Alfred Richard Orage

Alfred R.
Orage
Born 22 January 1873
Dacre, West Riding of
Yorkshire, England
Died 6 November 1934
(aged 61)
London, England
Nationality English
Occupation teacher, lecturer, writer,
editor, publisher
Known for Editor of The New Age
Religion Nonconformist
Spouse(s) Jean Walker (rst spouse
maiden name), Jessie
Richards Dwight (second
and last spouse maiden
name)
Children Richard and Ann
Parents William Orage, Sarah Anne
McGuire (mother's maiden
name)
Relatives David, Marcus, Linnet,
Carolyn, Piers, Toby and
Peregrine (grandchildren)
Alfred Richard Orage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alfred Richard Orage (22 January 1873
6 November 1934) was a British
intellectual, now best known for editing
the magazine The New Age. While
working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he
pursued various interests, including Plato,
the Independent Labour Party, and
theosophy. In 1900 Orage met Holbrook
Jackson and three years later they
co-founded the Leeds Arts Club, which
became a centre of modernist culture in
pre-World War I Britain. In 1905, Orage
resigned his teaching position and moved
to London. There, in 1907, he bought and
edited the English weekly The New Age,
at rst with Holbrook Jackson, and
became an inuential gure in socialist
politics and modernist culture, especially
at the height of the magazine's fame
before the First World War.
[1]
In 1924 Orage sold The New Age and
went to France to work with George
Gurdjie, the spiritual teacher P. D.
Ouspensky had recommended to him.
After spending some time of preliminary
training in the Gurdjie System, Orage
was sent to America by Gurdjie himself
to raise funds and lecture on the new
system of self-development which
emphasized the harmonious work of
intellectual, emotional and moving functions. Orage also worked with Gurdjie in
translating the rst version of Gurdjie's All and Everything as well as Meetings
With Remarkable Men from Russian to English; however, neither book was ever
published in their lifetime.
In 1927 his rst wife, Jean, granted him a divorce and in September he married
Jessie Richards Dwight (19011985), the co-owner of the Sunwise Turn bookshop
where Orage rst lectured on the Gurdjie System. Orage and Jessie had two
children, a boy and a girl: Richard and Ann. While in New York, Orage and Jessie
often catered to celebrities such as Paul Robeson fresh from his London Tour. In
1930, Orage returned to England and in 1931 he published the New English
Alfred Richard Orage - Wikipedia, the free encycl... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alfred_...
1 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
Weekly, remaining in London until his death on 6 November 1934.
[2]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Editor in London
3 Orage's politics
4 With Gurdjie
5 Last years
6 Works
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Born James Alfred Orage in Dacre, near Harrogate, in the West Riding of
Yorkshire into a nonconformist religious family, he was generally known as Dickie
and he dropped the name James altogether and adopted the middle name
Richard. He became a schoolteacher in a Leeds Board elementary school at the
age of twenty one and helped to found the Leeds branch of the Independent
Labour Party in 1894, writing a weekly literary column for the Labour Leader,
from 1895 to 1897. He brought a philosophical outlook to the paper, including in
particular the thought of Plato and Edward Carpenter. All in all, Orage devoted
seven years of study to Plato, from 1893 to 1900; he also devoted seven years of
his life to the study of Nietzsche's philosophy, from 1900 to 1907; from 1907 to
1914 he became a student of the Mahabharata.
[3]
By the late 1890s, Orage was disillusioned with conventional socialism and turned
for a while to theosophy. In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson in a Leeds bookshop,
and lent him a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. In return, Jackson lent him Friedrich
Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, which led him to study Nietzsche's work in
depth. In 1903, Orage, Jackson and the architect Arthur J. Penty helped to found
the lively and successful Leeds Arts Club, with the intention of promoting the
work of radical thinkers including G. B. Shaw whom Orage had met in 1898,
Henrik Ibsen, and Nietzsche. During this period he returned to socialist platforms
but by 1906, he was determined to combine Carpenter's socialism with Nietzsche
and theosophy. Concentrating on this and in the presence of Beatrice Hastings
was too much for Jean, the wife of his rst marriage, the same wife who had
shared in his own theosophic and aesthetic interests of his early activities in the
2 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
Leeds Arts Club, who did not grant him a divorce but went to live instead with
Holbrook Jackson and worked the rest of her life as a skilled craftswoman in the
tradition of William Morris. In 1906, Beatrice Hastings whose real name was
Emily Alice Haigh hailing from Port Elizabeth, a green-eyed beauty of twenty-six
with literary ambitions, could be seen with Orage and would eventually become a
regular contributor to the New Age. By 1907, it became an intimate relationship
and as Beatrice Hastings herself would later confess, Aphrodite amused herself
at our expense.
