I have just
been looking through a bound volume of the Quarterly Review for the year 1810,
which was, I think, the second year of the Quarterly Reviews existence.
1810 was not quite the blackest period, from the British point of
view, of the Napoleonic War, but it was nearly the blackest. It perhaps corresponded to
1941 in the present war. Britain was completely isolated, its commerce barred from every
European port by the Berlin decrees. Italy, Spain, Prussia, Denmark, Switzerland and the
Low Countries had all been subjugated. Austria was in alliance with France. Russia was
also in an uneasy agreement with France, but it was known that Napoleon intended to invade
Russia shortly. The United States, though not yet in the war, was openly hostile to
Britain. There was no visible cause for hope, except the revolt in Spain, which had once
again given Britain a foothold on the continent and opened the South American countries to
British trade. It is therefore interesting to observe the tone of voice in which the Quarterly
Review a conservative paper which emphatically supported the war speaks
about France and about Napoleon at this desperate moment.
Here is the Quarterly on the alleged war-making
propensities of the French people. It is reviewing a pamphlet by a Mr Walsh, an American
who had just returned from France:
We doubt the continued action of those military propensities which Mr
Walsh ascribes to the French people. Without at all questioning the lively picture which
he has drawn of the exultation excited amongst the squalid and famished inhabitants of
Paris at the intelligence of every fresh triumph of their armies, we may venture to
observe that such exultation is, everywhere, the usual concomitant of such events; that
the gratification of national vanity is something, and that the festivities which victory
brings with it may afford a pleasing dissipation to wretches who are perfectly free from
any feelings of ambition. Our belief indeed is, that those feelings are, at present,
nearly confined to the breast of the great conqueror; and that amongst his subjects, we
may almost say among his officers and armies, the universal wish is for PEACE.
Compare this with the utterances of Lord Vansittart, or, indeed, of the great part of
the press. The same article contains several tributes to the military genius of Napoleon. But the thing I
find most impressive is that this years issue of the Quarterly contains
numerous reviews of recently published French books and they are careful, serious
reviews, not different in tone from the rest of its articles. There is, for instance, an
article of about 9,000 words on the publication of the French scientific body known as the
Société dArcueil. The French scientists, Gay-Lussac, Laplace and the rest of them,
are treated with the utmost respect, and given their Monsieur every time. From
reading this article it would be impossible to discover that there was a war on.
Can you imagine current German books being reviewed in the
British press during the present war? No, I dont think you can. I do not, indeed,
remember hearing the name of a single book published in Germany throughout the war. And if
a contemporary German book did get mentioned in the press, it would almost certainly be
misrepresented in some way. Looking through the reviews of French books in the Quarterly,
I note that only when they are on directly political subjects does any propaganda creep
in, and even then it is extremely mild by our standards. As for art, literature and
science, their international character is taken for granted. And yet, I suppose, Britain
was fighting for existence in the Napoleonic War just as surely as in this one, and
relative to the populations involved the war was not much less bloody or exhausting.
I have been rereading with some interest The Fairchild Family, which was written
in 1813 and was for fifty years or more a standard book for children. Unfortunately I only
possess the first volume, but even that, in its unexpurgated state for various
pretty-pretty versions, with all the real meat cut out, have been issued in recent years
is enough of a curiosity.
The tone of the book is sufficiently indicated by the sentence:
Papa, said Lucy (Lucy was aged nine, by the way), may we say some verses
about mankind having bad hearts? And, of course, Papa is only too willing, and out
come the verses, all correctly memorized. Or here is Mrs Fairchild, telling the children
how when she herself was a child she disobeyed orders by picking cherries in company with
the servant girl:
Nanny was given up to her mother to be flogged; and I was shut up in the
dark room, where I was to be kept several days upon bread and water. At the end of three
days my aunts sent for me, and talked to me for a long time.
You broke the Fourth Commandment, said my Aunt
Penelope, which is, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy": and you
broke the Fifth, which is, "Honour your parents". . . . You broke the Eighth,
too, which is, "Thou shalt not steal". Besides, said my Aunt
Grace, the shame and disgrace of climbing trees in such low company, after all the
care and pains we have taken with you, and the delicate manner in which we have reared
you.
The whole book is in this vein, with a long prayer at the end of every chapter, and
innumerable hymns and verses from the Bible interspersed through the text. But its chief
feature is the fearful visitations from Heaven which fall upon the children whenever they
misbehave themselves. If they swing in the swing without leave they fall out and break
several teeth: if they forget to say their prayers they fall into the trough of pig-swill;
the theft of a few damsons is punished by an attack of pneumonia and narrow escape from
death. On one occasion Mr Fairchild catches his children quarrelling. After the usual
flogging, he takes them for a long walk to see the rotting body of a murderer hanging on a
gibbet the result, as he points out, of a quarrel between two brothers.
A curious and interesting feature of the book is that the
Fairchild children, reared upon these stern principles, seem to be rather exceptionally
untrustworthy. As soon as their parents backs are turned they invariably misbehave
themselves, which suggests that flogging and bread and water are not a very satisfactory
treatment after all. It is worth recording, by the way, that the author, Mrs Sherwood,
brought up several children, and at any rate they did not actually die under her
ministrations.