Dickens on Social Class

Charles Dickens' protagonists are almost always solid, hard-working middle-class types, such as would appeal in the Victorian reading public. Excepting Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, none of his novels has a central working-class hero or heroine. Even Oliver is found to come from solid stock in the end, and Pip is taken far beyond his lowly origins.

What his novels express above all, though, is the distaste the new aspiring middle-class have for traditional elites; either narrow in vision, like Sir Leicester Deadlock in Bleak House; predatory and treacherous, like Sir Mulberry Hawk in Nicholas Nickleby, or foppish and stupid, like Sir Mulberry's friend, Lord Frederick Verisopht. Even Steerforth, whom Dickens’s treats with a degree of sympathy in David Copperfield, has a languid and amoral quality that the author always associates with a certain kind of decadent upper-class seducer.

Pax Americana, or the Illusion of Empire

In the discussion pages of Blog Catalogue one user posted a question recently drawing a comparison between America and the Roman Empire, asking specifically if the downfall of the one is set to be repeated in the downfall of the other. I chose not to participate because it was clearly an American question pitched at an American audience. Still it’s worth thinking about this sort of thing, worth trying to interpret present events in the light of the past.

I have to say that there is not a strict comparison between the United States and Rome and that history does not always move in predictable cycles. The US is a nation state with a distinct identity and cultural unity, whereas Rome was a multi-national empire which was to fragment eventually under sustained external and internal pressures. Even so there is a growing sense that America, like Rome, has overreached itself in the exercise of new forms of imperial power, reflected most particularly in the recently published The Icarus Syndrome: How American Triumph Produces American Tragedy by Peter Beinart.

Interestingly the author originally supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 though he now sees it as a major error of judgement, an error born of hubris. To that extent the American example bears comparison, at least in my estimation, with the Emperor Trajan’s invasion of what was then Mesopotamia in the kingdom of the Parthians. It was to take the Empire to its greatest ever extent but it was a step too far and too ambitious, a conquest impossible to maintain. Hadrian, his successor, was quick to recognise this in retreating from the east and beginning a retrenchment, a shoring-up of the existing imperial borders that in some ways was to mark the beginning of eventual decline.

Trajan had a vision of endless imperial greatness, a vision that turned out to be an illusion. George W. Bush had a vision, the vision of a Pax Americana. For him the 9/11 attack on New York was an “opportunity”, his own expression, to invade Parthia and reshape the whole of the Middle East. America could do this because America had the power and because the old Soviet Union, the one counter to imperial ambition, was no longer around. But like Icarus, as Beinart argues, America under Bush flew too close to the sun, tumbling sharply to earth in what now seems like endless conflict in an unstable region, from the Gulf to Afghanistan.

America needed a Hadrian to come in the steps of Trajan. Instead it got Barack Obama, who is realistic enough to recognise that there are limits to the exercise of imperial power but is tied to a course already set. Unlike Rome America will not fall; it will just get tired of playing a game that has no obvious end.

Fox that

If I were to try to think of people I would favour for an Orwellian style two-minute hate there would be no shortage of candidates. The whole line up of deadbeats and mediocrities from the present Labour Party leadership contest would be an obvious choice, particularly that awful fat hypocrite Diane Abbott (just imagine that as prime minister) or ‘Deadward’, the Milband double act that calls to mind those talentless losers ‘Jedward.’ But no, the way I feel at the moment it would have to be just about anyone involved in animal rights.

Oh, gosh, how I hate these trendy, do-gooding urban lefties, people who know almost nothing of the country, people responsible for even more suffering than they pretend to alleviate. The fox-hunting ban – which is totally ineffective – has actually brought more suffering to these animals, not less, as many are disposed of in hideous ways.

But it’s not really country foxes that I want to talk about, no, it’s their urban cousins, the pizza and burger migrants, as I like to think of them. So much additional information has come out on these vermin – a word I use in a strict, descriptive sense – ever since two babies were savaged in their home in London's Hackney district. There are some interesting snippets in the last weeks issue of The Spectator, details I will risk repeating for those who do not read the magazine.

