Examining slavery at the Fitzwilliam

 

A "trade token", used on a British ship to vouch for the "integrity" of the slave trader (1788)

Hot on the heels of the last slavery exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, here is another show on a similar theme (Rise Up: Resistance Revolution Abolition), co-curated by Victoria Avery, who was also responsible for the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in 2023. This exhibition is the result of a study commissioned by the University to identify its links with Atlantic slavery “and other forms of forced labour”. This explains why there are so many references to Cambridge alumni in the exhibits and catalogue.  

The themes of the exhibition appear to be:

• Anti-slavery campaigners with links in and around Cambridge, notably Olaudah Equiano.
• The anti-slavery campaigning movement in Britain.
• Resistance and rebellion in early Black states, primarily, Haiti. The curators state the exhibition focuses on “acts of resistance” rather than “narratives of white abolitionism”.
• Resettlement, comprising a fascinating section about the 3,000 British Black loyalists who fought in the American War of Independence and were offered resettlement in Nova Scotia, and some coverage of an attempt to “repatriate” African slaves in Sierra Leone.
• Some early Black students at the University of Cambridge, specifically, a composer and an actor.  

This is a lot for one exhibition. Is it an art exhibition, a history presentation, or an act of expiation by the University? It sits uneasily somewhere between all three, with some muddled messages as you proceed around the exhibition.

What unites the exhibition, if anything, is a strident tone of injustice, with many heavily pedagogical captions. You will be told the correct interpretation of these exhibits, just in case you missed it; for example, a medal celebrating William Wilberforce is sternly labelled:

Medals like this one  - adopting the individualist conventions of the medium – ensured that abolitionist success was associated for decades to follow with a single white man. This has contributed to the neglect of countless other stories of resistance.

This hectoring style of captioning reminds me of recent exhibitions at the Tate Modern.  

Undoubtedly there are some fine exhibits, but overall the effect is weakened because of the very disparate themes and their wildly differing importance. To remember the first Black actor to play Othello is undoubtedly worth celebrating, as is one of the earliest Black composers as a student at a Cambridge college, but where does that fit in this exhibition of resistance and revolution?

Haiti

Haiti is justified for inclusion as the first successful rebellion by a slave population. Yet the focus here is rather strange. While the story of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the initial rebellion is well known, Haiti after the revolt is not a very edifying tale – as is shown by images in this exhibition. It looked to me there were more objects in the exhibition relating to reaction in Haiti than to revolution.

Dessalines, leader from 1804, introduced “serfdom” (as opposed to slavery, now banned), with all labourers bound to a plantation. The use of a whip was now forbidden, so estate owners used thick vines instead. Before this exhibition, I had no idea that Haiti had ever had a king. Now I know that Henri Christophe, one of the leaders of the rebellion, created a kingdom for himself, with a vast palace, using forced (not slave) labour, “using the corvée system, where people worked without pay instead of paying taxes”. Is this the rebellion we want to celebrate? Do we want to see details of the heraldic arms of the newly created (and short-lived) Haitian nobility?

Links to Cambridge

This is a mixture of significant and trivial. Certainly it is interesting that “the contradictory intertwinement of abolitionism and slavery existed at multiple levels from individuals to institutions to the country at large” [p134]. But does that justify mentioning all possible references to Cambridge alumni, for example that “Cambridge University educated … the heirs of British planters from Barbados, Jamaica and other British colonies long after slavery had ended”? Several references have an unintended effect: “Around 13,000 enslaved people rose up on sixty plantations, including some with connections to the University of Cambridge.” [catalogue, p144]

Contemporary art

One of the common practices with recent exhibitions that take place in an art gallery, but on a historical theme, is to invite contemporary artists to present their interpretation. This is the principle behind, for example, the recent Hew Locke show at the British Museum. However, some of the art seems to be chosen for its compliance with the exhibition theme, but to be in harmony with the message does not always produce an effective piece of propaganda – or art. A collection of hessian sacks by Karen McLean, for example, depicts enslaved women “via their reproductive organs rather than their faces to highlight enslaved women’s resistance and defiance through the control they took over their wombs.”  Sadly, I think that’s just how the slave owners saw the women: as reproductive agents to create more slaves. It doesn’t appear very defiant to me.

