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Huxley’s ‘Lost’ Play, N ow More Than Ever. A Scholarly Edition
by
James Penman Sexton
B.A., University o f British Columbia, 1969 M.A., University o f British Columbia, 1971
. D.A. University o f Oregon, 1980
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment o f the Requirements for the Degree o f
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department o f English
We accept this dissertation as conforming to the required standard
Dr. A. Jenkins, SupepEqs^(Department o f English)
________________________________ Dr. D. Tha^tgher, Departmental Member (Department of English)
_______________________________ Dr. T. Williams, Departmental Member (Department of English )
Dr. J. Your^,/pi^tside Member (Department o f Philosophy)
Dr. R. Maud, External Examiner(Departmentof English, Simon Fraser University) © James Penman Sexton, 1996
U ni versi ty o f Vic to ria
All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission o f the author.
Supervisor; Dr. Anthony Jenkins
ABSTRACT
A ldous Huxley completed a three-act play called N o w M ore Than Ever'm the autum n o f 1932. After trying unsuccessfully for over two years to persuade theatre producers in both New Y ork and London to stage the play, he abandoned the project, turning his full attention to other work in progress, particularly the novel E yeless in Gaza, which he completed in 1936.
The core o f this dissertation (Chapter Three) is an annotated edition of Huxley's "lost" play. N o w M ore Than Ever, based on the only extant script, housed in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University o f Texas, Austin, and indexed as "An Unpublished Play, t ms, corrected. 92 pp."
The thesis argues that the play is an im portant docum ent in Huxley's intellectual and spiritual development and should not merely be regarded as a minor and fruitless theatrical adventure. In fact, it is best understood as part o f the author's ongoing discussion o f spiritual and social concerns to which he consistently returned in his fiction and journalism o f the inter-w ar period.
Written in 1932, midway between two m ajor novels. B rave N e w W orld and
Eyeless in G aza (1932-36), and resonating with ideas put forw ard in his volumes
of linked philosophical essays—D o W hat You W0'7/(1929) and M usic a t N ight (1931)— N o w M ore Than Æve/-should be recognized as a n im portant part o f an
Ill ongoing discussion with himself, which grew less and less provisional until his arrival at the definitive outlook on life that am ounts to a spiritual conversion in
1936. Like m ost o f H uxley’s fiction and dram a. N o w M ore Than E ver'is partly autobiographical. Some o f the male characters embody, at least in p art, H uxley’s earlier positions before his spiritual conversion, specifically the sceptical/aesthete and the extremist anti-dem ocrat. N o w M ore Than Overtakes the reader to the threshold o f that conversion.
C hapter O ne briefly summarizes the play then discusses the social, political and economic background, with particular emphasis upon the historical events surrounding the econom ic crisis which forms the backdrop for H uxley’s play.
C hapter Two discusses Huxley as dram a critic as well as apprentice and journeym an playwright. Although this aspect o f Huxley’s career has received scant attention from the critics, he left behind a significant body o f dram atic w ork—three full-length plays. The W orld o f L ig h t {\92>\), N o w M o re Than E ver (1932), and The G ioconda i ’n7/7e(1948)— and co-authored stage ad ap tatio n s o f his novels. The G enius a n d the G oddess {\951) and A fte r M a n y a S u m m er In addition, he published over eighty dram a reviews and several sh o rt dram atic pieces.
After discussing Huxley’s m onetary and artistic goals as a d ram atist, the chapter describes his early, apprentice plays and his dram atic precepts as revealed
in the reviews. Next, I examine his full-length plays w ithin a context o f the post-Ibsen "dram a o f ideas" in Britain, pointing to technical and thematic
analogues in the dram atic works o f Shaw, Munro, an d Galsw orthy, especially as these au th o rs treat what G alsw orthy termed "the parlous state o f England". The chapter concludes w ith an analysis o f The World o f L ig h t and The G ioconda
Smile.
C h ap ter Three introduces the play text with an analysis and evaluation of the themes a n d symbolic structure o f N o w M ore Than Ever.
The appendices present several o f Huxley’s H earst essays which illumine various aspects o f N o w M ore Than E’ver followed by a list o f all significant deletions th a t Huxley made to his typescript.
E xam iners:
Dr. A. Jenkins, Supervisorj^Departm ent of English)
Dr. D. T hatcher, D epartm ental M em ber (Department o f English) _____________________________ Dr. T. W illiams, Departm ental M em ber (Department o f English)
Dr. J. Young, o/a side Member (^ f^ ^ rtm e n t of Philosophy)
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S A B S T R A C T ... ii T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S ... v A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S ... vii IN T R O D U C T IO N ... 1 I. T H E P O L IT IC A L B A C K G R O U N D ... 10
1. The Kreuger Affair ... II 2. Extreme Solutions ... 18
3. R ationalization or Fascism? Britain's "Supremely Uncom fortable M om ent o f History" ... 26
4. Capitalism as Seen from the Left ... 44
5. N o w M ore Than £ ‘nerand the Novels: 1928-1936 62 II. T H E T H E A T R IC A L B A C K G R O U N D ... 74
1. Huxley's Theatrical Apprenticeship ... 75
2. D ram a Reviews ... 81
3. The Shavian Pedigree o f Huxley's Discussion Plays ... 88
4. The Political Plays of M unro and Galsworthy ... 103
5. The W orld o f L ight dind The G ioconda Sm ile ... 115
TABLE O F C O N T E N T S (coni’d)
III. N O W M O RE TH A N EVER ... 137
1. Lidgate Agonistes ... 139
2. Idolatries ... 143
3. N ow More Than Ever.'Y\\e.'?\d,'j'XtyA ... 153
B IB L IO G R A PH Y ... 252
A P P E N D IX A Selected Essays, 1931-34 268 1. "Gossip" ... 269
2. "Hyde Park on Sunday" ... 271
3. "Forewarned is not Forearm ed" ... 275
4. "Hocus Focus" ... 279
5. "Compulsory Suicide" ... 283
6. "Swindlers and Swindlees" ... 287
7. "Idolatry" ... 290
8. "Christ and the Present Crisis" ... 293 A P P E N D IX B List o f Significant D eletion s to
vil A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
I would like to express my gratitude to Laura and M atthew Huxley for permission to quote from copyright materials belonging to the A ldous L eonard Huxley Literary Estate. I also wish to thank Cathy Henderson and the sta ff at the H arry R ansom H um anities Research Center, University o f Texas, A ustin for their assistance in allowing access to the Huxley archive and for unbinding th e typed m anuscript o f N o w M o re Than E verso as to facilitate the incorporation o f Huxley's marginal em endations. In addition, I wish to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council o f C anada for a doctoral research g ran t. F or his willingness to use my edition o f N o w M ore Than EverdiS the acting text for the world premiere o f the play in M ünster, and for choosing "Now M ore th an Ever" as the m otto fo r the centenary symposium on Aldous Huxley in 1994, I wish to thank Prof. Bernfried Nugel o f the Westfalische W ilhelm s-Universitat. Finally, I wish to th an k my supervisor. Dr. Anthony Jenkins, for his critical suggestions and unflagging support, and committee members, Drs. D avid
Thatcher, Trevor Williams, and Jam es Young, for their aid in the p rep aratio n of this thesis.
