Houyhnhnm Land

Regular visitors to this blog are aware that I tend to read books that are not, shall we say, first in line for canonization in the near future.  Or the far future.  Or...any future, really.  This is what happens when you have a taste for doing literary history.  In any event, prior to hanging out at UCLA's Sadleir Collection,  I decided to read the first volume of an 1829 novel that, for reasons not immediately clear to me, exists on GoogleBooks in volumes one and three, but not, as far as I can tell, volume two.  The Sadleir Collection, however, has all three volumes.  Isn't that lucky?

Ahem. 

The novel is Oldcourt, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, a man who usually did other things with his time than write novels.  Needless to say, I ought to have taken that as a sign.  Of impending doom.

For the edification of my readers, allow me to reconstruct the experience of reading volume one.  With allowances, of course, for some...self-dramatization. 

Pp. iii-v.  Shee breaks out the modesty trope.  Everybody in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is modest.  All books impose on the public.  Nobody publishes anything remotely interesting, noteworthy, or otherwise unusual.  It's a wonder that the novel even exists as a literary form, once you think about it.

Under the circumstances, this is not cause for concern.  Yet.

The introduction.  An Irish family sits around debating the state of contemporary fiction, its decline and fall (or rise and flourishing, depends on which character you ask), the merits of Sir Walter Scott, the brilliance of Fielding and Sterne, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.   Presumably, Shee wants to justify writing a novel.  The less-than-charitably inclined, however, may feel an urge to remind him that introductions should not be forty-two pages long, and that it is generally considered advisable to get to the plot.  Alas, as Shee has been dead since 1850, it is somewhat difficult to point this out to him. 

Perhaps now would be a good time to invest in a ouija board, or conduct a seance.

Page 43.  Shee explains that this novel will be about the Oldcourts.  The reader, continuing to feel less than charitable, gently observes to no-one in particular that she knew this already, because the Oldcourts took up the first forty-two pages of the novel. 

Also, the book is called Oldcourt. Unless that's supposed to be some sort of bait-and-switch.

Page 44.  Shee decides that now would be a good time to discuss in medias res.  The innocent reader begins to feel a nagging concern.

Page 50.  Shee has been discussing the various problems facing poets, biographers, and novelists.  The reader, beginning to feel somewhat put-upon, wonders when we are going to get to the plot.

Page 50.  Wow! We're going to get to the plot!

Page 61.   The reader was, it seems, getting ahead of herself...and of Shee.  By page 61, we know something of the Oldcourt family background, and we know that they are Catholic.  But why, exactly, this book has come to exist upon the face of the earth, remains obscure.  And yet, surely, this novel must actually be about something?

Anything?

Hello?

Page 62.  The dawning of a new chapter.  Unfortunately, this dawn, no matter how rosy-fingered (rosy-fonted?), fails to bring the plot with it.  Instead, Shee's oh-so-playful narrator admits that his "powers of amplification" might be insufficient to produce a triple-decker.  The increasingly irate reader, shaking her first in the general direction of her Acer Aspire One (on which she is reading Oldcourt), points out sternly that this is a triple-decker, and that Shee's "powers of amplification" are all too obviously on view.  Because we still don't know a [insert epithet of choice here] thing about what the [insert second epithet of choice here] book is actually about, or why we should be reading it.

The reader calms herself.

Pages 65-66.  Shee is discussing historians, biographers, and novelists.

Again.

The horrified reader suddenly realizes that Shee is imitating Henry Fielding's digressions.  In a fit of inspiration, she wonders if it might be possible to charter a red phone booth and travel back in time to the eighteenth century, where she will eliminate Henry Fielding's novels from the historical record, thereby rendering Oldcourt impossible.  After further thought, she concedes that this might be overkill, and is somewhat unfair to Fielding.

Plus, she hasn't the slightest clue where to find a red phone booth.

