Victorian Age Summed Up

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

Victorian Age Summed Up

rOSE readers who lack time or inclination to read all the books which have been published within the last two years on the general subject of die Victorian era, or those wh?, having read much, would like to read a sum-ming-up, may be recommended confidently to seek a booklet by Professor Walter Murdoch. The genial and shrewd Australian essayist last year delivered two lectures at Brisbane on the invitation of the University of Queensland, and these have been published under the title "The Victorian Era" (Angus anil Robertson). Professor Murdoch remarks that "if we find many things to object to in the Victorian spirit, we can hardly object more strenuously than the great Victorians themselves objected." He then reviews the weaknesses of the age, quoting as proof the writings of the great Victorians, particularly Oarlyle and Arnold. Tennyson (it may be remarked incidentally) seems to him to the weaknesses of the English middleclass attitude to life prevalent in his day. Of the great landowner® he wrote: "Why should not these great Sirs Give up their parka some dozen times a year To let the people breathe."

"That not very revolutionary suggestion," Professor Murdoch remarks, "is Tennyson's contribution to the social problem of his time." But there was another side of the picture, and after drawing up his indictment the lecturer declares: "I believe it (the Victorian era) to be a period to which we, its children, owe an immense debt of gratitude; that our present fashion of treating it with contempt i«* neither sensible nor just; that the Victorians had some secrets which we have lost, and which we must try to recovcr if we would find a cure for some of our present ills." He believes that i» the production of men of genius the Victorian age was the greatest in England's history, that one sign of its greatness was the fact that it recognised and honoured many of its great men, and that another was the contribution it made to the World's stock of ideas. "Much as we may laugh at the Victorian weaknesses, we owe them nn immense debt of gratitude, because we find, somewhat to our surprise, that when we are fighting for any real reform tojday.we are fighting for an ideal whu-h v was first clarified and formulated and defined by the genius of the Victorian era. We laugh at them, but we march under a banner they wove for us, and the enemies we march against were their enemies, too."