Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian maintains that most of the best writers and playwrights are conservative in their outlook. So the news that David Mamet the best present-day American playwright has moved from left to right did not come as a surprise - the man is talented, after all - but was very good to hear anyway.

This review of The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture points out the obvious:

With all the talk of Hollywood liberalism — the endless leftist blather from Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, the cozying up to Castro and Chavez by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover, the jejune Iranian peace-making by Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard, etc., etc — it’s fascinating that the two leading playwrights in the English language (the smart guys) — Tom Stoppard and David Mamet — identify as conservative/libertarians.

Tory Historian rarely makes predictions (better not say never but hardly ever will do). One reason is the silliness of predictions found in many books. Books on politics, particularly those that deal with slightly volatile regions are notorious - the vagaries of publishing are such that by the time a book comes out everything would have succumbed to events.

Seeing Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” in its first revival since 1993 sent Tory Historian into a frenzy of musing about research, evidence and the obvious difficulty all historians face of how much of what we know we actually do know and how much of it we can prove.

This, one hastens to add, is only one of the themes in what is probably Stoppard’s most intellectual and, possibly, finest play. (An unreserved recommendation to anyone who might get a chance to see it: do so as soon as you can.)

As just about everyone knows the play shows events taking place in the same stately home in Derbyshire at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth or, in this production, the beginning of the twenty-first, the latter centred on an investigation of what happened in the former. Because we can see what “really” happened in the earlier part we can see where the later researchers, literary historians and a scientific mathematician, may be going wrong and when they begin to see the “truth”. Assuming, of course that it is the truth, something the play leaves, if not in dark, at least in crepuscular dusk.

In the modern section there are two literary historians. One is an amateur who had written a supposedly revisionist but probably quite silly book about Lady Caroline Lamb; the other a hard-nosed, arrogant and ambitious don, who is genuinely appreciative of Byron’s poetry but knows that it is the man’s private life that will bring him the fame he craves. (Actually, Byron would have understood that craving.)

Interestingly enough, it is the professional, Bernard Nightingale, who proceeds largely on his intuition that sometimes proves to be right and sometimes wrong; Hannah Jarvis, the amateur, demands a stricter standard of proof in which she is at one with the scientist Valentine, a descendant of the family we see in the earlier segments.

As we watch the two literary historians spar we realize that, as it happens, neither of them is a particularly good researcher. They seem to have little idea of where one can find information to support their assumptions apart from the accidentally preserved letter. Does an historian of literary life in the early nineteenth century really not bother to find out who edited the various London magazines?

On the other hand, as R. G. Collingwood has pointed out, among others, one cannot research without having some idea of what one is looking for, even if the subsequent research proves that idea wrong partly or in whole.

Sometimes the idea appears as happenstance. Bernard’s feeling that Byron must have stayed in Sidley Park is vindicated by Valentine mentioning that the poet is listed as a guest who shot in the game book, a valuable document that neither Bernard nor Hannah are aware of. As it happens, even the game book can be inaccurate and this we know from our view of what “really” happened in the years 1809 – 1812 in Sidley Park.

This piece of information sends Bernard into a frenzy of speculation until he comes up with an elaborate, entirely plausible but completely wrong theory about Byron’s behaviour. This theory brings him temporary fame and promises of more until Hannah, going through the garden book of the period (another valuable source of information) finds an entry about some flowers that had been sent from Martinique by the then Lady Croom's brother. This provides definite proof that Bernard’s theory is completely wrong and explains, at least partly, what happened. (The other part we shall never know as Septimus Hodge, the tutor, has burnt Byron’s note to himself without reading it.)

The point is that the entry Hannah finds would have had little significance if Bernard had not, some time previously, found several letters in a book that, at some point, belonged to Byron and drawn several entirely wrong inferences from them, which sent him scurrying to Sidley Park where she was researching the existence of a possible hermit in the artificial hermitage in the first half of the nineteenth century. Confused? Well, that’s research for you.

What do we know and what can we prove?

L. P. Hartley, not one of Tory Historian’s favourite writers, started his best-known book (mostly because of the film with Julie Christie and Alan Bates) with the words: “The past is another country; they do things differently there”.

As it happens, Tory Historian disagrees with that and feels that, maybe, novelists should not make comments about history (unless we are talking about Georgette Heyer). In essence, whatever the details may be, people do not do things differently in the past from the present.

While there is nothing attractive in rose-coloured glasses or, to be precise, in people looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses, the sneering proclamation of the superiority of everything in the present is no better.

These random thoughts appeared during the reading of Anita Desai’s introduction to the Virago edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “Turkish Embassy Letters”.

