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W. S. Gilbert—of the beloved Gilbert and Sullivan operas—seems to have presented a psychological problem to his biographers. They all find it necessary to assert that despite his well-deserved reputation for irascibility and bad temper, he really had a warm and generous heart. The delight in cruelty which is so conspicuous in his writings was in part the expression of his frustrated craving for domination and recognition; in part it was the bursting forth of his superabundant vitality against his self-imposed decorum and the restraints of mid-Victorian prudery. But there was something indecisive, something inconsistent, in his personality. His brain was not in harmony with his sentiments; he resented the petticoat morality of his day, but he could not free himself from it. He wanted to be a social philosopher and a moral reformer, but he made his reputation as a fanciful humorist. He was furious over the failure of his sentimental plays, for they expressed something which he felt very strongly although he never was quite sure what that something was. He always fought, but only for the sake of the fight, since he had no clear cause to fight for.
William Schwenck Gilbert was born November 18, 1836. Goldberg (8), (9) says that his father, William Gilbert, and his mother, Anne, second daughter of a Dr. Thomas Morris, had been married 'on February 4th of the same year in which their first child and only son was born. Four daughters were to follow… The mother of Gilbert disappears from the narrative almost as soon as she is delivered of him.' The biographies by Pearson (12) and by Dark and Grey (3) mention only three sisters; they add nothing regarding Gilbert's mother.
About the father there is a great deal of information. He was born in 1804. At fourteen, he was a midshipman in the service of the East India Company, but he 'quarreled with his officers