Some of the most effective recent art in the exhibition appears to have  little connection with the themes. There is a great picture by Rosmarie Marke (Which One, No Choice – Fleeing) of the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1997, but what is its connection with the rest of the exhibition?

Conclusion

It seems clear that the British Act of 1807 did not end the UK’s involvement with slavery, and I would have welcomed a more nuanced approach. Instead, there is a mixture of central and peripheral topics. The Atlantic slave trade is a fundamental and justified theme; it’s just a shame this Fitzwilliam show dilutes the message.

The Great Mughals: was it really paradise?

 

The carpet described in this exhibition as “The Ilchester carpet” ... but what has Ilchester got to do with it? It is Mughal in origin. 

The slogan (by a famous Persian poet) “If there is paradise on Earth, this is it”, is used to describe The Great Mughals exhibition (V&A, London): we are invited to see the period as an earthly paradise of tranquillity and beauty. We hear recorded sound of fountains and birds singing. We see object after object of spectacular wealth – jewellery, carpets, ironware, decorative weapons (not intended to be used in anger), as well as illuminated manuscripts, clothes, and paintings. But it turns out, not that you would learn this from the exhibition, that the three Mughals (Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Jahangir) who form the focus of this exhibition were perhaps not so great after all.

Clearly the V&A thought they were great, and that was sufficient. But everything was presented as an example of conspicuous consumption, and (at least walking round the exhibition) it was never clear where all this money came from, and whether the rulers spent it wisely. It looks like they had huge amounts of it, and spent it lavishly. As far as I could see, the paintings  (including the illustrated manuscripts) and the architecture were magnificent, and the textiles (hangings, clothes, and carpets) had wonderful detailed designs, but I wasn’t in a position to judge the many other objects on display (jewellery, ironware, glassware). It looked, well, expensive. Our criteria today are rather different to that of the 17th century.

What the exhibition didn’t tell me was:

• How none of the items I could see in the exhibition are actually held today in India? Does India have any collection of its own history?
• Where did the money come from to pay for all this stuff at the time of its creation?
• Were the Mughals (in 1066 and all that parlance) good kings or bad kings?
• More about the artistic quality of the items exhibited. What makes Mughal art distinctive?
• More about the various styles that the Mughals incorporated – not just the occasional (and easily identified) links to European art, but art of other Asian regions, plus more about what was being produced before the Mughals conquered the north of India.
• More about the Taj Mahal, rather than just a running video with dramatic shots of the building at sunrise and sunset

The catalogue, although lavishly illustrated, like the exhibition itself, answered few if any of these questions. The historical presentation is minimal – for example, the story of how Akbar reconquered much of North India is reduced to two sentences:

In 1556 the control of Hindustan by Babur’s descendants was precarious. Yet by 1571 Akbar’s territory could reasonably be described as an empire.  [Catalogue, p35]

It sounds like magic, and presented in this way, it is. You feel that there is probably more that could be said. In stark contrast, standard historical accounts of the period describe many years of warfare often with the family fighting among themselves. From the history books, Akbar doesn’t appear to be the nicest of rulers. He came to power aged only 13, and the de facto regent, Maham Anga,

overplayed her hand by promoting her own son, the ambitious Adham Khan, who in 1562 recklessly assassinated the kingdom’s leading minister of state. This so enraged the nineteen-year-old Akbar that, although the youth was his own foster-brother, he threw him over a palace balcony to his death. [Eaton, p180]

The contest to win control after Akbar’s death is described as “a bloody, fratricidal contest” [Eaton, p235]

As for Jahangir, after his son Khusrau fomented a rebellion, Khusrau’s supporters “were impaled along both sides of a road, while their miserable leader was placed on an elephant and mockingly made to receive his supporters’ ‘homage’ as they writhed in agony.” When Khusrau rebelled again, Jahangir partially blinded him. [Eaton, p204]. Jahangir’s end was not so illustrious, either:

in the last five years of his life, from 1622 to his death in 1627, the emperor became so incapacitated by drink and opium that Nur Jahan [his wife] took many administrative matters into her own hands. [Eaton, India in the Persianate Age, 2019]

That is not the image depicted by this exhibition.  

