Judgement on 19oo
By G. M. YOUNG
THERE are, I am told, certain gifted spirits who can stand in a snowstorm and call up all the sensations of a blazing August. I cannot. BUt it sometimes happens to me that, the time, the place, the conversation concurring, I can live again—but only for a minute or so—some experience of my youth, completely and exactly—far more exactly than I can remember, say, my feelings on a journey to London last Tuesday. The latest of these visitations took me to church, in June, 1900, at the very moment when a stumpy man, wearing a stock, slipped out, and the last hymn began. He had gone, of c ,urse, to bring the carriage round for the ladies from the manor house. Now Professor Pares not long ago posed the question: "Can any historian today feel like a member of the governing class in Victorian England.? " Well, driving to church was, I suppose, one of the badges of that class, and how many people, short of senility, today know what that felt like ? About the same time I first read Richard Feverel, and I was halfway through before I realised that it was not a tale of contemporary life. The framework was the same ; above all, the speed was the same. Baldwin used to say that soon all English classics would require footnotes to explain the metaphors from husbandry and sailing vessels Soon the Victorian• classics will require appendices to explain how the Victorians got about. Or a thesis, perhaps.
This chain of reflection, started by the coachman in the country church, led me to recall a paper I had once read, in which churches and hansoms somehow came together. In Obiter Dicta? No, but rather near it. George Russell, Of course: Seeing and Hearing, 1907. He there tells how, invited to spend a Sunday just beyond
— the suburbs, he remembered Lothair, "'tis the gondola of London," and bargained with the driver of a hansom. The streets end, the count'', begins, and the tinkle of a bell proclaims the presence of a church, and a tin church at that. Nothing else in sight. But the Oldest Inhabitant, who is also the bell-ringer; explains that the Squire wants to get some rich people to live round about, and he reckons they will be more likely tp come if there is a church for them to go to. And I remembered once seeing, in an estate agent's advertisement of the period, two clinching advantages enjoyed by some suburban property. One, that the purchaser would probably be mad; a J.P., the other, that there was an active clergyman in the parish. And all those rich people, if the weather gave the least excuse, would certainly drive to attend the ministrations of that industrious divine. Indeed, was it not proverbial that the Dissenter's carriage takes him to the parish church 7 To be a Justice of the Peace ; to bring the Vicar back to luncheon at the manor house, as it might be the domestic chaplain. And then ? " No one was allowed to ride or drive: Mrs. Neuchatel did not like riding or driving on 'Sundays. ' I see no harm in it,' said Adrian, ' but I like women to have their way about religion. And you may go to the _stables and see the horses.' " Did anyone ever say, ," You may go to the garage and look at the cars " ? I think not—unless perchance it was F. E. Smith. And among the revolutions of a century, does any go deeper than that ? Dr. Arnold saw in railways the end of feudalism, and rejoiced that one bad thing had come to an• end. Good or bad, it went on merrily for another fifty years, and then died stubbornly. What gave it the mortal blow was that fearful year 1879, when the hatches were choked with the hay from the flooded fields, the harvest was un- gathered in October, landowners who had sometimes given a ten per cent. abatement on their rents were glad' to get ten per. cent.
themselves, and everywhere the manor houses stood empty. Russell makes the acute remark that 'in former times families would economise by shutting up the town house and retiring to the country. Now they shut up the country house and displayed themselves in town. Rents might' fall, but dividends rose, and where could they be more splendidly, more sumptuously, spent than in London ?
That was Edwardian England, the last fling of the Eloi before the Morlocks took command ; and anyone embarking on the learned enterprise I have suggested, with a B.Litt. shimmering on the horizon, would do well to kindle his imagination by reading Russell. Born at Woburn, familiar from childhood with the old Whig society, with ladies who said Jertrude and balcony, and lords who rated their sons before all the servants for travelling to London in bowler hats, he carried about with him a complete set of standards by which to appreciate, co-ordinates by which to measure the changes he had observed. And, being a thoughtful man, he did not like what he. saw. Of course, things never happen all at once, and pockets of an older civilisation persisted, so obstinately that it would take two wars to destroy them. Still:
" We belong to one of the most corrupt generations of the human race. To find' its equal we must go back to she worst times of the Roman Empire. But it is uncommonly amusing to live in an age of decadence: you get every conceivable luxury and you die before the irruption of the barbarians."
That is 1900 giving judgement on itself. Was it a right judge- ment,?, I think 'I should say that it was right as regards the thing that did not matter, and wrong as regards the thing that did. And that was 7 " When the intellectual history of our time comes to be written, nothing will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investiga- tions that are going on and the genekal thought of other educated sections of the community. The human mind has achieved a higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity and self-detachment, that tried to spread out and must ultimately spread out to every human affair. Here mankind has learnt the rich rewards that ensue from patience and infinite pains."
The lesson is taking longer than he thought, and in his last days he doubted if it would ever be learnt. if it isn't, we need not worry, because there will be nobody left to worry and nothing left to worry about. If it is, then I can imagine A.D. 2000 taking those sentences of Wells as the truest judgement on ,A.D. 1900.
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