This dissertation argues that N o w M ore Than Ever'xs an im portant docum ent in Huxley’s intellectual and spiritual developm ent and should not merely be regarded as a m inor and fruitless theatrical adventure. In fact, it is best understood as p art o f the author’s ongoing discussion o f spiritual and social concerns to which he consistently returned in his fiction and journalism o f the inter-w ar period. W ritten in 1932, midway between two m ajo r novels. Brave N ew
W o rld {1932) and Eyeless in Gaza (1932-36), and resonating with ideas put
forward in his volumes o f linked philosophical essays— D o W hat Y ou Will {\929) and M u sic a t N ig h t {\9 3 \)— N ow M ore Than Æ've/'should be recognized as an im portant part o f th at discussion with himself which grew less and less provisional until his arrival at the definitive outlook on life am ounting to a spiritual
conversion in 1936. Some o f the characters in this partly autobiographical play em body Huxley’s earlier positions before his spiritual conversion, specifically those o f the sceptical/aesthete and the extremist anti-dem ocrat.
A lthough the play was completed in the fall of 1932, Huxley’s numerous efforts to have it produced were unsuccessful. The world prem iere did not take place until 27 June 1994 at Münster, Germany, the first o f six perform ances
staged by the am ateur English Dram a G roup during the Aldous Huxley Centenary Symposium organized by members o f the English Departm ent, University of Munster.
The rationale for offering a scholarly edition o f N o w M ore Than EverMes mainly in the fact that this interesting and thematically significant play clearly demands a place in the Huxley corpus. It is not mentioned in either Hanson R. Duval’s A ldous H uxley: A B ibliography York; Arrow Editions, 1939), nor in Claire John Eschelbach and Joyce Lee Shober's standard A id o u s H uxley:
A Bibliography 1916-1959 {Berkeley and Los Angeles: University o f California
Press, 1961).
In his article, "Aldous Huxley at Texas: A Checklist of Manuscripts"
{Library Chronicle o f the U niversity o f Texas, 9, 1978), Pierre Vitoux first called
attention to the existence o f the play that had hitherto been considered "lost" by Huxley’s biographer, Sybil Bedford, {A ldous H uxley: A Biography, London: C hatto, 1973, 257) and by G rover Smith, editor of Huxley's L etters { ^ e \\ York: Harper, 1969, 14). Vitoux described the "most important" item in the Texas collection, as "the complete typescript o f Huxley’s play N o w M ore Than E v e f (41). In addition to Pierre Vitoux, Bernfried Nugel, in his programme notes to the M ünster production o f N o w M ore Than Ever, referred to his perusal o f the
but did not reveal this opinion in print until the week o f the world prem iere. Then, too, David Bradshaw dealt with N o w M ore Than Ever'm. the fifth chapter o f his D.Phil. thesis A ld o u s H uxley’s Ideological D evelopm ent 1919-1936,
W orcester College, O xford (1987), but this work has remained unpublished. Given the limited circulation o f Vitoux’s article and the Oxford dissertation, and despite the citation o f Vitoux’s checklist in Eben Bass, A ld o u s H u xley: A n
A n n o ta ted B ibliography, (New York; G arland, 1981, 196), it is not surprising
that my play text used in M ünster and my introductory essay delivered a t the conference m ade the existence o f the play known to the general scholarly community.
Since there is only one extant text, there are. o f course, no v arian t readings, except for deletions and additions within the text itself, and I have alw ays
followed the a u th o r's brief autograph revisions— mostly pruning, b u t occasionally expansion o f passages—as a guide to his preferred rendering o f the text. I have used Grover Sm ith’s edition o f Letters o f A ld o u s //u x /e j (H arper, 1969),
supplemented by the unpublished letters from Huxley’s correspondence with J. R alph Pinker, 1920-1934. These letters help to reconstruct the history o f the com position o f N o w M ore Than Ever.
4 M ore than 230 unpublished Huxley letters to his literary agent J. Ralph P inker are now housed in the Pinker archive at the University o f Texas, Austin. Som e o f these letters docum ent Huxley’s vain efforts to stage N o w M ore Than
Ever. He wrote Pinker on 10 O ctober 1932, announcing the play’s completion,
noting that he had read it to friends to quite good effect, adding th at he would send it on in a few days "when I have done the typing." He added th at he wanted to offer the play to Leon Lion, a producer who had "cheerfully lost money" on two o f his previous theatrical ventures. Over a m onth later, he asked Pinker w hether he had received any word from Lion about the play (19 N ovem ber 1932).
In an interview published in the Sunday R eferee on C hristm as Day, 1932, Huxley told Derek Patm ore that he had come to London from his hom e in France to expedite production o f his "new play N o w M ore Than Evei[,] . . . a study o f the present financial and econom ic position o f the world" (6) and, in reply to the interview er’s question a b o u t the expected production date, Huxley responded with unfounded optimism: "Well, th at’s not quite settled. Soon I hope."
The next reference in the correspondence is a request dated 25 M ay 1933 th at R alph Pinker send a copy o f the play to P in k ers brother, Eric, the firm’s New Y ork representative. This optimistic letter from on board the S3 Statendam states:
want to make some improvements in the first acts— where several defects were pointed out to me by Miss Helburn o f the Guild.
On 11 June Huxley told Pinker he was working on a revised version o f the play. His last reference to Theresa Helburn, then e.xecutive-director of New Y ork’s Theatre Guild, was dated 22 June 1934, over a year after she had pointed out defects: "I am still waiting for Miss Helburn to come forward with her
suggestions, but she seems to me otherwise occupied."
According to David Bradshaw, at around this time Huxley had a luncheon at the Cheshire Cheese with R upert Doone, Robert Medley and other members o f the G ro u p Theatre. In a letter to Bradshaw dated 16 September 1984, Medley recalled, "The possibility o f a play by him was o f course the reason for the party, which was a very enjoyable one, but nothing came o f it" (Bradshaw, Diss. 230).
Huxley’s last, rather pathetic reference to the play was written on 18 December 1934:
I met last night the man [Robert Newton] . . . who runs the Shilling Theatre at Fulham. He expressed a desire to look at N o w M ore
Than Ever, and I think it would be a good idea to send him a copy
. . . I should like to see some sort o f a performance o f it, if only to be able to judge what should be done in the way o f altering it—and I think he might possibly give it a show.
A year after high hopes of a possible Theatre Guild run, Huxley was willing to settle for the Shilling Theatre. Soon afterwards, he shelved the play and moved on to other projects.
