Professional Documents
Culture Documents
On Historical
Distance
Mark Salber Phillips
Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund and from the foundation
established in memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College.
Copyright 2013 by Yale University.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Mark, 1946
On historical distance / Mark Salber Phillips.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-300-14037-8 (alk. paper)
1. HistoriographyPhilosophy. 2. HistoryPhilosophy.
D16.8.P42 2013
907.2dc23
I. Title.
2012037687
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of Harry and Avie, who are always with me.
And for Harry, Isaac, Zelda, and Miriam.
CONTENTS
Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xv
25
Part Two Circa 1800: History and Its Genres in the Long
Eighteenth Century
t h r e e The Most Illustrious Philosopher and Historian of the Age:
61
79
97
viii
Contents
s i x Past and Present: Contrastive Narratives in the Romantic Age
115
140
155
207
Epilogue. My Lai and Moral Luck; or, Tis Forty Years Since
Notes
237
Index
283
233
PREFACE
Modern Western history essentially begins with differentiation between the present and the past.
Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, 1988
In answering this challenge I remind myself of the old advice that the doctrines
which best repay critical examination are those which for the longest period have
remained unexamined.
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933
Preface
Preface
xi
xii
Preface
that noble dream of objectivity stake their position on the alterity of other
times. The past is a foreign country, has become the historians motto: they
do things differently there.
When powerful ideas dwindle into shibboleths it is easy to consider them
spent, but there is wisdom in Whiteheads remark on the value of revisiting old
doctrines. Whiteheads point, I think, is not just that entrenched ideas need an
occasional shake-up, a truism that could be applied to any number of historical
concepts. Rather, his dictum suggests the potential for broad-scale renewal that
lies dormant within the most enduring ideas. In this sense disciplinary reformations resemble religious ones and take on additional force to the extent that
they reexamine our most settled beliefs. Valuable insights may emerge from
any number of places, but the deepest reforms trace a path back to the heart of
a discipline and find new challenges in its oldest traditions.
This book is not intended as a connected history of Western historical thought
across the three periods it surveys. It might better be described as ten experiments
around a central idea. Beginning with the introduction, I outline an approach to
historical representation considered as an issue of mediation and distance, followed by studies of three distinct periods of changing historiographical practice:
circa 1500, or the shift from late medieval chronicles to Renaissance histories;
circa 1800, or the transition from Enlightenment to Romantic representation;
and circa 1968, the emergence of microhistory and affective historiography after
the Annales. It would have been simpler, no doubt, to frame the entire book
around its long central section (Part Two, Circa 1800), but doing so would
have risked giving the impression that the question of distance arises within
one privileged moment of emergent historical consciousness. In fact, claims of
this sort have been a staple of historiographical scholarship, most notably in the
writings of R. G. Collingwood, Friedrich Meinecke, and Reinhart Koselleck,
all of whom identify the period around 1800 as key to the emergence of modern
historical thought. But like so many quests for beginnings, these origin stories
are deeply problematic since their impulse is as much prescriptive as historical.
The result is a genealogy that authorizes a particular strain of historical thought
and blesses it with the name of modernity.
My interest is strictly heuristic. Far from privileging one moment in a lengthy
tradition, I am drawn to the question of distance because it offers the basis for
an approach that is open to all periods and all modes of representation. More
specifically, my premise is that an analysis of historical distance should help to
clarify two sorts of issues: one having to do with periodic shifts in historiographical style, the other with comparisons between rival historical genres. The first
Preface
xiii
dictates the books episodic form, while the second motivates the extra length
allowed to the middle part. Together, these two considerations give the book its
episodic and comparative structure.
If assumptions about distance and mediation underpin important aspects of
historical practice, it follows that significant changes in these assumptions play
a part in the emergence of new schools of historical thought. Since no single
episode of change would provide enough scope to test this view, the book is
structured around three separate moments of redistancing. All three episodes
hold an important place in the history of historical thought. But if there is no
need to defend the prominence of the Florentine Renaissance, the Scottish
Enlightenment, or the cultural turn, it is worth reiterating that the point is
to instantiate some larger patterns rather than to make a claim for the unique
importance of these particular moments.
This book is as much a study of historical genres as of eras of historical
thought. Though we talk about history as if it constituted a single body of work,
history is no more unitary than poetry or art. For critical purposes we
need to get away from real solemn history (as Jane Austens Catherine Moreland calls it) and cultivate a better understanding of historys diversity. Here
questions of distance play a significant role, helping to differentiate national
narratives from local (to take an obvious example), biography from memoir,
or neoclassical history painting from portrait. Though each of the three parts
includes a comparative dimension, it is in the longer, second episode that I
have given myself most room to explore the variety of genres that constitute the
wider family of historical representation. In addition to more canonical forms of
historical writing, this part includes chapters concerned with a statistical survey, contrast narratives, the writing of literary histories, and history painting.
In all three periods, however, my aim has been to offer the reader a decidedly
wide-angled portrait of the family of historical representations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
xv
xvi
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
xvii
Early versions of several chapters have appeared in print and appear here by
permission of their respective publishers. Chapter 1 draws upon Barefoot Boy
Makes Good: A Study of Machiavellis Historiography, Speculum 59 (1984):
585605. Chapter 3 is a revision of The Most Eminent Philosopher and Historian of His Time: Humes History of England, in A Companion to Hume, ed.
Elizabeth S. Radcliffe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). Chapter 4 revises Relocating Inwardness: Historical Distance and the Transition from Enlightenment
to Romantic Historiography, PMLA 118 (2003): 43649. Chapter 7 draws on
Literary History and Literary Historicism in the Long Eighteenth Century: An
Historiographical Perspective, in A Concise Companion to the Restoration and
Eighteenth Century, ed. Cynthia Wall (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005). Chapter 9 revises parts of On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Sentimental History for Life, History Workshop Journal 65 (2008): 4964, as well as a fragment
from Histories, Micro- and Literary: Problems of Genre and Distance, New
Literary History 34 (2003): 21129. Parts of Chapter 10 draw upon Contesting
Time, Place, and Nation in the First Peoples Hall of the Canadian Museum
of Civilization, in Contested Histories in Public Space: Memory, Race, and Nation, ed. Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) (with Ruth Phillips). An earlier version of the introduction
was published as Rethinking Historical Distance, History and Theory, Theme
Issue 50 (December 2011): 1123, by courtesy of Yale University Press.
INTRODUCTION
RETHINKING HISTORICAL DISTANCE:
FROM DOCTRINE tO HEURISTIC
It would be hard to name an idea that historians have more often invoked
or more persistently taken for granted than the one that this book explores.
As commonly understood, historical distance refers to the growing clarity that
comes with the passage of time. Conceived in this sense, the idea of distance
has exercised an important influence on how we think about historical understanding, elevating distancing and detachment to a privileged position with
respect to knowledge of the past. The idea acquires much greater suppleness,
however, when distance is reconceived in relation to the wide range of mediatory purposes that shape historical representation. In this context, calendrical time and objective knowledge have to be put in context with other forms
of engagement that mediate the now/then of history. Formal structures and
rhetorics, affective coloring, the strong summons of ideology, the quest for intelligibility and understandingthe push and pull of these fundamental investments gives distance a new complexity that has been missing from older
formulations.
Historians are not alone in believing that Truth is the daughter of Time,
but the idea holds a special place in the historical disciplineindeed, has come
Introduction
Introduction
make the past present, to bring the distant near3 remains a goal for historians
whose style and ideology are far removed from the age of Carlyle and Michelet.
Some of the best historical writing of the past generation has cultivated a more
immediate connection to the ordinary worlds of men and women in the past,
and though the result has been to foreground affective experience, it would be
hard to dismiss the motives as romantic. Strong ideological commitments fueled this democratized interest in questions of gender, memory, or trauma, just
as they inspired a whole generation of left-leaning historians to rally to Edward
Thompsons call to rescue forgotten lives from the enormous condescension
of posterity.4
In historical representation, as in daily life, proximity is often associated with
sympathetic understanding, as it is in Thompsons championing of the casualties of history. Quite the opposite effect, however, is intended by the opening
of Foucaults Discipline and Punish, where a close-up description of the tortures inflicted on Damiens, the would-be regicide, is not designed to enlist the
readers pity. The hideous violence inflicted on Damiens body works in the
contrary direction, functioning as a kind of alienation effect that estranges all
regimes of punishment alike, the modern penitentiary system as much as the
premodern tearing of the flesh.
In combination, Foucaults coldly aggressive close-up and the warm persuasions of Thompsons sympathy draw attention to the plasticity of distance, while
demonstrating that the same formal device (close-up description) can point toward quite different affects or actions. By extension, comparisons of this sort
point to the importance of distance in discriminating between various modes
of historical representation, distinguishing the political bite of journalism from
the measured judgment of academic scholarship, or the often intimate tone
of memoir from the wider compass of history proper. Though these assumptions are seldom fully explicit, they are so embedded in our understanding of
the rhetoric of historical representation that it seems impossible to define the
competing claims of different historical genres without implicit reference to
associations of this kind.
Form, affect, and ideologys summons to action shape much of our engagement with the past, but distance assumptions have powerful implications for
historical understanding as well. For the past two centuries especially, doctrines
related to distance have exercised a powerful role in setting the terms for both
practice and speculation. Much like the discipline of art history, historical
scholarship has made mastery of perspective an index of progress and sophistication. Medieval and early modern societies, it is widely agreed, lacked a proper
sense of anachronism, and even the Enlightenment, if we credit Dilthey or
Introduction
Collingwood, fell short of a full historical consciousness. It was only with Vico,
Herder, and their successors (so the story goes) that historians and philosophers
turned away from the generalizing ambitions of the eighteenth century to grasp
the essential particularity of historical process. The dialectics of distanceof
alterity and insightacquired a new authority as the indispensable structure of
historical understanding.5
These views, carried forward as a legacy of nineteenth-century historicism,
have exercised a deep influence on historians at large, legitimating certain
forms of historical thought, while relegating others to an inferior station. (What
is history and memory if not a shorthand for two modes of historical distance?)
The consequence is that certain prescriptive views of distance have become so
incorporated into historical doctrine that the idea of historical distance now
seems barely distinguishable from the idea of history itself.
DISTANCE AS MEDIATION
Introduction
do with the emotional or political uses of the past as with its explanatory functions or its formal design. To eighteenth-century Britons, ancient Rome seemed
more immediate and compelling than classical Athens, but to their nineteenthcentury descendants the reverse was generally true. (Witness Mills remark that
The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important
than the Battle of Hastings.)7 Similarly, Americans today feel the Founding
Fathers as a presence in their history and continue an engagement with the
eighteenth century that has little resonance for their Anglo-Canadian neighbors. Francophone and Aboriginal Canadians, however, come to the same period with yet another set of memories.
An old-fashioned, but still usefully compact formulation of historys mediational character is Burckhardts dictum that history is on all occasions the
record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another.8 This unapologetic recognition that history is the product of present interests as much as past
realities endows historical understanding with a binocular depth absent from
the positivist conceptions Burckhardt opposed. Rather than detracting from
its truthfulness, historys dialogical character supplies the essential questions
that carry the narrative forward in an effort to establish meaningful relations
between past and present. For this reason, history is best seen as a mediatory
practice, requiring what Gadamer, writing a century later (and with different
mediations in mind), would call a fusion of horizons.9 This redefinition, it
should be added, does not require historians to neglect their traditional concern
for questions of evidence and explanation, nor to abandon their more recent
interest in narratology and rhetoric. Rather, the mediatory focus suggests ways
to bring all of these issues together under a set of common concerns.
As conventionally understood, distance carries a heavy weight of prescription.
This prescriptiveness is not accidental. Historians generally invoke principles of
distance in order to define the optimum position from which to observe historical events, or (what amounts to much the same thing) to trace a genealogy of
modernity, where contemporary practice is assumed to set the standard. How
often, for example, have students of the Renaissance cited a growing sensitivity
to anachronism as evidence of the prescience of that age?10 There is real irony
in historians failure to think historically about the historical discipline itself, yet
no one should underestimate the difficulty of historicizing our own methods.
The challenge is the historians equivalent to life in zero gravity, a state impossible to achieve on earth. But if this degree of self-distancing is unattainable,
that does not mean we are exempted from self-scrutiny just where it touches
most closely on our own work. On the contrary, we should welcome any theoretical reflection which helps with so difficult a problem.
Introduction
This is where an expanded understanding of distance offers significant advantages, because it helps to problematize a set of ideas that have been assumed
to provide a stable basis for modern historical practice. In this spirit, I want to
propose a liberal heuristic that encompasses a wider range of positions, none
of which is privileged except in relation to the specific purposes pursued by
historical authors and readers. Every representation of history, whatever its
genre, incorporates elements of making, feeling, acting, and understandingor
(to alter the terms) questions of formal structure and vocabulary, affective impact, moral or ideological interpellation, and underlying intelligibility. Consequently, a more ramified analysis of historical representation needs to consider
the problem of mediation as it relates to four fundamental dimensions of distance that shape our experience of historical time. First, we must examine the
genres, media, and conventions that give a history its formal structures of representation, including its aesthetic qualities and rhetorical address. Second, we
should give attention to the works affective characterwhether (for instance)
historical conditions are made accessible to us through cool appraisal or lively
emotions. Third, we need to scrutinize the historys implications for action,
whether the summons it issues is primarily political, religious, or ethical in
nature. Fourth come the works fundamental assumptions regarding explanation and understanding. These ideas guide historical practice and provide the
conceptual grounds on which its intelligibility depends. Combining in various
ways to shape our experience of time, these four overlapping, but distinguishable distancesform, affect, summoning, and understandingprovide an orientation to some of the central problems of historical representation.11
In this, more complex meaning, distance enters into all the ways a narrative
works to bridge the then-and-now of history, including its formal structures, its
affective and ideological demands, and its claims to truth or understanding.
But a further expansion is still required to make the best use of a conception
that has been hobbled by a combination of prescriptive and polarized usage.
In ordinary speech, distance refers to a position of detachment or separation:
chronologically a then that is remote from now. In relational terms, however, this binarism dissolves into a continuous gradation made up of all positions from near to far. Affect, to make an obvious point, can take many forms:
sometimes the warmth of intimacy, other times cool detachment or even an
ironic smile. Similarly, understanding, so often identified with objectivity and
abstraction, also operates through insights won at close range and absorbed in
the finest detail. Redefined in this way, distance becomes the entire dimension
of representation rather than one extremity or limit. This leaves distancing or
distantiation to designate movements toward positions that are comparatively
Introduction
remote or detached. What matters is to recognize that all historical representations mediate our engagement with the past, though their distances vary both
in type and degree.
SOME COMPLEXITIES OF DISTANCE AND REPRESENTATION
Introduction
Introduction
10
Introduction
to distance, just as expectations about distance give definition to genres. Biographies, for example, are not just abbreviated general histories. Rather the
writer of lives is expected to offer a more intimate view and a closer insight
into character and motive. In practice, changes in forms and approaches often
flow together, so that new genres come into prominence in response to shifts in
historical sensibilities. The flowering of microhistory, for example, produced a
hybrid form that married the affective attractions of biography to a wider historical outlook. At the same time, as Giovanni Levi and Carlo Ginzburg insisted,
a mere reduction of scale was not enough. Their choice of close focus made
it possible to illuminate lives and experiences previously excluded by adverse
standards of evidencea matter of conceptualization and ideology as well as
of form and affect.22
MEDIATION AND METAPHOR
Introduction
11
between engagement and detachment, but his stranger is a decidedly less heroic figure than Lvi-Strausss self-isolating ethnographer. Another expression
of this constellation lies in the objectivity of the stranger, Simmel writes. He
is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies
of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of objectivity. But objectivity does not simply involve passivity and detachment; it
is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and
involvement.25 For Simmel, the stranger brings into sharp relief the complex
balance of alterity and acceptance found in every human relation. In consequence, the phenomenon of the stranger represents both an empirical category of social relations and an analytic device for measuring distance-relations
across a broad social spectrum. Thus, though the essay lacks the explicit selfreference of Lvi-Strauss, it is natural to read it as a reflection on Simmels own
condition, both as a social analyst and as a European Jew.
Distance lends itself to the economy of metaphor. Life says Charlie Chaplin, is a tragedy when seen close up, but a comedy in long shot.26 Macaulay
is almost as succinct in his summary of the evolution of historical writing from
the colorful narratives of Herodotus or Froissart to the dry analytical writings of
his own day. It may be laid down as a general rule, he writes, though subject
to considerable qualifications and exceptions, that history begins in novel and
ends in essay.27 Oscar Wilde and Lord Acton make an odd pairing, but their
thoughts on truthful testimony have something in common. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person, writes Wilde. Give him a mask, and he
will tell you the truth.28 For Acton, the context is certainly different, but his
observations on the deceptions of self-censorship are much the same: The living do not give up their secrets with the candour of the dead, he writes; one
key is always excepted.29
Acton (quoting Seeley) invokes an implicit idea of distance in order to speak
about historys relationship to the practicalities of political life. Politics are
vulgar when they are not liberalized by history, and history fades into mere
literature when it loses sight of its relations to politics.30 And where Simmel
is reticent about his own identity as a stranger, the never-reticent Michelet is
brimming with energetic self-disclosure. I speak because no one would speak
in my place. . . . As for me, I have always loved. Perhaps I also knew better the
antecedents of France; I lived in her grand eternal life and not in her present
condition. I was more alive in sympathies and more dead in interests; I came to
the questions of the day with the disinterest of the dead.31
The eighteenth century made distance central to aesthetic commentary,
both as a matter of idealized images and disinterested viewing. In Shaftesbury
(and later Kant) disinterestedness plays a crucial role in forming the emerging
12
Introduction
category of the aesthetic. The mere face painter indeed has little in common
with the poet, writes Shaftesbury; but, like the mere historian, copies what
he sees and minutely traces every feature and odd mark. It is otherwise with
men of invention and design.32 In a different context, Collingwood too argues
against unreflective particularity. Since the historians knowledge of the past is
mediate or inferential or indirect, never empirical, Collingwood asserts, if we
could build some Wellesian machine for looking backward through time, the
resulting information would not count as historical knowledge.33
Like Simmels stranger, all of these images are figures of distance. Chaplins
long shot, Macaulays novel versus essay, Wildes masks, Actons mere
literature, Shaftesburys mere face painter, Michelets love of country, and
Collingwoods disdain for the time machine: these and any number of similar
expressions enrich the language of distance relations in order to give shape to
what Simmel calls the unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every
human relation.34 Even Claude Lvi-Strausss heroic self-description as lonely
ethnographer becomes a symbolic figure when seen in long shot.
DISTANCE AND REDISTANCING
If the goal is to revive the capaciousness of a concept that has been reduced
to narrow, prescriptive purposes, it is worth asking why we need concepts of
distance at all. I have already suggested that Simmels idea of the unity of nearness and remoteness offers a useful direction. Now I want to conclude with
some reflection along the same lines by David Hume.
Historical distance encompasses the variety of ways in which we are placed in
relation to the past (orto put the case more fullyto the futures that the past
makes possible). In broader terms, this means that historical distance belongs
to a family of feelings, judgments, and actions that are bound up with our need
to navigate the world around uswhether in relation to gradations of space,
time, and affect, or to the rewards and pressures of community. Thus, though
historical distance is usually discussed in more restricted contexts, it is clear that
the need for conceptions of distance begins in something broader and more
elementary.
In essence, distances are relational concepts, and much of the work they do
addresses the continual need we have to reconcile the claims of something
close bythe here and now, the family, the home or communitywith the
larger structures that surround us. As Hume puts it, There is an easy reason,
why everything contiguous to us, either in space or time, shoud be conceivd
with a peculiar force and vivacity, and excel every other object, in its influence
on the imagination. Ourself is intimately present to us, and whatever is related
Introduction
13
to self must partake of that quality.35 As a result, Hume goes on to say, men are
principally concernd about those objects, which are not much removd either
in space or time. . . . Talk to a man of his condition thirty years hence, and he
will not regard you. Speak of what is to happen to-morrow and he will lend you
attention. The breaking of a mirror gives us more concern when at home, than
the burning of a house, when abroad, and some hundred leagues distant.36
Hume rests a great deal of weight upon this elementary recognition that human life is deeply conditioned by the force and vivacity that objects acquire by
virtue of being intimate to the self. But if the starting point is easy, tracing
the consequences certainly is not, since it becomes his task to understand how
the powerful preference given to whatever is related to the self succeeds in
producing life worlds that are socially responsive and cognitively stable. Thus
the raw data of sight would grossly distort the size of physical objects depending
upon their distance from the eye, leaving us with a very uncertain understanding of the relative size of a far-off mountain or a nearby chair. So too the proper
functioning of human affairs depends upon an analogous capacity to resize
social objects to bring them closer to their real proportionsin other words,
to the way others would perceive them.37 And tho the heart does not always
take part with those general notions, Hume concedes, or regulate its love and
hatred by them, yet are they sufficient for discourse, and serve all our purposes
in company, in the pulpit, on the theatre, and in the schools.38
This is not the place for an extended discussion of Humes historical thought,
which I will review at some length in Chapter 3. It is enough to note his conviction that attention to distance is key to understanding the dynamics of social
relations and the role of the passions. Depending on situation, of course, different distances will be salient. Thus, though space and time are broadly similar
in their effects, Hume speculates on the dissimilarities between them, whether
these be in the realm of aesthetics, affect, or authority. In more general terms,
however, what matters is the invitation he offers to view the play of distances as
motivating some of the most fundamental features of social life, coupled with
his clearly stated belief that were it not for the human capacity for redistancing, social communication would be all but impossible. No wonder, then, that
distance is so frequently a focus in his writing, whether the immediate subject
is as trivial as the breaking of a mirror or as grandly pathetic as the execution
of a king.
PLAN OF THE BOOK
I want very briefly to go back to the beginning and restate the core of my
concern. In common usage, historical distance refers to a position of detached
14
Introduction
Introduction
15
reaches back into both antecedent traditions to arrive at a synthesis that combines a dramatic particularity derived from the vernacular chronicles with an
elevated rhetoricism he inherits from his humanist and classical models.
Chapter 2 turns to Machiavellis Discourses, his masterpiece of political and
historical reflection. Despite its focus on Livys History, the Discourses is seldom
read in a historiographical context. But when Machiavellis commentary on
the Roman historian is twinned with Guicciardinis critique of the work, what
emerges is an instructive conflict of historical genres and methods. Machiavelli
mines history for notable examples, with little regard for the niceties of time
and place. Guicciardini, in turn, sternly opposes this promiscuous use of example and insists on a close account of eventsthe model he follows in his own
historical writing. Since the ostensible subject of one writer is ancient, the other
nearly contemporary, there is an obvious difference in temporal frameworks
historical distance in its most conventional terms. But at a deeper level other
distances are at issue in a quarrel that pits Guicciardinis particularized narrative against the speculative freedom of Machiavelli.
Part Two, Circa 1800, follows the same pattern of longitudinal and horizontal studies, but on a more ample scale so as to afford space for a richer comparison of genres. Chapter 3 is devoted to David Hume, whose writings serve as a
model for the complex distances characterizing eighteenth-century histories,
as well as a measure of the shift that will come with the Romantic influences
belonging to the new century. Hume is generally remembered as an aloof and
skeptical historian, as well as a pioneer of Enlightenment philosophical history.
Much of this reputation as a distanced and abstracting historian is the legacy
of a narrative voice that cultivates balance and detachment. This impression of
Humes style is only partially true. A wider view reveals a history whose tone is
as often sentimental as ironic, while its explanatory framework subordinates the
humanist study of character to new modes of social analysis derived from political economy. Affectively, too, Hume offers a more complex balance, as in his
treatment of the Civil War. Since both sides in the conflict struggled with blindness, it should be possible to extend sympathy to all, royalists and parliamentarians alike. Paradoxically, the effect of greater temporal and ideological distantiation is to encourage a new, more openly affective connection to the past.
Looking back, Hume was anxious to distinguish himself from what he regarded as the narrow partisanship of earlier historians. His would be a postrevolutionary narrativethe work of a writer who was able to shed a generous
tear for Charles I. But despite the support Hume gave to the role of sentiment
in history, his nineteenth-century critics saw his work as crippled by bloodless
abstraction. Chapter 4 seeks to resolve this apparent contradiction by recogniz-
16
Introduction
ing that histories work with multiple distances, often in ways that later ages
find inconsistent. As a matter both of theory and practice, it is true, Hume
places much stress on the need to engage the readers emotions. But for Hume
the readers affective identification with the past remains quite separate from
the conceptual framework that gives history its intelligibility. This configuration changes with the Romantics, for whom the new commitment to historical
imagination means that the historian, like his reader, comes to know history
itself through a process of participatory engagement.
Chapter 5 opens a series of chapters that examine distance in several emerging
historical genres of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centurysurvey,
contrast narrative, literary history, and history painting. Sir John Sinclairs Statistical Account of Scotland (179199) enlisted the Scottish clergy in a parishby-parish survey. A pioneering work of political economy and the new science
he called statistics, Sinclairs massive survey seems an unlikely place to look
for either history or distance. Indeed few of Sinclairs queries called for historical information as such. Nonetheless, the nine hundred ministers who actually
wrote the individual reports responded by composing local histories that traced
a genealogy of present conditions through two or three generations of rapid
social change. Thus two distinctive distances run through this work. From its
editors standpoint, the Statistical Account was designed as a grand inventory of
the nation, and Sinclair looked forward to the day when the information he had
compiled would be condensed into a series of tables and charts. But when we
turn to the work of the nine hundred authors, we find a decidedly more historical vision. Whether the difference arose from local attachment or the clergys
exposure to the teachings of the Scottish universities, what shines through the
vast majority of the responses is that the ministers took Sinclairs invitation as an
occasion to write the history of everyday life as it was reflected in the social and
economic progress of their own parishes.
Chapter 6 moves into the early nineteenth century to discuss an unusual, but
influential historical genre, which I am calling the contrast narrative. History
is commonly described as a literature built upon comparison of then-and-now.
(What one age finds worthy of note in another, as Burckhardt phrases it.) Curiously, the idea that historical thought involves a dialogue between two distinct
moments finds no acknowledgment in historys formal structure, which since
the time of Herodotus and Thucydides has favored linear and sequential narratives. This contradiction between historys conceptual underpinnings and its
formal arrangements lends particular interest to a small body of nineteenthcentury histories that experiment with strategies of contrastiveness. In practice, the comparative impulse can take a number of forms, but the best known
Introduction
17
18
Introduction
Introduction
19
pay to our sense of the real. Nowhere, perhaps, is this tension more evident
than in the rhetoric of the obituarya historical form caught up in the contradiction between the honesty demanded of a final reckoning and the charity
we owe to the dead. This brief coda to the discussion of the generation of 1968
assembles some of the death notices for Hugh Thompson, the American helicopter pilot who put a stop to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai,
the most shameful episode in that shameful war. Looking back to these events
a full generation later, the obituarists look to Thompsons life to recover some
sense of humanity, but their flat accounts do little to illuminate the source of
his courageous resistance, or to explain the brutalities perpetrated by the men
of Charlie Company.
Part One
Why begin with the Renaissance? More to the point: Why begin before the
Renaissance?
Every thinking of history, writes Benedetto Croce, is always adequate to
the moment at which it appears and always inadequate to the moment that
follows.1 The alteration Croce identifies will be illustrated a number of times
in this book, but never again with quite the same force as in the Renaissance,
when humanist rhetoricians recast medieval chronicles in the language and
image of classical Rome. This displacement of the vernacular genre by a newly
revived classicism transformed virtually every dimension of historical writing.
The resulting rupture between two successive styles of narrative constitutes a
particularly dramatic example of oppositions that, in one form or another, will
arise again and again in the development of Western historiographical traditions. In this instance, however, the triumph of history over chronicle seems so
complete that we have lost Croces sense of a continued evolutioneach moment adequate to itself, but inadequate to the one that follows.
Every successful revolution darkens the achievements of previous generations, and the more successful the revolution the more damage is done to the
memory of earlier times. The humanists of Quattrocento Florence initiated a
classical revival that shaped European ideas for centuries to come, but they also
cast a long shadow over earlier traditions, making it correspondingly difficult
21
22
Circa 1500
to retrieve the logic by which their predecessors had constructed their pasts.
Even now, we continue to speak about the historical writers of the Middle
Ages in ways that unconsciously reproduce the judgments of their humanist
successors. Architecture would have its Gothic Revival, art its Nazarenes and
pre-Raphaelites, Romantic poetry its popular ballads, but no modern revival of
chronicle-writing has emerged to build new feeling for this antiquated genre.2
Reducing chronicles to a mere record of the pastthe nonliterary and unphilosophical compilation defined by the dictionaryhardly encourages us to
explore chronicles as a rich historical genre with a long pedigree of its own.
Unless we appreciate the strengths of a powerful work like Giovanni Villanis
New Chronicle of Florence, however, we cannot reconstruct the ways in which
such narratives would come to seem inadequate to a later sensibility. In an
important sense, we need to take the chronicles more seriously if we want to
understand the humanist movement, just as we need to comprehend both the
chronicles and the humanists if we are going to measure the accomplishments
of the great vernacular writers who followed.
This is where Machiavelli is so helpful a figure. In the Florentine Histories,
Machiavelli writes as both a continuator and a critic of a lively local tradition,
to which he contributes an important new chapter of his own. The result is a
complex genealogy that provides new perspectives on the double inheritance
of his own workone part of which reflects the orderliness and elevation of
Leonardo Brunis humanism, the other the sharp-eyed particularity of Villanis vernacular chronicle. But there is another side of Machiavellis historical
thought that reaches beyond the limits of any well-told narrative, whether cast
in a classical or vernacular mold. In the Discourses as well as in parts of the
Florentine Histories, Machiavelli adopts a comparison of ancient and modern
examples in search of a more exacting historical method. This metahistorical
side of Machiavelli draws us away from a genealogical use of his work, suggesting instead a comparison with an outstanding contemporary. Francesco Guicciardini was not only the creator of the greatest historical narrative of the age
but also the author of a stringent commentary on the Discourses. Unlike many
later critics, whose objections were primarily moral, Guicciardini confronted
Machiavellis politics on the grounds of historical reasoning. For him it was not
moral or political scruple but respect for the particularity of historical narrative
that left him suspicious of the generalizing ways and speculative ambitions of
the Discourses.
The conflicting positions of the two great sixteenth-century writers carries
echoes of earlier tensions within the Florentine tradition, and in Guicciardini
particularly there seems to be a memory of the crowded particularity of the
Circa 1500
23
Florentine historians can be divided into two broad categories. Most were
native sons who wrote chronicle or history out of personal experience and civic
commitment, but others, often newcomers to the city, were learned men whose
narratives were composed against a background of bureaucratic service and
quasi-official patronage. In this admittedly schematic division, Machiavelli occupies a mediating position. Though he came from an old Florentine family (albeit one that had come down in the world), he was also a secretary, a
commissioned historian, and a man of letters. This set of employments brings
him closer in some respects to professional rhetoricians like Leonardo Bruni
(c. 13701444) than to citizen-historians like Giovanni Villani (c. 12761348). A
further complication lies in the fact that his active career proved an obstacle
rather than a help in securing literary patronage. For Machiavelli, the fall of
Piero Soderinis anti-Medicean republic brought a period of exile, followed by a
long campaign, never entirely successful, to find him a place in the new political order. Thus his 1520 commission from Cardinal Giulio de Medici to write
the history of Florence came as a late (and still partial) rehabilitation. In such
circumstances, Medici sponsorship represented an important opportunity, but
also one fraught with considerable difficulties, and Machiavelli had to choose
his path with some care.1
In the Proemio to the Florentine Histories Machiavelli offers his reasons for
taking his work back to the origins of the city rather than beginning with more
recent events in the usual fashion. This enlargement is certainly strategic. By
extending his scope, Machiavelli not only makes the period of Medici domination less central, he also places his own account in direct rivalry with his
25
26
Circa 1500
27
upon both earlier schools makes the Florentine Histories a valuable point of
entry for examining the Florentine tradition as a whole.
Following Machiavellis admonition about reinstating the importance of
faction, I want to examine two outstanding occasions of violent conflict in
Trecento Florence: the expulsion of the duke of Athens in 1342, and the revolt
of the Ciompi a generation later in 1378. Each of these outbursts was described
in detail by the most substantial chronicle of its dayGiovanni Villani for the
earlier episode, Marchionne di Coppo Stefani (13361385?) for the laterand
this in turn made it possible for both Bruni and Machiavelli to compose their
own accounts. Their attention to the events of 1342 and 1378 reflects the continued hold of these episodes on Florentine memory, at the same time as it
provides an opportunity to examine the two different directions marked out in
the Proemio.
In his narrative of the expulsion of the duke of Athens, Machiavelli reaches
back into Villanis account to retrieve the sharp note of violence Bruni had
muffled. At the same time, Machiavelli sets his stamp on the account by transforming a moment the chronicler had represented as a moral exemplum into
a frank drama of human passions, equally pathetic and brutal. Similar passages of cultivated vividness recur in Machiavellis reworking of the Ciompi
revolt, but here the idealizing rhetoric of humanism seems more central. What
Machiavelli owes to Bruni is never more clear than in his portrayal of the
Ciompi leader, Michele di Lando. In a history that is not rich in heroes, this
barefoot plebeian provides the supreme example of a life framed by the idea
that although every republic can offer examples, those belonging to the history
of our own country move us more than any other.
THE TYRANNY AND EXPULSION OF THE
DUKE OF ATHENS, 13421343
Walter of Briennethe curiously named duke of Athensholds the dubious distinction of being the most unambiguous villain of Florentine history. A
French nobleman and adventurer, he exploited civic divisions to raise himself
from mercenary captain to tyrant, only to lose power again when resentment
against his arbitrary justice and financial rapacity provoked a revolt that eventually spread across all ranks of Florentine society. Though Villani himself played
no great part in these events, he underlines the fact that he writes with the authority of an eyewitness. All subsequent histories of this factional crisis depend
on Villanis work, which becomes a base line for examining the reinterpretations introduced by Leonardo Bruni and Niccol Machiavelli in subsequent
centuries.
28
Circa 1500
29
more than anything else it was caused by the disunion and partisanship of the
citizens.10 By contrast, Villanis providentialist view of history allowed no such
separation between the political state of the commune and the moral disorders
it was incubating. Luxury, greed, self-regardthese vices had given rise to the
spirit of selfishness and division, bringing down on the city a comprehensive list
of calamities: not just the loss of liberty, but natural disasters, disease, economic
setbacks, and military defeat. But if the dukes seizure of power reflected Gods
judgment on the city, his own sins were subject to the same moral law. To
underscore this message, Villani followed his account of Walters usurpation
by quoting at length a letter from King Robert of Naples, who admonished the
duke to play the part of a good leader. If Walter failed to heal the divisions in the
city, he would not long hold his position in safety.11
For all the elevation of its moral horizon, Villanis chronicle stands very
far from the other-worldly abstraction we sometimes associate with medieval
chronicles. Like Dante, from whom he may have absorbed his providentialist
faith, Villani saw earthly happenings as resembling the soft sealing wax on a
letterthe visible sign of Gods remote and invisible presence. Theologically,
this simplified Augustinianism was a difficult position to hold (as Villani himself was aware) since it seemed to tie Gods unknowable will to the limits of human understanding. But, nave though it might have been, Villanis conviction
that God is active in history makes every event potentially revelatory. In historiographical terms, the consequence is a narrative that is as closely observed as
any to be found in his later, more secular successorsits human dramas all the
more vivid for being enacted under the searchlight of Divine judgment.12
The directness and intensity that Villanis narrative is capable of achieving
is evidenced in the conclusion to this episode, when three separate groups of
citizens (the leaders of each of which are enumerated by the chronicler) found
themselves joined together again in a common purpose. Much to Villanis
pride, the city reasserted its unity and demanded that justice be executed on
the bodies of those who had oppressed them:
In the end the popolo refused any pact unless the duke gave them the conservadore, his son, and Messer Cerrettieri Visdomini to do justice to them.
To this the duke would not agree. But the Burgundian [soldiers] who were
besieged in the palace, banded together and told the duke that rather than
die of hunger and in torment, they would hand the duke himself over to
the popolo, as well as the said three. . . . The duke, seeing himself in such
straits, consented. On Friday, the first day of August, at supper hour, the Burgundians took Messer Guglielmo dAsciesi, the conservadore of the tyranny
of the duke of Athens, and his eighteen-year-old son, Messer Gabriele. The
30
Circa 1500
latter had been recently knighted by the duke, but he was truly villainous in
torturing the citizens. They pushed him out of the gate of the palace into
the arms of the enraged popolo, especially the friends and relatives of those
his father had executed: Altoviti, Medici, Oricellai, Bettoni Cini, and many
others. To increase the fathers pain, the son was shoved out in front, and
they dismembered him and cut him into tiny pieces. This done, they pushed
out the conservadore and did the same. Some carried a piece on a lance or
sword throughout the city. And there were those so cruel and bestial in their
fury that they ate the raw flesh. Such was the end of the traitor and persecutor of the popolo of Florence. And note, he who is cruel dies cruelly, saith
the Lord. This furious revenge having been accomplished, the anger of the
popolo was much quietened, which was the salvation of Messer Cerrettieri.
He should have been the third, and well he deserved it. . . . But let us return
to our subject of the affairs of the duke.13
31
more effectively than the popolani, who were too numerous to be brought together in one place. Consequently, the popolani were credulous and easily led
by a tap on the shoulder or a suggestion whispered in the ear.14
Vivid language and physical gestures of this sort color the moral vocabulary
of the chronicle and animate its political observations. The goal of the nobility was to overturn the Ordinances of Justice as well as to avoid paying debts
arising from recent bankruptcies. Accordingly (writes Stefani) they sought to
aggrandize themselves over the little sheep and their shepherds. Like wolves,
they wanted to kill the sheep and discard the skin and eat their flesh and make
dice of their bones. They were the enemies of humankind (li nemici della humana spezie), the chronicler concludes, but things have always been so. The
vice is not just that of the Florentines, since the big fish have always eaten the
smaller.15
Similar mixings of high moral rhetoric and a late medieval version of realpolitik recur a number of times in this account. Walters downfall followed his
decision to turn against the grandi and woo the minuti. The tyrant forgot that
it was the people that crucified Christ, crying Let Him die, let Him die. The
duke should have considered that they would serve him no better than they
had served Christ, who was a just Signore. Meanwhile the grandi, having been
Walters greatest supporters, thought they could say touch me not and touch
not my anointed. But they were wrong, since a tyrant usually oppresses those
who gave him power.16
Against this background, there is a seeming inevitability to the terms in which
Stefani presents the overthrow of the dukea scene that stands as a palimpsest
of Florences evolving historical tradition. In its essentials, Stefanis narrative
differs little from Villanis, but it lacks the earlier chronicles insistence on the
fitness of the punishment. Instead, Stefani records the death of the eighteenyear-old without any judgment on his guilt or innocence, and in describing the
tearing, cutting, and biting of the bodies of the victims, he adds that according to what one reads, souls in hell do not fare worse; and it was a terrible sight
to see.17
Leonardo Brunis History of the Florentine People
(c. 14151442)
Stefanis chronicle left much of Villanis account still standing, even as it
inverted its language by reducing a grand vision of divine providence to a bleak
idiom of municipal conflict. The contrast with what was to come next could not
be more acute, since the great aim of the humanist school that had its beginnings in the Florentine Quattrocento was to elevate the emerging polity on the
32
Circa 1500
33
with powers to reform the state and set the city in order. Angelo Acciauoli, the
bishop, was added to their number, a man of great wisdom and authority, who
had effectively been their leader in the recovery of liberty.
Meanwhile, the siege went on day and night. The tyrant had with him
a strong force of about three hundred soldiers, and the place was well fortified. But these advantages were such that it seemed the danger could only
be delayed. . . . So the besieged proceeded, now to ask for parleys with the
citizens, now to beg for a safe conduct, and finally were reduced to supplications and solemn vows. Furthermore, to soothe the peoples anger with some
act of atonement, they shoved outside the gates the tyrants satellites who in
former times had run riot tormenting the people, and whom they now heard
the people calling for so that they might take their revenge. Thrown on the
swords of the inflamed people, these men were instantly torn limb from limb,
earning a most fitting reward for their acts of cruelty. After this act, the citizens anger abated somewhat, and the bishop and the Fourteen entered into
a parley.22
34
Circa 1500
with the Bishop had complete power to reorganize the government of Florence. . . . [Some ambassadors] tried to arrange terms between the duke and
the people, but the people refused to discuss any agreement until Messer
Guglielmo of Assisi and his son were given into their power, together with
Messer Cerrettieri Bisdomini. By no means did the duke wish to agree, but,
threatened by the people who were shut up with him, he let himself be compelled. It is evident beyond doubt that hatreds are greater and wounds more
serious when liberty is got back than when it is defended. So then Messer
Guglielmo and his son were put among thousands of their enemieshis son
was not yet eighteen years old; nevertheless not his age, not his beauty, not
his innocence could save him from the fury of the multitudeand they who
could not wound them when alive wounded them when dead and, not sated
by rending them with steel, tore them with their hands and teeth. And that
all their senses might be satisfied with revenge, after having first heard their
laments, seen their wounds, touched their torn bodies, they let taste also take
pleasure in them, so that, since all the outside parts had been sated, those
within might also gain satiety.27
As a despotic foreigner, the duke of Athens was easy to hate, and he quickly
became the indisputable villain of Florentine history. By contrast, it took several generations for Michele di Lando, the plebeian leader of the Ciompi revolt
35
36
Circa 1500
such a man could make his way into the palace and take on the trappings, if
not the entire substance, of the communes highest office: the Gonfaloniere (or
Standard Bearer) of Justice. Nowhere is this simple sense of amazement more
evident than in the chronicle attributed to Alamanno Acciaioli, a conservative patrician who was serving in the priorate at the time the communal government collapsed and ceded the palace to the crowd. Significantly, Acciaioli
alone amongst the chroniclers presents the crisis as Gods verdict on the city for
abandoning its traditional support of the papacy, a view that would have been
natural to Villani. For the sin committed against the sacred church of God,
he writes, . . . God promised to discipline this city of ours, as is told in this
account.31
The Ciompi Chronicles
Acciaiolis narrative reflects his physical location as much as his conservative
ideology. Enclosed in the Palazzo with his fellow priors, Acciaioli observed the
abdication of the government more closely than the insurgency of the wool
workers. Not surprisingly, he points the blame at what stands closest to him,
especially the cowardice of his colleagues and the intrigues of Salvestro de
Medici, the Standard Bearer. By comparison, Michele di Lando appears as a
startling intrusion, an apparition more to be wondered at than condemned as a
genuine figure of power:
The priors having departed from the palace, the door was open, and the people entered. And one Michele di Lando, wool comber or really foreman of
a wool shop in charge of the combers and carders, had the standard of the
people in his hand, . . . and he was dressed in rough shoes without stockings.
With this standard in hand he entered the palace with all the people who
were his followers, and he mounted the stairs as far as the audience chamber
of the priors, and there he stopped. By the voice of the people he was given
the signoria and they wished him to be Standard Bearer of Justice and lord
(signore). . . . And so all that day and on to the next at half past nine one could
say that this Michele di Lando, wool comber, was the lord of Florence twentyeight hours and more. This is the result of quarrelsomeness and innovation!
O dear Lord, what great miracles you show us!32
Dramatic political differences divide the three writers who left contemporary
accounts, but as chroniclers they share a common indifference to the more
rounded portrayal of motive and character that eventually emerges in Machiavelli. Though the chronicles often seem crowded with names, individuals make
their appearance in relation to office, family, or guild. Stefanis account, for
37
example, reverses Acciaiolis judgment and places the full blame on the archGuelfsa faction from whose hostility no one could feel safe, even if he was
more Guelf than Charlemagne.33 Characteristically, Stefani does not follow
up with individual portraits of factional hatred. Rather his impulse is to document the division plaguing the city with a long list of the malefactors, followed
by another list enumerating their unfortunate victims. These bare records seem
sufficient, since for the native son the names by themselves speak to the specificities of political alliance.
Nor is the picture essentially different in the only chronicle written from the
Ciompi standpoint (a historiographical rarity as remarkable in its own way as
the career of Michele). As a man of the lower classes, the so-called Squittinatore (Electoral Scrutineer) knows more about Micheles background and gives
more space to his actionsespecially the accusation that Michele sold out to
the elites. Individuals, however, are not his concern. Rather he focuses on the
guilds under whose banners the rival factions were gathered: Many people
poured into the piazza from every direction . . . especially the wealthy and the
guildsmen, both minor and major, because they knew of the plot that was about
to take place. They brought all the banners of the guilds and the militia companies to the Piazza of the Priors; and all the banners of the guilds were placed on
the rostrum and all the banners of the companies were fixed in their places on
all sides of the piazza. The Ciompi too were gathered under their own sign, and
they resisted bravely until the priors began throwing rocks and missiles from the
palace. Then, writes the Squittinatore, their spirits broke. When they saw that
the priors, that is those in whom they had trusted and in whose protection
they stood, were betraying them and stoning them, then they felt they were all
going to die.34
Leonardo Bruni and the Emergence of Michele di Lando
Brunis history transforms this scene, emptying the piazza of its fluttering
banners and composing a narrative that presents a new sense of unity and control. Two principal figures now dominate: Salvestro de Medici, the patrician
who made the near-fatal error of stirring up the mob in order to restrain the
arrogance of the Guelfs, and Michele di Lando, the plebeian whose surprising
nobility protected the Florentines from the full consequences of their folly.
