BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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Bagehot exaggerated the extent to which the "eclipse" has
already occurred in the mid-nineteenth century.
He failed to take into
account the ability of the notables to endure even as they were forced
to concede power and influence.40
Bagehot also did not foresee that
the love of ceremony grew at the very time that the position of the
aristocracy was waning.41
Finally, he was too quick to assume that the
entire nation is in accord, at one in endorsing the spectacle of
grandeur.42
Despite these limitations, Bagehot, perhaps more than any
other contemporary writer, realized the importance of symbols and the
display of pageantry in nurturing the basis of popular support for the
political order from the citizens of the new democracy.
Bagehot's descriptions cited above are particularly well suited
to explaining the appeal of the Primrose League.
Each local
association could be counted on to supply its annual assortment of
teas, entertainments, and fetes which, as often as not, were overseen
by one of the notables residing in the district.
Both Ostrogorski and
Robb have indicated that all classes were represented at Habitation
40 F.M.L. Thompson in fact dates the "eclipse" a half century
later to the period spanning the years between the First and Second
World Wars. Thompson, English Landed Society, pp. 1-2, 290-91, 295,
299, 327.
41 Cannadine, Lords and Landlords, pp. 21-25, 30, 33-34, 36,
319, 224-25, 425. Idem, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of
Ritual," The Invention of Tradition, pp. 108, 114-15, 120-23, 133-38.
42 N. Birnbaum, "Monarchies and Sociologists: A Reply to
Professor Shils and Mr. Young," Sociological Review, new series, vol.
3, no. 1 (1955), pp. 5-8, 13, 20 and Lukes, Essays in Social Theory,
pp. 62-64. While the above authors were responding to the arguments
presented by Shils and Young in "The Meaning of the Coronation," many
of their criticisms apply to Bagehot's interpretation of deference.