E ditorial M ethod
Only one version o f N o w M ore Than Æverexists, and that is the
authorially corrected typescript version housed in the H arry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University o f Texas. Austin. There is no reason to disagree with David Bradshaw th at the "revised version" of the play Huxley says he was
working on at Sanary, in the letter to Pinker dated 11 June 1933, is "probably the typescript deposited at Austin" (Diss. 229). After H elburn’s initial criticism, Huxley revised the sequence o f events in Act One, scene one, but, apart from this change and the altering o f one major character’s C hristian name, Bradshaw’s sum m ary o f the authorial revision is unexceptionable: "Huxley’s revisions . . . largely consisted o f ineffectual tamperings with the dialogue, and did not change the play in any substantive way." T hat the Texas typescript is the version Huxley corrected after several defects were "pointed out" by M iss H elburn in the letter o f 25 M ay 1933, is buttressed by a careful examination o f Huxley’s "corrected
Close scrutiny reveals that all ninety-two pages were am ateurishly typed on Excelsior paper w ith a watermark, "F. G uerm and & C o., Voiron." Since Voiron is a town in the Isère départem ent o î not far from Huxley’s Sanary home, it is likely that Huxley was, in fact, the typist. However, twenty-five o f these pages were typed on a different machine—doubtless in response to H elburn’s suggestions. The sixty-seven pages o f the draft seen by H elburn are all
single-spaced within speeches. Moreover, the lower-case "w" key was stiff, resulting in an irregularly-raised character. On the other hand, the twenty-five second draft pages are consistently double-spaced within speeches and show no evidence of that raised lower-case "w" key. Huxley apparently put these pages in sequence to produce a 92-page script but then re-revised the whole script, in pen. His title page reflects these revisions and he used the second typew riter to label the whole script, "Corrected Typescript." Huxley's use o f a second typew riter is
perhaps accounted for by the fact that he had apparently left it behind in New Y ork before em barking on a cruise to Central America, since in a letter o f 24 May
1933 he thanks Eugene Saxton, his New York publisher, for finding it and arranging to have it sent to London {Letters, 370).
T he Texas m anuscript is almost certainly the one Huxley referred to in his undated letter to R alph Pinker, requesting him to have "the corrected version of
8 the play. N o w M o re Than E ver.. . typed in quadruplicate o r quintuplicate . . . and send at least two copies to your sister-in-law in New Y ork . . . . I had a note from her two days ago, saying that the Guild people . . . were anxious to see the thing . . . ."
I therefore print, as the received text, the version which Huxley sent Pinker for typing. Since som e o f his revisions obscure occasional details whose omission readers might regret, and since—had the play gone into production— o ther
revisions would undoubtedly have been made, I print the most im p o rtan t o f the textual variations as Appendix B.
It is w orth speculating that H elburn’s m ain concern was th at the only im portant female character, Joan, daughter o f the tycoon protagonist, A rthur Lidgate, was n o t draw n with sufficient depth. This speculation is borne out by the fact that all three large insertions to the original script typed on the second machine (pp3-6; 21-27, and 33-43) deal with Jo a n ’s characterization; the first change places Jo a n on stage as the curtain rises. This insertion deftly serves two purposes: it delays the arrival of Lupton and Upavon. Originally at the opening curtain they had been revealed conversing about m atters relating to the business theme—a too sudden engagement with political ideas. In the revision, Jo a n ’s importance is im m ediately signalled, and the amusing depiction o f the way she
independence. The second major addition emphasizes Jo an ’s grow ing disaffection with the milieu o f the débutante (21-27); the third, in Act Two, (33-43) emphasizes her search for a creed.
I have silently capitalized the term o f address, "daddy" an d emended hyphenated words such as "to-day" in keeping with contem porary usage. During the process o f editing this play, I have striven for "accuracy, clarity, and
simplicity", the three characteristics John W. G raham stresses in his essay on editing Virginia W o o lfs The PK7ve.9(Halpenny 77-92). I have also been mindful o f Huxley’s critique o f certain editors which he voiced through the persona of Emberlin in an early story, "Eupompus G ave Splendour to Art":
T h at is the way o f com m entators— the obvious points fulsomely explained and discussed, the hard passages, about which one might want to know something, passed over in the silence of sheer
ignorance (L im b o 197).
I have tried to illuminate the hard passages and hope that judicious readers will excuse discussion in some o f the footnotes o f what to them may ap p ear relatively obvious inform ation on the grounds that sixty-four years stand between the general reader and the period depicted in Huxley’s timely and topical play.
10
I: THE POLITIC AL B A C K G R O U N D
T h an k s in large part to a refocused interest in Huxley during the 1994 centenary o f his birth, several im portant works he wrote before W orld W ar II have recently become generally available.' Regarding the long-forgotten N o w
M ore Than E v e r{191)1), this development is particularly welcome. F o r Huxley's
play can profitably be considered within a context of works he wrote as a direct response to the economic and political crisis o f the inter-war period; namely Brave
N ew W orld {\91>2) and several journalistic pieces such as "Abroad in England"
and three o ther essays written for N a sh ’s PaJl M a ll M agazine \n 1931, as well as several others he wrote for the H earst newspaper chain and for Time a n d Tide during the early 1930s. Taken together, they reveal Huxley as an inform ed and deeply concerned com m entator on social, political, and economic problem s o f the time.
1. T he Kreuger AiTair
The idea behind Huxley’s play was precipitated by the suicide o f Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish M atch King. On 24 July 1932, in a letter to his agent J. R alph Pinker—ironically, later jailed for swindling his clients, Huxley am ong them — Huxley notes, "I am working out the scenario o f what may be, I think, rather a good play—w ith a Kreuger-like figure as the central character— linking the story up with general economic ideas, which might be timely, as everyone is bothered about these things" {Letters, 364n). By 15 O ctober 1932, H uxley was able to announce in a letter, "I have just finished a play. Let’s hope a few
m em bers o f the theatre-going public may find it as interesting as I do" (364). The model for A rthur Lidgate, Huxley’s tycoon protagonist, was Ivar K reuger
(1880-1932). Today his nam e is known to few except economic historians, but in an obituary which appeared in The Econom ist, 19 May 1932, his fall was likened to th at o f a Greek tragic hero, and no less a figure than J. M. Keynes gave a sym pathetic obituary over BBC radio shortly after news o f his suicide reached England. As time passed and details o f Kreuger’s chicanery emerged. T he
A tla n tic M o n th ly devQied its cover story o f August 1932 to a m an "guilty o f the
grossest frauds; [one who] had forged securities on a gigantic scale and . . . swindled investors to the tune o f about 750 million dollars, and possibly m ore"
12 (B arm an 238). Huxley shared the world’s fascination with K reuger's fall, penning a t least two articles on him, the first in Tim e an d Tide, 1 M ay 1932. Since
H uxley's contributions under the rubric "Notes on the Way" sometimes escape his bibliographers, I shall quote at length from this little-noticed article. In it. he reveals a well-informed interest in economic affairs. Lamenting the ability o f "speculative bears" to destabilize currencies, he deplores the power that a sm all group o f wealthy gamblers wields over the economic prosperity o f the
com m unity:
U nder the present dispensation, people who play baccarat and roulette are fined or sent to gaol; people who gamble in the well-being o f the nation are treated, so long as they succeed, as honourable citizens. And yet the first harm only themselves and their immediate dependents; the second do mischief on an
incom parably larger scale. In a more reasonable world, gambling in stocks and shares would be made illegal, or rather, by the better organization o f investment, physically impossible. . . . M onte Carlo is far less mischievous than Wall Street (515).
