The Bookman THE AGE OF REFORM LITERARY AWES. THE NEW CHINA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 12, 13 July 1935, Page 24

The Bookman

THE AGE OF REFORM

LITERARY AWES.

THE NEW CHINA

TOBY, WHia, iB TVIT

LORD BROUGHAM AND HIS TIMES

If one \yere asked to name the ■ period in the history of Britain when ; t~to use industrial phraseology-—the output of sheer brainstufr in all direc- - tions reached its peak, one could not overlook the claims of the first half of the nineteenth century. It was for the first fifteen years an almost unbroken period of war for very existence against the genius of Napoleon, in which Britain won through, much as she won through the Great War a century later, by shrewd diplomacy as much as by prowess of leaders on land and sea. And yet throughout that time and for another fifteen years or more politics . were corrupt to a degree that seems almost incredible in a.retrospect from today. This was the age Of "rotten boroughs," when Parliamentary seats were bought and sold or conceded for services like any other commodity. Britain was ruled by quite small coteries of aristocratic families, mostly connected with one another, and the parties—the Tories and the Whigs—were aligned not so much on principles as " rivals in the struggle for place and power and the : spoils that went with them. The ■ social morality of the upper classes j was no higher than their political I code, and the lower classes were in a state of poverty and ignorance worse than what prevailed in any other nation of Western Europe. The proportion of Englishmen who could read or write in those days was painfully small. Yet such was the natural vigour of the race that through this upper crust of rottenness, as through a heavilymanured soil, there pushed its way to light the richest growth of genius the British nation has • ever seen. What other age can show such a galaxy of great men?'. Poets like Shelley, Keats, Coleridge,! and Byron, greatest of a host; essayists like de Quincey, Lamb and Landor,' Hazlitt, Wilson, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, Hallam, Cobbett, and Leigh Hunt;, novelists like Scott and Jane Austen; painters like J. W. M. Turner and Constable, among many. So much for the arts. This was the age when journalism began with the newspapers to exercise its influence and the great reviews, were founded.In the more material sphere the scientists were at work paving the way to modern miracles; John Dalton, Humphrey Day, and. Michael Faraday are memorable names. Inventors and engineers gave the world the steamboat and the railway, and Telford built his,, bridges and canals.. Major inventions in textile and other machinery expedited the progress of the industrial revolution. BROUGHAM AS REFORMER. On such an expanding world of mind and matter the social and political system of Britain in that day was like an old, garment impeding the growth. It was an obvious anachronism that had to go, if the country was to progress, and action could only take place through Parliament unless there was to be a revolution like the French. It took a full generation of work in and out of Parliament to accomplish even the first great steppolitical reform. Of the persons, great and small, who played a part in bringing about, reform, the greatest, as well as the most typical, figure of the age was Henry, Lord Brougham. Although he -shuttles through the whole period, weaving his own bright thread in the many-hued fabric of history, there has been, curiously enough, up to the present no adequate life of him in a handy form for anyone interested to read. This gap has now been filled by Mi*. G. T. Garratt's LORD BROUGHAM (Macmillan and Co., Ltd., London, pp. 354), which gives us at least a moving picture of Brougham and the stirring times in ■Which he lived and played his part. Of him Mr. Garratt says at the outset:— Posterity has not been fair fo ono of tlio great figures dominating the first half of tho nineteenth century. Perhaps this was inevitable. Brougham disobeyed tbc first rules for those who would become famous in politics or literature, and would bo esteemed after their death. He was incurably versatile, and he neither organised a personal following nor attached himself to a group. Brougham was v politician who became virtual lender of tho Whig Party, an orator who was "thu one sola rival" of Canning; a lawyer, who rose to be Lord Chancellor; a pioneer of populiir education, who helped to found London University; a reformer and controversialist, who did moro than anyone to. free his countrymen's minds from the lumber' of eighteenth century ideas and Inhibitions. ... He forced tho Kng-. ]l3h to think along new linos, a service lor which they are not apt to bo over-grateful. Possibly he lived too long. Sorao of the causes for which ho had fought—the abolltlou of slavery, Catholic emancipation, tho sovereignty of Parliament, the State's responsibility for popular education, the easier accessibility of the Law Courts—these had ceased to be matters of bitter controversy, and certain general principles had been accepted some years before he died. Born in 1778, while Chatham and Dr. Johnson were still alive, ho survived such younger men as Palmcrstou and Thackeray, For over fifty of his ninety years ho impressed his vivid personality upon his countrymen, but the. paradoxes of his oarly years had become platitudes long before he died, and the Victorians forgot the Iconoclast of the Regency, who had broken tho Images which no longer had any significance. . . . A NORTHERNER IN LONDON. Brougham, who came of a Westmoreland family on his father's side and Scottish on his mother's, was entirely ' Scottish from upbringing and educa-tion,-and always ranked as a Northerner^ in the London which he invaded with many other ambitious young men of the north and who formed a big part of the professional element in English politics, where most of the teams were titled amateurs. Brougham for many years acted with one or two others as a sort of "brain trust" to the Whig Party. He was always a Reformer, standing to the Left of tho Whigs, but never a Radical, like Cobbett, .Henry Hunt ("The Orator"), Sir Francis Burdett (a "parlour Bolshevik"), and Admiral Cochrane, the naval firebrand, who left politics to help the Chileans and Brazilians in the South American Wars of Independence. The Whigs were a heterogeneous team, headed by the indolent Lord Grey, and it was not until Brougham was 52 that the Whigs came into office. Their hostility- to George IV, as Regent and afterwards as King, was a barrier ■which their own pusillanimity made stronger. Brougham reached his heights as an advocate in hte defence of Queen Caroline in 1820 before the House of Lords on the Bill of Pains and Penalties, calling for the divorce and degradation of the Queen at the instance of George IV, from whom she had been separated. Brougham's success did not make him a persona grata with the WMgs—he was never accepted into the charmed circle of either party —and in a weak moment he chose a "descent to the Woolsack" and the House of Lords rather than carry on as a freelance fighter and "King-maker." That was the real end of Brougham's political career, for when, after passing the Reform Bill in' 1832, the Whig Government crumbled,1 m 3.834^