[4]
Orage explored his new ideas in several books. He saw Nietzsche's bermensch
as a metaphor for the "higher state of consciousness" sought by mystics and
attempted to dene a route to this, insisting this must involve a rejection of
civilisation and conventional morality. Instead, he moved through a celebration of
Dionysus to declare he was in favour not of an ordered socialism but of an
anarchic movement.
[5]
In a one-year period, from 1906 to 1907, he published three books,
Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superhuman based on his experience with
Theosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche: the Dionysian Spirit of the Age and Nietzsche in
Outline and Aphorism. His rational critique of Theosophy evoked an editorial
rebuttal from The Theosophical Review and in 1907, he terminated his association
with the Society. The two books on Nietzsche were the rst to be published in
England as a systematic introduction to Nietzschean thought.
[6]
Editor in London
In 1906, he resigned his teaching post and moved to London, following Arthur
Penty, another Leeds Art Club friend. Orage attempted to form a league for the
restoration of a guild system, much as described by William Morris.
The failure of this project spurred him in 1907, supported by George Bernard
Shaw, to buy the weekly magazine The New Age, in partnership with Holbrook
Jackson. He quite soon turned it into his conception of a forum for politics,
literature and the arts. Although many contributors were Fabians, he to some
extent distanced himself from their politics, and a wide range of political
viewpoints were represented. The magazine launched an attack on parliamentary
politics, while Orage argued the need for utopianism. He also attacked the trade
union leadership, while oering some support to syndicalism, and tried to
combine this with the guild system. Combining these two viewpoints resulted in
Guild socialism, a political philosophy he began to argue for from about 1910.
Between 1908 and 1914 The New Age was undoubtedly the premier little
magazine in the UK. It was instrumental in pioneering the British avant-garde,
from vorticism to imagism. Some of its contributors at this time included T.E.
Hulme, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Herbert Read and many others. Apart from
3 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
his undoubted genius as an editor, it might be said that Orage's real talent was as
a conversationalist and a bringer together of people. The modernists of London
were scattered between 1905 and 1910. Between 1910 and 1914, largely thanks
to Orage, a sense of a genuine movement was created. In other words, Orage
successfully ran a forum which at least assumed (and perhaps created) a
commonality between the seemingly unfathomable philosophies and artistic
practices then being created.
[7]
Orage's politics
Orage declared himself a socialist, and followed Georges Sorel in arguing that
trade unions should pursue an increasingly aggressive policy as regards issues
such as wage deals and working conditions. He approved of the increasing
militancy of the unions in the pre-war era, and seems to have shared Sorel's belief
in the necessity of a Trade Union-led General Strike, leading to a re-evolutionary
situation.
[8]
However, for Orage, economic power precedes political power and
political reform is useless without economic reform.
[9]
In the early issues of The New Age, Orage supported the women's surage
movement, but became increasingly hostile as the Women's Social and Political
Union became more prominent and more militant. Pro-suragette articles were
not published after 1910, but heated debate on this subject took place in the
correspondence column.
During World War I, Orage defended the interests of the working class. On 6
August 1914, Orage wrote in Notes of the Week of The New Age: We believe that
England is necessary to Socialism, as Socialism is necessary to the world. In
1917, in the published work Political Ideals, Bertrand Russell mentions for the
rst time Orage Guild Socialism.
[10]
On 14 November 1918, Orage wrote of the
coming Treaty of Versailles: "... The next world-war, if unhappily there should be
another, will in all probability be contained within the clauses and conditions
attaching to the present peace settlement." By the end of the war, Orage was
convinced the hardships of the working class were the result of the monetary
policies of banking and government. If Great Britain could remove the pound from
the gold standard during the war and reestablish the gold standard after the war,
then the gold standard is not as necessary as the oligarchic monetary few would
want the proletariat many to believe. On 15 July 1920, Orage wrote: We should
be the rst to admit that the subject of Money is dicult to understand. It is
'intended' to be, by the minute oligarchy that governs the world by means of
it."
[11]
After the First World War, he was inuenced by C. H. Douglas and became a
supporter of Social credit. On 2 January 1919, Orage published the rst article by
C. H. Douglas to appear in The New Age: A Mechanical View of Economics.
[12]
4 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
With Gurdjie
In 1914 Orage met with P. D. Ouspensky, whose ideas left a lasting impression.
