Robert E. Sullivan's 'Macaulay. The Tragedy of Power ' 2009

 

Harvard University Press first edition - 2009

This biography is certainly not aimed at the 'general reader' and is not for the faint hearted. In 487 densely-packed erudite pages (and a further 90 of Notes), the reader requires stamina, fortitude and, probably, regular incursions to the spirits decanter. I finished the book feeling that the biggest gap between the 19th century elite (and the author - Associate Professor of History and Associate Vice President at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana) and those of the 21st century, is the study and knowledge of the Latin and Greek, the Classical, world - its languages, its thinkers, philosophers, historians, modus vivendi. A classical education once integrated England's leaders intellectually, socially, and ethically. I studied Latin for several years at school - and Greek for a single year! -  but this certainly did not equip me to understand a sizeable chunk of what Professor Sullivan was referring to. Nowadays, in Britain the two languages are rarely taught outside of the public schools, and are as dead as the proverbial Monty Python parrot. This means that a major aspect of Macaulay, his life-blood really, cannot readily be empathised with, or even understood. Sullivan, in his useful Introduction, suggests much of the English-speaking reading world has demoted him from an Eminent Victorian...to a name known only to liberal-arts graduates of a certain age and to students of nineteenth-century culture.

Sullivan provides a valuable sketch of Macaulay's father, Zachary (1768-1838) - a member of the Clapham Sect (a group of mostly rich evangelical Anglicans living in a pious commune), who wanted to impose their morality on the public by abolishing the slave trade and to strangle slavery throughout the empire. They were nurtured and regulated through Bible-reading and prayer. Zachary insisted that his son's pleasing him was the condition for enjoying God's favour: "Unless you are thus docile and obedient, you cannot expect that Jesus Christ shd. love you or give you his blessing." Try that tone in 2025! The younger Macaulay read incessantly as a youngster - before he was seven he produced a compendium of Universal History. His education marked him for the rest of his life - what he studied and how he studied had more in common with the Renaissance, with late antiquity, than with the early 21st century. Studying the classics was inseparable from classical rhetoric. Sullivan charts the increasing distance between father and son, but a distance often skilfully masked by Macaulay. At Cambridge, the latter became a keen competitor, writing Latin epistles and English declamations. For the rest of his life he was more at home as an orator, rarely taking part in, or enjoying, actual debates. He never forgot  the ancients' timeless lesson that "the object of oratory...is not truth but persuasion".

A brief Blog such as this is not the place to chart Thomas Macaulay's life (1800-1859), in all its vicissitudes, but one can pick out some salient pointers: 

