A Victorian Eminence, by Giles St Aubyn

[p021] A Victorian Eminence. The Life and Works of Henry Thomas Buckle, by Giles St Aubyn (Barrie Books, 25s.) BUCKLE’S famous. work, the ‘History of Civilization in Eng- land’, is read by scarcely anyone today, and there must be many people for whom the title merely recalls the dusty corner of some second-hand bookshop. But in its day—it was published 1857-61—it had an instant and resounding success. For Buckle, unreadable though he may seem today, was a great popularizer, and the ideas he interpreted and synthesized were of great interest to the general reading public of the ‘High-Victorian’ era. ‘I hope’, he wrote, ‘to accomplish for the history of man - something equivalent, or at all events analogous, to what has been effected by other inquirers for the different branches _ of natural science.’ Needless to say, his belief in the validity of a scientific approach to the history of society gave Buckle some insight into historical processes, but the crudeness of his materialism and his vulgar intellectual arrogance resulted in many naive oversimplifications. His book naturally had an -enormous 114 August-September 1958 appeal for the many who in 1860 were imbued with the same enthusiasm for science and progress, for the triumph of machinery celebrated with such unrefined vigour in the Great Exhibition of 1851. Although Buckle easily reconciled all this with belief in God, his book was furiously attacked by conservative thinkers. The present biography is well written and provides not only an interesting account cf Buckle’s life but an excellent summary of his views and 2 very fair assessment of the man and his work. It is an im- portant book for any student of Victorian England. K. R. ANDREWS Limelit Decade The Sweet and Twenties, by Beverley Nichols. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 21s.) THIS book does exactly what it sets out to do. ‘This is not intended as a serious history of a decade’, the author tells us, ‘but rather as an album of snapshots and memories which may offer, at least to the middle-aged, some moments of nostalgic entertainment.’ Few of the writers and painters who made the decade illustrious and of the politicians who served or be- trayed the nation make an appearance, though, as Mr Nichols admits, ‘even in so slight a compilation, seriousness “creeps in” ’. He is right in saying that ‘the mood of the twenties as far as war was concerned was buoyant with hope’. Most people believed fervently in the League of Nations and many of the progressive young were convinced that the Labour Party would come to power and give it full support. As the author bitterly observes, ‘we were destined to be duped, every man Jack of us’. He finds the fundamental difference “between the average intelligent young man of the twenties and his modern counter- part’ as a difference of faith, ‘not of religious faith but of faith in the civilized world at large and the possibility of its ever making sense’. Sheer relief at survival, combined with confidence in the dawn of a brave new world, led to various forms of exuber- ance on the part of the would-be U-class young and an out- burst of social activity by a section of the middle-aged and elderly. Publicity, of the kind dispensed in the gossip columns of the Sunday papers, became the drug most in demand by frustrated socialites. In this addiction many of them outdid stage folk, for whom limelight is an occupational necessity. It is not surprising that the youthful Beverley Nichols found many imposing front doors flung open to receive him when he joined the staff of the Weekly Dispatch under the editor- ship cf Bernard Falk. He was good-looking, clever and accom plished, with an excellent Oxford background—he had been editor of Isis and president of the Union—and his success was, from the first, assured. In the limelit world of café society as well as in more exalted circles, he ‘knew everyone and went everywhere’ and the stories he tells of his friends are always amusing and always adroitly handled. One of the best concerns an encounter between Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. The latter, after her first trip to the Riviera, came back “bronzed and delicious ... but also rather grand. When she saw Noel there were stories of parties and yachts and a a great many titles. Noel listened in silence. looking more and more Chinese. Then Gertie, with an elaborate sigh, observed: “Of course, I shall be going again in the winter. T really don’t think I could stand the English winter.” Noel nodded. “No, darling. I don’t think you could. Not after all those years in sun-drenched Peckham.” ’ Leading figures in Mr Nichols’s portrait gallery are Edith and Sir Osbert Sitwell—‘all of us are devoted to Osbert—~ Emerald (Lady) Cunard, Sybil (Lady) Colefax, Maggie (Mrs Ronald) Greville, Syrie (Mrs) Maugham, Melba, Lady Diana Cooper, Elsie de Woolf (Lady Mendl) and that remarkable eccentric, Gerald (Lord) Berners. Usually he writes kindly of his friends and acquaintances but occasionally he dips his pen in acid. James Agate and Virginia Woolf, Father Conrad

[p022] SUMMER BOOKS Noel and the Dean of Canterbury meet with varying degrees ef disapproval, while of Lord Curzon he says that he was ‘of course a very common man’ adding that ‘if he had any cf the instincts of a gentleman he was at pains to conceal them’. Of his brilliant contemporaries Ivor Novello, Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton, he talks with insight and affection and he has much that is new and interesting to tell us about such half-forgotten characters as Leslie Hore-Belisha, Elinor Glyn, Pavlova and Teddie Gerrard. In more serious mood, his account of his interview with the father of Edith Thomp- son who, with her lover Frederick Bywaters, was hanged for murder, is simple and moving. The fact that Mr Nichols 1s a hater of cruelty, a pacifist and a humanist can be deduced from these pages though it is not unduly stressed. As a piece of writing, with its artful transitions, digressions and time-shifts,