Beneath the overstatement, one notices that Huxley, like some professional com m entators on economic matters, drew a similar lesson from the Kreuger
scandal: the need for better and more stringent organization o f stock m arkets, especially in the policing o f securities issues. W hen his article turns specifically to K reuger, Huxley sees him, not as a tragic hero, but as someone rather less
The late M r. Kreuger is now, quite definitely, my favourite
character in fiction. After the discovery, last week, o f those rubber stamps, there could be no doubt o f his p ro p er place; it was . . . among th e Micawbers and Stepan Trofimovitches, the Psmiths and Vautrins and Uncle Tobies o f this world. P rim us in ter pares.
In adm iring imitation I am thinking o f having all the signatures o f eminent persons in my possession photographically reproduced on rubber. Signed Maugham, or Shaw, or Galsw orthy, my little
articles will sell, not, as at present, like faintly tepid muffins, but like the hottest o f hot cakes.
The rest o f the article makes much of Kreuger’s charism a— "even bankers and financiers fell in love with him at first sight. Later, when the glamour of success had enhanced his native charm, people fell in love even before first sight."
Finally, Huxley, like Keynes, chose not to pillory Kreuger as a
self-interested shyster, but tended to ‘see him as a "far-sighted idealist". He was quick to perceive that Kreuger was the most notorious embodiment of the new economics: som eone who believed, like the m an who gave his name to the W orld Controller o f B rave N e w World. [Sir Alfred] M ond, that "business . . . and after business, governm ents, must be organized in ever larger and larger units. . . . In attem pting to act on [his] enlightened convictions, to put [his] sociological ideals into practice", he was "forced into gigantic fraud." Clearly Kreuger was cut from the same cloth as M ond and would have made an ideal Wellsian "open
conspirator". By som e he was seen as the saviour o f Europe; certainly to himself, as T. G. Barman states, he was that saviour, a m an with a mission (249).
14 The opening scene o f N o w M ore Than depicts the protagonist,
A rth u r Lidgate, a self-made tycoon, planning an elaborate scheme to rationalize the British iron and steel industry by a series of purchases and amalgam ations. Besides Kreuger and M ond, Lidgate is in part based on financier Clarence H atry (1888-1965), principal figure in the Stock Exchange scandal which rocked the City of L ondon in 1929. In January 1930, he was found guilty o f w hat his judge called "the m ost appalling fraud th at ever disfigured the commercial reputation o f this City" and received a prison sentence o f fourteen years for fraudulently issuing forged securities for the cities o f Wakefield, Newcastle, and Liverpool (Collier 301).
Lidgate relies on Sir T hom as Lupton, an unscrupulous representative o f the A m erican financier, W ertheim, to deliver needed but only vaguely-promised capital from his American contact. While stating that he has nearly persuaded the New Y ork financier to lend Lidgate several million pounds, L upton aims to
purchase the factories Lidgate wants, intending to wait until the last moment before announcing to Lidgate that the Wertheim loan is not possible. He does n o t foresee Lidgate’s stubborn yet foolhardy decision to press ahead with the
Besides L u p to n ’s pretended support, Lidgate’s scheme receives actual moral support from a Beaverbrook-like newspaper magnate. L o rd Upavon, who, like his real-life original, has used his newspapers to cam paign for "adm inistrative rationalization", an d who currently propagandizes for Empire Protectionism .' Moreover, L o rd U pavon is the employer of Ted, Duke o f M o n m o u th , an
impecunious gossip colum nist, who, like Lupton, is trying unsuccessfully to woo Lidgate’s daughter, Jo an . He is based on Evelyn W augh’s friend "Pauper",
Patrick Balfour, L ord Kinross, whose "Mr. Gossip" column ap p eared regularly in the D aily S ketch and whom Waugh depicted in Vile Bodies (1930), a novel
Huxley knew an d adm ired.
Lidgate’s bid to save England by modernizing its industrial infrastructure melds with the p lay ’s subplot when Philip Barmby. a forerunner o f Jeremy Pordage in A fte r M a n y a Sum m er D ies the Swan (1939), introduces Lidgate’s daughter, Joan, to W alter Clough, a former Oxford classmate o f Barm by's, now- turned C om m unist activist. His sense o f humanistic purpose galvanizes Joan into a similarly high-m inded pursuit of economic justice. She rejects quite readily the decadent frivolities o f M onm outh and the socialite, Peggy E ndicott, but she must also reject m uch o f w hat her father stands for— a rift which is signalled when she returns his gift o f a pearl necklace. Lidgate blames Clough for J o a n ’s apparent
16 disaffection. But his m ind is preoccupied with L u p to n ’s betrayal, which he only discovers after it is too late to find alternative backers to support his buyout offers, so he is forced to issue false securities in o rd er to raise the necessary capital. He does so partly to prevent Lupton from exploiting a situation that w ould result in national economic chaos. When Lidgate fails to raise the capital to cover the falsified securities, he realizes that he has two alternatives, prison or suicide, and he chooses the latter.
In the meantime, Jo a n ’s romance with Clough founders because o f the latter’s unwillingness to bring Joan down to his own economic level, fearing that he would eventually have to accept parental handouts and a capitulation to a life o f relative ease. Joan learns o f her father's suicide while Clough is at a political conference in Spain, and the last scene of Act 3 depicts her erstwhile friends, M onm outh and Peggy Endicott, getting ready to abandon her while becoming engaged to each other. An epilogue shows how Clough seeks out the now-
penniless Joan after he learns o f Lidgate’s suicide. After telling Clough of Joan's w hereabouts and thereby m aking their reconciliation likely, Barmby rejects U p av o n ’s offer to become a token reviewer of culture in his newspaper, thereby salvaging some o f his critical independence, and distancing himself from
full circle when Lupton's p e r fa m em P7/7ce5 philosophy (by starving [the workers], you will trium ph) is taken over in a subtler but no less exploitative way by
Upavon, who campaigns in his newspapers for "retrenchment on unem ploym ent pay and on education—all the social ser\'ices, in fact. Sacrifices all round
. . (MV/r£-244).
