Your Humble Blogger assumes that the person posting the Wimsey Papers has the permission of the Sayers estate so to do, and therefore Gentle Readers interested in Lord Peter, or Dorothy Sayers, can read and enjoy in good conscience these wartime bits of Wimseyana. So.
I was interested, of course, to see Harold Nicolson pop up. I’ve wondered how well the two knew each other; they have a similar outlook in a lot of ways, but somehow I can’t imagine them liking each other much. Much of what Ms. Sayers is on about in these bits seems to me to fit in quite well with a good deal of Mr. Nicolson’s sympathies, and often in areas I myself have less sympathy with. Aspect, perhaps, of Englishness that even YHB can’t swallow. A profound distrust of education for the working-class. A grudging attitude towards the free press. A romantic nostalgia for Country Life. Of course, I do share with them many other attitudes, such as a sense that not only is artistic life concerned with the political, but that it’s more difficult to trust a politician who shows no creative urge.
What strikes me as well is a sense I get in other writings of the time, that the Victorian world is ending, and that it’s terribly sad that the Victorian world is ending, even while acknowledging that the Victorian world was built on illusion and oppression, and that it must end and should end. That is, many English writers recognize that their beautiful Victorian (and Edwardian) habits and manners, their aristocratic mores, and even their codes of ethics and morals, their ideas of what is Done and Not Done, and their concepts of gentlemanly and ladylike behaviour are not only totally untenable in the world as it has become, but were at any rate built on predatory colonialization, oppression of the masses, and a sort of rigorous public dishonesty that would shame any of them in private life. And yet, the things themselves were so marvelous that one can’t help mourning for them even while knowing that they are false and bad.
I think that’s something we in America have a hard time with. Perhaps it’s the Civil War; our great national shame was tied up with a sort of Southern Culture that deserved, perhaps, the same mix of distaste and longing. We tend, though, to minimize one or the other, or to pretend that the good didn’t rely entirely on the bad. Our current cultural battles have a lot to do with nostalgia for, say, the fifties (not as they were, of course, but the same can be said for the English wartime attitude towards their own history of fifty years past). We tend, though to split between those who abhor the colonialism, racism, sexism and homogeneity (as well as the lousy pop music) and those who idealize the neighborliness, safety, prosperity, patriotism and cultural standards (as well as the great pop music). Those attitudes talk past each other. It’s hard for me, for instance, to recognize that yes, the streets were safer, and so were the homes, for many people. Communities existed that do not exist to day, communities of purpose and of accident. Prosperity was real, for many people, and within certain bounds, there was an emphasis on breadth of culture that I would like to still exist. But I feel compelled to point out that the read prosperity was made in part by exploiting people, here and overseas, and by the short-term benefit of switching to a car- and oil-based system that has been a long, slow catastrophe. Those communities existed, in large part, due to their ability to exclude members who would shake the world-view of the conservatives in them. The streets were safer and the justice system was more corrupt. These things were not coincidences. They were part and parcel of a complex system with benefits and costs.
The problem is, when we think the costs outweigh the benefits, to make the right choices without pretending the benefits didn’t exist. To say, yes, it’s too bad that the English country house weekend party is gone, even if it’s worth it. Once we do that, it could, perhaps, be easier to talk to the people who might weigh things differently.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
a couple points in defense of the USA in the 50s, all those things you listed taken into account.
(1) we were and still are exceptional engineers. we earned compensation for the stuff we made because in many ways, it was good stuff.
(2) the significant economic competitors had been flattened in the war so what flooded us with cash, which seems to have been the strong floor of the strong communities that formed at the time, was the monopoly situation.
to spoil these arguments i would say, point 1 glosses over american engineers failing to address the consequences of their solutions – although during that period when huge mistakes were going to be made, we were the only ones out there, as stated in point 2.
point 2 plays down the many public and private efforts taken to retain the lead gained from the wartime destruction. we have for instance, in the years since industrial competition started up again (say, 1970), completely screwed up our school system by underfunding it at a time when we needed all the local brainpower we could get our hands on. why we screwed it up probably traces back to discomfort at the empowerment of marginalized communities by the flood of cash.
Fair enough, and I don’t think I made it clear that among the reasons why things need to change is that things change, and the writers I’m talking about also seemed to understand that Victorian England, like 50s US, was an accident of global history that couldn’t be sustained even if it was moral to sustain it. That is, leaving out all the ways in which “our” moment in the sun came at the expense of others (even some of “us”) plunged into darkness, that moment was going to end sometime.
Thanks,
-V.
You forget the end of history, which is/was/will be perpetually upon us.
i see what you both are saying. (michael, though, really. once history ended in 1989, time became immemorial. please don’t refer to any moments outside the historical period.)
Thank you, Vardibidian, for this subtly profound piece. If the good side of the 1950s came from the benefits of a car- and oil-based system, in many ways such goods as we still have, culturally, must be of the same order.
What might it be well to regret about the passing of this system, to make it easier to talk to those who are terrified by the possibility of its passing into history?
Thanks, Chris. I’m don’t want to over-emphasize the car’n’oil aspect of 50s (and 60s and 70s) prosperity, as a substantial aspect was (as I’m sure david has pointed out before) due to increasing global commerce at a moment when any possibly competition was ravaged by war.
Still, if we talk about the Great Suburban Expansion that I think has outlived its time, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that the security, the space, and the privacy were all perfectly reasonable things to want. In fact, I totally want a picket-fence around a yard that is big enough for a few children to play safely but small enough not to be too much of a hassle or expense to maintain. I think the social costs of everybody having such a yard (or even just everybody who wants one) are immense, were not understood at the time, and will be paid off for generations yet unborn, but that doesn’t mean that the yards themselves are bad. It’s easy to make those yards (and the picket fences around them) a symbol of What Went Wrong, but it’s also wrong, morally, factually and rhetorically wrong.
If the yards somehow went away, I would be sad about it; much of my childhood was spent playing Whiffle Ball in one of those yards. And, of course, I’m aware that the affluence that allowed such a yard was, in large part, built on exploitation, pollution, and oppression. The yard was nice, though. You see my difficulty?
Thanks,
-V.
but the thing is i played ball in yards and i played ball on grassy commons and the play didn’t go too differently. if anything, playing in the yard was sort of lonely, and playing in the common areas provided lots of spectator opportunities that made me better at sports.
Sure, sure. But then some adult had to go and watch over y’all, or else there were (gasp!) unsupervised kids, and it is, after all, more work to go to the commons. My own belief, now, is that we’d all be better off with kids playing on the common green, even if it’s more work, and even if that means that sometimes the kids are unsupervised, but I sure understand why a parent would prefer a yard you can see from the kitchen and a picket fence around it.
Thanks,
-V.