Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War

  Each place the tour stopped, a new choir sprang up. These weren’t the tiny choirs of dying, early 21st century politically correct churches. These were Victorian choirs, hundreds of voices strong. Most of the people in them were young.

  Choral singing became one of the rites of passage of youth in the Northern Confederation, and remains so today. With Dr. Faust dead and buried, once we find something we like, we stick with it. While the Victorian repertoire remains popular, new composers soon began to write in the Victorian style. One of the byproducts of that movement was a quire of splendid new hymns, many so stirring you’d think the tunes came from Sir Arthur Sullivan himself.

  The return of 19th century choral music as popular music reestablished a long-lost connection, the tie between high culture and popular culture. The two were never identical, but in culturally healthy times, each had been influenced by the other. Now, in the 2040s, people began reaching beyond choirs to orchestras and the music that went with them: Mozart and Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms (and regrettably, Wagner, who to me always suggests elephants farting). Mahler marks the cutoff; after him it’s merely an assault on your ears.

  Here too people wanted to play, not just listen. As in the German-speaking countries, every respectable town now has its own orchestra. Even Hartland, a town with just two main streets, has a chamber group. Soon enough, the people in those little, local orchestras wanted something new, but not too new.

  In 2047, the Boston Symphony proclaimed a contest under the rubric, “Old Mozart.” If Mozart had lived his full four score of years, what else might he have written? That opened the door to both the fulfillment of the Classic style and the flowering of the early Romantic. The best entries were featured at a special concert in Boston’s Symphony Hall. Every ear in the N.C. was glued to the radio for the premiers, and the sheet music was soon circulating even in backwoods Maine.

  The light bulb soon went on for the artists. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts assembled a stunning collection of Winslow Homers, displayed them in a train of railroad cars and sent the train around the country. It made a special point of stopping for a day in small, rural towns. Farmers left their plowing and blacksmiths their forges to come and view. Today, it’s routine for young ladies to paint and young men to draw, and average people decorate their homes with original artworks, good ones, painted by family, neighbors, or friends. Abstractionism is dead. I last saw a de Kooning at a gallery when the owner was repainting a room. It was in service as a drop cloth, which was also how it started.

  Another Lazarus was the Christian novel. Of course, some people had continued to write and read Christian novels. Those of the self-diminutive Inklings, Dorothy Sayers in particular, had even retained a certain popularity. A few new writers quietly followed their path; Sally Wright was one with her Publish & Perish and Pride & Predator, Russell Kirk another. Kirk did it while bearing virtually unaided the corpus of Western culture through the blighted 1960s, '70s, and '80s. A large and flattering statue of him now stands proudly in Harvard Yard, and students doff their caps when they pass by.

  But the mainstream of American literature had flowed with the rest of the culture to the sewer, the cloaca maxima that was prurience mislabeled “art.” That made it easy for people with little talent and no skills to become “artists”. In the 1990s, one potter in a magazine interview fittingly defined a craftsman as “an artist with skills”, but reading their ouevres was like taking a bath in the sewage farm. So people stopped reading literature or much else and watched television instead, to the infinite amusement of Hell.

  But that was over. People wanted to read again, read more than the newspaper or a tract. They wanted to be amused, but not shocked or horrified. They wanted to escape, but not too far, not beyond the borders of what was real and right. In short, they wanted Christian novels.

  And lo and behold, it turned out there were people who could write them. The literary revival began in the Confederacy. The last great American novelist, Walker Percy, was a man of the South; his Love in the Ruins, published in the 1970s, offered the first clear look at where the country ended. Something Southern seems to fertilize writers. Perhaps it’s the time that hangs heavy and humid as a Mississippi summer night, time too slow for real work but too long for just nuthin'. Writing lies somewhere in between.

  In 2037, a new publishing house was founded in Baltimore, The Mencken Press. True to old H.L.'s name, it sought out new writers of merit, encouraged them, edited them strenuously, and by the mid-2040s deployed a stable of fine Christian authors. By that time we had some money, and Mencken Press books flowed North. In 2047, The Mencken Press established a branch in Boston, specifically to encourage writers of Christian fiction in the N.C. It was broad-minded of them and good for us. Soon, for the first time since television sprang upon us, authors found they need not join Dr. Johnson’s lament about “the patron and the gaol.” They could again make a decent living by their craft. Now, most homes have a good-sized library of well-thumbed fiction, and even Hartland has a prosperous bookstore.

  The revival of literature, music, and art and the recovery of beauty, a great and glorious part of the Recovery, put a bullet through the head of the cultural despair that had infected the nation. No longer did we wallow in endless self-pity, alienation and anomie. No more did we celebrate the deformed, degraded, and degenerate. Bad news was no longer good news.

  Everyone now knew where all that crap had come from. It was another road apple left on the highway of life by the Frankfurt School, those hosti humanis generis who had all too successfully translated Marx from economic into cultural terms. From Lukacs' call for an “abolition of culture” through Benjamin’s command, “Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones” to Adorno's worship of atonal music on the grounds that it was sick, these harpies trashed everything beautiful and elevated the alienating. They set the tone and direction of elite culture in America for half a century. Not coincidentally, the same half-century that marked the end of America.

