At the Oldie Literary Lunch, Ferdinand Mount talked about his new book, Soft - A Brief History of Sentimentality.
He explained how the great “weepies” of earlier centuries spurred real reform. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, derided in its day as women’s treacle, did more than any other book to make slavery appear intolerable. The sentimental novels of the 18th century inspired foundling hospitals, anti-slavery campaigns, protections for chimney sweeps and the first humane approaches to psychiatry. “A stony heart,” he suggested, “is blind to history.”
The troubadours of the 11th century first declared love life’s highest calling. And the funeral of Princess Diana marked the crest of the latest wave of sentimentality. Without sentimentality, Mount said, “life would be a shrivelled place.”
He ended with a favourite P.G. Wodehouse quote: “We struck a bumpy patch, and I could hear the milk of human kindness sloshing about inside him.”