Catalogue

I had hoped that the catalogue would give me some more answers, but I was disappointed in this respect. The catalogue comprises three parts, one for each reign: Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Each part has a very short general introduction by Susan Stronge, followed by much shorter and more detailed essays on individual works or genres (coins, Chinese porcelain). That leaves the catalogue, and the exhibition, short on historical background; perhaps 5% of the text is historical background. The curator, Susan Stronge, recently edited a publication on jewellery from India, so it is to be expected that she would have an interest in this aspect.

Like the exhibition, the catalogue seems to exist in an art-historical bubble, seemingly independent of politics, economics, and the wider social context. This show could have been a much more educational experience; we no longer look at artefacts and just admire the beauty, however stunning they may look. We ask questions.

Rajeev Kinra, in the introduction, stresses the non-sectarian nature of Mughal rule in India (he uses the term Hindustan to mean the northern part of India ruled by the Mughals). All religions were tolerated as long as they promoted the Mughal empire. I’m not so sure; Guru Arjun, one of the early Sikh leaders, was put death by Jahangir, and Guru Hargobind, his successor, was imprisoned for seven years. I don’t think I will be looking to the “great” Moghuls for guidance on how to run an empire any time soon. 

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)

 

Edith Wharton at The Mount, the country house she designed and had built in 1902

This was a very disappointing read. I read two or three books by Wharton when I was much younger, but perhaps I am more discerning today. What was wrong with this book? I can think of several reasons.

Lack of characterisation

I couldn’t believe that the main characters, May Welland, Newland Archer, and Ellen Olenska, could carry the weight of thought that Wharton tried to invest in them. In fact, of these three, only Newland Archer’s thinking is revealed. The novel could have been written in the first person by him.

Perhaps this lack of characterisation is a problem with a genre where if you decide to write about boring characters trapped in their environment, the book risks being boring itself.

The book attempts to present a Jamesian moment of decision: will Newland Archer desert his wife for an adulterous affair with Countess Olenska? But we feel he is too slight for us to bother much either way.

I was fascinated by the minutiae of New York life for the super-rich around 1890. At that time, it appears that if it didn’t happen in New York society, it wasn’t worth thinking about – at least, for the lucky participants. A social whirl of balls, opera, summer houses in Newport (where Wharton also had a house) but a life of complete philistinism, a cultural desert. Plus the way the men were able, if they wished, to run a double life with the tacit acceptance of their behaviour, clearly known about by the women, but not mentioned.

I was not impressed by Wharton’s feeble attempt to depict a bohemian artist, the tutor M. Riviere. Clearly she has a fondness for things cultural and presents this as a foil to the empty lives of the rich – but  Riviere’s character is as shallow as the main three roles.

The love scenes descend into romantic fiction, and resemble romantic fiction in that these characters are no better drawn or believable than the heroes of Mills & Boon.

How is Countess Olenska so notable, so individual? Newland is struck that she calls one of the wealthy relatives’ houses “gloomy” (“the words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy”). In contrast, he states, of her rented house “It’s delicious – what you’ve done here”. But we never hear quite what she has done; she remains shallow, as are the other characters, since we have no evidence otherwise.

Nor was I impressed by the plot. It is very unlikely that as a lawyer, Newland Archer would be given a case involving his own family. But his legal work seems so undemanding of his time that perhaps it doesn’t really matter. There is no problem in him having time off for his emotional life,

Perhaps the lovingly detailed description of East Coast life  is to be expected. Wharton was born into a rich New York family; she privately published a collection of poems, and “came out” as a debutante. For much of her life she lived financially secure, from a legacy and her husband’s income. I would have imagined her experience in the First World War would have hardened her, yet this novel was only published in 1920.

