The Rat and the Apostate

 I was reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Peter Bell the Third" yesterday (contained in the Penguin Classics edition of Selected Poems and Prose). It's the kind of satirical piece that's so up my alley it amazes me I hadn't already discovered it years ago. I want to travel back in time to share it with my younger self; he would have appreciated it even more than I did. 

After all, one finds in the poem—among many other gems—an explanation for one of my favorite lines of Brecht's poetry. In "Contemplating Hell," Brecht observes that his "brother Shelley" once declared that Hell must be a place much like London; whereas Brecht (he writes in the poem)—having now been to Los Angeles—finds that it must be even more like that. 

I always thought that this line of Brecht's just referred in general to Shelley's denunciation of the rot and corruption of the capital of his time—in political poems like "England in 1819." But, now that I've read "Peter Bell the Third," I discover that Brecht had something even more specific in mind. For, Part 3 of Shelley's satire opens with the words: "Hell is a city much like London."

There's a more important reason, though, why my younger self would have especially enjoyed this poem: the light it sheds on the political history of poets. 

I was fascinated even as a teenager, after all, by the apostasy of Wordsworth and Southey from the radical cause. At that point in my life, my main polemical target was Christopher Hitchens and the other erstwhile Trotskyites who had defected during the Bush administration, and had become apologists for the so-called "War on Terror." (Hitchens, of course, would have argued that it was the Left that had changed, not him.)

I found in the Romantic-era debate between the younger generation of liberals and radicals—Shelley and Byron—and the triumvirate of turncoat ex-radicals—Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey—a kind of distant mirror of what I was seeing in my own time. The betrayal of the erstwhile radical "Pantisocratists" seemed to presage the evolution of the Neo-Conservatives and "liberal hawks" in my time. 

And in the decades since, the same model has served me well time and again to explain the evolution of one-time liberal or radical reformers who live to become the embodiment of all they once protested against. In Robert Southey—say—one finds the perfect archetype of all subsequent political quislingism—the forebear of men like Glenn Greenwald.  

(Greenwald, of course, like Hitchens—would argue that it was the Left who betrayed him, by becoming more institutionalist, rather than he who betrayed the Left, by becoming a stooge of Putin and the MAGA movement.)

Shelley's "Peter Bell the Third" was written as a direct riposte to one of the later Wordsworth's poetical defenses of orthodoxy and conservatism. I haven't read the original poem (and, according to the Penguin editors, it's not clear Shelley had either!). But I think the general point that Wordsworth had evolved into an apologist for religious and political conservatism is beyond dispute. 

Shelley populates the satire with characters who are plainly stand-ins for the Lake Poets. There is a mystic-minded poet obsessed with foggy-headed notions derived from German metaphysics—obviously Coleridge. Peter Bell himself is Wordsworth (hence his pen-name "Verbovale"—get it?): a poet who writes in praise of liberty in his youth, but who ultimately converts to the cause of monarchy in old age, for the sake of securing more flattering reviews. 

All of which is played for mocking laughs. But in Coleridge and Wordsworth's forsaking of their youthful ideals, there is obviously an element of tragedy mixed in with the absurdity. Because these were two men of real talent, whose youthful works were—as Shelley put it himself in another context—"songs consecrate to truth and liberty." 

In Southey, however—portrayed in this poem at the tempter who led Wordsworth astray—the element of ridiculousness predominates. He had less talent to start with; and his political volte-face was, if anything, even more dramatic. He went, after all, from writing in praise of revolution, to accepting the position of the King's Poet Laureate—which came with the traditional compensation of a "pot of sack." 

Southey could therefore be portrayed in multiple works of the nineteenth century as a man who had "sold his birthright for a pot of sack." Thomas Love Peacock depicts him as Mr. "Sackbut," a one-time radical who now devotes his time to groveling before the high and mighty, flattering power, and trying to lock up his former friends on charges of "sedition."

And so, we know exactly who Shelley has in mind when he writes—in "Peter Bell the Third"—that "The Devil is a gentleman; [...] a bard bartering rhymes/ For sack." 

The Penguin Classics editors note that Shelley's humorously overwrought dedication to Thomas Brown is likewise meant to mimic the sanctimonious way in which Wordsworth had heaped titles and honors on Southey, in the dedication to his own verse—making the identification of the two figures even harder to mistake.  

The Penguin editors seem less confident, though, as to who is intended in the opening paragraph of the epistolary dedication by Shelley's phrase, "the Rat and the Apostate." They suggest the Apostate may be a reference to Wordsworth, given his notorious political defection from the radical cause. But they say the identity of "the Rat" is an open question. 

I, however, think there should be no such confusion on this point. Southey, after all, was also notorious for promulgating a list of dangerous poets, whom he referred to Parliament for prosecution on charges of sedition. As Byron wrote in another dedication to another poetic satire: Southey had thereby "added to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer."

Plainly, then—Southey must be "the Rat." As in: one who rats on his former allies. Thomas Love Peacock, after all, portrays Southey memorably (in the character of Mr. Sackbut in his Nightmare Abbey) as howling "for the blood of his old friends." 

And so I conclude by asking—who are the Rat and the Apostate of our time? The Apostate, I think, would have to be Ross Douthat. He is the only one of the present generation of political turncoats who was ever talented enough to impart to his apostasy an element of Wordsworthian tragedy. He is the only one whose tragic arc, therefore, is worthy of comparison to that of Peter Bell/Wordsworth/Verbovale. 

Of course, Douthat was never a liberal or a radical to start with. But, for four years of the original Trump administration, he managed to keep some semblance of critical distance from the MAGA movement. I recognize, then, that he preserved some of his integrity during this time—as irritating as I still found some of his takes. 

But—as John Greeenleaf Whittier once observed of another political turncoat—"The Tempter hath a snare for all." In Douthat's case, the "Tempter" was J.D. Vance. Douthat's personal friendship with his fellow convert Vance—who also evolved from being a one-time Trump critic to being the latter's most groveling henchman—is apparently the thing that finally undid him. 

Which would seem to make Vance "the Rat." He is the Southey, the Sackbut. And he has fitted himself perfectly to the role. He has even played the part of "informer" against his old friends—drawing up a case for the criminal indictment of Robert Kagan, for instance—just for having the temerity to compare Trump to a dictator (a comparison that Vance himself had made in the past, before his MAGA conversion). 

Vance is therefore plainly taking up Sackbut's call for "the blood of his old friends." He is "seeking to add to his other laurels those of the informer." He is "the Rat." 

And, as the Rat, the Southey, the Sackbut, it is also fitting that he should play the part of the Tempter in the ultimate downfall of Douthat's political integrity. "The Devil is a gentleman," indeed. 

And now listen to our present-day Rat and Apostate—Vance and Douthat—flattering each other. Note the tone of sanctimony and pious hypocrisy that marks their communications. As Douthat wrote last summer, after Vance was chosen to run as vice president: 

"If elected he will be the first vice president of the United States with whom I was friends before he became a politician. That’s quite a strange feeling and one that mostly inspired me to say some prayers for him and for the country."

Does the tone not smack of Wordsworth's fawning dedication to Southey, "P.L." (Poet Laureate)? Does one not sense the Rat and the Apostate needing to draw closer together for warmth—to flatter and praise each other to the skies, in order to keep at bay the dawning realization that they sold themselves for the paltriest price, that they mortgaged the birthright of their integrity to the lowest bidder? 

The Rat and the Apostate. Verbovale and Sackbut. They deserve each other.