Matthew Lewis -- The Monk

How often does a quotation actually portray the author's original intentions? I picked up Matthew Lewis's The Monk because of a quotation on the back of the book, in bold red ink, 'The Monk was so highly popular that it seemed to create an epoch in our literature'. Sir Walter Scott wrote these words. However, Scott was not necessarily saying what the quotation implies. The next sentence Scott wrote was, 'But the public were chiefly captivated by the poetry with which Mr. Lewis had interspersed his prose narrative.'

What The Monk is remembered for is certainly not its poetry, and any modern reader (and one has to assume the human race was not so different two centuries ago) is fascinated by the novel for the horror and the evil of its story. Scott, one suspects, was somewhat unworldy, not as fascinated by vice as most of us wretches. One never truly loathes any character in a Scott novel. As Chesterton wrote in his essay on Scott, 

He may deny a villain every virtue or triumph, but he cannot endure to deny him a telling word; he will ruin a man, but he will not silence him. In truth, one of Scott’s most splendid traits is his difficulty, or rather incapacity, for despising any of his characters. He did not scorn the most revolting miscreant as the realist of today commonly scorns his own hero. Though his soul may be in rags, every man of Scott can speak like a king.

The Monk has a much less generous view of human nature. And so for all its supernatural drama, it felt more realistic than a Scott novel (which is neither praise nor criticism of Scott nor Lewis, just an observation of difference). The dark journey on which Ambrosio, the titular monk, found himself will resonate with most people. We all know that the guilt of sin can almost be eliminated by way of familiarity. We can often persuade ourselves that if we sin in secret we have not done anything wrong, as if it were only the punishment that proves the sin. Ambrosio, in the beginning of the novel, was a man filled with pride and self-satisfaction -- the most virtuous of monks, a great teacher and orator admired by all. He was a man whose life relied on appearance and reputation, on comparing himself to the vices of others. He judged his own virtue by looking out externally for confirmation. Such a person is the most likely to end up regarding private sin not as 'real' sin -- that is, not the sort of sin that leads to hell. Only a loss of reptuation would convince him of his wrongness. Otherwise, it is his reputation that facilitates his sin: he hides sin behind holiness.

This of course makes one think of the scandals in the Catholic Church. This is most definitely an anti-Catholic novel to some degree, but I nevertheless found its depiction of moral corruption in a church hierarchy extremely convincing. It made me see, to some small extent, how priests could end up abusing deaf children and keeping nuns as sex slaves. (One narrative in The Monk even strikingly compares to the abuse in the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland.) I am nominally a Catholic, having been baptised into the faith, and though I am lapsed there is much I love in it. But the evil and degradation and corruption which has been revealed in my lifetime repels me from it. Although I do not think any other denomination or religion is necessarily much better, but that's hardly an excuse. They are corrupt in different ways and to different extents at different times. As an outsider, my impression is that the Catholic Church does suffer from excessive hierarchy and excessive superciliousness. Respect for order (which I strongly believe in in most areas of life) does not means uncritical deference to either those above you or your peers. The survival of a hierarchy depends on its integrity, on honesty and also fidelity to something outside the hierarchy, a greater truth -- these are undermined if one does not challenge corruption in those above. The body is a temple, but if it develops a tumour one needs to get over one's qualms about cutting into it in order to remove the tumour. The cutting into it may be unpleasant, but simply leaving the tumour would be far worse. This is surely what the Church has done.

Britain after Theresa May

I eventually decided to vote in the EU elections yesterday, and I actually surprised myself by voting Tory. Don't get be wrong, I do not support the Tories. In fact, I rather loathe them. They were certainly among my least favourite parties on the ballot paper. My vote was really for Theresa May and her Brexit deal -- or rather, it was a vote against all other options. I fear a second referendum, and I do not know how anyone could be persuaded the liberal economic utopia presented by the vast majority of Brexiteer politicians. Corbyn seems to want to offer an alternative, but his party won't let him.

I would have favoured a different compromise to that which May achieved. Mine would have had even greater long-term economic ties with the EU (begins with 'N', ends with 'way'), alongside a separate pursuit of domestic policies (anti-mass immigration, degree of protectionism, localism) that were implicit in the EU vote. For the vote was about culture and law, not dry economics. (As a matter of fact, I think Theresa May instictively understood some of this, unlike most of the Brexiteers in her party.)

As May has pointed out, her deal would get us out of the EU parliament the ECJ. We would be tied to some of the EU's trade rules, but not under its jurisdiction, and we would get a lot of money back. It's not a good deal, granted, but it's better than any of the current alternatives. 

Well, at least it was. I am sad to see Theresa May go. She was not a good prime minister. Her beliefs are mostly contrary to mine, at least so far as I can tell. But I do not doubt she acted in the national interest; her resignation speech showed an obvious, emotional patriotism. This will become rarer and rarer in the years to come and so I cherish it while I can. Our future options seems to be the 'free trade' utopians who want a 'global Britain', the international socialists in the Labour Party and the Greens, the EU-philes who would happily see Britain subsumed into a federal European state, and the bland managerial class in all the main parties, but especially the Tories. And right-wing parties like UKIP are so laughably useless and so politically, culturally and morally misguided. They come across as a sort of parody of the right.

