On the scales at 1.2kg or 2lb12oz in
Victorian money, this hefty tome conforms physically to its contents. Not for it the fashionable Victorianist world of steampunk, nor that of playful Victoriana as currently
on show at the Guildhall Art Gallery. High Minds is worthy, serious, solid stuff;
in a word, weighty.
While high thinking often induces low
spirits, however, Simon Heffer’s account is not heavy going, but offers fairly easy
reading, covering a great deal in short sections. Concise accounts of Chartism, Tractarianism,
denominational wranglings over education bills, civil service reform,
Disraeli’s hypocrisy, women’s colleges;
potted biographies of Thomas Arnold, Clough, Froude, Caroline Norton, Fitzjames
Stephen, Thomas Barnardo, Angela Burdett
Coutts and more; blow-by-blow narratives
of the Albert Memorial (in a chapter
entitled ‘The Heroic Mind’ although the energetic Consort and Sirs Henry Cole
and George Gilbert Scott were hardly great men in the Carlylean sense) and the 1867 Reform Act, described by Gladstone
as a national ‘leap in the dark’ and by Carlyle as a suicidal plunge over
Niagara into anarchy
And here is
the ending
So, a selective, metropolitan,
political and largely masculine history, Whiggishly endorsing the view of constant
improvement. Overall an accurate version,
since these groups dominated the polity, though not a sufficient one for later
analysts. Moreover, the
disinterestedness on which Victorian commentators prided themselves is no
longer taken at face-value. By the final
page, one has the indistinct impression that Heffer wishes to be the Macaulay
de nos jours – chronicling a period whose values he admires to promote a
pattern for the present.
Why do ‘the Victorians’ retain such a
reputation today? Is it the residual red globe effect? when briefly between the ascendancies of
France and the United States, Britain held such power in the world? Is it
nostalgia for supposedly lost ‘greatness’?
Can such a long-gone era still shape national identity? Who do we think we are? One wishes Heffer would go beyond summaries, since to argue through
such questions is one main pleasure of writing and reading history.
No comments:
Post a Comment