Rye, East Sussex, looking down the hill and northward from St Mary’s Church
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On this site you don’t just get unerring political analysis leavened with travelogue and stunning nature shots. Oh no. You also get literary debate.
To my recent post, A little more on the US war machine – a reworking of an extended reply to a reader’s comment – I attached this:
PS, yes I very much enjoyed my mini-break in East Sussex. I highly recommend a visit to Rye, the picturesque port on the edge of Romney Marsh. T’was here that another empire, facing a strong challenge from Bonaparte, had plans to open drainage sluices and flood the marshes in the event of a French invasion. Then someone pointed out that it would be just like those wily frogs to sow rumours of an imminent attack, for the pleasure of seeing countless hectares of arable land and pasture ruined at great cost to perfidious Albion’s ruling class. The whole idea was hastily ditched – yes, I think ‘ditched’ is the right word …
Which drew this comment from a denizen of Hastings, one MrShigemitsu:
Rye is an insufferably twee, overly-precious hotbed of upper-middle class smugness, and the town, and its rural hinterland, are the reason why poor old Hastings has to consistently endure a Tory MP, even though it remains one of the most deprived places in the UK. From the awful Amber Rudd, to the even more egregious Sally-Ann Hart-less.
All self-respecting socialists should avoid Rye like the plague, get real, and come to Hastings – or “Mugsborough” – home to Robert Tressell’s ragged trousered philanthropists, instead! : )
As you can see from the smiley at the end of his comment, MrShigemitsu is engaging in good natured banter. And why not? If I can get away with non PC references to “wily frogs”, he can surely defend his home town by knocking its snooty neighbour.
All the same, I thought the issue merited further exploration:
Rye is indeed thoroughly bourgeois but with its fine church and views across the marsh – and more than acceptable pubs, in one of which I sank a maiden pint of Sussex Best – a pleasant place to spend a sunny afternoon. As for Mugsborough/Hastings, well, I went there too. TRTP? I gave my assessment in footnote 5 to my post of a month ago, Ukraine in La La Land:
At this point Jams O’Donnell pitched in:
“Ragged Trousered Philanthropist” – I gave up on it in the 70’s after a dozen pages – it was so crudely/badly written as to be indigestible, despite its undoubtedly positive sentiments.
Had Jams persevered beyond page 12, he wouldn’t have made that seemingly trifling error of referring to a singular philanthropist, when Tressell’s central – albeit sarcastic – point is that the entire working class is collectively ‘philanthropic’ in donating unpaid labour-time to the capitalist class. The book’s title is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
An easy mistake to make, and Jams does have a point about the author’s laboured and unrefined style. I replied:
To be fair Jams, TRTP has its darkly comic moments. Did you get as far as the scene where the foreman (in classic Dickens vein his name is Misery) who also has a tiny stake in the firm’s profits visits the house of a worker who just died in poverty, to snatch his body for a funeral with said firm?
Which betrayed my own lack of attention when, though I can’t – off top of head – say precisely where that scene does begin, it is certainly after page 12. Be that as it may, MrShigemitsu had this come-back:
At least the “philanthropists” don’t get improbably rescued by any deus ex machina wealthy uncles, or preposterously redeeming ghostly epiphanies on the part of Rushton! ; )
I was ribbing you really – but it is so frustrating to see the poverty and deprivation in Hastings and St Leonards alongside the smug wealthy hinterland and enclaves of Rye and Winchelsea – whose votes, because they are lumped together in the same constituency, always stymie any possibility of desperately needed left-wing parliamentary representation (though from where, and whom, is another matter, of course!)
The wide open spaces and skies of Rye Harbour bird sanctuary are wonderfully healing though, maybe for your next visit…?
He – I’m assuming cis-gender from choice of pen name – is right of course. I replied:
Agreed, MrShigemitsu. I took the time to wander both towns and, as you imply, Rye Harbour and Romney Marsh are more interesting than the pretty and exquisitely sited – on a small hill overlooking flatland, marsh and tidal creek – but smugly well to do town.
As for the difference between Rye and Hastings, it strikes me as akin to that between Bath – also picturesque, and steeped in Roman and Georgian history, but snooty and pretentious with it – and bustlingly vibrant Bristol. Both are well known to me.
Agreed too on Dickens’ propensity to apply magic solutions – like kind and well heeled Mr Brownlow turning up in the nick of time to see Oliver Twist saved and Fagin hanged – to problems only too real, and painted in his monumental works in such vivid strokes.
(That said, the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has its own version of Mr Brownlow in the form of the rich ‘toff’ who, after pretending to be “one of the boys”, delivers a stirring speech on workers’ exploitation before opening up his wallet to pluck the main hero and his family from the abyss of destitution.)
Nor am I being entirely fair in comparing an honest if amateurish attempt to show the conditions of the English working class, circa 1900, with the work of a genius. Literary snobbery aside though, ditto a simplistic take on value appropriation, it seems to me that Tressell has the mirror opposite fault to Dickens’ over-reliance on magical resolution. Tressell’s frustrations surface repeatedly in the novel as exasperation, contempt and mistrust of the very class whose exploitation he charts so graphically, if at times clumsily. (We get a pretty strong taster of that contempt in his choice of pseudonym for the town of Hastings.) Where the maestro applies unreal solutions to real problems, Tressell ultimately has no solution at all. Of itself that isn’t a criticism. I’ve never seen the sense in insisting that, if we’ve no solution, we’ve no right to trouble folk with the problem.
(If I did, I could hardly do as I do, could I? The only “solution” this site offers is that, to borrow from my flawed but brilliant erstwhile spiritual teacher, we must face everything and avoid nothing. )
But his tendency to channel his frustration into a despising, different but no less real than the contempt the bourgeoisie hold, of those ‘philanthropic’ workers? That I do criticise.
And there are those deluded souls who say the age of the literary salon is dead. Not while there’s a steel city scribbler drawing breath it ain’t.
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