There has been some interesting coverage on social media in recent months of the views of William Ralph Inge (1860-1954), who was known as the ‘Gloomy Dean’ or the ‘Gloomy Philosopher’, and was Dean of St. Pauls Cathedral in London for 23 years.
Why was he ‘Gloomy’? This was a description first pinned on him by the Daily Mail newspaper, and it is a label that remained with him for the rest of his career. A Mail reporter had apparently attended some lectures Inge had delivered, and was shocked when Inge had called democracy ‘a superstition and a fetish’ and had argued that the Church should not cooperate with the Spirit of the Age – in other words, with the new social and other changes in society.
The idea of ‘progress’ was dangerous and misleading. Inge (pictured) also feared that the population was increasing far too quickly, which would lead to ‘decadence’ and the ‘decline’ of Britain’s cultural fabric and core institutions.
Above all, Inge morbidly felt that there was a general ‘crisis of civilization’ and society was in a state of ‘decay’, views which appear very similar to the ideas of the controversial German philosopher Oswald Spengler.
The rise of Inge
Inge was approached to become Dean of St. Pauls Cathedral in 1911, when the British Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, wrote to Inge, who was at that time a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. Asquith told Inge that he wanted to ‘restore the tradition of scholarship and culture’ that had been associated with the Deanery in the past. Inge seemed the perfect candidate. He was well-read, intellectually talented, and the author of numerous books and articles.
However, when Inge became Dean, it became very apparent to others that the new man was hardly a quiet scholar in the sense that many possibly expected. Indeed, Inge held a range of very strong, outspoken and controversial views, and used his position as Dean to engage in regular journalism on a huge variety of topics, to the point where he arguably gained ‘celebrity’ status during the interwar period. While parts of the Church gave him sympathetic support, other clergymen were evidently uneasy at his ‘antics’. Inge was undoubtedly seen as a great preacher, who could draw in large and enthusiastic audiences, whether he was speaking at St. Pauls or in other cathedrals around the country. Yet, there was also the suspicion that Inge enjoyed deliberately provoking his listeners and causing uproar, which he often more than succeeded in doing.
In fact, Inge was not just a man of the cloth but was also very ‘political’ – he loved to network with the leading politicians of the day, and had many contacts in the leading professions, as well as in banking, the arts, literary circles, and many other walks of life.
Inge and his wife loved to entertain famous people at their dinner parties at home. He also became notorious for his biting wit, and was often sought out by newspapers for his thoughts on the prominent topics of the day, delivering short articles and commentaries at short notice.
However, both his sermons and journalism were strongly and uncompromisingly shaped by his deep pessimism and his clear discomfort with ‘modernity’. In 1919 he had some major publishing success with the first volume of his Outspoken Essays (which included a whole chapter devoted to a defence of eugenics) and, shortly afterwards, was invited by Lord Beaverbrook to pen a weekly column for the Evening Standard newspaper. Inge also contributed to the Morning Post and numerous other newspapers.
The ‘breakdown’ of society
Many of the ideas expressed in these writings were culturally conservative and, at times, notably reactionary. He was, for example, very pro-capital punishment and wanted it extended to include all ‘anti-social offenders’. Similarly, he said that human beings are ‘born unequal’, and expressed scepticism that women should have equal voting rights with men. Modern society, he argued, was heading in the wrong direction and was ‘breaking down’ in both its morality and the quality of population.
There were regular complaints from angry readers about Inge’s views, and if one engages in a quick survey of this extensive material it is clear why he became such a figure of controversy. Inge was a member, for example, of the Eugenics Society, and his views on ‘race’ and the quality of the population often featured in his articles. Although Darwinism had challenged the very essence of Christian faith, Inge apeared to see no contradiction in marrying his faith with a perverted form of evolutionary philosophy. He was thus a Social Darwinist and regularly warned that when ‘natural selection’ is not allowed to operate, the result is inevitably a ‘C3’ population. Too much social welfare, he warned, ‘penalized the successful while susidising the weak and feckless’.
The state, he felt, should instead intervene in matters of population for a clear and single purpose – to engage in engineering the quality of the ‘race’. He said that, ideally, the British population should consist of no more than ’20 million’, all with ‘certificates of bodily and mental fitness’.
Although Inge stepped down from his role as Dean in 1934, and retired to a house called Brightwell Manor, near Oxford, he remained active and vocal. He clearly admired aspects of the Hitler regime, especially its policy of eugenics and rejection of democracy. Remaining gloomy, though, he feared war was inevitable between Germany and Britain. Although his hopes that war could be avoided were briefly raised by Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards Germany, it is apparent that by June, 1940, Inge believed Britain had definitely lost the war. Controversially, by 1942, he was advocating that Britain should open peace negotiations with Germany, which, understandably, did not go down well at all with his critics, and embarrassed some in the Church.
This idea was possibly reinforced by a personal tragedy: one of his sons, Richard Inge, had resigned from the clergy to become an RAF pilot and was killed in action.
All in all, the ‘Gloomy Dean’ was a significant figure in Britain during the interwar period who, despite being highly critical of ‘modernity’, was only too happy to exploit the new mass media to communicate his ideas and become something of a modern ‘celebrity’ in the process.
Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics
(All images: Wikimedia Commons)
Note: An earlier version of the above was first published here in July, 2023.
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