Charles Moore in his Notes tells of an encounter a gamekeeper he spoke to had a few years ago. The man came across a large van that had broken down on a country road. While helping the driver to get it restarted he noticed a rank smell coming from the back. “What is it you have?”, he asked. “Thirty live foxes”, the driver replied. They had all been collected in London and the man had instructions by the council authority in question to take them into the countryside and release them. The keeper asked him not to do this because not only would they spread mange but that they would also die cruelly in an alien environment. In responding the driver said that he was obliged to follow instructions. At once, under the pretence of getting more help, the keeper called a friend, asking him to bring his guns. The driver was then persuaded to allow them to shoot as many of the foxes as possible, the only humane solution, as Moore concludes, to a problem caused by ‘animal lovers.’

Even better is Melissa Kite’s account of her experience with an official of Lambeth Council Pest Control. It was a few days before the attacks on the babies turned the problem of urban foxes into a hot topic. She called the council because she was worried by the number of foxes wandering down the street “like hoodies”, as she puts it. In short, she wanted the council to issue an animal Anti-Social Behaviour Order! “We don’t remove foxes”, she was told, “but we give advice on how to deter them. If you have a family of foxes living in your garden I can send you information.”

Rather shocked by this revelation she said “Wait a minute. Do you mean that to tell me that some poor sods have whole families of foxes living in their gardens? Because I’m just complaining about them sitting on my doorstep.”

Bit by bit it got worse. The official in question said that her job was to catch dogs and that if she started to trap foxes she would be doing it all day long, surely an indication of just how bad things have become. When Kite, now clearly overcome by a mood of ironic frustration, said that while the council did not want to harm the foxes for reasons of ignorance and political correctness would they mind most awfully if she dealt with the problem herself. After all, as she explained, they are vermin.

“They’re not vermin”, came the response. “You can’t kill them. The RSPCA would do you for cruelty if you trapped them, you would be liable to prosecution.”

“And if one attacked a baby?”

“I don’t think there is any risk of that.”

As I have said this was a few days before the mauling of the baby twins, sleeping in their cots in their own bedroom. Kite gave up in frustration but agreed to the offer of a helpful leaflet to be sent in the post. This added to the general craziness, explaining that the fox was a member of the dog family and that small family pets can form a part of its ‘natural’ diet. It was illustrated with a cartoon strip showing a family of foxes frolicking in a garden. A checklist on dealing with a fox invasion recommended some £15,000 of renovations to one’s house and garden. Yes, indeed, £15,000.

In the meantime, the advice continued, if one happens to find a fox hole in one’s garden one must place twigs across the entrance and check it daily. Only after three days and nights have passed without disturbance is it permissible to fill the hole, unless, of course, its the period from February to April, when the hole has to be checked for ten days in case there is a breeding vixen inside. Yes, this is how crazy things have become.

Speaking of pets, I remember once when we came back from holiday when I was about ten or so looking out on to our back garden, there noticing a mound of fur in the middle of the lawn. When father went out to investigate he discovered the bottom half of a rabbit. The top part, including the head, was missing. Subsequent to this one of our neighbours told us that some children, people I knew well, had been going around asking if anyone had seen their pet rabbit. We knew we had a fox problem, so the connection was obvious. Father was left with the unpleasant task of going to speak to the children’s parents.

Foxes are vermin, a danger to people and to pets alike; they should be treated like vermin. In the country fortunately they still are.

Happy Blooming Day!

Tomorrow marks one of the most important days, no wait, the most important day in the history of modern literature (no qualifications here!) It's 16 June, Bloomsday, the day all of the action in James Joyce's Ulysses takes place, the day also that the author and Nora Barnacle, his future wife, first went out together. Ulysses, that wonderful, panoramic and magical book, is set entirely within the confines of 16 June 1904, although all time seems to be drawn in, a day when Leopold Bloom, after whom it’s named, wanders around Dublin as Homer's Odysseus wandered from Troy to Ithaca. The various episodes also allude to the journey outlined in the Odyssey, one step removed by the Roman translation of the name of the epic hero.

