earth" -A Child's History of England"Hail
Briton! In whatever zone Binds the bright
earth beneath the blue, In ancient seasons
or in new No manlier front than thine is
shewn... God keep thee strong as thou art
free..." - "Hail Briton!") They were indeed
critical of much in their Britain - Tennyson
called it "the greatest nation in the world,
and the most vulgar" - but that did not
mean that other ages or countries were
preferable (though Dickens did find
arrangements in France to praise; Tennyson
did not). Dickens mocks his Mr Podsnap's
praise of the Englishman's superlative
qualities and his dismissal of "such other
countries as there may happen to be" but is
not altogether unPodsnappian: equally he
mocks Mr Podsnap's "will it bring a blush
into the cheek of a young person?" but
where does Dickens write, or as an editor
publish, anything blush-making? He and
Tennyson were often conscious too, and
proud, of living in a Britain which was
leading the world in industry, was ruling
more of the world than any nation ever had
done, had invented such useful devices as
railways, Blue Books, the penny post and
income tax, and was (briefly) international
top-dog. Dickens presented his new weekly
Household Words (1850) and its "Conductor
as "faithful in the progress of mankind,
thankful for the privilege of living in this
summer-dawn of time," though a more
complex and critical view appears in his Bleak
House (1852) comment on the scandal of
insanitary city graveyards, a shameful
testimony to future ages, how civilisation
and barbarism walked this boastful island to
gether. (ch. 11)
Similarly Tennyson could go up and
down. In "Locksley Hall" (1842) the
protagonist - very close to his author-
famously expresses what has been called "the
ambivalence of a generation", alternately
proud and terrified of living in this age of
"the march of mind,... the steamship,...the
railway,... the thoughts that shake mankind"
and tempted as on other occasions to escape
from it to some luxurious tropical island: but
than he turns upon himself, decides that he's
a fool, and ends with an affirmation using
(or so he intended) a railway image (but it's
more like a tram):
Not in vain the distance beckons.
Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down
the ringing grooves of change.
If our two authors were very English, they
also shared - again with disadvantages as
will as benefits - the admired quality of
common-sense. One contemporary wrote that
Dickens's "common-sense had all the force of
genius," another that "An immense sanity
underlay the whole [of Tennyson's poetry]-
the perfection of common-sense." The names
of their contemporaries Nietzsche and
Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky, none of them
eminently common-sensical fellows, will
remind us that there are limitations to this
great English virtue. Similarly that domestic
sentiment and family appeal could lead to
weaknesses, Hyppolyte Taine describes some
ladies listening to a reading from Tennyson:
They like him because they feel he
likes them. More, he honours them....