Page 76.  NOW SHEE IS WRITNG ABOUT HOSPITALITY WHAT IS THIS I CAN'T I DON'T EVEN

After this moment of inarticulate rage, the reader reminds herself that she is an academic, and should therefore be approaching this novel in a state of scholarly calm.  Moreover, she further reminds herself, just because Shee has yet to establish a plot, the hint of a plot, or even the teensiest wisp of something that, with considerable TLC, could someday be a plot, doesn't mean that he's incompetent.  He might be subverting the conventions of linear narrative, thereby generating an altogether new sense of historical transformation that critiques Sir Walter Scott's post-Enlightenment theories of cultural progress!

Or he might be incompetent.

Page 77.  Shee admits that he might be "going off, as it were, at a tangent..." As it were? As it were?? As it were?!!!

For those of you keeping track, the reader remains in the dark about why this novel has emerged from the depths of GoogleBooks to seize her in its Cthulhu-like tentacles.

(Cthulhu does have tentacles, I think.)

Page 82.  The family Oldcourt reappears.  The reader nearly faints from the shock. What next--a story, even?

Her hopes begin to rise.

Page 92.  There are many anecdotes about the Oldcourts and their various self-destructive behaviors.  This is not quite a plot, but one must applaud any move in that direction on the author's part.  Yet the reader is somewhat distressed to realize that the Oldcourts now under discussion are not the same Oldcourts as those hanging out in the introduction.  The forty-two-page introduction, in case you've forgotten.  

The reader's hopes, initially up, now begin to sink.

Page 93 ff.  Something vaguely resembling, not a plot, but at least a coherent narrative, puts in an appearance.  The reader wonders if she should faint, dance around the room in celebration, or some combination of the two. 

Page 115.  The narrator, who had temporarily digressed from digressing, is now digressing from his non-digression.  This prompts the reader to contemplate defenestrating the book.  Good sense, and an unwillingness to blow another three hundred dollars on a new Acer Aspire One, intervenes.

Page 189.  The narrator puts in an appearance at the Oldcourts' chapel.  The reader takes a moment to tell him exactly what she thinks of him.  For some reason, the narrator remains unconcerned. 

Page 240. After undigressing from the digression from the nondigression which followed the original digressions, the narrator begins redigressing.  (Reredigressing? The reader has lost count.)  By this point, given the choice between unconsciousness or continued perusal, the reader elects unconsciousness.

Several hours intervene, uninterrupted by any dreams pertaining to awful nineteenth-century novels.

Unfortunately, the reader awakes, and upon recollecting the novel's existence, rails at the heavens.  Why has she been forced to bear this burden? Is this some punishment for an unspeakable crime?

After striking some melodramatic poses, however, the reader concedes that this really is her fault, and reminds herself that if she had decided to specialize in Dickens, this would not be happening.

Onward!

Page 270ff.  It appears that Shee dislikes dueling.  The reader gathers this, because we now enter upon a lengthy set-piece about dueling, in which a character expounds his theories of same at length.  Considerable length.  So much length that one of the Oldcourts tries to get him to can it.  If only the author had taken his character's hint!

Page 357.  After much hobnobbing about dueling, the actual duel goes kerflooey. 

Kerflooey, incidentally, is a criminally-underused theoretical term. 

(Lord's day). Up and to my chamber, where all the morning close, to draw up a letter to Sir W. Coventry upon the tidings of peace, taking occasion, before I am forced to it, to resign up to his Royall Highness my place of the Victualling, and to recommend myself to him by promise of doing my utmost to improve this peace in the best manner we may, to save the kingdom from ruin. By noon I had done this to my good content, and then with my wife all alone to dinner, and so to my chamber all the afternoon to write my letter fair, and sent it away, and then to talk with my wife, and read, and so by daylight (the only time I think I have done it this year) to supper, and then to my chamber to read and so to bed, my mind very much eased after what I have done to-day.

