Sir Geoffrey Butler and the Tory Tradition

Sir Geoffrey Butler and The Tory Tradition Stephen Parkinson he thoughtful, pragmatic The Cambridge Review and be elected Conservatism of R.A. Butler President of the Union. Trinity (whose is well known, as is the Master was Geoffrey’s uncle H.M. Butler) important role he played offered him a fellowship, but it was a Tin returning the Tories to government smaller college going through a period of within six years of the Labour landslide transformation – Corpus Christi – which of 1945 – and as a leading member of attracted him. the government before and after. But the Col. Robert Townley Caldwell was most important political and intellectual the first layman to become Master of influence on the young Rab – his uncle, Corpus, at a time when the fortunes of Sir Geoffrey Butler – has received little the fourteenth-century college were ‘at attention, not least because of his early a low ebb’. He set about ‘importing new death at the age of forty-two. During his blood’: from King’s he recruited William short life Sir Geoffrey made a powerful Spens to become director of studies in impression not only on his nephew but natural sciences, and E.G. Selwyn, a on a whole generation of talented young future Dean of Winchester; from Trinity men, and his lessons on Tory philosophy he lured not only Butler but another – particularly a series of lectures he Conservative historian who would enter delivered exactly one hundred years ago parliament, Kenneth Pickthorn.5 History Sir Geoffrey Butler was an 'ubiquitous – are still relevant today. was still a young subject at the university, and lively' character who made a lasting George Geoffrey Gilbert Butler was born impression on more than one generation of and Corpus did not have any history 6 on 15 August 1887, the eighth of nine sons. Conservatives. fellows. ‘More than most men of his The Butlers were not a wealthy family, generation, [Caldwell] appreciated the but were part of that ‘other’ aristocracy changed position of the History School’.7 whose dominance over the mid-twentieth Geoffrey happily followed in the family Butler’s election as a fellow in 1910 ‘led century Noel Annan described: one of ‘the line, declaring Cambridge ‘my life’s work to the development of historical studies intellectual families that intermarried in and passion’.3 After his schooling at as one of the main branches of learning the nineteenth century and were in full Clifton (where he was later a governor), at Corpus, to which the College has ever flower between the wars’.1 The Butlers he went up to Trinity in 1906, where ‘his since attached great importance.’8 maintained a consecutive tradition as original personality and singular capacity The other transformation Caldwell Cambridge dons from 1794 until the end for squeezing an extravagant infectious wrought was to convert Corpus from a of Rab’s time as Master of Trinity in 1978. humour out of the most unpromising Whig to a Tory College. Maurice Cowling ‘No other family can claim such a galaxy situation’ made him a popular figure.4 (who knew about these things, years of academic stars,’ noted The Times at He had a glittering undergraduate later, at Peterhouse) declared: ‘The most the end of that impressive run, under the career, winning a double first in history important features of inter-war Corpus headline: ‘Cambridge without a Butler: and the Chancellor’s Medal for English were that it was a small college and that like a master without a servant’.2 verse while also finding time to edit it was a Conservative-Anglican plot’.9 18 Conservative History Journal Vol. II, Issue 2 Autumn 2014 Sir Geoffrey Butler and The Tory Tradition During his short life Sir doctrine loses all that is ennobling Politics without ideals in its appeal, if it confines itself to loathsome[;] with wrong ideals Geoffrey made a powerful these; if it fails, that is, to get down pathetic, says G.G.B.14 impression not only to the principles which lie beneath all such resistance. The great Tory This Betty was Elizabeth Levering on his nephew but on leaders of the past challenge us Jones, the daughter of a ‘widely known’ a whole generation of to something more, and by their Philadelphia lawyer who was one challenge show us the secret of of the trustees of the University of talented young men. their own irresistible example. Pennsylvania.15 Butler’s letters to her are The captains of Toryism in the all that remain of his papers at Corpus past can be made the instructors Christi, and reveal the anxieties of the Caldwell himself was an active Tory: of Toryism in the present: and the young author. ‘[T]he book is coming out he was ‘for some time’ chairman of the Tory tradition is the Tory hope.12 next week,’ he wrote to her in October Unionist party in Cambridge and declined 1914: ‘I