1926-06-17 — Page 4

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IS HONGKONG VICTORIAN?.

AN INAPT COMPARISON.

A FEW FACTS AND IDEAS FOR DIGESTION,

[DY DYPIT FOR THE "HONGKONG DAILY PRESS ."]

PANICS AND BOOMS.

POLITICAL DEMONSTRATIONS. virtue, which was characteristic of Eng- There were phases of adversity as well It was found neesmary in 1818 to ́en. land when it appeared." Brudlaugh on- as prosperity; panics as well as booms roll 170,000 special constables in London bounced hituself an atheist in Parliament Against the Bourishing years from 70 to deal with a political street procession. and as such unable to take the oath, but to 74, there was a slump five years In 1963 a demonstration of working mon insisted on his right to sit, as a chosen later which is thus described "From one defied the Home Secretary and the Lon representative of. the people. He fought end of the kingdom to the other, great don police to the extent of pulling down the point for eight years, and, although firms became bankrupt, mines and Iron the railings of Hyde Park to hold a for his methods were not by any means works were stopped, ships lay idle in hidden meeting. In 1880 a Trafalgar charming, attracted suicient respect to ports, and a universal feeling of des Square mob so terrified the denizens of win. Plimsol, to get his line adopted, pendency and distrust spread like a St. James's (throwing stones at the win-wade a violent scene in the House of blight into every corner of the industrial dows of the best clubs was part of their Commons in the seventies, refused to Most new arrivals in Hongkong Boon world." It is clear that the croakera demonstrations) and of Piccadilly that apologize, but aurvived. Gladstone. sum up the situation as Victorian. They must then have declared the doom of many members of the ruling classes triumphed over the appellation Júdas don't mean it. as a compliment. They British industry. Lancashire suffered thought it advisable to quit London and Iscariot. The Royal Family had to find that our eastern buttress la disap terribly from the American civil war in let the revolution take its course. But triumph over Punch's caricature of Queen pointingly different from their Maughan-1802. In 1870 there were seventy-two the inbred good-sense, integrity and Victoria and Prince Albert as importu led Kipling-bred conceptions of east of strikes. The activities of trade unions justice of the British people, as well as nato beggars; and Her Majesty bad to' Buzz. For a state of affairs with which did not begin with desperate bolshies their rough roadiness to scrap, at home live down a bitter accusation of pro they are imperfectly acquainted, human yesterday. They began in the middle of or abroad, for what they thought they Gorman sympathies against Denmark in beings usually hit upon a word of which the century, and long before the end of ought to have, were strong in the Vic- 1604; and had to depend, in each case, they don't clearly know the meaning the century had won legal recognition as torian Era. Neither the rulers nor tho not on prestige, but on personal merits. But Victorian is an unusually inapt something more than illegal societies or agitators of that age are to be disparaged It is absurd to brand as materialistic an word to apply to this colony. It is nei conspiracies in restraint of trade. The by comparison with any of their succosage which accepted Carlyle, with all'his thor enlightened appreciation nor con author of Tom Brown's Schooldays was sors of the prosent century.

imperfections on his head, as its prophet.. clusivo abuse. Britain in the nineteenth among those who dared to help the move COBDEN'S IDEA OF THE CHINESE. The Ago which is supposed to have re century had much more about it to ndment. An eight hours day was adopted It is more than eighty years sinen volled in ugliness discovered the greatest mire than to condemn; and it is time as part of the programme of the Miners' Cobden pointed out to Parliament anBritish artist, Turner, whose "Fighting that, the talkers got busy and read some union in the sixties. Thors was book like Herbert Paul's five volumes European war, as well as many expen some of us are still, apparently, blind to; the only original school of British Art, a big aspect of tho Chinese, question, which Teucraind" was exhibited in 1830; and about the years from 1847 to 1805. They siva colonial wars, undertaken by Bri-a merely sentimental consideration, no the Pre-Raphaelites, got together in would then see that they might as well tain, while the Victorian public jingoed doubt, but one that is felt. The young 1848. call Hongkong Alexandrian or Periclean, and objected, even as you and I, accord- Chiness aro fond of it-"an ingenious Augustan or evon Byzantino. It has ing to mood. Britain was scared by be and civilised people, who were learned some very obvious Babylonian features ing on the verge of the red revolution when our Plantagenet kings could not But to call if Victorian is as sure a proof of the barricades in Paris in 1846, as write, who had logic before Aristotle, and of lack of information and observation. well as popular and, nationalist risings morals before Socrates." John S. Mill na to call the situation in China Gilber- in Italy, Berlin, Austria; and again by expounded some principles about govern a communist revolution of 1871 is Paris mènt, in bis Representative Government, The latter is described by a contem 1800, which one would expect to find [porary Victorian an "a socialist and familiar to every keen citizen whose