Perhaps Huxley's ambivalence towards the overall benefits o f a planned society is responsible for the pessimistic ending of N ow M ore T han Ever. Yet in
1931 Huxley appeared to be a convinced Mosleyite, in his hostility to Old G ang politicians, business leaders, and agriculturists, and seems to have been reluctantly prepared to accept non-constitutional methods o f turning the M o th e r o f
Parliaments from, to use Mosley’s celebrated phrase, "a talking sh o p into a workshop."^ Unwilling to entertain the possibility of a Com m unist regime in Britain, though not oblivious to th a t threat, he referred approvingly to M osley's "National Policy" and The W eekend R eview s "National Plan" (14 February , 1931). Both plans advocated a stream lined executive, a similarity which
prompted the editor o f The W eekend Review, Gerald Barry, indignantly to deny Mosley’s influence, attributing those ideas to a wave of innovation am ongst the country's young political thinkers (Barry 249).
18 2. Extreme Solu tion s
The enemy is the Old Gang o f our present political system. N o m atter w hat their political label the old parliam entarians have proved themselves to be all alike. The real division of the present decade is not a division of parties, but a division o f generations. (Oswald M osley The Greater Britain, 1932).
One is struck by the clear polarization between young and old no m a tte r which side o f the political spectrum comm entators o f the thirties represented. Eugen Weber, a noted authority on Fascism, states that
The years between the wars were dom inated by old men and by- mediocrities. Like families, like business, like the literary and artistic world, political parties were led by men o f the nineteenth century whose age made them timid and reluctant to change (Brewer 6, 7).
T h at contem ptuous term "the old gang", levelled at the pre-W orld W a r I generation o f politicians, including Prime M inister Ramsay M acD onald,
Chancellor o f the Exchequer Philip Snowden, and other members o f the N ational Government, was used by the Fascist Mosley as well as by the editorial sta ff o f the liberal W eekend Review.
Huxley revealed a similar hostility in his October 1931 article, "G reater and Lesser London", in which he referred sarcastically to the "dear o ld gentlemen" who controlled parliam ent, business, and other institutions, suggesting th at a
massive pensioning off would be desirable. Referring to a "grave national crisis", he saw little hope for effective action;
So long as parliamentary procedure remains what it is, tw addling is unavoidable; prom pt and comprehensive action, all but impossible. Some such reforms as those suggested by Sir Oswald Mosley are obviously essential. And no doubt reforms will be m ade— but as usual, m uch too late and not in their desirable entirety (49).
Since the proofs o f this article are dated 29 June 1931, the reform s Huxley refers to are alm ost certainly those contained in the "Mosley M anifesto" (December,
1930) and the latter’s monograph, A fb /tc y (February, 1931). Perhaps the most controversial idea was a proposal to turn cabinet into a five-person executive group, prom pting one British political cartoonist to caption his drawing o f Mosley and II Duce, "Moslini". The cartoon represents a top-hatted Mosley showing M ussolini a placard inscribed, "THE M OSLEY M A N IFE STO .
W ANTED : A N A TIO N A L CABINET O F FIVE," while M ussolini says, "Five Dictators? W hy worry about the other fbur?"^
In a letter to Mosley’s wife, Cynthia, dated September, 1931, Huxley
writes, "W ouldn’t it be possible to bring in a Bill o f Impeachment against a few of the old politicians who have landed us in this mess by their crim inal negligence?" (Skidelsky 227).
20 Mosley’s hostility to free trade and his corresponding flirtation with
Empire Protectionism attracted for a time the interest of Beaverbrook, Churchill, and Lloyd George. In the "Abroad in England" articles (M ay-July, 1931), Huxley also voiced a concern that continuing free trade would hurt Britain:
Today alm ost every country is a producer. Many are very efficient producers. Having gone into the business later, they are not
burdened with the old-fashioned plant and superannuated business methods bequeathed to us from an earlier generation o f
m anufacturers. (Some of our rivals had what has turned o u t to be the luck to get their industrial provinces devastated during the W ar, and so were forced to begin again with a clean slate. A little
judicious devastation in northern England, coupled with the discharging o f some o f the more elderly company directors, m ight have been the salvation of our basic industries.) M oreover, efficient or inefficient, all these new producers are Protectionists an d m ost o f them are, by o u r standards, underpayers of labour. The surprising thing is, not th at our export trade should have fallen off, but th at it should have remained even as flourishing as it is.
It is sufficiently obvious that the historical accident which gave us our immense prosperity during the nineteenth century can never recur. There is no possibility of our becoming once again either the world's coal m erchant or the world's manufacturer of iron and cotton goods. Even if the basic industries were protected— and there seems to me the strongest possible case for giving
m anufacturers and workers a certain security and stability, either by means o f tariffs, or else by the establishment of im port
boards—even if they were assured the home market, they could never recover the preponderant position which they occupied
during the nineteenth century. Large numbers of the men who used to be employed in these industries can never be employed in them again. Can they all be absorbed elsewhere? Probably not. The army of unemployed is destined, no doubt, to remain a standing army. Can we pay for the upkeep o f this army? And can we reduce its numbers? Yes; but only by the most careful and systematic
national planning. The age o f happy accidents is over. Little piecemeal improvements and local tinkerings are inadequate to the m odem circumstances. Stability and a m easure o f assured and perm anent prosperity can be achieved only by the nation that has an intelligent national purpose ("Abroad" 84).
He concludes the first article o f "Abroad" by praising Russia's penchant for national planning, as evidenced by its Five Year Plan, asserting that the country which fails to plan will die. He then refers to the "two national plans on the English m arket— Sir Oswald Mosley's and the rath er m ore fully w orked-out plan propounded by the Week E n d Review[¥çbv\idiV^' 14, 1931]." He expresses his doubt th at either plan, or any such scheme, could be executed by constitutional means, citing the evidence o f W orld W ar I to affirm the incom patibility o f "rapid large scale action and traditional constitutional methods" (84). In a concluding paragraph Huxley comes close to espousing what could be called the Fascist position:
So long as there exists a gulf between what is, by the highest hum an standards, desirable and what is actually desired by a m ajority or even a minority o f hum an beings, force has got to be used. We are using it all the time. M any people desire to take cocaine; but it is n o t desirable that they should do so. We do ou r best to prevent them from getting what they want and, if they succeed and we catch them , we punish them severely. Nobody desires, I imagine, to pay incom e tax; but it is desirable that all whose income is over a certain figure should contribute to the expense of running the community. Force is used to extract the contributions.
In the present case, a powerful m inority, including alm ost all those now holding political power, may h ive strong objections to
22 large-scale national planning. But if national planning is, . . .
desirable, then the actual desires o f this m inority will have to be overridden and the desirable thing imposed by force. But as this m inority at present controls the governmental machine, it follows th at the application o f force may have to be done
unconstitutionally. Which would doubtless be regrettable; but not so regrettable, I think, as the prolongation o f the present stale o f affairs, with the cheerful prospect o f economic breakdown,
revolution and a final communist triumph.
