First serialised Chambers’ Journal in 1891, this novel offers more psychological penetration than many other narratives written by Allen. The central character is Haviland Dumaresq, a philosopher and deviser of a grandiose Encyclopaedic Philosophy. Aging and embittered by his relative failure and early years of poverty, Dumaresq has become an opium addict — likely inspired by the life of Allen’s hero and mentor, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). An English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist, Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia.
The novel relates how Dumaresq is forced to engage with the ‘Philistine’ world when planning the future of his beloved daughter Psyche. She is in love with a successful, yet shy painter, Austen Linnell, who has inherited a fortune from his father’s American patent medicine company. Shy of the origins of his fortune, Linnell lets no one know that he is rich. Dumaresq, fearing his daughter will marry a penniless painter, forces her to promise not to encourage him for three years. Feeling jilted, Linnell leaves for Khartoum on a madcap adventure with a journalist. In England Psyche suffers from episodes of psychosomatic blindness…