For conservatives, natural pessimists, this is an especially hopeless time.

Smelfungus in Tennessee: Some Scribblings

Airports are inimical to civilisation. If one ever needs evidence of how commerce ruins culture, visit a major airport. There is nothing but bland international shops and restaurants. It simultaneously has everything and nothing. The most awful music is pumped out (even when boarding the plane one has to suffer this music, courtesy of Delta), and the architecture is horrifyingly boring.

****

On the plane they supplied a 'Retail Therapy' magazine. It was actually called that. These are surely two of the modern world's most noxious inventions: retail and therapy. Retail therapy used to be a joke term, a way to ridicule both therapy and retail shopping. Now the dastardly forces of commercialism have appropriated the term for themselves.

****

You can judge a country by its public lavatories. Upon landing in an American airport, the British traveller is invariably shocked by the 'restrooms'. The cubicle closes with a lock that seems barely secure, the door leaves nearly a foot gap underneath and is so short that one can almost see over the top, and the water level in the bowl is terrifyingly high, creating all sorts of hazards.

****

It strikes me that holidays are a great swindle. The average working man spends his few weeks of holiday on a trip that is extremely costly, filled with the woes of airports, culminating in an end point that is usually less agreeable than his starting point. He begins his journey to a foreign country with a sense of nervousness; he returns home with a sense of gladness. But all this masked by his pretending to have had a marvellous time, which he feels is a social requirement. There are many exceptions, of course, but I can't help but feel that what I describe is probably the most common experience.

****

Watching American television I am struck by how everything is sensationalist, exaggerated, insincere, thoughtless, shiny, superficial, fast, choppy, frenetic.... I thought I might find Tucker Carlson's programme more agreeable, but I found it no better for the fact that I agreed with half of it. In fact I think I preferred Chris Matthew's on the left-wing MSNBC. I enjoyed disagreeing with him, and found him older and calmer than Carlson.

The only channels that stood out as different were CSPAN and PBS. Though the latter had some appalling, low-budget programmes. There were also a couple of religious channels that were surprisingly good. Most were dreadful evangelical fare, but one Catholic channel and another more serious-minded evangelical channel stood out. I apologise for having forgotten their names. They were well produced, with long monologues, calmly and reflectively presented. The people who did not strike one as narcissists, hacks or people who loved the sound of their voices. The programmes were slick and polished but the presenters did not come across as insincere. They spoke seriously and moreover, unlike the immodest seriousness of the news channels, on subjects that really matter.

****

There were no particularly attractive churches where I was. There was an Anglican cathedral that looked like something out of Disneyland and a Catholic church that was a dreary redbrick. Some of the protestant churches had Greco-Roman aspirations, but like a lot of the grander buildings in the area they were at once very opulent and very cheap.

****

There was a guitarist-singer who wore a sort of metal washboard vest and started banging on it semi-percussively. He did this while advertising some hot sauce. It is, as far as I'm concerned, a kind of hell, but at least it's an interesting kind of hell.

****

Southern Americans are pathologically nice. One cannot escape their niceness. They will not leave you alone -- they are suspicious of reserve. I am suspicious of a lack of reserve. Americans are so nice one starts to think one cannot trust them. It is all superficiality -- one never can quite tell what they really think.

Although, coming back to our miserable little country, though I love our rudeness, our sarcasm, our irony, our miserabilism, our gentle insults, our cheekiness, I do thoroughly miss the politeness and decency that the southern Americans have cultivated. I think we could do with something similar, minus the 'have an amazing day!' comments which shop-workers all give you, and which I regard as unprofessionally colloquial and so excessively happy as to be depressing. Though sadly it seems that the only aspect of American politeness that we have inherited is this awful commercial rot.

****

There is little sense of culture in this part, at least, of America. Towns have malls not high streets. You will find no butchers, for example. Cars have created urban landscapes without proper communal spaces or local commerce. All the shops are chain shops and low culture predominates. Though their low culture (I'm thinking of the music particularly) still has a very strong folk component. People play the music of their place, their home, and they play it often unamplified, with humility. The commercialism has not quite destroyed it. But they do not have the sort of high culture one readily finds in Europe. Even the violin I heard referred to as the 'classical violin'. I presume, like the guitar, the nonclassical version is now considered the norm.

****

The city I visited was a very clean, fairly affluent, up-and-coming city. There was a very obvious gentrification effort by white liberals. I saw signs in shop windows saying 'diversity matters', exhibits of modern art, adoption of electric scooters, exotic restaurants with many vegan and vegetarian options. The diversity of restaurants I found particularly tiresome. We are always told that one of the benefits of immigration is that our towns culturally enriched -- made more colourful, more vibrant -- by foreign cuisines. I find it rather dull personally. Every city has the same array of restaurants -- an Italian, a tapas, a Meditarrianian, perhaps an Ethopian, a French, and so on... And so every city becomes like every other city. Diversity has a homogenising effect. The sense of local flavour was somewhat lost. It was remarkably hard to find Southern cuisine (except in a few chain restaurants usually outside the city).

