The English political novels included in this study present a panorama
of British history extending back to the early part of the nineteenth
century. A reading of them creates a picture of gradual change, of a
surprisingly orderly political evolution. Disraeli’s novels portray an
England of immense social and economic differences. Although patents
of nobility are being granted with increasing frequency, the society
is much more static than dynamic, with extremely little individual
or group mobility. It is an England of rotten boroughs, of voteless
millions. The country’s political life goes on in accordance with
carefully defined rules, and the players remain the same--the Whigs
and Tories. The England of a hundred years later, seen in _Fame Is
the Spur_, is a different land. The Monarchy and the Church, though
changed, are still strong reference points in English life, but almost
everything else has altered. The franchise is no longer the exclusive
possession of the landed; suffrage has been extended to women. The old
laissez faire economy has evolved into one with considerable state
regulation. The Whigs have given way to the Liberals who, in turn, are
about to be superseded by the Labour Party. Actually, a revolution
has taken place, but it has occurred within the existing political
framework.
=George Eliot: The Early Nineteenth Century in the Midlands=
George Eliot’s _Felix Holt, the Radical_ was published in 1866,
but it dealt with English politics in 1832. The plot, with its
double identities, confused litigation, and secret paternities, is
labyrinthine. But the description of English elections is sharp and
vivid. Both the Whig and Radical candidates hire mobs of miners and
navvies to demonstrate for them. The result is a bloody riot quelled
by troops. Harold Transóme is a corrupt Radical; his foil is Holt,
the honest Radical charged with a murder committed during the riot.
The novel’s ending may seem sentimental and contrived, but this does
not lessen the value of the book as a study from which emerges the
political complexion of Laomshire in the English midlands.
=Benjamin Disraeli and Anthony Trollope: Whigs v. Tories=
In his effort to point up the need for a Young England party, Disraeli
exposes the abuses of early nineteenth century England. In _Coningsby_
one sees the millionaire Monmouth manipulate the twelve votes he owns
in Commons to attain a dukedom. In _Sybil_ Charles Egremont attempts
to fit himself for public life by first investigating the conditions
of the working class. Thus Disraeli shows to his reader the farm and
factory workers and the miners who signed the National Petition of the
Chartists. He follows the House of Commons’ rejection of the Petition
and the great uprisings which follow. This author-politician does not
simply offer his own partisan solution to his country’s ills; he also
shows the specific events and general climate which elicit it.
Disraeli and Trollope have been praised at each other’s expense.
Disraeli had immensely greater political experience, but Trollope
was by far the better novelist. Trollope’s books are much more
readable, and the student of the political novel will find just as
much information in them. Of his six parliamentary novels, three make
particularly profitable reading. _Phineas Finn, The Irish Member_
(1869) chronicles the rise and fall of a young Liberal. Standing in
186- for the Borough of Loughshane in County Clare, Finn comes in with
the Liberal government which succeeds that of the Tory Lord de Terrier.
A member of the new cabinet is Mr. Gresham, obviously modeled after
Gladstone. The leader of the Conservative opposition is Mr. Daubeny,
who bears a striking resemblance to Disraeli. The Reform Bill for
England carries and Finn becomes Under Secretary for the Colonies.
When his conscience forbids him to conform to party policy by voting
against the Reform Bill for Ireland, he resigns his office and returns
to Ireland, feeling that he has ruined his career in any case. In
_Phineas Redux_ (1874) he returns to Parliament. Now Daubeny’s Tories
are in, hanging tenaciously to a dwindling advantage in order to retain
patronage and power as long as possible. Daubeny’s purposes are clear.
Because of his parliamentary tactics, he earns from Trollope the
sobriquets “the great Pyrotechnist” and “a political Cagliostro.” The
culmination of the novel’s love story, with which Trollope parallels
the politics, is a spectacular trial in which Finn is acquitted of
murder. He is offered his old job at the Foreign Office, but once more
he retires from the field. Finn reappears in _The Prime Minister_
(1876). When Daubeny’s government goes out, neither he nor Gresham
can muster enough strength to form a new one. The result is that now
familiar phenomenon, a coalition government. The new Prime Minister is
the Duke of Omnium, and his Secretary for Ireland is Phineas Finn. The
country prospers under the coalition. But eventually signs of strain
appear, and with them the resignations of two ministers. Finally,
in its fourth year, the coalition founders on the County Suffrage
Bill. Winning his vote of confidence by the slim margin of nine,
Omnium resigns. It is left for the next government to complete the
near-assimilation of the county suffrages with those of the boroughs.
The two thousand-odd pages of these novels contain close likenesses
of real politicians. They also describe some of the basic issues and
attitudes of this era, and detail the workings of three distinctly
different types of ministries.
=George Meredith: The Early Radical=
In their _Outline-History of English Literature_ Otis and Needleman
describe Meredith’s _Beauchamp’s Career_ as “a political novel
suggested by the candidacy of Capt. Frederick Maxse of Southampton.”
Published in 1876 and spanning the years 1850-1862, the novel
highlights Commander Nevil Beauchamp’s return from distinguished
service in the Crimean War to run for Parliament as a fire-eating
Radical. With more descriptions of canvassing and elections, the
novel also contains the frequently found criticism of the press,
which is almost always regarded as an organ in which truth runs a
very bad second to political expediency. Before the novel ends with
Beauchamp’s tragic drowning, Meredith has given the reader his record
of another aspect of English political life on the local level in the
mid-nineteenth century.
=Mrs. Humphrey Ward: Victorian Portraits=
One of the chief values of Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s _Marcella_ (1894) in
the study of English political currents is its catalog of types. The
novel follows the erratic romance of Marcella Boyce and Aldous Raeburn.
