Despite the reaction of the aristocrats to this lower group, some of the English novelists regard them as a great source of national strength. Disraeli may have felt that they needed guidance, not freedom and self-expression; Orwell found hope in them. Looking out the window of his and Julia’s rendezvous, Winston Smith sees the figure of a woman of the Proles, a “solid, unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come.”
The Fruits of Imperialism
When one thinks of the literature of imperialism he is likely to remember Kipling’s Soldiers Three, Mandalay, or Recessional. Wells’s Dick Remington remarks, “The prevailing force in my undergraduate days was not Socialism but Kiplingism.” But if Kipling emphasizes the White Man’s Burden, most other novelists emphasize the White Man’s Guilt. In Beauchamp’s Career Col. Halkett looks up from his newspaper to remark to Nevil, “There’s an expedition against the hill-tribes in India, and we’re a peaceful nation, eh? We look as if we were in for a complication with China.” And Nevil replies ironically, “Well, sir, we must sell our opium.” Forster’s A Passage to India lays prime responsibility for India’s tragedy at Britain’s doorstep. He pictures the cruel clannishness and snobbery of the English colony of Chandrapore with its Mrs. Callendar who declares, “Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die.” India is full of red-faced Ronny Heaslops, officials who play God, a god whose thunderbolts and lightnings are infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Mrs. Moore, the single English subject in Chandrapore able to bridge the enormous gap between the two cultures, reflects about Ronny:
One touch of regret—not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart—would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.
There is no question in this novel that Britain is the violator in this loveless union. The South African novels recall Wordsworth’s line about the makers of the French Revolution “become oppressors in their turn.” The Afrikaners may now be the malefactors; at one time they, like the Indians, were clearly the victims. Jakob Van Vlaanderen, the great stern patriarch of Too Late the Phalarope, recalls the trek into the interior to escape the repressive measures of the British. Jim Latter in Prisoner of Grace travels to London from Nigeria, where he has overseen the destinies of a tribe for years, because he is convinced that the people in the Colonial Office “want to kill off the Lugas.”
As Britain began to exchange the imperialist role for that of co-defender of the West, this deftness and high-handedness in international affairs was sometimes regarded as an asset. Major Walker assesses it for Tommy McPhail in The Crack in the Column when he says, “You’re no match for us in arranging a chain of political events, in planning several moves ahead, in making the baby be born exactly when the horoscope says, sex, weight, and appearance of innocence guaranteed.”
Like any good national literature, the English turns inward the searching light of criticism. The reader sees hypocrites, time-servers, and turncoats. Spread before him are domestic abuses and cold imperialism. But he is also given a glimpse of a people who retain a regard for the rights and dignity of the individual, a people who have turned away from violence and shown a remarkable capacity for achieving change without sacrificing stability, for combining growth with order.
THE UNITED STATES: A SELF-PORTRAIT
De Forest, in Playing the Mischief, describes Congressman Sykes Drummond as a “Robert-the-Devil” type. This complete cynic makes an interesting comment on the conditions around him: “A John Bull told me yesterday that there is no such thing known in England as a municipal ring or a thieving mayor. That is what any American of the present day would set down as a fairy story.” If the political novel has any validity as a commentary on national characteristics, one conclusion is inescapable: many Americans become criminals when they accept public office. Drummond’s comment is borne out by the two groups of novels. In the English novel individuals such as Hamer Shawcross and Chester Nimmo sell out to the opposition. Nimmo even engages in commercial activities too closely related to his official duties to be quite proper. But there is a complete absence of the corruption portrayed at all levels of government in the American political novel.
Crawford attempted to differentiate the English from the American early in An American Politician. The novel’s political naïveté renders any of its judgments suspect, but in this Crawford appears to come close to the truth. His opinion is that