g to its service a group of young men, then
altogether unknown, whose reputation has gradually spread, in two or
three cases, all over the world, and who have always been in the main
identified with Fabianism. Very rarely in the history of voluntary
organisations has a group of such exceptional people come together
almost accidentally and worked unitedly together for so many years for
the furtherance of the principles in which they believed. Others have
assisted according to their abilities and opportunities, but to the
Fabian Essayists belongs the credit of creating the Fabian Society.

For several years, and those perhaps the most important in the history
of the Society, the period, in fact, of adolescence, the Society was
governed by the seven Essayists, and chiefly by four or five of them.
Mrs. Besant had made her reputation in other fields, and belonged, in a
sense, to an earlier generation; she was unrivalled as an expositor and
an agitator, and naturally preferred the work that she did best. William
Clarke, also, was just a little of an outsider: he attended committees
irregularly, and although he did what he was persuaded to do with
remarkable force--he was an admirable lecturer and an efficient
journalist--he had no initiative. He was solitary in his habits, and in
his latter years, overshadowed by ill-health, he became almost morose.
Hubert Bland, again, was always something of a critic. He was a Tory by
instinct wherever he was not a Socialist, and whilst thoroughly united
with the others for all purposes of the Society, he lived the rest of
his life apart. But the other four Essayists, Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw,
Graham Wallas, and Sydney Olivier, then and for many years afterwards
may be said to have worked and thought together in an intellectual
partnership.[18] Webb and Olivier were colleagues in the Colonial
Office, and it is said that for some time the Fabian records--they were
not very bulky--were stored on a table in Downing Street. For many years
there were probably few evenings of the week and few holidays which two
or more of them did not spend together.

In 1885 or early in 1886 a group which included those four and many
others formed a reading society for the discussion of Marx's "Capital."
The meetings--I attended them until I left London--were held in
Hampstead, sometimes at the house of Mrs. Gilchrist, widow of the
biographer of Blake, sometimes at that of Mrs. C.M. Wilson, and finally
at the