Nostalgia?

Perhaps the book is, as some have claimed, an exercise in nostalgia, for a world that would never return. However, if this was New York in the 1890s, I want nothing of it. This is an existence totally dependent on slavery; Olenska’s visit to Boston is noted because she did not have a servant with her. She states it wasn’t worth it for only two day: “For two days it was not worth while to bring her”. Newland sees this as “unconventional”. Olenska is unusual in having a named servant, but one maid in the novel has no name except the description “mulatto”: we first hear of a “a mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban”. There is no description of the ethnic background of any of the other slaves, except for Olenska’s Nastasia, so why the repeated mention of “mulatto”? It must have some significance that escapes me (and escapes the World’s Classics edition editor).  

Aragon and Catalonia: are they Vanished Kingdoms?

 

Museum of the History of Catalonia (MHC), founded 1996, one of several lavish Barcelona museums presenting the Catalan interpretation of history

When you visit busy, industrial Turin, you are surprised to discover a royal palace in the middle of the city; the Italian monarchy is a relatively recent phenomenon. But this is the Royal Palace of the House of Savoy. There is no House of Savoy today; there are regions labelled “Savoie” in France, but nothing similar in Italy. Compare that to Barcelona, where Catalan history is omnipresent in street names, museums, art galleries, and even children’s games. Why does the House of Savoy not have a separatist movement in Turin, while Barcelona is shouting Catalan messages at every street corner? That’s a question that interests me.

Sadly, Vanished Kingdoms (by Norman Davies, 2012) does not answer the question. It is a study of 15 former states, none of which exists today. Of course, there is a fascination in forgotten areas of history. What could be more romantic than the study of disappeared kingdoms? It’s a bit like coming across an old railway line in the middle of the countryside. When was it built? Who built it? How can things change so much that it was important then, but of no significance today? Clearly, a book entitled Vanished Kingdoms raises an interest of the forgotten-corners-of-history variety. And, indeed, there is a chapter on the House of Savoy. However, my immediate question was to see what Davies says about Catalonia, which could be described as a vanished kingdom, but one that has spent the last hundred and fifty years trying to recreate, or even reinvent itself. What intrigues me is that there is a chapter in Davies’ book about Aragon, but not for Catalonia. Perhaps I am seeing things from a Catalan perspective, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider one without the other.

Davies’ method for each kingdom, one per chapter, is to examine it in three parts:

1. A view of the European location today
2. A narrative of the vanished kingdom
3. The extent to which the vanished kingdom has either been remembered or forgotten.

The emphasis is clearly on the second part, the narrative, comprising (I would guess) 80% of the material of each chapter. Hence, for the Aragon chapter, Davies begins by visiting present-day Perpignan – although what he finds is present-day references to Catalonia, not to Aragon. His narrative section covers the historical kingdom of Aragon, but in many respects this is also the history of Catalonia. Part three, potentially the most interesting, is the skimpiest and the least satisfying. He notes that one of the songs popular in Perpignan mentions “the Catalan girls” – not the Aragon girls.

Perhaps I was expecting too much; Davies ends his introduction with a romantic view of the historian as “a beachcomber and treasure-seeker”. So this really is the historians’ equivalent of writing about old railway lines! I wished the Aragon – Catalan discussion were considerably longer, and that Davies had spent less time describing mythical events in Aragon history. What I wanted to see is an exploration, not of Vanished Kingdoms, but of how some kingdoms reinvent themselves – while others do not. Catalonia would be a perfect case study of this phenomenon.

Sadly, Davies’ interests are elsewhere. His tone suggests a light-hearted rapid coverage of many different areas, with no attempt at a solid history (there are no chronologies or biographies in the book). Davies’ writing style can be summed up by the expression on the first page of the Aragon section, describing Perpignan:

As the corbeau flies, it is situated 510 miles south-south-west of Paris..