Grandson of Lord Maxwell, an old Tory politician, Raeburn enjoys a
successful career in Commons, eventually becoming an Under Secretary in
the Home Office. But the obstacle to true love is politics. Aldous is a
Tory, and Marcella is a Venturist, defined as “a Socialist minus cant.”
The love triangle is completely political, for Aldous’ rival Harry
Wharton sits as a Liberal. He is, however, gradually drawing closer
to the rising labor movement. At one point Wharton gives the complete
Socialist program for the country districts. After a transitional
period, he says, land and capital will be controlled by the state.
The emancipation of the laborer will mean that “the disappearance
of squire, State parson, and plutocrat leaves him master in his own
house, the slave of no man, the equal of all.” Wharton presides at the
Birmingham Labour Conference, speaking for graduated income tax and
nationalization of the land. At this conference Mrs. Ward introduces
the reader to the leaders of this new movement, from the moderates to
the violent radicals. In a concession to the happy ending, the author
has Wharton discredited for a rascal, thereafter reuniting Marcella and
Aldous.
=H. G. Wells: England in Transition=
In _The New Machiavelli_ (1910) H. G. Wells dealt with Dick Remington,
whose career is ruined like that of Parnell by an extra-marital affair.
Before his fall, Dick changes from a Liberal to a Conservative.
Reminiscent of Disraeli’s novels (which he has read), he becomes
a Young Imperialist of the New Tory movement. Dick’s shifting of
political allegiance is not at all uncommon. This change of loyalties
appears much more often in the English novel than the American, and
there is no opprobrium attaching to it. Dick’s career, in which he
takes his stand on such timely subjects as woman suffrage, is the story
of a journey from one political faith to another. Its background is the
political milieu of late Victorian and Edwardian England.
=Howard Spring: Labour and the Course of Empire=
Spring’s massive _Fame Is the Spur_ (1940) records many of the major
events in English national life in the seventy-five year period ending
in 1940. But one of the primary formative influences in John Hamer
Shawcross’ life took place forty-six years before he was born. It was
the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which the working people gathered in
Manchester to hear Orator Hunt were attacked by dragoons. This story,
related by Hamer’s great uncle, first fires his imagination and then
becomes part of his stock in trade. Entering politics as “Shawcross of
Peterloo,” he carries the sabre which the old man had wrenched from
a dragoon. One of the founders of the Labour Party, Shawcross scorns
the Fabians and writes popular books on politics. In London he sees
Keir Hardie take his seat as one of Labour’s first M.P.’s. Later his
marriage is disrupted when his wife estranges herself from him for his
opposition to her suffragist campaigns. Spring records the turbulence
of these efforts--the pickets outside Parliament, the violence, the
hunger strikes, and the “Cat and Mouse Act” (a convicted suffragist
was placed under police surveillance so that she could be returned
to jail when she appeared to have recovered from the effects of a
hunger strike). Although Shawcross’ part in the World War I coalition
government is considered by many a betrayal of Labour, he becomes
Minister of Ways and Means when Labour comes in again in 1924. Having
lost his chance to be Prime Minister, partly because of his stand in
1914, Shawcross in 1931 puts in motion the formation of the National
Labour Party, intended as part of the coalition which is to be formed
to take measures against the depression. This is thought to be his
final betrayal of the Labour Party and cause. As a reward he is made
Viscount Shawcross of Handforth in the same year. His forty-year
political career is at an end.
=Joyce Cary: The Edwardian Age and After=
Tom Wilcher, in Joyce Cary’s _To be a Pilgrim_ (1942), is nearing
the end of a life much involved with politics. In this acute, witty,
and compassionate book, Cary follows Wilcher’s attempt to keep a
representative of the family in Tolbrook, its old home, and to
inculcate into his niece and her little boy the religion which has been
so vital a part of his own life. Through his recollections of his own
experience and that of his brother Edward, Wilcher gives a vivid record
of tense moments in England’s political life. He recalls the stormy
days when he and Edward were pro-Boer, and the more explosive times
which followed:
There are no political battles nowadays to equal the bitterness
and fury of those we fought between 1900 and 1914. It is a marvel
to me that there was, after all, no revolution, no civil war, even
in Ireland. For months in the years 1909 and 1910, during the last
great battle with the Lords, any loud noise at night, a banging
door, a roll of thunder, would bring me sitting upright in bed,
with sweat on my forehead and the thought, ‘The first bomb--it has
come at last.’
Ten years later, in _Prisoner of Grace_, Cary built a novel around
the career of another Labour politician, Chester Nimmo. He secures
attention and injuries through his pro-Boer agitation. Shifting his
attack from the government to the landlords, he finally wins a seat in
Parliament in 1902, later becoming Under Secretary for Mines. He is so
intensely political that when he tells his son fairy tales, the wolf in
_Little Red Riding Hood_ has “a face just like Joe Chamberlain.” The
narrator, Nimmo’s unhappy wife Nina, reflects that:
I suppose nobody now can realize the effect of that “revolution”
on even quite sensible men.... But the truth is that it was a real
revolution. Radical leaders like Lloyd George ... really did mean
to bring in a new kind of state, a “paternal state,” that took
responsibility for sickness and poverty.
Like Shawcross, Nimmo stays on in the coalition cabinet of 1914, hoping
to become Prime Minister at the war’s end. But he loses his seat in the
general elections of 1922. At the book’s end he is, like Shawcross, a
lord, but one who looks wistfully from the sidelines upon the struggle
in the political arena.