However, Huxley was not, on the strength o f these sentiments, a su p p o rter o f M osley’s New Party, although at the time many respected figures had voiced sym pathy, if not outright support, for Mosley’s breakaw ay faction from the L abour Party. Among early sympathizers were John M aynard Keynes, H aro ld M acm illan, Leslie Hore-Belisha, Harold Nicolson, Cyril Joad, John Strachey, O sbert Sitwell, Bernard Shaw, and William M orris (later Lord Nuffield), as well as Huxley’s friend, Gerald Heard. It should be remembered that Mosley h ad been touted as a future Prime Minister by Ramsay M acD onald himself.
Mosley did not form the British Union o f Fascists until after the dissolution o f the New Party in the late Spring o f 1932 and, even after its
dissolution, Nicolson, according to Skidelsky, held out the hope for "a respectable fascism— the corporate state idea introduced under the benevolent dispensation o f the N ational Governm ent and leading intellectuals, without recourse to
eventually broke with Mosley, politically at least, when his fascist tendencies became clear. Mosley’s loss o f credibility for most moderates dated from N icolson’s article in the W eek E n d Review, May, 1932, which resoundingly refuted Fascism, "calling it unnecessary . . . oppressive, and untruthful, . . . constituting a danger to the future o f European stability" (Lees-Mil ne 29).
M orever, Raymond M ortim er cites Huxley’s contempt for Action, the New P arty weekly edited by N icolson [October-December, 1931], in a letter to Sackville-W est dated November 1, 1931:
A ction . . . is not only squalid but ineffective. As Aldous says, it
seems to be m ade up o f articles rejected by Joiin O'London.
Altogether the New Party has been grotesque, choosing boxers and such people and deserves its fate. . . . It is depressing to see a person [Harold Nicolson] one is fond o f making an incredible fool o f
himself (24).
Despite the m ention o f Oswald Mosley in N o w M ore Than Ever, and despite Mosley’s vociferous advocacy o f national planning, Huxley’s
internationalism and indifference to Empire autarchy would have distanced him from Mosleyism. If such figures on the extreme left and extreme right as, let us say, John Strachey and L ord Rotherm ere, could find elements in M osley’s
program they considered w orthy o f support, it should surprise no one th a t Huxley also found common ground with Mosley, at least until 1932.
24 T he "influence" on Huxley’s political thought at the time, and a possible source for ideas in N o w M ore Than Ever, was the socialist Fred Henderson. Two days before he announced to his agent that he was working on N o w M ore than
E ver Huxley recommended to his father
an excellent book on the present economic situation— The Economic
Consequences o f Pow er Production, by Fred Henderson— a most
excellently clear analysis. . . . I am sure he has got hold o f the essential inwardness of the situation. But, alas, it takes a fearful long time for such books to make any effect on governments. ’In politics, everything is as stupid as it seems’ {Letters 1)59, 360).
W hether Huxley had read Henderson’s book early enough in 1931 to have used it as a source for Brave N e w World or the "Abroad in England" series, published in N a s h ’s Pal! M a il Magazine \n three instalments from M ay through July 1931, is difficult to tell. Certainly it was being advertised in the Times
Literary Supplem ent as early as 23 July 1931. J. M. Keynes called Henderson’s
argum ent brilliant in an article for Politicai Quarterly, and the reviews were
generally favourable. In any event, it is little wonder that Huxley found its subject m atter timely. Significantly, it would appear that H. G. Wells, in A fte r
Democracy, and Oswald Mosley, in The Greater Britain (reviewed together by-
Kingsley M artin on 29 O ctober 1932 in the N e w Statesman a n d N ation), also subscribed to H enderson’s thesis that the Industrial Revolution had not progressed appreciably beyond its first phase, for despite the quantum leap in
production attributable to power-aided machinery, hum anity's hope for a w orld o f universal plenty had not come to pass because m anufacturers regularly
withdrew a portion o f the proceeds from direct consum ption as profit, "which they are obliged to capitalize for the financing and equipping of interm ediate m anufactures" {T L S 6 August 1931, 610). Henderson concluded that this tribute exacted by private owners o f the means of production was archaically feudal and pressed for reforms in the area of distribution and production of wealth— namely the shift to a co-operative commonwealth, a position Huxley adopted after 1935.
In addition, the "Abroad" article, quoted above, and a 1932 essay, "Com pulsory Suicide", written for the Hearst newspaper chain, show the
congruence o f Huxley’s and Henderson's ideas regarding the folly o f thinking that Britain could ever again compensate for technological unemployment by gains in the export market. Henderson also noted that, under the current economic system, any return to prosperity required "the utmost possible cheapening o f production by every available device of rationalization and improved technique o f power-production" (90). The simplest way was either to reduce labour entirely or else to cut labour's wages. W ithout reform, said H enderson, we "must settle down grimly to this competition in which the nation to emerge trium phant will be the nation whose working population will produce m ost and live on least" (92).
26 3. R ation alization or Fascism? Britain’s "Supremely U n com fortab le
M om ent o f History"
R ationalization: "the methods o f organization designed to secure the minimum waste o f either effort or m aterial. They include the scientific organization o f labour, standardization o f both materials and products, simplification o f processes, and improvem ent in the system o f tran sp o rt and marketing. . . . [T]he judicious and
constant application o f . . . rationalization is calculated to secure . . . to the com m unity greater stability and a higher standard o f life." W orld Econom ic Conference, Geneva, sponsored by the League o f N ations, 1927, defined in L. Urwick, The M eaning o f
Rationalization, 1929.
A ldous Huxley w rote N o w M ore Than Æ’ver between July and N ovem ber, 1932, a period he referred to in an essay published in 1931 as a "supremely
uncom fortable m om ent o f history." Dire warnings about capitalism ’s final phase or extreme vulnerability em anated from all positions on the political spectrum , and H uxley’s play considers several competing solutions to the economic and political crisis which had reached its peak in Septem ber 1931 when Britain’s unemplo>ment total reached 2.5 million. M oreover, the government had been forced to devalue the currency and abandon the gold standard.
A t this time. C om m unists like John Strachey and D. M. Mirsky, published books which celebrated capitalism ’s death throes. Sir Oswald Mosley, having been unsuccessful in convincing the Labour Party to accept his economic
actively cham pioned the Fascist solution. H. G. Wells, from 1927, had refined his Open Conspiracy solution, one he referred to in 1932 as "Liberal Fascism ’’.'
J. M. Keynes praised W ells's open conspiracy ideas, but himself offered m onetary reform and a program o f public works, an interventionism which cam e to be known as the New Economics.