Who is this wordplay aimed at? The French don’t say “as the crow flies”, so this is an amusing joke for British readers. It would be largely unintelligible to anyone who is not a native English speaker. The intended audience throughout is an English reader who is familiar with British history. It’s not a tone that is appropriate for dealing with current political situations. The coverage of events seen as major in other books is very different here. In discussing the 1348 plague, seen by other commentators as a significant factor in the decline of Catalonia, there is a lengthy description in Davies, but no indication that this was a major factor in the 14th-century change of fortunes.

Here is his one-sentence overview of recent Catalan history:

Since 1978, after painful experiences under General Franco, the province has enjoyed autonomy within Spain, and has successfully reinstated the official status of the Catalan language.

That is hardly a measured appraisal of the Catalan situation. “Enjoyed” makes it sound as if the Catalans are all happy with the current situation, which is by no means the case. There is a fascinating article to be written about why Catalan nationalism became so popular, but at the same time is resisted by many of the inhabitants. The vanished kingdom of medieval Catalonia is used as a weapon in this struggle; but that’s not something that Davies seems interested in. In his bibliographical note to this chapter, he writes:

But the inclusive approach is signally lacking, especially in work inspired by national Catalan or regional Aragonese perspectives. Readers seeking introductory matter need to explore books on the Iberian peninsula as a whole …

I would have liked to see a more inclusive account from Davies, not one that features only the Aragonese side.

How to fix the UK economy

 

Photo by Alexander Grey on unsplash.com

Will Hutton seems to have a clear idea of what needs to be done with Britain. He has written his own book (Britain after Brexit, This Time No Mistakes), and as if this wasn’t enough, in a review of two titles addressing the same problem (Great Britain? How we get our future back, by Torsten Bell, and Left Behind, A new economics for neglected places, by Paul Collier), he made several specific recommendations for getting the UK economy to grow. I’m no expert in analysing the problems of the UK economy, but it’s interesting to see what others recommend. And, in all modesty, perhaps I can add a personal angle to the conversation.

Should we worry about the UK declining?

The first assumption seemed to be that the UK needed fixing. I was struck on a holiday to rural Portugal how wealthy that country had been to create so many lovely buildings (up to around 1800, as far as I could see) and yet how poor it was when we visited (this must have been around 2010 – things have no doubt changed now). If a colonial empire was really so lucrative, was there any alternative to economic decline once the colonies became independent?

What does nationalism have to do with it?

I was struck by the way all commentators agonized about how to improve the UK economy. Does it matter? There has been much talk in government circles about encouraging pension savers to invest in UK companies, something that seems to have gone completely out of fashion. But why should anyone invest in UK shares if the performance of the UK economy is so dire, compared to the USA? I read somewhere a figure of just 4% of UK pensioni funds invest in UK stocks, and I was surprised – until I read that Canadian pension funds have an even lower proportion of investment in their own country.

But let’s see the specific recommendations first to bring British economy back to life. I’ve based it on Hutton’s review of the two books, which usefully summarizes the main arguments.

Will Hutton seems to have a clear idea of what needs to be done with Britain. He has written his own book (Britain after Brexit, This Time No Mistakes), and as if this wasn’t enough, in a review of two titles addressing the same problem (Great Britain? How we get our future back, by Torsten Bell, and Left Behind, A new economics for neglected places, by Paul Collier), he made several specific recommendations for getting the UK economy to grow. I’m no expert in analysing the problems of the UK economy, but it’s interesting to see what others recommend. And, in all modesty, perhaps I can add a personal angle to the conversation.

Should we worry about the UK declining?

The first assumption seemed to be that the UK needed fixing. I was struck on a holiday to rural Portugal how wealthy that country had been to create so many lovely buildings (up to around 1800, as far as I could see) and yet how poor it was when we visited (this must have been around 2010 – things have no doubt changed now). If a colonial empire was really so lucrative, was there any alternative to economic decline once the colonies became independent?

