=Peaceful Change in the Political Realm=
The English political novel presents a people whose political processes
have operated in a well-defined manner with progressively decreasing
violence. England had its Wars of the Roses and its Cavaliers and
Roundheads, but with the exception of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1746,
resort to arms as a means of domestic change has been in the discard
for the past two hundred years of English history. The Peterloo
Massacre, the Chartist Riots, and the struggle against the Lords all
involved bloodshed, but this form of conflict has largely subsided. The
novel reflects this pattern. It is one of change within a framework
of relative stability. The Right wing and the Left are the two poles
between which the political ions flow. The names of the poles may vary,
as may some of the elements in their chemical composition, but their
function remains the same. The Tory is always the opponent of change
or the advocate of slow and minimal change; the Whig, Liberal, Fabian,
or Labourite is the champion of more rapid and extensive change. The
extreme radical appears occasionally, the revolutionary infrequently.
Almost all the English novels in this study show this basic alignment.
Even when the liberals are represented by Mrs. Ward’s Venturists and
the conservatives by Disraeli’s Young Englanders or Wells’s New Tories,
this is the essential political structure. George Eliot’s Felix Holt
and Harold Transóme, both Radicals, are set off against the Debarry
family headed by Parson Jack and Sir Maximus Debarry. Meredith’s Nevil
Beauchamp is another young Radical in conflict with his uncle Everard
Romfrey, who calls himself a Whig but is an aristocratic reactionary.
Except for Disraeli, James, and Conrad, the authors of these novels
tend to present the case of the liberal or progressive. But no matter
what the point of view or time, the main characters tend to range
themselves on one of these two sides.
Conrad’s _The Secret Agent_ departs from the common
liberal-conservative alignment by dealing with the dangerous lunatic
fringe of English political life--the revolutionary terrorists. But
Verloc, the novel’s main character, and Yundt, one of the most violent
members of the circle, are not native Englishmen. In using these
characters, Conrad views the same political virtues the other novelists
treat by contrasting them with violence. When the embassy secretary
orders Verloc to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, he tells him that
the English must be shocked into repressive action. “This country,” he
says, “is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty.”
The Professor, “The Perfect Anarchist,” attempts to goad Police
Inspector Heat into seizing him when they meet in an alley. Heat knows
that if he does so the Professor will blow both of them up by pressing
the detonator in his pocket. Undoubtedly this fact crosses his mind,
but his answer is typical: “If I were to lay my hand on you now I would
be no better than yourself.”
The Englishman’s often unemotional approach to politics also appears
in the novels. In _The New Machiavelli_, Dick Remington, enthusiastic
about Socialism and “the working-man,” is one of a group of students
who invite Chris Robinson, “the Ambassador of the Workers,” to
Cambridge to talk to them. But when Robinson speaks, they are
disappointed at the excess of emotion and deficiency of content. When
the Englishman does allow emotion to surge into his politics, it may
be mixed with religion. It was said of Hamer Shawcross, in _Fame Is
the Spur_, that “his platform manner was that of a revivalist parson.”
Chester Nimmo has somewhat the same style in _Prisoner of Grace_. A
former Wesleyan lay-preacher, he advocates pacifism at one point in his
career. His wife Nina comments:
to a man like Chester, whose politics were mixed up with religion
and whose religion was always getting into his politics, this was
the situation which he was accustomed to handle. It did not prevent
his religion from being “true” that he knew how to “use” it.
Both these politicians are liberals, and perhaps this is merely another
means of separating the two great groups. The university man, who
has had some advantages, may look upon emotionalism as bad form; the
working man, for whom grade school and the church often constitute
his only sources of formal education, is conditioned to respond to
the stimuli he has known in one of these institutions: the emotional
approach of the revivalist parson or the lay preacher.
Despite the reaction of the aristocrats to this lower group, some
of the English novelists regard them as a great source of national
strength. Disraeli may have felt that they needed guidance, not freedom
and self-expression; Orwell found hope in them. Looking out the window
of his and Julia’s rendezvous, Winston Smith sees the figure of a woman
of the Proles, a “solid, unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work
and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. Out of
those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come.”
=The Fruits of Imperialism=
When one thinks of the literature of imperialism he is likely to
remember Kipling’s _Soldiers Three_, _Mandalay_, or _Recessional_.
Wells’s Dick Remington remarks, “The prevailing force in my
undergraduate days was not Socialism but Kiplingism.” But if Kipling
emphasizes the White Man’s Burden, most other novelists emphasize the
White Man’s Guilt. In _Beauchamp’s Career_ Col. Halkett looks up from
his newspaper to remark to Nevil, “There’s an expedition against the
hill-tribes in India, and we’re a peaceful nation, eh? We look as if we
were in for a complication with China.” And Nevil replies ironically,
“Well, sir, we must sell our opium.” Forster’s _A Passage to India_
lays prime responsibility for India’s tragedy at Britain’s doorstep.
He pictures the cruel clannishness and snobbery of the English colony
of Chandrapore with its Mrs. Callendar who declares, “Why, the
kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die.” India is
full of red-faced Ronny Heaslops, officials who play God, a god whose
thunderbolts and lightnings are infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Mrs.
Moore, the single English subject in Chandrapore able to bridge the
enormous gap between the two cultures, reflects about Ronny:
One touch of regret--not the canny substitute but the true regret
from the heart--would have made him a different man, and the
British Empire a different institution.
There is no question in this novel that Britain is the violator in this
loveless union. The South African novels recall Wordsworth’s line about
the makers of the French Revolution “become oppressors in their turn.”
The Afrikaners may now be the malefactors; at one time they, like the
Indians, were clearly the victims. Jakob Van Vlaanderen, the great
stern patriarch of _Too Late the Phalarope_, recalls the trek into the
interior to escape the repressive measures of the British. Jim Latter
in _Prisoner of Grace_ travels to London from Nigeria, where he has
overseen the destinies of a tribe for years, because he is convinced
that the people in the Colonial Office “want to kill off the Lugas.”
As Britain began to exchange the imperialist role for that of
co-defender of the West, this deftness and high-handedness in
international affairs was sometimes regarded as an asset. Major Walker
assesses it for Tommy McPhail in _The Crack in the Column_ when he
says, “You’re no match for us in arranging a chain of political events,
in planning several moves ahead, in making the baby be born exactly
when the horoscope says, sex, weight, and appearance of innocence
guaranteed.”
Like any good national literature, the English turns inward the
searching light of criticism. The reader sees hypocrites, time-servers,
and turncoats. Spread before him are domestic abuses and cold
imperialism. But he is also given a glimpse of a people who retain a
regard for the rights and dignity of the individual, a people who have
turned away from violence and shown a remarkable capacity for achieving
change without sacrificing stability, for combining growth with order.