  But the Frankfurt School was history, and with its game out in the open, no one fell for it any more, not even academics. A new Zeitgeist was abroad, and it had a remarkable resemblance to England’s longest-ruling monarch, Good Queen Victoria. Recently, rummaging in the attic at the Old Place, I came across a quote that summed up the spirit of the N.C. in the 2040s and '50s.

  The power necessary to obtain a most unexampled growth is secured to our country. And we speak in this tone of confidence because the power itself dwells in the mind and character of the people. It is not derived from external circumstances...If this grandeur is realized, it will place a gigantic sceptre in our hands. Such a spectacle as the near future is opening its portals to disclose has never charmed the vision of the world. It will be the miracle of modern life.

  The quotation is from Harper’s Magazine, January, 1855. Retroculture was working.

  Along with everyone else, I immersed myself in the pleasure of a normal life. That was something none of us had known, except those old enough to remember the 1950s. They enjoyed it all the more, because it represented what they had always been told was impossible: the recovery of something that had been lost. It didn’t hurt that when they started the kind of story old folks all love to tell, beginning with “I remember when…” young people wanted to hear it.

  For me, normal life meant summers spent at the Old Place, farming, and most of the rest of the year in Augusta, attending to the duties of the General Staff. Those weren’t too heavy. We had occasional trouble with pirates, or with some tribe molesting one of our traders in the Mediterranean or off some African or Malay coast. But a visit from an N.C. zeppelin was something to be feared, and not many miscreants wanted a second one. If there were any left after the first. Most of my work consisted in keeping our forces from getting foutinized or bureaucratic, the usual consequences of peace.

  Maria and I were together from planting through harvest and over the holidays in the winter. Time and practice had given
us the rarest of relationships, the kind without friction. We loved each other deeply. But our love expressed itself not in passion but in consideration. Each knew what the other liked and disliked, and was careful to do the first and avoid the second. In short, it was Christian love, which is not what you feel but what you do.

  For a while, I did wonder whether Maria was as satisfied with our arrangement as I was. So one fine July evening in the year 2045, as we sat out front on the half-log bench and watched the sun go down over the ponds, each mimicking its fade from orange to purple to black, I asked her to marry me.

  She replied with her kind, frequent and slightly sad smile, the sort proffered by Botticelli Madonnas. “Thank you, Señor John. I am honored that you would ask me. But I have learned the lesson of our people. When you are happy, be content. Do not seek for more. I hope you will allow me to remain Mrs. Hudson.” Of course, I did.

  The Faustian dance was over, in small things as in great.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  On November 23, 2053, N.C. Naval Zeppelin L-370, while patrolling the western Mediterranean against the usual Algerian pirates, was caught in a sudden squall at the same time she was experiencing engine trouble. The huge airship was blown onto the North African shore, where most of her crew had the misfortune to survive the crash.

  They were captured, brought to Algiers, and in a public ceremony before a vast crowd, offered the usual choice between the Koran or the sword. The sword was a metaphor. When, to a man, they chose Jesus Christ over the Prophet, they were crucified. Some took three days to die of exposure, thirst, and asphyxiation.

  This required more than the usual punitive air raid in response. The people of the Northern Confederation agreed, and on December 6, they voted overwhelmingly for war with Algeria.

  The key to these affairs was always the same: find someone on the other side who would like to become the local Grand Wazoo in place of whatever raghead held that dignity at the moment. By the time our small task force reached the Med, a revolt had broken out in Algiers. We quickly hooked up with the rebels. The government forces made the mistake of coming out of the city to fight, which made the job easy. While the rebels grabbed them by the nose, two N.C. Marine regiments hooked into their rear and rolled them up from behind. It was over in the course of an afternoon.

  Our portion of the booty was the leaders who had ordered the crucifixion of the men from L-370. We put them aboard another airship, positioned it precisely over the public square where our boys died, and pushed them out the door, one by one, at an altitude of 1000 feet. Observers on the ground reported that each landed with a satisfying splat. The new government made the usual Algerian peace and promised not to attack N.C. ships or citizens. They didn’t mean it, of course, but they’d leave us alone for a while.

  A correspondent from the Rochester, New York newspaper had accompanied our Marines. He reported that when they attacked, they’d done so yelling the age-old battle cry of German and Austrian troops: “Victoria!” I smiled when I read the account. It seemed our military traditions were taking a firm hold.

  Public opinion is a funny thing. When the report from the Rochester paper was reprinted around the Confederation, the “Victoria!” battle cry struck a chord. Most people didn’t know its origin, or much care. To them, it represented what we as a nation most respected, the Victorians, our astonishingly successful forefathers who now served as our models, mentors, and measure. It thrilled them that our Marines now swept to victory under the very name that inspired most of what we as a people did, or tried to do.

