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April 2019 April 2019
measured by the lateness of one’s arrival, obliging the
local lord and lady of the manor to make their NEWS FROM WESTMINSTER
appearance just minutes before ‘carriages’, permit
Gaskell to deploy her satirical talents to the full. Similar When was it that Edmund Burke told the voters of
precisely measured judgements seem characteristic of Bristol that a Member of Parliament “owes you, not
attitudes in the small Midlands town where the story is set. his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays,
Thus the depth of mourning for his late wife of one of the instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your
characters is criticised by local ladies on the grounds that opinion”? You will have to read on to find out, but
the black crape band worn on his hat is less than the the quote is as relevant today as it was back then,
regulation three inches wide. Added to a well- not least in relation to Brexit. I am sometimes
constructed and on the whole believable plot (which criticised for not mentioning Brexit in these regular
did, it is true, drag somewhat towards the end), all this columns. But events in Westminster are extremely
made for an enjoyable read and was accordingly given fast moving that anything I write is likely to be out of
a universal ‘thumbs up’ by the Group. date before it is published. At the time of writing, we
have not yet had the vote on the Prime Minister’s

proposed deal, and we are waiting to hear if there have been any changes to
Villette - Charlotte Bronte the proposed Backstop.
In February we were back in stormier waters with Over the last two years
Charlotte Brontë’s last novel, Villette (1853). George and more since the
Orwell controversially said good prose should be like a referendum, a very large
pane of clear glass: transparent and invisible. If number of residents have
Elizabeth Gaskell passes Orwell’s test, on the same contacted me about their
analogy reading Brontë is more like peering through a views on Brexit. As
stained-glass window designed by one of the pre- expected, these are wide-
Raphaelites. Like the members of that brotherhood, ranging and cover the
Brontë is devoted to the arcane, the archaic, the whole spectrum of views.
medieval. Why describe something as repugnant, Some people want us to
when the word ‘oppugnant’ can be taken down from ignore the result of the
the shelf where it has lain unnoticed for centuries, referendum, and stay in the
dusted off and then returned to obscurity? ‘My European Union. Some
impressions of it’ becomes ‘my impressions people think we should have left straight after the vote, and see no point in
thereanent’, ‘at a stately pace’ ‘incedingly’; an ink-stained, dusty jacket is said to trying to do a deal with the EU. I have received hundreds of emails from people
be ‘be-inked’ and ‘adust’; ‘old age’ or ‘antiquity’ is ‘eld’. She is particularly fond telling me how to vote: vote for a deal, against a deal, to stay in the EU, to leave
of strange outdated constructions ending in ‘-less’: ‘tameless’, ‘resistless’, without a deal, to extend article 50, to have another referendum. There are
‘quenchless’, even ‘wretchless’ (= ‘reckless’). Conversely, Brontë disinters the those who want a closer union with Europe, and for us to start using the Euro,
dead root-word ‘ruth’ (= ‘kindness’, ‘mercy’), of which ‘ruthless’ is the only living others feel that the European Union is a failed project, and the sooner we leave
survivor. Brontë’s sentence construction too is often deliberately ornate and the better.
opaque, so slowing the pace of reading that some of us, this reviewer included,
struggled to finish the book on time. And this takes me back to Edmund Burke. The quote may be nearly 250 years old
(the answer is 1774), but I think it is still vitally important in the social media age.
Even so, it would be churlish to deny the book’s many positive qualities, which Nearly all the letters and emails from constituents exhort me to “represent their
have led some critics to prefer it to Jane Eyre. Semi-autobiographical in nature, it views”. But as so many are conflicting, I clearly cannot vote exactly as everyone
presents us with a gripping psychological study of the central character, Lucy says that they would like! I have to vote based on my opinion of the question in
Snowe, a lonely young woman in search of love and happiness. The other front of me.
characters are convincingly drawn. The enigmatic professor Paul Emanuel, an

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