When Ouspensky moved to London in 1921, Orage began attending his lectures
on "Fragments of an unknown teaching", the subject of which would later be
published as In Search of the Miraculous. From this point on Orage became less
and less interested in literature and art, instead focusing his attention in the
greater part of the 1920s on the problems of the theory and practice of mysticism
without having to run away from the world. His correspondence with Harry
Houdini on these subjects moved him to explore ideas of the afterlife. He returned
to the idea that there were absolute truths and felt these were embodied in the
Mahabharata.
In February 1922, Ouspensky introduced Orage to G. I. Gurdjie. Selling the New
Age, he moved to Paris to study at the Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man. In 1924 Orage was appointed by Gurdjie to lead study groups in
America. He taught the Gurdjie System in America for seven years. Gurdjie
arrived in New York from France on 13 November 1930, and after a few years of
teaching in New York, Orage was deposed by Gurdjie and his groups were
formally disbanded because Gurdjie believed that they had been incorrectly
taught and they were working under the misconception that self-observation
could be practiced in the absence of self-remembering or in the presence of
negative emotions. Members were allowed to continue study with Gurdjie after
taking an oath not to communicate with Orage (ironically Orage himself also
signed the oath). Upon hearing that Orage had also signed, Gurdjie wept.
Gurdjie had once considered Orage as a friend and brother and thought of Jessie
as a bad choice by Orage for a mate. Orage was a chain smoker and Jessie was a
heavy drinker.
[13]
Orage, Ouspensky, and C. Daly King emphasized certain aspects of the Gurdjie
System while ignoring others. According to Gurdjie himself, Orage emphasized
self-observation. In Harlem, New York City, Jean Toomer, one of Orage's students
at Greenwich Village and part and parcel of the Harlem Renaissance, was using
Gurdjie's work to confront the problem of racism.
[14]
The Orages sailed back to New York from England on the S.S. Washington on 29
December 1930 and arrived at 9:30 AM on Thursday, 8 January 1931. The next
day, while staying at the Irving Hotel, Orage wrote a letter to Gurdjie unveiling a
plan for the publication of All and Everything before the end of the year and
promising a substantial amount of money.
[15]
At lunch, on 21 February 1931, in New York City, Achmed Abdulla, a.k.a. Nadir
Kahn, conded to the Orages that he had met Gurdjie in Tibet and there
Gurdjie was a.k.a. Lama Dordjie, a Tsarist agent and tutor to the Dalai
5 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
Lama.
[16]
After the separation with Gurdjie, Orage returned to England with Jessie. In the
privately published Third Series of writings, Gurdjie wrote of Orage and his wife
Jessie, his romance had ended in his marrying the saleswoman of 'Sunwise Turn,'
a young American pampered out of all proportion to her position...
[17]
Last years
In May 1930, Orage returned to England and became seriously involved with
political issues and was paramount in re-sparking interest in the Social Credit
Movement. He was temporarily back in New York on 8 January 1931 to meet
Gurdjie's new demands. As Orage would confess to his wife, he would not be
teaching the Gurdjie System to any group past the end of the Spring. Orage was
on the pier on 13 March 1931 to bid Gurdjie farewell on his way back to France;
the Orages sailed back to England on 3 July of the same year. Back in England,
Orage founded a new journal, The New English Weekly, in April 1932. By the
beginning of 1933, The New English Weekly was an established success with the
critics but the economic eects of the Great Depression made it dicult as a
monetary venture; they were hard put for money. On 18 May 1933, Orage
published Dylan Thomas rst poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion. On
September 1933, Jessie gave birth to a daughter, Ann. On January 1934, Senator
Bronson M. Cutting presented before the United States Senate Orage's Social
Credit Plan as one of the tools of Roosevelt's economic policies; the news
appeared in the 2 February issue of The New English Weekly. At the beginning of
August 1934, Gurdjie asked Orage to revise a new edition of The Herald of
Coming Good. On 20 August, Orage wrote his last letter to Gurdjie: "Dear Mr.
Gurdjie, I've found very little to revise..."
[18]
Toward the end of his life, Orage was attacked by a severe pain below the heart,
an ailment that had been diagnosed a couple of years back as simply functional
and he did not again seek medical advice.
He was working on Social Credit and prepared a speech to be broadcast on
"Property in Plenty". During the broadcast, he experienced an excruciating pain
but continued the speech as if nothing were happening. After leaving the studio,
he spent the evening with his wife and friends and made plans to see the doctor
next day. On reaching home after midnight, he went to bed and died in his
sleep.