Brougham went out of office, never to return. ' ■. THE GREAT MISTAKE. On this pathetic anti-climax Brougham's present biographer philosophises thus: — The lives of many la-en polllli-al reformers fall into a certain pattern. Up to tliu ago oi lltty or thereabouts they arc <iulto content to lie'in tho right with two or three"; they endure the great moral strain of supporting a. ckjUuilo point of view against the deadweight ot Hostility and iudlirerouco. Then lv later middle age, when thoy have, porhaps unknown to themselves deeply affucted thu outlook Of a new generation, they becoino weary of well-doing, they long for some coucreto recognition, tor a "label" aud a pjaco in tho world. Sumctlmos they begin to suffer from that last infirmity of noble minds—social ambition—and fall toil t.itlo or the smiles of a duchess. Sometimes the old acquisitive instinct, long suppressed, comes out in a keenness to amass a fortune. . . . All these factors oncourage a move world view of life aud politics. A decline in zeal aud oombativeness Is so normal Hint it is tho variations from typo which arc interesting. These truculent Radicals of Brougham's generation, Burdett and Hobhouse, ended their careers, tho first as a member of the Conservative Party, the second as a Peer. So might we compare in our own times the careers of F. E. Smith, M.P. ("Galloper Smith"), the late Earl of BLrkenhead, and the former Socialist firebrand, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. MAN OF MANY PARTS. This biography of Lord Brougham is full of the life of his times, the wit and the venom of pamphleteers and caricaturists in an age when the law of libel might protect the King, but not his subjects. Brougham himself, as one of the chief contributors to the "Edinburgh Review" in its most savage days and as a collaborator (revealed recently) in "The Times," could well appreciate the innumerable jokes on I his choice of a title, Lord Brougham and .Vaux, and the play on Vaux in Vauxhall and the Vaux and Grapes, and, best of all, "Henry Brougham has destroyed himself and is now Vaux (vox) et praeterea nihil." A cartoonist shows Lady Holland ("Madagascar"), of Holland House, the Why salon, as Delilah clipping the locks of the sleeping Samson (Brougham), and Lord Grey on tiptoe, with Lord Durham in attendance carrying the Lord Chancellor's wig, saying, "Hush! How astonished he'll be,when he.awakes!" And there is the famous remark of the poet, Samuel Rogers, after seeing Brougham off: "This morning, Solon, Lycui'gus, Demosthenes, Archimedes Sir, Isaac Newton, and a great many more went away in one post-chaise." And it was Brougham who invented the famous "box on wheels," which is always associated with his name. Finally, .there i- the cartoon of him (reproduced), which appeared in "Punch".; of April 19, ,1848, when Brougham was in his 70th year, as "The Citizen of the World; or, Lord Brougham Naturalised Everywhere," with the famous Brougham nose, like a proboscis, conspicuous on a score or more of figures in the costumes of different nations. This from the "Punch" which hkd caricatured him for a generation was, indeed, tribute to the greatness of the man.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mr. Francis Yeats-Brown, who made his name with "Bengal Lancer," is now engaged on a novel.