Lady Mary, one of the most attractive letter writers of a period that boasted many such individuals, is patted on the head for “her ability to study and alien culture according to its own values” and for “a rare ability to see herself through the eyes of others”. If only Ms Desai shared these abilities.

She is so horrified by the fact that Lady Mary’s father conducted financial negotiations with her suitor, Edward Wortley Montagu, that she quite forgets to explain why those negotiations came to nothing. Or to tell us how and when were the young people reconciled with the Earl of Kingston, later Marquess of Dorchester.

Altogether Ms Desai is horrified by many things and seems unable to study what she sees as an alien culture, England of the eighteenth century, according to its own values.

All those people, my dear, Alexander Pope, Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey and Lady Mary herself, are so nasty. Oh my smelling salts! Or a lavender-sprinkled handkerchief!

That talent to enjoy was poisoned and distorted by the society in which she moved, what Dervla Murphy calls not the Age of Reason but the Age of Savagery. The attacks made on her by Pope would have dragged him into a court of law for libel nowadays, and Horace Walpole’s insinuation that she suffered from venereal disease (‘the half she yet retains of nose’) would have got him a ruinous fine. In the eighteenth century these jibes were permissible, and Lady Mary’s record as an adversary in the field is not negligible. Her caricature of the hunchbacked Pope could only be acceptable amongst hardened cynics.

Of course there can be no doubting of John Buchan as a Conservative. He was one of Lord Milner’s young men; he was a great Empire man, believing in its future as well as its past; he was, of course, a Unionist; he was Scottish Unionist MP for Edinburgh University from 1927 to 1935.

Beyond that he was a man who believed in public life, in ambition, in bettering oneself for one’s own good and that of one’s country. A son of the manse, he became a successful lawyer, writer, politician and, finally, Governor-General of Canada.

The question of whether he was a Tory or not arose in Tory Historian’s mind on re-reading the splendid “Huntingtower”, first of the Dickson McCunn stories. Mr McCunn is a highly successful Glasgow grocer, who sells his business and retires at the beginning of the novel.

Being an incurable romantic he decides to celebrate the beginning of his retirement by a jaunt and runs into remarkable adventures that severely test his intellectual and physical stamina. The adventures involve a Russian princess on the run from a particularly evil Bolshevik who had been a rather unpleasant Tsarist officer, the Tsar’s jewels (though this is a side issue), an English poet by name of John Heritage, Sir Archie Roylance, one of Buchan’s reappearing heroes, slightly lame as a result of dare-devil behaviour as a Great War pilot and, above all, the Gorbals Die-Hards.

The latter is a group of tough boys who live on the streets and survive by their wits until they are taken under Mr McCunn’s wing. Uncared for and discarded by society they show their courage, intelligence and superlative morals in the fight for Princess Saskia.

The novel, like many others by Buchan, have little time for authorities. The police in “Huntingtower”, as everyone keeps repeating are of little use and will arrive too late as they always do. It is up to the disparate individuals to win the tremendous battle with the forces of evil. They do so through steadfastness and intelligence, although they are severely outnumbered.

It is not society or the authorities who understand the goodness of the Gorbals Die-Hards but a particular individual, himself a grocer, a bourgeois, not a man highly regarded by the average Tory squire but greatly admired by Buchan.

Nor are the views about the Russian Revolution expressed in the book entirely what one would expect. The Bolsheviks are power-crazed criminals but the worst of them had had a bad reputation in Bokhara in 1912 as Archie Roylance makes it clear. He is simply evil and goes with whoever will let him exercise control. (Oddly enough, there is a note of compassion even for him.)

While Russia and Russians are seen as victims of the most terrible historical tragedy, there is a clear indication that Buchan and his characters feel strongly that the tragedy was brought about by the carelessness and thoughtlessness of the Russian aristocracy.

The man Saskia marries, the erstwhile Prince Alexis Nicolayevich, now Alexander Nicholson, an Australian engineer and budding businessman, makes it clear that he had left Russia because he was disgusted by the behaviour of his own class, going back only to fight in the War and then joining the Australian divisions. He it is, who explains to Saskia that Dickson McCunn, far from a figure of fun, is the real strength of a country and a nation. Russia will not become truly great until she has people like him. (Sadly, that remains true to this day.)

Interestingly enough, Richard Usborne, in his highly entertaining “Clubland Heroes” shows himself to be far more of a Tory than Buchan. In fact, he does not exactly like Buchan, partly because his were the “clean” adventure stories that parents and teachers always approved of but partly because of his tendency to write about outsiders who make good. Usborne prefers the upper class thugs of Sapper and Dornford Yates, characters who have long been forgotten, while in one form or another (usually the wrong one) Buchan’s heroes and heroines go on, appealing to generation after generation of readers.