red republic.

perpetual flag to name is on a'voters' list at home, or who the proletaire class everywhere."

signs a petition for representative govern ment in Hongkong, or who contemplates, in modern political institutions. But I with any intelligence, 'China's experiment

could not find the book under Mill's works in the Hongkong Club. For those who their head in the clouds and their feet cannot find time for much reading of this on the edge of destruction, imagine that

tian.

ין

LIFE IN HONGKONG.. Perhaps it is the geographical name of our city, or the glimmerings of living historical knowledge in learning that this colony was founded at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victorin, or per- haps a sudden discovery of our fondness for royal statuary, that inspires the critics to use this word. It cannot sure ly be confusion over the fact that annals of the Victorian Era record a Mackono

THE MODERN SPIRIT. Some folk talk excitedly as if the pro- letariate was a new invention of sono twentieth century devil. Others, with

A VIRILE PERIOD.

It was an age of Philistines only in so far as all ages are copious with greedy people engrossed in their own. that it was an age of fixed ideas. Even gains. But we cannot truthfully say

the sacred rights of property word tam- pered with by hoary Victorian statesmen over fifty years ago, in the recognition of tenant right in Ireland and in the disestablishment of the Irish Church.

No bogey was so terrible but what some It was not a flabby ago. It was vicile:

men, irrespective of class, were ready to challengo it, without counting the per- sonal cost. There were Ulysacses and Knights Errant in plenty, although

chio. of sixty years ago, prosecuted in a new age with The League of Nations mended. There is nothing new in saying Tennyson, who earned Peel's patronage some twentieth century angel has started sort, the ninth paragraph can be recom

Cobden advocated

the Court of Arches for "kneqling befors and Disarmament. the elements,

using lighted can arbitration, and spoke for disarmament dles.

burning incense, mixing as an alternative to the expense of plat water with wine. It is more likely ing ships with armour more than sheer ignorance. If there is anything in years ago. Tennyson has assured u the connotation of the term to account that All the world wondered" with ad- for its application to a community which | miration for the might of British valour dances with such persistence and dresses at Balaclava; but Matthew Arnold, who with such abandon, it must be in the was certainly one of the world at the sphere of ideas. We know that life in time, records in his letters the opinion Hongkong is placid, that, material con- that "Those gentlemen will be mora siderations count for a great deal and missed at reviews than in the field," and that we are largely at the mercy of little the Fronch General who was looking on worries because we are afraid of big raid "C'est manifique, mais ce n'est troubles, and that the clash of great principles does not disturb, us so often as is good for British health.

