What to read if... we're playing musical chairs

Part One

It will not have escaped your notice that the world is currently - “enjoying” isn't really the mot juste is it? - let's say, in the throes of election season: general elections to the right of us, general elections to the left, and (quite possibly) the Valley of Death thrown in as well as an optional extra - because what politician can ever resist playing with fire? As you can see, this is shaping up to be one of those cheery, feel-good pieces that leave you with a smile on your lips (and a song in your heart, no cliché unturned, because we're talking about politics); because (again): who can possibly contemplate the assorted tergiversators and recidivists currently on offer for most of us, without thinking that maybe it's time to bring back that magnificently expressive, extremely old-fashioned phrase: “What a shower!” Who are these people?

As, of course, you know - ‘twas ever thus. Amongst the plentiful graffiti at Pompeii are various political exhortations, ranging from the demure Vote for Gaius Blah, he's a good chap, to the more loaded “The petty thieves urge you to elect Vatia as aedile,¹” testimony to Pompeii’s vigorous political culture; but also a masterclass in the multiple meanings and readings inherent in any political statement. It's entirely possible, for instance, that Gaius is just a popular bloke. It's also possible that this is a paid-for promotional “poster”, authorised by his campaign manager - so just campaign wallpaper, of a type we’re all too familiar with. Similarly, Vatia (who’s also popular with Late Drinkers United) may simply be a hard-partying type who favours louche company - thus earning the support of a unionised, politically literate criminal fraternity - which, of course raises questions in itself: is this really what you want in your political representative? Or his endorsement could be an actively libellous commentary on his behaviour and politics.

Everyone always thinks we're all going to hell in a handcart. Politicians are always terrible (they're politicians). There's always at least one dodgy populist, leveraging the lowest common denominator and whipping up “unity” through factionalism and discrimination. Them’s the rules. The brilliant Roman satirist, Juvenal had a nice line in anti-Greek invective: coming over here, taking all our jobs, showing off by speaking - wait for it - perfect Greek (a sign of cultivation and sophistication in the Roman world); or, if you’re Juvenal, a symbol of an effete, decadent society in thrall to a bunch of dodgy foreign incomers. Rome is overrun. And no, he's not hysterical, he's a good and vigilant Roman (populists are always something responsible and defensive), doing his best to preserve its Roman “identity.” (Good luck with that one, at the heart of empire.) The enduring topicality of this particular trope is illustrated by the ethnic substitutions offered in the many “modern” renderings of the Third Satire: Dr. Johnson (see below) favours that Anglo-classic the French fop; a mid-18thc version² goes for a wave of Scots; an early 20thc one³ - set at Oxford (the university) - introduces an influx of Indian and African students (to provide some context, apparently there were 32 Indian students at Oxford in 1907⁴; the Oxford poem was first published in 1910). Interestingly, the latter two align most closely with Juvenal's original, because the displacement is directly related to England’s/Britain's territorial expansions; ultimately resulting in empire; meaning that the early 20thc contention will run and run, the manifest fall-out of that empire’s collapse.

But Juvenal also has important things to say about poverty, housing, the dangers of a city where daily life is founded on a punitive inequity, which we can take seriously; and - sadly - are still entirely relevant today: apartment buildings regularly collapse, killing their residents, because jerry-building and poor maintenance are more profitable for landlords; fires rip through; poverty is a trap. One of the Third Satire’s most famous observations is “it's not easy to rise in the world for those whose straitened domestic circumstances obstruct their abilities”; capitalised by Samuel Johnson in his magisterial “Imitation,” London: A Satire (1738), it's so important: “SLOW RISES WORTH, BY POVERTY DEPRESS’D”⁵; a truth which should, of course, be universally acknowledged, but is far more frequently denied; especially by politicians - because then they might have to try and do something about it; which isn't easy. Far better (most politicians) to make poverty the poor person's responsibility:

All crimes are safe, but hateful poverty.

This, only this, the rigid law pursues.

(Johnson again.)

Or, skipping ahead to the nascent struggles of the party system in early 18thc England (when politicians began to roughly align under the novel designations Whig or Tory), how about William Shippen’s gloomy assessment that ”all around is Hell and Anarchy,” in his pamphlet poem Moderation Display’d? Shippen, like Juvenal (when he's obsessing about Greeks), is combining press and PR for the nasty party - there’re complicated political manoeuvrings regarding Jacobitism, religious conformity and so on, which we don't need to take into account here, for the general argument which is:

How Civil Discord and Intestine Rage

Have boil’d in ev’ry Nation, ev’ry Age…

Now Plots are form’d, and publick Tempests rowl…

while, also, like Juvenal, taking the precaution of presenting contention in anonymous literary guise (although there's no comparison between their poetic abilities); a political negotiation in itself to ensure survival. Political assessment though?

They stick at nothing to Secure their Ends,

Caress their Enemies, betray their Friends.

Their Medley Temper, their Amphibious Mind

Is fraught with Principles of ev’ry kind.

Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

Of course, so much concerning politics is smoke and mirrors (and everyone loves a good performance). These are lessons the young, idealistic and (relatively, he's had a diplomatic career) inexperienced Balint Abady has to acquire in The Writing on the Wall: They Were Counted, the first novel in Miklós Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy⁶. Balint doesn't realise that when the local Prefect asks him to stand for Parliament at the upcoming elections, it's not because of Balint’s personal qualities (or even his political stance): it's because the Prefect wants to keep out the opposition and ensure that the district isn't “represented by some ‘foreigner’ who had bought his seat from the party leaders in Budapest”. To this end, the elections are rigged:

Aspiring politicians, with money in their pockets, [would] come from the capital to win the seat. They would be welcomed, and their pockets emptied, by the Prefect and his friends, to an apparently vicious contest with a loud-mouthed demagogue who…had been employed to contest the seat. On one occasion the rich candidate from Budapest had tired of paying and retired; and, to the province’s shame and embarrassment, the phoney candidate had been elected.