Indeed, if the virtue and constancy of the Standard-Bearer Michele had not
stood in their way, the city would have come to ultimate destruction. Michele
was from the lowest of the plebs, but he seemed chosen by the heavens (divina sorte) to direct the city in these turbulent times. He consistently opposed
himself to the greed of the multitude, and reined in their spirits by his advice,
38
Circa 1500
exhortation, and chastisement. Despite his low birth, Michele possessed advantages of character and experience that made him a leader. He possessed a kind
of natural authority and was not ignoble in appearance; in addition, he had
spent several years of his youth in military service in Gaul. Thus, though not
without a certain crudity in his domestic matters, he was an able man thanks to
his experience abroad and was at once well-informed and artful in his conduct
of affairs.35
The chroniclers had tended to see Michele as exercising only a secondary
role in the conduct of affairs, the real focus of power remaining with the elites
and the powerful council called the Eight of War. With Bruni, however, Michele emerges as a pivotal figure in the defeat of the mob. When a delegation
from the plebs boldly confronted the priors in the palace, the others were
afraid and ready to swear, but the Standard-Bearer of Justice angrily drew his
sword and rushed at them, slashing and wounding one of them in the face and
spearing the other with the point of his weapon. He pursued the rest and threw
them down the stairs. The citizens thereupon were aroused and the good men
formed themselves into a body, while Michele himself went forth armed, bearing the Standard of Justice and riding a fine horse.36
For all Micheles virtues, however, Bruni never quite lets him dominate the
scene and a degree of reserve remains mixed in with his praises, leaving the
Gonfaloniere something less than the wholly exemplary figure he becomes in
Machiavelli. But even if it were possible for Bruni to overlook Micheles undignified origins, the central lesson of the episode necessitates a different focus. In
the face of the crisis precipitated by Salvestros rash actions, Micheles saving
presence is remarkable, almost miraculous. Nonetheless, the enduring lessons
of 1378 could only be addressed to the political elites, not to anyone lower in the
hierarchies of rank. As a matter of ideological summonsthe manner in which
history addresses the futurethe message is clear: This state of affairs can
stand as an eternal example . . . for the citys leading citizens that they should
not allow civil unrest . . . to come down to the whims of the mob. For it cannot
be restrained once it begins to snatch the reins and realizes it is more powerful,
being more numerous. Most of all, it seems, one should beware of seditious
actions which have their origins among the principal citizens, for they end up
moving from there to the lower orders.37
Machiavellis Heroic Myth
Machiavellis account of Michele draws upon both branches of the Florentine tradition. Brunis history provides him with the essential outlines of Micheles role and character, but Stefanis chronicle supplies incidents that give
39
Machiavellis narrative its dramatic texture and realistic effect. It is only in Machiavellis hands, however, that Michele emerges as a fully elaborated hero,
a man who possesses the combination of political cunning and extraordinary
virtue required to command the historical stage. And yet, thanks to this double
inheritance, even when Michele is elevated and idealized to such an extent, his
portrait carries the force of realistic detail.
Two of Machiavellis innovations are worth reviewing for the sense they give
of the way he enlarges Michele without seeming to compromise his historical
specificity. One is a speech placed in the mouth of an anonymous plebeian orator, who justifies the plebs use of violence against the elites; the other is an incident of mob fury that becomes the occasion for demonstrating Micheles political skills. (A further element is the extended comparison of ancient and modern
class conflict that opens Book 3 of the Histories, but I want to reserve discussion
of this dimension of Machiavellis historical outlook for the next chapter.)
The invention of the anonymous plebeian accomplishes two purposes. Under the cover of a long-standing classical convention, Machiavelli gives the insurgent wool workers an unusually coherent and dramatic voice. At the same
time, by inserting this eloquent pleb into the story, Machiavelli effectively splits
the historical Michele in two, with each persona playing foil to the other. Two
plebeians now stand before us where before there was only one, thus giving
the Ciompi insurgents a distinctive sense of purpose, while separating Michele
himself from the taint of the mob.
For Bruni, there had been little need to explain why the wool workers revolted.
Once Salvestro provided them with an opportunity, poverty and greed seemed
motivation enough.38 Machiavellis orator, in contrast, is a rational, calculating
figure, who carefully weighs the costs of either retreating or advancing. There is
nothing impulsive in his argument that it would be strategic to step up the violence against the rich: little faults are punished, he argues, great and serious
ones are rewarded.39 Similarly, the orator presents an explicit politics that is entirely absent in the earlier accounts, though the slogans bear some resemblance
to contemporary peasant rebellions. And do not be frightened by their antiquity
of blood which they shame us with, for all men, since they had one and the same
beginning, are equally ancient. . . . Strip us all naked; you will see us all alike;
dress us then in their clothes and they in ours; without doubt we shall seem
noble and they ignoble, for only poverty and riches make us unequal.40
The speech of the anonymous orator has a counterpart in Machiavellis account of the murder of Ser Nuto. The outline came from Stefani, who described
the unfortunate official as a cruel bailiff who was hired to be an executioner,
but instead fell victim to the revenge of the Ciompi. In a grisly scene, Ser Nuto
40
Circa 1500
was lynched by a mob, who (says Stefani) tore him and cut him to bits, and
some took pieces weighing no more than an ounce back to their houses.41 For
his part, Machiavelli spared nothing of the physical description, but embedded its violence in an explanation of Micheles strategy for calming the city. In
this account, Michele deliberately sent his followers in search of Ser Nuto in
order to occupy the minds of the people, and to buy himself some time to act.
Meanwhile Ser Nuto was carried to the Square by the mob and hanged on
the gallows by one foot; and since everybody around cut off a piece of him, in a
short time only that foot remained.42
Despite everything, Bruni could never look past Micheles origins and rough
manners.43 For Machiavelli, however, Michele was above all a sagacious and
prudent man, more indebted to Nature than to Fortune.44 With this eulogy,
Machiavelli erases the stigma of low birth, or rather turns it to Micheles advantage by making it the test of the heros ability to overcome the malice of fortune.
This greatness of mind is dramatized in a culminating scene, the details of
which could be found in the chronicles, but whose elevation belongs entirely
to Machiavellis powerful myth of the hero.
In Machiavellis retelling, some representatives of the Ciompi confronted Michele in the Palazzo and accused him of ingratitude toward those who gave him
power. To his enemies, in short, Michele was nothing more than what fortune
had made him, a worker raised up by the caprice of the mob. But the Gonfaloniereremembering rather the office he held than his humble birthwas
determined to punish this extraordinary insolence by means equally extraordinary.45 Stung to arms, he attacked and defeated the Ciompithe righteousness
of his anger, in effect, demonstrating the virtue which fitted him for office. This
is the climax of the narrative and, at the same time, the final triumph of virtue
over fortune.
Micheles heroic fury could be set beside many similar moments in literature.
But Machiavellis heroic myth, though it draws inspiration from traditional literary images, is inescapably political. For Machiavelli it seems insufficient that
the great man prove his individual virtue; the man of virt is also the protector
of society and the means of regenerating its corrupted spirits. As the ragged
figure we first see, Michele might only be an exemplum of fortunes capricious
powers. But as the protector of Florence he becomes, Michele grows into a
representation of the debt society owes its political heroes.
In the end, writes Machiavelli, the tumults were composed solely by the
abilities of the Gonfaloniere, who in courage, in prudence, and in goodness
. . . surpassed every citizen of his time. He deserves to be numbered among
the few who have benefited their native city, because if his spirit had been ei-
41
ther wicked or ambitions, the republic would have entirely lost her liberty and
would have come under a tyranny more severe than that of the duke of Athens,
but Micheles goodness never let come into his mind a thought opposed to the
general good.46
Only in this leave-taking is it fully apparent why Michele deserves to be ranked
among the glorious few. More than simple bravery or political skill, Micheles
highest virtue rests in being free of the temptation to exploit his dominating
position for private ambitions. The point is crucial because it reveals a central
dilemma that Machiavelli is reluctant to acknowledge. Though he exalts charismatic leaders like Michele, Machiavelli cannot finally ignore the dangerous
kinship between greatness and tyranny. The unsettling truth is that same virt
that elevates the hero could as easily have made him a tyrant. Only Micheles
goodness (bont) prevents such an ambition from forming in his mind. Yet as
Guicciardini observed in rebuttal, the idea of tyrants who voluntarily surrender
their power seems so rare as to be practically impossible to believe. An action so
exemplary, one might say, is also unexampled.
One of the great themes of Machiavellis political writings is the celebration
of heroes. The greatest of these are the new princes: those men who founded
new states on the strength of their own abilities (virt) without being beholden
to Fortune except for the gift of opportunity.47 Michele did not found a new
state (quite the reverse, he rescued an old one), but in other ways his brief rise to
power fits the Machiavellian scheme. Like the archetypal heroes of The Prince,
Michele seized an opportunity created by an extraordinary crisis. In these circumstances even a despised plebeian could command a following and become
his countrys savior. Fortune, as it were provided the matter but they gave it its
form; without opportunity their prowess would have been extinguished, and
without such prowess the opportunity would have come in vain.48
Unlike The Prince, however, the Florentine Histories is not a book of heroes,
nor does it end with the cry for Italys Redeemer. In the 1520s Machiavelli accepted that he was writing history, not prophesy, and that even as history his
narrative would need to observe some carefully chosen limits. With the Medici
dominating the later history of the city, there were obvious reasons to return to
earlier chapters, where the historian had more liberty to shape the narrative according to the light of his own historical imagination. At the same time, turning
to the earlier history of Florence meant returning to the chronicles in an effort
to marry the strengths of both schools. The result is a narrative of remarkable
elasticity and toughness, where unflinching descriptions of popular violence
alternate with occasional irruptions of virt.
Distance has a close cousin in contrast, a distancing device which is both the
method and the subject of this chapter.1 And contrast is useful to the student
of Florence since its two greatest historical thinkers represent such different
methods and sensibilities. Niccol Machiavelli was a bold synthesizer of historical knowledge, as well as a brilliant stylist and rhetorician. His contemporary,
Francesco Guicciardini, stands out as the first of Machiavellis critics and the
author of one of the greatest and most exacting historical narratives ever written.
Politically, both were marked by the collapse of Italian independence in the
catastrophic wars of the period. But though their thinking emerged from the
same bleak circumstances, the two Florentines responded to the crisis of their
times in strikingly different ways. The result is a quarrel over the uses of history
that is even more instructive than the work of each writer on its own.
Scholars have tended to see their differences as a dispute between politics
and history, foreshadowing the disciplinary wrangles of the modern academy.2
On a deeper level, however, what unites the two writers (politicians and historians both) is a debate over historical knowledge and how such knowledge is
best mobilized for purposes of political action. Machiavellis work expresses a
taste for bold speculations, supported by far-reaching comparisonsthe mark
of a writer who combined a wide range of historical information with a deep
admiration for the example of Rome. In Guicciardini, on the other hand, we
42
43
44
Circa 1500
Probably no other remark has put history at so lasting a disadvantage as Aristotles famous comparison of poetry and history in the Poetics. Aristotle frames the
distinction as a matter of conceptual distance. The true difference, he writes, is
not that poetry is composed in verse and history in prose, but that the historian
relates what happened, the poet what might happen. That is why poetry is more
akin to philosophy than history; poetry deals with general truths, history with
specific events.5 Aristotles hierarchical division between truths universal and
particular proved especially influential for early modern thought, where it put
history into a perennially defensive position in relation to both philosophy and
imaginative literature. Philip Sidney, for instance, adopts Aristotles language to
raise poetry high above history, while Joshua Reynolds follows the same path in
exalting the Grand Style of painting.6 Similar distinctions are also invoked by
Hume, though not to disparage history as such, but rather to turn its attention
away from the quirky singularity of chance events and toward general movements of economy or manners.7
Aristotles position was not easily countered on its own terms, but historians
could take comfort in a celebrated adage of classical rhetoric. History, writes
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (attributing the idea to Thucydides), is philosophy
teaching by example.8 Without challenging Aristotles hierarchies, Dionysius
offers a satisfying rejoinder that plays to the strengths of historical narrative,
and in early modern Europe especially it became a commonplace of historical
composition.9 The idea of the exemplum is hardly new, but when attached to
historical writing example serves as a mediating concept that reconciles historys particularity with philosophys elevated vision. Thus history finds a means
to raise itself above the mere confusion of passing events (one damn thing after
another) and to orient its narratives toward more general truths. Properly distanced, history too has a claim to lasting knowledge, with the added advantage
that its truths come in more accessible forms and are available to wider audiences. A perfect marriage, in fact, of rhetoric and philosophy.
On reflection, however, Dionysiuss compromise seems to raise as many
questions as it answers. The sense of the adage is that example is particularity made instructive, but this leaves open whether all forms of example are
45
equally useful and whether they instruct in much the same way. Still less clear
is the relation between example and linear narrative, traditionally regarded as
the basic structure of historical composition. Is example just another name
for anecdote or storytelling, so that the Dionysian formula does little more than
restate the customary preference for narrative? Alternately, might the focus on
example pull away from narrative structures altogether by endowing selected
particulars with a special potency of their own? Could reliance on a method of
example lead historians to loosen their respect for the logic of chronology in
favor of other, more resonant ways of describing the past?
At its root, example means something taken out, a sample or specimen
selected from a larger whole. Since there can be a variety of reasons for selection, it follows that there are different types of example, each potentially holding its own relation to narrative structures. Three primary motives stand out:
idealization, representativeness, and intensification. Of these, idealization is
most prominent in classical and early modern thought, while representativeness (or typicality) becomes a characteristic feature of the empirical methods
of modernity. By comparison, the third motive, intensificationthe striking example that makes the story seem more real or immediateenjoys a more varied
career, often coming to the fore in periods when an affective engagement with
the past is most openly encouraged.
In classical and early modern conception, historical writing is closely allied
with rhetoric as an instrument of instruction. As magister vitae, history has a
special role in the education of young males of a certain rankheirs-in-waiting
to the burdens of state. Appropriately, the life-lessons that history teaches have
little to do with day-to-day matters, the supposedly trivial preoccupations of
commerce or family life. Rather, since history operates on a public scale, the
historian concerns himself with the elevated images that prepare young men for
service in the political realm. Skillfully presented, such images spur readers to
emulate virtue, just as portraits of vice bring on natural feelings of revulsion.10
In modernity we have learned to select on quite different principles. (Few
things, Mark Twain remarks, are harder to put up with than a good example.)
As members of an age that is both democratic and scientific, we have grown
suspicious of overtly rhetorical language, but are easily persuaded by statistics.
Our bent is toward representativeness rather than singularity, the typical and
repeatable rather than the ideal. This does not mean that we have banished all
heroic aspirations, but finding the right register for a monument has become
much harder to do. In modernity, the unknown soldier displaces the wellknown general, and elaborate allegories of mourning cede their place to the
spare symbolism of a wall of names.
46
Circa 1500
In this context, the contrast between classical and modern sensibilities is relatively straightforward, but it is less easy to assign a specific epoch to intensification. Nonetheless, there are clearly some periods when historians are drawn
to this way of augmenting a sense of actuality. The eighteenth centurys cult
of sensibility is such a moment, as is the late twentieth centurys interest in
microhistory. Though microhistories vary considerably, all seek to gain from a
process of selection and enlargement, whether the goal is to stimulate curiosity
or to forge an emotional connection with the past.11
Each of these versions of example carries its own characteristic stance in
relation to narrative. Classical texts adopt portraiture as a desirable supplement,
which (much like the invented oration) interrupts the action for a stately purpose. Yet from another point of view, such set-piece devices could seem unwelcome distractionsponderous embellishments that burden the narrative
and take on a life of their own. By contrast, examples chosen for reasons of
intensification should work in the opposite sense, reinforcing the impact of the
narrative, rather than calling attention to themselves. Much depends, however,
on the deftness with which the detail is worked into the picture. Thus when
Machiavelli transforms the murder of the duke of Athenss henchmen from
an instance of divine justice to a scene of human savagery and pathos, the
shocking violence of the mobs cannibalistic fury lends the whole incident an
extra degree of realism.12 But it must also be accepted that there is a danger of
lingering too long over such details, so that what begins as a moment of frankness slips into exploitative emotionalism or even voyeuristic indulgence. In a
contemporary context, this is a temptation that (though seldom acknowledged)
has haunted the project of modern microhistorians.13
Machiavellis use of example both for idealization and intensification speaks
to his roots in Renaissance eloquence. His most ambitious historical thinking,
however, pursues another kind of instruction, arrived at by methods at once
more speculative and comparative. In the Discorsi especially his rejection of
decorative uses of history in favor of utilit leads to a broader harvest of events,
both ancient and modern. The aim is a new manner of generalizing the particular, one which turns away from the singular event to build its claims on
a structure that requires repeated comparison. Concentrated, atomized, and
made mobile, brief historical narratives are first reduced to their essential elements and then reassembled as parts of a grand archive of case studies. The
goal remains to mine history for patterns of instruction, but rather than offering
objects for direct imitation (still largely the pattern of the Prince), the Machiavellian metahistorian seeks to uncover the larger designs governing success and
failure. The result is a use of example with evident affinities to the modern.
47
Earlier, in reviewing the expulsion of the duke of Athens and the extraordinary career of Michele di Lando, I postponed discussion of the brief introductory essays which are so striking a feature of Machiavellis Florentine Histories.
Much like the Discorsi a decade earlier, these prefaces juxtapose ancient and
modern examples largely to measure Roman strength against Italian weakness.
Set into the Histories, the comparative frame can only occupy a page or two
before it cedes to a more conventionally organized narrative. Brief though they
are, however, these prologues define the widest terms for reflecting on the Florentine story and offer a form of mediation quite distinct from those I surveyed
in the preceding chapter.16
The introductions reprise themes familiar from the Discorsi, though the more
limited scope allowed by the Histories requires Machiavelli to recapitulate his
ideas with even greater economy. Histories Book 3, for instance (containing
48
Circa 1500
the account of the Ciompi revolt), begins with a short discussion of the natural enmities that spring up between the nobility and the populace, causing
all the evils which take place in cities. Such divisions, Machiavelli writes,
kept Rome disunited and the same causesif small things with great may be
comparedalso divided Florence. The comparison, as is evident, will not be
to Florences advantage, and the remainder of this prologue outlines a series of
densely stated contrasts concerning the effects of these conflicts in both cities.
In Rome the tensions had generally brought positive consequences, but in Florence the case was otherwise, since the defeat of the nobility deprived the state
of much needed military and political talents.17
This discussion takes us back to the early chapters of Book 1 of the Discorsi,
where Machiavelli writes that those who condemn the dissensions between
the nobility and the people seem to me to be finding fault with what as a first
cause kept Rome free. . . . They are not considering that in every republic there
are two opposed factions, that of the people and that of the rich, and that all the
laws made in favor of liberty result from their discord.18 In the narrower Florentine context, however, the emphasis shifts to the negative, since the citys quarrels brought results quite different from Romes, and instead of profiting from an
invigorating tension the republic stripped itself of the leadership that only the
nobility could provide. In Florence, victory fell to the popolo and the magnates
lost access to office. The consequence was that the nobility were forced to shed
their distinctiveness and to become as much like the popolani as they could.
In time, they lost their military virtue along with their generosity of spirit
qualities the popular class was in no position to supplyand Florence declined
into an ever more depressed and abject weakness. Such was the condition of the
city, Machiavelli concludes characteristically, that a strong Legislator (uno savio
datore di legge)19 might easily have renovated it in any form he chose.
The similarities between Book 3 of the Histories and Book 1 of the Discorsi
provide an important instance of the carryover between the two works, making it clear to what extent the Florentine narrative can read like a blow-up of
selected elements of the earlier and much more comprehensive study. Space
should be made, however, to mention one other introductory passage where it
is precisely the absence of a prologue that provides the strongest evidence of a
continuity which is both thematic and methodological.
The Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 was a plot to overthrow the Medici regime
by assassinating the youthful Medici brothers as they celebrated mass in the
Duomo. In the event, the Pazzi succeeded in killing Giuliano, but Lorenzo
escaped his attacker, with the result that far from losing its grip on the city, the
49
regime decisively consolidated its power. The Histories narrates the crisis at
some length, but it also begins with a revealing apology. Since Book 8 lies between two conspiraciesthe Lampugnani in Milan, the Pazzi in Florence
the authors usual custom would be to open the book by discussing the nature
of such events. I should gladly do so, Machiavelli continues, if in another
place I had not spoken of them, or if they were matters to be treated with brevity. Accordingly, he chooses to forgo introductory remarks and press on with
the narrative.20
The reference is clearly to Discorsi 3.6a detailed and comprehensive review of the problem of conspiracy with respect to a variety of types of rulers,
assassins, and political circumstances. The complexity and importance of the
subject dictate a lengthy discussion, and in fact this chapter is by a considerable margin the longest in the Discorsi, where it amounts to an encyclopedic
essay examining the problem of conspiracy from every angle and in every place
and period.21 The text is dotted with specific considerations keyed to each type
of plot, the injuries that incite it, the numbers of conspirators, the difficulty of
preventing discovery, the precautions which can be taken, the problems arising
from changes of plans, and similar subjects.
All this, as I have said, calls for lengthy discussion, but Machiavelli extends
the chapter still further by giving the whole analysis a thoroughly historical
character, drawn from both ancient and modern examples. A good portion of
his Roman illustrations, naturally enough, comes from Livy, whose work constitutes the spine of the Discorsi, but Tacitus, Plutarch, and other classical historians provide their share. In keeping with his methods, Machiavelli also presents
a good number of modern plots for comparison, among them brief narratives of
the overthrow of the duke of Athens and the Pazzi Conspiracy.22
When he came to write the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli acquired the
scope to expand his account of the Pazzi into a detailed narrative of strong dramatic interest, but even without the usual custom of a prologue, he could not
forgo entirely his instinct to frame events with some opening generalizations.
As long as Medici influence was balanced by that of other families, Machiavelli
argues, those who envied their power could oppose them openly without fear of
immediate reprisal. But after the victory of 1466, the government was so completely limited to the Medici . . . that the discontented were forced either with
patience to bear that kind of government or, if they did attempt to destroy it, to
do so with conspiracies and secretly. Such plots are seldom successful and they
often result in the ruin of those involved. Worse still, the ruler is given every
motive for enlarging his authority. Many times, indeed, having been good,
50
Circa 1500
he becomes wicked, because these conspiracies . . . give him reasons for being
afraid.23 The lesson, in short, is clear: not only are conspiracies unsuccessful,
but they also produce the tyranny they seek to oppose.
GUICCIARDINI AND THE EXAMPLE OF ROME:
THE CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DISCOURSES
OF MACHIAVELLI AND THE RICORDI
51
illness because of the virtues of the remedy applied to it. The clash between the
popular and aristocratic factions was a real fault in the constitution and Rome
suffered for it. I do not think [their institutions] were such that those seeking
to establish a republic should take them as a model. The superb military discipline of the Romans compensated for other defects, though these mattered less
in a militarized city like Rome than in those which are ruled by the struggles,
ever-changing circumstances, and arts of peace.28 The clear implication is that
modern Florencea city dependent on peaceable commercecould do little
with the model of ancient Rome.
Sometimes Guicciardinis dissent takes the form of disputing the specifics
of particular arguments. (For example, Machiavellis discussion of Cosimo de
Medici in Discourses 1.8 strikes Guicciardini as pure imagination.)29 The most
interesting cases, however, are those where the disagreement between the two
Florentines speaks to deep-seated differences in their ways of addressing the
world. One such dispute revolves around Machiavellis condemnation of the
moral influence of the papacy on Italy as a whole (Discourses 1.12). The question emerges from Machiavellis discussion of the importance of Roman piety
in fueling the rise of the republic, coupled with parallel observations on the
contaminating effects of papal immorality. In fact, the closer people live to the
papal court, the less they respect religion; to prove the point (per esperienza
certa), just try transplanting the papacy to Switzerland and watch how quickly
the people are corrupted.
After this brief, but typically bold venture into the distancing effects of counterfactual, Machiavelli shifts his ground from manners to statecraft. The papacy, he argues, has inflicted enormous political damage on Italy because it is
the Church that has kept and still keeps this region divided.30 No country has
ever been united and happy except when brought under a single republic or
prince. Unity has made France and Spain the dominant powers of contemporary Europe, just as (implicitly) it built the strength of ancient Rome.
As so often, Guicciardini responds by seconding the harsh verdict on contemporary manners, while also resisting Machiavellis view of history. As an
administrator in service to the Medici popes, Guicciardini knew papal politics
at first hand,31 but on this occasion the vehemence of his remarks also reflects
the bitterness of his situation, since at the moment of writing he was living as an
exile in Rome. One can never speak ill enough of the Roman court, for it is an
infamy, a pattern of all the opprobrium and vituperation of the world.32 Nonetheless, where Machiavelli found plain-spoken lessons, Guiccardinis instinct is
to emphasize complexity. Even before the days of the Church, he points out,
it was never easy to unify Italy because of the strong appetite of its people for
52
Circa 1500
53
Guicciardini did not put the Ricordi aside entirely when he turned to writing
his vast narrative of the Storia dItalia. On the contrary, he often drew upon his
stock of cautionary maxims, inserting them freely into the text of the history,
whether as the narrators observations or (more occasionally) in the voice of
a speechmaker. Early in the crisis brought on by the French invasion, when
the hapless Piero de Medici attempted to imitate Lorenzos bold journey to
the court of his enemies, Guicciardini observes: But without doubt it is very
dangerous to govern oneself by example, unless all the same considerations apply, not only in general but in all the particulars.37 Given the continuities in
Guicciardinis thought, it is always tempting to allow the suggestive brevity of
the Ricordi to substitute for a close reading of a multivolume history. Nonetheless, the historiographical implications of Guicciardinis critique of his fellow
Florentine show themselves most fully in the underlying rhythms and structure
of the Storia dItalia.
To pursue the question, it is helpful to set aside the simplistic dichotomy that
claims Machiavelli for politics and Guicciardini for history. Instead, we need
to recognize that the Discorsi and the Storia dItalia address many of the same
historical issues, even if from different perspectives. Both works are preoccupied with the need to understand the collapse of the Italian powers post-1494,
but their explanatory strategies are radically opposed. Machiavelli, as we have
seen, holds that historys utilit rests on a full repertory of example, both ancient
and modern. Guicciardini, for his part, is no less political or pragmatic, but his
approach to history is cautious, incremental, and close-focused. Speaking in
tones that are magisterial and remote, Guicciardini works his way slowly toward
a verdict on those he judged responsible for the catastrophe. Step by step and
incident by incident, his narrative measures out the cumulative errors by which
the Italian powers moved themselves inexorably toward their eventual humiliation. No wonder, then, that despite all his respect for Machiavellis brilliant
talents, Guicciardini is frequently exasperated by the freedom with which the
Discorsi jumps historys tracks.
54
Circa 1500
55
The first clear indication of the new pattern of Italian affairs comes with the
opening of Book 3. With the departure of the French, the narrative appears to
have come full circle and Italy rang with the praises of Venice and Milan,
which had saved the peninsula from servitude to the ultramontanes. Unfortunately, however, neither state was ready to return to seek a balance of power,
the wise policy which Lorenzo de Medici and Ferdinand of Aragon had once
placed at the center of Italian diplomacy.43 Instead, putting self-interest before
the common welfare, Venice and Milan were drawn into new adventures out
of a desire to profit from Florences loss of Pisa (an early consequence of the
French invasion). In imitation of his classical models, Guicciardini stages an
oration that takes us into the Venetian Senate to hear the question debated.
The wisest members plead for restraint now that the ultramontanes have been
56
Circa 1500
taught the road to Italy, but misguided ambition wins out over prudence. Inevitably, both Venice and Milan are left to learn the difficult truth that from now
on the weaker side in any Italian dispute would always have recourse to superior
foreign forces.
The wars that commenced with these events brought new combatants into
the Italian theater. The Spanish and the French struggled over Naples. Swiss
mercenaries and even the German emperor pursued the profits of war on Italian soil. Florence, having thrown off Medici rule, remained a republic, and,
though racked by internal struggles, carried on its exhausting war against Pisa.
This bitter and dragging conflict exhausted the Florentines and at crucial moments kept the flames of war alight, destroying hopes for the return of peace.
Most ironic of all, perhaps, was the fate of Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, the
restless politician who first stirred up the French invasion in a vain effort to
ensure his own security. In the end he was destined to live out his last years in a
French prisona man (comments Guicciardini) whose ambitions all Italy was
once too small to contain.
This pattern soon establishes itself, as successive books open with new hopes
for peace, followed again and again by renewed conflict born of short-sighted
greed for power. But though the broad outline becomes depressingly familiar,
the tilt of decline is not uniform. The opening of Book 8 marks a new cycle
of viciousness. Close to the midpoint of our Dantean journey, having passed
through Limbo and then the sins of incontinence, we descend into the circles
of violence. Italy had already suffered fourteen years of war, Guicciardini comments, with many destructive changes. Thus far the killing had mostly afflicted
the ultramontanes themselves and the peoples of Italy had suffered less than
their princes, but the next cycle brought new strife to all Italy and real suffering
to her peoples.44 Having opened the door to new disorders, the wars that now
spread resulted in the sacking of cities and a mounting toll of death across Italy.
In violation of all religious feeling, sacred things were treated with even less
respect than profane, and the licentiousness of the soldiersas destructive to
friends as to enemiesbecomes a running theme of the history.
The reason for these evils was as almost always the ambition and cupidity
of rulers. But considering things more particularly (a characteristic formulation) the fault lay in the insolent actions of the Venetians, who stirred up both
France and the Holy Roman Empire.45 Since Venice was the only Italian state
powerful enough to aspire to hegemony, the Serenissima was often the target
of Guicciardinis reproach. For different reasons, however, the most memorable
example of princely mischief in this period of the history was surely Pope Ju-
57
58
Circa 1500
views as an early (and perhaps hypocritical) commentary on Machiavellis famous immoralism. Guicciardinis objection, however, has more to do with historical truths than with moral ones. As a political and historical thinker, he had
no hesitation about extreme measures when they seemed to be needed. The
snare lay in assuming that violence was always the most effective solution.
In Guicciardinis time as in our own, it was conventional to believe that time
would clarify events by revealing their causes and motives. Nonetheless, the
Storia dItalia contains numbers of passages where historical retrospect fails
to deliver a conclusive judgment and the historian finds no better option than
to wrap important actions in a cloud of alternative motives.48 On such occasions, Guicciardini simply picks up the threads of his story, without coming to
any resolution beyond the documentable facts. This habit of taking refuge in
indeterminacy might be read as a way of offering the reader the full space of
interpretation. More fundamentally, however, this habit of studied indecision
seems calculated to enforce a distinction between things that are fully visible to
a third-party observer and those questions of motive and explanation that inevitably contain a considerable element of conjecture. In the face of so much that
is opaque to history, Guicciardini seems to say, all we can rely on is narrative
itselfthe studiously particularized record of actions and events.
Machiavellis gift is just the opposite. Lacking any hint of Guicciardinian
hesitancy, he knows exactly what essence to extract from every account he collects. This is why he is able to move so swiftly to assemble a body of useful examples derived from his reading of histories, ancient and modern. Each narrative is harvested for its utilit and then recombined with others in a framework
of historical comparison. Methodologically, this distancing strategy stands at
the opposite pole from Guicciardinis close-chronicling. Part judge, part healer
(his stated models for the study of ancient examples are physicians and jurists)
Machiavelli pursues a higher ambition. His instinct is for metahistory, the path
of a writer who adventures among narratives already assembled by others. Even
when he takes on the more conventional tasks of historical writing, as he does
in the Florentine Histories, he is not content with straightforward linear composition. Though the rhetorician in him delights in scenes of heroic or violent
struggleexample in its other meanings as precept or intensifierhis most
characteristic addition to the work of his predecessors is to reframe the citys history in terms of brief, but far-reaching comparisons. For those who are capable
of seeing it, every chapter of Florences past can be studied in the light of much
larger patterns. And for those whose vision does not carry that far, the experiences of ones own city . . . are much more moving and more useful.49
Part Two
59
60
Circa 1800
the hopeful fiction that leads us to speak of history in the singular, as though
the past reaches us in a single stream, unmediated by rival interpretations or
conventions of representation. For certain purposes, of course, it is possible to
invoke history as a solitary monolith. We sometimes speak of the judgment of
History or the perspective of History, just as we refer to the value of Art, Poetry,
or Religion. But these uppercase entities are there to confer consequence on
our activities, not to promote critical judgment. For this purpose, a unitary concept of history simply gets in the way. Far better to imagine history as a cluster
of competing genresa crowded Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps, where amid so
many cousins the family never speaks in one voice and there are always multiple conversations going on.
In practice, issues of historical change and genre formation are closely intertwined since innovation in the system of genres gives a clear signal that a
historical outlook is under revision. Often this means that an already established literature was in the process of being reoriented toward a more explicitly
historical purpose, as happened with history painting in the time of Benjamin
West (see Chapter 8). What results may be a hybrid formation where once disparate genres combine in the interest of pursuing a new object. In conjectural
history, for example, the mixture of history and political economy provided historians with the means to represent a distanced past for which more traditional
forms of documentation were unavailable. Similarly, the affective attractions
of literary history offered eighteenth- and nineteenth-century readers a way to
explore the rich but difficult terrain of the history of manners and sentiments
(see Chapter 7).
Formal innovation does not always manifest itself in changes of such magnitude. The same pressures that create full-scale reformation of genres also produce limited experiments that can be incorporated into more traditional histories as substructures of the narrative. It is no small part of Humes greatness,
for example, that his work manages to combine a wide variety of formal and
thematic elements in a complex and harmonious balance (see Chapter 3). The
corollary of this achievement, however, is that if we mean to follow the evolution of eighteenth-century historical thought, we need to pay closer attention to
the full range of its historical genres, including the minor and eccentric. Taken
singly, each represents only one pathway of the periods thinking of history,
but collectively they map its historical interests. By comparison, even so extraordinary a work as Humes cannot match this breadth of possibility.
I believe that this is the historical Age, and this the historical Nation.1
Humes quiet boast to the publisher William Strahan speaks to his pride in
Scotlands achievements, as well as to his easy acceptance of his own position
as the foremost historian of the age. Despite this confidence, however, Humes
evocation of Scotlands newfound literary glory carries with it an inescapably
ironic echo. After all, the most persistent indictment against the Enlightenment
has concerned its alleged failures of historical imagination. The nineteenth
century, it has long been said, was the great age of historical mindedness; the
eighteenthan age of reason rather than of historyremained incapable of appreciating any spirit other than its own. Collingwoods verdict is typical of a long
tradition of criticism, lasting well into the second half of the twentieth century:
Hume never shows the slightest suspicion, he wrote, that the human nature
he is analysing in his philosophical work is the nature of a western European in
the early eighteenth century. . . . He always assumes that our reasoning faculty,
our tastes and sentiments, and so forth, are something perfectly uniform and
invariable, underlying and conditioning all historical changes.2
In questions of historical thought, as in so many other aspects of eighteenthcentury culture, it has proved remarkably difficult to dispel the disapproving
shadow of the century that followed. Even now, when at last it has become
possible again to take Hume seriously as a historian, we cannot help but be
conscious of pushing against the weight of nearly two centuries of hostile reception.3 In this context, it is difficult to read Humes letter to Strahan in the
straightforwardly confident spirit in which it was written. Vital though it is to
understand Humes sense of achievement, it is no less important to probe why
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those who came after found so little to admire and so much to combat in the
Enlightenments vision of history.
At its core, the perennial charge against the Enlightenment was that its rationalist and universalizing psychology ruled out any genuine sense of history.
In the simpler forms of Romantic criticism this view became a lament for the
unimaginative blandness of modern historians. History had become a remote
and argumentative discourse, akin to the abstractions of philosophy and political economy, but with little grasp of the real substance of individual life or
everyday experience. Carlyle, for example, mocked the empty wisdom of the
philosophical historian as the endless hoo hoo of an owl crying from the rooftop, while Dilthey, writing three quarters of a century later, but with hardly less
acerbity, charged that No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject
constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.4 Collingwood, too, as we have already seen,
arraigned the narrow conception of reason which left Hume and his fellow
historians with no sympathy for, and therefore no insight into any period that
did not share their own rationalist spirit. When one compares, for example,
the complete lack of any sympathy for the Middle Ages shown by Hume with
the intense sympathy for the same thing which is found in Sir Walter Scott, one
can see how this tendency of Romanticism [an interest in cultures unlike ones
own] had enriched its historical outlook.5
The nineteenth-century critique of Hume figures more fully in the next
chapter, but already it should be evident that these strictures constitute an inescapable challenge to any appreciation of Enlightenment historiography, as well
as a point of departure for understanding the shift in historical distance that
marked the early nineteenth century.
THE MOMENT OF HUMES HISTORY OF ENGLAND:
TEMPORALITY AND OTHER DISTANCES
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Hume began his work a scant half-decade from the 45, the second and final uprising of the Scottish clans in favor of the exiled house of Stuart. The brutal military suppression that followed the defeat of the Highlanders at Culloden
ended forever the hope of reversing the effects of the revolutions of the previous
century. Henceforth, Jacobitism would survive primarily as a politics of nostalgia and a literature of romancemost famously in Walter Scotts re-creation of
these events in the first of his novels, Waverley, or Tis Sixty Years Since.
Sixty years was also the interval that separated the time of Humes writing
from the great event that, as the terminus of his History, measured the distance
between the living present and its written past. The Revolution of 1688, as
Hume writes at the end of volume 6, formed a new epoch in the constitution
and put its nature . . . beyond all controversy.6 Like Waverley, then, Humes
narrative took the form of a look back on a world that was both recent enough
to retain its hold on living memory and distant enough to be past all reclaiming.
The difference lay in the fact that while Scotts decision to write a Scottish fiction allowed him to indulge the romance of the vanquished, Hume interpreted
the challenge of becoming Britains historian as requiring him to strip bare the
myths of the victors. The Whig party, he writes in a passage that serves as a
summary of his historiographical mission, for a course of nearly seventy years,
has, almost without interruption, enjoyed the whole authority of government:
and no honours or offices could be obtained but by their countenance and protection. But this event [the Whig ascendancy], which in some particulars, has
been advantageous to the state, has proved destructive to the truth of history,
and has established many gross falsehoods, which it is unaccountable how any
civilized nation could have embraced . . . The result, Hume adds, naming the
best known works of Whig historiography, has been that the most despicable
histories, both for style and matter, have been extolled, and propagated, and
read; as if they had equaled the most celebrated remains of antiquity.7
Humes antagonism to Whig historiographical tradition has often been elided
with a hostility to the Whig cause itself, a much more disputable point. In fact,
Hume liked to picture himself as an even-handed observer, capable of displaying both analytic detachment and comprehensive sympathies. As he put it in
his brief autobiography, not only was he the only historian that had at once
neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudice, but he was also the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for
the fate of King Charles I. This defense was undoubtedly sincere, but there is
a degree of disingenuousness in the accompanying expressions of surprise and
hurt. In important ways, the deepest provocation Hume offered his critics lay
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precisely in assuming that posture which for him was the principal source of
his pride, namely the presumption that he could write with a considerable degree of detachment about events and ideas still so present to national memory.
Hume, in short, assumed a decidedly postrevolutionary vantage and prided
himself on the expanded understanding that this distancing made possible.8
For his opponents, on the other hand, the seventeenth-century remaking of the
British state was not yet so much a thing of the past as to permit old instincts to
be suspended. Thus the same vantage that nourished Humes sense of opportunity to win fame in his new field of literary endeavor also ensured a lasting and
bitter response from several generations of Whig critics.
If Humes historiographical politics were postrevolutionary, in important respects his sense of historical form and explanation was distinctly postclassical.
In this camp, however, the deficiencies of British historiography were widely
acknowledged, and the same factors that made Hume hopeful of fame disposed
his countrymen to pay proper tribute to his accomplishments.
Eighteenth-century historiographys relation to the classical tradition was far
from simple, especially when we take into account its conceptual as well as its
formal inheritance. Some useful guidance can be taken from the way in which
contemporary British commentators celebrated two distinct, but overlapping
achievements in historical writing. First, Britons were conscious of lacking a
historical literature worthy of their standing in the world, and they welcomed
Humealong with Robertson and (somewhat later) Gibbonfor their outstanding literary achievements.9 At last Britain had produced a school of historians to match the best writers of continental Europe or even the greatest historians of antiquity. Second, contemporaries celebrated the fact that historical
writing had expanded its scope considerably beyond the military and political
events that preoccupied historians in the classical tradition. History written in
the new manner would not, of course, neglect the traditional business of the
historian, but it would give older questions new depth and meaning by encompassing manners, commerce, and the history of the arts. At the highest level, in
short, history would be not only polite, but also philosophical.
The problem of fashioning a polite historical style existed in anticipation
an artifact of Britains long tutelage to Italy and France in so many branches of
letters. The challenge of rendering history philosophical, on the other hand,
only came into focus retrospectively, as historians began to create narratives of a
distinctively modern kind and critics turned back to measure the extent of recent achievements against the inadequacies of earlier traditions. This sense of
accomplishment is nicely summed up in a review of Sir John Sinclairs History
of the Public Revenue: History, till of late, was chiefly employed in the recital
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are seldom made use of by the ancients. The same objections, he continues,
apply to reflections and observations that go on for longer than two or three
sentences. The historian who brings in long reflections withdraws us from the
most interesting part of the narration, interrupting the flow of the action and
therefore breaking the train of association that created the readers emotional
engagement with the narrative.14
Smiths successor in rhetoric at Edinburgh, Hugh Blair, repeats much the
same view, while also applauding just those recent advances that had disturbed
the old balances. But when we demand from the historian profound and instructive views of his subject, Blair writes, it is not meant that he should be
frequently interrupting the course of his History, with his own reflections and
speculations. What is more, when a historian is much given to dissertation
we grow suspicious that he will be in hazard of adapting his narrative of facts
to favour some system which he has formed to himselfan objection that has
less to do with Smiths concern for affective impact than with a fear of excessive
ideological coloration.15 Despite these cautions, however, Blair ends his chapter on historical writing with yet another summation of the great conceptual
advance that animated historical writing at this time. I cannot conclude the
subject of History without taking notice of a very great improvement which has,
of late years, begun to be introduced into Historical Composition; I mean a
more particular attention than was formerly given to laws, customs, commerce,
religion, literature, and every other thing that tends to show the spirit and genius of nations. It is now understood to be the business of an able Historian to
exhibit manners, as well as facts and events. Assuredly, he continues, whatever
displays the . . . life of mankind, in different periods, and illustrates the progress
of the human mind, is more useful and interesting than the detail of sieges and
battles.16
As the tone of Blairs summary indicates, eighteenth-century historians regarded their expanded horizon as a primary contribution to historical studya
sure mark of their advance over the narrowly political and party-bound interests
of earlier writers. Nonetheless, this triumph of a more philosophic and democratizing spirit brought with it a tension that Smith was closer to acknowledging than Blair. If writing history was to involve a wider array of experiences,
historians would need to rework their customary tools for representing and explaining the past. The resultso characteristic of Enlightenment philosophical
historieswas to populate their narratives with broad and often abstract social
descriptions, designed to discover the deeper logic of things. And yet, the same
desire to exhibit manners, as well as facts and events could also lead in the
direction of close and affectively heightened description, aimed at evoking a
67
sense of familiarity with the textures of other ages. From some points of view
these two directions may well seem contradictory. (This was certainly the verdict of a later, more romantic generation.) But in a culture that was sentimental
as well as enlightened, they combined with remarkable effect, establishing a
crucial balance of distances that characterized the work of some of the leading
historians of the age.
INTELLIGIBILITY AND INSTRUCTION
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What, then, from Humes standpoint, makes history intelligible? One answer, to be sure, lies in Humes survey of the principal topics of philosophical
history. Another resides in the way he organizes those topics according to a
repeated and insistent comparison of past and present. We may safely pronounce, Hume states, taking up the first of his announced themes, that the
English government, at the accession of the Scottish line, was much more arbitrary, than it is at present; the prerogative less limited, the liberties of the
subject less accurately defined and secured. With respect to religion, Hume
notes that the liberty of conscience which we so highly and so justly value at
present was utterly suppressed, unable to stand up to the [religious] bigotry
which prevailed in that age. Politically, the principles that prevailed during
that age were entirely favorable to monarchy, but by the changes which have
since been introduced, the liberties of individuals have become more secure,
while those of the public have become more uncertain.18 Manners, too, were
shaped by the the monarchical government which prevailed, and they lacked
that strange mixture, which, at present, distinguishes England from all other
countries. Such violent extremes were then unknown, of industry and debauchery, frugality and profusion, civility and rusticity, fanaticism and scepticism.19
Amongst the aristocracy, high pride of family then prevailed and the nobility
distinguished themselves from the common people by their dignity and stateliness of behaviour. Great commercial wealth was more rare, and had not, as
yet been able to confound all ranks of men, and render money the chief foundation of distinction.20
Often, of course, the contrast of past and present is implied rather than spelled
out, but the self-conscious and systematic hunt for intelligibility through then/
now comparisons remains a consistent impulse. As Hume had observed in the
Treatise of Human Nature, the present situation of the person is always that of
the imagination, and that tis from thence we proceed to the conception of any
distant object.21 When Hume states, for example, that The expenses of the
great consisted in pomp and show, and a numerous retinue, rather than in convenience and true pleasure, it seems evident that he intends both a temporal
and a moral contrast with the present. Civil honours, he goes on to say, which
now hold the first place, were, at that time, subordinate to the military. . . .
The fury of duels too prevailed more than at any time before or since. This was
the turn, that the romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly so renowned, had taken.22
These examples are all drawn from the first two divisions of Humes survey
(i.e. government and manners), but the contrastive habit carries through the
broad range of observation that makes up the remainder of the appendix. When
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Hume notes the amount of the kings revenue as it stood in 1617, or remarks
on the high rate of interest in Jamess reign, or details the relatively meager
supplies voted by parliament, or lists the price of corn during this reign (no
lower, or rather higher than at present), or writes of the absence of the danger
and expense of a standing army, or estimates the number of men in England
capable of bearing arms according to a review of 1583, not one of these items
stands as an autonomous datum.23 Rather, every statistic, observation, or judgment forms a part of an extended comparison whose chief purpose is to measure the distance between then and now.
This repetitive marking of contemporary conditions demonstrates Humes
awareness of writing from a historical present, coupled with an equally selfconscious view of the essentially contrastive structure of historical understanding.24 For Hume, it is clear, historical thinking implies something more than a
factual knowledge of the four previous epochs of the history of Britain; it also
requires a critical thinking back from a particular present to an alien past. This
vantagepostrevolutionary, Hanoverian, enlightened, skepticalstands as an
unapologetic reference point in the narrative, where it constitutes the fifth and
ultimately most crucial epoch of the History of England.
DECIPHERMENT AND THE HISTORY OF OPINION
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an issue that would become increasingly central to any view of history that
looked beyond the chronicle of political events.31
Hume possessed a variety of resources for writing such a history. Like his
nineteenth-century successors, he did not hesitate to generalize about the spirit
of the age or to identify crucial shifts in national manners, but less direct strategies were also available. One device, both frequent and characteristic, was the
oration, a typical feature of ancient historiography, but one that Hume modified to serve a substantially new purpose. We feel the shadow of the classical
tradition when, for example, Hume pairs opposing parliamentary and royalist
arguments in order to draw the lines of the coming conflict.32 His usual strategy,
however, is to avoid the fiction of direct address, offering instead a catalogue
of attitudes and ideas that comes closer to a set of notes and headings than to
a polished oration. The consequence is to shift the oration from its traditional
roles toward a new, more analytic purpose as an index of conflicting views.
In departing from its classical definition as a narrative of public actions,
Humes history takes on a new concern with tracing the conditions leading to
social change. As Hume writes of his aims in depicting the age of Elizabeth, it
would be sufficient to show the genius of that age, or rather the channels in
which power then ran.33 From this perspective, it did not necessarily matter
whether an incident resulted in large public consequences. It would be enough
that the historical object, whatever it might bean event, an institution, even
something so unself-conscious as a trick of speechseems indicative of the
mental habits of another time. Such habits get particular attention when tracing their detail offers Hume a way to give body to otherwise undocumentable
changes in sensibility. It may not be unworthy of remark, he writes of the famous jurist and M.P. Sir Edward Coke, that in the trial of Mrs. Turner, [Coke]
told her, that she was guilty of the seven deadly sins. She was a whore, a bawd, a
sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon, and a murderer. And what may more surprise
us, Bacon, then attorney general took care to observe, that poisoning was a popish trick. Such were the bigoted prejudices which prevailed: Poisoning was not,
of itself, sufficiently odious, if it were not represented as a branch of popery.34
As a matter of historys intelligibility, we understand, the issue is not the guilt or
innocence of the obscure Mrs. Turner. Even Coke and Bacon, in a sense, are
nothing more than opinions agents. What gives this cameo historical impact is
what it reveals about the mind of the English, then and now.
