Peacock vs. Southey

 Thomas Love Peacock is often regarded—perhaps due in part to his irresistible name—as a "light" novelist. He wrote short social satires, we are told—comedies ending in marriage—with alliterative titles—which all feature a group of pedants and eccentrics gathering in a country estate somewhere in order to debate various philosophical and political issues. 

Indeed, all of this is true; but only up to a point. The description I have just given you, of the default Peacock novel, accurately describes Headlong Hall (his first novelette); Nightmare Abbey (minus the usual alliteration); and Crotchet Castle—works that do indeed belong to the tradition of "learned comedy" (much like those of Swift, the elder Samuel Butler, or Laurence Sterne). 

What you wouldn't gather from the standard thumbnail sketch of Peacock's career, though, is that he also wrote historical romances that had nothing to do with country estates (though they shared Peacock's satirical interests): Maid Marian (yes, that Maid Marian, of Robin Hood fame) and The Misfortunes of Elphin (an Arthurian romance). 

The dismissive view of Peacock as a "light" and frivolous writer, meanwhile, also drastically underplays the element of political invective and social criticism in his work. We all know that Peacock was a satirist; but many have perhaps forgotten—or never knew—what a radical one he was (particularly in his early works); condemning the society of his time root-and-branch.

Peacock was a friend of Shelley; and this was no accident. It shows in the pointed political stances he takes in his work. Nightmare Abbey is full of arch sallies against figures like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and—above all—Robert Southey; who forsook the radical cause of their youth in order to become crabbed conservatives and monarchist reactionaries with age. 

Southey is a particularly ripe target for abuse: since the political conversion in his case seemed to have a particularly overt element of self-interest behind it. 

As a young poet, Southey sung the praises of the medieval rebel Wat Tyler. But he then did a heel-turn to become England's arch-conservative poet laureate. Soon, he was condemning his former radical friends as poets of the "Satanic School" and drawing up lists of their names in order to propose them for prosecution on charges of sedition: "thereby adding to his other laurels" as Byron archly put it, "the ambition of those of an informer."

In Nightmare Abbey, Peacock depicts Southey as "Mr. Sackbut"—the poet who had "sold his birthright for a pot of sack" (the traditional honorarium bestowed upon the kingdom's poet laureate); and describes him as "flourish[ing] his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk," and  howling "for the blood of his old friends" (such as by sending their names to the legislature under allegations of sedition). 

Shades in all this, as I've remarked before, of J.D. Vance going from a self-declared "Never Trump guy," once upon a time—to becoming Trump's top lieutenant, helping him to instigate bogus investigations and file malicious criminal charges against people, merely for expressing the exact same views that Vance himself publicly held just a few years ago.

As Peacock describes the fate of the political prisoner who comes under the scrutiny of such would-be "informers," in The Misfortunes of Elphin—in words that today can only bring to mind the cases of James Comey or Letitia James—or other victims of Trump's "retribution" campaign against his political adversaries for daring to challenge him: 

Elphin, in a point which much concerned him, held a belief of his own, different from that which his superiors in worldly power required him to hold. Therefore Maelgon acted as the possessors of worldly power usually act in similar cases: he locked Elphin up within four stone walls, with an intimation that he should keep him there till he pronounced a more orthodox opinion on the question in dispute.

In Headlong Hall, Peacock returns to the subject of Southey and Wordsworth's political heel-turns. In discussion with the arch-conservative Mr. Mac Laurel—a Southeyish figure whose name perhaps combines, with the poet laureate, an element of Sir Walter Scott: a fellow Tory—the young Mr. Escot (who seems a stand-in for the views of Peacock and his friend Shelley) debates with the latter the question of whether morality is purely a matter of individual preference. 

Mac Laurel takes the view that each proceeds according to his own fancy, in human affairs, and thus no course is more intrinsically moral than another. 

"Thus, sir, I presume," replies Mr. Escot, "it suits the particular views of a poet, at one time to take the part of the people against their oppressors, and at another, to take the part of the oppressors, against the people"—a pointed reference to Southey. 

Mr. Mac Laurel holds the editorship, you see, of a journal that bears a certain resemblance to the real-life Quarterly Review—the arch-Tory periodical of the age, which often featured the works of Scott and of Southey, during his later conservative period (and which William Hazlitt once amiably described as "present[ing] one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners"). 

To which Mr. Mac Laurel replies: "Ye mun alloo, sir, that poetry is a sort of ware or commodity, that is brought into the public market wi' a' other descreptions of merchandise, an' that a mon is pairfectly justified in getting the best price he can for his article."

So too one must allow, in Vance's case, the same with respect to law graduates and memoirists; I suppose they must be allowed to put their own best commodities—their integrity and brains—up at auction for the highest bidder. "Ye ken, sir, a mon mun leeve," as Mac Laurel puts it. 

Of course, it must be noted that is the fate of such bought propagandists and hired tools—viz. the fate of Rudy Giuliani, e.g.—to eventually be neglected and thrown on the scrap heap, after they have served their purpose. As another character—the phrenologist—expounds this insight later in the novel, while displaying a set of human bones that illustrate the principles of his science: 

"Here is the skull of a turnspit, which, after a wretched life of dirty work, was turned out of doors to die on a dunghill. I have been induced to preserve it, in consequence of its remarkable similarity to this, which belonged to a courtly poet, who having grown grey in flattering the great, was cast off in the same manner to perish by the same catastrophe."

Vance and Rubio would do well to regard this cheering view of the destiny that inevitably awaits them. 

Peacock even alludes to the subject of Southey in his historical romances. In Maid Marian, Peacock's version of Robin Hood at one point describes the role of the licensed bard: "I am come to play anywhere, [...] where I can get a cup of sack; for which I will sing the praise of the donor in lofty verse, and emblazon him with any virtue which he may wish to have the credit of possessing, without the trouble of practising." 

The "sack" here being another reference to the traditional honorarium the poet laureate received for his trouble—and which Southey as poet laureate received, specifically, for betraying the people's cause and singing the praises of their ruler. 

As Friar Tuck observes in the same novella: "For the laureate, his only office is to find virtues in those who have none, and to drink sack for his pains."

Likewise, in The Misfortunes of Elphin, about the Welsh bard Taliesin, Peacock returns by implication to the subject of Southey. 

Let us conclude with Taliesin's words of indignation, in one of the poems Peacock inserts into the novel, against "false bards" that flatter the great to advance their careers and win power or money. It is the only fitting epitaph for historical figures like Southey; but also for the craven Southeys of our time—the Vances; the Rubios, etc.—who flatter the no less "weak-minded" self-appointed king in Washington: 

  False bards the sacred fire pervert,

Whose songs are won without desert;

Who falsehoods weave in specious lays,

To gild the base with virtue's praise.

From court to court, from tower to tower,

In warrior's tent, in lady's bower,

For gold, for wine, for food, for fire,

They tune their throats at all men's hire.

[...]

True bards know truth, and truth will show

Ye know it not, nor care to know:

Your king's weak mind false judgment warps;

Rebuke his wrong, or break your harps.