The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914

946 Pages·2017·18.66 MB·English

by  Simon Heffer

CONTENTS
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
Prologue: Swagger
Part I
The World of the Late Victorians
1. The Decline of the Pallisers
2. The Rise of the Pooters
3. The Workers’ Struggle
Part II
Coming Storms
4. Imperial Tensions
5. Ireland
6. The Death of God
7. The Civilising Mission
8. Protecting Women
Part III
Public Debates, Public Doubts
9. The Future
10. Nostalgia
11. Imperial Consequences
12. Art and Life
13. The Uses of Literacy
Part IV
Strife
14. Men and Power
15. Dukes and Dreadnoughts
16. The Great Unrest
17. Votes for Women
18. Rebellion
Envoi: One Afternoon of Heat
Picture Section
Bibliography
Notes
Picture Acknowledgements
Index
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
The folk memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful,
contented, orderly and thriving country. It commanded a vast empire. It bestrode
international commerce. Its citizens were living longer, profiting from civil
liberties their grandparents only dreamt of, and enjoying an expanding range of
comforts and pastimes. The mood of pride and self-confidence is familiar from
Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, newsreels of George V’s coronation
and London’s great Edwardian palaces.
Yet things were very different below the surface. In The Age of Decadence
Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian and Edwardian
Britain. He explains how, despite the nation’s massive power, a mismanaged war
against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about its imperial
destiny. He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the
twentieth century’s gravest constitutional crisis and coincided with the worst
industrial unrest in British history. He describes how politicians who conceded
the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female
suffragists were driven to acts of public protest that bordered on terrorism. He
depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy and scandal. He analyses a
national psyche that embraced the motor-car, the sensationalist press and the
science fiction of H. G. Wells, but also the Arts and Crafts of William Morris
and the nostalgia of A. E. Housman. And he concludes with the crisis that in the
summer of 1914 threatened the existence of the United Kingdom – a looming
civil war in Ireland.
He lights up the era through vivid pen-portraits of the great men and women of
the day – including Gladstone, Parnell, Asquith and Churchill, but also Mrs
Pankhurst, Beatrice Webb, Baden-Powell, Wilde and Shaw – creating a richly
detailed panorama of a great power that, through both accident and arrogance,
was forced to face potentially fatal challenges.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Heffer was born in 1960. He read English at Cambridge and took a PhD
in modern history at that university. His previous books include: Moral
Desperado: A Life of Thomas Carlyle, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch
Powell, Power and Place: The Political Consequences of King Edward VII, Nor
Shall My Sword: The Reinvention of England, Vaughan Williams, Strictly
English, A Short History of Power, Simply English and High Minds: The
Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain. In a thirty-year career in Fleet
Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The
Spectator, and is now a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday
Telegraph.

To Peter Hennessy, in friendship and fellowship
Give them a chance. Give them money. Don’t dole them
out poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies. Give
them the wherewithal to buy these things. When your
Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think
in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes
give people cash, for it is the warp of civilisation,
whatever the woof may be.
E. M. Forster, Howards End (p. 134) A time there was,
as one may guess,
And as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell, Before the birth
of consciousness
When all went well.
Thomas Hardy, ‘Before Life and After’, from Time’s
Laughingstocks
We are weak, and writing is difficult, but for my own
sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that
Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and
meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.
We took risks, we knew that we took them; things have
come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for
complaint, but bow to the will of Providence,
determined still to do our best to the last.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Journal, 29 March 1912
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame, And falling fling
to the host behind – Play up! play up! and play the
game!
Sir Henry Newbolt, ‘Vitai Lampada’
Penny buses, gramophones, bamboo furniture, pleasant
Sunday afternoons, Glory Songs, modern language teas,
golf, tennis, high school education, dubious fiction,
shilling’s worth of comic writing, picture postcards,
miraculous hair restorers.
T. W. H. Crosland, The Suburbans (p. 80) In the first
place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second
place I believe in the British race. I believe that the
British race is the greatest of governing races that the
world has ever seen … I believe there are no limits
accordingly to its future.
Joseph Chamberlain, speech to the Imperial Institute,
London, 11 November 1895
‘And yet,’ demanded Councillor Barlow, ‘what’s he
done? Has he ever done a day’s work in his life? What
great cause is he identified with?’
‘He’s identified,’ said the Speaker, ‘with the great
cause of cheering us all up.’
Arnold Bennett, The Card (p. 256) Our Sovereign Lord
the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being
assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and
peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their
lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act
made in the first year of King George, for preventing
tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.
The Form of Proclamation from the Riot Act, 1714
INTRODUCTION
This book is a successor to High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern
Britain, which told the history of Britain and the growth of British power from
1838 to 1880. It starts where that finished, with Gladstone beginning his second
administration in April 1880; and it ends in July 1914, with a nation fixated on
an Ireland on the brink of civil war over Home Rule. It does not deal with the
immensely complex question of why Britain went to war in 1914, which the
author hopes to cover in a later volume. Although primarily a social, political
and cultural history of Britain in the decades before the Great War, The Age of
Decadence also deals at length with two other matters that profoundly shaped
and affected Britain at home: the thirty-year wrangle over Irish Home Rule,
whose consequences are still apparent in the twenty-first century, and the late-
Victorian and Edwardian expansion and consolidation of the British Empire.
I owe great thanks to many individuals and institutions who assisted me or
granted me access to archives during the writing of this book, or who simply
discussed questions within it with me and pointed me towards hitherto unknown
sources. Extracts from the journals of Bishop Hensley Henson are reproduced by
kind permission of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral: I owe a particular debt to
Dr Julia Stapleton for alerting me to this source, and to Dr Janet Gunning and
Lisa di Tommaso for facilitating access. Andrew Riley and Ceri Humphries, of
the Churchill College Archives Centre at Cambridge, helped me with the papers
of the 2nd Lord Esher. The Marquess of Salisbury generously granted me access
to the papers of his great-great grandfather, the 3rd Marquess. Vicki Perry and
Sarah Whale helped me greatly in the Hatfield archives. Sonia Gomes and
Gemma Read at the London School of Economics Women’s Library helped me
with material concerning the campaign for women’s suffrage. I should also like
to thank the staff of the British Library for assistance with a number of archives,
notably those of W. E. Gladstone and Viscount Northcliffe. The staff of the
Cambridge University Library, particularly Peter Meadows, helped me with
access to the archives of Lord Randolph Churchill. The staff of the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, especially Sonja Kujansuu, assisted me with the papers of
Herbert Henry Asquith. Simon Gough, Archives Officer at the Parliamentary
Archives, enabled access to the papers of David Lloyd George, and I was greatly