{"id":2918,"date":"2005-06-07T11:42:51","date_gmt":"2005-06-07T15:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/07\/2918.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:05","slug":"as-your-wimsey-takes-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/07\/as-your-wimsey-takes-you\/","title":{"rendered":"As your Wimsey takes you"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger assumes that the person posting the Wimsey Papers<\/a> 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.\n

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.\n

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.\n

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.\n

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.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17440,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions\/17440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}