The Past is a Foreign Country

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

-L.P. Hartley, The Go Between

Visiting the Victorian Age

The aptness of Hartley's metaphor was brought home to me when I recently saw the 85th anniversary show of The Players' Theatre Company. This dedicated group of performers recreates Victorian Music Hall in as accurate manner as possible. There are specific conventions that are part of the tradition, such as a garrulous Chairman who introduces each act with verbose excess that is mocked and echoed by the audience.

The spectators are active participants in the entertainment, joining in the songs, adding commentary, anticipating punch lines, and in general, acting as a kind of comic chorus.

The heyday of the Music Hall was from roughly 1850 to around 1918 when the growing popularity of silent cinema began to supersede that of live performances. But, nostalgia for this form of entertainment never completely disappeared. The Music Hall is nevertheless rooted in the social history of Victorian England. It developed as a consequence of increased leisure time and more disposable income, for a portion of the working and middle classes at least. John Woolf in The Wonders describes the alterations that gave impetus to the development of popular entertainment including the circus, the freak show, spectator sports, and the Music Hall. Preconditions were "the institutionalization of the Saturday half-holiday, restrictions on the hours of industrial work, the value placed on the concept of spare time, and broader economic and social changes which ensured that the working and middle classes had more money in their pockets to spend on leisure" (Woolf, 2019, p. 244).

Perhaps the key characteristic of the Victorian age is its length; corresponding to the reign of Queen Victoria, it lasted for over 63 years from June 20, 1837, to January 22, 1901.

It would be foolhardy, though, to treat those years as a coherent whole. To assume that time or space can be neatly summarized is an error into which we all too easily fall. Indeed, the period was marked by enormous change domestically and internationally. Between 1837 and 1901, the nation was transformed. By 1901 Britain had emerged as the foremost political power in the world with an empire that governed, in one way or another, approximately 400 million people, or one quarter of the world's population.

Furthermore, concepts of space and time were altered. From 1845, Victorian society invested heavily in railways, redefining the geography of the country, diminishing space between cities and regions, making suburbia, and the seaside resort possible. The growth of the railways also changed the structure of time. Different areas had regional variants but the need for reliable timetables led to a national standardized "railway time" and, ultimately, to the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time in 1880. That it swiftly evolved into an international standard reflects the global reach of Victorian influence. From the late 1870s in London, the epicenter of Victorian England, electric street lighting began to alter urban life in a radical way. The dangerous darkness of night progressively gave way to illuminated space, creating locations for pleasure and recreation.

When we think of the Victorians, we tend to return to stereotypical associations: "...Victorian, and still more Victorianism, is frequently used in a derogatory way, to connote narrow-mindedness, sexual priggishness, the determination to maintain feminine... innocence (that is, sexual ignorance)... and an emphasis on social respectability" (Abrams, 1999, p.329). Victorian England, through those lenses, was indeed a serious place with moral values that sustained social order in the interests, primarily, of middle- and upper-class privilege. Distinctions between the various social strata permeated economic and social life and were critical to the quality of existence.

The attitudes and behaviors of the upper class are satirized by the Irish outsider, Oscar Wilde, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895):

LADY BRACKNELL. I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?

JACK. I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.

LADY BRACKNELL. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

In this foreign country, we would encounter some unfamiliar assumptions and would have to learn something of the language of the place to comprehend nuances of meaning. We would need, for example, to understand that "society" is not the collective sociological term defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: "a large group of people who live together in an organized way, making decisions about how to do things and sharing the work that needs to be done." Instead, as Lady Bracknell implies, "Society" is a term that designates an elite group of Victorian aristocracy. It is an exclusive club: "Never speak disrespectfully of Society... Only people who can't get into it do that." This society is marked by conventions that, as Lady Bracknell illustrates, contain a perverse logic:

London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now.

Logical absurdities also characterize the rules of behavior: "Come, dear, we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform." Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (1893) demonstrates that "society" could also be a darker force of social and moral tyranny. Simultaneously, however, the distinctions and institutions of privilege were widely satirized, subverted, and ridiculed. A paradox of Victorian society is that it took itself very seriously and not seriously at all.

The comic operettas of Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert offer further evidence of the popularity of the satirical voice. In H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), "The Ruler of the Queen's Navy" describes his rise to prominence in a manner that illustrates considerable skepticism about the judgement of those who manage a key arm of Britain's global military might:

Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship that I ever had seen.
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Now landsmen all, whoever you may be,
If you want to rise to the top of the tree,
If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool,
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule.
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,
And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee!