Where religious bigotry is the target, Hume is never shy about adding the twist
of irony to the thrust of argument. But while the critical tone of his remarks is
unmistakable, we are apt to overlook the stylized note of hesitation about things
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Early in his career as a historian, Hume summed up the politics of his History in a way that both acknowledges and rationalizes its tensions. My views of
things are more conformable to Whig principles, he writes in a typically balanced formulation; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing
can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to
find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.35 The reconciliation of
opposites seems deceptively easya gesture of disavowal that aims to distance
himself from the shallow partisanship he thinks typical of English historical
writing. At the same time, by ironizing his reputation as a Tory, he not only
complicates the ideological issue, but also points to the complex balances of
(Tory) affect and (Whig) explanation that characterize the History.
Humes Whig critics would have scoffed at the notion that his views of the
British constitution were close to those of their own party, but (as has already
been said) we should not confuse his condemnation of the partisanship of Whig
historiography with a wholesale rejection of fundamental Whig principles.36
Hume questioned neither the legitimacy nor the desirability of the Hanoverian
settlement; what he did oppose was an entrenched historical doctrine about
how the mixed constitutional state had come into beingspecifically the creed
that the Civil War represented the culmination of an old and largely continuous history of British freedoms.
Humes recasting of British history would ultimately reach back to Roman
times, but its most dramatic effects related to the two most recent dynasties and
especially to the reigns of Elizabeth I and Charles I. For Hume, the revolutionary crisis of the seventeenth century was rooted in broadly based economic and
social changes. Exploration and New World commerce had brought increasing
commercial wealth, which had thrown the balance of property into the hands
of the commons and created a situation in which the dispositions of men
became susceptible of a more regular plan of liberty.37 From this broad social
observation, combining economy and the history of opinion, a more pointed
political argument followed. In the constitutional struggle of the times, the real
initiative did not come from the efforts of the Crown, seeking (as the Whigs in-
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him for the new realities and nothing less than fatal experience could engage
the English princes to pay a due regard to the inclinations of that formidable
assembly.42
Charles was hardly alone in suffering from such limitations of vision. Of
necessity, some degree of historical blindness is the fate of all those who are
required to act in the face of new or emergent conditions. For Hume this is a
crucial point because it brings with it an invitation to abandon partisanship and
to approach individuals on both sides of the conflict with a warmer appreciation
of the pathos of their historical situation. The irony of historical judgment, in
other words, is that by achieving a measure of ideological distancing suitable to
a postrevolutionary age, we open ourselves to the possibility of closer affective
engagement: hence the generous tear that Hume prides himself on having
shed for Charles I or Strafford. On another level, however, Humes sensitivity to the changing basis of opinion makes him less interested in individual
failures of insight than in the collective ideologies and experiences that condition the perspectives of whole generations. Who in the time of Elizabeth, for
example, could have foretold the importance of the Puritans to the history of
English liberty? Yet in fact it was to this sect, whose principles appear so frivolous and habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of their
constitution.43 Following the same logic, Hume also recognized that it would
be inappropriate to condemn the arbitrary and haughty conduct of Elizabeth.
The maxims of her reign were conformable to the principles of the times, and
she continued to be the most popular monarch England ever had. It was only
the continued growth of the popular party since her day that had so changed
our ideas in these matters that her autocratic ways now appear to us extremely
curious, and even at first surprising. Nonetheless, the queens views were so
unremarkable in her day that neither Camden . . . nor any other [contemporary] historian has taken any notice of them.44
The weight of Humes statement falls as much on recent changes in the climate of opinion as on the darkness of earlier ages. Nonetheless, Hume has often
been derided as a philosopher-historian whose commitment to the uniformities
of human nature left no room for a true understanding of historical change.
By now it should be clear, however, that Humes supposed uniformitarianism
offers no barrier to a sharp awareness of changes in British manners and institutions. Nor does Hume hold back from drawing conclusions regarding the need
for appropriate perspective in historical judgment. It seems unreasonable, he
states (repeating much the same point on a number of occasions) to judge
of the measures, embraced during one period, by the maxims, which prevail
in another.45 Even religionthe form of opinion most resistant to reason
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required the historians best efforts. This did not mean that Hume expressed
sympathy for the religious spirit; only that he understood the power of belief
and had some respect for its consequences. Though many of the scruples of the
Puritans now seem quite frivolous, Hume explains with a characteristic mixture of irony and historical insight, we should not think that these issues only
troubled those who were small-minded or foolish. Some men of the greatest
parts and most extensive knowledge, that the nation, at this time, produced,
could not enjoy any peace of mind; because obliged to hear prayers offered up
to the Divinity, by a priest covered with a white linen vestment.46
Humes recognition that history must take into account the condition of opinion in another time should not be elided with later historicist doctrines.47 His
view of history was as far from a romantic immersion in past times as it was from
Collingwoods idea of reenactment. Hume envisioned history as a continued
comparison of then and nowan operation calculated to sharpen the sense of
difference. The consequence was a form of binocularism that often expressed
itself in irony, but could also nourish a forgiving spirit of sympathy. By definition this enlarged perspective was unavailable to historical actors, caught up in
the blind passions of the present, but it was the historians chosen instrument
for tracking the complex movements of opinion.
MY REPRESENTATIONS OF PERSONS
Hume believed that if Britons could accept the fact that the Civil War was
well and truly over, they would be able to extend a warmer sympathy to all
those who took part in its struggles. The consequence was a narrative that some
readers admired for its elegant and pathetic style, while others criticized its apparent bias toward the royalist cause. In fact, just as Hume had predicted, many
readers judged the book by its most sentimental featurea response that would
have become all the more seductive after the appearance of Robert Bowyers illustrated edition, with its many images of virtue in distress.48 But even in earlier
and much plainer printings, Humes interest in character gave the book a sentimental coloration which played a considerable part in its political reception.
Humes predecessors in the humanist tradition regarded history as the pedagogy of public life. Accordingly, they drew as direct a line as possible from
character to action. Hume, for his part, loosens this link, which had contributed
so importantly to rhetorically conceived ideas of history since ancient Rome.
Though he remains deeply interested in individual character and intention,
Hume believes that at bottom history responds to deeper causal patterns. As a
result, his narrative tends to separate causes from motives in a way that would
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not have appealed to earlier, humanist historians. What were the reasons, he
writes, which engaged the king to admit such strange articles of peace, it is vain
to enquire: For there scarcely could be any. The causes of that event may admit
of a more easy explanation.49
Humes preference for more general forms of explanation is joined to a continued attention to the problem of historical distancea preoccupation that
makes him alert to the blindness of historical actors as well as tolerant of their
failings. If human beings have no option but to operate in a world of changeable
circumstances and unforeseen consequences, it is hard to construct historical
narrative as the direct consequence of individual will and virtue. Nonetheless,
though character had lost much of its traditional authority as the prime explanation of human actions, it does not follow that the subject had exhausted its
appeal. Instead, as a historian whose literary sensitivities are shaped by a culture
of sensibility, as well as a philosopher much concerned with the operations of
sympathy, Hume embraces character study for quite different reasons, finding
in it an opportunity to engage his readers attention with those elements of historical experience that lie closest to their own humanity.50
Unfortunately, British history provided Hume with abundant scope for depicting virtue in distress. To be oppressed with calamity was at all times sufficient to excite the sympathy of Mr. Hume, writes an early nineteenth-century
commentator. To rouse his indignation, it was enough to place before his eyes
a scene of cruelty, hypocrisy, or injustice.51 The result is a work whose more
somber or skeptical themes find a counterpoint in pathetic tableaux designed to
serve as a release for sympathetic emotions. For many of its readers, the Historys
real power resided in such scenes as the tribulations of Mary Queen of Scots,
the execution of Strafford, and (most famously) the last days of Charles I. Not
surprisingly, these moments became the favorites of the illustrators.
This shift toward sympathy or pathos carried large consequences for historical
representation. In both Roman and Renaissance practice, it had been assumed
that history aims to present ideal examples of virtue and vice. The purpose
of history, after all, was largely understood in terms of its value in instructing
young men in the duties of public life. By Humes day, however, this definition
was becoming obsolete, as history became the property of a wider class of readers of both genders as well as the vehicle of a much more extensive body of description.52 The consequence was an important redirection of historical writing,
as Hume moved away from the neoclassical stress on exemplarity to offer his
readers the more vivid and accessible emotions favored by an age of sensibility.
Virtue was to be placed nearer, not higher, in a literary culture in which the
historian, no less than the novelist, would be judged by his capacity for pathos.
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As the Whig historian James Mackintosh would later put it, The effect of the
death of Clarissa, or of Mary Stuart on the heart by no means depends on the
fact that the one really died, but on the vivacity of the exhibition by the two
great pathetic painters, Hume and Richardson.53
IRONY AND THE BALANCES OF HISTORY
Humes mastery of pathos seems to run squarely against his reputation for irony,
but in the framework of distance, sentiment and irony may reflect the same historical concerns. Sentiments power lies in presenting experiences so immediate
that no one could fail to respond. Ironic reflection, on the other hand, marks the
limits beyond which sympathy cannot travel, defeating the sentimental quest
for a reassuring concordance of the emotions. Thus, if sentimentalism suspends
the movement of history with scenes that make the past seem transparent and
approachable, irony forces a retreat from this illusion and makes us take account
of the ruptures that mark the evolution of opinion. (What better instrument than
irony, for instance, to register the divisions that separated eighteenth-century audiences from the harsh religiosity of the previous centuries?)54 From this point
of view, sentiment and irony constitute complementary movements in Humes
construction of distance: the one bringing history forward into virtual contemporaneity, the other returning the past to a time of its own.
Ironies of many kinds abound in the History. The largest take us close to what
is most vital in the books conception, but even the least contribute to that glint
of wit that gives the History its characteristic tone. Humes irony, of course, is
not evenly distributed. Of all the historical phenomena with which he contends, religion is certainly the one that Hume finds most repugnant to either
sympathy or explanation; religion, therefore, attracts the widest range of ironic
comment. At the simplest, much of Humes antireligious wit amounts to little
more than ridicule. It seems all too easy, for example, to laugh at those who
rebaptized themselves with outlandish names, testifying to their certain belief
in their own salvation (Accepted, Trevor of Northam).55 Easy, also, to mock
the pretensions of the Quaker James Naylor, who in imitation of Christ, rode
into Bristol on a horse, I suppose from the difficulty in that place of finding an
ass.56 More serious-minded is the summation of the paradoxical qualities that
made Cromwell both so forceful and so hidden. The strokes of his character
are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during
the time, dark and impenetrable. . . . A friend to justice, though his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition.57
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Misunderstandings of all kinds are a fruitful source of irony. How could contemporaries penetrate the indirections of Cromwells policiesindirections
that only time and history would clarify? How, on the other side, could the king
know that in preventing the emigration of Cromwell and other Puritan leaders
he was lengthening the odds against his own survival? How, most of all, could
Charles comprehend the emergence of a new configuration of power and opinion thatagainst all precedentgave parliament a wholly new role to play and
set Charles himself on his own increasingly perilous path? Unhappily, his fate
threw him into a period, when the precedents of many former reigns favoured
strongly of arbitrary power, and the genius of the people ran violently toward
liberty. . . . Exposed, without revenue, without arms, to the assault of the furious, implacable and bigoted factions, it was never permitted him, but with the
most fatal consequences, to commit the smallest mistake.58
The fate of King Charles brings us back to the issue of the balance of
irony and sentiment with which this section began. Often it is the fatal blindness of the historical agent that stimulates Humes sympathy, encouraging the
historian as well as his reader to shed a generous tear. In this situation, sentiment and irony seem intimately relatedobverse positions, perhaps, but not
opposite ones. Witness those typical situations of Humes sympathy which I
cited in the previous section: the many persecutions visited on Mary Queen
of Scots, the execution of Strafford, the trial and execution of Charles I. In all
these moments, sympathy for the victim is heightened by the repugnant face
of persecution, whether it be that of the dean of Peterborough who harried the
Scottish queen right up to her last moment to give up her Catholic faith, or the
implacable parliamentarians who forced Charles to sacrifice Strafford and then
brought the king himself to the scaffold. In such cases, Hume fixes our gaze
on the sufferer and the mood is predominantly sentimental. Conversely, there
are other momentsless prominent perhaps, but quite similar in their basic
structurein which obscure innocents fall victim to ruthless persecution. Here
what captures us is not so much virtue in distress as bigotry distressing virtue.
Often the scope of observation is more general, moving away from the personal
framework that is productive of sentiment to something broader, more ironic,
and we might say more diagnostic. These changes, however, do not come about
because Hume encourages us to pity the plumage and forget the dying bird.
Rather, with the sufferers all but anonymous, what stands out is the hideousness
of power when bigotry acquires a free hand.
The perusal of a history seems a calm entertainment; but would be no entertainment at all, did not our hearts beat with correspondent movements to those which
are described by the historian.
Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751
Did any one ever gain from Humes history anything like a picture of what may
actually have been passing, in the minds, say, of Cavaliers or of Roundheads during the civil wars? Does any one feel that Hume has made him figure to himself with any precision what manner of men these were; how far they were like
ourselves, how far different; what things they loved and hated, and what sort of
conception they had formed of the things they loved and hated: And what kind
of a notion can be framed of a period of history, unless we begin with that as a
preliminary?
J. S. Mill, Review of Carlyles French Revolution, 1837
Both Hume and his critic express a strong commitment to the importance
of sympathetic understanding in history, but Mills diatribe makes it clear that
these two apparently similar declarations conceal a deep disagreement over the
place of the emotions in historical writing. More remarkably, the stereotype of
an emotionally disengaged eighteenth century did not die away with the first
generations for whom it served as a necessary foil. On the contrary, from Dilthey and Collingwood to Hayden White,1 philosophers and historians have repeated the same complaint. Even those more friendly to the Enlightenment
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have interested themselves primarily in its speculative and abstract qualities, neglecting the sympathetic chord so clearly evident in my quotation from Hume.
The consequence has been to accentuate the sense of a sharp divide, reinscribing in modern accounts the antagonism between Romantic inwardness and
Enlightenment abstraction that is such an important part of the nineteenthcentury reaction against the previous age.
It comes as no surprise that the historical consciousness of the early nineteenth century defines itself in opposition to the Enlightenment. What matters
here is the extent to which the Romantic polemic rests on a convenient simplification of the concept of historical distance, pitting a new age of vivid historical imagination against an opposing figure of pale rationalism and elegant
abstraction. Thus the juxtaposition of Hume and Mill provides an opportunity
not simply to reexamine a cherished historiographical topos, but also to observe
how powerfully ideas of distance have shaped historical conceptions.
Some of the nineteenth centurys most familiar characterizations of history
follow Mills lead by presenting historical truth as a conflict between immediacy and distantiation. Michelet cries out for a virtual resurrection of the
past,2 just as Carlyle calls for histories in which the strong pulse of individual
life can still be felthistory as the essence of innumerable biographies. But it
is Macaulay, with his powerful, rolling prose and his talent for popular imagery,
who provides the most abundant lexicon of distance-related images. In a wellknown passage from his essay on Hallam, Macaulay returns again and again to
the idea that historyonce a marriage of intellectual and artistic powershas
suffered itself to be split into opposing but insufficient virtues: reason and
imagination, philosophy and poetry, essay and romance, the map
and the painted landscape, anatomy and sculpture. Only a great historian, Macaulay argues, can restore history to the unity it possessed in the hands
of the greatest of the ancients. In the meantime, it is not history itself but the
historical novel that has stepped into the space left vacant by the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment:
To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us in the society
of a great man on an eminence which overlooks the field of a mighty battle,
to invest with the reality of human flesh and blood beings whom we are too
much inclined to consider as personified qualities in an allegory, to call up
our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and
garb, to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables, to rummage their
old fashioned wardrobes, to explain the uses of their ponderous furniture,
these parts of the duty which properly belongs to the historian have been
appropriated by the historical novelist. On the other hand, to extract the phi-
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losophy of history, to direct our judgment of events and men, to trace the
connections of causes and effects, and to draw from the occurrences of former
times general lessons of moral and political wisdom, has become the business
of a distinct class of writers.3
For Macaulay, it is clear, the true antagonists are not Hume or Hallam, except
insofar as their decorous rationalism had ceded so much territory to the historical novel. The angel he is wrestling with is the Author of Waverley, but to
write authentic history in a way that meets Scotts challenge would require a
dramatic redistancing of narrative.
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it in its true proportion and genuine aspects, to consider it unobscured by
the passions and prejudices of existing factions; and by comparing the age to
which it gave birth, form and character, not only with that which produced it,
but with every other to which it bears an analogy, to make a just estimate of its
real merits, and deduce with certainty the lessons it affords to the legislator,
the statesman, and the political philosopher. At the same time the transaction
is sufficiently recent to possess every advantage requisite for creating the most
lively interest.4
Here historical distance (in the conventional sense) is credited with a multitude of practical advantages, including more open access to information as well
as a freedom both to see and to describe once controversial matters without
suffering the prejudices of faction. Above all, however, what time gives the historian is the opportunity for the synoptic vision that is the ideal of eighteenthcentury epistemology.5 Nonetheless, Maconochie readily acknowledges that
there is something that lies beyond such carefully cultivated detachment. For
Britons in 1809 the events of 1688 seem far from remote. On the contrary, the
Revolution retains an ideological and affective presence such that a history of
these crucial events retains the most lively interest.
Normative distance could also be given other inflections, as Scott made evident in the subtitle to the first of the Waverley novels: Tis Sixty Years Since.
The implications of the titleat once so matter of fact and so resonantwere
glossed in the famous Postscript in which Scott paid tribute to his familiarity
with the dwindling generation of Jacobites he knew as a youth. It was his early
acquaintance with these folks of the old leaven, Scott attested, that enabled
him to preserve some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed
the almost total extinction. As Scott understood, two generations marked the
natural limit of living memory. Sixty years was a privileged distance for the kind
of history he had in mindabove all in a nation like Scotland, which within
the course of half a century or little more, had undergone a more complete
change than any in Europe.6
In later novels Scott would not always stand so close to the living past, but
the interval he chose provided a fitting point of departure for a writer who symbolized the new centurys desire for a warmer historical affect. Scotts opposite
in this respect (as prejudice would have it)7 was David Hume, so it is worth
recollecting that Humes engagement with historical writing dates from the immediate aftermath of the events commemorated in Waverley. More to the point,
Humes own temporal distance from the Glorious Revolutionthe endpoint
of his great History of Englandconforms precisely to Scotts perception of a
canonical span of two generations.
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detachment and reflective judgment: the breadth of mind that this period associated with scholarly wisdom and gentlemanly independence.15 Among
eighteenth-century writers on art, the classic statement of this position comes
from Joshua Reynolds, for whom the mark of genius is the artists capacity to
look beyond accidental and outward appearances and discover an abstract idea
. . . more perfect than any one original. It is only by much experience, he
writes, and a close comparison of objects in nature, that an artist becomes
possessed of the idea of that central form . . . from which every deviation is
deformity.16 Even so devout a believer in the general idea, however, had to
concede the power of particularity to clinch the viewers attachment. I am
very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness frequently tend to
give an air of truth to a piece, and interest the spectator in an extraordinary
manner.17
More surprising, perhaps, is Reynoldss recognition in another passage that
the imaginative associations of style might overcome ones sense of objective
chronology. Speaking in praise of Vanbrughs gifts, Reynolds writes that he
seems to have had recourse to some principles of the Gothick Architecture,
which though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more so in our imagination.18
A generation later, the comment was picked up by Hazlitt, who notes that until he met up with this remark in so circumspect and guarded a writer as Sir
Joshua, he had been afraid of being thought extravagant for entertaining very
similar convictions. The dark or middle ages, says Hazlitt, when every thing
was hid in the fog and haze of confusion and ignorance, seem, to the same involuntary kind of prejudice, older and farther off, and more inaccessible to the
imagination, than the brilliant and well-defined periods of Greece and Rome.
The Gothic seems a witness to events much more wild and alien to our own
timeso much so that the mind resists any effort to force it upwards in the
scale of chronology.19
Hazlitts investigation of the plasticity of distance echoes Burkes writing on
the sublime, but in a wider view it is part of a broad reorientation that puts
moral psychology at the center of the human sciences. Distance, in short, is no
longer a property of the object as such, but of its associated passions. For Hazlitt,
that is old (in sentiment and poetry) which is decayed, shadowy, imperfect,
out of date, and changed from what it was. That of which we have a distinct
idea, which comes to us entire and made out in all its parts, will have a novel
appearance, however old in reality; nor can it be impressed with the romantic
and superstitious character of antiquity.20
Among the sciences that provided models for social observation, none was
more influential than optics. Both Hume and Smith were impressed by Berke-
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leys demonstration that distance perception, rather than being a matter of simple sense impressions, depended upon experience and judgment,21 and they
applied the same idea to the operations of judgment in relation to emotions and
perceptions.22 The identical object, writes Hume, viewed at a double distance,
really throws on the eye a picture of but half the bulk.23 Nonetheless the mind
compensates, since we know that the difference does not lie in the size of the
object itself but in our relative position as observers. And, indeed, without
such a correction of appearances, both in internal and external sentiment, men
could never think or talk steadily on any subject; while their fluctuating situations produce a continual variation on objects, and throw them into such different and contrary lights and positions.24 Distance, in other words, is a condition
of daily life as much as of sight, and in both contexts, experience teaches us how
to stabilize and order our impressions so that we can live successfully in a world
of fluctuating situations.25
Even without the example of optics, however, the issue of distance would
surely have become an important consideration for Hume since it was so closely
connected to two of his central themes as a philosopher: the association of ideas
and the power of sympathy. Though one of these fundamental principles was
primarily rooted in cognition and the other in affect, both called upon notions
of relatedness. Consequently, both doctrines required Hume (and, following
him, Smith) to have continual reference to situations that measured degrees of
proximity and remoteness. Thus in his introductory discussion of the association of ideas, Hume outlines the various forms of relation upon which association depends. After identity, he writes, the most universal and comprehensive relations are those of Space and Time, which are the sources of an infinite
number of comparisons, such as distant, contiguous, above, below, before, after,
etc.26 Crucially, these relations, though in the first instance a matter of cognition, always carry affective and moral implications. Contiguous objects, he
observes, have an effect on the will and the passions much greater than distant
ones. In common life, people are most concerned with objects, which are not
much removd either in space or time. They enjoy the present and leave what
is far off to chance and fortune (or, perhaps, to the considerations of historians
and philosophers). For this reason, if you talk to someone about his situation in
thirty years time, he will pay little heed. Speak of what is to happen to-morrow,
and he will lend you attention.27
In general, contiguous objects must have an influence much superior to the
distant and remote,28 but Hume also notes that there are situations in which
extended distance, rather than diminishing the effect of an object, enhances
its summoning power. Viewing any thing that is greatwhether successive
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On the other hand, the deep distress of the numerous Athenian army before
Syracuse; the danger, which so nearly threatens Venice; these excite compassion; these move terror and anxiety.43 So too, Suetonius and Tacitus give us essentially the same facts, but the impact is very different. When the latter paints
a pathetic scene, What sympathy then touches every human heart! What indignation against the tyrant, whose . . . unprovoked malice gave rise to so much
detestable barbarity.44
HUME ON TRAGEDY AND HISTORICAL DISTANCE
In a striking passage in his essay Of Tragedy, Hume writes that when Clarendon, the great historian of the English Revolution, approaches the execution
of the king, he hurries over the kings death, without giving one circumstance
of it. Clarendon evidently considers it as too horrid a scene to be contemplated with any satisfaction, or even without the utmost pain and aversion. He
himself, as well as the readers of that age, were too deeply concerned in the
events, and felt a pain from subjects, which an historian and a reader of another
age would regard as the most pathetic and most interesting, and, by consequence, the most agreeable.45
It may come as something of a surprise that one of Humes most remarkable
reflections on distance appears in an essay devoted to a literary subject. The
problem of why tragedy pleases was a well-established topos, but this passage adds a historical resonance appropriate to an author recently launched
on his great History of England.46 Humes sympathetic acceptance of Clarendons reticence, combined with his understanding that the event that had been
most painful to an earlier generation had become most interesting to his own,
points to an intriguing awareness of the elasticities of historical distance. Hume
clearly recognizes that Clarendon did not freely choose his stance in relation to
the regicide. Rather the seventeenth-century historian shared with his readers
a proximity to events that made a sentimental representation of Charless death
unthinkable. By the same token, Hume also understands that the passing of
time had created new possibilities, opening the way for the kind of detailed and
pathetic account of the execution that he would offer his own readers.
Humes comments acknowledge that distance is both a reflection of external events and a textual construction designed to shape the readers response.
Clearly, we can only understand the differences between Hume and his predecessor if we take account of the changing outlook and experience dividing
their generations. But if Clarendons account seems appropriate to its age, later
readers would not be satisfied with its hurried, uncircumstantial narrative. On
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the contrary, such readers, attracted to the pathos of the story, would be eager to
hear the tragedy unfold in all its evocative detail. For this, they would need to
read Hume, not Clarendon.
Finally, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the literary context of Humes
reflections on Clarendon. The question of why tragedy pleases had a long history but Humes interlocutors in this essay were Dubos and Fontenelle, two key
figures in the French belletrist tradition.47 In short, Hume did not come to Clarendons narrative from questions that were strictly historiographical. Instead, he
approached the issue from within a tradition of letters that had long interested
itself in issues of spectatorship and of literatures capacity to engage the emotions. Bringing his own preoccupations to a well-established question, he found
a fresh opportunity to articulate one of the abiding themes of his historical approach. Working within this familiar context, he added his own speculations as
a historical thinker and produced a fresh articulation of a theme we can trace
through so much of his work.48
THE COMPLEXITIES OF DISTANCE IN
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVES
In keeping with the theme of his essay (why tragedy pleases), Hume puts his
emphasis on the emotional impact of historical narrative, but at bottom the
stakes are as much ideological as affective. If Clarendons avoidance of this infinitely disagreeable subject had an evident political meaning for its own time,
so does the fact that a later reader might regard the same events as pathetic
and agreeable. This layering of one kind of distance over another stands as a
reminder not to think of distance as a unitary dimension. Rather, in exploring
the theory and practice of historical writing in the eighteenth century, we need
to be alert to the presence of several forms of engagement as well as to the variety of ways in which they combine.
Looked at in this way, the problem of understanding eighteenth-century
historiography becomes a matter of reconciling some very different postures
in relation to the pastpostures that often appear in the same author and indeed in the same text. One of the defining impulses of the Enlightenment was
its tendency to approach history as a laboratory for establishing a naturalistic
science of man. This generalizing spirit became one of the principal targets
of Romantic critique, but we should not underestimate the energy that came
with this sense of rational discovery. Witness the confident sentiments of the
Edinburgh clergyman and minor literary figure John Logan in a brief work
entitled Elements of the Philosophy of History (1781). To common minds every
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thing appears particular, Logan wrote. A Philosopher sees in the great, and
observes a whole. The curious collect and describe. The scientific arrange and
generalize.49
This side of Enlightenment historiography is well known; less so its other,
more sentimental face. There is abundant evidence, however, that historians,
much like contemporary novelists or poets, were keenly interested in engaging
the readers sympathies, especially by presenting scenes of virtue in distress. This
dimension of Enlightenment historiography has often been obscured because
it has been common to focus on the more abstract and philosophical works of
the period. If, however, we turn our attention to belles lettres and literary history
it is immediately obvious that audiences were strongly attracted to histories that
provided opportunities for sentimental identification.
In short, raising the issue of distance leads us to recognize a split between two
important features of the historical outlook of the eighteenth century. Much of
the best historical work of the period drew its strength from a theory of knowledge that assumed the importance of extensive perspectives and abstract understanding. Only the comprehensive philosophic eye, it was thought, could discern the connecting patterns that structure the development of society. At the
same time, if we turn our attention to matters of form and of morals, we have to
recognize that the discussion of narrative in this period was strongly concerned
with cultivating a sense of immediacy. Histories, it was commonly argued, no
less than fiction or verse, should exercise the moral imagination of readers by
presenting them with scenes that are as vivid and affecting as possible. If we
bring these subjects nearer, as Hume put it in his discussion of sympathy and
history in the EPM: If we remove all suspicion of fiction and deceit: What
powerful concern is excited, and how much superior, in many instances, to the
narrow attachments of self-love and private interest!50
This interplay of opposing distances gave eighteenth-century historiography
some of its most characteristic energies, but it also helps to explain why the
work of this period fell out of favor with a subsequent generation of readers,
who focused their critique on just one side of the Enlightenments legacy. It
seems reasonable to suggest that the sentimental strain in Enlightenment writing made a large contribution to the growing desire for immediacy in historical accounts. But in cultivating this taste, Hume and his contemporaries were
helping to nourish a new climate of reception by which their own work would
come to be judged as excessively cold and detached. What resulted was a second shift in distance, much like the one that Hume recognized as separating his
own generation from that of Clarendon.
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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INWARDNESS:
KAMESS ELEMENTS OF CRITICISM
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93
one of the greatest histories ever written.57 He praised Humes ease of manner
and the unforced air with which he was able to bring in his more abstract reflections. But above all Mackintosh admired Humes ability to mix pathos and
philosophical distance, thereby combining the highest attractions of sensibility
and Enlightenment. No other narrative seems to unite, in the same degree,
the two qualities of being instructing and affecting. No historian approached
him in the union of the talent of painting pathetic scenes with that of exhibiting
comprehensive views of human affairs.58
Mackintoshs homage to the balances of Humes History offers a valuable
summary of the qualities the eighteenth century looked for in historical narrative, but he adds an important qualification that belongs to the new centurys
insistence on imaginative insight. It cannot be denied, he writes, that Hume
sometimes trusted to his acuteness to supply the place of industry in the investigation of evidence. Humes preference was for reflection over research, but
more than thathe was too much the rationalist to probe the real depths of
earlier times. He was too habitually a speculator and too little of an antiquary,
to have a great power of throwing back his mind into former ages, and of clothing his persons and events in their moral dress; his personages are too modern
and argumentativeif we must not say too rational.59
Mackintosh accepted Humes failures of imagination as an important limitation, but not as a crippling weakness. Others, however, took a more categorical
view. For writers influenced by Romantic and historicist principles, the historians ability to throw his mind back into the past came to be the gateway
to historical understanding. By this test, even the best of eighteenth-century
narratives looked like a bundle of lifeless generalities, incapable of producing
a genuine understanding of earlier ages. The mind of man does not love abstractions, Godwin declares in his early and prophetic essay On History and
Romance. Read on the one hand Thucydides and Livy, and on the other
Hume and Voltaire and Robertson. When we admire the ancient historians,
we simply enter into the feelings with which these authors recorded them. By
contrast, the moderns neither experience such emotions nor excite them.60
Here, it is worth noting, the line between reading history and writing it is largely
erased; entering into the feelings of another age is something that the historian
both experiences and excites.
Godwins prescient essay gives voice to a fundamental shift that increasingly
informs the historical sensibility of the first half of the nineteenth century. John
Stuart Mill, for instance (as noted at the start of this chapter), takes Humes
failure to throw his own mind into the minds of men living in other times as
a foil for celebrating Carlyles narrative of the French Revolution. If there be
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a person, Mill argues in 1837, who, in reading the histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon has never felt that this, after all, is not historyand that
the lives and deeds of his fellow-creatures must be placed before him in quite
another manner, if he is to know them, for them to be real beings; such a person . . . feels no need of a book like Mr. Carlyles; the want, which it is peculiarly fitted to supply, does not consciously exist in his mind.61 George Henry
Lewes echoes Mill, but is even more dismissive of the previous age. In an essay
on contemporary French historical writing, he holds up Michelet and Carlyle
as two historians who share the same pictorial power of representing the past
as present, and exciting the warmest sympathies in persons and events. If there
is anyone who would prefer Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, he adds, we have
nothing more to say.62
Neither Mill nor Lewes felt it necessary to speak of Humes work in detail. A
quick backward glance was enough to mark the divide between the outmoded
elegance of the previous century and a generation that absorbed its first images
of history not from Hume but from the romances of Scott. In Britain, Macaulays
History of England (184961) clearly represented a decisive moment in establishing a new national narrative. It was not just that Macaulays Whiggish and
well-researched history easily met the political and evidential objections that
had been raised by more than a generation of Humes critics. Macaulay also
possessed a brilliant narrative style capable of suggesting the intense historical
presence demanded by the canons of Romantic historiography. Next to such a
work, the best historical writing of an earlier era was sure to seem pale. All the
historians we have ever read, wrote an enthusiastic reviewer, not excepting
Gibbon and Hume, presented history as a matter for study and an effort of
intellect. But in Macaulay, we have pictured to ourselves the living and actual
reality of the men, and the times, and the actions he describesand close the
volume as if a vast and glowing pageant had just passed before our eyes.63
LOCATIONS OF INWARDNESS FROM
ENLIGHTENMENT TO ROMANTICISM
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the readers moral sympathies. In the larger picture, then, we need to balance
these two aspects of eighteenth-century historiography, keeping in mind that
this period combined a conception of historical knowledge that emphasized
generality with a view of narrative that stressed the aesthetic and ethical value
of immediacy.
When the problem of continuity is stated in this way, some elements of discontinuity also stand out more clearly. The Romantics not only deepened the
desire for immediacy in some areas where sentimentalism had already prepared
the way, but also brought a new demand for close engagement in places where
eighteenth-century historical thought valued a greater degree of distantiation.
From this point of view, Romanticisms stylistic innovations look like an intensification of an already existing movement toward actuality and immediacy.
On the other hand, when nineteenth-century historians invited a warmer ideological response or a more thoroughly historicist conceptualization, they were
cultivating a relationship to the past that had fewer precedents in the previous
century.
Both groups of historians, it is clear, sought ways to make the past more vivid,
but for eighteenth-century writers the search for immediacy centered on the
psychology of reading, rather than the quality of knowing. Their program called
for strategies to involve the reader as closely as possible in the narrative, so that
he (and sometimes, especially for symbolic purposes, she) would respond as
a witness rather than as a detached observer.64 In formal terms, consequently,
much thought went into strategies for abridging affective distance. All this, however, was directed at the reader, and the historians own framework of understanding was not explicitly at issue. We miss the characteristically historicist
principle that equates historical understanding with the quality of insight by
which the historian penetrates the alterity of the past.
In Hume or Kames, in other words, the abridging effects of sympathy belong to moral psychology and criticism, not to historical understanding as such.
When they wrote about historical narrative, both men were writing in a tradition of belles lettres, as was Smith in his remarkable Lectures on Rhetoric.65
From within this sphere they reworked the traditional view that history teaches
by presenting ideal examples of character and action, replacing it with a new
sense that history might contribute to virtue by providing vicarious exercises
for the moral imagination, especially by soliciting sympathy for virtue in distress. But these sentimentalist doctrines did not move beyond issues of affective
and ethical engagement, or change the terms in which these Enlightenment
philosophers formulated some of their central concerns regarding historical
knowledge.
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This was what changes in the new century, in ways that begin to be seen
in Mills criticism of Humes failure to throw his mind into the situation of
another time. Mills attack on the Enlightenment expresses a concept of historical knowledge that is central to nineteenth-century thought and continues to
influence the historical profession. The key feature of this way of thinking is the
opposition it establishes between distance and insight. On this view, historical
understanding is not a matter of simple identification with the past. (Such naivety was the hallmark of the chroniclers, whose work so attracted the Romantic
imagination.) Rather, genuine historical understanding begins with a recognition of difference, but strives to overcome the opacity of the past through acts
of imaginative identification. More superficial minds (so it was believed) might
content themselves with the simplicities of factual knowledge or the abstractions of empty generalization. But when we want to understand the real experience of past times, neither abstract theorizing nor external observation would
do. Instead, we need to cultivate special qualities of historical insight and try to
see more directly into past experience.
This view of historical understandingstrengthened by liberal and nationalist ideologies and codified as a historical epistemology by Dilthey, Croce, Meinecke, and Collingwoodhas done a great deal to shape subsequent thinking
about the proper forms of historical writing. For the historians of the Enlightenment, who began with quite different ideas about distance and intelligibility, the continuing influence of these views has created a persistently hostile
climate of reception. Only now are we beginning to read eighteenth-century
historians in the light of more suitable prejudices.
But the change, though steadily and rapidly progressive, has nevertheless, been
gradual; and like those who drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river,
we are not aware of the progress we have made, until we fix our eye on the now
distant point from which we have drifted. Such of the present generation as can
recollect the last twenty or twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, will be
fully sensible of the truth of this statement.
Walter Scott, Waverley, 1814
The idea of comparing ones own age with former ages, or with our notion of
those which are yet to come, had occurred to philosophers, but it never before
was itself the dominant idea of any age.
J. S. Mill, Spirit of the Age, 1831
Ever since the French Revolution overthrew the ancien rgime, the 1790s
have been accepted as a watershed in modern historical thought. All across
the Continent, the revolutionary years shattered inherited assumptions and left
behind a lasting sense of alienation and unease. Whole nations awakened to
their increasing separation from a way of life that, once lost, had come to look
comfortable and attractive. For the French in particular as well as for nationalists in Germany the result was the birth of a new historical consciousness,
along with those alternations of nostalgic recollection and utopian prophecy
that have been characteristic of modern ideologies.1
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Though pared down almost to the point of parody, this outline represents
what has become the standard account of the emergence of a modern historical
consciousness. By contrast, Scotts observations at the conclusion of Waverley
(quoted above) indicate that these same decades also produced another, more
gradualist perspective that speaks directly to the experience of Britain, Europes
most advanced commercial society. Drawing upon revolutions that were primarily economic and social, Scott points to the fact that many of the changes
that had reshaped contemporary Scotland had slipped by almost without notice,
flowing unremarked beneath the surface of ordinary life. As a historical concept,
this perspective too belongs to modernity, because it is only with modernity that
historical consciousness embraces realms of experience that are essentially private and social. Such, for example, is the spirit of Humes injunction to study
the gradual and domestic revolutions of the state, displacing the customary
focus on the unpredictable accidents of personality and high policy.2
My aim is to explore this gradualist version of historical consciousness in relation to a remarkable record of everyday life in the 1790s. If, as Scott suggests,
the memory of the last twenty or twenty five years of the eighteenth century
provides the now distant point from which his countrymen could measure
their progress, no better resource can be imagined than Sir John Sinclairs Statistical Account of Scotland, a massive parish-by-parish survey of Scottish demography, economy, and social structures in the last decade of the century. It is
not simply that the Statistical Account offers a detailed description of everyday
matters, giving us a highly textured description of daily existence in every part
of the country. It is also important that though Sinclair launched his project as
a comprehensive survey of political economy, it was carried out by nine hundred ministers of the Church of Scotland, who brought their own interests and
experience to the individual reports.
As a body of social observers, the clergy occupied a strategic location, distinct
from the literary travelers and agricultural experts whose narrations provided
other sorts of accounts of these same regions. Most had a close acquaintance
with their parishes, born of long residence and service to a church that by English standards at least was relatively democratic. Socially their position was
middling, and in their responsibility for the welfare of the poor, they were crucial intermediaries between those who gave alms and those who received them.
But for all their intimacy with parish life, they were also educated men whose
horizons stretched beyond the local. A few were authors in their own right;
othershaving completed their studies at Glasgow, Edinburgh, or Aberdeen
must have taken away some elements at least of the social and economic concerns of the Scottish Enlightenment. As a result, the clergys surveys of parish
99
life not only documented the conditions that gave rise to the theoretical insights
of David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Millar, but also translated their philosophical inquiries into forms of local description.3
For the clergy, as for their philosophical mentors, questions of property and
material life were formative for understanding the manners and morals of their
parishioners. Against a background of rapid social and economic change, this
twinning of materialities and manners encouraged each minister to transform
Sinclairs project in his own image, so that what had begun as a national inventory of persons and property became a vast repertory of local histories concerned with changing manners and customs. Nor should we overlook the sense
of local responsibility that encouraged some of the ministers to make use of the
survey to speak out for urgently wanted improvements. Given the semi-official
character of Sinclairs inquiry, the survey must have seemed a fine opportunity
to advertise the parishs need for a new turnpike, protest the miserable wages of
the schoolmaster, or detail the woeful effects of the tax on sea coals.
To examine the Statistical Account from the point of view of the nine hundred men who actually wrote it is to read against the grain of Sinclairs stated
program as well as the bias of modern commentaries. Two modes of distance
operate in this massive compilation, not just the one closest to the heart of
its editor. The resulting tensions give the survey its texture and illuminate the
ways in which the entire nation participated in Scotts perception of historical
change.
SIR JOHN SINCLAIR AND THE STATISTICAL ACCOUNT
Sir John Sinclairs Statistical Account of Scotland was a milestone in the Enlightenments drive to apply the methods of science to the materials of social
life.4 Though not the first effort in Scotland to survey the state of population
and economy, it was certainly the most comprehensive, and by the time of its
completion in the summer of 1799, after nine years of labor by its indefatigable
editor, it amounted to twenty-one large volumes encompassing 938 parishes.
In all, some nine hundred ministers of the Scottish Church provided Sinclair
with the fruits of their labor, creating (as the modern editor writes) a complete
and at that time unique survey of the state of the whole country, locality by
locality.5
Sinclairs ambitions for the new science he called statistics were very high.
In order to secure an adequate proportion of happiness to each individual,
it is a duty incumbent on every Government, whatever its form may be, to
make minute and regular inquiries, into the circumstances of the people over
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Circa 1800
whom it is placed, for the purpose of ascertaining, to what extent they already
enjoy the advantages of political society, or in what respects their situation
can be ameliorated. To that science, which points out the proper objects of
such inquiries, and the surest means of making them effectual; the science
consequently, which tends most to promote, both the good of the individual,
and the prosperity of a state . . . I have ventured to give the name of statistical philosophy.6
In keeping with his strong commitment to an empirical and utilitarian program, Sinclair aimed to connect his work to the empirical methods that had
produced advances in other fields. Chemistry, mechanics, and other branches
of the arts and sciences had found their path forward not on the strength of
visionary theory, but on the sure basis of investigation and experiment. Political knowledge, similarly, would now proceed in the same manner. It would
analyze the real state of mankind and especially the the internal structure of
society7a social focus that Sinclair insisted was quite different from the narrower state-building objectives of earlier discussions of statistics in Germany.
In a Scottish context, the broad outline for social inquiries of this kind had
been set out a half-century before in the list of themes Hume announced at
the opening of the Fourth Appendix to his History of England. It may not be
improper . . . , he wrote, to take a brief survey of the state of the kingdom, with
regard to government, manners, finances, arms, trade, learning. Where a just
notion is not formed of these particulars, history can be little instructive, and
often will not be intelligible.8 Since the midcentury, Humes brief survey
had been elaborated and deepened in many ways, most notably in the more
sustained works of political economy pursued by Smith, Millar, and Ferguson,
all of whom strengthened the tie, so strongly articulated by Hume, between
historical understanding and political and economic analysis.
Sinclairs indebtedness to this tradition of social inquiry is obvious, but it
remains to be asked to what extent he shared his predecessors commitment to
historical understanding, or whetherwith his utilitarian motives and political
objectivesthe M.P. from Caithness had turned Scottish political economy
away from its earlier historical orientation.
Sinclair is generally regarded as a man whose vision was exclusively economic or geographical, and little of what has been reviewed so far suggests
that he viewed material life within a historical framework.9 Rather, Sinclairs
program seems exclusively aimed at investigating the political economy of the
present daya pattern broken only in a concluding suggestion that this first
survey should be followed by periodic renewals every half-century, so as to fur-
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Circa 1800
Account form the base of a structure whose higher levels are the 33 County
Reports and the Statistical Analysis of Scotland as One District.
The Pyramid of Statistical Inquiry speaks to the other and seemingly stronger
side of Sinclairs work: its determinedly Baconian emphasis on accumulated
information and empirical reasoning, along with a corresponding emphasis on
social analysis as a collective and cumulative endeavor.11 The data, he argues,
once collected, condensed, and methodized, would provide the best guidance
for future actions. knowledge, in an undigested state, the accompanying
text proclaims, may be compared, to a small portion of gold, dispersed
throughout a great quantity of ore. In that rude condition, it is, comparatively speaking, of little value or utility. but if the pure metal be
separated from the dross, its real worth is ascertainedit becomes an
object of attentionand it may be employed with advantage.12
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Circa 1800
remarkable is the sheer variety of objects and experiences which require some
form of historical description. Every parish, it seems, could provide its own particular version of what Scott calls the now distant point from which we have
drifted.
From a modern perspective, the 160 queries that make up Sinclairs questionnaire seem more ad hoc than scientific. Even so, their comprehensive curiosity
ensures that the reports are solidly ballasted with parish detail, without losing
all sense of an orderly inquiry. The general headings, as Sinclair sets them out,
are Geography and Natural History, Population, Productions of the Parish, and Miscellaneousa capacious set of themes, but not one that highlights historical considerations. On the contrary, as Sinclair writes in one of his
circular letters, the great object of the Inquiry is to know the present state of
the country, and to ascertain what means are the most likely to promote the real
interests of its inhabitants, . . . deep researches, into subjects of antiquity, are far
from being considered as equally essential.14
This presentism carries through most of the long list of particular queries.
Only rarely does the wording suggest that assessing present-day matters might
demand some form of comparison with the past.15 Under the rubric of Geography and Natural History of the Parish, Sinclair levels a barrage of questions
about the location and physical state of the district. A few of these incorporate
an element of diachronyWhat is the ancient and modern name of the Parish? What is the origin and etymology of the name?16but the sense of history
is weak, while the concern for topography and economy is strong and specific.
A second group of questions details the state of the population, bringing us
closer to the modern readers expectations about the purpose of a statistical
survey. Again an element of temporality makes an appearance. What is the
ancient state of the population of the parish, asks the first question. The second is What is now the amount of its population? And the same theme is
resumed ten questions later: Is the population of the parish materially different from what it was 5, 10, or 25 years ago? and to what causes is the alteration
attributed?17 But though these openings to history are not trivial, they are easily
lost sight of amongst a flood of particulars. There are questions concerning longevity, marital status, social rank, and occupationhow many farmers? manufacturers? craftsmen? ferrymen? miners? lawyers? physicians? apothecaries?
Questions about race or place of originhow many Jews? negroes? gypsies?
foreigners? persons born in England, Ireland, or the British colonies? Others
still concern sectarian affiliation, emigration, cases of murder or suicide, unemployment, and housing.