What does nationalism have to do with it?

I was struck by the way all commentators agonized about how to improve the UK economy. Does it matter? There has been much talk in government circles about encouraging pension savers to invest in UK companies, something that seems to have gone completely out of fashion. But why should anyone invest in UK shares if the performance of the UK economy is so dire, compared to the USA? I read somewhere a figure of just 4% of UK pensioni funds invest in UK stocks, and I was surprised – until I read that Canadian pension funds have an even lower proportion of investment in their own country.

But let’s see the specific recommendations first to bring British economy back to life. I’ve based it on Hutton’s review of the two books, which usefully summarizes the main arguments.

Will Hutton seems to have a clear idea of what needs to be done with Britain. He has written his own book (Britain after Brexit, This Time No Mistakes), and as if this wasn’t enough, in a review of two titles addressing the same problem (Great Britain? How we get our future back, by Torsten Bell, and Left Behind, A new economics for neglected places, by Paul Collier), he made several specific recommendations for getting the UK economy to grow. I’m no expert in analysing the problems of the UK economy, but it’s interesting to see what others recommend. And, in all modesty, perhaps I can add a personal angle to the conversation.

Should we worry about the UK declining?

The first assumption seemed to be that the UK needed fixing. I was struck on a holiday to rural Portugal how wealthy that country had been to create so many lovely buildings (up to around 1800, as far as I could see) and yet how poor it was when we visited (this must have been around 2010 – things have no doubt changed now). If a colonial empire was really so lucrative, was there any alternative to economic decline once the colonies became independent?

What does nationalism have to do with it?

I was struck by the way all commentators agonized about how to improve the UK economy. Does it matter? There has been much talk in government circles about encouraging pension savers to invest in UK companies, something that seems to have gone completely out of fashion. But why should anyone invest in UK shares if the performance of the UK economy is so dire, compared to the USA? I read somewhere a figure of just 4% of UK pensioni funds invest in UK stocks, and I was surprised – until I read that Canadian pension funds have an even lower proportion of investment in their own country.

But let’s see the specific recommendations first to bring British economy back to life. I’ve based it on Hutton’s review of the two books, which usefully summarizes the main arguments.

First, the government must lead as a “public investor … so that it supports private investment”. That is easier said than done. Successive governments have tried public-private partnerships, usually with disastrous results. The present government is showing itself unwilling to take responsibility, for example, with the water industry, leaving it in private hands.

“Economic dynamism is linked … to socially cohesive societies”(these are Hutton’s words, although he is paraphrasing Torsten Bell).

 It doesn’t look like that in the US, with huge variations in income but vast wealth creation for some.

We need a regional policy to redistribute wealth. Easier said than done; I was in Boston, Lincolnshire, and I’m not sure what expenditure could change things.

“Destructive privatization has run riot” – “we need to change the fiscal rules so the government can borrow for investment”. Agreed, but the current government is not placing big enough investment in place.

Raising taxes, including council tax reform, increased capital gains tax, taxing electric vehicles. Unfortunately, the new government has already demonstrated that relatively small changes are greeted with screams of woe from the wealthy.

British companies must invest more, and they must invest in longer-term projects, not just for results in the short term. Great idea, but impossible to regulate by government.

Share ownership in UK companies should include a critical mass of influential owners, who can sustain the long-term strategy of companies. My reading of any investment is that sensible investors are in the minority. The majority are looking for a quick win, without any relationship to actually building the economy.  

Pension funds should be consolidated, so they can make some more risky investments safely. I’m not sure I am convinced by this argument. Pensions are not risky investments, for the most part, even without being consolidated.

More generally, he write about “contributive justice”, the idea that citizens contribute to a common purpose. Now, at the level of a residents’ association, there is plenty of scope to provide this kind of beneficial activity. But how can I contribute to the success of the town where I live? It looks to me as though this has already been established by central government bypassing local authorities, by setting up bodes that are not directly accountable to the electorate, but which benefit from central allocation of funds – the local example is the Greater Cambridge Partnership.