A nother solution was proposed by a group o f eminent businessmen,
economists, and scientists, associated with Gerald Barry's W eekend Review . Led by Sir Josiah Stamp, chairm an of the largest railway company in Britain and a director o f the Bank o f England, and by Sir Basil Blackett, chairman o f Imperial Cables Ltd., and also a director of the Bank o f England, they formed w hat Strachey called "the national planning" school (237). Although some o f the above-mentioned proposals would have employed m ethods unacceptable to the other groups, one concept stood out as a common denom inator: rationalization. Responding by letter to a request from producer Leon Lion to a d a p t the recently published B rave N e w Worldiox: the stage, Huxley demurred, offering instead "a politico-economic play more or less about Ivar Kreuger; i.e., a financier with a sincere desire to rationalize the world, but who bites o ff more th an he can chew and is driven into swindling and finally suicide. . . ." (Lion 115).
28 As C hris Hopkins points out. "Kreuger was not simply a businessman who failed spectacularly: he was adopted by Marxist, and o th er Leftist critics of the thirties as a suprem e paradigm o r symbol of the ‘crisis o f capitalism '" (62). Hopkins does not cite John Strachey s reference to K reuger, but th at scion of privileged liberalism had been Huxley's pupil at Eton, and suggests a possible model for the communist character, Clough, in N o w M o re Than Ever.
In The C om ing Struggle fo r Power { \9 ll), Strachey referred to Kreuger's spectacular collapse, which occurred after he had written the first draft of that m onograph. There he depicted Kreuger as the "ultra-imperialist" incarnate, whose Swedish conglomerate was the best example o f a "well-developed world trust". According to Strachey, Kreuger was one who, "pointing to the existence of international monopolies, look[s] forward to Com bination instead o f Competition amongst the great powers themselves" (84). With the benefit o f hindsight,
Strachey referred to T. G. Barman's Fortnightly article o f December 1931 which proposed "a whole political philosophy upon the beneficial activities of Messrs. K reuger and Toll" (85 n.). To Strachey, K reuger's fall demolished the dream o f a future internationally-rationalized capitalist utopia, inferring
somewhat fallaciously —on the basis o f one example—th at "international trusts are inherently unstable."
The operative word in Huxley's letter is "rationalize". Seen by m any business com m entators as the best hope for a solution to the econom ic crisis th at had been in effect since the Wall Street Crash o f 1929, rationalization occupied much o f Huxley’s thought at the time. To economists, rationalization o f industry entailed a combination o f sm aller concerns into larger ones; it also implied the use o f science to increase efficiency, especially those techniques propounded by
Am erican engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) and by the m an who had applied Taylor’s techniques in the fledgling automobile industry, H enry Ford. Strict time and m otion m ethods, together with the use of assembly lines and
division o f labour, characterized rationalized industry.
The man credited with pushing through the amalgamation o f the British chemical industries in 1926 into one massive, multi-national corporation. Imperial Chemical Industries Limited (ICI), was Sir Alfred Mond, Lord M elchett
(1868-1930). He provided a succinct definition o f the modish concept o f
rationalization for a new edition o f N u tta ll’s Standard Dictionary xn M ay 1929: "The application o f scientific organization to industry, by the unification o f the processes o f production and distribution with the object of approxim ating supply to demand" (Bolitho 290).
30 Significantly, Huxley gives the name M ond to one o f the ten world
controllers o f Brave N e w World, and critics agree that M ustapha M ond,
spokesm an for the rationalized world o f 632 A.F. {A nno F ordi), at least holds his own with the humanist protagonist. John Savage, in a debate about the new
dispensation’s methods o f ensuring stability. The reason the devil receives m ore th an his due in Brave N e w W orld\s plain enough to see. F o r although in a letter to M rs. K ethevan Roberts dated 18 May 1931, Huxley notes th at the novel was originally conceived as a satire on the "horrors of the W ellsian u to p ia'\ he, like his b ro th er Julian, was very receptive to the idea o f rationalization, rem arking in a Jan u ary 1933 essay for H arper’s M onthly, that "political reform and industrial rationalization are necessary and valuable", despite the following caveat;
But do not let us make the m istake o f supposing th at they autom atically create happiness. The only people who derive happiness directly from them are the reformers and rationalizers themselves. Absorbed as they are in occupations which are felt to be valuable, they lose themselves in their work and consequently are happy. But the people for whom they work do not share this
happiness. All that reform and rationalization can do for them is to provide . . . an environment propitious to the kind o f working and living th at brings self-forgetful happiness ("Problem o f Faith" 214). Like m any thinking people during the economic crisis, Huxley sincerely sought a solution to the problems o f unemployment and the growing
J. B. Priestley and George Orwell set out on their fact-finding missions to the industrial heartland of Britain which would result in English Jo u rn ey {\92>A) and
The R o a d to Wigan Pier{ 1936), Huxley had made two separate journeys to the
M idlands and beyond. After Maria Huxley had typed 'the worst bits' o ï Lady
C h a tterleys L o v e rïn February 1928 for their close friend, D. H. Lawrence, the
Huxleys m ade a m otor tour of the region in M arch, a tour which resulted in H uxley’s article, "Magic o f London", in which he observed, "N obody who has visited the coal and iron towns of the North can fail to have been struck by the dreadful silence and listlessness of the crowds o f unemployed men who shuffle along the streets like walking corpses" (12).
In O ctober 1930, Huxley gave the lecture "Science and Poetry" to a group o f miners in Willington, County Durham , at a meeting o f the local branch o f the W orkers' Educational Association. David Bradshaw gives a full account of Huxley's visits to D urham and to the Derbyshire and N ottingham shire colliery towns, as well as his "whistle-stop tour" of the industrial north in mid-February
1931, "which brought home to Huxley even m ore graphically the severity of the problem s which confronted Britain" (Bradshaw, "Huxley's Slump" 155). Given their strong descriptive quality and caring tone, had Huxley accepted American publisher Jam es Wells's offer to publish the resulting series o f four long
32 essays under the proposed title A broad in England, it is entirely possible that Huxley's reputation as an aloof observer of the bourgeois social scene m ight well have been modified by the obvious revelation of a social conscience.
By the time the first article, "Abroad in England" was published in May 1931, E ngland’s situation had gone from bad to worse. A glance a t the titles o f various books and articles of the period give an indication o f the pessimistic tem per o f the times. Huxley contributed the foreword for Alderton P in k ’s A
Realist L o o k s a t Democracy, while articles such as F. Britten A ustin’s
"H .R .H .—T he British Mussolini?" advocating the Prince o f Wales as dictator, were being published in N a sh ’s Pall M a ll Magazine a\on% with pieces by Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton discussing the virtues o f government by intellectuals. The January 1932 issue featured an article by H. G. Wells entitled "Crystal
Gazing" (later that year published as a chapter in A fte r Democracy) in which he m aintains th at
Either those necessary world conferences and federal boards, the essential frame o f a reconstructed world, will have been assembled before twelve m onths are out, or we shall be realizing that 1932 was appointed by the Fates as the date when the collapse of W estern Capitalism became evident and indisputable. Either hom o sapiens will have pulled himself together o r plainly he will have begun to tear himself to pieces. . . . [We] need rationalization along w orld lines. T oo much has been left to accident. . . . The world is in need o f m onetary, economic, and political federation. Are we going in
1932 to set about doing what we all see so clearly has to be done? (16, 17).