105
One might proceed in this way through the remainder of Sinclairs 160 queries without appreciably altering the balances already observed. Nor is the issue
strictly a matter of number. There are some queries, it is true, that raise historical
questions of the most conventional sortquestions asking, for example, about
Roman, Saxon, Danish, or Pictish sites, castles, camps, altars, roads, fortsbut
these have an air of miscellaneousness and duty that is confirmed by Sinclairs
offhandedness about antiquarian matters. On the other hand, questions about
the expence of a common labourer, when married or the usual wages of
male and female servants in the different branches of husbandry have a weight
and specificity that speak to a strongly conceived purpose.
The closest Sinclair approaches to addressing history consistently and directly comes in a small sample of additional queries, appended to the original
set. After five new questions about the state of the roads, the rent of farms, the
number of enclosures, and the famine of 1782 (all of them questions with at least
some implication for history), we find a sixth that clearly signals the heritage of
Hume, Smith, and Millar. Are there any curious or important facts, Sinclair
inquires, tending to prove any great alteration in the manners, customs, dress,
stile of living, and c. of the inhabitants of the parish, now, and 20 or 50 years
ago?18 This is the last question in Sinclairs entire circular letterthe 166th of
the list.
TIS FIFTY YEARS SINCE
The opening to history in Sinclairs questions was at best indirect, but it was
sufficient to invite a steady stream of historical description, albeit of a kind only
tangentially connected to formal historiography. For many of the correspondents (if not perhaps for the statistical philosopher himself), a close-up view
of the internal structure of their parishes implicitly required an elementary
chronicle of changing social conditions. The result is that a book designed as
a benchmark for future investigations of progress becomes a retrospect on the
half-century just ending.
Two ways of marking time crisscross through the Statistical Account. On the
one side, there are fragments of history as traditionally conceived, drawn from
the accepted narrative of the Scottish past, but given a local habitation by association with objects or places belonging to the parish. On the other side, there is
a plain-spoken chronicle that seldom looks beyond the particulars of daily life,
or takes a form more complex than a simple before-and-after regarding local
changes. About fifty years ago, we read; till about thirty five or forty years;
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Circa 1800
for thirty years past; but now the scene is completely altered and infinitely to
the better.19 Repeated endlessly across the length and breadth of the Statistical
Account, these then/now contrasts accumulate with powerful effect, mapping
the many tributary themes that make up the narrative of Scotlands social and
economic progress. But it is not just the unself-conscious reiteration that gives
this rough, approximative then-and-now its force. Simple as it is, the device
serves as a sturdy vehicle for describing the framework of social development.
As a view of history, it speaks to an understanding that was still relatively new in
European thought and one whose particularities were not easily expressed in
terms of more conventional narratives. For some time, to be sure, a number of
Scotlands best minds had been engaged in conjectural reconstructions of this
kind of history, though often at a level of generality that was the very opposite of
these reports. As a result, this massing of historical observation at ground level
provides one of the most impressive monuments we have to the Enlightenments awakening to the importance of the everyday.
There is not space to show the full range of occasions which evoke the
then/now of social observation, but here is a summary example, as given by a
Mr. Auld from the Parish of Machline:
The manner of living and dress is much altered from what it was about
50 years ago. At that time, and for some time after, there were only two or
three families in this parish, who made use of tea daily, now it is done by, at
least, one half of the parish, and almost the whole use it occasionally. At that
period, good two-penny strong ale, and home-spirits were in vogue: but now
even people in the middling and lower stations of life, deal much in foreign
spirits, rum-punch and wine. In former times, the gentlemen of the county
entered into a resolution to encourage the consumption of their own grain,
and, for that purpose, to drink no foreign spirits: But, in consequence of the
prevalence of smuggling, and the heavy taxes laid on the home-made liquors,
this patriotic resolution was either forgotten or abandoned. As to dress, about
50 years ago, there were few females who wore scarlet or silks. But now, nothing is more common, than silk caps and silk cloaks; and women, in a middling station, are as fine as ladies of quality were formerly. The like change
may be observed in the dress of the male sex, though, perhaps, not in the
same degree.20
The simple concreteness of such a chronicle carries a natural sense of conviction, since the changes it tallies seem so commonplace that they would
not have escaped any person in the parish. It is only the broader narrative of
progresstacitly assumed, but generally unspokenthat might elude observ-
107
ers with less education. By contrast, when the ministers offer more conventional
forms of historical comment, their writing often acquires an air of second-hand
learning. As men of the book, the ministers found it only too natural to buttress
their writing with an occasional reference to Buchanans History of Scotland or
perhaps to more recent literary travelers like Johnson and Tennant. Nor could
they be expected to forgo a chance to decorate their reports by touching on the
melancholy emotions associated with Gothic ruins.
It would be wrong, however, to draw such distinctions too sharply. Though
the reports seldom look beyond the boundaries of the parish, a national framework is implied in their assumption that the entire process follows from Scotlands modernization after the Union.21 Equally, significant events often take
on more force by their association with local histories. Mr. Aulds description of
Machline includes a note about religious persecutions that afflicted his parish
in an earlier day. On the green, he writes, at the town head, there is a tombstone whose inscription tells the story of five men put to death in 1685 under
the unhappy reign of James VII of Scotland:
Bloody Dunbarton, Douglas, and Dundee,
Moved by the devil, and the Laird of Lee
Dragged these five men to death with gun and sword,
Not suffering them to pray, nor read Gods word;
Owning the work of God was all their crime;
The eighty-five was a saint-killing time.22
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Circa 1800
the remote island of Skye, among a population of Highland Catholics, the turn
to toleration had fully established itself. The common people, in general, still
wear the Highland garb, reports the minister, and adhere more closely to ancient customs and manners, than their superiors. All the superstitions and delusive notions, however, which formerly accompanied popery, have entirely vanished; and the peoples ideas of religion and morality, are rational and solid.24
SCOTLAND, TRANSFORMED AND UNTRANSFORMED
The most tangible symbol of Scotlands material transformation was Edinburghs New Town. Unusually, the description was not provided by one of the
clergy. Rather, the author was William Creech, a prominent Edinburgh bookseller and civic leader, who had begun his account of Edinburgh morals and
manners well before Sinclair announced his survey. The similarity of interests,
however, meant that the booksellers observations were easily incorporated into
Sinclairs work, for which Creech (to his cost) also became the publisher. As
the culminating chapter of the Specimens volume, Creechs description of Edinburgh takes pride of place, a clear signal that the sweeping changes transforming the capital marked the direction of progress for the nation as a whole.25
Like Scott a decade later, Creech was impressed by two contradictory appearances in the changes transforming the city. On the one hand, the alterations
seemed so complete that they must surely be impossible to overlook; on the
other, they had occurred in a manner sufficiently gradual and in relation to
things so ordinary that noting their progress required a special effort of recollection. Everyone who remembers but a few years back, must be sensible of
a very striking difference in the external appearance of Edinburgh, and in the
mode of living, and manners of the people. It would be important, Creech
continues, offering a programmatic statement that looks back to Hume and
forward to Scott, to state a comparison between things as they were in 1763
and again in 1783 and then once again in 1793. In this way, many features of
the present time will probably appear prominent and striking, which, in the
gradual progress of society, have passed altogether unnoticed, or have been but
faintly perceived.26
True to this plan, much of the text consists of repeated series of dated triplets, each tracing the dotted line of progress as it carries some particular object
or custom from initial absence to later stages of increasing fulfillment. Some
of these brief narratives concern themselves with matters whose social weight
would be apparent to everyonethe physical enlargement of the city beyond
its medieval boundaries, the growth of shipping at the port of Leith, the increas-
109
ing frequency and rapidity of stage coaches to London, the number of iron
foundries or establishments for manufacturing printed cotton, the increasing
enrollments in the College. Still more persuasive, perhaps, are some notations
on the changes to older neighborhoods following the exit of the higher ranks
to the New Town. In 1763, Creech reports, People of quality and fashion
lived in houses, which, in 1783, were inhabited by tradesmen, or by people in
humble and ordinary life. The Lord Justice Clerk Tinwolds house was possessed
by a French TeacherLord President Craigies house by a Rouping wife or Sales
woman of old furniture.27
Outside of Edinburgh, no alteration in daily life marked a new era quite so
dramatically as this, but though the changes were not on the same scale as in the
capital, local observers reported them with an intense alertness to signs of social
transformation. About 50 years ago, writes William Logan, pastor for the Parish of Symington in Ayrshire, this parish, like others in the neighborhood, was
almost in a state of nature. At that period there were no inclosures, except the
glebe and a few acres adjoining. . . . The country in winter was a naked waste,
scarce a tree appeared to gratify the wandering eye, except a few adjoining the
seats of residing heritors; and the roads were all deep and unformed.28
Each part of Scotland provided its own versions of the same themes. On the
sea coast, for example, the marks of progress were different, but there was an
equally strong sense of social and material progress. From Portpatrick on the
Irish Sea, Mr. John McKenzie testifies to improvements in ports and shipping.
Formerly, he writes, the harbour was a mere inlet between two ridges of rock
which advanced into the sea. Only flat-bottomed vessels could use this harbor,
and when a boat approached the whole inhabitants, men and women, ran
down, and by main force, dragged her up the beach, out of the reach of the
waves. Now, however, one of the finest quays in Britain has been erected on
this same spot, as well as a fine lighthouse to match an existing one on the Irish
shore. Even on the darkest night the passage had now been rendered convenient and comfortable, like a street well lighted on both sides.29 The change,
adds the minister, is largely attributable to the efforts of a single enterprising
individual: whether the scene is a great capital like Edinburgh, or a provincial
town like Portpatrick, there are a few bold spirits who seem born for the purpose of rousing the multitude from a state of ignorance and torpor, from which
they are too often unwilling to be emancipated.30
Even in far-off Portpatrick, it seems, Edinburgh acted as a beacon, providing the nation with an exemplary instance of commercial progress and urban
polish. By contrast, provincial Scotland was marked by varying degrees of backwardness or incompletiona tacit comparison that aligned every part of the
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Circa 1800
111
dynamics of social progress, the spirit of enterprise, industry, and science was
ranged on one side. On the other stood the resistance of habit and prejudice,
but also at times the old-fashioned bonds of community and the human need
for the comfort of the familiar.
A minister whose backward parish was entirely dependent on its sheep added
the sympathetic comment that it was hardly to be wondered at that people
in such narrow circumstances were reluctant to risk what little they had on
untried innovations. Another lamented the emotional losses that were suffered
when these small flocks were given up. The whole family was interested in the
business: for every child claimed the property of a ewe-lamb . . . and an emulation prevailed among them, who should possess the handsomest.36 Numerous
reports remark that the decay of the feudal system was contributing to the loss of
warmth and attachment between landlords and their tenants, and some point
to this weakening as a cause of emigration from the Highlands to Americaa
problem soon to be the subject of Lord Selkirks Observations on the Present
State of the Highlands of Scotland (1805).37 Another writer, underlining the
same loss of ancient bonds of community, protests that the Highlands now suffer a degree of aristocratical influence entirely incompatible with the liberty
of British subjects.38
The lure of economic development brought a peculiar disappointment to the
minister of Roseneath, a parish whose soil was reputed to be inimical to rats. A
West Indian planter had gone so far as to carry a quantity of earth to Jamaica to
protect his sugarcanes, but the trial had not been a success. Had the experiment
succeeded, the minister remarks, this would have been a new and profitable
trade for the proprietors, but perhaps, by this time the parish of Roseneath might
have been no more.39 The ironies of progress manifested themselves differently
in the Borders, where Dr. Somerville (himself a historian of some note)40 writes
that the Union with England hurt the region not only by taking away profitable
opportunities for contraband trade, but also by encouraging emigration. When
England and Scotland stood as separate and hostile nations, he explains, emigration was neither desirable nor easy, but now Scotsmen are free to follow their
personal advantage, especially if this could be effected without the unpleasing
idea of relinquishing home. Passing from the Borders into Northumberland
was rather like going into another parish than another kingdom.41
THE PLAN OF THIS STATISTICAL HISTORY
Sinclairs ministers leave it to their editor to speak to the purposes of the survey,
and beyond occasional boasting about their own contributions to local farming
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Circa 1800
or education, they say little that reflects on their role as keepers of the annals of
the parish. An intriguing exception is a long footnote from Dr. Thomas Somerville, whose remarks on the changing character of the Borders were quoted just
above. Along with his initial report, Somerville also provided another: a description of the nearby Parish of Ancrum, where as a younger man he had learned
so much from conversing with the then minister of the parish. After urging his
young readers likewise to court the company and conversation of men of advanced age and experience, Somerville then goes on to suggest a telling parallel
between oral histories gained in this manner and the records preserved in the
Statistical Account.
If this advice were more closely attended to, Somerville writes, interesting
anecdotes, and valuable information of the sort that elude the notice of general history, while they are recent and familiar, would often be conveyed by
authentic tradition; and acquiring importance from the rapid and strange vicissitudes they exhibit, as well as from their contacts and connection with modern
events and manners, would at length, enter into record, and be rescued from
the gulph of oblivion. Oral memory, in other words, is ignored by historians,
who seek out its traditions after too much time has gone by to ascertain their
accuracy. But such information, properly preserved in written record, has great
value, acquiring importance from the rapid and strange vicissitudes they exhibit, as well from their contrast and connection with modern events and manners. By accumulating a store of facts, Somerville continues, our views of past
history would become more correct and enlarged; and the speculations of the
philosopher and politician, relative to future events, and to measures affecting
the interests of posterity, would be founded upon the most solid basis.42
In just a few sentences, Somerville takes us from an informal exchange with
our elders to the more studied kind of social memory preserved by the Statistical Accountall of it, oral as well as written, made especially valuable in a time
of rapid social transformation. What fascinates, too, is the easy pivot in the second sentence toward the wider ambitions of the statistical project, understood
as a store of facts important to the philosopher and statesman. And, as if to
confirm the implicit reference to his own work as a statistical recorder, he goes
on to bring these reflections home in a second paragraph that once again moves
easily between the two perspectives traced in this reading.
The plan of this statistical history, he writes, giving the Account a title that
connects it to history more closely than Sinclair himself ever does, seems well
calculated to supply what has hitherto been a desideratum in literature; and,
in the estimation of future generations, the locality and minuteness of the circumstances which it contains, will constitute not the smallest part of its interest
113
Two perspectives operate in the Statistical Account, giving the work both its
underlying coherence and its sense of disorderly abundance. One view aspires
to scientific observation and practical effect, while the other is shaped by habits that are more immediate and anecdotal. The two perspectives are closely
related, and in a sense their differences are simply two elements of a single
project of national improvement. Nonetheless, there is an evident tension between the editors elevated vision of a future illuminated by hopes for scientific
governance and the ministers small-scale histories of material conditions and
the progress of manners. The result is far from tidy, but thanks to a great deal
of hard work and a lack of precise boundaries, Sinclair was able to amass a vast
treasury of social description concerned with the recent history and immediate
prospects of the northern part of the kingdom.
Without question the Statistical Account provides an almost inexhaustible
survey of Scottish material life, but the notion that the Account is simply a
kind of political economy concerned with material objects and practices seems
easiest to maintain if we focus on Sinclairs own vision of a utilitarian science.
In contrast, the repeated before-and-after chronicle of the parish reports seems
to move the work toward other contexts that are both social and historical. On
this level, the pivot shifts to the immediate past, turning local narratives into
vehicles for an unusual kind of history thatif not entirely newhad never
before been practiced on such a scale.
The parish reports have their origin in Sinclairs ambition for a scientific
survey, but they amount to much more than a simple response to his queries.
As local descriptions, they speak to an experience of social change that was
felt in every corner of the country, and they give evidence that, to one degree
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Circa 1800
For two centuries at least, historians and philosophers have been grappling
with ways to understand the overlapping temporalities that inform historical
thought. The nineteenth century linked history to the alienation that results
from modernitys rupture with tradition. As a result of this distancing, historical
perspective is always cross-temporal: a record (to cite Burckhardt once again) of
what one age finds worthy of note in another.1 The twentieth century, in turn,
largely reverses these terms and finds historys root in the embedding of tradition in language. History does not belong to us, says Gadamer; we belong to
it. Defined in these terms, historical consciousness is not so much a thinking
across time as a thinking in timeperhaps time that is thought. There is no
more an isolated horizon of the present in itself, writes Gadamer, than there
are historical horizons that have to be acquired. Rather, understanding is always
the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves.2
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Circa 1800
We are faced with intriguing contradictions. If historical thought is inescapably comparativea literature of finitude and fusionhistorical writing seldom acknowledges the fact. Instead, Western traditions of historical writing
are strongly identified with narrative forms that are sequential and continuous.
There are occasions, of course, when historians want to emphasize discontinuity as well as progression. Nonetheless, except in the rather limited circumstances that this chapter explores, disjunctive narratives seem remarkably rare.
More often, historians embrace conventions of linear narrative, while disparaging genres that seem fragmentary or disjunctive. Mere chronicle can never
hope to attain the dignity of history.
At times, it is true, narrative continuities can be suspended in favor of extended comparative descriptions. Both Hume and Macaulay, for example, interrupt their histories with chapters that outline broad social and governmental
changes that are essential to acquiring a perspective on their narratives. (For
Hume, it should be recalled, the history of Britain in the seventeenth century would hardly be intelligible without the retrospect he provides in the
Fourth Appendix.) But crucial as these chapters are on conceptual grounds,
their distinctive presence only underscores the curious paradox that historys
fundamental mode of understanding appears to be at odds with its formal arrangements. One consequence is that overtly contrastive works of the kind I
want to consider are most fully developed outside of the standard conventions
of national historiography among writings of a more speculative, polemical, or
poetic character.
No one would look to Pugins Contrasts for a conventional history of British
architecture, or to Carlyles Past and Present for a scholarly narrative of provision for the poor. In both works, the eccentricity of design is a deliberate
provocation, signaling a thorough hostility to the forms as well as the ideologies
of mainstream historical writing. In other experiments, however, the rupture
is less sharp or insistent, allowing an author to mask his impatience with the
linear orthodoxy behind a somewhat gentler and more literary appearance.
Southeys Colloquies, for example, is an extended poetic fiction that mixes
cranky politics and political economy with rambles across the picturesque
scenery of the Lake District. And if, in the end, his rather prosy dialogue with
the ghost of Thomas More seems less compelling than the confrontation of
medieval and modern conditions in either Pugin or Carlyle, Southeys adaptation of the contrastive form retains some fundamental similarities of purpose
and method. Comparison takes a different turn in Richard Whatelys Historic
Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte, where a pretended skepticism about
the evidences for the real historical existence of the French emperor becomes
117
the vehicle for reasserting a sincere belief in the authenticity of the early Christian miracles. Thus in a pitch-perfect send-up of Humean prose, Whately reverses what would become the standard strategy of much Romantic historiography, and rather than bringing the distant near, estranges the matter-of-fact
solidity of the recent past.3
In the broad family of historical genres, these histories constitute no more
than a small and quarrelsome clan, and even if we add to their ranks by invoking a list of distinguished ancestors and descendants, the examples remain few,
though often illustrious. Still, numbers are not everything, and these unusual
textsboth in what they express and what they opposecall attention to some
central features of historical representation.
PUGINS CONTRASTS
To understand an oppositional writer like Pugin, it will help to begin with the
kind of conventional celebration of progress he despised and wanted to destroy.
My example is drawn from a lecture delivered to a London literary society.
Appropriately, its point of reference, like Pugins, is as much visual as verbal.
Amidst the crowded and brilliant assemblage which I see before me the lecturer begins, there will be many who have recently enjoyed the inspection of
the beautiful Cartoons in Westminster Hall, in which some of the more striking
incidents of our early history, as a nation, have been powerfully and pleasingly
depicted. In looking back to the period to which these incidents belong, and
contrasting the present with the past, they cannot fail to have been struck with
the amazing difference exhibited.4
The date was 1843the same year, coincidentally, as Carlyles Past and Presentand the occasion was the inaugural lecture to the British and Foreign
Institute by its president, the author and traveler James Silk Buckingham. The
cartoons (or preliminary designs) were on exhibit as part of a competition to
furnish decorations for the newly rebuilt Houses of Parliament, a national
project to which Pugin himself contributed significantly. The full scheme
had not yet been decided uponindeed was still subject to much discussion,
both as to the kinds of scenes that should be depicted and the style that would
be appropriate in a country better known for portraiture and landscape than
for historical painting. Even the medium was a matter of debate, and Charles
Eastlake, who presided over the project, summoned a scholarly inquisition to
examine whether both the British climate and Britains artistic genius would
support a program of frescoed wall paintings recently revived by the German
Nazarenes.5
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Circa 1800
Given the popularity of the exhibition, Buckingham had every reason to believe that his audience was familiar with the cartoons and sympathetic to their
patriotic spirit. Visitors to the exhibition would embrace these images of primitive Britain as signs of that amazing difference that linked past and present
in flattering contrast. The early Britons, Buckingham told his audience, were a
nation of savages, as wild as the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, and apparently as unteachable as these are now supposed to be.6 Indeed, well-informed
Romans came to doubt the value of their conquest, thinking the land unwholesome and the inhabitants incorrigibly stupid. If Caesars invading army could
be transported in a few hours by the South-eastern railway to London, they
would find it almost impossible to believe the transformation represented by the
splendid city of today. The modern nation had passed through many troubles
religious persecution, political tyranny, military carnageyet, thank Heaven,
we have at length reached a steady landing, where we have securely planted
the blessings of Civil and Religious Liberty . . . and where we have attained an
eminence in the progress of literature, science, and art, of which the wildest
enthusiast of past ages could never have dreamt.7
True to the spirit of the day, the Westminster cartoons took the superiority of
modernity for granted. Pugin, for his part, could not abide these notions and
called upon the force of satiric contrast to provide the whole form and meaning of his counterattack. Leaving nothing to chance, he gave his work a long
programmatic title: Contrasts; or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the
Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day; shewing the Present Decay of Taste. Accompanied by Appropriate Text (1836; rev. ed., 1841).8
This slim book is a work of loveand of hate. Prophet and propagandist of
the Gothic revival, Pugin was an outstanding draftsman and architect and the
renderings that constituted the spine of his work were the product of his own
art. To these plates he added a relatively brief and highly polemical text, so that,
as the title itself indicates, the text illustrated the engravings, more than the
other way round. Pugin then printed the whole at his own expense, a genesis
that gave the project something of an air of personal witness.9
In its briefer and ideologically cruder first edition especially, Contrasts consists largely of a series of matched architectural renditions, each depicting a
medieval building paired with its modern, neoclassical counterpart. In keeping
with his polemical purpose, Pugin pulled no punches about what he disliked
among the works of his contemporaries, or why he embraced the Gothic. But
the object was not really to encourage a taste for individual examples of the
style. Rather, each plate describes not just a building but a building type, and so
by extension the qualities of its age. And underscoring all this, the strict pairings
Fig. 6.2. A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasted Residences for the Poor. In Pugin, Contrasts.
121
of Gothic and modern relentlessly juxtapose medieval honesty against contemporary sham. No house, chapel, or market building stands simply for itself.
Each represents the virtues or vices that the age expressed in its architecture.
Pugin believed that architecture is a symbolic art and that Christianity found
its perfect symbolic expression in the Gothic style. From Christianity has arisen
an architecture so glorious, so sublime, so perfect, that all the productions of
ancient paganism sink, when compared before it, to a level with the false and
corrupt systems from which they originated.10 Pugins quarrel, however, was
not with classical art and architecture as such, but with their modern revival.
Ever since the fifteenth century, Europe had been swept by a mania for paganism that had not just affected churches and palaces, but could be seen in
every class of building and even in domestic furniture and ornament. And as
in architecture, so in life itself; everything had been corrupted by the spiritual
emptiness and pagan sensuality that had driven out the pure Christian style.11
In the first edition of Contrasts, the fall of the Gothic was explained in the
simplest possible terms. Since ancient Britain was Catholic and modern Britain
Protestant, it followed that the Reformation had been the cause of the decline
of true Christian ideals. In the second edition, however, Pugin broadened his
sense of the underlying causes. The destructive or Protestant principle, he
argued, was not so much the cause as the effect of what he called Catholic
degeneracy. On this view, the losses suffered by Catholic art were the consequence of the Renaissances revival of paganism as much as the attacks of
the Protestants.12 But in making the argument somewhat more flexible, Pugin
did not relax his fundamental conviction that architectural style and religious
virtue are one and the same. Before true taste and Christian feelings can be
revived, all present and popular ideas on the subject must be utterly changed.
Men must learn that the period hitherto called dark and ignorant far excelled
our age in wisdom, that art ceased when it is said to have been revived, that superstition was piety, and bigotry faith. The most celebrated names and characters must give place to others at present scarcely known, and the famous edifices
of modern Europe sink into masses of deformity by the side of the neglected
and mouldering piles of Catholic antiquity.13
CARLYLES PAST AND PRESENT
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Circa 1800
in his writing of history, somewhere between the copious energy of the French
Revolution and the bare bones of the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell (1845).
The earlier work is carried by sheer animation and conviction, its exuberance
motivated in part by a sense of its own daring, in part by the conviction that no
arrangement of words, however extravagant, could match the dangerous energy
of the event itself. The later book, on the other hand, registers the intractability
of its subject through the authors retreat into the role of editorso often before
a fictional device, but here an acknowledgment that he could go no further to
encompass a man of Cromwells passions and contradictions. Carlyles work
had a massive impact on Cromwells subsequent reputation, and to that extent
it can be considered a success.14 Still, the fact remains that in an important
sense Carlyle was defeated by the life of his hero.
Past and Present was written in an interval in the long gestation of Cromwell,
and its birth was as rapid as the others was protracted. A letter Carlyle wrote
to Emerson makes the reasons for this difference clear. One of his grand difficulties, he confessed, was that he could not write two books at once; cannot
be in the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth at one and the same moment. For my heart is sick and sore in behalf of my own poor generation; nay,
I feel withal as if the one hope of help for it consisted in the possibility of new
Cromwells and new Puritans: thus do the two centuries stand related to me, the
seventeenth worthless except precisely insofar as it can be made the nineteenth;
and yet let anybody try that enterprise!15
The truth is that every one of Carlyles histories entailed writing two books
at once; Past and Present is simply his most deliberate and shapely experiment
along these lines. As a tract for the times, it begins and ends in the social struggles of the 1840sthe condition of England questionbut the work is best
remembered for its second section, the description of an industrious twelfthcentury reformer, Abbot Samson, as drawn from the pages of his chronicler,
Jocelin of Brakelond. Carlyles study of Samson and his Boswell is simultaneously a chapter in the Carlylean mythography of hero worship and a serious
meditation on how to read a medieval text. Folded into the larger time dialectic
of the work as a whole, Book 2 transforms Past and Present from a political
tract (as Emerson initially calls it) into an unclassifiable mixture of contemporary polemic, medieval historiography, and political prophecy. The book
makes great approaches to true contemporary history, Emerson writes, a very
rare success, and firmly holds up to daylight the absurdities still tolerated in the
English and European system.16
Like the conservative historical critiques with which it has much in common, Past and Present questions the dogmas of progress by juxtaposing contem-
123
porary illth to the health of earlier times. Carlyle was not Pugin, howevera
man whose mtier as well as his faith permitted him to dream of resurrecting
the past in a much more literal fashion. There is a sense, it is true, in which Carlyles hero worship looks like a return to the typological thinking of the Middle
Agesthe work might have been called The Old Samson and the Newbut
a more accurate analogue might be Renaissance mirror of princes literature,
with its assumption that constitutional structures are secondary when compared
to the moral education of the magistrate. Carlyles political myth is grafted onto
a sense of history too complex in its motions to allow for any simple idea of
revival. The new Puritans Carlyle tells Emerson he is longing for cannot be
the strict descendants of Cromwells seventeenth-century veterans, much less
of Samsons twelfth-century monks. Rather, as products of new struggles inconceivable either to Jocelin or Ludlow, they must emerge out of a whole new
phasis (as Carlyle likes to say) of social life.
Samson is the perfect governor for his times. As Carlyle repeatedly emphasizes, he is a practical Abbot, a hard-working reformer, a careful planner,
a jealous guardian of the rights of his abbey, Bury St. Edmunds. Most of all,
Samson has the outer quiet and strong inward convictions requisite to a man
who would guide others. Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious feeling, without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and what others
are. To modern eyes, Samson seems a man whose nature is more practical
than spiritual. But in Samson this worldliness is another kind of devotionnot
the self-conscious questioning and everlasting doubts of modern Methodism,
but the genuine faith of an age when true worship is accomplished by honest
labor. Indeed, Samsons silence about religion is the best sign of health in his
religious life. His faith is both ordinary and deep. It is like his daily bread to
him: something which he does not need to talk much about, but feeds upon
when needed. This is the character of the Catholicism of the twelfth century,
Carlyle concludes, something like the Ism of all true men in all true centuries,
I fancy! Alas, compared with any of the Isms current in these poor days, what a
thing!17
More particulars could be given to fill out the portrait of Samson as a governor of men, but enough has been said to show what Carlyle finds worthy of
note in the life of the twelfth-century abbot. Just how we are to take note, on
the other hand, remains much more difficult to specify. It was one thing for
Renaissance orators to glorify Roman models, but quite another when a succession of Enlightenment and Romantic historians had put the past beyond direct imitation by demonstrating that customs, manners, and tradition vary from
age to age. One thing to exalt biography when the model was Plutarch, quite
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Circa 1800
another when the biographer repeatedly invoked was that hero-worshiping anecdotalist of private life James Boswell.
Samson is the hero of Carlyles story, but its narrative takes shape around the
presence of Jocelin, the indispensable but eccentric mediator whose wayward
attention simultaneously promises and frustrates every desire for a closer engagement with his times. Truly it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of
Seven Centuries . . . But here, of all helps, is not a Boswell the welcomest; even
a small Boswell? Jocelin is indeed a lesser Boswellboth his book and its hero
are built on a smaller scaleand as a witness to the times he is often sketchy, intermittent, and gossipy. Nonetheless, this obscure monk, whose chronicle had
only recently been published when Carlyle seized upon it, seemed to possess
just that nave simplicity that Romantic historians valued in chronicles. He is
an ingenious and ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd,
noticing, quick-witted man, Carlyle writes in praise of Jocelin; and from under his monks cowl has looked out on that narrow section of the world in a
really human manner.18
In a work of fiction, Jocelin might be nothing more than a narrative device.
But for Carlylea historian of consciousness rather than materialities, despite
his protestations about Workit is essential that there be a human presence
mediating the remoteness of the historical past. Everything that we know (or
cannot know) about Abbot Samson reflects the presence of Jocelin, this less
than perfect witness to his times. Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human. Through the thin watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses
of that deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method, face to face.19
Carlyle is determined to avoid the romantic touches of conventional medievalism. His Samson is worldly and clear-sighteda practical Abbot.20 His
Jocelin, gossipy and garrulous, is at best only a small Boswell. His monks
conniving, troublesome, backbitingare nothing like the creatures described
by writers of Gothic fiction. But individuality or eccentricity of detail is not
really the issue, which lies in the simple, stern message that the past is not to be
treated as a projection of the present, as a figment of its need for the ideal or the
imaginative. The imaginative faculties? Rude poetic ages? The primeval
poetic element. Oh, for Gods sake, good reader, talk no more of all that! It was
a Reality, and it is one.21
It was, we might add in clarification, a separate reality, not easily aligned with
modernity. Much emphasis, therefore, is placed on the opacities obstructing
our comprehension of the past: the utterly changed conditions that make it so
difficult to imagine life lived along very different lines, as well as the lacunae
125
or inarticulacies that make Jocelin seem as frustratingly distanced as he is indispensably necessary. The monks are like prehistoric fossils, human Mastodons or Stegosauruses, creatures of an era long since buried and never to
be revived. Will not the reader peep with us into this singular camera lucida,
where an extinct species, though fitfully, can still be seen alive?22 Jocelin himself, however, is not a mute fossil, but a living soul and a writer, and in many
ways it is his humanity that produces the most severe difficulties as well as the
greatest rewards. Historian that he is, Jocelin has views of his own about what is
noteworthy about his age. Why is it, Carlyle complains, that we know so little
of King John, signatory of Magna Carta, since John spent two entire weeks
under Jocelins eye at St. Edmundsbury? Jocelin marks down what interests
him; Carlyle observes, entirely deaf to us.23 The separation is immense, but
not finally absolute. When we stare into the dimly lit world opened up by the
pages of Jocelins chronicle, here and there some real figure is seen moving . . .
whom we could hail if he would answer;and we look into a pair of eyes deep
as our own, imaging our own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we, for the
time, are become as spirits and invisible!24
This striking reversal by which the living medieval past thrusts the nineteenthcentury present into ghostly futurity expresses a powerful theme of Carlyles
historical imagination. The past, Carlyle repeatedly assures us, so near to being
irrecoverable, is at the same time utterly real and present to itself, and whatever
slight possibility remains to later ages of seeing into it again must begin by recognizing that it too was once a living world. This is perhaps the largest lesson
Carlyle asks us to contemplate: that there was a past, unlike our own time in
almost every way, but just as real to itself as this time is to us. To juxtapose these
two realities is not to make them blend into onethat would be giving in to
romancebut to force us to stare into the spaces between.
SOUTHEYS COLLOQUIES
The last time I saw Southey was on an evening at Taylors, Carlyle recollected. We sat on the sofa together; our talk was long and earnest; topic
ultimately the usual one, steady approach of democracy, with revolution (probably explosive), and a finis incomputable to mansteady decay of all morality,
political, social, individual, this once noble England getting more and more
ignoble and untrue in every fibre of it. Our perfect consent [made] the dialogue
copious and pleasant.25 There is something engagingly self-parodying in this
listing of well-practiced conservative attitudes, as the two earnest doomsayers
pass a pleasant evening sharing a sofa.
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Circa 1800
The affinities between the two men seem clearest when Past and Present
is brought together with Southeys Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of
Society (1829). Ideologically, the two works share common ground, especially
a powerful anger against the horrific social conditions of early industrial England and a scornful view of the economic orthodoxies that justify such cruelties under the guise of Malthusian or Smithian science. Formally, too, there is
an obvious analogy between Southeys imaginary dialogue with the ghost of Sir
Thomas More and Carlyles strenuous effort to inhabit the alien world of Jocelin. However, if we examine the uses of contrast in each, significant differences
emerge in the ways the two works juxtapose past and present.
Southey worked on the Colloquies off and on through much of the 1820s,
a time dominated by agitation over Catholic emancipation and electoral reformboth of which Southey vehemently opposed. As early as 1820 he reported
that he had made a good beginning. I have just finished the introduction to
such a book as is wanteda full statement of the existing diseases of society,
with a view of the consequences etc. You know how much this has been in my
thoughts, and I think I have chosen a good form for rendering it more effectual and more attractive than if it appeared as a direct political essay. Southey
claimed the Consolations of Philosophy as his inspiration, but he also acknowledged that the model would be hard to detect in his finished product.26 The historical intention, in any case, was quite clear. More had lived in the age of the
restoration of letters, of the beginnings of printing, and of the upheavals of
the Reformation. By tracing the consequences of these things . . . and drawing
the parallel between that age and this, Southey hoped to draw out some important home truths. His motto consists of three words taken from St. Bernard
(ones that could as easily have served Carlyle): Respice, aspice, prospice
Look to the past, look to the present, look to the future!and upon this text I
hope to preach a stirring sermon.27
Carlyles contemporary history (as Emerson calls Past and Present) belongs
to no established genre, but the Colloquies loosely continues the classical and
early modern tradition of dialogues of the deada genre most prominently
represented at this time by the imaginary conversations of Southeys friend,
Walter Savage Landor.28 With his penchant for travel writing and other relatively relaxed forms of description, Southey moves the genre toward a more
naturalistic convention (if talking to a ghost can be regarded as naturalistic).
Here, one of the speakers is still alive (and, though given a Spanish name
Montesinoshe is clearly a proxy for the author). The two men meet companionably in a variety of well-specified settings. Some of their encounters take
place out of doors, accompanied by a good deal of picturesque description of
Plate 1. Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770. Oil on canvas,
152.6 214.5 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Transfer from the Canadian
War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, England, 1918).
Photo NGC.
Plate 3. Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth
to Be Broken Up, 1838, 1839. Oil on canvas, 91 122 cm. Turner Bequest, 1856.
The National Gallery, London.
Plate 4. Ford Madox Brown, Cromwell on His Farm, 187374. Oil on canvas,
143 104.3 cm. LL3641. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Courtesy National Museums Liverpool.
Plate 5. Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England, 185255. Oil on panel,
82.5 75 cm. Courtesy Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.
Plate 6. Gavin Hamilton, The Death of Lucretia (The Oath of Brutus), 176367.
Oil on canvas, 213.4 264.2 cm. Courtesy Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection.
Plate 8. John Singleton Copley, The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September
1782, 1783. Oil on canvas, 302 762 cm. Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.
Plate 9. Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Field of Waterloo, exhibited 1818. Oil on canvas,
support, 147.3 238.8 cm. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856,
Tate Collection. Tate, London 2011.
Plate 10. David Wilkie, Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch, 1822. Apsley House,
The Wellington Museum, London (Trustees of the V&A). English Heritage Photo Library.
127
the Lake District. Others are staged in Montesinoss library, permitting the
scholar-poet to evoke the literary pleasures that come from rambling through
his own well-stocked shelves.
Southey took considerable pride in the lighter matter which softened the
austerity of the dialogue form, but he was deeply offended by the suggestion of
his publisher, John Murray, that the book might be more successful if it gave
more space to entertainment and less to controversy.29 In fact the easy conversation and naturalistic settings are not irrelevant to the broad question of how well
the Colloquies evoke a historical past. Beginning with Southeys earliest readers,
critics have complained that Southeys dialogues fall flat because there is no real
tension between the two speakers. In a famous attack, Macaulay refers to the
dialogue as a conversation between two Southeys, equally eloquent, equally
angry, equally unreasonable, and equally given to talking about what they do
not understand.30 Similarly, though a little more temperately, a reviewer for
the Monthly Review writes that Southey has merely adopted the appearance
of dialogue. The interlocutors . . . fall almost immediately into the same strain;
and rather relieve each other as they happen alternately to be out of breath,
(if this may be said of a ghost). What is the point, the reviewer complains, of
bringing back from the dead the spirit of one of the wisest men that England
has ever produced, merely to make him a kind of stalking horse?31
The dialogue would certainly be livelier if Montesinos and More could be
brought to quarrel, but the complaint misses one of the central ideas of the
book. The close identification between the two speakers (and hence the partial
elision of their two historical periods) rests upon Southeys claim to a special
likeness between himself and the man who wrote the Utopia. On his first appearance, the spirit reveals that he has selected the poet for the single purpose
of speaking to him about the present condition of Englandthese portentous
and monster-breeding times. It is your fate, More insists, as it had been his own,
to live during one of the grand climacterics of the world. And I come to you,
rather than to any other person, because you have been led to meditate upon
the corresponding changes whereby your age and mine are distinguished.32
We have both speculated, says the ghost of More, in the joy and freedom
of our youth upon the possible improvement of society; and both in like manner have lived to dread with reason the effects of that restless spirit, which . . .
insults Heaven and disturbs the earth.33 Both men, in short, have learned important lessons from the experience of failed idealsa fact that makes Southey
a fit person to receive the message brought by Utopias author. But Southey
also claims to share in Mores historical lineage, since the revolutions of his
own day can be traced back to forces that had their origin in Mores lifetime.
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Circa 1800
By comparing the great operating causes in the age of the Reformation and in
this age of revolutions, More insists, going back to the former age, looking at
things as I then beheld them . . . which are now developing their whole tremendous power, you will derive instruction, which you are a fit person to receive
and communicate.34
Clearly Southey approaches the traditions linking past and present in a spirit
quite different from Carlyle, who emphasizes the discontinuity between the two
eras and the opacities that complicate historical understanding. Fewer barriers,
it seems, separate Southey from the times of Thomas More. On the contrary,
Southey argues that there is a strong analogy between the two periods and that
lines of continuity link them to one another. This age is as climacteric as that
in which [More] lived, he writes to Landor, in explaining once again the plan
of the book; in fact we are beginning now to perceive the whole effects of the
three great events of his agethe invention of printing, the Reformation, and
the discovery of America.35 Equally, Southeys choice of More as a ghostly interlocutor has the effect of bringing the past right up on stageor at least into
his library and familiar environs. Not, like Jocelin, a remote and often frustratingly elusive witness, More is a lively ghost who is always willing to speak his
mind, and the consonance of the dialogues two voicesthe past chiming in
with the presentmeans that the ideological summons is generally consistent.
Little exegetical effort, in short, is required to bring the past to life, only the
patience to wait for the ghosts next appearance.
In Carlyle, the stubborn limitations of the mediating witness lend drama to
the process of discovery, but may also leave us uncertain about how to work
with the fragmentary understanding we have acquired. In Southey, the reverse
obtains. Despite any number of well-calculated references to Sir Thomass life
and works, Southeys More is not so much a historical figure as a convenient fiction. The resulting concordance of opinions gives Southeys reading of British
history a consistent ideological voice, but the gain in clarity comes at the cost
of historical conviction.
What Southey sacrifices by his strategy emerges more clearly when we compare the ghostly More of the Colloquies to the same figure as he is presented in
another of Southeys works of the same period, The Book of the Church (1824).
Southey wrote this polemical defense of the Protestant Church in part to glorify the heroes of the Reformation. Names like Wycliffe, Tindal, and Latimer,
he argues, should be as well known to Englishmen as Blake or Nelson.36 In
this company, Thomas More, persecutor of Protestant heretics, is necessarily a
problematic figure, as Southey fully acknowledges: Sir Thomas More is represented, by the Protestant Martyrologists as a cruel persecutor, Southey writes;
129
None of the historical works we have looked at so far quite prepares us for
the reversals of past and present performed by Richard WhatelyOxford don,
professor of political economy, and later archbishop of Dublin. As an author,
Whately is remembered for some occasional literary essays, as well as his Elements of Logic (1826) and Elements of Rhetoric (1828), but as a younger man he
published an anonymous satiric tract called Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1819). The title echoes Horace Walpoles Historic Doubts on
Richard the Third (1760), a witty refutation of Shakespeares play, but Whatelys
target is Humes essay Of Miraclesa masterpiece of Enlightenment skepticism. Contra Walpole, Whatelys doubts focus on the most recent and best
documented chapter in European history, the career of Napoleon Bonaparte.
First published anonymously only four years after Waterloo and subsequently
elaborated in a series of editions, the work purports to question the historical evidence for the life of the French emperor, then exiled in Elba. Deftly parodying
Humes genially skeptical arguments, Whately explores a range of reasons why
a man of common sense and independent mind might want to question the evidence for so much of what news and rumor attributed to this oversized hero. By
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Circa 1800
Humes test of truth to experience, a great deal of Napoleons life must surely be
fiction. Just consider the inconsistencies in the reports of his military exploits,
the contradictory assessments of his character, and the flagrant self-interest of
newspapers, our major source of information. Suspicion must also fall on the
convenient circumstances of the exile, which ensures that Bonaparte is isolated on a remote island where no credible authority can speak to him, followed
later by the even more convenient report of his death. And behind it all, there is
the sheer unlikelihood of such extraordinary events, evidently belonging to the
realm of romance rather than of fact:
All the events are great, and splendid, and marvelous; great armies, great victories, great frosts, great reverses, hair-breadth scapes . . .everything happening in defiance of political calculation and in opposition to the experience
of past times. . . . Every event, too, has that roundness and completeness which
is so characteristic of fiction; nothing is done by halves; we have complete victories, total overthrows, entire subversion of empires, perfect re-establishments
of them, crowded upon us in rapid succession.38
So improbable is all this, Whately concludes, applying Humes test for the credibility of testimony, that anybody not ignorant of history and human nature
surely must wonder how far they are conformable to Experience, our best and
only sure guide.
Whatelys satire on Humean skepticism cleverly estranges the recent past in
order to retrieve the historical reality of an ancient onethe past of the Gospels
and of the early Church. In this sense, Historic Doubts works in the opposite direction to so much Romantic historiography, whose first impulse is to overcome
skepticism by evoking an atmosphere of belief in the most direct and palpable
way. Unlike Pugin or Southey, Whately does not attempt to draw the age of
faith nearer. Rather, while maintaining an apparent affective and ideological detachment, he makes historical testimony itself the subject of historical
inquiry, and in the undeniable reality of the life of Napoleon, he finds a way of
questioning the evidential paradigm by which modern skeptics put narratives
of the early Church beyond the credence of history.39
It would be possible to add other titles to this short survey of early nineteenthcentury narratives built on a framework of comparison or disjunction. Southeys
Lake District variant on the dialogue of the dead, for example, might be paired
with John Galts curious adaptation of the legend of the Wandering Jewa
131
figure who, in this odd marriage of Gothic frame-tale and fictive eyewitness
report, is condemned to wander in eternity through the textbook of world history.40 Similarly, the distinctive shape of Past and Present finds an echo in the
double narrative of Charles Knights The Old Printer and the Modern Press
(1855), though here the juxtaposition of medieval and modern is a vehicle for
a message of progress rather than corruption.41 And Whatelys brilliant parody
of Hume is paralleled in Cornwall Lewiss Egyptological Method, an amusing
take-off on Niebuhrs speculative treatment of the legends of early Rome.42 But
even allowing for a small number of additionssome (like Galts) little more
than gimmicky experiments and none having the moral seriousness or literary
vigor of the principal exampleswe would be left with a small and sometimes
eccentric body of work.
A brief return to Pugin suggests a more profitable avenue. It is testimony to
Pugins reliance on visual argument that his title seems perfectly chosen. In
fact, the sharp fold of pictorial comparison gives the book its distinctive structure; otherwise, the accompanying text proceeds in the largely linear fashion
that is customary in historical writing. Remove Pugins drawings, in short, and
we have something like Cobbetts diatribe against the social effects of Protestantism in his History of the Reformation in England (1829), or (to take the other
side) Southeys anti-Catholic polemics in his Book of the Church.43 All three
books are polemical and all three make the Reformation the hinge of English
history. Only Contrasts expresses this view in its formal structureand then by
dint of visual, not verbal narrative.44
As a formal device, contrast is more easily managed in visual images than
in verbal texts, with the result that visual contrast is employed across a wider
spectrum than its textual cousin. Language seldom produces the quick impact
belonging to visual contrast. The slow-paced, cumulative structures of language
lend themselves better to dialogue or irony than to the outright oppositions of
Pugins engravings. Nor is it easy to imagine a writer of Pugins temperament
carrying out a double-columned verbal comparison that would not dissolve into
mere caricature. Pugin could draw a modern house front in full detail, but he
would have been hard put to describe one with anything like the same sense of
completeness he gave his plates.