Up and to the office, where I hear that Sir John Coventry is come over from Bredah, a nephew, I think, of Sir W. Coventry's: but what message he brings I know not. This morning news is come that Sir Jos. Jordan is come from Harwich, with sixteen fire-ships and four other little ships of war: and did attempt to do some execution upon the enemy, but did it without discretion, as most do say, so as that they have been able to do no good, but have lost four of their fire ships. They attempted [this], it seems, when the wind was too strong, that our grapplings could not hold: others say we come to leeward of them, but all condemn it as a foolish management. They are come to Sir Edward Spragg about Lee, and the Dutch are below at the Nore. At the office all the morning; and at noon to the 'Change, where I met Fenn; and he tells me that Sir John Coventry do bring the confirmation of the peace; but I do not find the 'Change at all glad of it, but rather the worse, they looking upon it as a peace made only to preserve the King for a time in his lusts and ease, and to sacrifice trade and his kingdoms only to his own pleasures: so that the hearts of merchants are quite down. He tells me that the King and my Lady Castlemayne are quite broke off, and she is gone away, and is with child, and swears the King shall own it; and she will have it christened in the Chapel at White Hall so, and owned for the King's, as other Kings have done; or she will bring it into White Hall gallery, and dash the brains of it out before the King's face.1 He tells me that the King and Court were never in the world so bad as they are now for gaming, swearing, whoring, and drinking, and the most abominable vices that ever were in the world; so that all must come to nought. He told me that Sir G. Carteret was at this end of the town; so I went to visit him in Broad Street; and there he and I together: and he is mightily pleased with my Lady Jem's having a son; and a mighty glad man he is. He [Sir George Carteret] tells me, as to news, that the peace is now confirmed, and all that over. He says it was a very unhappy motion in the House the other day about the land-army; for, whether the King hath a mind of his own to do the thing desired or no, his doing it will be looked upon as a thing done only in fear of the Parliament. He says that the Duke of York is suspected to be the great man that is for raising of this army, and bringing things to be commanded by an army; but he believes that he is wronged, and says that he do know that he is wronged therein. He do say that the Court is in a way to ruin all for their pleasures; and says that he himself hath once taken the liberty to tell the King the necessity of having, at least, a show of religion in the Government, and sobriety; and that it was that, that did set up and keep up Oliver, though he was the greatest rogue in the world, and that it is so fixed in the nature of the common Englishman that it will not out of him. He tells me that while all should be labouring to settle the kingdom, they are at Court all in factions, some for and others against my Lord Chancellor, and another for and against another man, and the King adheres to no man, but this day delivers himself up to this, and the next to that, to the ruin of himself and business; that he is at the command of any woman like a slave, though he be the best man to the Queene in the world, with so much respect, and never lies a night from her: but yet cannot command himself in the presence of a woman he likes. Having had this discourse, I parted, and home to dinner, and thence to the, office all the afternoon to my great content very busy. It raining this day all day to our great joy, it having not rained, I think, this month before, so as the ground was everywhere so burned and dry as could be; and no travelling in the road or streets in London, for dust. At night late home to supper and to bed.

1. Charles owned only four children by Lady Castlemaine-Anne, Countess of Sussex, and the Dukes of Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland. The last of these was born in 1665. The paternity of all her other children was certainly doubtful. See pp. 50,52. ↩

Up, and betimes to the office, where Mr. Hater and I together all the morning about the perfecting of my abstract book of contracts and other things to my great content. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again all the afternoon doing of other good things there, and being tired, I then abroad with my wife and left her at the New Exchange, while I by water thence to Westminster to the Hall, but shops were shut up, and so to White Hall by water, and thence took up my wife at Unthanke's, and so home, mightily tired with the dust in riding in a coach, it being mighty troublesome. So home and to my office, and there busy very late, and then to walk a little with my wife, and then to supper and to bed. No news at all this day what we have done to the enemy, but that the enemy is fallen down, and we after them, but to little purpose.

[Second half of a deleted section from Book Two, analyzing an Irish Protestant response to Catholic Emancipation in 1829.  Originally, this section was part of a larger examination of "interchangeability" in nineteenth-century pro- and anti-tolerationist rhetoric.  See the post below for Part One.]