The above attitude, so much a part of Wells's public persona as an open conspirator, is ostensibly what Huxley reacted against in Brave N e w World, (completed in 1931). Yet David Bradshaw convincingly argues th at while that novel "has been approached mainly from a dystopian perspective; we can now also recognize th at [it] embodies in an absurd and distorted form ideas and opinions that Huxley framed in earnest beyond this novel's satirical parameters" (Bradshaw "Huxley's Slump" 168). Although Bradshaw does not press the parallels between Wells's and Huxley's thought at this period, he m akes it clear that neither Huxley nor Wells held democracy sacrosanct. In the "Abroad" journalism , Huxley was often contemptuous of the governm ent, sometimes
advocating m ethods distinctly in keeping with the Open C onspiracy frame of mind. Indeed, Bradshaw goes so far as to call Huxley "a card-carrying Open Conspirator" (Bradshaw, H H Z \).
Despite the fact that both Wells and Huxley have been labelled "fascists", or at least fascist-leaning, their similar attitudes, especially tow ards science,
pacifism, and socialism, render them fellow travellers en route to Cosmopolis, not Rom e or Berlin.^ I f pacifism, socialism, and a hostility to nationalism be badges o f fascism, then fascists they were. From 1929, they were fellow board members
34 o f the short-lived jo u rn al o f scientific humanism. The Realist, and, from 1933, members o f Cyril Jo a d ’s Federation o f Progressive Societies and Individuals (FPSI), both, in fact, accepting status as Vice-Presidents, along with such liberal o r leftist intellectuals as Gerald Barry, Vera Brittain, Kingsley M artin, Bertrand Russell, Rebecca West, O laf Stapledon, Leonard Woolf, and B arbara W ootton; strange company fo r fascists to keep. Furtherm ore, in 1934, Wells referred to Oswald Mosley as a "little black-head" {A utobiography 6A9), and Huxley, after a brief consideration o f M osley’s pre-fascist platform , scorned the declared fascist in a negative eye-witness account of a Mosley-led fascist meeting at Olympia in
1934.'
Before turning to Huxley’s early attem pts to find ways o f solving
England’s econom ic crisis, it should be noted that his interest in the problem led him to sympathize with several formal or informal groups, under whose aegis his signature appeared in m any letters to the editor and other open fora. Those problem-solving groups included Political and Economic Planning (PEP), The Federation for Progressive Societies and Individuals (FPSI), and T he
Peace-Pledge U nion. In addition, his ideas reflected those spelled-out in Wells’s
The Open C onspiracy {\92%)\
1. T he com plete assertion . . . o f the provisional nature o f existing governments and o f o u r acquiescence in them.
2. The resolve to minimise . . . the conflicts o f these
governments, their militant use o f individuals and property and their establishment of a world economic system.
3. The determ ination to replace private local or national
ownership o f at least credit, transport and staple p ro d u ctio n by a responsible world directorate serving the com m on ends o f the race.
4. The practical recognition o f the necessity for world biological controls, for example of population and disease.
5. The support o f a minimum standard o f individual freedom and welfare in the world.
6. . . . Advancement of human knowledge, capacity and pow er
{Open Conspiracy 113, 114).
In his writings from 1927-1935. Huxley endorsed the substance o f item s 1, 2, 4, 6, and signed public letters urging the kind o f credit reform m entioned in clause 3. Moreover, by allowing Cyril Joad to draft him as a Vice-President o f the
Federation o f Progressive Societies and Individuals, he acknowledged his support of an organisation whose partial origin lay in the H. G. Wells Society. T he first chapter o f the Federation's M anifesto (1933) was drafted by Wells an d called for reforms in production and distribution, specifically "the replacem ent o f
production for private profit by collective production", and in the system o f money and credit so as to stabilize consumption {M anifesto 15, 16). F a r from being Fascist, the comm on denom inator in Wells' and Huxley’s reform ist thought
36 was socialist: anti-fascist and anti-nationalist. Only in their esteem for science, especially eugenics, might the tenor of their thought be seen as consistent with fascism— but even in this domain, both writers eschewed policies o f racial superiority.
U pon his return from Willington. County D urham , on 12 O ctober 1930, Huxley wrote to M arshall Diston, a functionary o f the Independent L abour Party, who had been "seeking the views o f prominent figures, such as Wells, Arnold Bennett, Bertrand Russell, and Huxley," on potential solutions to the current crisis:
Having just returned from the Durham mining district, I feel m ore than usually diffident of expressing a political opinion. All I know is th at I shall be enthusiastically on the side o f anyone who gets us out o f the social and industrial mess, o f which the D urham
coal-field provides such a terrifying example. W hether any parly will o r can get us out o f that mess is another question (Bradshaw, "Huxley’s Slump" 153).
By this date Huxley was already expressing doubt as to the ability o f political parties to find solutions to England's problems. Those doubts were heightened after his unsatisfactory first visit to the Strangers’ Gallery in the House o f C om m ons on 11 February 1931, an account o f which forms the basis for his H earst essay "Forewarned is not Forearmed" (November, 1931). Snowden had warned on February 11 that "the countr>' was heading for som e kind o f crash",
and that crash duly occurred. Britain’s unem ploym ent total stood at 2.5 million by Septem ber 1931, and the country was forced o ff the gold standard, the pound eventually stabilizing at a value of 15 shillings. The lesson Huxley learned from this was th at "it is exceedingly difficult, especially in a democracy, to a c t . . . so as to falsify the prophecies o f impending disaster" ( / / £ ‘33).
In "A broad in England" Huxley, after reflecting on the degradation o f the industrial Teesside town of Middlesbrough an d the plight of its many unemployed workers, suggested that only systematic national planning could help im prove the econom y and, faced with the prospect of econom ic collapse, seemed ready to consider a brave new world solution: the turning over o f the executive branch o f governm ent to a form o f Wellsian samurai class o f expert planners. One may recall M ustapha M ond’s history lesson in ch ap ter 3 o f Brave N ew World, where, after the N ine Years’ War (read W orld W ar I) and the collapse o f liberalism in the face o f econom ic failure (read the economic consequences o f Versailles, the Wall Street Crash), a saving remnant of scientists prepares to deliver "the primal and the ultim ate need. Stability. . . . There was a choice between W orld C ontrol and destruction" {B N W IA , 40). M ond presides over a Keynesian, post-liberal
program o f cunningly enforced consum ption as a corrective to the