Pugins work drew upon long traditions of paired or contrastive images. Pagan themes like Sacred and Profane Love would not have appealed, nor baroque equivalents like Martha and Mary. But Pugins Catholic spirit might
have found an appropriate ancestry in the typological pairings of the Middle
Ages (Christ and the Old Adam, for example) or perhaps the grandly contrastive scene of the Last Judgment. (Pugin himself alludes to this tradition in one
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of the plates: They Are Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting.) As a visual
satirist, he could have found indirect inspiration among the printmakers of a
more recent period, for whom contrast imagery was a useful device, whether
the point was to compare French tyranny and English liberty or to attack the
two-facedness of well-known politicians.45 Often, however, contrast has less to
do with the visual image alone than with a deliberate incongruity between title
and image. Witness Gillrays Dido in Despair (1801) in which a comically plump
Emma Hamilton wails by a window as Nelson sets sail in the background, leaving his Queen of Carthage to her lamentations. This masterpiece of snobbery
is an inversion of Reynoldss fashionable portraits in which the painter dressed
his women as literary characters or Muses.46 Gillrays comedy centers on the
unfortunate mistress made to seem preposterous by the cruel contrast with
high-flown Virgilian passions, as though the comparison were proposed by the
famously histrionic heroine herself. Had Gillray moved Nelson to the center,
the comedy might have pointed elsewhere, its ironies aimed at the fickleness of
heroes, or the artistic pretensions of the grand style.
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135
Fig. 6.6. James Barry, The Death of General Wolfe, 1776. Oil on canvas support,
148.1 239.1 cm. New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, New Brunswick.
ance.) Cromwell is the protagonist of this story, but shown in a bare setting that
leaves him alone with the corpse, he becomes a figure of thought rather than of
actiona mute witness to historys meaning. Earlier portraitists had resorted to
emblems to illuminate Cromwells notoriously closed character, but in keeping
with the realism of his age, Delaroche rejects symbolic devices for a psychological portrait that is more difficult to parse.47 Much of the paintings impact rests
on just this absence of verbal or visual clues to Cromwells cast of mind, so that
Cromwells private thoughts become the true subject of the work. And yet, if
there is no way to know what Cromwell is thinking, it is plain that he has no
choice but to continue along the path he has chosen, both for himself and for
his country. In the stillness of this moment, it seems that Cromwell holds both
past and future in his mind, but so too does the artist, for whom the figure of the
English regicide is by now a twice-mediated presence.48
Great figures like Cromwell or Wolfe were the natural focus of the grand
style, leaving smaller lives and private experience as the mark of subordinate
genres. From this point of view, genre-contrast is built into any painting of common lifeby virtue of theme or formal complexitythat bids to be read as
a history. David Wilkie made a pioneering move in this direction with the
Village Politicians (1806) (figure 8.14), but far more boldly in his Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch (1822) (plate 10). As the first news of the
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137
family is equally successful in suggesting how ordinary lives are drawn into the
flow of history. And if the unself-conscious wrestling of the boys on the beach
is a foil for the melancholy thoughts of the adults, so too is the contrast between the quiet English seaside and the memory of an unseen battlefield in
Belgium.49
Turners Fighting Temeraire (1839) is one of many nineteenth-century narratives in which contrastiveness takes the form of compressing past and future
within a carefully chosen moment (plate 3). This is not the place for an extended
discussion of Turners famous image of the passing of the age of sail, nor is it
easy to break through the fog of familiarity that surrounds Britains favourite
painting. Perhaps it will help a little to think of it not only as a companion to
Rain, Steam, and Speed (1844)50 or PeaceBurial at Sea (1842),51 but also as the
most complete fulfillment of the possibilities projected by Pugins title.52 And
as in Carlyles use of the same contrastive device, the juxtaposition of this onceproud wooden battleship with the smudgy presence of the coal-fired tug directs
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us neither to the isolated horizon of the present in itself (as Gadamer calls
it), nor to its supposed counterpart in the past. Instead, the Temeraire calls our
attention to an in-between state that forms a necessary part of both horizons.
The ease with which visual images lend themselves to comparison seems to
pay off in a greater range and adaptability of contrast-effects. In visual narrative,
sentiment seems as natural as polemic, earnestness as irony. For nineteenthcentury history painting, one important consequence lies in the invitation that
contrast extends to narratives of changeespecially those expressions of transformed understanding or awakening feeling which are the hallmarks of Victo-
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rian art. Such scenes are as often domestic as historical, but when the awakened
mind belongs to a distracted Oliver Cromwell inspired by a sacred text,53 or
even an anonymous pair of impoverished emigrants, staring out to sea and an
unknowable future, the result can be a powerful new manner of suggesting the
movements of history. Ford Madox Browns Cromwell on His Farm (187374)
and The Last of England (185255) present history in two quite different settings,
but in both pictures the blank gazes of the protagonists project a sense of an inner state wholly disconnected from the surroundings (plates 4 and 5). Cromwell
on His Farm is a conversion narrative in which the major contrast lies between
the calling taking hold of the mind of the hero and the this-worldly bustle of
life on his farm. In The Last of England, only half of the contrast is shown,
but the receding coast of England signals the depressed thoughts welling up
behind the staring eyes of the emigrant couple. Hidden too is a young child,
whose tiny hand is just visible under the mothers cloak.54 For all their thematic
differences, the two paintings share a common aesthetic. The principal figures
remain isolated behind a pane of glassy silence, while the thoughtless energies
of common life loose themselves in a centrifuge of restless detail.
Like any countercurrent, the polemical contrastiveness of Carlyle or Pugin
has to be read against the dominant modes of its age. The nineteenth century is
remembered as one of the great ages of narrative historya reputation that has
a great deal to do with the continuing belief in history as a continuous and fully
plotted story. Many things came together to reinforce this view, most especially
the call of nationalist ideologies, whose faith in the continuities of time, space,
and tradition deeply informed historical thought. Indeed, it is clear that narrative historiography was a force for the creation of modern nationhood as much
as a publicist for its victories. Historys nearest competitor in this respect was
the historical novel, but this rivalry only serves to confirm the premise that
whether dressed as fiction or facthistory would naturally take the form of a
totalizing narrative.
In a long view, however, historys identification with linear narrative reaches
much farther back than the century of Hallam and Macaulay. Nineteenthcentury historians could summon a long line of ancestors to lend prestige to the
writings of their own age. For an era so conscious of its own modernity, to write
historical narrative under the eye of Thucydides and Livy was to hope that the
greatness of modern nations might be preserved as long as the memory of the
ancients. By the same token, writers who despised the comforts of the dominant
school saw contrastiveness as a sharp-pointed instrument that might puncture
the complacencies of Whiggery and estrange the ideology of progress.
The wonder child among historical genres today is surely the history of science, but until a generation ago (roughly the legacy of Thomas Kuhn) this
glamorous offspring of two very different disciplines seemed barely historical at
all.1 Something similar could be said of the flowering of literary-historical writing circa 1800, another hybridized historical genre that historians have largely
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143
exists, and if poetry has something more divine in it, the novel savours more of
humanity. Considered as memorials of social life, novels cannot be matched.
No authentic document of the period rivals Joseph Andrews as an account
of the moral, political, and religious feeling of the time of George II.6 This
work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind.7
Scott, too, is strongly attracted to any form of literary and historical record
that evokes the past in familiar terms: among them the medieval romance
and its modern counterpart, the novel of manners. The novels of Fielding and
Richardson, he writes in a discussion of chronicles and romances, are even
already become valuable, as a record of the English manners of the last generation. How much, then, should we prize the volumes which describe those of
the era of the victors of Cressy and Poitiers.8 Romances give us an intimate
knowledge of another time; they tell us what our ancestors thought, the language they used, their sentiments, manners, and habits. Narratives of this sort
are an essential supplement to regular history, but which in the end is valued
the highest is difficult to say.9
Behind arguments of this kind stands a conventional image of history, portrayed as a solemn and monumental literature lacking the ease and informality
of other routes to the past. The same comparison attracted lovers of literary biography, a genre that competed with History by devoting itself to lives valued
for private thoughts rather than public actions. No species of writing combines
in it a greater degree of interest and instruction than Biography, writes Robert
Bisset in a passage that strongly evokes the language of distance. Our sympathy is most powerfully excited by the view of those situations and passions,
which, by a small effort of the imagination, we can approximate to ourselves.
Hence Biography often engages our attention and affections more deeply than
History.10
Affective proximity of the kind Bisset treasures comes in part from the sympathetic character of the individual around whom the narrative is written (in
this case a life of Addison), but it also seems inherent in the genre itself, with its
triangular sympathies between a reader and two writers. Like other commentators, Bisset connects literary lives with the identificatory emotions belonging
to sentimental reading. When we read the works of great writers, he insists, we
anxiously desire to know the histories of those from whom we have received
so much pleasure and instruction. William Godwin, similarly, thinks that identification is an essential part of the pleasures of reading. I know not how it is
with other men, he writes; but for myself, I never felt within me the power to
disjoin a great author from his work. When I read with delight the production of
any human invention, I pass irresistibly on to learn as much as I am able, of the
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writers personal dispositions, his temper, his actions, and the happy or unhappy
fortunes he was destined to sustain.11 No wonder that so many works included
a prefatory life of the author.
Plutarchan biography complements classical historiography by providing a
place to chronicle the private life and character of public men. In contrast,
Boswellian literary biography fashions its narrative out of lives that have little to
offer in the way of eventfulness or public importance. In a sentimental culture,
however, public life often seems remote unless enlivened by what journalists
today call human interest, causing readers to seek out narratives that soliloquize inward feeling. Hence the eighteenth centurys attraction to the epistolary novel, as well as to biography in the form of the life and lettersthe
latter being an especially attractive proposition when the biographical subject
is also a writer fluent in the language of the sentiments. Both of these uses
of epistolarity (novelistic and biographical) are on display in Anna Barbaulds
admiring edition of the correspondence of Samuel Richardson. Barbauld is an
acute analyst of the advantages and disadvantages of epistolary fiction, but she
seems to be equally moved by the ordinary letters of Richardsons wide circle of
correspondents. Nothing, she writes with evident pleasure, tends so strongly
to place us in the midst of the generations that are past, as a perusal of their
correspondence. To have their very letters, their very handwriting before our
eyes, gives a more intimate feeling of their existence, than any other memorial
of them.12
Much of what was recorded in Richardsons letters had no relationship to
authorship, but there was something about literary lives that seemed to provoke sentimental interest. Even those whose connection with literature was no
more than commercial might attract an extra measure of curiosity. Witness a
Blackwoods review of The Life and Errors of John Dunton, the autobiography
of a London bookseller from the early years of the previous century. Despite all
that had been preserved from this period, the reviewer notes, Duntons indefatigable self love succeeds in adding still more to our picture of those times.
If only Duntons example would not be lost on his successors: There are no
other traffickers, with whose minutest and most peculiar objects of interest so
large a portion of readers must at all times be found to sympathize. The autobiography of any other tradesman would have no interest to anyone outside of his
own particular calling. Yet what would be more amusing for the great masses
of the reading public in 1919 [i.e., a hundred years on] than a Sketch of the Life
and Errors of William Blackwood, or Archibald Constable, or John Ballantyne, citizens of Edinburgh,or of William Davies, or John Murray, citizens of
Londonwritten in true Duntonian fulness and freedom.13
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The long eighteenth century saw a marked rise in enthusiasm for the Elizabethans, balanced by a waning interest in the Augustans. This revolution in
taste reflected this periods growing interest in the literatures of earlier times,
just as the reversal of literary reputations provided evidence of literatures historicity. In point of fact, however, one needed to look no further than a library of
childhood favorites to see that literature, like politics, was subject to moments
of upheaval.
Eighteenth-century discussions of literature seldom make much of a division
between aesthetic pleasures and matters of morals and manners. Addison, for
example, continues to be admired as a master of style, but his reputation as a
writer is as much social as literary. Johnson, most notably, places Addison in a
genealogy that begins with Castiglione and della Casawriters now suffering
neglect precisely because they succeeded in effecting that reformation which
their authors intended. Before the appearance of the Tatler and the Spectator,
however, England had no masters of common life. There were no writers,
that is, who wrote to instruct Englishmen in the smaller sorts of duties, nor
did periodicals themselves (the instruments of this reformation) predate the
Civil War.14
Johnsons narrative of the progress of manners is more fully developed in
a work of the first decade of the nineteenth century, Nathan Drakes Essays,
Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and
Guardian (1805). Drake is alert to the problem identified by Johnson, namely
that the very success of the reformer makes it difficult for later readers to appreciate his accomplishments. Accordingly, the literary historian has to re-create
the lost feeling of distantiation. In this light, Drake suggests that his own survey
of literature and manners should impress the reader with an idea of the value
of the instruction which the periodical essay is calculated to afford; and will
enable us, likewise, in a succeeding part of our work, clearly to ascertain to
what amount we are indebted to these papers [the Tatler and Spectator] for the
progress of civilization and the diffusion of learning and morality.15 Inevitably,
Johnson is one of those quoted to give authority to this picture of Englands
sometime ignorance and incivility. So, even more revealingly, is the Spectator itselfa nice example of the reciprocity of literary history and manners by
which the literature of another age serves to document its social history, while
the same social history becomes a context for understanding its literature.
The sketches drawn from such sources help Drake to revivify the historical
contrasts on which his retrospect on English manners relies. Not content,
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Drake was as capable as anyone of enlivening his history with patriotic sentiments, but his view of literary progress seems essentially unaffected by the
Francophobia that was rife in this age of Anglo-French hostilities. Within the
same decade, however, a counternarrative began to emerge, fashioned by writers as disparate as Robert Southey and Francis Jeffrey. Their revision of the
long-established outline of literary progress (of which Drake was a late representative) not only presented a strikingly different view of the stages of national
literature, but also gave literary history a more overtly ideological summons.
A summary of the new narrative of national traditioncompact but essentially completeis set out in Southeys preface to Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807). Southey presents his anthology as a continuation of Elliss
Specimens, but in paying this compliment to the older collection, he endows
the earlier volume with a new historical significance. Together, Southey asserts,
the two collections will exhibit the rise, progress, decline and revival of our
Poetry, and the fluctuations of our poetical taste, from the first growth of the
English language to the present times.18
Southeys subject is taste, but initially his choices are as much historical as
aesthetic. The taste of the publick may better be estimated from indifferent
Poets than from good ones, he argues. The ordinary poet writes for his own
time, the great one for posterity; Cleveland and Cowley, who were both more
popular than Milton, characterise their age more truly.19 In practice, Southeys
criteria are mixed, but he attempts to give his work consistency by imposing a
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chronological divide at the Restoration. Up to this point, his choices are largely
governed by a documentary purpose; afterward, poetic merit becomes a larger
factoralbeit for a revealing reason. Those of later date must stand or fall by
their own merits, Southey argues, because the sources of information, since
the introduction of newspapers, periodical essays, and magazines are so numerous. The student of later times, in other words, hasnt the same need for poetry
as social documentation, since by then other kinds of record play a larger part.
The Restoration is the great epoch in our annals, both civil and literary: a new
order of things was then established, and we look back to the times beyond, as
the Romans under the Empire, to the age of the Republick.20
Even so, Southeys division of literary history into two distinct epochs goes
well beyond temporal distance and the accompanying scarcity of documents.
The return of the Stuarts from Continental exile also marked the essential moment of decline, when a native English style gave way to foreign influence.
Spurred by the energies of the Reformation, then checked in the reign of Mary,
English poetry bloomed under Elizabeth with the sudden luxuriance of an
Arctick summer.21 In the strife of the Civil War, however, poetry began to suffer, and the great age of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage left no successors.
(The nation was too busy to be amused, and we had now imbibed the barbarizing superstition of Scotland.)22 At last, the Restoration gave the country back
the tranquility required for art, but the return of Charles II proved still more
damaging than civic strife had ever been. French tastes were imposed on the
country of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, and though the poets
who followed might be praised for their versification, their wit, or their reasoning, these things do not constitute poetry.
In short, Southey concludes, dramatically reversing what had been the conventional narrative of progressive refinement, the time which elapsed from the
days of Dryden to those of Pope, is the dark age of English poetry.23 Pope was
completely a Frenchman in his taste, and yet even in Popes own day a Reformation had begun. Thomson called the nation back to the study of nature,
and the growing taste for Shakespeare gradually brought our old writers back
to notice, helped along by the good work of Warton, and especially of Percys
Reliques of Ancient Poetry. For Southey the latter was the great literary epocha
of the present reignhence (even more than Elliss Specimens perhaps), the
true begetter of Southeys own collection.24
For all its crudity of outline, Southeys schematization of British literary history seems too powerful to ignore. Along with a strong dose of anti-French sentiment and the talismanic name of Shakespeare, Southeys polemical literary
history carries the conviction of a completely plotted narrative. And indeed,
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within a very few years this narrative, or one quite similar, was adopted and
elaborated by Jeffrey and others, becoming in many ways a conventional (and
conventionally Whig) view of British literary tradition. In this context, it is worth
noting that Jeffreys Edinburgh Review first subjected Southeys argument to unmitigated scorn. Although this hostility ran along party lines (a matter of poetic
tastes as well as political ones) the Edinburghs antagonism to Southeys work
illustrates something important in the periods developing interest in literaryhistorical questions.
The author of the attack on Southey was Henry Brougham, one of the mainstays of the Edinburgh and a figure as closely identified with its outlook as any
contributor, excepting Francis Jeffrey himself. In reviewing the Specimens,
Brougham takes his stand on the grounds of taste against those of history: It
seems to be here directly announced, that the object of the compilation is not
to collect a body of valuable poetry, but to afford a key to posterity to judge of
the prevailing taste of the British public.25 In fact, Brougham argues, Southeys
selections in themselves offer no such opportunity, and he goes on to suggest that
the gentle reader of the twentieth century will have to go to the full expense of
buying the entire works of Dryden, Thomson, Pope, Akenside, Gray, Cowper,
and the rest to remedy what is missing. Brougham is not prepared to push the tension between history and taste so far as to deny any interest in historical illustration, but he insists on the primacy of aesthetic judgment. If the curious reader
should be distressed to know the state of public taste in his fathers or his grandfathers time, he had assuredly better trust to the good than the bad poets of the
age. . . . A few instances of neglected merit, no doubt, will occur; but if he wishes
to know the taste of the period of Pope, let him read Pope, not Betterton.26
What is most striking in all this is its indifference to Southeys representation
of national history. Brougham does not attempt to refute Southeys narrative or
correct his account of the national spirit. Instead, his review turns a blind eye to
the historical dimension of Southeys work, as though it had no bearing on the
Specimens value as a representation of the literary past. Very likely Brougham
simply did not recognize what was at stake in Southeys rewriting of the narrative of national taste. But thanks in part to the essays of Francis Jeffrey himself,
it soon became impossible to overlook the mutual entanglement of literary epochs and national history.27
JEFFREYS TWO MODES OF LITERARY HISTORY
In the early numbers of the Edinburgh Review, it was far from obvious that literary history would emerge as an important concern. The Edinburgh addressed
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his mind. Even so, there is clearly a broad area of convergence in the idea that
contemporary poets will ultimately be evaluated in terms that are informed by
historical considerations, andmore particularlythat the works of the most
recent generation must be read as a response to an English tradition whose essential features had taken shape in the time of Elizabeth and James I.
Both parts of Jeffreys literary history, I want to suggest, the theory of belatedness as well as the narrative of Englishness, are open to a choice of two kinds of
readings: one that holds to a relatively restricted literary focus, against another
that takes into consideration his historical and historiographical interests, as discussed earlier in this chapter. In its narrower form (Burns, 1808), Jeffreys commentary on the dilemma of the after-poets focuses on the psychology of poetic
creation and comes close to adumbrating more recent theories of the anxiety
of influence. But a later and fuller discussion, much beholden to Humes speculations on The Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, moves beyond the
psychology of authorship to entertain a broader consideration of the position of
the arts in an advanced state of society (Lady of the Lake, 1810).
In this new perspective, Jeffrey is less inclined to see belatedness as implying
a simple loss of creativity. (The age, in fact, is unusually prolific of original
poetry.)32 Rather, the problem is that the progress of refinement has created
an almost irremediable split between popular and refined tastes. The earliest
poets may be said to have got possession of all the choice materials of their art.
But after-poets cannot have this same sense of ease and are put to a variety of
more self-conscious strategies. Some have responded by seeking greater minuteness and fidelity in observing characters or objects, while others have crafted a
more exacting analysis of a limited vein of the emotions. As a result, modern
poetry has been enriched with more exquisite pictures, and deeper and more
sustained strains of the pathetic, than were known to the less elaborate artists of
antiquity; at the same time that it has been defaced with more affectation, and
loaded with far more intricacy.33
This passage carries obvious echoes of Jeffreys critique of Wordsworth and
Southey, reviving preoccupations that once stood in the way of a historical approach to literature. In the later formulation, however, something more complex is beginning to emerge, directed toward locating both the strengths and
weaknesses of the early Romantic writers within a philosophical history of English sensibilities. The whole brings together Jeffreys developing narrative of
the evolution of national taste with his Humean speculation on the effects of
refinement in the arts.
Jeffrey was not the first to sketch the history of English poetry in terms of the
suppression and revival of a native tradition, but he did a great deal to establish
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this story as the dominant narrative of English literary history. Much of the force
of his account comes from its success in combining a genealogy of successive
schools of English verse with wider historical and ideological commitments,
so that the history of poetry is subsumed in a narrative of national tradition.34
Thus in a pivotal essay on Jacobean drama (Ford, 1811), Jeffrey argues that
the English love of Shakespeare is not extravagant or willful, as foreign critics
like to think. It is merely the natural love which all men bear to those forms
of excellence that are accommodated to their peculiar character.35 In attempting to bespeak some share of favor for those of Shakespeares contemporaries
who had suffered neglect in an era when French tastes prevailed, we are only
enlarging that foundation of native genius on which alone any lasting superstructure can be raised, and invigorating that deep-rooted stock upon which all
the perennial blossoms of our literature must still be engrafted.36
It is not Hume alone who presides over this kind of writing. Burke seems
equally present, though the contrast between their two approaches to history is
as much a matter of distance as of doctrine. Rather than designing a universal
inquiry on the nature of taste, Jeffrey approaches the neglected tragedies of
John Ford in relation to their roots in the English language and spirit. In this
context, literary history acquires a new warmth of attachment that is as much
ideological as aesthetic. As the essayist bespeaks our favor for the dramatic
works of Jacobean England, or forms his repeated contrasts between the natural
and the artificial, the native and the foreign, it becomes impossible to say where
purely literary study leaves off and where national traditions begin.
It would be wrong to draw too strict a division between the relative abstraction
of a Humean history of opinion and the immersive force of a Burkean evocation
of tradition. Elements of both mix in many of the works of this time. (In this
same essay, for example, Jeffrey speculates on the deeper and more general
causes that spurred the invigorating effects of the Reformation, and looks to
Taylor, Bacon, and Hooker, as well as to the poets.) Nonetheless, the Burkean
strain is not only important in its own right; it also gives us a particularly clear
example of the ideological stakes in literary mediation. For those swept along
by Burkes endlessly inventive metaphors of transmission and belonging, there
could be no better way to make the past compelling than by appealing to its
literary legacy.
JUST BOOKS
Humes argument that the wars and politics of different ages are more alike
than their taste, wit, and speculative principles is suggestive of the role that
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153
cism we formed our first standard of taste; and from his delineations we drew
our first ideas of manners. It requires little attention, she adds, turning to the
tastes of a new generation, to be convinced that this is no longer true for the
young women of the present.41
A less subtle reader might have responded to the change in Addisons fortunes
with simple nostalgia for the times of her youth. Instead, Barbauld examines
these revolutions of taste for their wider significance andlike Hume, Johnson,
or Drakefinds her answer in the close connections between literature, manners, and opinion. Books, she writes, make a silent and gradual, but a sure
change in our ideas and opinions; and as new authors are continually taking
possession of the public mind, and old ones falling into disuse, new associations
insensibly take place, and shed their influence unperceived over our taste, our
manners, and our morals. . . . This new infusion of taste and moral sentiments
acts in its turn upon the relish for books.42 It is true, she adds, that a great book
will never truly disappear, since it will live on as a classic. Nonetheless, it will
no longer be a book that everyone is expected to know, and to which everyone
refers. It loses the precious privilege of occupying the minds of youth; in short,
it is withdrawn from the parlour-window, and laid upon the shelf in honourable
repose.43
The practice of literary history seems calculated to produce moments both
of retrospect and prospect, giving writers reason to evoke the manners of earlier
ages or to imagine the responses of readers one hundred years on. In Barbaulds
case, the impetus came from her tasks as an editor, though she made the most
of what must have begun as a commercial proposition. It is not straining the
evidence, however, to see Barbaulds historical insight as the product of an established habit of looking to the arts as a register of what Hume calls the variety
of Taste and opinion. When Barbauld rereads the Spectator under the lamp
of manners, she is drawn to reflect on the way time had brought such changes
not only in the tastes and habitudes of common life, but in the fashion of
their studies, and their course of general reading. Books influence manners; and
manners, in return, influence the taste for books.44
If we want to understand how contemporary readers thought about books
and authors as bearers of history, we need to consider the kinds of historical descriptions literary texts made possible. For Barbauld, as for Scott, social change
seems a deep and smooth river,45 whose powerful current may flow unnoticed
until we position ourselves against objects on the opposite shore. To such alterations Barbauld offers herself as a witness of an unusually sophisticated kind,
thereby providing new generations of readers with an awareness of histories to
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which they might otherwise have been blind. But though literary texts provided
her with rich cultural markers, we should not confuse the signposts for the wider
experiences they heralded. No doubt Barbaulds self-conscious understanding
of distance drew deeply upon her talents as a writer, but her precocious historicism extended to much wider domains of language and society.
All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed poetical licence. A painter
of portraits retains the individual likeness; a painter of history shows the man by
showing his actions.
Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, 1781
It is needless to observe, that, whenever it may be thought proper to adorn the
large publick buildings of London with Paintings, they will necessarily be filled
with patriotic subjects, because no subjects would be proper for them, but such as
in some measure appertain to their national purposes. The same would take place
in the Hall of each Company. And in these points, whatever might be the merit of
the respective Paintings, all would contribute to the general celebrity and renown
of their country. They would furnish present honours, by renewing the memory
of the past; and in the future pages of history, their records would prove the most
valuable documents.
Prince Hoare, Epochs of the Arts, 1813
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already a distant memory and typesetting an arcane art.) Ironically, the sharpest
challenge may be for the historian, whoarriving well after the factwants to
mark the emergence of a new configuration of ideas within the stream of an
older tradition.
Of all the genres of representation we call historical, none bears out these
dilemmas better than history painting, which sails through early modern times
like the Argo, always under repair and always heroically intact. A moments reflection, however, suggests the extent of the changes that accompanied history
paintings voyage into modernity as a genre once identified with Ovidian myth
and dynastic allegory emerged, circa 1800, as an art form devoted to secular
struggles. Like history proper, but considerably later, history painting shed its
loyalty to the idealizations of the great style andwithout stopping to change
its namefound new challenges in depicting social and political actualities.
Scholars have generally linked the transformation of British history painting
to Benjamin West, who raised recent events to the dignity previously reserved
for classical subjects. This emphasis on Wests contemporaneity, however, does
not do justice to a complex realignment that has more to do with other distances
than with temporality as such. Fundamental changes were required before so
traditional a genre could embrace its modern identity and sublimate its poetic
and religious inheritance beneath a mantle of secular concerns. Casting aside
the symbolic imagery associated with biblical and classical narratives, history
painting drew closer to history in the more common meaning of the term.
How did history painting come to be redefined as the painting of history?
And what were the implications of this change? These questions cannot be
addressed to the painter alone, since they have to do with the idea of history,
broadly considered, as well as with the meanings and conventions of the visual arts. In this expanded context, the temporal shift on which scholars have
focused attention seems just one dimension of a larger process of redistancing
that affected all forms of historical representation circa 1800.
BENJAMIN WEST AND THE REVOLUTION
OF HISTORY PAINTING
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skeptical Joshua Reynolds with a ringing defense of the historical grounds for
his artistic choice. The battle for Quebec took place on the 13th of September,
1758, in a region of the world unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a
period of time when no such nations, nor heroes in their costume, any longer
existed. The subject I have to represent is the conquest of a great province of
America by the British troops. It is a topic that history will proudly record, and
the same truth that guides the pen of the historian should govern the pencil of
the artist.1
Wests identification of his art with historical writing marks a significant revision of neoclassical doctrine,2 but it would be nave to read Galts text as a literal
transcription of an encounter that had occurred more than forty years earlier.
Like the painting itself, the story is an artful restaging that endows the original
event with a luster it can only have acquired in retrospect. Written under the
close supervision of West himself, Galts biography was composed with Wests
later career fully in view and it idealizes this painting as a decisive moment in
Wests conquest of reputation. Retrospective though its truths may have been,
however, Galts account hints at Wests understanding that the definition of
history painting was under strain and that any revision would have to confront
the powerful authority of neoclassical criticism, as represented by the person of
Joshua Reynolds.3
In his classic essay on this picture, Edgar Wind argues that it initiated a revolution in history painting. Breaking with neoclassical canons of decorum, the
young American demonstrated that an event from the recent past could be depicted with all the elevation that history painting required. Intriguingly, Wind
also suggests that a key element of Wests aggiornamento rested in his control of
distance: more specifically, his understanding that in the depiction of a modern
hero, remoteness in space could stand in for distance in time. Thus by exchanging scenes that were exotic for those that seemed venerable, West was able to
bring the necessary dignity to a near-contemporary event. The result was still
a relatively conservative treatment that avoided directly attacking neoclassical
tastes, but once the rules had been breached to allow this mitigated realism,
the opening quickly widened to abolish the academic precept that distance
is essential to dignity.4 And where West had led, Copley soon followed and
pressed on to a more open and popular form of realism.
I want to return to The Death of Wolfe from a different angle and for reasons
that have as much to do with historical sensibilities as with aesthetic ones. In
this setting, what makes this moment pivotal is not just the contemporary subject, but the idea of history painting as a historical art. To be more precise, with
this work history painting is becoming historical in a new and distinctive sense.
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Circa 1800
The issue is not merely contemporaneitythe focus of Winds and many subsequent discussionsbut what history might mean in the context of art.
History painting as traditionally understood was not confined to depicting the
historical past, since its subjects were as often biblical, mythological, or poetic.
From the vantage of distance, the distinguishing feature was not so much that
the past was ancient rather than modern, but that it was conceived in exemplary
terms and narrated with symbols and allegories. As a result, neoclassical history
painting still spoke to a conception of history that had more in common with
the idealizing rhetorical prescriptions of seventeenth-century artes historicae
than with the mix of social inquiry and sentimental affect that characterized
historical writing in the age of Hume and Robertson.
In the second half of the eighteenth century these assumptions began to shift,
though with curiously little explicit tension. Carried along by a current of national feeling that altered both its affective and its ideological coloration, history
painting entered into an increasingly close engagement with the national his-
159
tories of Europe. As a result, this most prestigious of artistic genres assumed for
the first time its modern identity as a genre of painting committed to the same
past that was represented in secular narrativesand this just at a moment when
the conception of historical writing was undergoing a profound reformulation.
In this framework, the eighteenth-century transformation of history painting
becomes a compound movement: one by which history painting moves into
closer alignment with the sense of history as conceived by historians of the
same era and consequently (like historiography itself) finds itself challenged by
new ways of thinking about the subject of historical representation. Only at this
point can it really be said with Benjamin West that the same truth that guides
the pen of the historian should govern the pencil of the artist.5
SIR JOSHUA DEMURS
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Circa 1800
and poetry a speaking picture.8 Within this tradition of the sister arts there was
room for discussion about the degrees of likeness or the contrasting strengths of
each medium. But whichever side a critic took, he was unlikely to make history
proper a point of comparison, except to underscore the shared freedom of the
poet and the painter to rise above the triviality of petty facts to seek out a higher
and more philosophical meaning. As Aristotle puts it in the Poetics, poetry
deals with general truths, history with specific events.9
Arts pursuit of general truththe exemplary truth of poetry rather than the
particular truth of historywas a central legacy of the sister arts tradition, which
encouraged painters to emulate the grander designs of tragedy and epic. In
England, the most influential spokesman for these doctrines was Joshua Reynolds, whose Discourses gave the students of the Royal Academy a comprehensive summary of neoclassical ideas. The Art which we profess has beauty for its
object, writes Reynolds, . . . but the beauty of which we are in quest is general
and intellectual; it is an idea that subsists only in the mind; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the
artist, which he is always labouring to impart.10
This affirmation of art as the domain of intellectual or general truths provides
the crucial background against which the impact of the supposed revolution
must be measured. At the most obvious level, history painting is linked to poetry
through its subject matter, since mythological and poetic narratives provide so
much of the painters material. But at bottom neoclassical opinion understands
the choice for poetry over history as much in cognitive as in thematic terms.
Facts and events, Reynolds writes, however they may bind the Historian, have
no dominion over the Poet or the Painter. The artist is not restricted by a mere
imitative truth; instead he bends history to his great idea of Art.11
So insistent is Reynoldss defense of the history painters freedom to deviate
from strict and vulgar historical truth that at one point he comes close to rejecting altogether the traditional label of history. In Discourse IVhis most extended discussion of the genreReynolds holds up the example of the Raphael
cartoons to argue that artists who pursue the great stile must represent their
subjects in a poetical manner, which cannot be confined to mere questions
of fact. In conformity to custom, he adds, I call this part of the art History
Painting; it ought to be called Poetical, as in reality it is.12 Reynoldss suggested
renaming is fully consistent with his emphasis on the high conceptual powers
associated with invention and his warning that even Nature herself is not to
be too closely copied.13 And yet there seems to be a hint of defensiveness in
what he says as well. Why else this hesitation over terms so long accepted? Why
else the impressiondespite a stiff bow to customthat to call this art by the
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ambivalent name of history might chain it to a lesser sort of truththe vulgar factuality of history, rather than the elevated viewpoint of the poetic?
To an earlier generation, Reynoldss hesitation would hardly have mattered,
since there was little chance that the history in history painting would be
mistaken for the ordinary (i.e. textual) sense of the word. On the contrary, for
neoclassical criticism what made a painting a history was precisely its distancing of secular realities behind a veil of allegory and ideal truths. Coming
when it does, however, Reynoldss brief spasm of anxiety indicates an unsettling
convergence between two quite different meanings of history. Would it not be
better to avoid any possible confusion by giving the art form a new name that
conformed to the Aristotelian distinction between poetic elevation and historical particularity?
Reynoldss wobble marks a curious episode in the evolution of the genre,
though one more prophetic of future instabilities than of Reynoldss own views.
More commonly, he maintains his steady confidence in the parallel between
painting and poetry, with its implied asymmetry of history painting with historical writing. From this perspective, the real significance of this episode has to do
with establishing the chronology of changes yet to come. After all, though British history painting never fully abandons Reynoldss aspiration to emulate the
grand style of Raphaels stanze, the latter part of the century clearly witnesses a
growing engagement with historical truth in a spirit much closer to the particularizing manner that Reynolds is at such pains to reject.
POETRY AND HISTORY; POETRY VERSUS HISTORY
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Circa 1800
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Circa 1800
criticizes the liberties usually allowed to history painters and argues against
introducing elements of fable where matters of fact should be the principal
concern. Equally, the requirements of costume (appropriateness) dictate that
the artist should clothe his characters in the dress of their own times and keep
clear of anachronismal fictions, visionary allusions, or personifications of
inanimate nature.20
Bromley wants to avoid dogmatism and he is even prepared to welcome allegory where it appears natural and artless. In The Death of Wolfe, for instance,
the combined presence of soldiers in British uniforms, ships, and an Indian
warrior indicates the location of the action without intruding on the historical
scene. He accepts that strictly speaking some of the detailed description might
be considered as fiction, butlike the classical convention of invented orationsthe great figure of the aboriginal warrior performs a legitimate historical
function. In allegory, can any thing speak more correctly than these?21
Restated in more positive terms, Bromleys cautions about poetic artifice become a defense of the broad capacity of visual representation to depict historical subjects. What we contend for, he writes, is that the powers of the historic
pencil in the hands of the scholar . . . are equal to those of the pen in the selection of expression and in the communication of its own life and richness.22
His confidence in the effectiveness of visual representation runs into a double
obstacle, however. Not only have artists failed to understand the differences between historical and poetic subjects, but they have resorted to artificial devices
that have no genuine relation to the subject before them. The result is a violation of the purity of the historic line, producing a mungrel-composition that
is neither history nor poetry.23
Bromley argues for painting over writing on the basis of the traditional contrast between the instantaneity of visual images and the seriality necessary to
language, but he understands the comparison as equating rapid perception
with affective impact. This elision has considerable consequences for how he
thinks about both formal composition and moral persuasion. Where the mind
is assailed at once by the whole interest of any important subject, he asserts,
it will certainly be captivated with the greatest power, just as a fire that breaks
out suddenly is more intense than one that burns more slowly. Conversely, anything that inhibits or divides this interest will result in a heavy loss of affective
and moral impact.
In this context, Bromleys defense of the purity of the historic line seems
less a commitment to simple matter-of-factness than a view of the psychology of
representation. Poetic embellishments tend to embarrass and confound; they
draw off the mind from the simplicity of the narration to heterogeneous ideas
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which beget improbability.24 The best advice, rather, is to place the simplest
events in a most interesting view, and to make those facts which are bare of
themselves most sentimentally expressive.25 Bromleys emphasis on artistic actuality echoes Kamess theory of affective response, with its view that ideal
presence simulates lived experience and carries the same moral lessons. While
Kames focuses his attention on literature, however, leaving both history and
painting as marginal cases, Bromley turns Kamesian moral psychology into an
argument for the emerging alignment of history painting with history proper.26
PATRIOTISM AND THE PAINTING OF HISTORY
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Circa 1800
Another, more public undertaking was the creation in 1805 of the British
Institution to house sale exhibitions of contemporary artists, with special prizes
reserved for history painting on British subjects. This scheme (not the first of
its kind) was given a fuller elaboration by Martin Archer Shee in a published
proposal to the same body for a series of prizes, the highest of which would go to
works on Sacred or British Historya telling elision. Each picture contending in this category, Shee suggested, should consist of at least thirteen figures,
the size of life; and no picture to exceed the dimensions of the cartoons of Raphael. Lesser subjects would also be rewarded with smaller prizes, but preference would be given to subjects more directly sacred and patriotic, and more
strikingly impressive upon our concerns, as Christians and as Britons.33
Shees desiderata point to the difficult balances that faced history painting
at the turn of the century. Public art still aspired to the formal poise and sense
of scale of an earlier age, but it would have to do without the support of the
distancing motifs belonging to classical or biblical settings. At the same time,
the ideological intensities of an age caught up in wars and revolution drew artists to engage with truths that were less remote than those that Reynolds held
up as an ideal. The outcome was a more openly affective approach to art that
permitted history painting to shed some of its former austerity and joined feelings for country with emotions of a softer, more domestic sort. This shift from
exemplarity to immediacy broadly parallels the similar shift in historical writing
that had been pioneered by Hume a half-century before.34
The patriotism evident in Shees proposal was a direct response to the conflict
with France, where in many respects this reorientation of history painting would
prove easier to manage, since the ideological discourse of the revolutionary and
Napoleonic periods allowed republican and imperial motifs to retain a vital
place in the gestures of contemporary politics. Thus David and Ingres (to name
only the most famous exemplars) were able to fashion a new and very public
iconography that blended classicism with a striking theatricality in the service of
revolutionary and postrevolutionary myth. British painters, on the other hand,
seemed more receptive to Greuzian sentiment than to the tense masculinity of
David. They populated their histories with unusual numbers of suffering women,
and even in scenes of conflict, sorrowing spectators like those who accompany
the dying Wolfe provided an opportunity to evoke the softer side of the heroic.
In fact there was no real boundary between sentiment and neoclassicism,
which was a style that adapted itself gracefully to many moods.35 In relation
to the coupling of victory with pity, for example, one ready precedent was the
continence of Scipioa familiar theme of baroque history painting and one
that had been given a more modern reading in Haymans lost depiction of
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Circa 1800
General Amherst feeding his captives in The Surrender of Montreal (1761). Similarly, in John Singleton Copleys huge canvas of The Defeat of the Floating
Batteries at Gibraltar (1783) the celebration of victory is balanced by the gesture of the commanding general, Lord Heathfield, who directs our attention
to the sight of British sailors rescuing their enemies from the sea (plate 8). As
Britannia triumphs, the painting tells us, so does humanity.36 Venturing into a
darker realm of the pathetic, Turners Field of Waterloo (1818) takes us beyond
the moment of a great British victory to show a night scene in which indistinct
female figures search for the bodies of those they have lost; by now, what army
they follow seems to make very little difference (plate 9). William Mulready
presents another view of this battle, but displaces the action both in time and
space. His Convalescent from Waterloo (1822) (above, figure 6.8) pictures the
wounded soldier on a peaceful beachfront accompanied by his sorrowing wife
and family. This displacement from the field of conflict introduces a mood of
fragile recollection inconceivable in the moment of action. At the same time,
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the picture exemplifies the way in which symbolic elements retain their place
in history painting, though sublimated and naturalized in a microhistorical vignette. Thus the energetic wrestling of the young boys lends an air of ambiguity
to the paintings perspective on human conflict. Is warfare an inevitable feature
of life? Or should we see its ideals as a destructive illusion that only the truly
innocent can indulge?
Lacking the artistic stature of either David or Turner, West owed a great deal
to the opportunities of the moment, especially the rising pitch of national feeling. Even so fervent an admirer as William Carey suggested that a number of
Wests paintings on classical subjects surpassed The Death of Wolfe, yet none
of them excited so powerful a sensation. Every British subject, writes Carey,
sympathized with the fall of the British general, as that of a young hero, in
whose loss, England was a sufferer, and in whose glory, each of his countrymen was a sharer. The picture, he adds, had the power of an exalted national
memorial, which touched all the living interests of the realm.37 The paintings
popularity was such that West was obliged to produce a series of copies, but
even more telling was the huge demand for reproductive prints. In the matchless engravings of the Death of Wolfe, the Battle of La Hogue, and the Death
of Nelson, Carey recalled, England fought her battles over again, and will
continue to fight and conquer her enemies to the end of time.38
A NEW HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
Wests Death of Wolfe retains a strong sense of continuity with the traditions
of neoclassical history painting. But however conservative this revolution
might be in matters of style, Wests work establishes a new direction by engaging
history in a manner that comes closer to the preoccupations of secular historical thought in its time. As a result, it becomes less plausible than it once was to
continue to examine history painting in effective isolation from other forms of
historical representation as they were practiced in the period.
This is a crucial point, since the revolution of history painting took shape at
a time when historical thought was undergoing a very significant revision. The
Death of Wolfe, it should be remembered, was painted in 177071, at the midpoint of two decades of extraordinary importance in European historiography,
including not only the final volume of Humes History of England (1761) and
the first of Gibbons Decline and Fall (1776), but also Fergusons Essay on the
History of Civil Society (1767), Robertsons Charles V (1769), Millars Origin of
the Distinction of Ranks (1771), and Robertsons History of America (1777). In
short, the late eighteenth centurys rethinking of history in art coincided with
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Circa 1800
a very remarkable episode in history writingone which for the two or three
generations separating David Hume and Walter Scott placed Britain at the forefront of European historical thought.
Two elements of this other revolution helped determine the balance of distances characteristic of historical writing in this period: one largely a question
of conceptual frameworks, the other a matter of affect. Hume (among others)
relied on broad social explanations to capture the movements of history, even
as he used a sentimental style to evoke the intangible influence of manners and
opinion. Both of these features of the Humean approach had important consequences for historical writing in this period and it is reasonable to ask whether
the same may be true for visual narratives.
One of the fundamental elements of the Enlightenments interest in history
was its conviction that political narratives could only become fully comprehensible when united with broad social explanations concerning changes in economy,
manners, and customs. But as history reoriented itself to what Hume called the
domestic and gradual revolutions of the state, it had to grapple with intangible
social movements, often at the expense of events as such. In consequence, the
turn to philosophical history was far from straightforward. The change shifted
the focus of historical description and undercut the pleasures of narrative.
Ever since the advent of Romanticism, critics have charged the Enlightenment with neglecting flesh-and-blood realities for bloodless abstraction. This
attack gives us only one side of the picture, however, since it emphasizes the
periods bias toward conceptual distancing at the cost of ignoring its taste for
affective engagement (see Chapter 4). In truth, the eighteenth century was an
age of sentiment as well as enlightenment, and historians (much like poets and
novelists) explored the techniques of sentimental narrative to engage historical
readers in a sympathetic response to the scenes of the past. The result was a significant redistancing of narrative toward a mood of affective immediacy that has
obvious parallels in art. This shift meant much more than a simple alteration
of style. Rather, for historians who wanted to evoke the manners and opinions
of another age, sentimental narrative provided an affective and formal counterpart to some of the dryer tasks of social analysis. Thus a change that in another
context might have seemed purely a matter of style points to a fundamental
rethinking of historys conceptual foundations and ideological summons.
ROBERT BOWYERS HISTORIC GALLERY
The late eighteenth-century convergence of history painting and the historical record found its most literal expression in Robert Bowyers Historic Gallery,
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Circa 1800
173
an important expansion of historys range and audience, since the shift from
exemplarity to actuality makes room for viewers with no experience of heroism
and very little stake in the privileges or obligations of public life.
In tune with a culture of sensibility, Bowyers artists take a particular interest in depicting scenes of virtue in distress, and give prominence to female
figures not usually associated with the high dignity and masculine cast of history. In part, this must have been a tribute to the text itself, since Humes love
of pathos was much praised by contemporary critics. Nonetheless, it is striking
how uniform the illustrations are in comparison to the variety displayed by the
history. We know Hume as an ironist as well as a sentimentalist, as a master of
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Circa 1800
175
and other Puritan leaders are prevented in their plans to flee from England.
Henry Tresham illustrates the scene, but though there is an attempt at drama,
there is no shadow of the alternate history that might have been if the Puritan discontents had been allowed to go to America where, as Hume puts it,
they might enjoy lectures and discourses of any length or form which pleased
them.42
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Circa 1800
Similarly, there is a strong tendency among the artists of this school to assimilate all those who suffer to the same condition, no matter what the historical cause or the ideological valence. Witness John Opies Death of Archbishop Sharpe, where much of our attention goes to the central figure of the
archbishops daughter, who is vainly attempting to shield the elderly cleric.
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By this means Opie gives the encounter much the same feeling as a painting
like James Northcotes depiction of the two doomed innocents in the Tower,
from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, though one concerns the deaths of the
two young princes at the hands of a ruthless king, the other the assassination
of a worldly archbishop by religious zealots. Similarly, the shared innocence
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Circa 1800
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Circa 1800
to find an appropriate style for illustrating Humes famous appendices on art and
manners. Their choice, carried out by Robert Smirke, John Landseer, and others, was a thoroughly insipid program of commemoration displaying the great
names who had contributed to progress in the various fields of arts and letters.
