February 11, 2006
Two Disasters at Sea
By James
Piereson
Lytton Strachey's
Eminent Victorians, published in 1918, was the first
and certainly one of the most influential of twentieth-century
attacks on Victorian morality. His portraits of Cardinal Manning,
Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon were meant
to reveal the hypocrisy of these representative figures of the
era. Under the guises of virtue, rectitude, and service to others,
these Victorians were (according to Strachey) in fact seekers
after influence, position, and public approbation. Strachey's
portraits shaped the modern understanding of the Victorians as
moral hypocrites and gave to the word "Victorian" a
decisively negative interpretation.
World War
I is thought by many to have been the last gasp of the Victorian
era and the event that demonstrated the hollowness its claims
to moral virtue. It was perhaps the disillusion with the war that
prepared the way for the acceptance of Strachey's interpretation
of the Victorians.
Others have
pointed to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 as the event that
both closed the door on the Victorian era and represented its
moral aspirations. After the Titanic's fateful collision with
the iceberg, Captain Smith and his crew, knowing the ship would
go down within hours, set about placing women and children aboard
the available lifeboats while the band played the hymn, "Nearer
My God to Thee." Of the 2200 passengers, 1500 or so went
down with the ship due to the inadequate supply of lifeboats on
board. The captain and nearly all crew members went down with
them. One of the executives of the White Star Line managed to
save himself by sneaking on a lifeboat, and was afterwards denounced
as a coward for having done so. Winston Churchill is said to have
remarked that the conduct of the captain and crew, and of many
of the men on board, affirmed his faith in Christian honor --
a pair of virtues that Strachey would later dismiss as features
of the Victorian moral apparatus.
These ruminations
are occasioned by the awful news of last week's sinking of the
cruise ship Al Salam 98 on the Red Sea which cost the lives of
perhaps 1,000 of the 1,500 passengers on board -- a disaster comparable
in loss of life to the sinking of the Titanic. What is particularly
worth noting about this disaster, however, is that according to
survivors the captain and members of the crew adopted a "to
hell with the passengers" attitude, and took off aboard scarce
lifeboats as soon as it appeared that their ship was in danger
of going down. The passengers were left to fend for themselves
and, in the event, many drowned. The contrast with the Titanic's
captain and crew could not be clearer.
This brings
us back to Strachey and his condemnation of the Victorians as
hypocrites. The attack of hypocrisy in modern times is not intended
to encourage people to redouble their efforts to live up to high
moral standards, but rather to dissolve the distinction altogether
between virtue and vice. It seems hard to believe that this campaign,
so successful in overturning moral categories in the West, has
penetrated the Arab world. Still, one wonders, after contemplating
these two sea disasters nearly 100 years apart in time, if in
fact there might not be something to be said in favor of hypocrisy.
James
Piereson is an occasional contributor to The
New Criterion.
