Reflections on Young’s Portrait of an Age

G.M. Young’s “Portrait of an Age,” first published in 1936 and frequently reprinted ever since, is an examination of England and the British Empire during the 19th century, specifically the “Victorian era,” a period popularly thought of as having begun in the early 19th century and ended with the death of Queen Victoria in 1900. The book comes across as a somewhat nostalgic look at a time when England was without a doubt the world’s dominant nation, written at a later time when her hold on her Empire was slipping away and America, Germany, and even the Soviet Union were threatening to take the place on the world stage that she had held for more than a century.

Interestingly, though through the lens of history, we can clearly see that England reached its zenith during the Victorian era, not all of Young’s contemporaries saw it that way. Of course, to have such a perspective, one would have had to admit that England had already passed its zenith. This is evident in the perspective of history; even in 1936, England was not the strongest military power in Europe. Two decades ago, the United States had had to pull England’s and the Allies’ chestnuts out of the fire in World War I. Also, the global Great Depression had hit England just as hard as the United States and the rest of Europe—possibly harder—and she was by no means recovered from it. This seems to have led to a longing on Young’s part for the “good old days”; for example, ruminating on the literary landscape of Victorian London: “It was part of the felicity of the fifties [1850s] to possess a literature which was at once topical, contemporary, and classic; to meet the Immortals in the streets, and to read them with added zest for the encounter.” It was a fiction, though, to imagine one strolling through a huge, crowded city and continually bumping into famous authors, or for that matter, to imagine that such authors as the so-called Immortals were ever regarded as such. Young continually looked at the bygone era of Victorian England as an untarnished golden age.

Of course, there was ample reason for viewing Victorian England this way. Certainly, England at the time led the world in technological innovation, financial strength, and most of all, colonial domination of a large portion of the earth’s landmasses. Even those countries that became independent members of the Commonwealth, such as Canada, retained strong cultural and social ties to England; in fact, the United States was just about the only former British colony that regarded itself as having a culture and political philosophy completely independent from England—understandable in light of the two wars the nations had recently fought. America, however, was in the process of subduing and settling a large portion of the continent and was not yet a player on the world stage. This can be contrasted with the first half of the twentieth century, when America was largely viewed as a “sleeping giant” that would eventually be the world’s dominant power, regardless of any current isolationist sentiments there (which would be blown to smithereens, of course, by WWII). By the time Young published his work, though, not only was England on the wane but a mortal threat to its very existence was developing in Germany. The peace and prosperity of the Victorian era had come to a close and England no longer dictated world events.

In the nineteenth century, England had benefited from being geographically and philosophically isolated from the conflicts that wracked Europe and the United States during that time. The Victorian era in England was marked by a series of parliamentary and governmental reforms, even as Britain and its Empire became globally dominant politically, economically, and now, it seemed, philosophically as well. Young noted the benefits of England’s insulation from many of the troubles of the times: “It may well be thought that if England had been visited by such a calamity as befell Europe in 1848, America in 1861, or France in 1870, the urgency of reconstruction would have drawn the new conceptions into a new and revolutionary configuration.” For Young, given the upheavals of the 19th and early 20th centuries, “revolutionary” was not a positive adjective. He viewed this time, for England, as one when great institutions were solidifying and a new philosophical consciousness was dawning. The Victorians, in fact, truly did think that with advances in science, philosophy, and governance, they were on the verge of solving the human condition and perfecting society. This was, of course, somewhat of a delusion, as London in, say, 1890 was still riddled with disease and poverty and the majority of the Crown’s subjects at home and abroad barely eked out an existence. Of course, there was also sharp stratification of the classes and very little chance for upward mobility. (It is interesting to reflect that Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital after dwelling in London for some time.) The rising tide, however, was lifting all boats, albeit slowly.

It is therefore interesting to further reflect on the difference between the world the Victorians thought would exist in the twentieth century and the actuality of the year 1936. England had lost an entire generation of young men to the senseless bloodbath of WWI, and to make things worse, nothing had actually been solved or resolved by all the killing. Germany was re-arming for a second round (Churchill later wrote that he considered WWII to simply be a continuation of WWI). The financial world had collapsed, and it seemed as if democracy, pluralism, and the rule of law were being pushed aside by fascism, totalitarianism, and nationalism. The Victorians had thought that the world by this time would be ruled by reason and enlightenment (ideally, under England’s benevolent dominion). In fact, they had every reason to think this way. In the late 19th century, America was up and coming but after all, its institutions had been inherited from England and its soul was still British. British steamers and clipper ships sailed the globe and took riches back home to the mother country. The sun literally never set on the British Empire. So what had gone wrong?

Especially from the point of view of a 20th-century British intellectual, a major difference between Victorian and Edwardian England was that in the latter era, England no longer supplied the driving ideas and philosophies of the age. Young continually noted not only the social and legislative advances of Victorian England but also the enlightened attitudes that had made them possible. For example: “In 1875, Parliament recognized in its entirety the freedom of contract and the right of collective bargaining. The author of this wise and timely measure of pacification…was a typical product of Early Victorian training.” So rather than enlightened legislation being just that—enlightened—it was a natural outgrowth, a consequence of advanced Victorian thinking and sensibilities. In the Victorian era, England’s hand was still firmly on the wheel. Now, only a few decades later, she was being dictated to by the world and was no longer in control of her own destiny.

While Portrait of an Age never explicitly asked the question of what had made England’s world dominance evaporate so quickly, certainly, that question must have been asked again and again by the book’s readers, especially over the next few years as England barely survived Germany’s assaults (to call England one of the “winners” of WWII seems to be an exaggeration at best) and lost almost all of her Empire. Young didn’t see this coming, or if he did, he never explicitly said so, but the implied contrast between world-beating, muscle-flexing Victorian England and the war-devastated, Depression-wracked England of the inter-war period was profound.

At the end of the book, Young expressed regret for England’s loss of drive and world impact as the Victorian era drew to a close. He also came to an interesting conclusion, that the English character had deteriorated: “But, fundamentally, what failed in the late Victorian age, and its flash Edwardian epilogue, was the Victorian public, once so alert, so masculine, and so responsible.” Young’s given reasons for the decline of the British Empire sound strikingly like those given by both historians and pundits for that of the Roman Empire or for the alleged impeding (or already in-progress) decline of the United States. Ultimately, the prosperity and wealth granted by England’s social and technological superiority, according to Young, made the British people decadent. This is what Gibbon said happened to Rome and what modern historians say is happening to the United States.

Young’s nostalgia and regret are perhaps nowhere more poignant than when he says that “That time has left its scars and poison with us, and in the daily clamor for leadership, for faith, for a new heart or a new cause, I hear the ghost of late Victorian England whimpering on the grave thereof.” It is clear that he is regretting the end of a golden age (In fact, in 1936, he didn’t know the half of it.) What makes this book so interesting for modern-day American readers is that America in 2014 can be compared to England in 1936: losing the control it used to have over events, becoming a leader rather than a follower, and asking itself if its best days were already behind it—in addition, and perhaps most painful of all, sensing that its message to the world was being tuned out. Young showed his readers just how easy it was for the entire edifice of Victorian England, the first true world empire in history, to come crashing down. The parallels are there for present-day American readers to contemplate.

Bibliography

George M. Young. Portrait of an Age. London: Oxford University Press, 1936.