Though lighter and more graceful than the antiquarian efforts of Houbraken
and Vertue, the illustrations have little to recommend them beyond a return
to familiar conventions of monumental inscription and allegorical representation. It can come as no surprise that, despite the importance of this material to
Humes text, the plates seem to have had little of the afterlife that sustained the
narrative scenes.
Bowyers Historic Gallery testifies that historical depiction circa 1800 still succeeded best when it could represent its subject in terms of the actions or sufferings of known individuals. But in the age of David Hume and John Millar, of
Edmund Burke and Walter Scott, historical thought had begun to encompass
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Circa 1800
Despite the complex layerings of text and image brought together by Bowyer,
a purist might still be inclined to dismiss the Historic Gallery as an exercise in
illustration. In an important sense, however, history painting always had an illustrative purpose. As a narrative art committed to public subjects, it looked to
stories that were already known through other sourcestraditionally the great
narratives provided by biblical or classical history or the canonical literatures
of ancient Greece and Rome. As Reynolds puts it, the grand style demands an
object in which men are universally concerned, and which powerfully strikes
upon the public sympathy. . . . Such are the great events of Greek and Roman
fable and history, which early education, and the usual course of reading, have
made familiar and interesting to all of Europe. . . . Such too are the capital subjects of scripture history, which, besides their general notoriety, become venerable by the connection with our religion.46
As so often, Reynolds provides a powerful summary of a tradition on the verge
of radical revision, but he also helps us to see what had changed and what
fundamentally had not. The revolution in narrative art that began to emerge
in his lifetime did not alter the viewers need for prior exposure to the story;
that kind of foreknowledge would remain crucial for history painting to communicate its meaning. What was in the process of changing was the source of
the narratives intelligibility, which was now less likely to be tied to a single
canonical text than to narratives or experiences that were the common property
of national memory and experience.
In this context the Historic Gallery seems less predictive of the future of history painting than The Death of Wolfe a generation earlier. In an era of strong
national feeling, organizing a program of history painting around a great work
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Circa 1800
Fig. 8.14. Abraham Raimbach after Sir David Wilkie, Village Politicians, 1814.
Engraving and etching, 50.8 62.2 cm (plate). Courtesy Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
revolution; they had also transformed the concept of history painting twice
overfirst by bringing painting closer to secular histories, then by offering both
historians and painters the challenge of a new, more social conception of the
historical process. History, it was now understood, is more than a set of events;
it is also a texture of experience. The great challenge was to break free of the
elevated conventions of the neoclassical genre and reconceive history as it is experienced in common life. This is where Wilkie was a pioneer of an emerging
conception of history painting, and if it is hard to agree with Cunningham that
Wilkie already possessed this vision fully in 1806, there can be no doubt that
two decades later he gave it lasting expressiononce again in a work where a
newspaper figures as the vector of history.
In Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch (1822) Wilkie found an
inventive new way to give witness to a great battle (plate 10). Bypassing the event
itself, he depicted the impact of war on a mixed body of old soldiers hearing the
news of victory for the first time. This is a multigenerational portrait of the ordi-
185
nary British soldier, and for anyone who cared to probe its detail, an engraved
key identifies the uniforms of every veteran stretching back to Bunker Hill. Like
Village Politicians or Mulreadys Convalescent from Waterloo, Chelsea Pensioners turns away from portraying the battle itself. Instead, it presents history indirectly: not in its place and moment, but in a more democratized context and
as a form of social witness. This time, however, there is no doubt that Wilkies
intention was to create an historical composition, and even so conservative a
hero as the great Duke was delighted by the result.
Part Three
Circa 1968:
Sentimental Histories
The historical sensibilities closest to ourselves are always the hardest to name.
Cultural history would be safely neutral. Microhistory, thick description,
or historical anthropology have obvious applications. But as informative as
they are, these methodological labels go only part way toward identifying the
pressures that have reshaped historical narrative post-1968. What seems central
is a politics of feeling belonging to a generation that found its identity in the
struggles of the New Left and second-wave feminism. Instinctively antihierarchical and grounded in a fundamental optimism about human nature, the
New Left embraced the belief that the personal is the political. As Stuart
Hall recalled, We raised issues of personal life, the way people live, culture,
which werent considered the topics of politics on the Left. We wanted to talk
about the contradictions of this new kind of capitalist society in which people
didnt have a language to express their private troubles, didnt realize that these
troubles reflected political and social questions which could be generalized.1
It is clearly too late in the day to persuade modern readers to return sentiment to the unreservedly positive sense it carried for much of the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, I can think of no better way to characterize the
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Circa 1968
preoccupation with affective experience and everyday life that runs through so
much of the historical thought of the late twentieth century. Equally, none of
the more conventional designations is as frank about the traps and temptations
that accompanied this same program. But however we assess the strengths and
weaknesses of the period, there is no mistaking historys pride in new beginnings, post-1968. Not only did writing the story of the way people live enormously extend the social horizons of historical study, it also brought a renewed
sense of the moral and political relevance of historical scholarship.2 And if to
call this approach sentimental risks associating the sobriety of academic prose
with moods more often found in popular or commercialized genres, this too
may be a reason to hold on to the ambiguities of the word.
For many historians, the most visible consequence of the turn toward affective history was a rejection of the austere methods of the Annales in favor of the
close focus and human satisfactions of microhistory. The impact of this change
makes the rise of microhistory a forceful example of distance-shift within the
academic canon, but it also carries implications for the wider family of historical genres. The foregrounding of affect meant entry into a domain that has long
been associated with popular histories, especially those genres that cultivate the
promise of greater immediacy with the past. Living history museums, immersive displays, restaged battles and other reenactments, computer simulations in
cinema or television, the immense popularity of genealogy and family history
these are just a sampling of the historical genres that have won contemporary
audiences to a beguiling mixture of curiosity, nostalgia, and entertainment.
Academics still regularly insist that the past is a foreign country (we hold the
passports after all), but even the most confident historian must sometimes envy
the vividness and adventure of popular representation.
History and memory has become one of the commonplaces of historiographical discussion. With deceptively simple economy, this pairing identifies
two modes of understanding that seem to divide the sphere of the past between
them, giving a name to a tension that has animated historical discussion for a
generation. But behind its apparent oppositions, the distinction designates areas
that, now more than ever, are shared as well as contested. In the way we speak
of them, history and memory are in fact mutually defining, two forms of historical distance that have to be understood in relational terms. This being the case,
what most needs examination is not just their evident differences of emphasis,
but also the convergences that, by bringing competing claims into closer proximity, have generated discomfort on both sides.
What was it really like? To the common sense of the lay reader, this question
seems to be the foundation of all historical work, the very core of our curiosity
about the past. Ironically, however, in the long history of historical writing, the
idea that the ambition of history is to reenter the feelings and experiences of the
past is a relative latecomer and, even then, it has seldom taken precedence over
other, seemingly more disciplined reasons for examining the past. Recently,
however, the lay readers question has found its way to the front, animating the
most ambitious historians of the past four decades. What was it really like (such
historians have been asking) to be a sixteenth-century French peasant woman?
How was it to live in a thirteenth-century community of Cathar heretics? to be
a follower of a peasant cult that continued to practice pre-Christian fertility rituals? to work as a midwife in eighteenth-century New England?
From the earliest days, history has been written in the service of memory.
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Father of History begins, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay
the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and
wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed
of glory. What has changed, almost beyond recognition, is what we want to
remember. Herodotuss view that history concerns itself only with great and
wonderful actions belongs to an age of heroes, remote from the populism of
modern cultural politics. Nor would it be easy to agree that historys purpose is
necessarily to record what men have done. Gender aside, the focus of many
histories today has more to do with feelings than doings.
Traditionally, history has been thought of as combining the desire to record
events with the need to explain them. In recent decades, however, this way of
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engaging with the past has lost some ground to narratives of another sortones
that often seem content to bypass much of the business of events and explanations while exercising the closest scrutiny in retracing the textures of ordinary
life and inward feeling. But the empathetically re-created past presents enormous challenges. Not only does it concern people who remain largely invisible
to history, but also physical or mental experiences traditionally regarded as lying beyond the reach of historical change: the growth and decay of the body,
the life of the senses, childhood, sexuality, madness, death. Though much has
been written about the theoretical demands that come with this sort of history,
we have been reticent about another sort of complication: namely, the fact that
academic historians have been drawn into closer engagement with an interest in which popular audiences and popular representation have an important
presence. In the process, high and low histories have come into a closer
proximity than at any other time in recent scholarshipsometimes with uncomfortable results.
In a time when the resurrection of physical and emotional experience has
become so prized, where does the past exercise its greatest affective impact? For
some the prompt may come from a visit to New Yorks Tenement Museum, a
list of family names preserved at Ellis Island, or the reperformance of Cooks
South Sea voyages in the cramped living space of a replica eighteenth-century
sailing ship. If what historians want is to retrace the contours of experience
in groups usually silent at the table of history, even the most gifted historian
might feel at a loss. Is there not greater richness in a collection of family photo
albums, more inwardness in the confidences of fiction, more immediacy in the
unrivaled actuality of film or television, beyond anything we can wring from an
academic manuscript?1
BETWEEN DIGNITY AND DESPAIR
Let me begin with just one example of recent work in the mode I have in
mind. The book is Marion Kaplans Between Dignity and Despair, a study of
the daily lives of Jewish women in Germany after the Nazi takeover. It is not
altogether easy, I think, to say how this exploration of the feelings of ordinary
German Jewish women relates to the traditional idea of history as a narrative of
events, but no one can deny that in tracing the confused and painful emotions
of that time, Kaplan touches something that draws all of us deeply, seriously,
and repeatedly to an interest in history. I wanted to fill in the missing stories,
Kaplan writes: to try to understand how Jews like my parents grasped the meaning of Nazism. How did they react? How did they negotiate the ever-building
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tensions? What were their options? Disavowing any intention of studying Nazi
politics and ideology or the causes of fascism and genocide, Kaplan takes daily
life and feelings as her object, asking how Jews (and especially Jewish women)
coped with the loss of their friends, careers, and businesses, the defeat of their
hopes, dreams, and futures. What combination of energy, foresight, and luck
did it take to get out in time? What role did gender play in assessing Nazism or
reacting to it? Personal incidents and unfolding realizations set against a backdrop of social disintegration may, I believe, give us insight into later startling
and cataclysmic events.2
In retrospect, we know that those startling and cataclysmic events would
not be long in coming and that, when they did, they would proceed with unimaginable brutality and speed. For the victims of Nazi violence, however, this
clarity was often tragically lacking. As Kaplan demonstrates, the swiftness with
which the brutalities mounted, combined with brief moments of apparent reprieve, bred a mixture of uncertainty and desperate hope that left Jews unsure
of their fate until for most it was too late to save themselves or their families.
Kaplan keeps future trials on the margin of the account, however, while she
focuses her attention on the experiences and anxietiesdespair, numbness,
hopethat belonged to the time before the cataclysm.
Much of what makes this history so compelling is its chronicling of common
emotions in a setting where even the most ordinary responses acquire such
extraordinary resonance. But thematics alone do not account for the powerful
current of feeling that animates this book. An important contribution is also
made by the deliberate narrowing of horizonsa narrowing that from another
point of view might be seen as the books major limitation. These restrictions
help to give this work a quality of intimacy that we generally look for in novels
or memoirs, but seldom associate with history proper. The result is an account
which by virtue of its structure as much as its themes is calculated to invite a
strong sense of identification with the women whose lives it details.
Empathy, as we all know, can lead to some dangerous paths. When the sufferer is someone to whom we have no direct or demonstrable connection, identification may seem unearned and can easily degenerate into self-indulgence
or even pruriencea temptation that has not always been handled well by
historians of the Holocaust. But if the dangers are avoidedas Kaplan does by
virtue of exercising a combination of stylistic and moral restraintthe effect is
to offer the reader an unusual sense of closeness to historical experience. The
consequence is that, alongside the expected detail of historical investigation,
this history also gives weight to broader, less technical inquiries that are very
compelling. In exploring the most basic and quotidian aspects of Jewish lives,
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I will return to debates about the ethics of empathy and the Holocaust at the
end of this chapter, but I have chosen to begin with Kaplans book for reasons
that have little to do with the specifics of her tragic subject. The most obvious
feature of this history is the unashamed prominence it gives to the emotional
lives of its subjectsthe feelings that accompanied events, rather than the
events themselves. But (as has already been noted) the explicit foregrounding
of the emotions is only one part of the character of Kaplans work; more distinctive, in some respects, is the particular way that her narrative calls upon the feelings of the reader: a matter of evoking sympathy rather than (as classically) of
inspiring emulation. In reading about the lives of these Jewish women, we are
not called upon to idealize their courage or model ourselves after their actions,
the pedagogical ideal of what Nietzsche called monumental history. What
is asked for, rather, is the involuntary movement of compassion that anyone
might experience when placed in the situation of the onlooker in the face of
sufferingan altogether less heroic and more democratized emotion.
In the eighteenth century, works that heightened the readers compassion
were called sentimental, and though the term soon lost its respectability, it
still seems the most appropriate way to describe a culture that favors this view
of the moral powers of narrative. Given the weight of prejudice against it, how-
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ever, some discussion will be needed to retrieve a nonpejorative idea of sentiment for twenty-first-century uses. Conventionally, sentimentalism has been
seen as a kind of shallow or excessive emotionalism, but this seems too facile a
verdict on a movement that mobilized such powerful forces, most notably in
a series of moral campaigns from antislavery to womens rights. The real mark
of the sentimentalist is not that he or she feels things more acutely (this is just
the caricature), but that he takes feelings more seriouslyothers as well as his
own. In his social sympathies as well as in matters of self-scrutiny, the sentimentalist trusts himself to an ethical gauge drawn in part from reflection on his own
inward state. The first consequence may be to enlarge the sphere of the emotions in personal life, but this is followed by a wider recognition of affects role
in social communication and moral judgment.4
On these matters we can get some help from a number of present-day philosophers who have reasserted the centrality of affect to moral theory. None, to my
knowledge, has gone as far as Humes provocative argument that reason is and
ought to be a slave of the passions, but that is in part because those who now
want to argue for the passions are also keen to break down the strict separation
between rationality and emotion. What must be shown is that the emotions do
not and should not play an inferior role in deliberations about justice, Robert
Solomon writes in a book with the deliberately provocative title In Defense of
Sentimentality. It is false, he argues, that the emotions are more primitive and
more dangerous than reason. Reason and emotion are not two conflicting and
antagonistic aspects of the soul. Rational emotions constitute justice, which is
neither dispassionate nor merely emotional.5
The same move away from traditional suspicion of the emotions motivates
Martha Nussbaums exposition of the ethics of compassion in Upheavals of
Thought. What positive contribution, she asks, outlining the program of her
book, do emotions, as such, make to ethical deliberation, both personal and
public?. . . . Why should a social order cultivate or appeal to emotions, rather
than simply creating a system of just rules, and a set of institutions to support
it?6 For Nussbaum, emotions are judgments of value and as judgments they
have an important cognitive component.7 Thus she can say of compassion that
it, like other major emotions, is concerned with value: it involves the recognition that the situation matters for the flourishing of the person in question. As
an emotion, compassion requires us to take on the point of view of the onlooker
and make our best judgment about what is really happening to the person8
even if our own judgment departs from the views of the person herself.9
It is not for the historian to evaluate these arguments on philosophical
grounds. However, when Solomon writes that justice is first of all a personal
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virtue, a certain sense of proportion and appropriateness and a feeling of fairness, we recognize that he is writing in conscious tutelage to the age of Rousseau, Hume, and Smith.10 What draws the two eras together (despite their many
differences) is a shared seriousness about the emotions, combined with an (intermittent) distrust of the more abstract propositions of pure Reason.
Sentimentalism in eighteenths-century Britain was the mark of a society recoiling from a period of acute ideological trauma.11 Similarly, the second half
of the twentieth century saw a sharp reaction against the extremist ideologies
and political brutalities of the first. The result has been a deep skepticism about
the grand abstractions that guided earlier debates and a greater willingness to
place ones trust in thoughts and feelings that seem more immediate and local.
The personal is the political sums up the deeply felt instincts of sentimental
politics, going well beyond the womens movement alone, and much the same
can be said of the environmentalist injunction to think globally, act locally.
Against the background of a skepticism toward the grand, emancipatory
claims of earlier ideologies, much political thought has accepted the need to
rein in its theoretical ambitions and keep to a relatively confined and defensible terrain. Where political philosophers have ventured to outline more positive versions of the good life, however, their programs have often carried with
them a new emphasis on the importance of inward states and intersubjective
exchange. Charles Taylors communitarian analysis of the politics of recognition, for example, identifies a broad arena where liberalisms traditional interest in protection of individual legal rights has been overtaken by a new demand
for acknowledgment of the shared experiences and identities of the group.12
This shift towards intersubjective issues has been perfectly demonstrated in the
recent debate over gay marriage; here, after all, is an issue that depends on a
demand for the legitimations of language rather than (as traditionally) on securing individualistic legal or economic entitlements.
As the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another, history closely
reflects what the present finds most absorbing (or most troubling) in itself. From
this perspective, it cannot be surprising that historical thought has followed
where philosophical reflection and political agitation have led.
REDEMPTIVE HISTORY: RESCUING
THE POOR STOCKINGER
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est scope for acts of identification. Witness the streetscapes, shop fronts, and
domestic interiors that have become so prominent in history museums, or the
fashion of narrativizing the past through the adventures of commonplace commodities like salt, cod, or glass. Witness, too, the memorials to the Holocaust or
Vietnam where a simple heap of shoes or an endless alphabet of names gives
the sheer massing of private grief a meaning beyond any public statement.
Scenes such as these carry with them a sense of immediacya presence so
compelling that it seems not to involve mediation. For sentiment to have this
effect, a degree of vividness, of course, is required, but in the end the availability of the emotions is the real goal, not their dramatic heightening. The need,
in short, is less to make the past powerfulthe intention of romantically or
ideologically charged narrativesthan to bring the past near. That is why when
we wish to exercise the compassionate imagination, ordinary men and commonplace objects are so often the channel of feeling. Sentimental histories, to
put it another way, bring us possible brothers and sisters, not impossible heroes.
Actuality, not exemplarity provides their pedagogical program.
Since sympathy is something we extend most readily to those who have been
hurt, denied, or pushed aside, sentimentalism has been one of the forces that
have expanded historys social horizon. The lives of women and children
sentiments most reliable themeshave attracted a great deal of attention, and
it is clear that the reciprocity between feminist ideology and sentimental affect
has been one of the defining features of these times. But the late twentieth
century has also extended its reach to many others who are marginal to power,
starting perhaps with Edward Thompsons famous inventory of the dispossessed
of industrialism: the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the obsolete hand
loom weaver, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott.13
As feminist scholars soon pointed out, the range of Thompsons historical
sympathies was more limited than it seemed at the moment of writing.14 But
more fully than any others I can think ofhis words go to the heart of our
unacknowledged sentimentalism. By rescuing lives such as these from the
enormous condescension of posterity, many historians hoped to give their
work a sense of moral witness that transcended mere professionalism. History
becamethough we didnt yet have the phrasethe scholarship of truth and
reconciliation, offering the dignity of narrative as compensation for lifetimes of
oppression and exclusion.15
Thompsons redemptive mission brought with it a strong commitment to
the idea of experience as a place where the political consciousness of ordinary
people grappled with the material and political conditions governing their
lives. Experience, in other words, bridged the gap between material realities
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But there is no doubt that sentiment also carries possibilities for facile pathos,
or even more disturbingly, for a kind of fellow feeling that becomes the cover
for respectable forms of learned voyeurism.
In common with other disciplines, history has responded to changes in the
political climate by which some of the dominant ideological beliefs of the first
half of the twentieth century (socialist as well as liberal) lost their force, to be
replaced by a new politics of identity focused on considerations of gender, ethnicity, and community. In North America and Western Europe, new groups
found their way upon the public stage, democratizing the theater of political
participation. But even more profoundly, perhaps, the search for recognition
implied a consensus on the primacy of felt experience over externally constructed ideas of rights. There was a growing agreement, it seemed, to measure
the value of public actions and institutions by the test (however it was to be
judged) of authentic feeling.
This reorientation from a concern with social structures to structures of feeling offered historians the exhilaration of a new, if often elusive subject. But
there were concomitant tensions as well, which came from entering an arena
customarily associated with places of popular display rather than the sobriety
of the academy. Not since Macaulay arraigned the fictions of Walter Scott for
usurping the territory that properly belonged to history has it been so easy for
historians to point to other modes of historical representation as foils for their
own more decorous practices. Heritage, memory, reenactmentthese more
populist versions of history owe the breadth of their appeal to an erasure of the
analytic distancing that academic historians continue to claim is central to their
own, more judicious forms of historical representation.
The late twentieth century has seen a huge expansion of institutions and technologies promising a new sense of immediacy, often in the form of immersive
or sensory experience, but there is also a continuity of experiment that leads
from the late eighteenth-century invention of the panorama to cinemascope,
IMAX, and CGI. From this point of view, the crucial thing to notice about recent decades is not so much the extension of popular sentimentalism as its convergence for a time with the sensibility of elite knowledge. This convergence
partial, uncomfortable, but also energizingmatters a good deal because if
sentiment designates the area of human experience we have worked hardest
to historicize, it also names the type of historicization we are most careful to
disavow. This doubleness is essential to my subject and plays a considerable part
in its complexitiesincluding, when left unconfessed, the evasions that have
sometimes blurred the ethical responsibilities of historical writing. The truth is
that sentimentalism is not something we can separate from academic writing.
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On the contrary, a strong emotional pulse animates our histories, giving vitality
to so much of what our age finds worthy of note in others.
MICROHISTORY, BETWEEN AFFECT AND IDEOLOGY
Sentimental history had its characteristic politics as well as its affective intensities, but it was a formal innovation that first captured readers attention.
For a historian who came of age in the sixties and early seventies, there was no
more graphic example of the impact of shifting distances than the arrival of
Italian microstoria, with its challenge to the methodological doctrines of the
Annales as well as to old-fashioned positivism. In 1967, I well remember, when
I began graduate studies, the first book that thumped down on our desks was
Braudels Mediterranean, an encyclopedic survey of this central region of European history in the time of Philip II of Spain. Famously, Braudel taught us to
value the oxymoronic notion of lhistoire immobile, the slow-paced evolution of
geographical, demographic, and social structures, leaving the short time-scale
of eventful history to seem comparatively trivial. Backed by the massed research of Annaliste colleagues (our second assignment, if I recall correctly, was
Gouberts equally weighty Beauvais et le Beauvaisis), Braudels aspiration to
write history built on long time-cycles and careful, cumulative measurement
was enormously influential. Unknowingly, however, we were on the brink of a
remarkable shift and it soon became clear that even within the high precincts of
French historiography the reign of eventless history was under challenge, to be
replaced by a new generation devoted to the rhythms of small-scale narratives,
with the opportunity this gave to explore individual experience in close focus,
yet free from the taint of old-fashioned biography.
In fact, microhistorys program continued the concerns of the Annales in a
number of ways, especially in their shared interest in everyday practices and
peasant societies. But the formal innovation that gave microhistory its name
is crucial, since the reduction of scale encouraged historians to give close attention to traces of individual experience excluded by the methods of the earlier paradigm. In place of long-durational accounts of prices and goods, the
microhistorians turned their minds to Inquisition records and other legal testimony in order to explore the elusive evidence of popular belief. Admittedly,
the documentation was often fitful, but that too was part of its draw, and in the
hands of the most talented historians, it was sufficient to bring to life the mental
worlds of men and women whom traditional historiography had regarded as
inarticulate.
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The dramatic results of the move from long view to close focus make microhistory a textbook demonstration of the impact of redistancing on historiographical practice. Like the first readers of Robert Hookes Micrographia, we
could now visit worlds populated by creatures we hardly knew were there, and
the excitement of encountering life forms as exotic as the benandanti deepened our pleasure in the arcana of early modern scholarship. In some respects,
indeed, the effect of the formal shift was almost too dazzling, since it led to a
view of microhistory as a single, undifferentiated school. In fact, though all
microhistories shared a common formal characteristic, the genre was capable
of considerable variation in the other engagements I have named.
Italian microstoria was the pioneer and is generally regarded as the model,
but it is distinguished by its emphasis on combining the affective attractions
revealed by close focus with other ideological and conceptual engagements.
The unifying principle behind all microhistorical research, writes Giovanni
Levi, is the belief that microhistorical observation will reveal factors previously unobserved.19 Most notably, the microhistorical lens gives us the ability
to observe what Levi calls the irreducibility of individual persons to the rules
of large-scale systems.20 Similarly, Ginzburg argues for exhaustive analysis of
individual documents as a counter to the straightjacket of serial historythe
Annales insistence on studying long-term and repetitive phenomena. To select
as a cognitive object only what is repetitive, and therefore capable of being serialized, signifies paying a very high price in cognitive terms. Since documentation follows the contours of power, Ginzburg argues, this sort of methodological
purism interdicts the historians access to the lives of the powerless. By necessity, insight into the lives of the poor or the marginal demands imaginative use
of the documentarily unique or anomalous.21
These commitments have shaped the practice of microstoria at its best. Ginzburgs Cheese and the Worms, for example, combines exotic detail and human
closeness in the manner that gives the genre as a whole so much of its affective
attraction. As in all the best works of this school, Ginzburg makes the strange
world of premodernity remarkably palpable, and for all its opacity, its mysterious ordinariness becomes all the more graphic in consequence. Even so, as
closely as we approach the mind of Menocchio as he reads and misreads the
books that inform his bizarre cosmology, his mental and emotional world is
never really open for us to inhabit. Instead, the history is largely constructed out
of a series of alien silences: the space between Menocchio and his eclectic reading; the space between the questions of the inquisitors and the answers of their
victim; the space (never finally overcome) between the historian and his elusive
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subject. As a result, though the story loosely hinges on a sequence of events (first
trial, second trial, execution), chronology does not give us its sense of forward
motion. Instead, the narrative emerges from the processes of detection itself,
just as the mind we get to know best is not Menocchios, but that of his untiring historian. But however remote or elusive, Menocchio retains his reality as
a historical person, never becoming (as Ginzburg the antipostmodernist would
see it) a pawn in a skeptical fiction.22 The result is an unusually compelling
combination of affective pleasures and cognitive distantiation, braced by Ginzburgs refusal of the totalizing understanding he associates with the nineteenthcentury novel. The obstacles interfering with the research, he writes, were
constituent elements of the documentation and thus had to become part of the
account; the same for the hesitations and silences of the protagonist in the face
of his persecutors questionsor mine.23
Ginzburgs combining of affective closeness and conceptual distance stands
out more clearly in comparison with another celebrated example of the genre.
Le Roy Laduries Montaillou offers many parallels to Italian microstoria and
they are often classed together. The parallels include his exploitation of a rich
inquisitorial record, his concern for popular religious mentalities, and the
small-scale focus itself. Nonetheless, we should note some important contrasts
that bear on the multiple dimensions of distance. As Lawrence Stone rightly
said when microhistory first broke upon the scholarly world, Montaillou does
not tell a straightforward storythere is no storybut rambles around inside
peoples heads.24 Because of its colorful anecdotalism, much given to details
of sex and hygiene, the history won praises for its novelistic attractions, and
in France it became a best-seller. In formal terms, however, the book lacks a
narrative structure, including the kind of hermeneutic narrative that shapes
Ginzburgs tale of historical detection, where our knowledge of the strange
cosmology of Menocchio is always twice mediatedfirst by the interrogations
of the inquisitors, second by the detective-historian. Montaillou, by contrast,
offers the impression that in the trial records of the Inquisition we hear the
direct testimony of the peasants themselves,25 while the powerful presence of
the inquisitor is rendered transparent. Yet this manJacques Fournier, bishop
of Pamiers, the future Benedict XIIis the indispensable figure at the heart
of this history. His was the intelligence that guided the trial and preserved the
testimony of Montaillous heretical peasants. Le Roy Ladurie makes brilliant
use of this evidence, but his focus on the peasant community comes at the cost
of veiling the presence of his principal witness. This strongly ideological choice
marks a critical difference separating Montaillou from the conceptual distancing demanded by Levi and Ginzburg.
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One more example, American this time, and richly sentimental in the positive sense I intend it. Laurel Thatcher Ulrichs A Midwifes Tale (1990) is a
warmly engaging study of the life and community of a New England midwife
named Martha Ballard. Here the abbreviation of distance produced by close
description has little to do with the conceptual challenges stressed by the Italian
microhistorians. Rather, Ballards meticulous diary-keeping from 1785 to 1813
provides the basis for a vivid picture of daily life in the early American republic,
especially those aspects of family and health most closely related to women.
As a historical document, Ballards diary is certainly precious, but as a record
belonging to a society of widespread literacy, the diary is far from anomalous in
the sense that matters to Levi and Ginsburg. It would be hard to assert, for example, that Ballards medical practices can only be deciphered in the detail of
close-up study. In fact, Ulrichs investigations often work in the opposite direction, reading the known practices of the day (as described in widely distributed
medical manuals) to make sense of the particular remedies of this provincial
healer. Affectively, too, Ballard is far more accessible. In its outlines at least, her
life as an American woman of the early nineteenth century is not fundamentally opaque to us. And since she is both the heroine of the tale and its recorder,
there is no hostile intermediary standing between.
This is not to say that Ulrich effaces all traces of distancing between us and
the early American scene she brings so vividly to life. On the contrary, each
chapter begins with a sizeable excerpt from the diary, in which the vagaries of
eighteenth-century grammar and orthography are carefully preserved, estranging the language of the past just sufficiently to warrant the affective pleasures
that come from discovering elements of familiarity in times unlike our own.
Juxtaposing the raw diary and the interpretative essay in this way, Ulrich
writes, I have hoped to remind readers of the complexity and subjectivity of
historical reconstruction, to give them some sense of both the affinity and the
distance between history and source.26
SENTIMENT: ITS USE AND ABUSE
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including you and me. Therefore, like disaster movies, the Black Death is very
popular.27
Even the Black Death, however, cannot compete in popularity with Jack
the Ripper, one of the two male presences that haunt Judith Walkowitzs much
praised City of Dreadful Delight. Walkowitzs important study is centrally concerned with problems of representation and trauma that so often accompany
the sentimental approach. Indeed, I cannot think of any history that so effectively reveals the double life of such narrativesthe mix of dread and delight
that drew audiences to the reformative writings of Victorian social crusaders
and remains a troubling feature of these narratives today.
From the start, the books title announces its interest in the excitements that
accompany the horrors of violence.28 So too the introduction, where Madame
Tussauds Jack the Ripper Street (opened, we are told, in April 1980) is described in some detail. As she will do in other situations, Walkowitz sets the
tone by quoting sensationalist journalistic descriptions of the Tussaud montage,
and then follows with her own more moderate academic translation. The Ripper street transports the visitor back into a Victorian Carnival of the Night of
mean streets, menacing obscurity, and drunken raucous laughter. Newspaper
accounts of Tussauds street represent it as a movie set designed from the male
point of view. . . . As the spectator abruptly observes the prone body of the
murdered Catherine Eddowes, he/she becomes complicit in the act of looking,
forced into an uneasy alliance with the disappearing shadow of the Ripper.29
This complicity is a central thread in the chapters that follow as Walkowitz
weaves together narratives of reform and sexual predation. A powerful streak
of voyeurism marked all these activities; she writes in the opening chapter
(Urban Spectatorship); the zeal for reform was often accompanied by a
prolonged, fascinated gaze from the bourgoisie.30 The prime exhibit in this
story of mixed motive is W. T. Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, whose
sensational revelations about child prostitution, entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, created a stir that led to the passage of laws on the
age of consent. Walkowitz analyzes the manner in which Steads new journalism made use of sexual strategies already familiar in popular entertainments and grafted pornographic scenarios onto the codes of melodrama. In
fact, to pursue his investigations, Stead himself became a traveler in the dark
world he wanted to expose. In this way he made himself a tourist guide and
social observer for the reader, outlining the moral and social landscape of the
Labyrinth.31 Transforming himself into the predatory Minotaur he sought to
expose, Stead demonstrated how easy it was to procure a young girl, with results
that were exemplified in an episode entitled, Why the Cries of the Victims are
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203
Not Heard, where Stead reported that the brothel keeper spoke confidentially
to him (and therefore to the reader) as a potential customer for her services. In
my house . . . you can enjoy the screams of the girl with the certainty that no
one hears them but yourself. 32
Walkowitz easily persuades us that Steads sensational writing not only
mapped out the same social geography as late-Victorian pornography; it also
replicated, in a moralizing frame, many of the sadistic scenarios that filled pornographys pages.33 Ones unease must be aroused, however, by an inquiry that
is so acute regarding the complex motives of the writers and readers of another
age, but eludes confronting the danger that it too participates in the same complicity. Granted much time has passed since Steads time and the Rippers, but
temporal distance alone does not determine our engagement with the past
least of all in a book which by opening with Madame Tussauds Ripper Street
and closing with a chapter on the Yorkshire Ripper strains to enhance the emotional actuality of its narrative.34
I do not mean to suggest that the problem I am pointing to is easily solved.
On the contrary, what Mieke Bal calls the complicity of critique is inherent
in many forms of representation. The critic, Bal writes, cannot help being the
expository agent, the pointing subject who shows the image, even if the image
is the object of this subjects negative analysis. You can show and critique, but
the gesture of showing itself is constative and bears no modal qualification; it
cannot say no to its own object.35
Mieke Bals particular concern is with visual quotation, where the power of
images so often breaks through the critical cautions of the surrounding text.
But her caveat has important bearing for a sentimentalist scholarship as well,
concerned as it often is to broaden the audience for history as well to explore
the widest range of bodily and psychic experiences. Given our favored modes
of attention to the past, the impossibility of showing and saying no36 poses
a challenge to historians that will need much more discussion than it has yet
received.
Let me turn now to a second, rather different example, Christopher Brownings Ordinary Men. In the conventional (and pejorative) sense in which we
ordinarily use the term, Brownings work is far from sentimental. Strict in its
use of evidence, restrained in its emotions, never unduly graphic, the book is
exemplary in its avoidance of sensationalism, even though it deals with one
of the most horrific chapters of the Holocaust. Brownings subject is the mobile killing units that accompanied the German army in Poland and Russia
and did the work of extermination not in the distanced, mechanized way we
have generally associated with the Nazi genocide, but in enormous numbers
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nonetheless, and by the old-fashioned methods of Jew hunts and pistols fired at
close range.
All the more reason, one might say, for the historian to exercise restraint;
but in what sense, then, is Ordinary Men sentimental? The answer has to lie
in ones assessment of the books most fundamental impulse. Was it to document a particularly vicious chapter of the Final Solution, a chapter previously
overshadowed by the more visible history of the extermination camps? Or was it
primarily an exercise in empathetic understanding that transferred the methods
of Alltagsgeschichte to a new and more difficult setting?37 The first intention
gives us something close to the traditional strengths of history as res gestae; the
second promises a most unusual witness to experience and a sense of what it
was like to be there.
Both impulses, in fact, are present in the book and both are outlined in its
preface, but they are articulated in a sequence that suggests that in the course
of his research the author was led in good measure from the first to the second.
For us, the books readers, this is certainly the itinerary that we travel, from
an opening series of detailed narratives to a final chapter that seeks the widest human explanations possible, among them psychological findings drawn
from Milgrams famous experiments on obedience to authority. The result is
an approach to mass murder that has been called situationalista matter of
understanding what ordinary men might do once placed in this extraordinary
situation.38 This combination of historical empathy and laboratory psychology
first draws us into uncomfortable proximity to the motives and choices of these
killers and then explains their actions in universalizing terms.
The resulting mix of distances has proved potent, giving the book its unusual
personal impact on many readers, while for others it has raised an ethical alarm.
Both morally and emotionally, Ordinary Men addresses the question that so
many readers will bring to an account of such atrocities: What would I have
done in such a situation? Would I have been one of the few who had the courage or quickness required to stand aside? This gives the book a power that is
particularly notable in so restrained an account. At the same time, it is precisely
this universalization that has some critics concerned, since it might seem to
exculpate those trapped in a real-life psychological experiment calculated to
make them indifferent to the sufferings of others.
Ordinary men or ordinary Germans? Daniel Goldhagens fierce attack on
Brownings approach seeks to establish a sharp choice between an ideological
and an empathetic/sentimental reading of the evidence. I simply do not believe that the evidence supports a universalistic reading of the perpetration of
the Holocaust according to which an ordinary man, that transhistorical, acul-
Sentimental History
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tural being, would be willing to kill as these men did, simply for the asking.39
Framed by Goldhagen as a matter of Hitlers willing executioners, the story
of the Order Police becomes a demonstration of the power of racist doctrine
in a population primed by a long history of anti-Semitism. In this ideologically
charged reading, we are so estranged from the perpetrators that no exchange of
understanding seems thinkable. Browning, for his part, insists that even with
killers it may be necessary to find a degree of empathy for understanding to be
possible. Ultimately, he writes, the Holocaust took place because at the most
basic level individual human beings killed other human beings in large numbers over an extended period of time.40
It is not for me to adjudicate. Rather, I want to point to something in this
debate that goes beyond the questions of evidence or argument articulated by
the two historians. Goldhagen seems right to insist that the line between him
and Browning has to do with ones willingness to enter into what he calls a
universalistic reading, but he says nothing about the historical sensibility that
makes such a reading possible at this moment. On the one side we find Goldhagens ideologically constructed Nazi, that willing executioner whose racist
brutality has put him beyond normal conversation. On the other side stands
Brownings ordinary man, the subject of Milgrams experiments on American
undergraduates, as well as the historians own research on the Nuremberg trials.
But for Brownings narrative to work, something more is required than scientific
or historical evidence alone. If the Holocaust in all its horror is to be made more
approachablethe work of humans, not robots or monstersthen Browning
needs a reader who is attracted to the opportunity to exercise this form of understanding, even in the most demanding of settings. This personwe might call
him the willing readerbelongs to the sensibility of these times.
THE HISTORICITY OF HISTORICAL DISTANCE
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personal at the expense of engagement with larger public and political issues.
Inevitably, therefore, the sentimental approach will be criticized for lacking
the aspiration to uncover larger structures of explanation that are essential to
understanding the world and so to changing it. As Geoff Eley has rightly put it,
Why should the earlier concerns of social historians be forgotten, as opposed
to fruitfully re-engaged? Why should embracing the possibilities of microhistory require leaving the macro entirely behind? Not to do so, Eley warns, only
leaves the field open to the latest pack of recklessly and hubristically aggrandizing master narratives [that] will continue enlisting popular imaginations, shaping the political common sense, and generally sweeping the globe.42
It is not my purpose to pursue these questions, which I deliberately bracketed in order to explore the ethical tensions that I believe are inherent in the
sentimental approach. I raise the issue only to make a point of a different kind
concerning the historicity of these mediatory frameworks. Inevitably, the distance shift which gave us the close focus of microhistory and the inwardness
of the sentimental has been challenged by other ways of engaging the past and
will come under an increasing pressure of criticism. It would be premature,
no doubt, to say that the sentimental impulse in historiography has had its day,
and in the environmental conscience that is an increasing force in all Western
societies it may be that we are now seeing the emergence of a new and powerful
force for a renewed politics of sentiment. Unmistakably, however, there is also
a growing interest in grand narratives and large explanatory schemes, especially
those that can be modeled on Darwinian frameworks. If in time these evolutionist narratives begin to shape historical explanation in the same manner that
they already dominate a number of other disciplines, a rising generation might
well choose to turn away from the current fascination with affect to embrace
programs that seem to offer historians grander prospects or more rigorous designs. In that event, my own discussion here would surely seem sentimental in
the negative sense I have tried to correct, and even the best historical work of
the past generation could find itself dismissed as little more than an indulgent
interlude between Marx and Darwin.
10
Things are not that simple, Rebbe. Some events do take place but are not true;
others arealthough they never occurred.
Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time, 1968
I wasnt at all like Sandy, in whom opportunity had quickened the desire to be
a boy on the grand scale, riding the crest of history. I wanted nothing to do with
history. I wanted to be a boy on the smallest scale possible. I wanted to be an
orphan.
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, 2004
Historical writing, it hardly seems necessary to say, has largely been a story
about powerwho has it, how it is organized and contested, how new formations
arise and older ones decline, combined with all the ways that these processes
have expressed themselves in philosophy, literature, and art. Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that while the centripetal operations of power lend themselves
to coherent narratives, our growing engagement with stories of experience refocuses history on relations that are harder to circumscribe. The effectboth
daunting and exhilaratinghas been to leave us increasingly unsure of the
boundaries of our discipline, since it no longer seems possible to say just what
sort of persons or types of activity it encompasses. This being the case, a question that initially seems liberal and inclusive acquires the strongest potential for
critique. What was it like to be there? persists, but in newly radicalized terms.
What more was going on that we didnt give the attention it needed? Who else
wanted to speak, whose voice was suppressed or ignored?
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The roots of the shift from the organization of power to what Raymond Williams calls the structure of feeling1 are complex beyond anything I can discuss
here, but some of its effects on changes in historical representation are plain
to see. In the space of a generation, history has expanded its reach toward ever
more democratized horizons while beginning to explore inward states traditionally regarded as the domain of fiction. Moving rapidly from rescuing the poor
stockinger or recognizing the presence of Eve in the New Jerusalem, the
historical discipline has gone on to encompass subaltern histories, women
on the margins, queer studies, and cultures of childhood, youth, and death
until it seems ready to leap over the boundary between species entirely and take
in the nonhuman as well. Even more remarkably, perhaps, this ingathering of
genders, classes, and peoples has brought with it a parallel shift of attention to
forms of experience that once seemed marginal, commonplace, or fixed by
biology. Fear, leisure, sexuality, childhood, trauma: so much that would once
have been set aside as simply timeless now takes its place in an ever widening
anthropology of experience.
Academic historians might like to exempt themselves from a merely sentimental interest in the past, but if this characterization is accepted in the nonpejorative sense I intend, there is no need for defensiveness. On the contrary, I
believe that taking a serious interest in structures of feeling has been the signature of recent decades and that it has shaped microhistory (for example) no
less than immersive displays in museums or the biographical fictions of some
recent historical novels. This being the case, what distinguishes extra-academic
forms of history is not so much a difference of sensibility as a repertory of representational media and genres that print-bound historians can only watch in
envy. As John Crowe Ransom says of poetry, No belly and no bowels, / Only
consonants and vowels.2
In peaceful times, histories presented as the sum of collective experience appear invitingly liberal; add a few touches of populist theatera stroll through
the streets of colonial Williamsburg, for example, or the whiff of realism in
battlefield reenactmentsand history museums take on the democratic appeal
of an activity that merges family entertainment with pleasant instruction. But if
history museums have become populist tabernacles, why have they been struck
by violent controversy? The answer, I think, is that where structures of feeling
become historys focus, the process of de-centered inclusion is not easily limited
to consensual partners. Instead, the radical possibilities inherent in the call to
experience become available to all those who feel themselves overlooked or
excluded. Most obviously, the identity politics of recent times have made recognition the essential prize in campaigns for representation.3 In these circum-
209
stances, outsider demands are not easily integrated into the liberal narratives
of those who see themselves as speaking for society at large; indeed, given the
outsiders determination to test the good faith of those who hold the power of
representation, the counternarrative is often expressly unassimilable. In turn, as
the quest for experience radicalizes itself, the liberal center grows increasingly
uneasy at finding itself confronted with forces that refuse its consensus and deny
its representativeness. The resulting problems of representation (in both senses
of the word) are the focus of this chapter.
To explore the twin potentials of experiential representation, I begin with
two articulations of the consensual view, before moving on to paired instances
of contrastive narratives as carried out in visual and verbal media. The first
example of the consensual view is Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelens wellknown survey of popular historical attitudes in the United States, The Presence
of the Past (1998). Though the book aims to document the participatory nature
of American interest in the past, it is as much an argument for affective engagement as a study of its popularity with the American public. The same spirit of
liberal inclusiveness lies behind two of the earlier installations at the Canadian
Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, Canadas national museum of
history and anthropology, where Canadian history (Native and non-Native) is
presented in panoramic views of the country as a peaceable kingdom.
There follows a second visit to the Canadian Museum, where the First Peoples Hall gives witness to a more recent and more confrontational representation of Native peoples. In place of earlier harmonies, the newer installation
leaves the visitor with opposing images and texts that face one another in blank
disagreement: the science of archaeology on one side, Native myth, art, and
identity on the other. A very different way of creating counternarrative is to be
found in Philip Roths The Plot Against America (2004). Unlike the strategy of
juxtaposition followed in the museum, this brilliant imagining of a potential
Nazification of America follows an ostensibly linear narrative in the traditional
manner of histories. Yet from the opening paragraphs of this counterfactual fiction, the reader knows that this is a history that did not happen. We are forced
back on memory and a constant comparison of discordant truths.
My primary concern is to extend the earlier discussion of contrast narratives
to a more recent period and a more popular domain, where, as already suggested, issues of representation are writ (or imaged) large. Among other things,
the prominence of visual media in the popular arena allows for a fuller exploration of word and image in relation to this distancing device. Clearly, the
immediacy of visual perception invites strategies of contrast impossible to the
slower accretions of meaning available through language. The moderated pace
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of verbal narrative, for its part, offers incomparable detail and range of perspectiveshere combined with the imaginative freedoms of a gifted novelist. Roths
Plot Against America joins together two stories of very different scope, a lovingly
detailed inner world of childhood emotions within a counterfactual public narrative of the broadest historical reach.
THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST
Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelens Presence of the Past offers a valuable
witness to the place of affect in recent historical sensibilities. In response to the
history wars of the previous decade, the study sets out to test the conservative
accusation that ordinary Americans show little knowledge of earlier times and
not much interest. What Rosenzweig and Thelen discover is that what most
people dislike is not history as such but the formalities of the schoolbook. When
ordinary citizens are asked in detail about a broad range of past-related activities their responses impress us with the presence of the pastits ubiquity and
its connection to current-day concernsrather than its frequently bemoaned
absence.4
With its central concern for participatory and experiential uses of history, The
Presence of the Past speaks directly to the sentimental mood in contemporary approaches to history. As Thelen puts it in summing up: Im much more certain
that respondents participate actively and use the past intimately than I am that
the pasts they use are intimate or private. The central issue in a fundamentally
historical culture is participation or passivity. . . . To find the common ground
among respondents, then, we should look for occasions when they participated
voluntarily and enthusiastically, situations where they felt invited to use the past
on their own terms.5
Within this participatory framework, the study pursues a view of what it calls
popular history making that is very broad-based, if only loosely connected
to a conventional understanding of history as a public narrative. Americans
reach into history by reaching out of their own lives. As they build bridges between personal pasts and larger historical stories, Americansespecially white
Americanstend to personalize the public past. African Americans, American
Indians, and evangelical Christians sometimes construct a wider set of usable
pasts, building ties to their communities as well as their families.6 In the final
analysis, however, the authors conclude that there is no fundamental division
in the way Americans experience their history since family remains the essential
link that provides connection to the past.