Tory Historian came across an old edition of one of the William Brown books, “William - the Outlaw” by Richmal Crompton. Came across describes the process very well as people in a neighbouring street had put out a couple of boxfuls of old books, encouraging passers-by to take what they wanted and to leave financial contributions, should they so wanted. Tory Historian did leave some.

The books were all a little decrepit and were clearly part of a somewhat random family collection. There was a strong smell of damp hanging around them and “William - the Outlaw” had a sticker that indicated it had been acquired in a bookshop in Lusaka. In fact, there must be an interesting tale around those books.

However, first things first. A book newly acquired requires some reading. In this case, this meant an entire afternoon happily devoted to William Brown and the Outlaws.

Richmal Crompton had the enviable knack of being able to draw any reader immediately into the world she describes. Within a few pages one knows a good deal about William, his parents and siblings, the Outlaws, the school they go to, their other friends and enemies, the village in general and, what is more, one cares about them.

Some aspects remain a little vague. Just exactly how large is that village? Or is it a question of several villages close to each other, all surrounding a nameless town where, one assumes, most of the men work, with farms and fields around them?

For the village has a strongly defined class structure with society being run by matrons and families who live in large houses called things like “The Laurels” and descending to those people in the cottages such as jobbing gardeners. The Browns and the other Outlaw families are in the middle.

They are not particularly grand but Mr Brown manages to keep a cook, a parlour maid and a gardener, as do the parents of Ginger, Douglas and Henry. Mrs Brown is always involved in village activity, such as fetes and bazaars, much disliked by Mr Brown. Robert, William’s brother goes to university and Ethel, his sister, does nothing very much apart from buying new hats, going to garden parties and flirting with young men.

The vicar’s wife figures prominently, as do other locally active ladies.

There is another gang in the village or nearby, the Hubert Laneites against whom the Outlaws wage permanent war. It is assumed that the Hubert Laneites are probably from slightly better off families.

There are enough children in either this one village or several neighbouring villages to keep one or two boys’ schools and, presumably, a girls’ school going, with the assumption that a number of the socially superior children probably attend boarding schools. Children of jobbing gardeners and suchlike, go to the elementary school and get jobs soon after that, possibly by going into service.

William’s school is obviously dedicated to good education and even the Outlaws manage to pick up a certain amount of random knowledge. It is, in fact, surprising how much boys who are dedicated to the outdoor life, playing pirates and Red Indians and the avoidance of anything that smacks of learning, actually know.

The title story of “William - the Outlaw” involves the four eleven year old boys discussing (with a hit and miss accuracy) such matters as parliamentary legislation, trade unions and letters to the press on the subject of people needing a lot of fresh air.

In other stories they display some knowledge of history and literature. Douglas, who is the intellectual of the group, is even knowledgeable about Bible stories and suggests that Joseph must have been like a particularly obnoxious and sneaky boy in the village, called Georgie. Sadly, the growth of civilization prevents the Outlaws from dealing with Georgie as Joseph’s brothers had dealt with him, but they still manage to defeat the little sneak, with the help of one right-minded adult and through some knowledge of English history. (No, no, read it yourself. The story is called “Georgie and the Outlaws”. You won’t regret it.)

In the “Knights of the Square Table”, the Outlaws are driven by bad weather to reading a book about King Arthur, given to Ginger by his aunt, and the tales enthral them.

When William affirms that there must still be wrongs to right though they probably do not hear about them, Ginger agrees:

My father’s got a lot of wrongs to start with. Rates an’ income-tax an’ that sort of thing.

We’re not going to start rightin’ those. It’d take us months to right those. They’re not really wrongs, either. They’re only things grown-ups go on about at breakfast. They’d go on about somethin’ else if we got those righted. They aren’t what I call wrongs. Not like bein’ put in dungeons an’ havin’ your lands ravidged by giants nd your castle stole off you by false knights.

“Do shut up int’ruptin’, said Henry, “I’m tryin’ to tell you ‘bout this gen’ral election. There’s four sorts of people tryin’ to get to be rulers. They all want to make things better, but they want to make ‘em better in different ways. There’s Conservatives an’ they want to make things better by keepin’ ‘em jus’ like what they are now. An’ there’s Lib’rals an’ they want to make things better by alterin’ them jus’ a bit, but not so’s anyone’d notice, an’ there’s Socialists, an’ they want to make things better by taking everyone’s money off ‘em and there’s Communists an’ they want to make things better by killin’ everyone but themselves.”

