The New Machiavelli — A Closer Reading

Machiavelli as a Mirror

The title and opening chapter explicitly invoke Niccolò Machiavelli, not as a guide to statecraft but as a kindred spirit. Remington, like Machiavelli, has been forced out of political life and turns to writing as a way to order his thoughts. He claims kinship with Machiavelli 'by the dream he pursued and the humanity of his politics,' but also by 'the mixture of his nature'—a pointed reference to moral complexity. The narrator's attempt to imitate The Prince fails, and he burns the manuscript, suggesting that his own story cannot be forced into a preexisting mold. This framing device does more than signal intellectual ambition; it establishes a central tension between the desire for systematic political thought and the messy reality of personal experience. The excerpts do not reveal whether Remington ever completes his book, but the act of beginning and discarding becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of reconciling public ideals with private conduct.

The Weight of Domestic Politics

Margaret Remington emerges from the excerpts as a figure of quiet, relentless control. She manages her husband's campaign with meticulous attention to detail: selecting his meals, choosing his fur-trimmed coat, and even studying the memoirs of Mrs. Gladstone in hopes of replicating her methods. The narrator observes that her 'act of servitude was in essence a towering self-assertion,' a phrase that captures the paradoxical dynamic of their marriage. Margaret's confidence in Remington's political future contrasts sharply with his own doubts, and her certainty becomes a source of irritation rather than comfort. Wells uses concrete details—the heavy coat held over her arm, the rejected hotel meals, the proposed egg-and-sherry mixture—to illustrate a relationship where affection and manipulation are nearly indistinguishable. The excerpts suggest that Margaret's support is conditional on Remington conforming to her vision of a successful politician, a vision that leaves little room for his own evolving convictions.

The Riddle of Political Engagement

During his first election campaign, Remington becomes acutely aware of the gap between his ideals and the practical demands of politics. He describes the 'vast drifting indifference' of the electorate and the 'incredible silliness' of campaign jokes, including a bill that opponents stick on pigsties and dog-kennels. The repetition of such jests becomes 'irksome,' and Remington questions whether he is truly taking hold of anything or merely 'flowing into an accepted groove.' This self-doubt is a recurring note: he is 'perplexed by the riddle' of his own effectiveness. The excerpts do not show him resolving this doubt, but they establish a pattern of introspection that runs counter to the confident public image he must project. Wells's portrayal of political life is less about ideology than about the psychological toll of performing conviction. The narrator's restlessness, announced in the first paragraph, finds its political equivalent in a campaign that feels hollow despite its outward success.

The excerpts from The New Machiavelli offer a portrait of a man caught between two kinds of commitment: to a political career that demands conformity, and to a personal life that increasingly resists it. Wells's narrator is neither hero nor villain, but a figure of genuine ambivalence, and the novel's interest lies in the texture of that ambivalence rather than in any simple moral judgment. Readers attentive to small gestures—the weight of a coat, the taste of a rejected drink—will find a story told as much in objects as in arguments.

There’s something tender about Wells’s politician trying to hold onto his ideals while his private life unravels. It made me think of those quieter, older essays in Reprinted Pieces — Context and Discussion, where the same restless mind lingers on smaller moments. I remember finishing both and feeling a strange fondness for that Edwardian muddle. We never quite reconcile the public and private selves, do we?