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The survey method involves a mix of quantifiable and open-ended inquiries relating to the general framework.7 In the case of African Americans and
other minorities the open variety introduces some questions that break with
the consensual tone of the general survey: How much of a common history do
you think you share with other Americans? Is the past of any other place in
the world more important to you than the past of the United States? Do you
feel more connected to the past on the 4th of July or on Martin Luther Kings
Birthday?
Questions of this kind are obviously intended to give space for alternative
views and to encourage a more open conversation with the telephone interviewer. Nonetheless, as ventures into dissent, the questions seem bland, as well
as disconnected from the survey as a whole. Indeed, if we return to the core list
of activities related to the past, it is striking how little place there is for any
past-related activity that does not fit the familial model. Watching movies
or television, making a family tree, looking at photos with family and friends,
writing in a diary, attending a reunion, participating in a hobby or making a collection, visiting museums and historic sitesit is in this homespun atmosphere
that the core issue of historical participation is examined and assessed. Within
this strongly affective framework, the survey tests degrees of participation, but
seems blind to the idea that some Americans might experience their histories
through other, perhaps less comfortable or consensual forms of engagement.
It would be jumping the gun to speculate too far on what kinds of questions
would suit the two chief examples of oppositional narrative I discuss later. Still,
it might be worth imagining for a moment what such a survey would look like.
Is suing the Canadian government a past-related activity, when undertaken
by those who suffered sexual and cultural abuses in residential schools? Should
a survey of historical experiences include fear of violence because of racial or
religious bigotry? In what circumstances would joining peace marches, protest
groups, rallies, and petitions constitute forms of historical participation?
THE HISTORY OF A HISTORY MUSEUM: FROM THE
PICTURESQUE TO THE EDGE OF CONTRAST
As you enter the new First Peoples Hall at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC), the museums largest installation concerned with Indigenous life,
you are confronted by a panel bearing words of greeting superimposed over an
image of the Ottawa River.8 The statement is given in three languages, English,
French, and Algonquin.
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Fig. 10.1. Welcome panel, First Peoples Hall, Canadian Museum of Civilization,
Gatineau, Quebec. Photo: Ruth Phillips.
You have arrived on Algonquin land. The Creator put the Algonquin here to
occupy this land. The Creator also gave the Algonquins a language to communicate with.
It was told to our ancestor that:
As long as the sun will shine
As long as the rivers will flow
As long as the grass will grow
The Anishinabe life would continue to circle forever.
This is what was given to the Anishinabe.
And this is as it should be.
This welcome is not issued in the name of the CMC or the Canadian nation, but of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabe Circle of Elders, representatives of
the Indigenous First Nation recognized as the traditional owner of the land on
which the museum sits. The greeting is part of a contemporary movement to
reassert Aboriginal sovereignty, but the picture over which this text is printed ex-
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215
that contain both didactic installations and information on Native life, past and
present. Physical constraints, however, have limited some of them to a relatively
shallow space.
The concept for the Grand Hall also provides for the animation of the exhibition through live performances and interpreters. Despite these modifications,
however, the overwhelming impression remains that of a scene viewed from
the watersomething like Turners views of Venice translated to an unfamiliar
shore. On encountering this miniature village, the visitors first thought is not to
explore whatever goes on behind the house fronts, but to stand in admiration of
a picturesque spectacle that manages to be both dazzling and approachable.
The Canada Hall, situated two stories above, confronts the visitor with affective pleasures of another kind. Here too the curators and designers were
given a vast stage for their work, but rather than gathering up the whole into
a single tableau, they chose a more intimate approach. The installation consists of a series of enclosed areas and close-up views, artfully arranged along
a winding path that is simultaneously a geographical journey across Canada
and a chronological journey through its history. Thus as we travel from east to
west (the path of Empire as the eighteenth century saw it), we also progress
through a series of moments in the growth of the nation. What is represented,
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Fig. 10.3. House fronts and totems, Grand Hall, Canadian Museum
of Civilization. Photo: Mark Salber Phillips.
however, is a series of typical scenes rather than specific events: Basque whalers, a town square in Nouvelle France, nineteenth-century Ontario storefronts,
a Metis encampment, a railway station ready to receive immigrants, a Chinese
laundry, a prairie grain elevatoruntil once again we reach the fishing villages
of the Pacific coast.14
The Canada Hall is an extended version of the streetscapes that became
popular in history museums in this period. As MacDonald himself explains,
one part of their attraction lies in the fact that they offer a change of scale
from traditional displays, another in the fact that (given the familiarity we all
have with city streets) people feel comfortable in this type of environment.
All the spaces here are small, enclosed, and intimate, andin keeping with the
CMCs strongly stated goal of making the museum a place of experience rather
than a treasure house of artifactsthe exhibits work to make the past seem
as accessible as possible. Whereas old-fashioned display cases place a barrier
between visitor and artifact, MacDonald writes, environmental reconstructions allow visitors to penetrate the exhibit, thus increasing the potential for
that participation and interactivity which enhances both the enjoyment and
the learning process.15
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With their invitation to peer into bedrooms, taverns, and churches, immersive exhibitions of this kind offer the sweet flavor of nostalgia, as well as a hint
of voyeurism. Such impressions of intimacy with life in other times are also intensified by the reduced scale of the reconstructed buildings, a device borrowed
from theme parks such as the Epcot Center at Disneyworld, which was an
important source of ideas for MacDonald when the CMCs exhibits were being planned. Curiously, the architects and designers seem disinclined to draw
analogies with other forms of historical representation; nonetheless, there is an
obvious parallel with contemporary experiments in historiographyespecially
with those forms of microhistory where the desire for affective presencing is
most salient.
If the Grand Hall is a magnificent panorama, the Canada Hall is a sentimental journey. The intimacy of its individual settings offers the visitor a cumulative sense of participation and belonging. At any given stage of the narrative,
the scene may seem exotic, but over time and space Canadas progress from
coast to coast unfolds as a journey of identification. The museums itinerary
takes us through a liberal sample of Canadas diverse population, seeking to
provide points of attachment for visitors of varying geographies and ethnicities.
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As we tread the cobbled path, we are kept aware of following a trail, and if we
happen to look up, we may catch a glimpse of the next or the previous stopsa
rooftop or a ships mast projecting above the horizon. No scene, in fact, stands
wholly unto itself. Instead a gentle compulsion moves the visitor forward along
the journey of unity and progress that the museum was built to celebrate and
promote.
Despite some difference in affect, the same picturesque aesthetic governs
both the Grand Hall and the Canada Hall. The variation is largely a matter of
scale. Any of the Northwest Coast houses could be transferred to the narrativized space of the Canada Hall, just as a number of the Canada Halls scenes
could be enlarged to create a panoramic spectacle closer to the one magnificently elaborated two stories below; all that would be needed (but is purposely
not granted) is the space to stand back in admiration. Given Canadas regionalism, for instance, one could imagine a sectional revolt among the curators in
which the Grand Hall would be cleared of its totems to be refurbished with the
lanky wood walls of prairie grain elevators. Tenderly restored and brought to
Ottawa, these icons of western settlement would serve a new purpose as a lieu
de mmoire of an urbanized nation.
CONTRAST AND CRITIQUE
The picturesque, as the name implies, is an aesthetic (and especially an affect) closely tied to visual perception. Though it is possible to approach the
same result through language, the painters eye moves with an immediacy that
the writers ear can only aspire to. Museums, of course, have always had both
verbal and visual media at their disposal, though not always in the same balance. On the contrary, post-1968 there has been a notable tilt in the direction
of the visual as museums everywhere have shifted their emphasis from the objectifying and classificatory regimes of earlier institutions toward a more open
appeal to affect and experience.
The shift has affected all stripes of museum. Art museums, for example, generally bastions of traditional display, once labeled their treasures with little more
than the artists dates and the venerated names of the donors. Today every label is likely to become a brief ekphrastic exercise: a verbal description of what
the eye should see and, by implication, an instruction about how the visitor
should respond. From another quarter, history museums have vastly increased
in number, and many have added a performative element, thereby translating
an orderly collection of things into an active body of experience. More radically, museums of conscience (New Yorks Tenement Museum, for instance)
219
not only provide immersive displays that encourage the visitor to reexperience
the harsh conditions of life in an earlier generation, but also point to the continuance of very similar abuses in the present day. Taken as a mode of formal
distance, reenactment often lends itself to nostalgia, but in the museum of conscience, performativity becomes active and critical.
At the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the First Peoples Hall offers a strong
contrast with the mood of its predecessors. Against the panoramic harmonies
of the Grand Hall and the journey of inclusion in the Canada Hall, the newer
installation aims at effects that are often deliberately disparate and jarring. Here
the curators make good use of one of the perennial strengths of visual perception. The same rapidity, after all, that gives images their potential for immediate
pleasures can also be a vehicle for juxtapositions that jangle and disturb.
As I have already noted, the first indication of this contrastive strategy comes
with the initial greeting panel showing superimposed images of Indigenous life
and the neo-Gothic parliament. Once inside the Hall, we come to a display
dedicated to the theme We Are Diverse, where we encounter a variety of
items assembled with cheerful luxuriance, but little respect for art historys aesthetic clarity or anthropologys classifications by culture areas and object types.
In a further section, called Ways of Knowing, the same idea is extended and
given sharper definition by juxtaposing various expressions of Indigenous belief with Western ethnology and archaeology. The clear message is to demand
respect for the equal authority of traditional knowledge and the findings of
Western science. This rebalancing is achieved by changing the space ordinarily
devoted to each body of knowledge. Thus the main archaeological installation
is surrounded by an array of Indigenous storytelling formsNorval Morisseaus
painted account of Ojibwa cosmology (A Separate Reality); Shelly Niros sculpture of the Iroquois creation story (Sky Woman); a storytelling booth; and a large
theater in which Stephen Augustinea CMC curator and Mikmaq elder
narrates part of the Glooscap trickster-hero cycle.
In all this the message of contemporary archaeological findings is not erased.
Through glass floor panels we see and walk over the re-created deposits of artifacts that museum archaeologists have excavated at Bluefish Caves in the Yukon Territory, a twenty-five-thousand-year-old site containing Canadas oldest
deposits of human tools. There are also text panels explaining the standard theories regarding climate change and human migration across the Bering Straits.
But this information constitutes just one side of an argument about the origin
of human habitation in North America. Another panel, entitled Our Origins,
states the Native view: Scientific research and our own traditions confirm that
we, the First Peoples, have an ancient presence on this continent. We are not
Fig. 10.5. Ways of Knowing, First Peoples Hall, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Photo: Mark Salber Phillips.
Fig. 10.6. Our Origins, juxtaposed with archaeological exhibits. First Peoples Hall,
Canadian Museum of Civilization. Photo: Mark Salber Phillips.
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the first immigrants; we are the Native inhabitants of the land. We have been
here since before the world took its present form. There is no gesture toward
adjudicating these differences; as in the introductory panel with which I began,
two contradictory images simply occupy the same space, without any apparent
resolution.16
CONTRAST NARRATIVE AND COUNTERFACTUAL
It is a truism of contemporary scholarship that comparative study is a powerful tool of historical understanding. Curiously, however, histories that adopt
comparison as a formal structure are relatively rare.17 In this sense, we have
done little to soften the intriguing irony that although historys conceptual
framework is often described in contrastive terms (what one age finds worthy
of note in another) its formal conventions continue to be linear and sequential
(see Chapter 6).
I do not know of any discussion that examines contrastive narrative as a specific historical genre,18 but it is worth repeating the point made in an earlier
chapter that a small but notable body of histories has taken this exceptional
formamong them texts as different from one another as Plutarchs Lives,
Machiavellis Discorsi, Carlyles Past and Present, and Tocquevilles Old Regime and the French Revolution.19 The comparative impulse can serve a variety
of purposes, but a common theme has been to set present weakness against the
attractions or achievements of another age. Thus if narratives of progress are by
nature affirmative and inclusive, narratives of estrangement tend to revisit the
past for critical or even openly polemical purposes.
Such narratives have continued to be written post-1968, but in tracing this
type of composition into recent times I want to confine myself to one distinctively modern variant, namely the counterfactual.20 In this increasingly prominent genre, a historical episode is rewritten to give a plausible account of something that might have happened, but did not. What if Charles Martel had not
turned back the Muslim army at Tours in 732? What if Germany had defeated
Britain in 1940? By comparison to structures of juxtaposition such as Carlyles
Past and Present, this strategy of overwriting seems a more radical disruption of
the standard narrative. In an important sense, however, the violence done to
history is somewhat deceptive, since by definition counterfactuals remain alternative accounts. For the contrast to do its work, the established narrative must
remain present in the readers mind. Consequently, though the counternarrative thrusts itself forward, its ultimate function is supplementary. Less a history
in its own right, it serves as a comment on its double.
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Readers for whom names like these are no longer current can brush up by
consulting the novels ample postscript. There (stepping outside the protections
of fiction) Roth provides a substantial historical apparatus, including a bibliography of historical works from which he has drawn his material, a true chronology of the major figures, as well as briefer summaries of the lives and opinions
of others who play a smaller part in his narrative. Factual though the appendix
is, its purpose is as much polemical as matter-of-fact, since much of it is devoted to documenting the now largely forgotten anti-Semitism of key figures
of the timeHenry Ford, Burton Wheeler, Father Coughlin, and especially
Lindbergh himself. Tellingly, Roth also reproduces the full text of Lindberghs
flagrantly anti-Jewish speech to the America First rally in Des Moines in September 1941, portions of which are also embedded in the opening pages of the
novel. Inverting the classical convention, which put invented orations into the
mouths of real-life heroes, Roth supports his fictionalized portrait with an authentically historical speech.
Clearly this is a novel that demands to be read in the context of history, but
the relationship between its fictions and history is by no means straightforward.
The Plot Against America is a work of fiction, Roth writes at the opening of his
postscript, adding that the appendix is intended as a reference for readers interested in tracking where historical fact ends and historical imagining begins.24
Whether this invitation is disingenuous it is difficult to say, but it would be odd
for a writer who has worked so hard to complicate these categories to let the
matter rest here. On the contrary, the way in which the true chronology combines reportorial style with forceful persuasion only adds a further complexity
to the question of how history functions in a novel whose opening premise runs
counter to the accepted narrative of the period.
Critics have generally classed The Plot Against America as a counterfactual,
or (what amounts to the same thing) an alternative history. The description
has an obvious application, but taken by itself it is most easily attached to thinly
textured narratives (whether histories or science fictions) where simple plot inversion is the defining feature. To fix the label on Roths work, on the other
hand, highlights a single plot device, thereby prejudging the key issue of just
how fact relates to imagining. If we want to hold open the question of history and fiction, it seems best to begin on the wider terrain of the historical
novellong a home to such hybriditiesbefore turning to the special issues
that are raised by Roths experimentation with contrastive structures combined
with a deeply sentimental re-creation of the Jewish family.
At the core of The Plot Against America is its evocation of the tensions and
insecurities of life in the Jewish neighborhoods of Newark in 194042. This
close-up interest in the emotional experience of ordinary people has clear par-
225
allels in recent historiography,25 but it also gives Roths narrative a shape that
nicely inverts the structure of the classic historical novel. In Scotts works, for
example, a public setting establishes the broad conditions of social and political
life, while an intimate inner realm (often a romance) addresses the heart. The
resulting combination of extended and foreshortened perspectives is one of the
attractions of this hybrid genre, in which the irrefutable authority of the historical past lends a sense of moral consequence and seeming inevitability to the
inner spaciousness which fiction permits. Roths history of the Jews of Newark,
it is evident, follows a similar pattern, though one that is complicated by the
novels autobiographical particularity. The history of the Roth family carries the
strongest aura of verisimilitude, while the jarring inventions of the public narrative vigorously advertise its departure from the historical record.26
The combination of two great narrative forms gives the historical novel its
distinctive richness, but it also places special burdens on the writer, for whom
so much depends upon the integrity with which the work mediates the differing
requirements of fiction and history. (Manzoni, having completed I promessi
sposi, notoriously declared the union impossible.) Unfortunately, much of the
critical response to Roths novel shies away from having to deal with these tensions, choosing instead to give selective emphasis to one side or another of its
double structure. Some critics, for example, have focused on the intimate portrait of family life in Weequahic, thus savoring the affective pleasures of Roths
fiction, while turning away from the distancing perplexities generated by his
imaginary history. The danger is that the Lindbergh coup becomes little more
than a dramatic plot device, something like those private catastrophes that regularly initiate the novels of Ian McEwan. On this reading, Roths creation could
seem little more than a richly sentimental portrait of the time and place of his
origins, rather than a serious attempt to capture the historical dimensions of
Jewish life in America. On the other hand, critics more sympathetic to Roths
wider politics have tended to read the novel against the background of more
recent American conflicts, seeing its real purpose as a gesture of protest against
the degradation of democracy under the government of George W. Bush. Notably, this reading allegorizes the ideological dimension of the novel, on the
assumption that a narrative estranged by such blatant historical fictions is not
really intended as a representation of the events it purports to describe. Thus
the seriousness of the novels attention to public matters is preserved, but only
by displacing them to another time, once again weakening the double structure
that characteristically gives the historical novel its special force.
There is nothing out of the ordinary in the thought that Roths imagining
owes something important to the paranoid atmosphere of the Bush presidency,
with its War on Terror and its sacrifice of democratic institutions to the cause
226
Circa 1968
of internal security. Like other sorts of history, the historical novel too must be
a record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another. Nonetheless,
there are strong reasons to credit the strength of Roths engagement with the
forties, a time that encompasses the earliest memories of this obsessively autobiographical writer, as well as a crucial passage in the history of American Jews,
the great subject of his fiction. I am not pretending to be interested in [the
years 1940 to 1942], he has written, . . . I am interested in those two years.27
Puzzlingly, however, it is just this conjunction that the opening pages seem
both to invite and resist. After all, though we can take Philips word for it that
he grew up fearful, we are sure that Lindbergh never became president and that
there was no isolationist entente with Hitler.
No narrative that opens on this note intends to be taken as a true history,
but if we are going to read The Plot Against America in the tradition of the historical novel, it remains essential to ask what historical purpose is served by its
counterfactual inventions. By way of analogy, we know that Pericles funeral
oration was largely Thucydides own composition, yet readers have no trouble
in accepting that such orations hold a legitimate place in this great and sober
account of the Peloponnesian War. In this context, the differences between the
ancient historian and the modern novelist are a matter of ideological distance
as well as formal convention. Thucydides creation is both elevated and affirmative, reflecting back to Athenians an idealized view of their own best selves.
Roths invention, on the other hand, is polemical and estranging, calling out of
hiding an image of America that has become repulsive to memory.
Like Pericles, Roths narrator Philip both participates in events and comments on their meanings, but the narrators of modern novels are permitted
an extraordinary fluidity not available to classical orators. Key passages often
begin from the frightened eye of the child, only to broaden insensibly into the
recollective perspectives of the adult narrator. A new life began for me, says
Philip, on the eve of the return of his cousin Alvin, who has lost a leg as a
volunteer in the Canadian forces.
Id watched my father fall apart, and I would never return to the same childhood. The mother at home was now away all day working for Hahne . . . and
the father whod defiantly serenaded all those callow cafeteria anti-Semites
in Washington was crying aloud with his mouth wide opencrying like
both a baby abandoned and a man being torturedbecause he was powerless to stop the unforeseen. And as Lindberghs election couldnt have made
clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong
way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as
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228
Circa 1968
while many, like Hermann and Bess, are caught up in a blind, instinctive resistance that Roth pictures as stubborn to the point of heroic. The consequence
is a history both extreme and sentimental, an intensely flavored stew that tastes
equally of sweet and sour.
In no other novel does Roth put himself forward so lovingly on the side of
his principal characters, men and women unironically depicted as magnificent
in their simple integrity and straightforward ordinariness.33 But as vividly as
our narrator recalls the anxieties of his early years, his recollective perspective
brings with it continuous reminders that he speaks from a later timeone quite
different from the period he remembers with such warmth and alarm. As far as
I can tell, the precise moment from which these adult recollections take their
bearing is never specified, inviting the association that critics have made with
the presidency of Bush.34 A vivid contrast between the two eras can certainly be
built on the level of high politics: FDR against George W. Bush, but also the
age of Felix Frankfurter versus that of Caspar Weinberger and the Jewish neocons. Roths most enduring concerns, however, belong to private rather than
public life. Here the changes are more subtle, though pervasive, and their foreshadowing in the prewar narrative is largely felt by implication.
Take the following description of Hermann Roth and his Jewish associates at
Metropolitan Life, the giant insurance company for which they all work, meeting together in anxious consultation when their employer serves notice that
they will be relocated to various offices across the hinterland of America:
They were very similar people at the core; they raised their families, budgeted
their money, attended to their elderly parents, and cared for their modest
homes alike. . . . These were Jews who needed no large terms of reference, no
profession of faith or doctrinal creed, in order to be Jews, and they certainly
needed no other language. . . . Neither was their being Jews a mishap or a misfortune or an achievement to be proud of. What they were was what they
couldnt get rid ofwhat they couldnt even begin to want to get rid of. Their
being Jews issued from their being themselves, as did their being American.
It was as it was, in the nature of things, as fundamental as having arteries and
veins, and they never manifested the slightest desire to change it or deny it,
regardless of the consequences.35
For these men and their families, the immediate danger springs from the racist policies of the Office of American Absorption, but it is hardly possible to
read such passages without looking ahead to the long arc of disillusionment
described in American Pastoral (1997), Roths great novel of postwar prosperity
and confusion. When the two novels are placed side by side, a more extended
229
history comes into view, revealing new threats to a way of life that had once
seemed as natural as having arteries and veins. Here (Roth seems to be telling
us) is what would become of all that anxiety and stubborn resistance. Swede
Lvov and his troubled daughterthey are the future that was preserved when
Hermann Roth chose not to flee to Canada and President Lindberghs plane
mysteriously vanished into thin air.
As an art of retrospect, history is built upon the ironies that come from the
readers knowing what the characters cannot. (We dont need Thucydides to
tell us who is going to win the Peloponnesian War.) Roth describes American
Jews at their moment of peril, but he speaks to a reader who knows the America
the Roths inherited, as described so bleakly in American Pastoral. For Plot
Against America, however, this foreknowledge is anything but distancing. On
the contrary, looking back across the divide of postwar suburban prosperitya
divide impossible to imagine amidst the pressures of 194042Roth infuses
the image of that earlier time with an extra measure of tenderness, though one
tinged with sad premonitions.
In The Plot Against America (unlike American Pastoral), the longer, intergenerational perspective remains largely in the background of the narrative, a
source of irony and nostalgia; the sharp edge of the counterfactual, on the other
hand, hits with immediate force and its consequences carry right through the
novel. Here contrastiveness goes beyond a simple juxtaposition of before and
after to overwrite the historical record entirely, thus producing a relationship to
the common narrative that seems inherently more violent and polemical. And
yet Roths use of contrast-narrative also involves a seeming hesitation that has
not yet been sufficiently discussed. The book tells a story of mounting danger to
the Jews, but unlike most examples of the genre, Roths version leaves the Nazification of America a near missa threat averted (however narrowly) by the
disappearance of Lindbergh and the emergence of his wife as an unexpected
champion of the Constitution. The design is certainly eccentric since the usual
expectation of counterfactuals is that their consequences will be extrapolated to
their logical conclusions. Roth, on the other hand, holds back from carrying his
speculative fiction all the way to its end and attempts (not altogether convincingly) to stitch his imagined history back into the proper sequence of events.
The details are few, but we learn that Burton K. Wheelers coup fails and that
FDRpresident once againdies in office . . . only weeks before the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies marked the end of World War
Two in Europe.36
Why hesitate like this just on the brink, only to turn away from the full consequences of a story that Roth has risked so much credibility to set in motion? And
230
Circa 1968
why, having worked so hard to make imaginary dangers feel convincing, close
the novel by seeming to reinstate the old boundary between fact and fiction?
At first glance, the collapse of the counterfactual premise looks like nothing so
much as a capitulation to realisma retreat (too long delayed, some would say)
from the extravagant burdens of historical imagining. Another reading is also
possible, however, and I would like to explore its implications.
If, as I have suggested, Roths alternative history overwrites the standard narrative, it may seem natural to assume that it also replaces it. On this view, the
counternarrative presents a version of events that is not only substantially different from the accepted history, but also one that is incommensurable with it.
But contrast, like other redistancing devices, can operate in many registers, so it
may be more productive to think in terms of a wider spectrum of possibilities.
Something similar, after all, has already been canvassed in connection with the
recollective structure of this novel, where the narrators adult consciousness
does not displace his memories of childhood, but revisits them in the light of
later experiences, creating a temporal consciousness that is not anchored entirely in either the present or the past. This, of course, is a fluency that comes
more easily to the novelist than to the historian.
I began by calling Roths novel a paranoid history, since from the opening
it is charged with an atmosphere of sharp anxiety and an equally intense, but
defensive attachment.37 But if the label is at all appropriate, it can be so only
if we resist the commonsense view that would equate paranoia with thorough
derangement. Rather, Roth appears to offer us an account of American life
whose relationship to the straightforward appearance of things is considerably
more ambiguous. Paranoia (if that is what it is) yields nothing like the whole
truth. Crucially, it does not wait for events to disclose their full consequences
something historians ought to do, though witnesses and participants cannot.
Rather, it dwells excessively on harmful potentials, confronting the world with
the alertness of a fearful child (especially a watchful seven-year-old who is the
offspring of Jews). But as the joke has it, even paranoids have enemies, and in
certain circumstances, an exacerbated attentiveness to hidden meanings may
amount to a more penetrating form of attention.
As Philip announces at the start of the book, The Plot Against America is
a story about fear. Fear generates the vision of America that the counterfactual
makes visible. And fear is what joins the two layers of the novel together, fusing
the sentimental family narrative to the paranoid factuality of the history. The
result may be the sort of history that most historians turn away from in search
of a perspective that is more distanced and reliable. But even the most sober
historian might be brought to admit that there are also moments when the
231
232
Circa 1968
EPILOGUE
MY LAI AND MORAL LUCK;
OR, TIS FORTY YEARS SINCE
Hugh Thompson was one of the heroes of the Vietnam War, though a troubled and damaged hero too. Here is an account given by the New York Times
obituary, under a headline that reads Hugh Thompson, 62, Who Saved Civilians at My Lai, Dies:
On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese
village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children
strewn over the landscape. Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre
was taking place. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which
a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. Using
hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while
ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who
opened fire on the civilians. None did.
Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to evacuate the group, and
then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from a nearby irrigation
ditch and their helicopter flew him to safety.
Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he returned to his base.
They said I was screaming quite loud . . . I threatened never to fly again.
I didnt want to be a part of that. It wasnt war.1
233
234
Epilogue
threats, and was once told by a congressman that he was the only American who
should be punished over My Lai.2
Later Lt. William Calley, commander of one of the platoons that had been
involved, was court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence
was commuted by President Nixon to three years of house arrest. Thompson
himself was largely forgotten, and his private life after My Lai was troubled
by alcohol and several failed marriages. He even changed his name, calling
himself Buck, to avoid identification with the memory of My Lai. Eventually
a campaign was mounted on his behalf and, after thirty years, he was decorated. The Guardian reported: The US army had initially wanted his Soldiers
Medal, the militarys highest award for bravery in peacetime, to be presented
quietly, preferring to keep what happened at My Lai in the background. But
Thompson resisted. He wanted a ceremony at the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC, and the bravery of his fellow crew members recognised as well. In
March 1998, he finally got his wish.3
What had given Thompson such courage and clarity of mind? The obituaries have relatively little to say about his motives, preferring to dwell on his
continued trials and eventual vindication, rather than to speculate on the inner
resources that allowed one ordinary man to make so costly a stand. The Guardian, however, hints at a number of possible avenues: Thompson was born in
Atlanta, Georgia, to strict Episcopalian parents, and moved to nearby Stone
Mountain when he was three years old. His father served with both the US
army and navy during the second world war and spent 30 years with the naval
reserve. His paternal grandfather was a full-blooded Cherokee . . . , forced off
tribal land in North Carolina in the 1850s and resettled in Georgia. Thompson
joined the US navy in 1961, and spent three years in a Seabees construction
unit. After a brief return to civilian life in 1964 . . . he re-enlisted in the army, as
it was becoming engaged in Vietnam.
A religious upbringing, his fathers military career and his own commitment
to the military life, perhaps a residual identification with his Native American
ancestry, with its own history of forced removals and genocidal violence against
civilians: it would be entirely plausible if any or all of these played a part in
Thompsons response that day, enabling a readiness to act that seems quite different from the slower awakening and retrospective regret that so often troubles our moral lives. There is also a further question to consider in relation to
Thompsons dissident braverya circumstance that (combining with the other
influences already mentioned) may have contributed something important to
his strength of mind that day. As a reconnaissance pilot, Thompson had a different job to do in My Lai than did the infantrymen of Charlie Company, and he
Epilogue
235
and his crew observed events from a different physical and intellectual vantage.
Their war was no less dangerousThompson himself was shot down five times
and one of his crew was killed only a few weeks laterbut surely they had seen
a different sort of war. Indeed, as the Times obituary makes clear, seeing was very
much the issue, and in the initial stages Thompson had trouble simply making
sense of the picture that emerged below. It was only by taking off and landing
a second time that he became convinced that the dozens of bodies that littered
the village formed a pattern that belonged to no concept of warfare he could
acceptwhether the revulsion was owing to his military training, religious upbringing, Cherokee ancestry, or some other feature of simple humanity we do
not know or cannot name.
Considered as a kind of parable, the story I have assembled from the obituaries speaks strongly for a variety of ways in which forms of distance may operate
to shape our moral capacities. In his most critical moment, Thompson was not
merely a pilot flying above the carnage. He was also a reconnaissance officer
with both military and human duties to perform. His training as well as his
physical location gave him possibilities for judgment that set him apart from
the men on the ground. By the same token, his situation was very different from
that of the military brass and congressmen, whom he angered by caring more
about the atrocity he had witnessed than for the reputation of the American
forces. On this account, the view from the hovering aircraft confronted the
pilot with a disturbing cognitive challenge, but one that could only be resolved
in moral action by coming right down to ground level. The result was a lifechanging decision that left Thompson both a hero and a victim.
Presented in isolation, Thompsons life easily assumes the form of what Nietzsche calls monumental historythe kind of history that is built on the conviction that the past must be described as something worthy of imitation.4 In
the context of Vietnam, such an approach has deep attractions since it retrieves
a moment of hopefulness in one of the worst episodes in a shameful war. And
yet, as Nietzsche rightly insists, for all its comforts, the monumental approach
gives us only a selective understanding of history.
What, then, has been left out? No historian will ever walk a mile in the
shoes of those who murdered the civilians of My Lai, but neither can we claim
for ourselves the physical and moral elevation of Thompsons helicopter without considering the very different vantage of those who fought on the ground
against soldiers who seemed indistinguishable from ordinary peasants. What
were the realities for them? Even the obituaries, focused though they are on
Thompsons courage and conscientiousness, gave indications of another, much
less edifying, but equally human narrative: On March 16 1968, the Guardian
236
Epilogue
reported, Thompson was flying his H-23 scout helicopter, with its three man
crew, over a part of Quang Ngai province known as Pinkville, supporting a
three company search-and-destroy assault on several villages, which faulty intelligence had indicated were heavily defended by Vietcong troops. . . . Charlie
Company was bent on revenge; days earlier several of its members had been
killed by Vietcong mines and booby traps. Without a shot being fired against
them, Calleys men began slaughtering anyone they could find. The faulty intelligence may have been the consequence of mistakes made at some remove
from the battlegrounds, but the deadly booby traps of Quang Ngai were experienced at all too close a range, and the men of Charlie Company responded
with dreadful consequences for both the perpetrators and their victims.
It is not easy to join Hugh Thompsons experience with Charlie Companys
under a unified view of American warfare. The problem goes beyond balancing the moral bravery of the one and the murderous violence of the other. To
understand their intersecting fortunes we may need the help of another relational concept with some affinity to distance. I have in mind Bernard Williamss
oxymoronic idea of moral luckthe sense that even moral life, traditionally regarded as a realm of autonomy, is subject to the accidents of situation. Certainly
it takes nothing away from the admiration that is owing to Thompson and his
crew to say that March 16, 1968, was a good day to be airborne.
And what of the vantage of the historian, whose acts of reconnaissance can
no longer be thought of as a straightforward search for detachment? Historys
first task may be to fashion a responsible narrative of events, but its larger ambitions encompass complexities that could not have been visible to those who
were caught up in the fray. How to grapple with this sort of challenge is impossible to prescribe in the abstract. (The problem has been the subject of far too
much prescription already.) But once we are able to set aside the notion of a
clear line from temporal recession to objective distance, it becomes easier to
honor the many-sided character of historical engagement. Only then will we
be able to make the most of Simmels perception of the unity of nearness and
remoteness involved in every human relation.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Eric Hobsbawm, Un historien et son temps prsent, in Ecrire lhistoire du temps
prsent: En hommage Franois Bdarida. Actes de la journe dtudes de lIHTP,
Paris, CNRS, 14 mai 1992 (Paris: Editions CNRS, 1992), 98.
2. Instead of dealing with temporal phenomena, and causing time to stop, he adds,
they [i.e. the humanities] penetrate into a region where time has stopped of its own
accord, and try to reactivate it. The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in
Meaning and the Visual Arts (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 24. The classic work on
history and temporal perspective is David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Carlo Ginzburg has examined
the idea of distance in set of virtuoso essays, though with purposes rather different
from the ones I am pursuing. See Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance, trans.
M. Ryle and K. Soper (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). See also John
Brewer, Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life, Cultural and Social History 7, no. 1 (2010): 87110.
3. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Hallams Constitutional History, in Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays and Poems, vol. 1 (New York: Albert Cogswell, 1880),
310. First published in the Edinburgh Review, September 1828.
4. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 12.
5. The classic statement of this historicist view is Friedrich Meinecke, Historism, trans.
J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge, 1972). The widely discussed emergence of a sensitivity to anachronism in the Renaissance is well summarized in Peter Burke, The
Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Edward Arnold, 1969).
6. See for example Collingwoods condemnation of the historical outlook of the Enlightenment: a truly historical view of human history sees everything in that history
as having its own raison dtre. . . . Thus the historical outlook of the Enlightenment
237
238
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Notes to Pages 57
was not genuinely historical. The Idea of History, rev. ed., ed. Jan van der Dussen
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 77. Meinecke, similarly, though elevating
Rousseau above Hume, speaks of the latters failure to achieve a fully historical attitude. Historism, 300.
J. S. Mill, Grotes History of Greece, in Collected Works, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto:
Toronto University Press, 1978), 11:273.
Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Alberto Coll (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 168. For a present-day articulation of
this tension, see Andreas Huyssen: Given a selective and permanently shifting dialogue between the present and the past, we have come to recognize that our present
will inevitably have an impact on what and how we remember. It is important to
understand that process, not to regret it in the mistaken belief that some ultimately
pure, complete, and transcendent memory is possible. Twilight Memories (New York:
Routledge, 1999), 250.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed., translation revised by Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), 306.
The best summary remains Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past.
In earlier work I referred to the fourth category of distance under the rubric of cognition. I had in mind Louis Minks narrative form as cognitive instrument, where narrative becomes a mode of comprehension, or Michael Baxandalls idea of a cognitive
style that contributes to what he calls the period eye. This usage now seems likely
to invite misunderstanding and it seems more appropriate to my purpose to speak
about these issues (as here) in terms of modes of understanding or conceptualization.
I am aware, of course, that the idea of conceptual schemes has also generated a great
deal of discussion.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Problem of Historical Consciousness, in Interpretive
Social Science: A Second Look, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987), 87. Charles Taylor has often acted as an interpreter of Gadamer. See, for instance, Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View
on Conceptual Schemes, in Gadamers Century, ed. J. Malpas et al. (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2002). His most comprehensive critique of positivist positions is Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, in his Philosophy and the Human Sciences,
vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
These issues run through Gadamers work, but the most relevant sections are to be
found in Truth and Method, part 2, section 2.
On play, see Gadamer, Truth and Method, 10120.
I take the phrase from Paul Ricoeurs commentary on Gadamer. See The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation, in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics
II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 7576. Ricoeurs discussion is partly framed as a criticism of what
he sees as an antinomy expressed in the title of Gadamers Truth and Method. Ricoeur
rejects this choice and seeks to overcome it through an analysis of the text, which
he claims reintroduces a positive and . . . productive notion of distanciation. In my
view, this is too narrow a view of Gadamers work. Warnke puts the issue more fairly in
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
239
240
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
241
edge my debt to Felix Gilbert, who was my mentor in studies of Renaissance historiography. For the historical background to this chapter, see especially Gene Brucker,
Florentine Politics and Society, 13481378 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1962), and John Najemy, A History of Florence, 12001575 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, Proemio, in Tutte le opere di Niccol Machiavelli,
ed. Francesco Flora and Carlo Cordi, 2 vols. (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1967),
2:5. For English translation, see Machiavelli, History of Florence, in Machiavelli: The
Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1965), 3:1031. For the sake of uniformity I have used the Gilbert translation
for both the Istorie and the Discorsi while introducing occasional modifications as
needed to clarify a point.
Machiavelli, History of Florence, 3:1031.
It may be worth noting that Machiavelli does not connect Brunis decorousness or
his own freedom to represent these incidents to the passage of time, with the greater
distances that result. By contrast, see Humes comments on Clarendons discomfort
with narrating the execution of Charles I in Chapter 3, below.
Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica: Edizione critica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, 3 vols. (Parma:
Fondazione Bembo, 199091) 3:292. Translations are my own. Limited selections in
English can be read in the abbreviated version of Philip Wicksteed, Villanis Chronicle, trans. Rose E. Selfe (London: Constable, 1906). For a very useful overview and
brief translations, see also Paula Clarkes contribution to Chronicling History: Chronicles and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sharon Dale et al. (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2007).
Villani, Nuova cronica, 292.
Ibid., 293.
Prominent among those named are the two men who will figure in the mobs revenge
that ends the dukes rule: messer Cerritieri de Visdomini suo scudiere e famigliare and messer Guiglielmo dAsciesi allora capitano del popolo, il quale rimase poi
collui per suo bargello e carnefice, diletttandosi di fare crudele giustizie duomini.
Ibid., 298.
Ibid., 299.
Remigio Fiorentino, in Historie universali de suoi tempi di Giovan Villani Cittadino
fiorentino (Venice, 1559), marginal comment 121: Lautore attribuisce la servit di
Firenze ai peccati de popoli, ma pi che niuna altra cagione stata la disunione, e
partialit dei cittadini.
Villani, Nuova cronica 3:301. In the later stages of the chronicle, Villani becomes increasingly preoccupied by the corruption of Florentine manners as a falling off from
an earlier piety and a spirit of charity. See, for example, 3:34849.
It is no coincidence that Villani chooses to follow King Roberts letter with what looks
like the most minor of issues: the vicious new style of dress that Florentine youths
had picked up from the French accompanying the dukethough in the past their
dress had been il pi bello, nobile e onesto of any nation. It stands as an interesting
sign of Florentine historical mindedness that Remigio points out to his reader that this
form of dress, so repugnant to Villani, can be viewed in paintings in the Church of
242
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
243
26. Bruni, History of the Florentine People, 2:27981. Brunis magnification of the role and
dignity of Bishop Acciaioli is striking. Villani and Marchionne Stefani had depicted
him as weak and vacillating and, for much of the story, a willing supporter of the
tyrant.
27. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 113132.
28. Villani, Nuova cronica, 3:339.
29. It has to be admitted that the pantheon is rather eccentrically populated, but though
Michele is no Moses or Solon, he seems not less worthy than Agathocles of Syracuse
or his modern equivalents, Cesare Borgia and Castruccio Castracane.
30. My narrative of these events is largely based on the fine studies of Gene Brucker,
who first introduced me to the subject. See The Ciompi Revolution, in Florentine
Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. Nicolai Rubenstein (London: Faber, 1968), 314356. For the larger context, see especially Bruckers Florentine Politics and Society, and John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine
Electoral Politics, 12801400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
Among specialized studies, see Najemy, Audiant Omnes Artes: Corporate Origins of
the Ciompi Revolution, in Il tumulto dei Ciompi: Un momento di storia fiorentina
ed europea. Atti del Convegno Firenze 1979 (Florence: Olschki, 1981), 5993; Richard
Trexler, Follow the Flag: The Ciompi Revolt Seen from the Streets, Bibliothque
dHumanisme et Renaissance 46 (1984): 35792; Samuel Cohn, The Laboring Classes
in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), esp. 12954.
31. Alamanno Acciaioli, Cronaca, in Il tumulto dei Ciompi: Cronache e memorie, ed.
Gino Scaramella, Rerum Italicarum scriptores, n.s., vol. 18, part. 3 (Bologna: Zanicelli, 1917), 18 (my translation).
32. Ibid., 3233.
33. Stefani, Cronaca, 315. For the events of 1378, unlike those of 1342, Stefanis chronicle
is one of the primary accounts.
34. Cronaca prima di anonimo conosciuta sotto il nome di Cronaca dello squittinatore,
in Il tumulto dei Ciompi: Cronache e memorie, 8182.
35. Bruni, History of the Florentine People, 3:911.
36. Ibid., 13.
37. Ibid., 9.
38. Typical is Brunis recitation of the lesson of Salvestros miscalculation: Thus, while
intending to succor a few men who have been warned [i.e. proscribed by the Guelfs],
he despoiled of its social position his own family and all others like it, subjecting it
to the rashness of an aroused mob. For there was no bridling the uncontrollable willfulness of the impoverished criminals who took up arms, raging with desire for the
fortunes of rich and honorable men. Their only goal was plunder, slaughter and the
exile of citizens. Ibid., 9.
39. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 115960.
40. Ibid., 1160. The English peasants famously questioned the pretended rights of their
superiors, chanting, When Adam dug and Eve span, Who was then the gentle man?
But it was Cosimo de Medici, neither a pleb nor an ideologue, who remarked that
five yards of fine cloth make a gentleman.
244
41. Stefani, Cronaca, 325: lo mpiccarono, e sbranarono, e tagliarono a bocconi, che tale
ne port a casa per parte meno dunoncia, peso. Bruni also notes the event, but his
account is much less vivid. The victim is not named nor (more importantly) is his
death attributed to Micheles diversionary stratagem. See Bruni, History of the Florentine People, 3:7.
42. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 1166. Bruni also notes the event, but his account of
the lynching is generalized rather than vivid and lacks Machiavellis suggestion that
the violence was an act of policy on Micheles part. See Bruni, History of the Florentine People, 3:7.
43. Thus, though not without a certain crudity in his domestic manners, he was an able
man thanks to his experience abroad and was at once well-informed and artful in his
conduct of affairs. Bruni, History of the Florentine People, 3:11.
44. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 1166. It could be said that the formula applies to
Machiavelli as well.
45. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 1167.
46. Ibid., 1168.
47. The classic formulation is in The Prince 6: quelli che per propria virt e non per fortuna sono diventati principi. Il principe e Discorsi, ed. S. Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli,
1971), 30.
48. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 50.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
245
reason of things, that his example draweth no necessary consequence, and therefore
a less fruitful doctrine. Apology for Poetry (or The Defence of Poesy), 3d rev. ed., ed.
R. W. Maslen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 8990, see also 94.
For Reynoldss distinction between the Grand Style and the vulgar factuality of history, see Chapter 8, below.
See below, Chapter 6.
Quoted from George H. Nadel, Philosophy of History Before Historicism, History
and Theory 3 (1964): 301.
I have read somewhere or otherin Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I thinkthat history is philosophy teaching by example. Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, Letters on the
Study and Use of History (London, 1738), Letter 2. Other early modern writers echo
the same view, including Degory Wheare and John Dryden. Dryden, for example,
writes: All history is only the precepts of moral philosophy reduced into examples.
See Works of John Dryden, ed. Walter Scott, rev. George Saintsbury, vol. 17 (London:
William Paterson, 1892), 61.
On Renaissance ideas of exemplary history, see Nadel, Philosophy of History, as
well as Timothy Hampton: Writing from History; The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). Hamptons study is
wide-ranging and helpful, but for reasons outlined just below, I find his discussion of
Machiavelli and Guicciardini misdirected.
See Chapter 9, below. On the sentimental bias of much eighteenth-century historiography, see my Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740
1820 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). On microhistory and distance,
see my Histories Micro- and Literary, New Literary History 34 (2003): 21129, as
well as John Brewer, Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life, Cultural and
Social History 7 (2010): 87109.
Commenting on Romantic historiography, Ann Rigney notes: Details help heighten
the realism of an account and hence its status as a representation of real events. See
her engaging study, Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic
Historicism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
For more on this theme, see Chapter 9, below.
My view is at odds with Hamptons reading of Machiavelli, which brings [Machiavelli] quite close to the extreme scepticism of . . . Francesco Guicciardini (Writing
from History, 72). This interpretation involves a considerable over-reading of Machiavellis work and, in my view, produces at least three difficulties. First, we miss
the distinction I have drawn between direct imitation and comprehensive imitation
and thus a significant difference between the Prince and the Discorsi. Second, by
bringing Machiavelli so close to Guicciardinian skepticism, Hampton in effect makes
Guicciardini a very poor reader of his contemporary, though we have every reason to
believe that Guicciardini understood very well what divided his own views from Machiavellis. Third, in order to save some differences between the two men, Hampton
(influenced by Pocock) takes the view that Guicciardini was trapped in passivity
(ibid., 73). In my view, this is a fundamental misreading, which confuses prudence
with passivity. To the contrary, what Machiavelli and Guicciardini share is precisely
246
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
247
Italian text is edited by Roberto Palmarocchi in Scritti politici e Ricordi (Bari: Laterza,
1933), 365.
Guicciardini, Considerations, VIII.
Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1.12.
This hatred is expressed most vehemently in Ricordi, C 28: I know of no one who
loathes the ambition, the avarice and the sensuality of the clergy more than Iboth
because each of these vices is hateful in itself and because each and all are hardly
suited to those who profess to live a life dependent upon God. Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman: Ricordi, trans. Mario
Domandi (New York: Harper, 1965).
Guicciardini, Considerations, XII.
Ibid.
Guicciardini, Ricordi, C 117.
The authoritative Italian text prints the final form of each of the Ricordi, along with
the previous redactions. See Guicciardini, Ricordi, Edizione critica, ed. R. Spongano
(Florence: Sansoni, 1951). In some cases, this means being able to trace the evolution
of a thought across five versions, identified by Spongano as Q1, Q2. A, B, and the
final version, C. For my own exploration of this text, building upon the opportunities
provided by its multiple layers, see Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini, 6180.
Guicciardini, Ricordi, C 110.
Guicciardini, Storia dItalia, ed. Costantino Panigada, 5 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1967)
1:8384. He adds that it is necessary that affairs be governed by the same prudence
and enjoy the same good fortune. Guicciardinis reuse of his maxims in this way is
both frequent and flexible. Often, as here, the observation is conveyed by the voice of
the narrator, but we also find them embedded in orations attributed to men who are
actors in the drama. These borrowings occur frequently enough that, on the model of
Sponganos remarkable edition of the Ricordi, one could assemble yet another redaction of this slow-growing work from the pages of the Storia dItalia.
