{"id":700,"date":"2008-12-15T08:40:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T07:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=700"},"modified":"2009-09-19T19:37:18","modified_gmt":"2009-09-19T18:37:18","slug":"hudsons-statue-by-thomas-carlyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=700","title":{"rendered":"Hudson’s Statue by Thomas Carlyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3101752633_9ae6d5aaa6_o\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Download<\/strong>
\nPart 1 A4<\/a> | US Letter<\/a> PDF 345Kb
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Selected<\/strong> and Introduced<\/strong> for Short Work<\/a> by Stephen Bury<\/strong>,\u00a0Head of European and American Collections at the British Library<\/a><\/p>\n

Thomas Carlyle, \u2018Hudson\u2019s Statue\u2019 in Latter-day Pamphlets<\/em> (1850)
\nThe writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), is an acquired taste \u2013 Pursewarden, in Lawrence Durrell\u2019s Alexandria Quartet <\/em>(1962), described his work as \u201chaggis of the mind\u201d. Nor have Carlyle\u2019s ideas on democracy endeared him to the 20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> centuries.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hudson\u2019s Statue\u2019, dated 1st <\/sup>July 1850, is the seventh in the series, Latter-day Pamphlets.<\/em> George Hudson was a railway speculator \u2013 the \u2018Railway King\u2019 – and Carlyle uses the proposal to make a statue of him as the armature of a pamphlet that explores whom his contemporaries think are heroic, and therefore worthy of worship. As Hudson\u2019s speculative empire burst in 1849, the statue was never built, but this does not stop Carlyle making it into a \u2013 literally \u2013 obscene reality, and which he remorselessly uses to examine mid-nineteenth century England.<\/p>\n

Today, when there are doubts about the USA prescribing one-man one-vote democracy for all cultures, we can begin to see some point in Carlyle\u2019s caustic rant. And at a time we hero-worship minor celebrities or make proposals for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, \u2018Hudson\u2019s Statue\u2019 can be usefully \u2013 if not pleasurably \u2013 re-read. Are we any less gullible than those Englishmen who subscribed \u00a325,000 to erect a statue in honour of this speculator and scoundrel?<\/p>\n

The only reference that the modern reader might struggle with is Daniel Lambert (1770-1809), a Leicestershire man, who became notoriously fat and charged admission for the public to see him.<\/p>\n

Stephen Bury<\/a>
\nDecember 2008<\/p>\n

Thomas Carlyle<\/a> (1795-1881) was an essayist, satirist and historian, perhaps most famous for his book Sartor Resartus<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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