The New Republic: Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House

by William Hurrell Mallock

William Hurrell Mallock, a prominent British philosopher, wrote this 1878 English satire based upon the religious liberalism or scientific optimism of Arnold, Pater, Huxley, Tyndall, Ruskin, Jowett, and other leading Victorians. Dedicated to `Violet Fane', this Peacockian symposium in novel-form introduces her as Mrs Sinclair. Other characters admittedly drawn from life are "Dr. Jenkinson" (Jowett), "Mr. Herbert" (Ruskin), "Mr. Storks" (Huxley) and "Mr. Stockton" (Tyndal), "Mr. Luke" (Matthew Arnold), "Mr. Rose" (Walter Pater). An important title in the history of utopian literature.. Mallock was also known for his books on atheism and socialism as well.

Genres: Fiction, Victorian, Politics

Paperback

First published December 1, 1877

About the author

William Hurrell Mallock was an English novelist and economics writer.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, if not exactly memorable, high-brow caricature of Victorian mentalities. You have your pundit of progress here, your reactionary, your prophet of culture, your aesthete, and your theist, and various other ideological offshoots in the form of supporting characters. According to a preface (written around the turn of the – last – century or so), I was able to make literary acquaintance of Benjamin Jowett, and identify the anti-Mammonist as Ruskin, not Carlyle – the latter of whom, according to a who’s who found subsequently online, also apparently figures in the book, albeit hardly. That same clef surprised me by revealing the perhaps most obnoxious character to be W. K. Clifford, and not T. H. Huxley as I would have thought, given his ultra-positivism. Maybe I don’t know my Victorian intellectuals as well as I should, but what I’ve read of Clifford’s suggests an even-keeled mind, not a screechy line of reasoning, and I would have thought Huxley more radical. Anyway, given that W. H. Mallock actually saw and heard some, if not all or most, of these people in action, I’m willing to trust his depiction, exaggerations accounted for. The portraits of Jowett and Arnold, I found particularly interesting for that reason, that they gave away something of what the men were, their deportment, from a firsthand perspective, Mallock having intersected with both at Oxford, so far as I understood.

You won’t find comedy here – it’s more a parody than a satire, and again, carried on throughout under the refining, as opposed to bathetic, influence of colored lanterns and sea breezes on colonnaded porticos. It’s been billed as a country-house conversation novel, and that’s true insofar as the setting and dialogue go, but both of those grew somewhat repetitive or unvaried as the book went on, going to show for the unmemorable aspect. Funny, though, coming back to humor, how yesterday’s hot debates are tomorrow’s last-season affairs, and how easily schools of thought reduce to stereotypes. But that’s perhaps a topic for another time.

Just shy of four stars for me; I vacillated.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this Victorian novel--first published in serial form in 1876--a dozen or so characters are invited to stay two days at a country estate. While there, these people--many of them modeled on celebrated personalities of the era--spend several idle hours debating what a Utopian “new republic” would look like.

Whether as conversation topic or as Mallock’s own themes, much is made here of modernism, scientific enlightenment, the death of God, society’s patronizing elites, progressive decadence, and chronological snobbery. Mallock has a great talent for dialogue, and the book reads quickly. Toward the end, I did begin to worry that the angle I wanted most to see addressed in the book might not, in fact, make it into the story. However, the final 30 pages rounded out the book in a way that could not have been improved on.

It is truly stunning to read something like this, written more than 130 years ago, which shows how little the central issues may change, from one age to the next. I'm tempted to conclude that humanity forgets much and learns relatively little.

On a side note: Possibly the chief benefit I’ll take away from the novel is a budding interest in Victorian art critic John Ruskin--known here as Mr. Herbert.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basically, Mallock (who later graduated to non-fiction and poetry anthologies) took Plato's Republic for his model and set this in a 19th century English country house (as you probably guessed from the subtitle). His characters are modeled after the greatest minds of Victorian England: Thomas Huxley, Walter Pater, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, etc. They talk about the state of society, what life is all about, God's qualities (if he exists), that sort of thing. There's a lot of eating and flirting and whatnot. I guess it might be like "St. Elmo's Fire" but with William Gladstone's idea of the Brat Pack. Still, there are some great points made, and the dialogue is eminently quotable. (Lady Ambrose: "Mr. Rose always talks as if we weren't wearing any clothes . . .") The penultimate chapter might just be my favorite chapter in English literature. It's a shame the book isn't more read today. Definitely one of my top ten.