Does it fall within contributive justice to invest in UK stocks? Should I express my patriotism by restricting myself to a lower pension? This hardly seems a sensible option, either for an individual, or for a pension provider.

All in all, the views of the analysts and critics don’t appear to be stress-tested against the real world, where if you make the slightest increase in fuel duty, you are confronted by mass demonstrations that bring the country to a halt. There is no justice in this, but there is mob rule that you cannot ignore. So my fear is that nothing much will happen with all the above, and in the meantime, the rich continue to find out way of staying rich and getting richer – without any redistribution of wealth.

My 2024 books of the year

 

And the books keep piling up ... some of the books I haven't even started yet

2024 has been a good year for books. I’ve written separately about my two favourites, The Voices of Morebath, by Eamon Duffy, and Witold Rybczynski’s Home: a Short History of an Idea. Both these books continue to resonate several months after I finished them, the first helping to answer the question “What is religious belief and how was it manifested in the common people in pre-reformation England?”, and the second the equally fundamental question, “What does home mean now, and when did it start having the present-day associations we have with the term?”

More light-heartedly, the discovery of the year was E F Benson’s Mapp and Lucia (1931), a truly comic novel that had me in stitches. Perhaps it’s easier to write social satire about a distant generation to our own, but it certainly seems difficult for comic novelists to achieve with the present day (at least, if Nina Stibbe’s Reasons to be Cheerful and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia are typical). Benson is mercifully free of any self-importance, and his premise of elderly society women attempting to gain or maintain top social status in a provincial town is a perfect one: this is a novel of triviality, but written with such verve, and with such awareness of conversational put-downs, that you begin to anticipate the next social catastrophe. Elizabeth Mapp fails to respond to Lucia’s application for the annual art show, and whole chapters are devoted to the build-up, and consequence, of such a faux pas. It sounds insignificant, but in the hands of a skilled writer like Benson, who reminds me of Evelyn Waugh at his most satirical, it  has a glorious verve to it. 

I read that Miranda July’s All Fours, a novel that appeared on several critics’ books of the year, has comic elements, but for me any comedy was outweighed by the narrator’s monstrous egotism. Except, perhaps, for the joke that by the end of the novel, she hadn’t even reached the menopause she so dreaded. 

In complete contrast, Fin de Siècle Vienna, a series of essays by Carl Schorske, was heavy going (no reading aloud!) but rewarding. I bought it to accompany a trip to Vienna during the summer, and it added a whole dimension. I am no expert in the complicated emergence and fortunes of Austria-Hungary during the 19th- and early 20th centuries, and I needed to create my own notes of terms, people and events, to make sense of it, but it was worth the effort. Schorske has the knack of taking two historical figures, such as the writers Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal, and finding remarkable similarities and differences between them, such that these contrast build up an impression of the society and politics of the period. The crucial comparison is the essay on the Ringstrasse, the famous circular road around the historic centre of Vienna, and two of the urban designers involved in its construction, Camillo Sitte and Otto Wagner, the former a traditionalist, the latter a modernist. Similarly, Schorske’s chapter on the early years of the state of Austria finds unlikely parallels between three contemporaries, Georg von Schönerer, Karl Lueger, and the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, as he charts the tragic decline of democratic institutions and thinking during the early 20th century. One of the most impressive tools Schorske uses is the apposite quotation. Quotes appear in one location, then are recalled in a different context where they become hauntingly significant. Thus, Hofmannsthal: “Politics is magic. He who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him they will follow.”; or Freud’s “If I cannot bend the higher powers, I shall stir up hell” (the epigraph to his The Interpretation of Dreams, a quotation from Virgil; Virgil was referring to the River Acheron). A haunting book, Fin de Siècle Vienna depicts the steady descent of a nation to some of the most shocking events of the 20th century.