Today, our readers will be intrigued to learn, is International Women’s Day. What better day there is to write about one of the greatest woman writers in the English language, one who was, moreover, according to Professor Marilyn Butler, a conservative in her outlook.

In her “Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries” Professor Butler contrasts Jane Austen with Maria Edgeworth, the latter being a representative of the Enlightenment while Miss Austen harks back to a different set of ideas. While appreciating that changes are happening in the world she describes, Jane Austen, nevertheless, glorifies the old-fashioned community of the countryside with a responsible “leader” at the head of it.

Nor does she think highly of individuals following their own instincts, ideas or understanding. Her heroines achieve happiness only when they accept the judgements of the world. Then again, as Professor Butler refers to glancingly, the world, as represented by Sir Walter Elliott and Lady Russell (well-meaning, though the latter is) or by the Bingley sisters is not precisely accurate in its own judgements.

This is the problem with Jane Austen: it is immensely difficult to fit her into any category. She is largely conservative in her social attitudes but many of her own judgements are too radical even for modern film and TV producers.

Tory Historian is a great Jane Austen fan, having read all her novels several times, most of the early pieces and fragments, a couple of biographies, critical studies (most of them inadequate) and some of the letters. Therefore, the Mills and Boonification of Jane has not been to Tory Historian’s taste.

This is rather a new development in that back in the days the BBC had Sunday tea-time serials, which were not high-profile, there had been several extremely good adaptations of the Austen novels.

Once the “Classic Serial” became a flagship programme, everything has changed. The high-profile films have not helped. Those clever, witty, extremely hard-hitting novels have been turned into romantic mush.

The final insult is the latest film, which turns Miss Austen’s own life into mush. Young(ish) Anne Hathaway, last seen being unable to sustain the supposed main part in “The Devil Wears Prada” is smirking on posters as she is “Becoming Jane”. One wonders what she was before that.

Miss Hathaway tells us that she spent a month in London, reading all Jane Austen’s letters in the British Library. This may even be true. But why is it that neither she nor the film’s director or designer have managed to notice that young ladies of the period did not wear décolleté dresses during the day or go around bare-headed, as shown above in the drawing made by Cassandra Austen of her sister.

At the same time there has been an extraordinary promotion of Miss Austen’s male characters. According to all recent dramatizations, the novels are nothing but love stories with both members of the main couple being of equal importance. Several male actors have acquired the status of a sex symbol by playing in an Austen film or TV serial.

It seems that the modern film-maker finds it impossible to grasp that those novels are about women. The men are secondary, little more than marriage objects. Even when they are of importance in the community like Mr Knightley in “Emma”, they are seen entirely from the heroine’s point of view.

The famous TV series of “Pride and Prejudice” with Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennett and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy starts with the young men riding into town (Meryton, one assumes). This places them at the centre of the subsequent plot.

Nothing could be further from the novel, which is about the Bennett family and, famously, starts with them discussing the recent arrival of Mr Bingley about whom they know very little but whom they suspect to be extremely eligible.

“Pride and Prejudice” is a clever picture of contemporary society. Unlike some Victorian novelists, Jane Austen has a clear idea of money. Mr Bennett has £2,000 a year and has been unable to increase that income or to save money for his daughters, largely because of his abdication of responsibility.

Mr Bingley has £4,000 or £5,000 a year and has not yet settled down. His sisters have an income of their own, so their father must have made quite a fortune in his business in the Midlands, something that they do not want to remember.

Mr Darcy is, of course, the representative of the old aristocracy, related to all sorts of people, the owner of a handsome estate that, unlike Mr Bennett, he pays attention to (though when exactly is hard to tell) and has £10,000 a year. This is to be viewed more like turn-over in a modern business rather than clear profit, as the money has to be used for the upkeep of Pemberley, the household, the estate as well as his lifestyle.

No-one can accuse Miss Austen of being a snob. She may not think young girls should follow their own inclination, not being capable of making the right decision, but neither is she exactly enamoured of snobbish creatures like Lady Catherine de Burgh or her toady, Mr Collins.

In the end, it is being a gentleman or one of a gentleman’s family that counts, as Elizabeth famously tells Lady Catherine. But a gentleman has to do his duties as well as enjoy privileges. Mr Bennett is a sad failure in this respect as are numerous other “gentlemen” in the novels. It is the new, rising class of naval officers who are shown to be the real gentlemen in “Persuasion”, not the vain, selfish, stupid baronet, Sir Walter Elliott.

One could go on like this and, possibly, there will be an article in the soon to be published next issue of the Conservative History Journal. At present, all Tory Historian can suggest is that all those who really love Jane Austen’s novels should unite in “reclaiming Jane” from the terrible mush that she has been consigned to recently.