The song targets both the institution of the British Navy at a time of its greatest strength as well as political corruption of the "pocket boroughs": constituencies owned by a patron who appointed the representative without recourse to an election. HMS Pinafore ran for 571 performances, the second longest theatrical run for a musical performance up to 1878. It was sensationally popular, subversive in a way that broadens our view of the Victorian age.

Victorian England is another country and our encounters there are relevant to the work of education abroad. We analyze power structures, observe the impact of technology, understand dominant modes of thought, and comprehend the broad assumptions that shape our nascent understanding of place. We test what we know by asking questions, observing behaviors, reading the signs, exploring and analyzing the evidence we see, read, and study.

Wilde, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the popular entertainers of the day expose another Victorian England beyond the notion of serious, staid, propriety. To reveal that alternative place, we need to ask a different question. What made them laugh? Comedy is the enemy of dogmatism, fanaticism, and the arrogance of certainty. We learn that in Victorian Britain, at the height of British dominance, there were voices intent on pricking the pomposity of privilege. The balance of power is almost always in favor of conventional thought. Dominant versions of morality act as tools of social control. The attitudes and social systems that legitimize inequities of power are, however, challenged by laughter, exposed to ridicule. These are offensive in the most moral sense possible.

It's the Poor That Gets the Blame

One of the attractions of looking back at Victorian Music Hall is that it undermines the stereotypical view of the era as a time of staid solemnity. Songs tended to fall into four overlapping categories: sentimentalism, moral lessons, self-deprecating comedy, and commentary on class inequities. The common thread is that they were almost exclusively derived from working class experience and employed the language of the under-privileged. They, thus, gave voice and agency to those without political or economic strength.

Exemplifying morality tales is the traditional song sometimes known as "She was Poor, but She was Honest" or "On the Bridge at Midnight":

She was poor, but she was honest
Though she came from 'umble stock
And an honest heart was beating
Underneath her tattered frock
'Eedless of 'er Mother's warning
Up to London she 'ad gone
Yearning for the bright lights gleaming
'Eedless of temp-ta-shy-on

In quasi-comic tones of working-class London argot, "Cockney," the song tells of the perilous fate that may await the poor, naive provincial young woman at the hands of a rich seducer:

But the rich man saw her beauty
She knew not his base design
And he took her to a hotel
And bought her a small port wine
In the rich man's arms she fluttered
Like a bird with a broken wing
But he loved 'er and he left 'er
Now she hasn't got no ring

The consequence, as the audience would have understood, was ruin, a fate that demonstrates class and gender inequities and the heartlessness of a rigid moral code. The victim jumps into the river and drowns:

See 'er on the bridge at midnight
She says "Farewell, blighted love"
There's a scream, a splash......Good 'eavens!
So they dragged 'er from the river
Water from 'er clothes they wrung
They all thought that she was drownded
But the corpse got up and sung

From the voice of the dead girl a moral and political message rings out in a chorus that would have been heartily endorsed by the voices of an enthusiastic audience:

It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?

Poverty is also behind a song made famous by Marie Lloyd (1870 - 1922).

"My Old Man Said Follow the Van" also known as "Don't Dilly Dally on the Way" tells an all too familiar story of a family moving at night because they were unable to pay the rent. While the audience would know full well the reality of this dilemma, they would also have reveled in the domestic comedy, laughing at adversity. Singing along with the performers was both enjoyable participation and an expression of empathy, based upon shared perspectives.

We had to move away,
- Cos the rent we couldn't pay
The moving van came round just after dark
There was me and my old man
Shoving things inside the van
Which we'd often done before let me remark
Then we packed all we could pack
On the tail board at the back
Till there wasn't any room for me to ride.
My old man said follow the van
And don't dilly-dally on the way
Off went the cart with the home packed in it
I walked behind with me old cock linnet
But I dillied and I dallied
And I dallied and I dillied
Lost the van and don't know where to roam
And I can't find my way home.

The reality of urban poverty is transformed into a comedy of working-class resilience.

Visiting Victorian England

If the past is a foreign country, what might we learn from a journey there? Critically, we need to go beneath the surface of things to reveal multi-layered realities. The naysayers, comics, and satirists offer a challenge to conventional portraits of any given society. They invite us to engage in a form of intellectual archeology, unearthing that which is buried. Not believing what we are told is true is ultimately a moral action.

The education abroad student who comes to London might well look at Victorian society with curious skepticism and recognize both the importance of dissent and the profound, persistent significance of class distinctions, then and now. They may not be as visible as they were in Victoria's days, but they exist and are more powerful than we might at first glance assume. The single biggest mistake a student might make is to underestimate the importance of class in England.

Class distinction is a serious matter that made the English laugh back in those distant days. It still does.

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