Bánffy has great fun with Balint's political education, and politics in general; whilst making serious points; and recreating the drama of - now - historical events as they happen. As an insider, he's only too aware of how much political activity is fuelled by gossip:

Every day there was something new, and the following day it would be contradicted. Today the Speaker had resigned, tomorrow he had hired special bodyguards to eject trouble-makers from the House; the day after he had had a stroke, and the day after that he was taking fencing lessons preparing for the inevitable duels that the next session would bring.

Bánffy is fully alive to the comedy inherent in those “inevitable duels” - but also the incipient tragedy: a little later, he describes “a sad, absurd, unnecessary and, had it not ended in tragedy, ridiculous incident” in which an elderly, principled member of Parliament has a duel forced on him by a brash young thug (supported by a baying opposition) eager to make his mark - “They had found a whipping boy…and whip him they would!” - he’s killed by a sword-thrust so violent the blade is driven through his back.

Violence is a constant subtext in nearly all political discourse and manifestations of political activity (another universal truism): whether exemplified in the behaviour of politicians - as Bánffy allows us to see - or in the policies they seek to enact. There are official government announcements which are, in themselves, complex, morally dubious political negotiations; and a superbly revelatory scene when Balint is exposed most forcefully to the general skulduggery and dirty dealing of the political life, manifested as the members - literally - tear up the Parliamentary Chamber:

All shouting at once they bragged about their behaviour and their misdeeds, roaring and stamping…

‘We beat the hell out of them’

‘Did you see how I hit him with the inkpot?’…

‘We’ve had a real battle here my friend.’

Their leader slips effortlessly into his usual tropes of public speaking, as if shrugging on an old coat -

he launched into one of his usual rabble-rousing speeches full of slogans like ‘Girded with the Nation’s Right’, ‘The Power of the People’, ‘Irresistible Force’, and ‘Spurred by the Sacred Flames of Hungary's Freedom’ until…one of his henchmen…interrupt[ed] this flow of self-praising oratory, came up and said: ‘Chief! Did you see how I beat them off the platform with this?’

Ah, the exhilarating cut and thrust of democratic politics! (Or ‘Hear! Hear!’, plus feet-stamping, as they like to play it in the UK House of Commons.)

Another political insider is Emily Eden (sister to and hostess for); and, in The Semi-Attached Couple, she deploys a great political dinner to telling effect. There are - naturally - speeches galore (politicians tend to enjoy holding forth); and the inexperienced, recently married Helen sees her husband in a new light, impressed by the ease with which he responds to his fellows (these were the days when every speech was accompanied by a toast⁷), not realising that he’s employing a ritual form; and, like the locals, she completely accepts the “impromptu” nature of their MP’s gracefully confiding speech (planned, learned by heart, rehearsed to maximise effect); so that everyone is horrified by the very unsportsmanlike reporting and commentary on these “private” remarks in the press - exactly what was intended, of course:

As it was intended less for the edification of his hearers, than for an answer to the present attacks of the opposition papers, and a declaration of an important change in the commercial relations of the country, every word had been well weighed.

But Mr. G. (or Glorious Apollo, the tune his speech is heralded by) knows exactly how to deliver

with a slight hesitation of voice and manner, as if he had no idea what he was going to say, nor how to say it, and with an air of extreme surprise and gratitude at having his health drank at all…

William Shippen describes this type of career politician as “A Dapper Animal”; whilst excoriating

A Modern Coward Principle design’d

To stifle Justice, and unnerve the Mind.

A Trick by Knaves contriv’d, impos’d on Fools…

yet, whatever one thinks of his politics (and one could argue that their mixture of reason and unreason perfectly exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of the party system), ultimately he was a good egg. Shippen was a die-hard Tory; but when - as with all political careers - the House of Commons turned on the Whig behemoth, Sir Robert Walpole (caveat re politics multiplied), Shippen refused to vote against him, saying:

Robin and I are two honest men, he is for King George and I for King James; but those men with the long cravats only desire places either under King George or King James…[I] will not pull down Robin on republican principles.

A political career doesn't have to be predicated on whacking your opponent over the head with the balustrade of the Strangers’ Gallery. We seem to have rather an overabundance of the long-cravated, at the moment - but here's hoping.

(And, a charming reminder that the only certainty in politics is failure: according to The Times (30.06.24; Tim Shipman), the Lib Dems once gained a vote (election unspecified) because the voter had scrawled “wanker” next to all the other candidates’ names, excepting the Lib Dem. Almost certainly apocryphal; but still…)

1. CIL 4.576; quoted The Writing's on the Wall: Reading Roman Graffiti, Jerry Toner, Antigone Journal (antigone.com, 26 March 2022)

2. The Satires of Juvenal, Paraphrastically Imitat'd and Adapt’d, Edward Burnaby Greene (1763)

3. Oxford, a satire, Geoffrey Howard (1910); Juvenal in English, Martin Winkler, Penguin (2001)

4. From a 1907 report into the position of Indian students in the United Kingdom, quoted in Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities: the England-returned, Sumita Mukherjee, Routledge (2010)

5. The poet, John Dryden also wrote his own version of this, as contribution to a 1693 anthology of Juvenal translations: Rarely they rise by worth, who lie/Plung’d in the depth of hopeless poverty.

6. First published in Hungary in 1937; set earlier in the century: it starts in 1904.

7. The novel’s set in the 1820s, and written roughly contemporaneously (c.1829); but first published in 1860.