[19]
On 6 November 1934, Gurdjie was in New York City where he received the
telegram "...from London saying that Mr. Orage had died the same morning."
[20]
On hearing of Orage's death, Gurdjie issued the following invitation: "I have just
now learned of the death of Mr. Orage, who was for many years your guide and
6 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
teacher and my inner world essence friend. I invite you to attend a meeting to pay
homage to him and to speak in his memory, on Friday evening, November 9th, at
9 o'clock, in Miss Bentley's studio in Carnegie Hall, at which time, likewise, will
be played some of his favorite music and some of those pieces dedicated to him
which were composed by me while he was at the Prieur."
[21]
On 7 December
1934, in a letter to Ezra Pound, T. E. Lawrence expresses sadness at the death of
A. R. Orage.
[22]
Orage's former students of the Gurdjie System left the
enneagram inscribed on his tombstone.
Works
Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dionysian spirit of the age (1906)
[23]
Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism (1907)
[24]
National Guilds: An inquiry into the wage system and the way out (1914)
editor, articles from The New Age
An alphabet of economics (1918)
Readers and writers (19171921) (1922) as RHC
[25]
Psychological Exercises and Essays (1930)
The Art of Reading (1930)
On Love. Freely Adapted form the Tibetan (Unicorn Press 1932)
Selected Essays and Critical Writings (1935) edited by Herbert Read and
Denis Saurat
Political and Economic Writings. From 'The New English Weekly' 1932-34,
with a preliminary section from 'The New Age 1912' (1936) edited by
Montgomery Butchart, 'with the advice of Maurice Colbourne, T. S. Eliot,
Philip Mairet, Will Dyson and others'
Essays and Aphorisms (1954)
The Active Mind - Adventures in Awareness (1954)
Orage as Critic (1974) edited by Wallace Martin
Consciousness: Animal, Human & Superman (1978)
A. R. Orage's Commentaries on Gurdjie's All and Everything, edited by C. S.
Nott
References
^ Mairet, Philip (1966). A. R. Orage. University Books Inc. p. 63. "No better 1.
7 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
'argumentative' English was ever written."
^ Mairet, Philip (1966). A. R. Orage. University Books. p. 121. "The man who, as
Bernard Shaw said, was the most brilliant editor..."
2.
^ The purchase of The New Age (http://orage.mjp.brown.edu/mjp/pdf/martin02.pdf)
p. 17
3.
^ Carswell, John (1978). Lives and Letters. New Directions Publishing. pp. 2831.
ISBN 0-8112-0681-5. "...his little book introducing the philosophy of Nietzche...
appeared in 1906..."
4.
^ Luckhurst, Roger (2002). The invention of telepathy (1870-1901)
(http://books.google.com/books?id=OB4-aURw_IoC&pg=PA257&dq=orage+birth&
cd=54#v=onepage&q=orage%20birth&f=false). Oxford University Press. p. 257.
ISBN 0-19-924962-8. "...the main problem of the mystics of all ages has been the
problem of how to develop the superconsciousness, of how to become supermen."
5.
^ Orage, A. R. (1975). Wallace Martin, ed. Orage as critic (http://books.google.com
/books?id=8dU9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA6&
dq=Orage+and+Holbrook+Jackson#v=onepage&
q=Orage%20and%20Holbrook%20Jackson&f=false). Routledge. pp. 67.
ISBN 0-7100-7982-6. "...Orage did not lack activities to engage his intellectual
interests."
6.
^ Rooms in the Darwin Hotel (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/mjp/pdf/Darwin.pdf) pp. 98-127 7.
^ Ferrall, Charles (2001). Modernist writing and reactionary politics
(http://books.google.com/books?id=lxG35-IBohgC&pg=PA16#v=onepage&
q&f=false). Cambridge University Press. p. 16. ISBN 0-521-79345-9. "Thus Orage
remembered that..."
8.
^ cite book |last=Redman |rst=Tim |title=Ezra Pound and Italian fascism |page=49
|
9.
^ Ironside, Philip (1996). The social and political thought of Bertrand Russell
(http://books.google.com/books?id=koKlMJXmzeoC&pg=PA104#v=onepage&
q&f=false). Cambridge University Press. p. 104. ISBN 0-521-47383-7.
10.
^ Redman, Tim (1991). Ezra Pound and Italian fascism. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 24, 33, 4547. ISBN 0-521-37305-0.
11.
^ Hutchinson, Frances; Burkitt, Brian (1997). The political economy of social credit
and guild socialism (http://books.google.com/books?id=Q-jb8YwtXdoC&pg=PA10&
dq=orage+birth&cd=57#v=onepage&q=orage%20birth&f=false). Routledge.
