THE VICTORIAN AGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 144, 19 June 1937, Page 28

THE VICTORIAN AGE

3REAT LITERATURE

SOME CHARACTERISTICS

A CENTENARY REVIEW

(AVritten for "The Post" by A.M.)

I have no doubt that the Elizabethan anrt Victorian a;es will appear to '^historian of the future as the twin peaks in which nn.nsn -civilisation culminated.—Dean Inge. Early on the morning of June 20, 1837, a hundred years ago tomorrow, the Archbishop of Canterbury had Princess Victoria awakened at Kensington Palace to tell; her, that she was Queen of England. Then began a long reign of more than; sixty years, and in the loose sense of the term, .me Victorian Age. Before we consider the limitations of that phrase let it be stated briefly.what the young Queen abtuaUy did'W the way of™inf >n a new era. She saved the Monarcny. The^next heir ■ was the hated Duke of 'fcSmberland and the .nation w°uM^o have tolerated him long as King. -Vie toria made a clean break with the «gtei™of'the. Georges -She brought a new .'and fresh .intelligence to the Throne', established anew Court, and cave new ideas to society. To that Ixtent the Victorian Age began when Queen/Victoria came, to the -Throne. THE RECKONING OF AGES., An age, however, never really begins on a certain day. It grows from seeds Zvn over a period of years; mdeed it is a product of all the past. a So when we speak of the Elizabethan Age, or the Age of Anne, we may mean more than the period actually covered by the reign of the Monarch. Asquith remarks that '"Shakespeare and-Bacon —the two Elizabethan • giants—produced their richest and most; memorable work after the. accession of James I The-achievements of the three greatest Englishmen. in the reign of Anne, Newton, Marlborough,- and Wren, were practical^! ' completed More the Queen's death; but Pope, Bolingbroke, Addison, < and not a few others, continued -to preserve the traditions of the -Age :df Arihe, ..projecting like a salient into the dull prosaic levels-.of the early Hanoverian era. Incidentally' Asquith. calls' attention to ,the "curious, ifact. in-English . history that the only'Sovereigris: who have given their'names to an epoch have ; been three reigning Queens. No one-talks of the Age of Edward I or-of Henry VIII or of George; 111, though their reigns were all times of great national movement, both in the sphere Of; action and in the sphere of thought. _ The1-characteristics of the Victorian Age however, were such, and the reaction against it has..been.so violent that-Victoria's connection with it has taken' on; a special importance. It is almost implied that Victoria created her Age with (in the eyes of its critic!) all its stuffiness, self-satisfac-tion, hypocrisy, and stupidity, simply by coming to the Throne. It, seems to be" forgotten,'* among' other; things,that at first-she-was a girl, and: fond of gaiety, 'it is'almost, suggested that she was.the severe, not-amused, middleaged or old woman from the start. The fact is that, however much she may have influenced her age, most of the great figures of that age were born and had their characters formed, before she became Queen. Gladstone was actually a Minister in 1834, and Disraeli made his maiden speech in.the House in the year of her accession. ;■.', 7 i-MEI^vOF- LETTERS.. • ■ ■' .1 .am;.'concerned <: here mainly -with the :.liter^ttire "r.of; that age-ra " literatures maryellpus ifc- «s quality and ' yange^' ;.. Sufficient time.should have passed; to ienable us to judge that literature1 with a .reasonable degree of finality. As bearing upon the Victorian -ness: of the Victorian Age, it should be noted that twO-of the master-pieces-of the time were written "-before her accession. "Pick wick'^ ran serially in 1836 and "The French Hevolution" was published in 1837. Between 1809 and 1819 there were born Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Browning, Charlotte Bronte, George' Eliot, Kingsley, and Ruskin. Carlyle, Macaulay, Disraeli, and Mill . were a little ■ earlier; Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold,'and George Meredith. a little later. • Darwin was also iof 1809. The effect •of Samuel Butler's posthumous hovel; "The Way of All Flesh" (1903). in setting;, yourigyer generations against the Victorian; Age is well known. A. few years ago Sir ArthurQuiller-Couchsaid that when ;he discussed the -Victorian Age with Cambridge undergraduates, "The Way of All Flesh" was commonly put up as proof of the evils of Victorian family life. Butler, however, was born two years before Victoria became ■ Queen, so his father was not a Victorian, but a pre-Victorian parent. If the novel had been published 20 years earlier, it would probably have exercised much less influence: But by 1903 the Victorian Age had receded into the past by more than' the two years since the Queen's death, and the time of reaction had arrived. If the Victorian Age could be said to have died on a definite date, that date could fairly be placed at the death of Tennyson ;in 1892. The nineties were the beginning of-a new age. " Shaw and Wells: were coming to the front. THE VICTORIAN OUTLOOK. This reaction has been long and violent, but there are now signs of a counter-reaction. The foolishness of condemning any age completely—let alone an age with such achievements, —is being realised. With some critics any stick has been good enough for beating the Victorian dog. The Victorians had certain marked characteristics and these were reflected in their writing. It was an age of material progress unprecedented in history. In 1837 the first patent for an ■ electric telegraph was taken out in England. ; Exactly a hundred years -later by means of an extension of telegraphy to the ether the furthest Do- : .minion was able to listen to the Coronation of Victoria's great-grandson. " This is but one example of the vast amount of mechanical achievement that has been packed into a hundred years. This material advancement enlarged the waistcoats of many Englishmen and woollied their brains. To most people progress was an inevitable law, but in the meantime certain beliefs—such as the rights of property ;—were sacred. Everybody believed in something. If it wasn't religion,, it was freedom or humanitarianism. Democracy was the last word in politics, and it was working out all right—if slowly. Even the rending of old be--7 liefs, which was so marked a feature of the age, and moulded so much of -its literature, did not destroy tradi-' . tions and ideals. Swinburne was an anti-clerical Republican, but he worshipped freedom. Matthew Arnold ' was one of his own "light half-be-lievers of our casual creeds," but he believed in a culture nourished in part by the religion to which he could not fully subscribe. ■: When he died the Nationalv Church, as is its custom,