Following her amusing anthology, "The Minor Pleasures of Life," Miss Rose Macaulay is now compiling a collection to be called "Personal Pleasures."

"Blood Relations," the. tale of an. English woman married to a German before the war, is a new novel by Sir Philip Gibbs, to be published by Messrs. Hutchinson.

Shakespeare's plays enjoy great popularity. In Moscow "Antony and Cleopatra," "Romeo and Juliet," and "King Lear" are being played, and "Richard the Third" and "The Taming of the Shrew" in Leningrad.

A sharp controversy will be revived in August when Mr. H. Duff Cooper's official life of Field-Marshal Haig will come out. This book will reply to the serious charges brought by Mr. Lloyd George in his "War Memoirs."

Addressing the First Edition Club, Mr. Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, said that he had been a book collector for many years. Out of his 5000 acquaintances in the world of his books there were only about 200 that he regarded as friends, returning to them again and again. Among them was Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways," which he had read 11 times.

In his forthcoming book, "The New America—The New World," Mr. H. G. Wells discusses the question: "How far is the trend of events in America developing the pattern of a new and fuller life for men?" After surveying the situation in the United States and other countries, the author affirms his belief that intimations of a future world State are to be found—if anywhere —in Westminster and in Washington.

The Venerable Bede is probably the earliest great Englishman of whose career enough is known to warrant his being honored with centenary celebrations. Recognising this, the British Museum has opened a manuscript exhibition of his works in honour of his 1200 th anniversary this year. The finest contemporary copies of his most famous book, "The Ecclesiastical History of the People of England," are to be found, not in London, but in places so far apart, both geographically and intellectually, as Cambridge and Leningrad, »

There is published at rare intervals a "children's book" which can claim the status of a minor work of art and, as such, will charm and entertain grown-ups, no less, and perhaps even more, than tho readers for whom it is primarily intended. Such a book is "Ho-ming: Girl of New China," by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, a companion volume to the excellent "Young Fu" by the same author. For younger readers, the actual adventures of the highspirited and attractive little Chinese girl who gives the book its title will be all-sufficient. To the adult, the chief interest will lie in the fact that Mrs Lewis has drawn on the experience of many years' residence in China to describe most vividly and convincingly the life of a small provincial town and to illustrate in sharp and delightful contrasts the conflict between the ways of an immemorial civilisation and those engendered by the new spirit that is sweeping through the land under th>? influence both oi the Nanking Government and the Communist movement. The tale is illustrated with some excellent drawings by Kurt Wicse, who also is thoroughly conversant' with the. scenes tie .depicts