This week’s book is Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva, by Patrick Dillon. It’s about the British prohibition of gin in the 1730s, and has all sorts of parallels with the crack and crank “epidemics” of our time.
I came across a neat passage yesterday about the supporters of the deposed King James. Dillon discusses how, over the years, being a Jacobite is less about restoring James’ line to the throne and more about dissing the establishment (notwithstanding a minor bombing by Nixon & Killingbeck). As he writes:
Jacobitism was the fly in the ointment of Hanoverian stability; it was Britain’s loose cannon, its unfinished business. Nearly half a century after the Glorious Revolution, the Old Pretender still waited in Paris with his ridiculous court and his bogus ceremonial; whenever a French king wanted to annoy the English, he still had only to start talking about invasions and restorations. Back in England, the wounds of the Glorious Revolution had still not healed over.
All the same, Jacobitism had changed in the past few decades. The passage of half a century was bound to change something. Even in 1715, restoration had been a real possibility. There had been a real Stuart army in Britain, with real support from Jacobite aristocrats, and from at least part of the people. The replacement of the unknown fifty-five-year-old German who sat on the throne with the late Queen’s half-brother seemed perfectly plausible.
By 1736, it didn’t seem so anymore, or only to people like Robert Nixon and Samuel Killingbeck. After twenty years of Hanoverian stability, the Stuarts had receded several steps into the realm of myth. A French-speaking king didn’t seem any more desirable than a German-speaking one. And although he had ditched much of the baggage of absolutism, James Stuart had stubbornly refused to turn away from Rome. The world had moved on. The opposition had found some other ground on which to fight its battles.
Jacobitism had become something more diffuse; the king across the water was wreathed in mist. The mist was partly made up of romantic memories and partly of dreams for a better future. Nine years later, in 1745, when the mist briefly evaporated and a real Jacobite army was marching through England behind a real Stuart prince, the main emotion among English Jacobites was one of alarm. The Pretender didn’t realize it himself, but after twenty-one years Jacobitism in England had turned into something quite different from a campaign to restore him.
Instead, it had become a general form of protest against those in power. As long as there was Jacobitism, there was an alternative to the Hanoverians. Jacobitism became a way of withholding support. That way, the King of England and his ministers, like everyone else, had to live with uncertainty. It had metamorphosed into a general spirit of subversion. Disgruntled Tory squires toasted the ‘King over the Water’ to express their disenchantment with London, the times and Walpole’s ministry. Jacobite songs like ‘The King Shall Enjoy His Own Again’ became a way to cheek anyone in authority.
This has led me to think about the knee-jerk “oppositionism” that characterizes a lot of debate in the U.S. for past decade-plus. It also, as ever, puts me in mind of Orwell. From England, Your England (1941):
One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is, ‘Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me,’ like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing.
It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army. The Italians adopted the goose-step at about the time when Italy passed definitely under German control, and, as one would expect, they do it less well than the Germans. The Vichy government, if it survives, is bound to introduce a stiffer parade-ground discipline into what is left of the French army. In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk. It belongs to a society which is ruled by the sword, no doubt, but a sword which must never be taken out of the scabbard.