LIFE IN ENGLAND.

that colonies are an encumbranco, which

are

and Queen

is not worth the expense; nor in the by describing the ong opposite doctrine, to which people are Victoria's by describing the other, was .. having but that we must be prepared to We are grossly extravagant with our wakening up, that colonies

warth not either, in the activo modern sense.

fight to keep them. These are both Vio praise if we accuse a

a little place like torian sentiments. The former reached Hongkong of having the qualities of a election of 1880. The lattor was classic stimulating and exciting century. If a pitch of considerable intensity at the great nation developed throughout a ally hinted by Lord Kimberley when he Hongkong can avoid being Carthaginian aid "But there is a disposition in so it can copsole itself for failing to bi many members of our party to imagine quite Victorian. The world is still feed. that an Empire can be, and ought to be, fallen from Victorian tables; still warm- ing on the scraps of ideas that have maintained without ever resorting to ing its hands at the glowing embers of Victorian Gres. What is wireless, us a step in human progress, compared with the mighty flight of laying the firat atlantic cable in 18667 Is it so very wonderful to listen to the Savoy. Orpheans broadcast to Aberdeen, when we have read in the letters of a visitor Prince's drawing-room he listened to the Opera on the Telephone, the Prince show. ing him how to put it on his ears.

THE FAULT OF THE

FAULT SCHOOLMASTER,

comes to the real pinch."

pas la guerre." There was sufficient ce, that I forcsce dificulties when it tolerance, and a sufficient sense of reality, to allow the spread of such opin- ions. It was in the middle of the Vic-

DRESS IN THE VICTORIAN AGE. The Victorians were not all dull and

"modern"" ato

torian Era, not in the twentieth century, conventional. There is much less diver- that writers began to talk about the rity in dress, demeanour, and opinion modern spirit, and to foster it, as a among a hundred prosent day representa spirit that would question the im- tives of the middle classes than there was mense system of institutions, established fifty years ago. We facts, accredited dogmás, customs, rules, which have come to them from times not modern." They were go-ahead genere tions, compared with which much that in morę modern is reactionary.

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES.

to Berlin in 1885 that in the Crown

It is easy to account for the small way

And we fondly foolishly imagine that, it was like this in England from 1837 f 1001. We take our notions of that era from Tonnyson, becauze bis poetry, ́be- ing easy to read, was taught us at school. We forget that he lived detached from

products of a stereotyped machino called etato education, or of an education which, the life of his times, afraid of express

even when it costs an individual and disin which the wonderful Victorian Aga ing ideas which would mean taking

criminating price, is dominated by the figures in our minds, compared with cer aides, and therefore risking half his market, on the great dividing questions

general conceptions of wholesalo stato tain periods in the more distant past. NO. education. Although men take excessive generation over knew so little about the of the times. He glossed over every

care with their dress to-day, it is direct Generations immediately preceding it, До did the generation Lorn in this thing which history now brings · out.

"That there were religious difficulties ed solely to ensuring that they will be last decade of the ninetyenth century. sharp and rough. Of an age of the is more generally realised. Our local dressed exactly like the other men they If they had been as much under fatherly spirit the only voice we have listened to papers advance now and then to the bat-ncet. Palmerston was & gay cupoptic and grandfatherly tutelage as earlier is the voice of its sybarite. Thus it is the positions of the Victorians. Some of well he would it in with the society of lackier. But they didn't do it" at son of Bolial." One can imagine how generations were, they would have been that we imagine the Victorian Age to the facts are worth recording as a tribute fantastic individuals in a book like the school. Parents had lost confidence in have been placid and stagnant. Actual to the free spirit of enquiry then inions, compiled by a Victorian. That knowledge alleged to be necessary in the recently published Uncensored Recollec- their power to give their young the new ly it was turbulent and progressive to the air. When the reformed science koray was a republican, and enjoyed the modern world. They handed them over a degree unsurpassed by any reign of of geology was expounded by a Scottish last of bohemianism in London, as George ta. schools and universities. But get a equal length. People think vaguely that stone-mason, thinkers began to give some it in Paris George Eliot was a rebel depend upon it that sooner or later h

Moore in his youth sampled the last of man to teneb in a school and you can Victorianism was uninterrupted pros attention to German critics who were against the family system, and exploited will prefer to teach only what ho hna perity, and unbroken peace; undisturbed questioning the literal inspiration of the the "natural antipathy of consanguin read in books, and will abstain from ex faith in the Christian Religión; docility Bible and thereby, as was at first sup Shavianism. Shaw is the last of the life. For it is safer so to do. He may not ity" which is takon as a smart modem pounding what he has encountered in under constituted authority; sound men posed, threatening the sura foundations Victorians.

