a radical family

some thoughts on

An uneasy inheritance - My family and other radicals

by Polly Toynbee

Atlantic Books 2023

I remember reading Polly Toynbee's columns in the Guardian for more than 20 years. I clearly recall her warnings not to topple Blair because if we were to let the Tories back they would destroy everything. Well she was right on that prediction.

Sometime between then and now I looked up her wikipedia entry either because I wondered about her strange name or because she had mentioned one of her ancestors in one of her columns. Actually, I think it may have been that she mentioned the Toynbee Fountain in Wimbledon, that rings a bell of sorts. I clicked my way through five generations of Toynbees back to Queen Victoria's ear doctor and came away impressed.

Remembering bits and pieces of that, I was keen to read her more coherent account of her family history which came out last year. Hers is really quite a remarkable family tree, not just in the name line. There are equally famous Victorians in the family of her paternal grandmother. Amazingly, all the famous ancestors fit the "radical" tag in the title - lefties, atheists, reformers, teetotallers, champions of lost causes, and all against the Tories. There are a couple of conservatives too, but they never amounted to much and were horrible people according to the author.

To me this is worthwhile reading for the simple pleasure of discovering lots of humans wo went against the grain and often changed their society a little bit by disagreeing with the mainstream. Obviously, gloating about your ancestors isn't allowed, especially not in leftie circles. so the framing superimposed on this is Polly's embarrassment at the apparent contradiction of being leftwing while comfortably off and socially secure due to being born into the middle class, i.e. champagne socialists. While I find that angle less interesting than the radical Victorians, there are a few insights to be drawn from these reflections on class as well. (There was also a Feature in the Guardian consisting of edited extracts from the book and making this the main issue.)

One assertion I have to protest as a family history person is when she claims (repeatedly) that there are no working class people in her ancestry. The family tree provided only goes back to her great-great-grandparents (see the family tree here, almost identical to the one in the book), and even those aren't all known (There should be 16, but only six are named in the book). I am sure that with a more probing look at those missing in the tree and their ancestors, some common people such as farmers, shepherds, servants etc. would turn up at one point. Give it another four generations and you're at 256 ancestors. They will have a much wider spread of origins from rich to poor.

The truth in her assertion is, however, that her ancestors, like most of mine, will have skillfully avoided the trap of the Industrial Revolution. I'm happy to believe that there are no industry workers in the tree, because industry only existed for a couple of hundred years, and when it started hoovering up workers the ancestors already had better things to do than becoming part of the industrial proletariat.

So I am sure there must be some stories of social ascent just beyond the horizon of this book - maybe waiting to be discovered in the next one.

PS Looking for an image of the book cover (which I don't like particularly, hoping for an improved paperback cover), I found another Toynbee-related book, which has been (re)published just after this one:

Reminiscences And Letters Of Joseph And Arnold Toynbee. Edited By Gertrude Toynbee (Blackwells)

In which Joseph (1815-1866) is Polly's great-great-grandfather, the pioneering otolaryngologist, Arnold (1852-1883) is his older son, and Gertrude is Joseph's oldest daughter - not Arnold's wife as the blurb below seems to think. Arnold's wife was Charlotte Atwood. (All nine children are listed here in a blog entry about one letter to Gertrude.)

Publisher's blurb:

This book is a collection of the reminiscences and letters of Joseph and Arnold Toynbee, two prominent British intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book provides a unique insight into the life and work of the Toynbee family, including their views on education, social reform, and politics. It is edited by Gertrude Toynbee, Arnold's wife, who herself was a writer and social reformer.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Well, now, I might be a little bit tempted by that ...