Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story (Vintage International) by Julian Barnes
Authors: Julian Barnes
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invented the pillar box – hovers on the edge of being a national treasure. This near-status has been greatly helped by the public support of two Trollope-reading Tory prime ministers, Harold Macmillan and John Major – despite the fact that Trollope hated Tories.
And George Orwell? It would surprise, and doubtless irritate, him to discover that since his death in 1950 he has moved implacably towards NT status. He is interpretable, malleable, ambassadorial and patriotic. He denounced the Empire, which pleases the left; he denounced communism, which pleases the right. He warned us against the corrupting effect on politics and public life of the misuse of language, which pleases almost everyone. He said that ‘Good prose is like a windowpane’, which pleases those who, despite living in the land of Shakespeare and Dickens, mistrust ‘fancy’ writing. * He was dubious of anyone who was too ‘clever’. (This is a key English suspicion, most famously voiced in 1961 when Lord Salisbury, a stalwart of the imperialist Tory right, denounced Iain Macleod, Secretary of State for the Coloniesand member of the new reforming Tory left, as ‘too clever by half’.) Orwell used ‘sophisticated’ and ‘intellectual’ and ‘intelligentsia’ as terms of dispraise, hated Bloomsbury, and not just expected but hoped that the sales of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
would outlast those of Virginia Woolf. He was scathing about social elites, finding the ruling class ‘stupid’. In 1941 he declared that Britain was the most class-ridden country on earth, ruled by ‘the old and silly’, ‘a family with the wrong members in control’; yet he also recognised that the ruling class was ‘
morally
fair and sound’ and in time of war ‘ready enough to get themselves killed’. He describes the condition of the working class with sympathy and rage, thought them wiser than intellectuals, but didn’t sentimentalise them; in their struggle they were as ‘blind and stupid’ as a plant struggling towards the light.
Orwell is profoundly English in even more ways than these. He is deeply untheoretical and wary of general conclusions that do not come from specific experiences. He is a moralist and puritan, one who, for all his populism and working-class sympathies, is squeamish about dirt, disgusted by corporeal and faecal odours. He is caricatural of Jews to the point of anti-Semitism, and routinely homophobic, using ‘the pansy left’ and ‘nancy poets’ as if they were accepted sociological terms. He dislikes foreign food, and thinks the French know nothing about cooking; while the sight of a gazelle in Morocco makes him dream of mint sauce. He lays down stern rules about how to make and drink tea, and in a rare sentimental flight imagines the perfect pub. He is uninterested in creature comforts, clothes, fashion, sport, frivolity of any kind, unless that frivolity – like seaside postcards or boys’ magazines – leads to some broader social rumination. He likes trees and roses, and barely mentions sex. His preferred literary form, the essay, is quintessentially English. He is a one-man, truth-telling awkward squad, and what, the English like to pretend, could be more English than that? Finally, whenhe rebranded himself, he took the Christian name of England’s patron saint. There aren’t too many Erics in the lists either of saints or of national treasures. The only St Eric is Swedish, and he wasn’t even a proper, Pope-made saint.
‘Getting its history wrong’, wrote Ernest Renan, ‘is part of being a nation.’ Pointedly, he said ‘being’ not ‘becoming’: the self-delusion is a constant requirement, not just part of a state’s initial creation myth. Similarly, getting its iconic figures wrong – and rebranding them at intervals – is part of being a nation. The Orwell whom the English have sanctified is a descendant of the stone-kicking, beef-eating, commonsensical Dr Johnson (another malleable iconic construct). It is
And George Orwell? It would surprise, and doubtless irritate, him to discover that since his death in 1950 he has moved implacably towards NT status. He is interpretable, malleable, ambassadorial and patriotic. He denounced the Empire, which pleases the left; he denounced communism, which pleases the right. He warned us against the corrupting effect on politics and public life of the misuse of language, which pleases almost everyone. He said that ‘Good prose is like a windowpane’, which pleases those who, despite living in the land of Shakespeare and Dickens, mistrust ‘fancy’ writing. * He was dubious of anyone who was too ‘clever’. (This is a key English suspicion, most famously voiced in 1961 when Lord Salisbury, a stalwart of the imperialist Tory right, denounced Iain Macleod, Secretary of State for the Coloniesand member of the new reforming Tory left, as ‘too clever by half’.) Orwell used ‘sophisticated’ and ‘intellectual’ and ‘intelligentsia’ as terms of dispraise, hated Bloomsbury, and not just expected but hoped that the sales of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
would outlast those of Virginia Woolf. He was scathing about social elites, finding the ruling class ‘stupid’. In 1941 he declared that Britain was the most class-ridden country on earth, ruled by ‘the old and silly’, ‘a family with the wrong members in control’; yet he also recognised that the ruling class was ‘
morally
fair and sound’ and in time of war ‘ready enough to get themselves killed’. He describes the condition of the working class with sympathy and rage, thought them wiser than intellectuals, but didn’t sentimentalise them; in their struggle they were as ‘blind and stupid’ as a plant struggling towards the light.
Orwell is profoundly English in even more ways than these. He is deeply untheoretical and wary of general conclusions that do not come from specific experiences. He is a moralist and puritan, one who, for all his populism and working-class sympathies, is squeamish about dirt, disgusted by corporeal and faecal odours. He is caricatural of Jews to the point of anti-Semitism, and routinely homophobic, using ‘the pansy left’ and ‘nancy poets’ as if they were accepted sociological terms. He dislikes foreign food, and thinks the French know nothing about cooking; while the sight of a gazelle in Morocco makes him dream of mint sauce. He lays down stern rules about how to make and drink tea, and in a rare sentimental flight imagines the perfect pub. He is uninterested in creature comforts, clothes, fashion, sport, frivolity of any kind, unless that frivolity – like seaside postcards or boys’ magazines – leads to some broader social rumination. He likes trees and roses, and barely mentions sex. His preferred literary form, the essay, is quintessentially English. He is a one-man, truth-telling awkward squad, and what, the English like to pretend, could be more English than that? Finally, whenhe rebranded himself, he took the Christian name of England’s patron saint. There aren’t too many Erics in the lists either of saints or of national treasures. The only St Eric is Swedish, and he wasn’t even a proper, Pope-made saint.
‘Getting its history wrong’, wrote Ernest Renan, ‘is part of being a nation.’ Pointedly, he said ‘being’ not ‘becoming’: the self-delusion is a constant requirement, not just part of a state’s initial creation myth. Similarly, getting its iconic figures wrong – and rebranding them at intervals – is part of being a nation. The Orwell whom the English have sanctified is a descendant of the stone-kicking, beef-eating, commonsensical Dr Johnson (another malleable iconic construct). It is
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