Joyce described Ulysses as his encyclopaedia, and in a sense that's exactly what it is with dozens and dozens of literary, poetic and historical allusions. I went so far as to say that if Ireland disappeared from the face of the earth it would be possible to recreate it using this book as a template. I was warned in advance when I announced that I intended read it, warned even by people who specialise in English literature, that it was 'impossible', that it was a real brain blower! But just as one would never sit down and read an encyclopaedia systematically from cover to cover, forgoing all else, I decided to read Ulysses 'discreetly', if I can put it like that, absorbing an episode at a time, with a day or two in between, interspersed with other reading. It worked and worked beautifully.

It was the Oxford Classics version that I read, based on the original 1922 text and annotated by Jeri Johnson. I'm so glad I did because the notes, which take up over a hundred pages, alerted me to so much that I would have otherwise have missed. The episode I enjoyed the most was Oxen of the Sun where Joyce writes in the style of a number of different authors, moving with ease from people like Defoe and Dickens, capturing their modes of expression with utter conviction.

Ulysses is one of those books that is met either with love...or incomprehension. In an early review H. G. Wells, outraged by Joyce's revolutionary style, described it as 'literary Bolshevism', a mark of his own fertile but limited imagination. If I were to describe it, or to try to match it to an image, I would suggest that it's a kind of cubist painting in words. I love cubism also, especially the paintings of Picasso and Braque, where a single object is seen in a myriad of facets, almost as if from the compound eye of a fly. That's Ulysses, a progress in a time looked at from a whole variety of angles, a whole series of perspectives.

A happy Bloomsday to one and all and please do raise a glass to one of the most creative and original authors who ever lived.

The Shadow of Stalin

Sometimes news reports offer information without enlightenment. The case I have in mind is the present ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, the former Soviet republic in Central Asia. So off I went looking for roots in history, for roots in history there surely are.

The main point is that this country, like its neighbours, is essentially an artificial creation, carved out, so to say, by the Soviet authorities in the early twentieth century; carved out by Stalin in his role of Commissar for Nationalities. The Russians had originally expanded into this area as part of a colonial drive in the nineteenth century, there to counter British expansion in India towards the frontier of Afghanistan, an act in what was known as the Great Game. At the time the area was made up of three long-established political units - the Khanates of Kokand and Khorezm and the Emirate of Bukhara, all of which were abolished. It was the Soviets who turned what was effectively an undifferentiated Tsarist colony into a series of 'countries', Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan along with Kyrgyzstan. It was an entirely arbitrary exercise based purely on the language and character of the dominant ethnic group.

The problem here was a simple one, sublimated by the Soviet dictatorships: these countries, created by bureaucratic edict, had virtually nothing in the way of national consciousness. They really only existed, in other words, by the exercise of strong central control, which continued even after the collapse of the Soviet Union when various authoritarian regimes and dictators emerged.

The instability in the region is one of the abiding legacies of Stalin. Not only did he help draw up the borders but he was later responsible for the almost total destruction of the local elites, the very people vital in the creation of any kind of national consciousness or legitimacy. He compounded the problem by destroying local Islamic tradition, a relatively liberal school influenced by developments in Turkey and India, opening the way to the import in the present day of more extreme missionaries in the fundamentalist mould.

So, with no national tradition, a weak elite, no coherent faith-based identity the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks, the main minority group, are like oil and water, existing side by side but never blending. The overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in the April riots against corruption and increased living expenses effectively brought to an end the central control that managed to hold the country together. The situation was similar in some respects to that in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, particularly in the state of Bosnia, where ancient rivalries emerged with the end of political unity. In Kyrgyzstan, around the southern city of Osh, the minority Uzbeks have become a target of Kyrgyz gangs with the government losing control. In essence we have a nation that never was a nation disintegrating into its constituent parts.

As I write the prospects are unclear with a full-scale civil war a distinct possibility in what is one of the most politically and ethnically sensitive regions on earth. So far the Russians have refused to intervene in spite of requests from a government that has effectively lost control. I honestly don't see how they can stay out for much longer given the implications for their own security if instability spreads throughout the whole southern region. In a sense Vladimir Putin was right that the disintegration of the old Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster, but perhaps not in the way that he meant. The Soviets both created a problem and offered a solution to a problem. Stalin casts a long shadow.