As Montgomery/Mortimer dryly notes, he cannot dine with the Catholic priest because his “real sentiments” would produce a sensation most “unpleasing” (42); convivial politeness cannot survive Protestant truths, which the local community will later denounce as “rancor and bigotry” (44). By the end of the story’s first part, the Protestant critique of anti-Catholic prejudice emerges as a form of silencing: in this act of framing avant la lettre, the Protestants render anti-Catholic language unspeakable by describing it as “bigotry,” and create a public sphere indifferent to religion by systematically negating all attempts to bring the Bible to bear on any denomination. In the story’s second half, Egerton’s wife comments that “Protestant writers” (126) bear the responsibility for negative views of Catholics in the nineteenth century, an assertion of bias that the rest of the narrative promptly disallows: the Protestant narrative of the past is the right narrative, from which pro-tolerationists deviate at their peril. From a devout Protestant point of view, the response to Montgomery’s/Mortimer’s sermon, which “did not allow that all religions were alike, or that, in point of fact, no religion was really requisite” (45), reveals the fault line in the logic of interchangeability, for while the curate disallows that religions are interchangeable, the populace demonstrates that an indifferentist attitude to religion is interchangeable with total secularism. In this context, any attempt to delineate a positive truth seems not only rude, but violently disruptive, “tending to set man against man” (44)—a pointedly ironic contrast to the imagery of martyrdom and warfare preserved in Egerton’s library. What the Protestants have done, then, is confuse perceived rhetorical violence with actual physical violence, while suppressing the historical and Biblical narratives that properly differentiate between the two. As we have seen in Egerton’s case, toleration for Catholicism requires Protestants to be bad readers or non-readers, resisting the very texts that would declare pro-Catholic attitudes out of bounds.

The second half of the story devotes itself to restoring the sense of difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. Mr. Egerton receives a series of shocks, all of which reinforce the story’s main point: Catholics believe that the two religions are incommensurable. First, a Catholic servant is refused last rites because he will not allow his Protestant daughter to attend the local Catholic school; Egerton, understandably troubled by the priest’s behavior, nevertheless insists that “We must not, however, judge of churches by individuals: and I shall continue to respect the religion of the Church of Rome, though I cannot but feel shocked at the inhumanity of one of her ordained ministers” (128). Egerton’s resistance to reading the priest symptomatically, however, soon runs into further difficulties. A new priest arrives who undermines the Egertons’ attempts to maintain a Protestant school in the town. Even worse, Egerton, accustomed to regard Moneyrogue as a safe seat, discovers that the Catholics have decided to oppose him. When a loyal Catholic servant of Egerton’s continues to work on his behalf, he is brutally murdered, his “head literally pounded to pieces” (132). Although the perpetrators are caught and executed, Egerton—who loses his parliamentary seat after all—must hear the priest “[speak] to them and of them, as if they had been martyrs” (132). Catholics, who have benefited from Protestant toleration, reassert their difference from Protestants through both physical violence and alternative narratives; if Protestants refuse to identify themselves with their own history of martyrdom, the Catholics are only too happy to represent justice for murder as martyrdom in the cause of truth. The Catholics win the war of rhetorical framing because Protestants falsely associate Scriptural truths with deadly violence. At the same time, the story insists that Catholic rhetoric ultimately produces violence in a way that Scriptural truths do not.  Protestants are right to believe that some religious discourse exemplifies “rancor and bigotry,” but they just happen to be wrong about which religion will have this effect. The story’s ending, with the Protestant turfed out of his parliamentary seat and replaced by a Catholic tool, the alternative school reduced to “silence,” and the countryside glowing with vaguely apocalyptic “bonfires” and the “distant thunder” of Catholic celebrations (133), lays out the ultimate effect of toleration: not egalitarian relations in a polite public sphere, but the brutal removal or suppression of Protestant influence from the nation’s culture. Protestants who keep silent, in other words, will be silenced.