Vindicating the Victorians
As I Remember. By E. E. Kellett. (Victor Gollanez. 16s.) Evicar generation has to endure the challenge of its immediate successor ; and, having endured it, recedes into its proper place in the pageant of history. So, by slow but sure degrees, the Victorian age is passing into its own ; and a book, like this of Mr. Kellett's, so serene in temper, so penetrating in analysis, and so wide in range, offers an effective rebuke to the young Absaloms of criticism who wage rebellious war against the authority of their fathers' house.
The rebuke is the more convincing for its deliberate modera- tion. "Having spent many of my best and happiest years," says Mr. Kellett, " in the Vietorian age, I do not like to hear it disparaged. I do not agree that those years were one long nightmare of priggishness, narrow-mindedness, self- complacency, hypocrisy, and goody-goodiness." But he, is far too wise a critic to waste words in abusing the plaintiff' attorney. He faces rhetoric with facts ; and presents a varied and lively panorama of Victorianism, based partly on his own memory, and partly on the testimony of his forbears, animated by extensive knowledge of men and. manners, of 'contemporary history, literature, religion, politics and sport, and everywhere irradiated with a quiet judgement which is not afraid of weakening its argument by facing both sides of the _question fairly and squarely. Though saturated with personality, the book is not a collection of personal remini- scences. It is the, map of a period, not the portrait of an individual. And, though its aim is atmosphere, the atmosphere is composed of a medley of elements. It abounds in sketches of character, in descriptions, and in anecdotes. Not all the anecdotes are new, and some of them have been better told perhaps elsewhere. But in their fresh setting they cluster together, and combine in an attractive pattern.. The Victorians are vindicated by evidence, and the evidence is handled with equanimity and force.
Mr. Kellett is by circumstance a Liberal Nonconformist, bred in a strictly religiblis, almost a theologies' community.
His boyhood was not immune from the mental sufferings of a - 2 . generation subjected to every Puritan test of faith and works ; and he would be the first to admit that much that he was taught was terrible. -Nevertheless, he has a kindly-Indulgence for those forms of superstition which sprang from a sincere conviction' of the reality of the spiritual world, and of the secret processes of Providence in the ways of human life. Was all this confidence hypocrisy ? Some of it, perhaps ; since ,the Victorians were often as vicious as Pagans ; but certainly not all—perhaps not even the greater part. Mr. Kellett lingers gently, but not sentimentally, in contemplation of the Victorian home, where the day began and ended in family prayer, the hearth was the centre of the universe, and the concerns of the household were of paramount interest. If these people were hypocrites, their hypocrisy was of the kind common to all humanity. " Can we uncompromisingly assert that there is anywhere a single person entirely free from this most subtle and elusive vice ? We all practise it, and our purest and most candid actions are touched with it."
But their hypocrisy was sentimental, rejoins the Devil's Advocate. Well, says Mr. Kellett in effect, not all senti- mentality is to be despised. Victorian Literature (and the author's acquaintance with the infusoria of the libraries seems inexhaustible)—especially the favourite fiction of the day was bathed in tears, palpitating _with the emotion of the death-bed. But the men and women who wept for Little Nell, for the boy-hero of Misunderstood, and the lonely orphan of Eliza Cook's Old Arm Chair, were, in their fashion, fulfilling the Aristotelian doctrine of purging their sentiments in sincere example. This generation had not learnt to bottle up its feelings, or confront calamity with a sneer. Still, it produced a national character which, when it issued ip action, was susceptible to great movements and capable of revolutionary reforms. It was an age of sympathy, which did not stop short at protestation.
The chapters on Politics, School, and Games are among the best in the vohnne, covering wide spaces with shrewd, inter- pretative insight. Particularly illuminating is the study of the growth of Imperialism, with the dawning suspicion, even in the heart of its acclaimed Laureate, that the commercial spirit of the race was stealthily infecting its idealism, and that
the dust that builds on dust was fatally threatened-by the winds of the ,world. The history of the period builds itself up under Mr. Kellett's constructive -touch ; and behind the fabric of history, the character of a race emerges, working out its own salvation. That is the -author's constant conviction. History may be made by tyrants and scherners ; but the future is fed from the character of the crowd. And the Victorian crowd was sound at heart. The value of its legacy begins to be appreciated now, and will be more fully recognised in the
perspective of years to come. ARTII UR WAUGH,
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