Tuesday
Like many, I have been watching Britain’s Brexit disaster with a mixture of horror and sadness. For outsiders like me, the solution seems obvious: have another referendum, this time without Russian interference, and see if the country really wants to leave the European Union. Polls suggest that some Brexiteers are suffering from buyer’s remorse and would reverse their original vote. Even if voters reaffirmed a British exit, then at least they would have a sense of what they’re signing up for. No more rosy scenarios.
But perhaps British pride runs so deep that people will not admit they made a mistake. Searching for a literary instance of such self-destructive pride, I thought of George Meredith’s Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), which made me so angry when I read it that I hurled the book across the room. (Note: it’s the only time I have done such a thing.) That’s because Sir Austin Feverel is so stiff-necked that he precipitates a heartrending crisis that could easily be resolved. (Spoiler alert: I’m going to tell you what it is). To make matters worse, he can’t even admit his mistake when he is confronted with the carnage he has wrought.
At the beginning of the novel, Sir Austin’s wife runs off with a poet, leaving him to bring up their son. A scientific humanist, he devises an educational method he calls “the System,” which treats young Richard more as an experiment than a human being. The System can’t handle the boy when, upon growing up, he falls in love with a neighboring farmer’s daughter. Sir Austin refuses to forgive them following their elopement.
Since Richard loves his father and Lucy is a lovely woman, a reconciliation appears as easy as holding a second referendum on Brexit. Sir Austin, however, fears that relenting would mean admitting his System is fallible, and his pride will not allow that. We see this when a kindly friend seeks to mediate between father and son:
“I think I have enough to meditate upon,” he replied, coldly bowing.
“God bless you,” she whispered. “And—may I say it? do not shut your heart.”
He assured her that he hoped not to do so and the moment she was gone he set about shutting it as tight as he could.
If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said, Never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of his own case. He had experimented on humanity in the person of the son he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to have failed, all humanity’s failings fell on the shoulders of his son….Base, like the rest, treacherous, a creature of passions using his abilities solely to gratify them—never surely had humanity such chances as in him! A Manichaean tendency, from which the sententious eulogist of nature had been struggling for years(and which was partly at the bottom of the System), now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his library, he saw the devil.
As in the Brexit referendum, there are other malevolent forces in the mix. A supposed friend of Sir Austin lusts after Lucy and, to separate the vulnerable couple, arranges to have a woman seduce Richard. This opens a rift—Richard becomes too ashamed to return to his wife—and the future appears bleak. New hope arises, however, when we learn of her pregnancy. Can Richard’s penitence, Lucy’s sweetness, and the prospect of an heir assuage Sir Austin?
Fora moment, the answer appears yes and Sir Austin arrives in town “having almost forgiven his son.” Note the “almost,” however. The following passage begins with an appearance of magnanimity, but Sir Austin’s self-satisfied vanity undercuts it:
Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher who says, ‘Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and more tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature who had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his heart of hearts.This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for his softness. But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must think he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his long absence signify?—Something highly unphilosophical. So, though love was strong, and was moving him to astraightforward course, the last tug of vanity drew him still aslant.
“Wounded pride.” “Tenacious vanity.” “The world must not suppose him soft.” How many of these sentiments continue to draw England’s current leadership aslant?
And so, instead of a happy ending that exists only a handshake away, we have a catastrophe. Richard reconciles with Lucy but insists on fighting a duel with the man who preyed on them. When he is wounded and appears close to death,Lucy, weakened from childbirth and kept away from him, dies of brain fever, causing Richard to go mad. Before her death, in a scene that haunts me to this day, they can hear each other’s cries, even though they have been forcibly separated:
Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She screamed that she was ‘drowning in fire,’ and that her husband would not come to her to save her. We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible to prevent Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and it produced an effect like fever on him. Whenever she called he answered. You could not hear them without weeping.
Sir Austin, meanwhile, remains stiff-necked to the end:
Will you believe that when he saw his son’s wife—poor victim! lying delirious, he could not even then see his error. You said he wished to take Providence out of God’s hands. His mad self-deceit would not leave him. I am positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her for not having considered the child. Indeed he made a remark to me that it was unfortunate—’disastrous,’ I think he said—that the child should have to be fed by hand. I dare say it is. All I pray is that this young child may be saved from him. I cannot bear to see him look on it.
Undoubtedly I am simplifying matters and the issues are more complex than I have let on. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Theresa May, while not taking Providence out of God’s hands, appears to be taking her country’s future out of the voters’ hands with her refusal of a second referendum. Meanwhile those Brexiteers who are plunging England into economic ruin keep making self-righteous pronouncements. The best of them are inflexible Sir Austins and the worst shameless con artists who resemble America’s president.
A country led by Sir Austins can expect the worst.