Historial Biography

ON the one hand, as Professor Whitney indicates, we have the ‘scientific’ school of historians, trained in research but not in writing; on the other, the ‘interpretative’ biographers who write with style but sometimes without proof for their arguments. Between the two extremes are a few who make the best of both schools.

HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY

THE great contribution of romanticism to historiography was its insistence on the importance of great men in shaping the destiny of the world, and its rejection of the ‘catastrophic theory of causation’ which had dominated the rationalistic school. Carlyle, the most romantic of all romantic historians, carried this idea to its logical extremity: in his eyes all historical events were dependent upon the actions and ideas of individual men. To him ‘ the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. They were . . . the creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain.’ Present writers of popular biography appear to have accepted this creed in its entirety. Those historians who, like Fronde, accepted it have never been surpassed in the presentation of their material, although at times deservedly criticized for painting their picture in too glowing colors. Historical biography labors under no delusion that it is a science. In applauding the work of such men as Lytton Strachey and Gamaliel Bradford we must not overlook the danger that is inherent in their method when practised by less scrupulous writers. If not based on careful study and thought, such interpretative studies can be extremely dangerous.

It is, then, heartening to see that the best traditions of this school are being preserved by Philip Guedalla, who improves steadily with every book which comes from his prolific pen. Just as his Palmeraton was an enormous advance over The Second Empire, so his latest volume, Wellington (Harpers, $4.00), is, for fidelity of portraiture and historical soundness, the best he has given us. His subject seems more congenial to him than any he has attempted before, and the picture he draws is correspondingly more sympathetic, more real, and more true. There is almost no striving for effect, which has occasionally marred his writing, and certain annoying mannerisms and tricks of style have been ironed out.

It is not a work of profound research, nor was it intended to be. But Mr. Guedalla has made us see what manner of man the Iron Duke really was; he has shown us the forces which he controlled and which in turn moulded him; and, best of all, he has given us a clear picture of that pre-Victorian England which so few people have ever been able to interpret.

If here and there he succumbs to the temptations which beset all romantic writers, — one cannot help feeling, for example, that he regards the Duke’s relations with Mrs. Arbuthnot through twentieth-century rather than nineteenth-century eyes, — we can easily forgive him in remembering that as yet no professional historian has given us so vivid and accurate an account of the struggle for Reform and for Catholic emancipation, or so shrewd an analysis of Wellington’s attitude in regard to both.

Wellington did not long survive the age to which he really belonged. He was as typical of his time as Victoria was of hers, and as hard to evaluate. With the author, we are inclined to wonder why his memory is not brighter; why a full-length portrait of him is not to be found anywhere in the pages of English letters; why his character so soon ceased to be held up as a pattern to English schoolboys. We may be inclined to accept Mr. Guedalla’s explanation that ‘a kindly nation seems to prefer its heroes slightly unsuccessful; its mind dwells more readily upon a last stand or a forlorn hope than upon the unchivalrous details of a crushing victory.’ But I think one is more inclined to suspect that it was Wellington’s fate to be forgotten, not because he was a failure or because he was not truly great, but because the public ideals for which he stood and the essential qualities of the man himself, noble though they were, ceased to be the ideals of the nation which had such cause to be grateful to him. One can hardly imagine the England of Gladstone, of Disraeli, of Anthony Trollope, either appreciating or understanding the Iron Duke save as a portentous figure of an earlier generation.

One hesitates to know how to describe the next two volumes: they cannot fairly he called history, biography, nor religious tracts. One of them was written for the further elaboration of a religious thesis, and the other, by a judicious selection of fact and incident, seeks to establish the thesis that all the miseries of the modern world are attributable to Ihe Protestant Reformation.

Hilaire Belloc’sCranmer (Lippincott, $5.00) is the third of his works in which he demonstrates the disintegration of the moral, cultural, and spiritual unity of Europe as a result of the religious debacle in the sixteenth century. He began with the seventeenth century first in his Richelieu and followed that with the Wolsey. Both of them were much more restrained in tone and much better history, although it is doubtful if many people outside Mr. Belloc’s own church would be willing to accept his central idea. In the present volume, perhaps because he was dealing with a man who, by the beauty of the liturgy which he bequeathed to it, did more than anyone else to make the Church of England preserve its own identity apart from Rome, Mr. Belloc abandons all attempt to present any sort of evidence in support of his conclusions, and his narrative at its worst degenerates into something very like religious propaganda. At the same time it must be admitted that his style is undeniably effective, and that he has selected his material skillfully with a view to making Cranmer appear to be as contemptuous a figure as he was in the sight of Lord Macaulay. Such incidents as Cranmer’s first marriage are made the most of; Mr. Belloc, in referring to that episode, merely retells the contemporary account of it given by Nicholas Harpsfield, the last Catholic Archdeacon of Canterbury, whose opinion, to say the least, can hardly be used as trustworthy evidence any more than the very favorable account by Foxe can be accepted as it stands. Moreover, in the entire book there is no mention of that Erastianism to which, whatever one may think of it, Cranmer remained consistently loyal throughout his life. The very effectiveness of the book in the hands of so interesting a writer as Mr. Belloc makes it all the more disturbing. We like to think that in our best literature, at least, we have progressed beyond the stage of excessive religious bias. In fairness to Mr. Belloc, it should be added that there are just as many highly Protestant accounts which deserve equal condemnation.

D. B. Wyndham Lewis’s Charles of Europe (Edwin V. Mitchell and Coward-McCann, $.5.00) deserves less serious attention. It makes very little pretense to be a biography of the great emperor at all; really it is a kind of general survey of the whole state of Europe during his period of power, with incidents so arranged and interpreted as to bring the religious controversy to the fore on every possible occasion. From the point of view of style, it has little to recommend it save a certain pungent journalistic expression which becomes distinctly wearisome as the book proceeds.

It would be wrong to imply that there is no merit at all in Mr. Lewis’s effort; its central idea is the one Mr. Belloc set forth in his Richelieu; and there is much to be said for that idea. To accept it in its entirety one must assume that the only disruptive force let loose in the sixteenth century was Protestantism and omit the equally disruptive impulses contained in nationalism and capitalism, to mention but two others. Moreover, the twentieth century is not so ready to glorify the Middle Ages as was the age of romanticism — we know too much about it now. But in fairness Mr. Lewis should be permitted to state his own thesis, although one Could wish he had been a little more careful of evidence in his attempts to prove it. ' In a united Europe no one nation could . . . consider itself God’s Chosen, with a self-appointed mission to despise and bully the rest of mankind. This childishness is one of the evil fruits of the sixteenth-century disaster. . . . From Rome, Ancient and Christian, Europe derives all that makes her worth defense. By the return to Rome these things may still be preserved and the unity and safety of Europe regained.'

EDWARD ALLEN WHITNEY