be the man to whom you would go for in charge of affairs, and practical poli- of true religion. A colonial Bishop, "SPIRIT OF CONTEMPT FOR MERE will tell you with an air of conviction advice about your latest scrape; but ho tics cardfully preserved from the tinker-working on mathematical and statistical

: AUTHORITY.". ing of theorists; a deaf ear, or even a arguments, challenged the historical

all about the causes, conduct and conse- Tho rulera were not all aristocrats,quences, with alternatives, of the War of edge, turned, on miscreants with ideas; truth of the Pentateuch, and the Judicial There was Disraeli. In the parliament The Roses. A man may have spent a subservient working classes; ardour tor Committes of the Privy Council support although working hours were long, and sad enjoy the daily reading of it; but of 1880 there were three workingmen, generation reviewing, current literature, imperial expansion; a salutary fear of ed him in his consequent difficulties with free education did not come in until 1891. put him in a professorial chair, and he Bocial ostracism which kept hot-landed bis superiors in the Church. The Joseph Chamberlain, at the beginning of will immediately set about expatiating folk from making a nuisanco of them authors of what was in its day, 1800, likely to put class against class. The boring book in the world. It looks like bis career was reckoned a dangerous man on Pamela, even if he finds it the most aelves with opinions different from those a heretical collection of Essays and Re-greatest theorist of Victorian times (and a plot on the part of the old to keep of the beat people; conventional beviews had to face the punishment of his theories are still the chief stock-in to themselves their only asset of ren

Church authorities, who 34 also baviour; ugliness in olothes and furni- Educational authorities, as well as Con an officer of the East Indian Company to pass on to the young only the shadewa trade of no-called advanced people) was knowledge from recent experience, and ture, and the dullness of respectability vocation's consure of their books. Bat. and for more than twenty years conduct of dead facts which they have learned in A mixture of Matthew Arnold and Rus supported by an immortal and humoured the correspondence of the company, books,

ous judgment of Lord Westbury's; they correspondence of the company as it happens that a generation may kin would soon destroy this congestive defied authority and questioned eatab ber of the famous Jamaica Committee. move forward, and have to take its place outlook.

lished dogma, winning through to the Macaulay was rejected an M.P., by in the front line, without knowing any Probably there were middle class.homes triumph of seeing one of their number Edinburgh, in spite of his popular whig thing about the achievements of those in England then, as there are now and Heads of Oxford Colleges. When the reputation as an administrator in India would be more to the general good if a Victorian Bishop, and two others the politics, and although he had added n from whom it takes over, Burely it. always will be, in which those were the most eloquent and socially, powerful to bis fame as an essayist in the Edin theo, generation which is now coming inte charactistics of life. But none of those Bishop of the English Church undertook hurgh Review; because he had much of power, had studied the Court of Queen: things is typically Victorian. The men in 1880 to squash, with scorn and scoffing, foolishly imagine that the Victorians XIV. knew about the Land Acts of at a meeting of the British Association that bumptiousness which some of us Victoria rather than the Court of Louis and events which history celebrates as the theories of Darwin about Evolution, mookly admired in public men. Vanity modern Ireland rather than the agrarian Victorian transcended all that Look it was found that The Lord had de Fair, of 1848, regarded by all admirers agitations of the Gracchi, and lind been un a few of the facts. Ability to recall livered him into the hands" of Huxley, of the Victorian Eri as the greatost of informed about the history of Trades what happened in eighteen anything is who defending science from religion, sl novels, owed much of its success to Unionis rather than taught to forget regarded as the loathsome stigma of a had the courage, and kill, to keel-haul its spirit of contempt for mero authority the names and dates of the Plantagenet politician.

bin with complete success,

or rank, not distinguished by genius or | Kings.

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