ISBN 0-415-14709-3. "Douglas's birth... and his meeting with Orage in 1918 remain
the subject of mystery and speculation..."
12.
^ Gurdjie, George (1978). Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am' (2nd private ed.).
New York: Triangle Editions, Inc. p. 67. LCCN 75-15225. "On the rst evening of my
13.
8 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
arrival in New York..."
^ Woodson, Jon (1999). To make a new race. Univ. Press of Mississippi. pp. 3841.
ISBN 1-57806-131-8. "Jean Toomer...was encouraged by Orage to undertake groups of
his own."
14.
^ Taylor, Paul Beekman (2001). Gurdjie and Orage. Weiser. p. 173.
ISBN 1-57863-128-9. "Dear and kind author of The Tales of Beelzebub..."
15.
^ Taylor, Paul Beekman (2001). Gurdjie and Orage. Weiser. p. 178.
ISBN 1-57863-128-9. "On St. Valentine's day ...bootleg whisky Gurdjie had oered
them in honor of the Saint of Love."
16.
^ Gurdjie, George (1978). Life is real only then when I am (2nd Private ed.). New
York: Triangle Editions Inc. p. 95. LCCN 75-15225. "...Mr. Orage ... realizing the
necessity and at the same time all the diculties of getting means on the one hand
for sending money to me, and on the other hand for meeting the excessive
expenditures of his new family life..."
17.
^ Taylor, Paul Beekman (2001). Gurdjie and Orage. Weiser. pp. 179194.
ISBN 1-57863-128-9. "There has been a great ght here over the question of Orage.
Now I understand Orage has returned to the fold."
18.
^ Philip Mairet A. R. Orage, A Memoir, pp. 118-120, University Books, 1966 ASIN:
B000Q0VV8E; 1st ed. 1936
19.
^ G. I. Gurdjie Life is real only then, when 'I am' , p. 152, E. P. Dutton, 1978 ASIN:
B000VAZW3Y; 1st ed. Paris 1976
20.
^ A. R. Orage: Introduction and Bibliography (http://www.gurdjie.org/driscoll5.htm)
p. 2
21.
^ Marriot, Paul; Argent, Yvonne (1998). The Last Days of T. E. Lawrence: a leaf in the
wind (http://books.google.com/books?id=3CMsJBHA4PUC&pg=PA18&
dq=The+Last+Days+of+T.+E.+Larence+Orage&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false).
Sussex Academic Press. p. 18. ISBN 1-898595-22-4.
22.
^ Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dionysian spirit of the age (http://books.google.com
/books?id=bdkzAAAAMAAJ&dq=orage+birth&lr=)
23.
^ Nietzche in Outline and Aphorism (http://books.google.com
/books?id=MS1FAAAAYAAJ&dq=orage+birth)
24.
^ Readers and writers (1917-1921) (http://books.google.com
/books?id=PrsEAQAAIAAJ&dq=orage+birth)
25.
External links
A. R. Orage: A Memoir (1936) Philip Mairet
Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club (18931923) (Scolar Press 1990) Tom
9 of 10 2014-05-28 21:43
Steele
Gurdjie and Orage: Brothers in Elysium (2001) Paul Beekman Taylor,
English 480/680: Modernism In and Beyond the "Little Magazines", Winter
2007, Professor Ann Ardis, Brown University (http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8080
/exist/mjp/teaching/Ardis/syllabus.pdf)
Orage and the history of the New Age periodical, Brown University,
Modernist Journals Project (http://orage.mjp.brown.edu/mjp/pdf
/Martin02.pdf)
Brown University, Modernist Journals Project main index
(http://orage.mjp.brown.edu:16080/mjp/)
Encyclopdia Britannica article on Orage (http://www.britannica.com
/eb/article-9057250/Alfred-Richard-Orage#143390.hook)
Complete archive of The New Age under Orage (http://www.modjourn.org
/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=1158589415603817)
Leeds University Library Brotherton Collection Manuscripts c20 Orage
(http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/handlists/124BCOrage.pdf)
C. Daly King: "The Oragean Version" (1951) A record of Orage's transmission
of the Gurdjie Ideas during the 1920-30s in New York City
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/12931413/C-Daly-King-The-Oragean-Version)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org
/w/index.php?title=Alfred_Richard_Orage&oldid=610190346"
Categories: 1873 births 1934 deaths People from Harrogate (district)
English journalists English socialists Independent Labour Party politicians
British Social Crediters Fourth Way
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