Essays on Economics and Economists by R. H. Coase

Author:R. H. Coase
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Economists

EIGHT

Alfred Marshall’s Mother and Father

John Maynard Keynes in his famous “Memoir on Alfred Marshall” opens with an extraordinary sentence: “Alfred Marshall was born at Clapham on 26 July 1842, the son of William Marshall, a cashier in the Bank of England, by his marriage with Rebecca Oliver.”1 What makes this sentence extraordinary is that it is a masterpiece of concealment.

Let us start with Alfred Marshall’s mother. Apart from the mention of her name in the first sentence, there is no other reference to her in the entire memoir, except for saying that she was the victim of her husband’s despotic will. As Marshall thought that the “most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings and of that capital the most precious part is the result of the care and influence of the mother,”2 one might have expected that Keynes would have given her more attention. This would seem especially called for given Marshall’s endorsement of Galton’s view that “the mother’s influence is most easily traced among theologians and men of science.”3 Alfred Marshall may be said to fall into both categories. As Keynes explains, Marshall had a “double nature.” He was both pastor and scientist, leading him to attempt to be, in Edgeworth’s felicitous phrase, an “Archbishop of Economics.”4 Marshall’s mother was, according to his wife Mary Marshall, “a charming woman and Alfred was devoted to her. Whenever anything pleasant befell such as the Address on his eightieth birthday, he would say ‘If only my mother were alive how glad she would be.’”5 Marshall was certainly closer to his mother than to his father, and it is not without significance that his letters from America in 1875 were addressed to her and not to his father. Yet she is absent from the memoir.

The reason Keynes did not do more than mention Marshall’s mother’s name was that this was almost all he knew about her and even her name was not easily obtained. Mary Marshall wrote to Keynes while he was preparing the memoir to tell him that “the pedigree has been unearthed from a distant relation—I am glad to see that it gives the maiden name of Alfred’s mother which I feared was lost.”6 How was it that all knowledge of Alfred Marshall’s mother’s family came to be lost? The explanation is contained in a letter which William, a nephew of Alfred Marshall’s (presumably the son of his elder brother), sent to Claude Guillebaud (also a nephew, son of Alfred Marshall’s sister, Mabel) after the memoir was published, the substance of which was sent on to Keynes by Mary Marshall: “William seems to know more about Marshall’s mother than anyone and he says she came from Maidston [sic] and was the daughter of a chemist and that the Marshall family considered this a mesalliance and she had to cut herself off from her own family.”7 In fact, even the nephew William’s information was defective. The truth was far worse than he knew. Marshall’s mother was certainly born

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