, the Renshaw singles cup, at Scarborough. He was educated at Westminster School, where he showed himself to be a good runner, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It was here that he and his brother made their name at lawn-tennis. Before they went down from Cambridge they were in the forefront of the game, and no two players have had a more triumphant career both in singles and doubles play. R. F. Doherty won the All England singles championship at Wimbledon in 1897, 1898, 1899, and 1900. Lawrence Doherty won in 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1906, and then resigned the title. The brothers, playing together, were eight times double champions between 1897 and 1905, being only once defeated (1902) by S. H. Smith and F. L. Riseley. In the Davis international cup contests, their record, and particularly that of the younger Doherty, was very fine. The latter’s appearances in these matches cover the years from 1902 to 1906, and, although he was once on the losing side, he himself never lost a match, and he met all the best American players of the time. Up to the present time he is the only Englishman who has ever won the American national championship; that distinction fell to him in 1903.
After 1906, H. L. Doherty retired from competition lawn-tennis and took up golf. In a short time he became very proficient at the game, and he played in the amateur championship on several occasions. On the outbreak of the European War he joined the anti-aircraft
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