Volume 1, Number 5 · October 31, 1963
Black Man's Burden
By V.S. Naipaul
Jamaican Blood and Victorian Conscience
by Bernard Semmel
Houghton Mifflin, 179 pp., $4.50
We are still too close to the British Empire. The very words, like Disraeli's addition of 'Empress' to the titles of Queen Victoria, have a selfconscious, playacting ring. And, oddly, they always had, even when they were most used. They were part of the English taste for pageant and ritual in which the individual subordinates himself to his role to a degree of self-caricature. Churchill, a young man of twenty-three going off to a frontier disturbance in India, is taken by a patron to a London club and (I paraphrase from memory from My Early Life) introduced as someone 'off to the front tonight.' It is a minor war whose outcome is certain, but around it a special type of drama has been created. The journey from the comforts of a club in London, heart of the world, to an embattled outpost of Empire many seas and deserts away, it is an imperial moment, and is savored as such.
Review, 1714 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |