Philip Mairet

Philip Mairet [Philippe Auguste, http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6350178M] (1886 – 1975) was a designer, writer and journalist. He had a wide range of interest: crafts, Alfred Adler and psychiatry, and Social Credit. He was also a translator of major figures including Sartre. He wrote biographies of Sir Patrick Geddes and A. R. Orage, with both of whom he was closely associated.

Although influenced largely by the example of Orage, a follower of Gurdjieff, Mairet was in later life an Anglican Christian. As editor of the "New English Weekly" in the 1930s, he championed both Christian Sociology (in the sense of Maurice Reckitt, a friend), as it was known at the time, and ideas on agriculture that would come together later as organic farming. [Phillip Conford, "The Origins of the Organic Movement" (2001), chapter "Philip Mairet and the New English Weekly".]

Life

He was educated at the Hornsey School of Art, becoming a draughtsman and designer of stained glass. [ Eric Homberger, "Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage" (1997), p. 332.] As a young man he worked in graphic design for Charles Robert Ashbee, becoming part of his community at Chipping Campden, [ [http://www.bahs.org.uk/46n2a5.pdf (PDF)] , p. 3.] [http://www.research-design.co.uk/page.php?publication=2&volume=41&page=289] and illustrating "Conradin: A Philosophical Ballad" (1908). He then worked for Patrick Geddes.

His wife Ethel Mairet (1872 - 1952) (previously married to Ananda Coomaraswamy) was an influential weaver [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990109/ai_n9656407] and teacher, who settled in the community at Ditchling, Sussex. She was born Ethel Mary Partridge and trained at the Royal Academy of Music; her marriage to Coomaraswamy lasted from 1903 to 1913. [http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/learndex.php?theme_id=cscu1&theme_record_id=cscu1mairet&mtri=cscu1text] They met because Philip had come to Ditchling to work as a labourer. [Fiona MacCarthy, "Eric Gill" (1989), pp. 139.140.] He was avoiding conscripted military service during World War I, and developed an interest in glass-making. He was that at time influenced by Dimitrije Mitrinović, attached to the Serbian Delegation in London, who met Mairet in 1917. Eventually Mairet was discovered, enrolled in the British Army, and spent a period in prison. [Luisa Passerini, "Europe in love, love in Europe: Imagination and Politics in Britain Between the Wars" (1999), p. 773.]

From 1921 to 1924 he worked as an actor, at the Old Vic. [Simon Blaxland-de Lange, "Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age: a Biography" (2006), pp. 144-5.] He began attending Orage's editorial meetings. ["And after the war, Edwin Muir, Herbert Read, Michael Arlen, Denis Saurat, Janko Lavrin, and Philip Mairet, to mention a few, attended regularly." [http://dl.lib.brown.edu/mjp/pdf/martin03.pdf (PDF)] , p. 43.]

Orage died suddenly in 1934, leaving the "New English Weekly" in limbo. Mairet, then the literary editor, emerged as the editor by a complex route: one group of Social Credit advocates wanted to exclude another group, of supporters of Mitrinović. Mairet was identified more with a third faction, the Chandos Group, around Maurice Reckitt, with Travers Symons, V. A. Demant, and Alan Porter.Jason Harding, "The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain" (2002), pp. 191-2.] This overlapped the Mitrinović group: there had been a shared interest in the journal "Purpose", from 1929, and the theories of Adler were also a common factor. [Mathew Thomson, "Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-century Britain" (2006), p. 91.] Symons introduced Mairet to T. S. Eliot, who was holding the ring. In practical terms the Chandos Group were already deeply involved in producing the "New English Weekly", and were sympathetic to Social Credit. [Peter Barberis, John McHugh, and Mike Tyldesley, "Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations" (2000), p. 80.]

He belonged to numerous other small societies and discussion groups of the period before World War II. [These included "The Moot": Marjorie Reeves (editor), "Christian Thinking and Social Order: Conviction Politics from the 1930s to the Present Day" (1999), p, 25.] He joined Rolf Gardiner's "Kinship in Husbandry" group in 1941. [Julie V. Gottlieb, Thomas P. Linehan, "The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain" (2004), p. 187.] He edited "The Frontier" for Walter Moberly's Christian Frontier Council. [ [http://www.bahs.org.uk/49n2a4.pdf (PDF)] , p. 21.]

He was an early supporter of George Orwell, giving him literary work for the "New English Weekly", and writing in very positive and comprehending terms about "Homage to Catalonia" and Orwell's approach. A friend and long-time correspondent also of T. S. Eliot, who dedicated his "Notes towards the Definition of Culture" to Mairet, [Alzina Stone Dale, "T. S. Eliot: The Philosopher Poet" (2004), p. 170.] , he became one of the best-connected of all the British Christian intellectuals of that time.

Works

*"An essay on crafts & obedience" (1918), Douglas Pepler
*"ABC of Adler's psychology" (1928)
*"Alfred Adler Problems of Neurosis" (1930) editor, case histories
*"Aristocracy and the Meaning of Class Rule - An Essay upon Aristocracy Past and Future" (1931)
*"The Douglas Manual: Being a Recension of Passages from the Works of Major C. H. Douglas, Outlining Social Credit" (Stanley Nott, 1934) editor
*"A. R. Orage: a memoir" (1936)
*"The Frontier" (1951)
*"Christian Essays in Psychiatry" (1956) editor
*"Pioneer of Sociology: The Life and Letters of Patrick Geddes" (1957)
*"John Middleton Murry" (1958)

Notes