don’t know how it will do’.16 By an invitation to become its parliamentary These last seven words were ones which Christmas, it was ‘going pretty well I candidate for the borough in 1905.10 Rab Butler was wont to quote throughout believe … But of course no books are really his political career; indeed, Chris Patten selling now’.17 It was certainly not the ‘The Tory Tradition’ acknowledges that it is ‘a sentence most best time to bring out a book on political Tory politicians have plagiarised in their philosophy. Butler’s brother Ralph – also This climate undoubtedly suited the time’.13 Through his lectures, Geoffrey a Fellow of Corpus – was now serving young history fellow. Although his Butler drew out those central tenets of on the Western Front. Nevertheless, main concern was diplomatic history, Butler was a committed and reflective Conservative. In 1914, he delivered a series of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania on ‘The Tory Tradition’. Revolving around four great Tory heroes – Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli, and Salisbury – these biographical portraits sought to explain not so much their careers but the philosophy which impelled them. Butler’s motive, he explained when the lectures were published in book form, had been to explain the Tory Party to an American audience which mistook it as ‘the party of privilege, of rapacious mediævalism, of opposition to enlightened reform’. This struck Butler as odd, seeing as America was ‘a country which in all the great things of life is essentially conservative’.11 But Butler was also speaking to a British audience. At home, politics had been dominated by protracted rows over the House of Lords and Irish Home Rule. These Tory preoccupations, feared Butler, had obscured the party’s concerns for the condition of the people. In his preface to the book, he regretted that Three Cambridge undergraduates: R.A. Butler, A.P. Marshall and Gerald Sparrow at the recent events had ‘concentrated the White House on the Cambridge Union debating tour of the USA, October 1924. attention of the man in the street upon the negative rather than the constructive side of Toryism’. He sounded a clear that Tory tradition: the belief in an organic he had ‘been sending it to newspaper warning in his key passage: state, in duty rather than simple ‘rights’, editors of my acquaintance, and hope to and in the importance of confronting the get a good notice in the Spectator and Resistance to predatory attacks world as it is, not as we wish it to be. He Daily Mail. But it is a bad time to bring upon property, and the like, will summed up his message more pithily in a a book out’.18 The Spectator did review always form important items in letter to his fiancée Betty a year after the it, although its lukewarm verdict may not the Tory programme. That Tory book was published: have been worth the effort. Its reviewer Conservative History Journal Vol. II, Issue 3 Autumn 2014 19 questioned Butler’s view of Bolingbroke British Government. It was, Butler told ‘as the real founder of modern Toryism’, Betty, ‘a very difficult job,’ but one he thought that he ‘should have given some seemed to enjoy: explanation of [Burke’s] explanation of his attitude towards the Crown’, and was We have taken up the habit nonplussed by his lecture on Disraeli: of interviews which you may ‘though Mr. Butler is full of enthusiasm, have noticed in the US papers he does not impart any very large share of – Sir E[dward] Grey, Lord it to his readers.’19 The unfortunate timing Robert [Cecil], Lord Newton, of the book also coloured its reception by Lord Hardinge … These form a The Political Quarterly. ‘What have we good means of putting our side to do with Tories or Radicals any more?’ before the public. Quite between it asked, hoping that the country would ourselves my dear not a few are not ‘go on playing our ridiculous party from the pen of one you know.26 games, unmindful of the lessons the war is teaching, and will yet teach us’. But it It was evidently also a job at which was slightly more generous, conceding Butler excelled – for it led in 1917 to his that ‘Mr. Butler is, however, a thoughtful appointment as a member of the Balfour writer’ and that the book ‘would not have Mission to the USA. The purpose of the been without its justification if it had mission, headed by the Foreign Secretary appeared at another period in the history and former Prime Minister, was to of the world’.20 Other reviewers were less arrange for American co-operation with Sir Gilbert Parker, Bt., the novellist and querulous: the Political Science Quarterly the Allies now the US had entered the Conservative MP in charge of propaganda found it ‘an exceedingly readable as well for the United States.

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