Of course, all my efforts at reading were dwarfed by Jane’s completion of A la recherche, by Proust, all seven volumes and 1.5 million words of it (not all in 2024, I hasten to add). I’ll leave to her the task of formulating a critique, and I look forward to it.  

The Future of Dinosaurs (David Hone), an interesting overview of the prehistoric animals, by an academic palaeontologist, was enjoyable, but read like a research proposal (“If only we had more specimens, more evidence”) rather than an attempt to tell us what we do know. Nonetheless, it contained some interesting details, when the author managed to get over his excessive qualification of results. Some dinosaurs had lips, but no ability to move them. We have more specimens of Anchiornis (a feathered troodontid) than any other dinosaur, but that doesn’t stop the world writing about Tyrannosaurus, with (according to the author) only 12 good complete specimens found, which means that a lot of what is written is guesswork.  

In summary, I’ve learned during 2024: something about dinosaurs, a lot about Austria-Hungary, the English Reformation, even something about the back-stabbing that takes place in a small English coastal town. But I can’t say I’ve learned much more about the menopause. 

Lucy Prebble, The Effect (Corpus Playroom, Cambridge)

 

Photo by Anna Shvets (CC0)

The Effect was great fun: entertaining (for the most part) to watch, with some good ideas. The plot is quite straightforward. Connie and Tristan, two twenty-somethings, have joined a medical trial which involves them being given increasing doses of an antidepressant drug. They interact, and the question is, is their interaction caused by the dopamine released by the drug, or is it a natural attraction?

That would be quite sufficient for a theme, but it’s not sufficient for a full West End play, which requires two hours. So the plot is, in my opinion, rather artificially thickened, to no great effect. The subplot is that the two doctors, one in charge of the trial (Dr Toby Sealey) and the doctor actually carrying out the trial (Dr Lorna James) had an affair some years ago. I found this subplot less convincing, perhaps because I was watching a student performance, in which the younger roles are always easier to cast than parts for 40- or 50-year-olds.

Prebble has a fine ear for dialogue, and writes some sparkling exchanges between the two young participants. It’s the classic contrast of higher-educated versus lower-educated, with all the corresponding differences in attitude and expectations, and performed brilliantly by the young actors, who are on stage most of the time. It reminded me of Shaw: the ability to construct a lively dialogue out of the simplest of scenarios.

There are some interesting puzzles to clarify, possibly just the clever decisions by the playwright to challenge your expectations. Of course the young man tries to get off with the young woman. Of course, the young woman is suspicious. But everything about the boy is not what it seems. He’s called Tristan, unlikely for someone from Wood Green in Essex, although it no doubt ticked a significance box for the author. More surprising, he turns out to be a believer in God, unlike her. And when rejected, he makes it clear that this is not a quick affair, but the love of his life. This is, for me, where the play begins to break down. I don’t see any justification for the two to stay together for life; I just can’t see it working. Where did eternal love come in? She has studied psychology and sociology, while he appears to be from the University of Life, although he is clearly an excellent learner.

The need to extend the play led to the introduction of some less essential material. Once the couple had got involved, their subsequent discussions were, for me, somewhat convoluted – what did they need to talk about? Even more cumbersome was the situation of the junior doctor, Lorna James. Whatever her background, her character didn’t quite gel for me, and it didn’t seem to matter too much to me if she did or didn’t resolve things with the older doctor.

The play throws in references to the ethics of medical trials (“you’re only interested in a side-effect if you can sell it!”), depression, and as I mentioned, attempts a subplot between the two doctors. But the main story is what gripped me. Its theme is summed up in a marvellous exchange between the two principals. She claims he is only attracted to her because of the drug. She says that if he were drunk and made a pass at her, she wouldn’t take it seriously. He replies that males only make a pass when they are drunk because they are too shy to open up normally. Of course, there is some truth in both arguments. Prebble’s achievement is to combine the two so that both are believable – until they fall in love for ever.