****

The same social and political problems in Britain you find in America. Towns and cities with rapidly ageing populations, coal and manufacturing plants closing, migration into the city, social mobility hollowing out communities. They have food banks too. Trump has not done what he promised, and even the most half-witted of observers has to find his economic boasts laughable.

****

Returning home, I was shocked by how filthy London is. It's a terribly dirty city, worse than any other I know of. American streets were noticeably cleaner. The people were not merely more respectful of each other but of their environment. But most probably the two are related: ugly environments inspire ugly behaviour.

On Walter Scott

I have just finished reading Ivanhoe, a superb story. There is a common prejudice regarding Walter Scott, perpetuated, I suspect, as such views often are, by people who have never read anything by Scott yet like to appear literary and knowing. The prejudice is that Scott's writing is prolix and that he has not stood 'the test of time' (that abominable cliche). 

People who repeat this view can't have read any of Scott's novels -- or at least, they can't have read Ivanhoe (I can't yet speak for the others). It is a thrilling, eventful story. It is true that Scott's writing is somewhat slower than most modern authors', which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing, being a slow and somewhat ponderous creature myself. It is also true that Scott is old-fashioned: his morality is not ours, but then again neither is Austen's, yet she seems to be remarkably popular for reasons I have not yet fathomed. (Austen, one might add, was envious of Scott's writing.)

I only realised as I read Ivanhoe what an important book it is. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck are main characters -- Scott is the reason why Robin Hood has come to be known as 'Locksley'. A couple of other historical characters appear -- you will likely be able to guess who they are, though I don't wish to explicitly spoil it for anyone. I get the impression that Scott's depiction of medieval England had a profound effect on England's sense of itself and its history. Apparently John Henry Newman, a great admire of Scott's novels -- 'O what a poet! his words are not like a novelist ... Author of Waverley, thou art a a second Shakespeare.' -- said that Ivanhoe first turned men's minds towards the Middle Ages. One can see why. It's such a great story, wonderfully told.

Yet it's not really appreciated any more. In fact, Walter Scott may be one of the most under-appreciated English-language authors. He may be even more under-appreciated than Tobias Smollett, after whom this little blog is named. At least Smollett's writing is not so frequently dismissed as turgid. Both were Scots, though I don't think that has much if anything to do with it. It is actually to do, I suspect, with the fact that modern people are particularly stupid and impatient; and those who aren't are awfully incapable of enjoying themselves. The low humour of Smollett and the romance of Scott (so often relegated, it would appear, in maimed editions, to the status of children's author) does not appeal to supercilious high-minded bores. They probably heard that Scott is not worth reading, and the appeal to authority is so strong for them that even if they read and enjoyed every Scott novel they probably would never confess the fact. And those who are looking to be entertained are not willing to endure the mild intellectual strain reading Smollett or Scott might inflict on such poor, weak souls.

On Talking to Oneself

If I sing softly to myself, perhaps some favourite melody or just an improvisation on a spontaneous theme, be it in the house or on a walk, I am considered quite sane -- or at least, not particularly strange. But if I speak softly to myself in the same way I am considered peculiar, even mad. Perhaps I am somewhat mad; I am certainly not normal, but that's hardly the same thing. When I am thinking deeply about an issue, I find it hard not to start verbalising my thoughts. When I am engrossed in a book, I find myself talking to the characters or the author. As I write this, I am muttering away, hearing how my thoughts sound aloud, which, contrary to most people's beliefs -- the great thoughtless masses -- is not a sign of madness, but rather an attempt to check that my thoughts are sensible and reasonable.

Reading aloud is considered strange for an adult. It's seen as a possible sign of mental retardation. Of course, people used to read aloud, and the ability to read silently was considered remarkable. Reading aloud often has a clarifying effect: I find if I am not quite grasping the meaning or intention of a passage, reading it aloud will more often than not help. It is also a wonderful way of experiencing what is beautiful about the writing; it has a similar intensity, a directness, to playing a musical instrument. The best way to appreciate music is to play it; the best way to appreciate language is to speak it. This should be obvious.

When I play music I often feel as if I am talking to myself. Indeed, any intellectual, reflective pursuit requires the sort of person who enjoys his own company, which does not merely mean one who enjoys being alone, but one who enjoys the social aspect of being alone. It is not to escape others necessarily, but rather to engage oneself. And one does this so that (or at least in the hope that) something fruitful will come from it that one will then share with others. But one also does it because it seems to have a purpose, a teleology, an ever-greater closeness with a transcendence which we can never meet, but which in the infinite gap between us and it we can drag ourselves inch by inch. We do this in solitude, but its rewards are found in society, in the creation of civilisation. Robinson Crusoe found this out -- the value of solitude -- when stranded on a desert island. We as a society are finding it out the opposite way as we design a world so contrary to that which made civilisation. Solitude, properly approached, is a corrective against the vices in the social world -- the vices, perhaps, that the social world creates.