The Return of the Fairy

I was lunching with some friends in Montmartre last summer, a very pleasant occasion. I decided at the end of the meal, in an act of sheer devilment, to ask for a glass of absinthe. I might have well asked for hemlock! The thing is, you see, as I very well knew, absinthe, the drink of La Belle Epoch, has not been available in France in its pure form for close on a hundred years because it was believed to be almost as lethal as hemlock. That lengthy prohibition may about to be lifted.

I’ve written before about absinthe (The Green Fairy) and its associations with decadence and witchcraft. It was the favoured drink of artists such as Vincent van Gogh, supposedly inspiring Starry Night among other paintings, and writers like Oscar Wilde. But the fairy could just as readily turn into a demon, so it was believed, the nightmare that walks the pages of Zola’s L’Assommoir, one of the best of his Les Rougon-Macquart series of novels. In a mood of moral panic, no doubt intensified by the atmosphere of the war, the French government banished the Green Fairy in 1915.

Although restrictions were lifted somewhat in more recent times, it can still only be sold if called an ‘absinthe-based spirit’ and made to a slightly different recipe. But according to report I read in the press Franck Choisne, who owns the two-hundred year Combier distillery in the Loire Valley, a place where the secret of the original recipe is still preserved, is leading a campaign to bring it back. He has been joined Ted Breaux, an American connoisseur, who succeeded having the ban lifted in the United States.

As we now know that the original drink was no stronger than whisky and that the herbs it contained would have to be consumed by in gargantuan quantities before any harm was caused, it’s likely that the French parliament will vote to end the ban. It seems a pity, though, that the mythology is likely to die with it, or perhaps it’s just reassuring to know that genius is its own absinthe.

Boy's World

One of my favourite literary genres is the essay and my favourite writer in that genre has to be George Orwell. I’m thinking in particular of his piece on Boy’s Weeklies, a brilliant exercise in cultural sociology which reveals so much about a particular set of attitudes, of a past that is indeed a foreign country.

The parameters of the world he describes had been set even before the First World War, in the kind of fiction offered by the likes of G A Henty, Herbert Strang, Percy F. Westerman and Robert Leighton. The themes these authors preferred - tales of individual heroism against a late imperial setting- can be found in the publications Orwell discusses; weeklies like The Boy's Own Paper (which my father remembers with some fondness!), Pluck and The Boy's Friend.

So, the generation of 1914 grew up against the kind of plucky and chivalric sentiment expressed by Henry Newbolt in Vitaï Lampada, with war depicted in a uniquely English way as a game of cricket;

The sand of the desert is sodden red-
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

For some the actual experience of war, the unheroic ugliness of the whole thing, did nothing to moderate these fictional depictions. In 1915 Captain F. S. Brereton published With French at the Front, whose hero, Jim Fletcher, could have leaped straight out of the pages of Henty. He is killed in a German attack, calling on his men to fight "for the sake of old England." Inspired by his example the Tommies fight on "the thin khaki line of heroes, the cool, calm, cherry sons of Empire", beating back the Hun. It's romantic; it's glorious: it's a lie.

Brereton went on treating the war through a prism of rosy and heroic optimism. In his 1917 novel Under Haig in Flanders he paints a nice and cosy picture of life at the front, where the Tommies feed on "frizzling bacon, not to be beaten anywhere, bread that might have graced the table of a Ritz hotel, and jam that would have been the envy of any housewife." He goes on to depict the Battle of the Somme, with the great blood-letting of 1 July, one of the worst days in British military history, described as a "triumph for the Allies and a bitter blow to our ruthless enemy."

This kind of literature, and much more besides, clearly has a propaganda purpose, intended to attract more and more young men to the front with a promise of high adventure. The reality must have been truly shocking. But even after the war, when no further purpose was served by these fairy tales, the genre continued, largely unaffected by the revelations of Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Brereton's novels remained in print throughout the inter-war period, and were popular as school and Sunday school prizes.