buried him with its rites. Tennyson faintly trusted- the larger hope. But the generation, that followed the Victorians, and much more so the postwar generation, felt these, anchorages loosen. All the foundations of their world began to move. ■ Max Beerbohm j depicted the Victorian John. Bull as a stout gentleman looking on a-future that was an extension of the present, but his successor as one facing a future denoted by a huge interrogation mark. Here lies much of the explanation of the dislike, anger, and contempt with which so many in the last twenty or thirty years have regarded the Victorians. Old values have been replaced by new ones—or_.by a breakdown of the sense of values. The Victorians preached duty. "Don't talk to me of duty!" cry many of the moderns. Envy is a factor in criticism of the Victorians—envy of their material stability and their intellectual and moral faith. One must admit in extenuation that the Victorians had not experienced a world war and its effects, and that in the reeling world of today some of the Victorian controversies must seem rather futile. THE VICTORIAN RETICENCE. Reticence was another Victorian characteristic, that excites ridicule today. Thff Victorians-undoubtedly carried it too far. In daily life it became prudery and must have been the cause of a vast amount -of suffering andwaste. In literature it restricted the field of the writer. Yet there is surely some virtue in the Victorian convention that the novelist should halt at the bedroom door. Today—well, we, have set "our modern fancies wallowing in ;the troughs ■of Zolaism" to an extent far beyond that which disturbed the author of "Locksley Hall Six Years After." You may remember that Pendennis's mother was horrified at the thought that Pen. might have seduced Fanny. To a novelist of today such a seduction would be almost routine. Are we .to believe, however, that the number of young men who seduce their ; landladies' daughters is greater than the number of those who do not? This- sort '.of. thing is now one of the literary modes, and, so wrote the late lamented C. E. Montague, "The critic who ..wants to be in the mode lays it down-that on no excuse is an imaginative author to betray a warmer liking for straight livers than for scrubs and polecats." THE VICTORIAN PARADOX. Generalisation, about the Victorians, as about, other things, is dangerous. It was- an.:age. of - contrasts—of poverty and wealth, Aof . selfishness . and complacency and '.'stern, 'criticism, of materialism and idealism. As I remarked in my.-recerit article oh colour, there-was'- a "denouncer -of every Victorian evil.'(iVictorianism ~was criticised.', by 7 Victorians, and.in this criticismy'leaders" of literature were active. Dickens's exposure of evil is well known. * Thackeray's book on snobs is a classic' Kingsley preached Christian Socialism and put it into novels. George Meredith held up as an ideal of womanhood a type of .intelligent Diana. Ruskin's denunciation of orthodox economics in "Unto This Last" so shocked opinion that the "Cornhill" stopped publishing his articles, but his ideas took root. Matthew Arnold punctured -with delightful irony the selfsatisfaction of the upper "Sad middle classes.'. And this serious-minded age, which to so many of the present generation looks like: a stiff museum piece, a thing for ridicule, was an age of humour. It demonstrated that English liking for nonsense that bewilders the foreigner. It produced Edward Lear's nonsense rhymes and Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." Above all it gave us Gilbert and Sullivan. A GREAT AGE. Despite its whiskers and crinolines,' its shatos and, hypocriyes'i'its-'rjruderies and sentimentality,' its'MtinisVandjSnobberies, its Podsriaps .ahd'Gradgrinds, its boastings and..bleak. landscapye. of laisser faire—despite all this the 7Victorian was a great age, and. in nothing, perhaps, so great as in its literature.. This' was one of -the highest peaks of British letters—perhaps, inequality and variety combined, the highest." It had no Shakespeare and in drama' it was well nigh negligible, but in' poetry it was splendid, and it produced, what the Elizabethan Age did not, novelists and historians. In the decade between 1850 and 1860 Appeared Tennyson's "Maud," "Idylls of the King,"-.7 and "In Memoriam," Browning's "Men; and Women," Thackeray's "PenderiniS" and "The Virginians," the third and fourth volumes of Macaulay's "History," George Eliot's "Adam Bede,"" Meredith's "Ordeal of Richard '- Fev'erel," Fitzgerald's '- translation of ' Omar Khayyam, Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," Darwin's "Origin of Species," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice,". Trollope's "Barchester Towers," Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford;:'*- and. the first .published poems of Matthew Arnold and William Morris. Has any ten years in English history produced such variety in literature? 'Let us give the Victorians their due, which is only justice. We should judge them as we should judge any individual, institution, or society, viewing impartially all their record, and not picking out and isolating faults to make a lively display of prejudice and injustice. In short we should judge them in the only way compatible with intelligence and integrity.