• crucially, his family taught him to be Janus-faced...he succeeded in crafting an intricate and winning public face that often belied him. He believed that "morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God..."
• His Whiggism was accommodating rather than dogmatic, an attitude that eventually made him a bellwether.
• elected as an M.P., Macaulay soon made his name as a compelling orator. Interestingly, he supported religious toleration, not so much for protecting religious minorities, but as a way of subordinating their diversity to the authority and control of the state.
• Tom was permanently celibate. An area which Professor Sullivan tries to unpick is Macaulay's 'incestuous' feelings for his two youngest sisters, Hanna (10 years younger) and Margaret (12 years his junior). Psychologists would have (and have had) a field day. Even accounting for 19th century sentimentality, his amorous language and clear dependence for emotional satisfaction upon the two girls is disturbing. Margaret's early death left him distraught and his subsequent attachment to Hannah and her daughter was intense. 
• His time in India as a legislator (he sailed with Hannah. who met and married Charles Trevelyan there, caused further emotional distress to her brother) was admired but, from a 21st century  viewpoint, deeply disturbing. Natives were "a nest of blackguards", "beggarly Musselmans", "scare-crows". On the other hand, the "brave, proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude", the English, were "the greatest and most highly civilised people that the world ever saw". And moreover, "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Macaulay argued that it was clear India could not have a free Government, but could have the next best thing - "a firm and impartial despotism".  Whilst in India he created a regimen of reading Greek and Latin "for three or four hours" every morning before breakfast. Macaulay believed that England's imperial mission was civilizing, not Christian.
• Ireland? to many Englishmen, including Macaulay, the indigenous Irish appeared barbarous, perhaps savage, and hence even lower on the scale of civilization than the Indians. There were shades of an ethic of civilizing and imperial extirpation in his views; his attitude to the awful years of the Irish famine make for very uncomfortable reading. Civilizing and progressive slaughter in history amounted to the secular expropriation of Providence. From projecting the eradication of aborigines' languages and literatures, it was a manageable stretch to recommending the eradication of aborigines who resisted the civilization that would uplift future generations. You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.
• England's responsibility to extend its superior civilization made conquest a moral imperative to be rewarded with growing prosperity and power. "all nations, civilised and uncivilised,", should know that "wherever an Englishman may wander, he is followed by the eye and guarded by the power of England" (a view soundly endorsed by Palmerston in his foreign policy).
• Of course, the publication of the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) brought the imperial idea, dressed in toga and sandals and armed with a sword and shield, alive to Macaulay's countrymen. They taught that Rome's invented traditions inspired its citizens to devotion, slaughter and sacrifice - defining modern "ardent patriotism".
• The History of England from the Accession of James II (1848, 1855) was not to be an objective history. His book was the product of a classically trained orator inspired by the art of Thucydides and the other great ancients. Re-reading the ancients during the late 1840s in dread of democratic revolution convinced him to see the past from their vantage and to look down on ordinary people as "politically too insignificant for history". High politics was his story, and political actors were his characters, More than Walter Scott or even the hero-worshiping Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay depicted the powerful movers of great events as the agents of historical change. For Macaulay, England superseded Christianity as the font of national unity. He also wanted to make history lively. English history was the triumph of reason and the state over barbarism and the church, and the unparalleled greatness of England depended on the Revolution of 1688. William III was "the greatest prince that has ever ruled England". Macaulay's disdain for "the multitude" was huge - "Rabble", "Common People", "the vulgar", "Clowns", "Rustics" and "ignorant populace". There was a permanent underclass threatening respectability, property and order and waiting to assault - "the human vermin".
• other aspects worth noticing -  Macaulay hated the Quakers - the dullest, vilest, most absurd of Christian  sects. The History  was unreliable in its transcription of documents (reminds me of Abbot Gasquet!) For Macaulay, the civilizing imperative was integral to modern England's identity and power. It required establishing "the ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority", first over the domestic "mob" or "multitude", then over the Celtic fringes, and finally over a global empire, above all over India.

The History was an immediate triumph. The first print run of 3,000 copies was quickly sold out; volumes one and two went through thirteen printings. To most contemporary readers it told a generally accepted story. It is interesting to read that Macaulay was allergic to criticism. When confronted with indisputable factual errors, he corrected them, but grudgingly and surreptitiously and never for the Quakers! More than ever, he respected domination as the precondition of civilization. England's history was a winner's tale. Democracy would enable the poor to plunder the rich and civilization would perish. The Irish were ill-suited to benefit from England's civilizing and imperial mission. The Scots were fit to be anglicized!

During the 1850s Macaulay pioneered in making belief in "perpetual progress" English public doctrine. The 'Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations' vindicated his vision of progress. The Crystal Palace housed "more than 100,000 exhibits...from Britain, its colonies and dependencies, and numerous other countries". Macaulay saw English nationalism as the exhibition's principal column, the outward and visible sign of England's inner strength and progress. He "could hardly help shedding tears" on his last visit.

Near the end of the biography, Sullivan had this perceptive comment to make about his subject: His indifference to his family's ambitions, desires, and well-being captures his emotional consciousness. Neither a psychiatrist nor psychologist, I am unwilling to inflict incompetent theories on someone long dead. Thomas Babington Macaulay understood my subject: his sensibility. Lifelong patterns in his interactions and words - mostly to himself - reveal him as a powerful and ultimately tragic man. His stunted emotional consciousness caused him to live barely attentive to and mostly unconcerned about the people and places in front of him, while his masterful intelligence empowered him to interpret and help shape the English public mind during his nation's century. Macaulay's sensibility also made his life a tragedy. Blind to the humanity he shared even with the unseen thousands whom he recommended killing, he lived as if riveted to a mirror, contemplating himself hopelessly, and finally alone.

Having read this biography, I got the feeling that Professor Sullivan didn't actually like his subject. Admired, was in awe of - yes. But Macaulay's denigration of nearly every other race apart from the English is so antithetical to the present mindset (at least to the majority of thinkers) that it is hard to 'like' the man. However, always study the 'context' of a person's life and times. Macaulay expressed the predominant view of mid-century Victorian England - a firm belief in History as progressive and in England as a civilising power, even greater than that of the ancient world. After this intellectual blockbuster, I am in need of a brain-rest, so I shall turn to a simpler book next!