Summer XXI-XXII. British character and Democracy

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XX. Jubilee + The Cat

At an inn in the north I once heard three men talking at their breakfast on the question of diet. They agreed that most people ate too much meat, and one of them went so far as to declare that, for his part, he rather preferred vegetables and fruit. “Why,” he said, “will you believe me that I sometimes make a breakfast of apples?” This announcement was received in silence; evidently the two listeners didn’t quite know what to think of it. Thereupon the speaker, in rather a blustery tone, cried out, “Yes, I can make a very good breakfast on two or three pounds of apples.”

Wasn’t it amusing? And wasn’t it characteristic? This honest Briton had gone too far in frankness, ‘Tis all very well to like vegetables and fruits up to a certain point; but to breakfast on apples! His companions’ silence proved that they were just a little ashamed of him; his confession savoured of poverty or meanness; to right himself in their opinion, nothing better occurred to the man than to protest that he ate apples, yes, but not merely one or two; he ate them largely, by the pound! I laughed at the fellow, but I thoroughly understood him; so would every Englishman; for at the root of our being is a hatred of parsimony. This manifests itself in all sorts of ludicrous or contemptible forms, but no less is it the source of our finest qualities. An Englishman desires, above all, to live largely; on that account he not only dreads, but hates and despises, poverty. His virtues are those of the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position.

Alpha.

I have no clue if Ryecroft is right here or if Englishmen differ from the rest of mankind in this respect. Being naturally cheap myself (my Scots or German genes, perhaps?) I marvel and am made slightly uncomfortable by people “living largely.” For one thing, there is often an unavoidable element of waste.

I’m reminded of the spectacular, introductory, after dinner party given by Mynheer Peeperkorn in The Magic Mountain. I would have thought that Peeperkorn was a magnificent invention of Mann’s except that he is widely acknowledged as being closely based on Gerhart Hauptmann. I have known some, lesser, Peeperkorns, and while their company can certainly be invigorating, I also find their manic energy unsettling. There is a tendency to excess in some people that I associate with self-doubt or low self-esteem. I once heard a story about Michael Milken, during his high-rolling days, taking associates to lunch at an exclusive restaurant and ordering everything on the menu for the table. For him I’m sure this signaled his ability to afford lavish expenditures -- and possibly an impatience with the usual ordering process. But to me it reeks of posturing and a disregard for the little people going to needless effort to realize his whim. And how much of that food ended up in the trash?

Potlatch.

I’ve been reading about the First Nations/Native American tradition in the Pacific Northwest of holding seasonal social events the purpose of which was to give presents to each other and to demonstrate the wealth of important people by destroying that wealth. This from Wiki:

Dorothy Johansen describes the dynamic: "In the potlatch, the host in effect challenged a guest chieftain to exceed him in his 'power' to give away or to destroy goods. If the guest did not return 100 percent on the gifts received and destroy even more wealth in a bigger and better bonfire, he and his people lost face and so his 'power' was diminished."

This traditional custom drives the entire economy of the peoples concerned making it a prime example of Georges Batalle’s Accursed Share economic principle. This would be an extreme example of the free-handedness that Ryecroft believed was typical of Englishmen. It is also a curious example of conspicuous consumption and status symbols (see Thorstein Veblin) in that your status is determined not but what you have but by what you give away or destroy.

One could see something similar in Andrew Carnegie's lavish, non-productive (in an economic sense) spending on public libraries or the current schemes to encourage the super-rich (like Ted Turner, Bill Gates, and the like) to devote significant amounts of their wealth to charitable contributions.

What Ryecroft here argues is part of the generous character of Englishmen, Bataille sees as a necessary aspect of economic systems that are too productive for their own good. I suspect Aldus Huxley was familiar with Bataille, or at least the desperate need to consume and waste production is stressed in Brave New World. So is this a human characteristic or an economic necessity? Or perhaps it’s both.

XXII. Democracy

For a nation of this temper, the movement towards democracy is fraught with peculiar dangers. Profoundly aristocratic in his sympathies, the Englishman has always seen in the patrician class not merely a social, but a moral superiority; the man of blue blood was to him a living representative of those potencies and virtues which made his ideal of the worthy life. Very significant is the cordial alliance from old time between nobles and people; free, proud homage on one side answering to gallant championship on the other; both classes working together in the cause of liberty. However great the sacrifices of the common folk for the maintenance of aristocratic power and splendor, they were gladly made; this was the Englishman’s religion, his inborn pietas; in the depth of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning attached to lordship. Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them forth in act. A poor noble was a contradiction in terms; if such a person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as though he were the victim of some freak of nature. The Lord was Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words, virtually constituted the code of honour whereby the nation lived.

In a new world, beyond the ocean, there grew up a new race, a scion of England, which shaped its life without regard to the principle of hereditary lordship; and in course of time this triumphant Republic began to shake the ideals of the Motherland. Its civilization, spite of superficial resemblances, is not English; let him who will think it superior; all one cares to say is that it has already shown in a broad picture the natural tendencies of English blood when emancipated from the old cult. Easy to understand that some there are who see nothing but evil in the influence of that vast commonwealth. If it has done us good, assuredly the fact is not yet demonstrable. In old England, democracy is a thing so alien to our traditions and rooted sentiment that the line of its progress seems hitherto a mere track of ruin. In the very word is something from which we shrink; it seems to signify nothing less than a national apostasy, a denial of the faith in which we won our glory. The democratic Englishman is, by the laws of his own nature, in parlous case; he has lost the ideal by which he guided his rude, prodigal, domineering instincts; in place of the Right Honourable, born to noble things, he has set up mere Plebs, born, more likely than not, for all manner of baseness. And, amid all his show of loud self-confidence, the man is haunted with misgiving...

Alpha.

I rather think Ryecroft is giving the old U.S. of A. rather more credit than it deserves here for destabilizing the British aristocracy. Since the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, it was actually the resurgent British middle-class that shaped the American plutocracy. The British aristocracy was slowly wasted and finally destroyed by the repeal of the Corn Laws and by revised Inheritance laws that were part of the class warfare between the upper and middle British classes. America benefitted in predictable (the import of grain) and unpredictable ways (the acquisition of estates and spouses by wealthy Americans), but I think this process was driven mostly by local factors.

(And isn’t it curious that the American Republic was modeled on the Roman Republic by people who were familiar with the sad -- though glorious -- fate of that Republic?)

In Parade’s End, Christopher Tietjens is “The Last Tory” -- the person who stands for 18th century values as the 20th century rises around him. Yet the Groby fortune rests on coal. The Tietjens of Groby stand with one foot in the age of King Billy and the other in the Mephistophelian age of industry and science and capital. They stoke the fires of the middle-class machine they both detest and see as ruining England, just as Ryecroft does here.

Next: Summer XXIII. Forms of true happiness.