  In the Spring of 2054, the voters of the town of Putney, Vermont adopted a resolution in town meeting: “Resolved, that in honor of our Victorian forebears, the Northern Confederation shall henceforth be known as the nation of Victoria.” Armed with their resolve, the people of Putney went forth to their neighbors in other towns, gatherings signatures for a ballot. The petitions lengthened swiftly, and by the end of April it was clear we’d have a vote. When the country went to the polls on May 15, the proposal carried by no less than 80 percent in every precinct in the nation.

  On July 4th, 2054, we formally ceased to be the Northern Confederation and became the nation of Victoria. In every city and town, people gathered for fittingly Victorian celebrations, with grand parades, stirring oratory, civic picnics, and spectacular fireworks. We did not intend to displace the old July 4th holiday. In most places, the mayor or the governor read the original Declaration of Independence in addition to the official Proclamation of Victoria. Rather, we saw in one our beginning and in the other our completion, through the Recovery of what our 18th century ancestors had dreamed of and fought for: a nation that could be free because it was virtuous. Queen Victoria and Lady Liberty shared the same dais, each leaning on the other.

  The year 2054 was a marker in my own life as well. It was the year I turned 66. That no longer meant retirement: we had neither the law nor the custom. I had my share of aches and pains, and I messed up more than I used to on names and dates, getting them wrong or just drawing a blank. But inside, I was the same person I’d always been, and my mind hadn’t gone to the point where I didn’t want to hear any ideas but my own. When that happened, it would be time to retire from the General Staff. As to farming, well, I continue to hope they’ll find me some fine Maine spring day, stretched out at the end of a long, straight furrow, the reins to Elise and Max Jr. still in my hands.

  Age is strange for its silent swiftness, all out of sync with our internal calendars. If someone had told me I’d soon be fifty, that might have felt about right. But growing old is not a hard thing otherwise, much less difficult than being young and wondering if life will ever offer us challenges equal to our talents, or what we imagine our talents to be.

  Except for the deaths of friends. I never got used to that. It was not a new experience. War had seen to that. But the shock was always fresh, as if it were happening for the first time. Maybe that was a grace.

  On September 17, 2054, my cousin John's sons Ham and Seth were up at the Old Place, helping me get in the potatoes. It had been a good year, rain and sun in the right proportions, and we forked a wagonload out of the bottom land every hour. Maria came out early with our lunches, just after eleven.

  “John, you had a call from Augusta. It was your adjutant, Captain Harlan. He asked you to call as soon as possible. He sounded upset.”

  “It’ll wait,” I replied. “Real work comes before paperwork.” Harlan and the rest of the staff knew my rule: act, and tell me about it later. Anyone who needed to talk to me before he could deal with an emergency was in the wrong line of work.

  “No, Señor John, I think you should call him as soon as possible. There was something in his voice…I can’t express it, but he had trouble talking. I think he was fighting to control himself.”

  That didn't sound like Captain Harlan, whom I chose as my adjutant because he had a personality that was both efficient and relaxed.

  “I’ve just been cleaning the house and canning tomatoes this morning, Señor John. I can dig potatoes for a while. The exercise will help me sleep tonight. It won’t take long to walk back to the house and call him.”

  “Anything to please a lady,” I replied with a smile and a bow. I would do just about anything to please Maria. But I also knew her intuition was usually right. Women could hear things that the male ear didn’t register.

  I glanced at the clock as I placed the call; it said quarter of twelve. “Waal, Captain, you’ve got a way with wimmen,” I said when Harlan picked up. “Maria’s now out there forking spuds instead of me. If you’re calling because you couldn’t find the paper clips, you’re gonna be chipping paint for the next three weeks.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, sir.”

  “Out with it.”

  “Governor Kraft was found dead in his study this morning, sir.”

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock. The sun streamed in, illuminating the old, oiled wood floor
, my cigar-stained worktable, Maria’s needlepoint on her chair. Everything was the same as always. But nothing would be the same again.

  “Sir? John? Are you okay?”

  “No. No, Harlan, I’m not okay.” My legs collapsed under me, and I fell heavily, awkwardly into my chair.

  Maria and Seth found me there a little before one, sitting just as I fell. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t think. Maria said all the color was gone from my face, and my eyes didn’t blink. She thought I’d had a stroke.

  “Aiyee, Dios,” she cried, dropping the basket of tomatoes and mums she had brought from the garden. “Quick, Seth, call the doctor!”

  Maria ran over to support me, fearing I would slide off the chair onto the floor. Seth grabbed the phone to call Doctor Sturgis. Somehow, the thought of an unnecessary visit from the doctor made me react. I reached out my left hand and pushed down the buttons on the telephone.

  “No, Maria.” I could hear myself talking, as if it were someone else saying the words. “No. No doctor.”

  “John, please, what has happened? Tell me. You must talk.”

  Again, I heard my voice from far away. “It's not me. It's Bill. Bill Kraft is dead.”

  “Oh. Oh John, no.” Then she couldn’t talk anymore either.

  Seth and his brother worked ‘til nightfall, getting the potatoes in. When they finally brought the last wagonload up the hill, they found us still sitting in my study, holding on to each other, the house dark. Maria was crying softly. I couldn’t even do that.