WHY NOT VICTORIANISM?

Evening Star, Issue 20634, 6 November 1930, Page 5

WHY NOT VICTORIANISM?

A RETURN TO GOOD OLD VIRTUES A writer in an evening paper lias made a humble appeal for a re tuny to the old virtues of hard work, thrift, and discipline (writes Thomas Burke, in the ‘Sunday News’). A few years ago his. appeal would have passed unheeded, but there are signs to-day of general dissatisfaction with the present mode of life, and it may bo that there will be a move back to return to the grim broadcloth gospel of Samuel Smiles, James Mill, Isaac Watts, Martin Tupper, and their fictional counterparts—Mr Gradgrind, Mr Fairchild, Mr Barlow—but we do seem to be realising that the deep earnestness of the Victorians was not entirely laughable. With the end of the war people of ■all classes appeared to think that life owed them “ a good time.” Duties were regarded as nothing but dreary fagging, and the ideal of everybody was, at all costs, to have a good time. Hence, short working hours for every class, much scamping in even those short hours, cars and motor cycles, nightly dancing, cocktails, and all sorts of foolish spending. But “ Good times ” merely come and go, and leave nothing. Tonics are useful in their place, but they are not nourishing, and wo are beginning to discover that we are getting very little out of our good times. Indeed, the general state of the country has been the despair of the last three Governments. No one class is wholly to blame for this. If the workers are anxious to do as little as possible, the employers, with their afternoon golf and their long week-ends, set, the example. All classes have been lured away from duty by the dream of getting money without working for it, and Stock Exchange speculation has spread in the last ten years from the rich to the poor. But the bottom has now fallen out of that, and a long run of “good times” is beginning,to show its uselessness in exhausted nerves and empty pockets. There is really very little fun in having a continuous good time and being continuously hard up, as most people—in London, at any rate—are to-day. There is another matter upon which a change of opinion can be perceived. One of the most notable features of this century has been the decay of the family. It was Victorian, and therefore, without any examination, it must go; besides, you could not have a good time and rear and' educate a family, too. But now there is a distinct reaction, and people are beginning to realise that house and garden and family can give life a deep, rich harmony that is never really attained through service flats, clubs, and restaurants. Constant movement is as futile as stagnation, and movement has been the spirit behind all the life of recent years. People have always been going somewheie else; always on the move. They couldn’t go to one friend’s house for the evening; they must go to six houses, giving half an homy to each. They must always be just going somewhere or just coming back from somewhere, and wherever they were at a given hour they itch to be somewhere else. But there are signs now of something like a settling, and a slower pace. trouble is largely responsible for this, and slackness in work is responsible for the financial _ trouble. But the trouble has its good side, since it has shown people that the quieter mode of life is not so utterly boring as they thought it. Those of the rich who. still possess estates are beginning to spend more time on them than they did, and to find their interest there. Those of the middle class who have had to cut down their spending arc discovering how many things they don’t really want. Others arc discovering that if they want more money they must work for it. Work, llio gospel of Carlyle and Buskin, has so long been under the cloud of ridicule which has covered both those eminent Victorians that it is rare to hear now of working youths who get up at five in the morning to study before going to work, and walk long' distances to attend lectures, as •many of the middle-aged Labour M.P ’> did. But the ridicule is being blown away by the gale of and it only needs some public figure of to-day, with the following that Carlyle had in his day, to show the satisfaction of work, to make the country again prosperous.