Guicciardini, Storia dItalia, 1:67; History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander (New York:
Macmillan, 1969), 48. For the English versions, I have generally made use of Alexanders abridged translation of the History, but with occasional corrections. In my view,
Alexanders version is more reliable as a translation than as an abridgment.
In this opening phase, Guicciardini paints most of the principal combatants with the
same ironic distance. Charles VIII is treated to a grotesque physical description and an
unflattering comparison with Hannibal, while the Italians are depicted as half-hearted
and duplicitous. One of their princes, for example, though himself bound to fight on the
side of Naples, offers his son to the French as a condottiere. The French were amazed,
the historian remarks gravely, not being accustomed to the subtlety of the Italians.
Guicciardini, Storia dItalia, 1:13.
Ibid., 67.
Thus numerous examples (per innumerabili essempli) will make it plainly evident
how mutable are human affairs . . . and how pernicious, almost always to themselves
but always to the people, are those ill-advised measures of rulers. Guicciardini, Storia
dItalia 1:1; Guicciardini, History of Italy, 3.
248
43. The idea of the balance of power was not yet formalized in the historical or diplomatic vocabulary, but Guicciardini is generally credited with one of its earliest articulations. At the opening of the history, he attributes the peace and prosperity of Italy to
the careful diplomacy of Lorenzo, who ensured that a balance would be maintained
(procurava con ogni studio che le cose dItalia in modo bilanciate si mantenessino).
Guicciardini, Storia dItalia, 1:3. The deaths of Lorenzo and his ally Ferdinand of
Aragon, followed by the elevation of their reckless sons, Piero de Medici and Alfonso
of Naples, tip Italy into a new and dangerous moment.
44. Ibid., 2:245.
45. Ibid., 24546.
46. When, for example, Julius returns to action after a near-fatal illness, Guicciardini
comments that his revival was owed, either to the robustness of his constitution or
to his being reserved by the Fates to be the author and principal cause of still longer
and greater calamities for Italy (o dall essere riservato da fati come autore e cagione
principale di pi lunghe e maggiori calamit di Italia. Ibid., 3:120.
47. Guicciardini, Considerations, XXVI.
48. A particularly elaborate instance of this kind of uncertainty concerns Pope Leo Xs
uncharacteristic and strategically dangerous decision to risk the consequences of a resumption of war in 1521. Having offered no less than six motives, Guicciardini simply
concludes that whichever of these reasons applied or all of them together (o una o
pi o tutte insieme), Leo turned all his thoughts to war. Storia dItalia, 4:7980.
49. Machiavelli, History of Florence, 1031.
249
250
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
251
other Enlighteners have been much blamed. See his comment on the Anglo-Saxons:
The convulsions of a civilized state usually compose the most instructive and the
most interesting part of its history; but the sudden, violent, and unprepared revolutions, incident to Barbarians, are so much guided by caprice, and terminate so often
in cruelty that they disgust us by the uniformity of their appearance; and it is rather
fortunate for letters that they are buried in silence and oblivion. Ibid., 1:34.
See J. C. Hilson, Hume: The Historian as Man of Feeling, in Augustan Worlds: Essays in Honour of A. R. Humphreys, ed. J. C. Hilson, M. Jones, and J. Watson (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 20522; Mark Salber Phillips, Relocating Inwardness: Historical Distance and the Transition from Enlightenment to Romantic
Historiography, PMLA 118 (2003): 43649.
John Allen, Review of John Lingard, A History of England (1825), reprinted in James
Fieser, Early Responses to Humes History of England, 2 vols. (Bristol: Thoemmes
Press, 2002), 4.
I have discussed Humes gendering of history in If Mrs. Mure Be Not Sorry for Poor
King Charles: History, the Novel and the Sentimental Reader, History Workshop
Journal 43 (1997): 11132, and in Society and Sentiment, 1015, 11022.
James Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, ed. R. Mackintosh, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853) 2:12735.
Witness Humes repeated stress on the narrow prejudices of ancestral Englandthe
bigotry which prevailed in that age. History of England, 5:129.
Ibid., 6:62.
Ibid., 145.
Ibid., 5:450.
Ibid., 543.
252
4. Observations on the Historical Work of the late Rt. Honourable Charles James Fox.
By the Right Honourable George Rose, Quarterly Review (November 1809): 233. The
anonymous author has been identified as Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank,
who had been Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nations at the University of Edinburgh. See Jonathan Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review
(London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 108.
5. As Adam Smith puts it, common observation shows us the world in all its particularity
and incoherence, but philosophy is the science of the connecting principles of Nature. See History of Astronomy, in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. Ian S. Ross
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 45. Similarly, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith
pays tribute to the improvements brought about by the concentrated intelligence of
artisans, but counterposes their contribution to those who are called philosophers or
men of speculation, whose trade it is, not to do anything, but to observe everything;
and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of
the most distant and dissimilar objects. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 1:21. The idea of increasing abstraction also becomes a principle of historical development. Both Smith and
Blair apply it to the evolution of language, while Millar speaks of increasing abstraction as a feature of the law. See Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres, ed.
J. C. Bryce (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 10; Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation
on the Poems of Ossian (1763; reprinted in The Poems of Ossian, ed. Howard Gaskill
[Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996]), 35455. In a rude age, Millar writes
regarding medieval law, the observation of mankind is directed to particular objects;
and seldom leads to the formation of general conclusions. Millar, An Historical View
of the English Government, ed. M. S. Phillips and D. Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, 2006), 368.
6. Waverley; or Tis Sixty Years Since, ed. Claire Lamont (Oxford: Oxford Worlds Classics, 1991), 340. The first, abortive draft of the novel carried the subtitle Tis Fifty
Years Since. Scotts adjustment of the number when he resumed work on the book
speaks both to his typical pragmatism and his continued commitment to the idea of
two generations as a privileged distance. For a further discussion of Scotts sense of historical change in relation to Sir John Sinclair and the Statistical Account of Scotland,
see Chapter 5 below.
7. Collingwood makes a direct comparison. Commenting on the Enlightenments tendency to denigrate the past as against the Romantic periods extension of sympathy,
he writes: When one compares, for example, the complete lack of any sympathy for
the Middle Ages shown by Hume with the intense sympathy for the same thing which
is found in Sir Walter Scott, one can see how this tendency of Romanticism had enriched its historical outlook. Idea of History, 87. Though Collingwoods comment is
aimed specifically at the question of the Middle Ages, it is clear that Humes view of
this period is to be understood as the extreme case of a general posture in respect to
pre-Enlightenment Europe.
8. For a longer discussion of Humes historiographical practices and especially the balance between affective and cognitive elements, see my Society and Sentiment: Genres
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
253
254
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
255
47. Fontenelles solution to the problemone which Hume largely acceptsis one that
involves a kind of distantiation: We weep for the misfortune of a hero, to whom we
are attached. In the same instant we comfort ourselves, by reflecting, that it is nothing
but a fiction. Reflexions sur la potique, as quoted by Hume in Essays, 218n.
48. Along with the better-known essays on Refinement in the Arts, the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, and the Standard of Taste, the essay Of Tragedy
points to the interconnectedness of Humes interest in literary history and his other
historical concerns. On literary history as a historiographical genre, see Chapter 7
below.
49. John Logan, Elements of the Philosophy of History (Edinburgh, 1781), 190.
50. Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 112; emphasis added.
51. Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, ed. Peter Jones, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 1:74.
52. Ibid., 2:633.
53. Ibid., 614. Similarly, Smith writes: When we read in history concerning actions of
proper and beneficent greatness of mind, how eagerly do we enter into such designs?
. . . In imagination we become the very person whose actions are represented to us:
we transport ourselves in fancy to the scenes of those distant and forgotten adventures,
and imagine ourselves acting the part of a Scipio or a Camillus, a Timoleon or an
Aristides. Theory of Moral Sentiments, 75.
54. Kames, Elements, 1:71.
55. It is worth noting Kamess disagreement with Fontenelle. Where Kames wished to
discourage any kind of reflection that might interrupt the sense of immediacy, Fontenellestressing the moral and aesthetic importance of distancingsaw the consciousness of fiction as a necessary and useful attenuation of the impact of tragedy.
56. Curiously, for all the warmth with which Kames argues his critical doctrine, he seems
hardly aware of the changes that it implies for the spirit of historical writing. In a writer
who is never shy about pressing his own claims to originality, such silence seems uncharacteristic. It may just be, however, that he recognized how closely his own view
of historys moral psychology echoes the affective stress so evident in Humes EPM or
(still more elaborately) in the remarkable discussion of indirect narrative in Smiths
early and unpublished rhetoric lectures. I have discussed historiographical themes in
Smiths rhetoric lectures in Adam Smith, Belletrist, in The Cambridge Companion
to Adam Smith. ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
57. The priority Mackintosh gave to the History amongst Humes works is worth underscoring, since, of all British historians, he was the one best versed in philosophical
writings and would later publish a history of ethical philosophy. But Mackintosh believed that Humes metaphysical writings are too remote from the affairs of men, to
claim much place in history. Nonetheless, he judged that in the history of speculation these works will, indeed, occupy a large space; they may be regarded as the cause,
either directly or indirectly, of almost all the metaphysical writings in Europe for
seventy years. Sir James Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir
James Mackintosh, ed. R. Mackintosh, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown 1853), 2:16770.
The younger Mackintosh culled passages from his fathers extensive manuscript
256
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
257
by general passions and interests. For a longer discussion of the British (and especially Scottish) contribution to historical thought and writing, see my Society and
Sentiment.
On the Scottish Church in this period, see especially Richard Shers Church and
University in the Scottish Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1985).
On Sinclairs intellectual and political career, see Rosalind Mitchison, Agricultural Sir John: The Life of Sir John Sinclair of Ulster, 17541835 (London: Geoffrey
Bles, 1962).
Donald Withrington, General Introduction, in The Statistical Account of Scotland,
17911799, new ed., ed. I. R. Grant and D. J. Withrington, 20 vols. (East Ardsley:
E. P. Publishing, 1975), 1:ix. This edition reflects the primary interests of social and
economic historians, for whom the Statistical Account (and its successors) have long
served as an important resource. In contrast to Sinclairs procedure of publishing the
parish surveys in the order he received them, the modern edition rearranges the reports along sensible geographical lines, making it far easier to trace local and regional
histories.
Sinclair, Specimens of Statistical Reports Exhibiting the Progress of Political Society,
from the Pastoral State, to That of Luxury and Refinement (London: T. Cadell 1793):
viiviii. Though the word has its origin in a related usage in German, as Sinclair indicates, he is the first to introduce the term into English.
Ibid., ix. The emphasis on statistics as an investigation of internal structures of society
is part of Sinclairs Humean legacy. His outline also reflects the strongly ideological
valence of these ideas in the 1790s by juxtaposing this view of solid and lasting ideas
of improvement with the delusive theories of the French republicans.
Hume, History of England, ed. William S. Todd, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,
1983), 5:124. On the Fourth Appendix, see Chapter 3, above.
For the geographical context, see chap. 4 of Charles Withers, Geography, Science
and National Identity: Scotland Since 1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001).
On this volume, see Withrington, General Introduction, xv, and Ian Grant, Note
on Publicity for Distribution and Management of the Statistical Account, in Sinclair,
Statistical Account, 1:liii. Curiously, neither of these very informative essays comments
on the historical structure of Sinclairs selection. Withrington simply remarks that six
[sic] parishes were selected, with some care, in order to give examples of very different
localities. Locality seems to be the issue, not the stages of development.
Indeed, founding systems of political economy, on minute and extensive investigations of local facts, is following the example of Bacon, who rested the basis of natural
philosophy, on minute inquiries, accurate experiments, and inferences deduced from
them. . . . It is well known, that since improvements in the arts and sciences have
depended on the sure basis of research and experiment, they have been carried to a
height, which formerly was supposed unattainable. Sinclair, Analysis of the Statistical Account of Scotland, 2 vols. in 1 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1831), 2:60.
258
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
259
His Time (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1856), 169. On the frictions between
Sinclair and his printer, see Ian Grants very useful account in Note on Publicity.
Letters Addressed to Sir John Sinclair 6. Creechs summary is much like Scotts view of
the pace of change in Scotland as a whole: So remarkable a change is not perhaps to
be equaled, in so short a period, in any city of Europe, nor in the same city for two centuries, taking all the alterations together. His choice of 1763 and 1783 marked the end
points of two warsarbitrary dates in relation to the changing manners of Edinburgh.
Ibid., 7.
Sinclair, Statistical Account, 5:396.
McKenzies view was not simply a matter of unreflective belief in progress. These
were times of misery, he wrote about the earlier epoch, though the inhabitants were
the happiest of mortals. Their continued exertions in launching and drawing up their
vessels, excited wonderful spirits, which they knew how to recruit when exhausted.
Every day that a vessel either sailed or arrived was a festival. Ibid., 1:39.
Ibid., 42.
Ibid., 5:416.
Ibid., 409.
Ibid., 4:62.
Ibid., 16:75.
Ibid., 13. Alexander [Jupiter] Carlyle, a leader of the Moderate faction in the
Church, is now remembered principally for his memoir, The Autobiography of Alexander Carlyle; Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of His Time (Edinburgh:
W. Blackwood, 1861).
Mr. John Naismith, Parish of Hamilton, Lanark. Sinclair, Statistical Account, 2:184.
Scott remarks in the Postscript to Waverley, The political and economic effects of
these changes have been traced by Lord Selkirk with great precision and accuracy.
Waverley; or Tis Sixty Years Since, ed. Claire Lamont (Oxford: Oxford Worlds Classics, 1991), 340. The passage is suggestive from the standpoint of distance since Selkirks investigation of the political economy of the Highlands serves Scott as a foil to
his own novelization of this history.
Sinclair, Statistical Account, 10:36366. While the mutual attachment of the chieftains and their clans subsisted, this evil was neither felt nor complained of. The chief
reigned in the hearts of his vassals, who bore his exactions, and followed his fortunes
with zeal and alacrity. At that time his object was men, now it is money.
Ibid., 4:76.
See Thomas Somerville, The History of Political Transactions, and of Parties, from
the Restoration of King Charles the Second, to the Death of King William (London:
A. Strachan and T. Cadell, 1792).
Sinclair, Statistical Account, 1:67.
Somerville, Ancrum. Ibid., 10:29697n.
Somerville, Ancrum. Ibid.
Ibid., 322.
Ibid., 5:396.
260
1. Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Alberto Coll (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 168.
2. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed., translation revised by Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), 306.
3. For an earlier example of contrastive narrative, see my discussion of Machiavellis
Discorsi in Chapter 2. For later uses, see Chapter 10 below.
4. J. S. Buckingham, Inaugural Lecture Written for the Opening of the British and Foreign Institute and Delivered, in an Abridged Form, Before the Members and Friends of
that Association, on Wednesday, the 2nd of August, 1843 at the Hanover Square Rooms,
2d ed. (London: Fisher and Son), 8. Buckingham was an energetic traveler, author,
lecturer, and journalist, as well as a campaigner for social reform.
5. On Eastlake and the Fine Arts Commission see David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978),
5877; Susanna Avery-Quash and Julie Sheldon, Art for the Nation: The Eastlakes and
the Victorian Art World (London: National Gallery Company, 2011), 3844, 4849.
6. Ibid., 9.
7. Ibid., 10.
8. For Pugins life, see the fine biography by Rosemary Hill, Gods Architect: Pugin and
the Building of Romantic Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
9. On Contrasts, see Margaret Belcher, Pugin Writing, in Pugin; A Gothic Passion, ed.
P. Paul Atterbury and Clive Wainright (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994):
10516; Phoebe Stanton, The Source of Pugins Contrasts, in Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing Presented to Nikolaus Pevsner, ed.
J. Summerson (London: Allen Lane, 1968), 12039.
10. A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, 2d ed. (1841; New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 2.
11. As Pugin puts it, in palaces, in mansions, in private houses, in public erections,
in monument for the dead; even furniture and domestic ornaments for the table.
Ibid., 9.
12. Ibid., 15.
13. Ibid., 17.
14. See Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002).
15. Carlyle to Emerson, August 29, 1842 (The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols. [Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
188384]), 2:10. This was written just before Past and Present.
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Past and Present, The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy and Religion 4 (July 1843): 96.
17. Carlyle, Past and Present, ed. Richard Altick (New York: New York University Press,
1977), 11617.
18. Ibid., 41.
19. Ibid., 4950. Among the many strengths of her fine study of Romantic historiography,
Ann Rigneys chapter on the aesthetic of historical ignorance in Carlyle is very
relevant here. See Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic
Historicism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
261
262
39. I take the phrase evidential paradigm from Carlo Ginzburgs essay on Clues. See
Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. J. and A. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1989), 96125.
40. Galt, The Travels and Observations of Hareach, the Wandering Jew. Comprehending a
View of the Most Distinguished Events in the History of Mankind Since the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, Interspersed with Anecdotes of Eminent Men of Different
Periods, 2d ed. by the Rev. T. Clark [i.e. John Galt] (London: John Souter, 1820).
41. Knight was publisher of the Penny Magazine and printer to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In his case the divided narrative serves a progressive
ideology.
42. Sir George Cornwall Lewis, Suggestions for the Application of the Egyptological
Method to Modern History (London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 1862).
43. Southey, The Book of the Church (London: John Murray, 1824); William Cobbett,
History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland. 2 vols. (London, published by the author, at no 183 Fleet St., 1829).
44. In fact, there is almost no reference in the written text to the specific buildings shown
in the plates. The two narratives are almost entirely separate. See Margaret Belcher,
Pugin Writing, in Pugin: A Gothic Passion, ed. Paul Atterbury and Clive Wainwright (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 106.
45. Another satirical genre of some interest is the divided or split image, in which the left
and right halves of two faces, for example, might be joined to score a political point.
See Amelia Rausers Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in
Eighteenth Century English Prints (Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont Publishing, 2008) and
Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
46. Reynolds painted numerous portraits of actresses and other beauties, of which the
best known is Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino,
California.
47. This portrait of Cromwell in Bowyers Historic Gallery is surrounded with lightning
bolts, a mask, and a tigersymbols of power, hypocrisy, and ferocity. In comparison,
Delaroche makes Cromwell a figure of thought, as is clearly expressed in an entry in a
near contemporary response: M. Delaroche has been often charged with sacrificing
his principal subject to the accessories by his excessive care in the rendering of them,
but here the attention is at once arrested by the thoughtful head of the Protector,
directed to the lifeless form he is brooding over, and it never wanders from the victim
and the victor. The sombre colour and gloomy shades are entirely in unison with the
prevalent impression. Simple as is the idea of the picture, it would perhaps be difficult
to name another modern painting which so thoroughly succeeds in carrying the mind
of the spectator into the very presence of the man represented. Charles Knight, Biography, or Third Division of The English Cyclopedia, vol. 2 (London: Bradbury, Evans
& Co., 1867), 542.
48. Cromwells stance and expression have provoked different readings. The poet Heine
observes: In the face of this Cromwell there is not the least expression of astonishment, wonder, or any other storm of the soul; on the contrary, the beholder is shocked
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
263
by this frightful, horrible calmness in the mans countenance. There he stands, a form
as firm as earth, brutal as fact, powerful without pathos. . . . (quoted in Stephen
Bann, Paul Delaroche; History Painted [London: Reaktion Books, 1997], 114). Bann,
the foremost interpreter of Delaroche, suggests that Heines account underplays the
element of violence in Cromwells stance (ibid., 108). This is possible, but I think
Bann is closer to the mark in a second observation where he speaks of a preliminary
drawing which closely parallels the finished painting, as an exceptionally fine study
for the attentive face of Cromwell (ibid., 108). It is this quality of attentiveness I want
to emphasize. See also Stephen Bann and Linda Whitely, Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey (London: National Gallery, 2010), 74. As Stephen Bann
points out, Chateaubriand and Guizot had accustomed the French to thinking of the
English Revolution as a forerunner to their own. Delaroches painting of Cromwell
was exhibited in 1831, a year following the July Revolution, but it had been commissioned before these events. In addition to the works already cited, see Bann, This
Man Is Cromwell. Paul Delaroches Painting of 1831 and Its Critical Reception, in
Between Two Heads, ed. P. Seddon (Nmes: Muse des Beaux Arts de Nmes, 2007),
2737.
An earlier painting of Mulready employs the same motif of wrestling boys, but without the historical resonances of Waterloo. See The Fight Interrupted (exhibited 1816),
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
National Gallery, London.
Tate Gallery, London.
On Turners many experiments with the theme of steam, see William S. Rodner, Humanity and Nature in the Steamboat Paintings of J M W Turner, Albion 18 (1886):
45574. More broadly, see John Gage, Turner: Rain, Steam, and Speed (New York:
Viking Press, 1972).
Two texts written in the frame of Cromwell on His Farm articulate the arc of Cromwells
calling. The first is from Psalm 89, verse 46, in the Book of Common Prayer, which
Cromwell marks with his finger. It reads: Lord, how long wilt thou hide thyself
forever? The second is an extract from Cromwells speech to the First Protectorate
Parliament on September 12, 1654: Living neither in any considerable height, nor
yet in obscurity . . . I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man. Browns
vision of Cromwell is much influenced by Carlyles Letters and Speeches (1845). See
Julian Treuherz, Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer (London: Philip Wilson
Publishers, 2011), 23033.
One of the unspoken differences between the two paintingsrelevant to the issues
discussed in Chapter 8is the sense in which each painting earns its title as a history
painting. By virtue of its moral seriousness as well as its historical subject, Cromwell on
His Farm (Lady Lever Gallery, Liverpool) is indisputably a history. The same cannot
be said of the boat full of anonymous commoners on their way to Australia depicted
in The Last of England (185255), (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery). Despite
the dignity conferred by the tondo format, the painting would not have been hung
as a history in Joshua Reynoldss Royal Academy. Ford Madox Browns catalogue description of 1865 is therefore worth quoting at some length. The picture is in the
264
265
9. The one teaches what our ancestors thought; how they lived; upon what motives they
acted, and what language they spoke; and having attained this intimate knowledge of
their sentiments, manners and habits, we are certainly better prepared to learn from
the other the actual particulars of their annals. Review of Elliss Specimens (first
published in 1806), ibid., 1718. See also John Murrays Of Some Memoirs Written
in the Fifteenth Century, Blackwoods Magazine (1819): 40711. Strout indicates an
anonymous author, though submitted by Mr. Murray. A. L. Strout, The Authorship
of Articles in Blackwoods Magazine, Numbers xviixxiv (August 1818March 1819),
Library, s5-XI (3) (1956): 187201.
10. Robert Bisset, Life of Addison, in The Spectator, with Illustrative Notes to Which are
Prefixed the Lives of the Authors . . . with Critical Remarks on Their Respective Writings. A New Edition, 2 vols. (London: Cawthorn, 1799), viiviii; emphasis added.
11. William Godwin, The Lives of Edward and John Phillips, Nephews and Pupils of Milton, Including Various Particulars of the Literary and Political History of Their Times
(London: Longman, 1815), vi.
12. Anna Barbauld, The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, to Which Are Prefixed
a Biographical Account of the Author, and Observations on His Writings (London,
1804), ccx.
13. Blackwoods Magazine (1819): 24.
14. Samuel Johnson, Life of Addison, in Lives of the English Poets, 3 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1905), 2:9293.
15. Nathan Drake, Essays, Biographical, Critical and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler,
Spectator and Guardian, 3 vols. (London, 1805), 1:40. The first collection of essays was
followed by a second set, illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler (1809
10)constructed, so as, I trust, to afford a clear, and distinctly arranged, retrospect of
Periodical Literature for the last hundred years.
16. Of the Elizabethans, Drake writes: the public mind was awakened to a sense of the
copiousness, the energy, and strength of its native tongue. Drake, Essays, 2:4. But it
remained for the Restoration to polish English prose: At a time when composition
in this island was singularly pompous, stiff, and harsh, the introduction of the lighter
graces and more perspicuous arrangement of French periods could not fail of proving
eminently serviceable. Ibid., 39.
17. Ibid., 7980.
18. Robert Southey, Specimens of the Later English Poets, with Preliminary Notices (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807), vi.
19. Ibid., vi.
20. Ibid., vii.
21. Ibid., xxi.
22. Ibid., xxv.
23. Ibid., xxix.
24. In the Essay Supplementary to the Preface to his 1815 collected works, Poems by William Wordsworth, Including Lyrical Ballads . . . [and] a Supplementary Essay, 2 vols.
(London: Longman, 1815), 1:viixlii. Wordsworth echoed this sentiment, saying that
every poet of his generation was indebted to Percy.
266
267
268
8. The traditional point of reference for this discussion is Lessings Laocoon (1766). On
the tradition of the sister arts, see Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of
Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1958). See also W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), as well as W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., The
Language of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
9. Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, trans. G. M. A. Grube (New York: Liberal Arts Press,
1958), 18.
10. Reynolds, Discourses, Discourse IX, 171. Like the poet, the history painter was required to exercise the power of Inventionthat exertion of mind, as Reynolds calls
it, that ennobles painting and gives the superiority to the Painter of History over all
others of our profession. See ibid., Discourse IV, 57n. The passage quoted was altered
in later reworkings, but without this sense being changed.
11. Ibid., Discourse XIII, 244.
12. Ibid., Discourse IV, 60.
13. Ibid., Discourse III, 41.
14. Prince Hoare, Examination of the Various Offices of Painting, in The Artist, ed.
Hoare, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 180910). The essay appeared in several numbers among the several contributions bound together in this work. Prince Hoare describes his aim as showing the steps by which the art gradually ascends to take its
station in the regions of poetry. Ibid., part 3, 2:256.
15. Every great epoch of human existence, Hoare argues, can be marked by the pencil
[i.e. the brush] with distinctness, and with truth proportionate to our knowledge of the
facts. Offices of Painting, ibid., 1:14.
16. Ibid., 17.
17. Ibid., 1819.
18. I take this useful concept from Michael McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
19. Bromley, Philosophical and Critical History of the Fine Arts, 2 vols. (London:
T. Cadell, 179395; reprint, New York: Garland Publications, 1971), 1:45. In the preface to the second volume, Bromley makes a strong claim for the originality of this
discussion. What remains unclear, however, is whether he sees the originality as lying
in the comparison itself, or in the conclusions it enables him to reach. Bromley, it
should be added, is a fairly obscure figure. Other than the Philosophical and Critical
History, Bromleys publications are restricted to some sermons and a collection of
hymns. There is no entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
20. All arbitrary circumstances, visionary allusions, and extrinsic adoptions, all intermixed of fable where the painting has assumed a known matter of fact, all personifications of inanimate nature, are illicit in his hands. Bromley, Philosophical and Critical
History, 1:46.
21. What language or resource of the art could have told us so much as those ships
have done. . . . And is not that savage-warrior every way as just as the crocodile on the
Nile? Without him, Bromley concludes, it is impossible to think of another symbol
that could communicate the location of the country so effectivelyor at least none
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
269
that could speak with so much precision, and so much in tone with the subject.
Ibid., 57.
Ibid., 48.
Ibid., 50.
Ibid., 46.
Ibid., 47. Reynoldsby necessitymakes a cautious allowance for particularity in
description.
For Kames on ideal presence in history and painting, see Chapter 4, above, as
well as my Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 17401820
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 107ff. Bromley holds that visual
representations are much more direct in their impact than verbal ones and therefore
model themselves closely on lived experience. Why is it, he asks, that we are more
affected by a speech delivered immediately from the lips of an orator than we are
by the same speech printed in a book? It is, because the scene itself is before us: we
behold the image and the animation of the speaker, and the images and animation
of the surrounding audience: from thence we catch the fire ourselves, and become
involuntarily affected (Philosophical and Critical History 1:14). Since the painting
remains a silent representation, we miss out on the sound of the words. Nonetheless,
because the eye carries a far stronger impression than the ear, the same principle
obtains as if we were watching the orator in person. Whether the figure stands before
us in reality or only on the canvas, the essential criterion is whether the passion be
preserved, and given in its own energy. If it is, the same effect is obtained and the
instruction received is as potent as if it came from Nature (ibid., 17).
See Brian Allen, Francis Hayman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 64ff.
The paintings have been lost and only one was engraved: The Triumph of Britannia,
completed in 1762 and engraved by S. F. Ravenet and published by John Boydell in
1765. The others were The Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst (1761); Lord
Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob, which pictured the aftermath of Clives
victory at the battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757; and Britannia Distributing Laurels to
the Victorious Generals, probably completed in 1764. Thus two of the large paintings
were narratives of battle or its aftermath, and two were allegories of victory on land
and sea.
The proposal was vetoed by the bishop of London on religious grounds.
On Hayman, see Peter de Bolla, The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and
Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2003). For Barrys polemical writing, see John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting
from Reynolds to Hazlitt: The Body of the Public (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1986). On Barry as painter there are now a number of important sources. See
William Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1981); Tom Dunne, ed., James Barry; The Great Historical Painter (Cork: Crawford Art Gallery, 2005); David Allan, ed., The Progress of Human Knowledge (London:
Calder Walker Associates, 2005). Holger Hoock has given us a detailed history of the
Royal Academy in The Kings Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of
British Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). On the Boydell Shakespeare, see
270
33.
34.
35.
36.
271
letter addressed to Valentine Green sets out Davisons desire of giving some encouragement to the talents of our Native Artists, and to bring them fairly in contrast with
those of Foreign Schools, by employing a select part of them on some interesting
Historical Subjects. The artists were called upon to to submit each a List of three
Subjects from English History, from which Davison would then make the final selection. The catalogue adds further that Intending to mark this Collection distinctly
from others of their works, it was made a condition, that each Artist should introduce
his own Portrait in the Picture he painted. The catalogue lists the paintings in the
order in which they are arranged, at his house in St. James Square, London. Davison,
Descriptive Catalogue, unpaginated. It is worth noting, too, the large dimensions of
the catalogue in comparison with the cheaper catalogues for use in commercial galleries like Bowyers.
Martin Archer Shee, Letter to the President and Directors of the British Institution;
Containing the Outline of a Plan for the National Encouragement of Historical Painting (London: William Miller, 1809) 45, 52, 54. In the second category Shee specified
that [n]o picture of this class, to be under the dimension of the Death of Wolfe by
the President, West. Ibid, 45. Shees proposal built upon an already existing scheme
for giving premiums to history painting. See A Prospectus etc. of the British School:
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Patron (London? 1802?) This publication,
disbound in the copy held by the Yale Center for British Art, is closely related to a
second one, Prospectus and Catalogue of the British School (London: Rickaby for
the British School, 1802). The latter, however, lacks the outline of the premiums.
This was not the first prize giving for British art, which was also a feature of the earlier Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. On this
society and its scheme of awarding premiums for history painting and landscape,
see Matthew Hargraves, Candidates for Fame: The Society of Artists of Great Britain,
17601791 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 25. See also M. G. Sullivan,
Historiography and Visual Culture in Britain, 16601783 (Ph.D. Diss., University
of Leeds, 1998), chap. 3. I am grateful to Dr. Sullivan for generously sharing his work
with me.
For an extended discussion of this fundamental shift of distance in Hume and his successors, see Chapters 3 and 4 above, and my Society and Sentiment, chaps. 46.
On neoclassicisms adaptability, see Robert Rosenblums classic study, Transformations in Late Eighteenth-Century Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
On Greuze, see Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
The sentimental orientation of this vast painting is indicated in a published key,
which directs the viewers attention to Sir Roger Curtis and a detachment of British
seamen who, at the hazard of their own lives, are rescuing their vanquished enemies
from destruction. Several of the seamen are seen at the stern of one of the battering
Ships, striking the Spanish Ensign; while others generously relieve a number of the
unfortunate Spaniards from a sinking wreck. See Proposal for publishing by subscription, an engraving from the historical picture painted by John Singleton Copley, RA:
and now exhibiting in a pavilion, erected through the gracious permission of the King
272
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
273
first impressions. See Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Library Companion, or the Young
Mans Guide and Old Mans Comfort in the Choice of a Library (London: Harding,
Triphook and Lepard, 1824), 23435.
It is worth noting that Rapin was a French Huguenot and Houbraken a Netherlander.
On Rapin and his illustrators, see M. G. Sullivan, Rapin, Hume, and the Identity of
the Historian in Eighteenth-Century England, History of European Ideas 28 (2002):
14562.
Hume, History of England, ed. William S. Todd, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,
1983), 5:24142.
Sir James Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, ed. R. Mackintosh, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown 1853), 2:168. For a longer
discussion of Mackintoshs view, see Chapter 4, above.
Prince Hoare, Epochs of the Arts; Including Hints on the Use and Progress of Painting
and Sculpture in Great Britain (London: John Murray, 1813), 33132. Above all, writes
Prince Hoare, the history of commerce is Englands story and properly the subject of
her artists. Every shore that has been visited by the navigator, every treasure that has
been brought to his home, is here the object of record. Every benefit that has been
derived to mankind, every good that has been communicated, every varied wealth that
has been imported, increases the claim of this country to renown. And what praises
can be recorded of Commerce, which do not enrich the fame of England?
For more on this theme, see my Society and Sentiment, chaps. 5 and 6.
Reynolds, Discourses, Discourse IV, 5758.
Morning Post, May 6, 1806, and La Belle Assemble, May 1806: both quoted in Nicholas Tromans, David Wilkie: Painter of Everyday Life (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2002).
Allan Cunningham, Life of Sir David Wilkie, With His Journals, Tours, and Critical
Remarks on Works of Art, and a Selection from His Correspondence (London: John
Murray, 1843), 112. For an extended description of the inspiration and historical interest of Wilkies Village Politicians see ibid., 11214. Recent studies of Wilkie include
David Solkins Painting Out of the Ordinary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2008); Lindsay Errington, Tribute to Wilkie (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2008); and Nicholas Tromans, David Wilkie: The Peoples Painter (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2007). On Cunningham as interpreter of British art, see
William Vaughan, The Englishness of English Art, Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 2
(1990): 1123. See also Hoock, The Kings Artists, 7778.
This was Cunninghams view: To those who are old enough to remember those
times when the yeast of the French Revolution was working in almost every mind;
disturbing the calmest hearts, and filling every city and town and village with clubs
which speculated on free constitutions, and societies which settled over the punchbowl the rights of mankind, no explanation of the picture need be offered: nor will
those require it who have seen during an evening the change-house of a Scottish
clachan, filled with rustics eager to dispute and tipple, while the rejoicing landlord
supplies them with news as well as liquor. Cunningham, Wilkie, 11213.
274
1. Halls reference here is to the traditional or Old Left. Stuart Hall, quoted from Geoff
Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2005), 19. See also Eleys testimony to the same point
in relation to the impact of Edward Thompson on Eleys generation. An important
part of Thompsons foregrounding of culture was a kind of populism, a politics of
empathy, borne by an intense and vehement valuing of the lives and histories of ordinary people. Identifying with the people in such a manner presupposed a readiness
for entering their mental worlds, for getting inside past cultures, for suspending ones
own context-bound assumptions. Ibid., 56.
2. For this sense of generational change and renewed relevance, as well as much else
that I have only touched upon, Eleys testimony is very valuable. How would I distill
Edward Thompsons importance in the late 1960s and early 1970s for my personal
sense of the generational breakthrough then occurring? . . . The desiccated and hollowed-out learning of the Oxford Modern History School was leaving me cynically
unconvinced that becoming a historian was still a future I wanted to acquire. Discovering Thompsons book allowed me to reconstruct my sense of historys importance.
It was so inspiring because it provided access to a potential counternarrative that was
different from the story of national stability and successful consensus, of gradualist
progression towards a naturalized present, that everything in the insidiously assimilative intellectual culture of postwar Britain invited me to accept. Thompsons book
showed me the instabilities in that account, which could be told against the grain in
some very different ways. Ibid., 54.
275
276
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
277
27. Joan Acocella, The End of the World, New Yorker, March 21, 2005, 82. Review of
John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death (New York,
2005).
28. The title is an adaptation from a description quoted from Henry James, whose affectionate portrait of London, that dreadfully delightful city, is dominated by the
flaneurs attention to the viewers subjectivity. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful
Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1992). 17. The transformation of Jamess ambiguous phrase to one
that points in the direction of Tussauds waxworks is a telling one.
29. Ibid., 1.
30. Ibid., 16.
31. Ibid., 99.
32. Ibid., 101.
33. Ibid., 99.
34. There is no equivalent for historians of the ethical consent forms that have become a
standard feature of research on human subjects. But we would all be unhappy with a
set of scholarly ethics that simply lapses when the subject is no longer alive.
35. Mieke Bal, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1996), 19597.
36. Ibid., 195.
37. Browning accepts the identification of his own work as a form of Alltagsgeschichte,
though of an unusual sort. See Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial,
1993), xix.
38. See the valuable commentary of Omer Bartov, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust,
Industrial Killing, and Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996),
9294, as well as his response to Goldhagens polemic against Browning. See Bartov,
Reception and Perception, in The Goldhagen Effect: History, Memory, Nazism
Facing the German Past, ed. Geoff Eley (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2000) esp. 5253.
39. Daniel Goldhagen, Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans? in The Holocaust in History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham Peck (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 306.
40. Browning, Ordinary Men, xvii.
41. For a longer discussion of the variety of the different balances of affect, ideology,
and understanding in some prominent microhistorical works, see my essay Histories,
Micro- and Literary: Problems of Genre and Distance, New Literary History 34, no. 2
(2003): 21129.
42. Geoff Eley, Crooked Line, 19798.
278
2. John Crowe Ransom, Survey of Literature, in The Oxford Book of American Light
Verse, ed. William Harmon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 351.
3. I am using recognition in the strong sense given it by Charles Taylor. See his illuminating essay The Politics of Recognition, in Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 22556.
4. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History
in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 1819. For a valuable
critique, see Michael Kammen, Carl Becker Redivivus; or, Is Everyone Really a Historian? History and Theory 39, no. 2 (May 2000): 23042.
5. Rosenzweig and Thelen, The Presence of the Past (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1998), 195. The results of any survey inevitably reflect the initial questions. Here
the emphasis is strongly participatory. Asked whether they had participated in pastrelated activities during the previous year, more than half said that they had looked at
photos with family and friends, taken photos or videos to preserve memories, watched
movies or TV programs about the past, attended a reunion, visited a history museum,
or read a history book. Between one and two fifths told us that they had joined a
historical group, written in a journal or diary, investigated their familys history, or
participated in a hobby or worked on a collection related to the past. . . . Almost no
one (only 7 of the 808 people interviewed in our national sample) reported that they
did none of the ten activities we asked about (ibid., 19). The authors also report that
they asked the respondents to use a ten-point scale to describe the intensity of their
engagement with the past. If we decide that a choice of 8, 9, or 10 indicates a close
association with the past, then more than half of our respondents felt very strongly
connected to the past on holidays, at family gatherings, and in museums. The numbers were lower in relation to three other activities about which the respondents were
questioned: Reading a book about the past; Watching a movie or television program
about the past: Studying history in school (ibid., 20).
6. Ibid., 13.
7. The four general areas of questioning are as follows: Activities Related to the Past,
Trustworthiness of Sources of Information, How Connected to the Past People
Feel on Certain Occasions, Importance of Various Pasts. See ibid., appendix 1,
20931. The full survey is also available on the web: http:/chnm.gmu.edu/survey/
activities.htm.
8. My discussion here and in the following section closely follows my longer treatment
in an article jointly authored with Ruth B. Phillips. See Contesting Time, Place and
Nation in the First Peoples Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, in Contested Histories in Public Space, ed. D. J Walkowitz and L. M. Knauer (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2009), 4970.
9. For the architecture of Douglas Cardinal (who later designed the smaller, but
similarly conceived Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington)
see Trevor Boddy, ed., The Architecture of Douglas Cardinal (Edmonton: NeWest
Press, 1998).
10. MacDonald was also influenced by the displays installed during the 1970s at the Royal
British Columbia Museum (then the British Columbia Provincial Museum) and the
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
279
280
21. From the standpoint of distance, there is a parallel here with reenactment. For the
most part, counterfactuals, like reenactments, have won little respect from professional historians, for whom both practicesthe counterfactual and the ultrafactual
seem to substitute nave literalism for longer, more measured perspectives. Even the
argument that explanation is simply impossible without a rigorous consideration of
alternative possibilities has done little to overcome the feeling that what if? is a question that is best left to amateurs and enthusiasts.
22. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America: A Novel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 1.
Note that in this opening statement the narrator does not identify himself simply and
straightforwardly as a Jew but as the offspring of Jews. The effect, I think, slightly
distances the question of personal identity, placing emphasis instead on something
collective: his upbringing, parentage, and community, rather than his own individuality or character.
23. See Philip Roth, The Facts: A Novelists Autobiography (New York: Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux, 1988). Also Philip Roth, Patrimony (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
24. Roth, Postscript, in Plot, 364.
25. See Chapter 9 above.
26. This means that some of the burden of believability, normally carried by the heavy
scaffold of public history, shifts to the family drama, while the story of mounting persecutions in proto-Nazi America becomes more real because its effects are so vividly
witnessed through the eyes of the boy narrator.
27. Philip Roth, The Story Behind The Plot Against America, New York Times Book
Review, September 19, 2004, 11.
28. Roth, Plot, 11314.
29. Another passage involving direct commentary on history has been cited as a key to
Roths views. Because whats history? he asked rhetorically when he was in his
expansive dinnertime instructional mode. History is everything that happens everywhere. Even here in Newark. Even here on Summit Avenue. Even what happens
in this house to an ordinary manthatll be history too someday (ibid., 180). The
speaker is a family friend, Shepsie Tirchwell, whose political views reflect his occupation as the projectionist at the Newsreel Theater. Understood as quoted speech, the
passage seems more guarded by ironies than the one quoted above. Whether either or
both represent Roths own views, there is no way of knowing, but the latter especially
offers little more than a historical commonplace and should not be cited as anything
more. For a contrary view, see Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel (London: Routledge, 2010), 17879.
30. Roth, Plot, 4.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 7.
33. I am speaking here about Roths novels, not his writings as a whole. If we turn to
Roths nonfictional memoirs, The Facts and especially Patrimony, we find a familiar
story, not just because all three books build on family history, but because they share
this same atmosphere of loving recollection.
281
34. In the hurried wrap-up of the plot, there is reference to the publication in 1946 of a
book by Bengelsdorf regarding the inside story of the Lindbergh presidency, leading
to controversy that has lasted for over half a century (Roth, Plot, 327). This would
bring the supposed time of writing to at least 1996.
35. Ibid., 21920.
36. Ibid., 327.
37. I came to J. M. Coetzees incisive essay on The Plot Against America after completing
this chapter. Nonetheless, I am glad to find similarities on a number of ideas, including this reference to paranoia. See Inner Workings: Literary Essays, 20002005 (New
York: Viking, 2007), 22843. For a wider context in Roths work, see Ross Posnock,
Philip Roths Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2006).
38. The reparative uses of counterfactuals have been of particular interest to students of
law and literature. See Catherine Gallagher, Undoing, in Time and the Literary, ed.
K. Newman, J. Clayton, and M. Hirsch (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1129.
Epilogue
1.
2.
3.
4.
INDEX
283
284
Index
Index
Consolations of Philosophy (Boethius),
126, 261n26
conspiracies, 4849
Contrasted Episcopal Residences (Pugin),
119
Contrasted Residences for the Poor (Pugin),
120
contrast narratives, 1617, 11539, 20910,
21932
Contrasts (Pugin), 17, 11721, 131
Convalescent from Waterloo (Mulready),
136, 137, 168, 185
Copley, John Singleton, 157, 168
counterfactual history and fiction, 22132
Creech, William, 10811, 259n26
Croce, Benedetto, 21, 59, 96, 232
Cromwell, Oliver, 7778, 122, 13435, 139,
17475, 262n47
Cromwell on His Farm (Brown), 139,
263nn5354
Cromwell Opening the Coffin of Charles I
(Delaroche), 134
cultural history, 18788. See also affective domain; historiography; ideology;
microhistories
Cunningham, Allan, 18384, 273n49
Dante Alighieri, 29, 55
Darwin, Charles, 206
Davison, Alexander, 165, 270n32
Dean, Carolyn, 275n15
Death of Archbishop Sharpe (Opie), 176
Death of General Wolfe (West), 134, 135,
15657, 16364, 169, 182
Decline and Fall (Gibbon), 169
Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar (Copley), 168
Delaroche, Paul, 13435, 262n47
della Bella, Giano, 28
della Casa, Giovanni, 145
Dido in Despair (Gillray), 132, 133
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 24, 62, 79, 96
Dionysus of Halicarnassus, 4445
Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 3
285
286
Index
Index
Gray, Thomas, 83
Great Mortality (Kelly), 201
Greece, 5
Green, Valentine, 165, 270n32
Guicciardini, Francesco: affective domain
and, 8788; exemplarity in history and,
41, 5055, 247n37, 254n43; ideology and,
5355; Machiavelli and, 1415, 22, 42,
5758, 65, 245n14. See also Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli; Ricordi; Storia dItalia
Hallam, Henry, 8081, 139, 149
Hallams Constitutional History
(Macaulay), 1
Hampton, Timothy, 245n10
Hankins, James, 242n18
Hayley, William, 159
Hayman, Francis, 165, 270n31
Hazlitt, William, 84, 142, 253n19, 264n6
Heine, Heinrich, 262n48
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 4
hermeneutical method, 7, 238n15
Herodotus, 16, 189
historical distance: affective domain of,
410, 1516, 6267, 15585, 18798;
chroniclers and, 2123, 2533, 3637,
1058, 11516, 122; comparison and
contrast and, 5055, 6769, 108, 11539,
20910, 21932; contemporary history
and, 12126; definitions of, 13, 57,
1014; epistemological concerns and, 2,
1213, 5758, 16970; ethical implications of, 19098, 20510; examples and
the exemplary in, 1416, 2841, 4347,
7577, 8190, 9297; formal structures
and, 410, 6566, 21118; hermeneutics and, 7; Hume on, 6869, 8188,
15154, 255n47; ideal presence and,
9197, 269n26; ideology and, 410,
158, 21018, 22236; imagination and,
22232; immediacy and, 189201, 20718,
237n2; literary history and, 17, 14054;
Machiavelli and, 2123, 2541, 5758;
287
288
Index
Index
Kant, Immanuel, 1112, 62
Kaplan, Marion, 18, 19092
Knight, Charles, 131
Kristallnacht, 223
Kuhn, Thomas, 140, 264n1
Ladurie, Le Roy, 200
La Guardia, Fiorello, 223
Lampugnani Conspiracy, 49
Landor, Walter Savage, 126, 128
Landseer, John, 180
Last of England (Brown), 138, 139
Lectures on Rhetoric (Smith), 9596
Legends of Our Time (Wiesel), 207
Leo X (pope), 248n48
Letters and Speeches of Cromwell (Carlyle), 122
Levi, Giovanni, 910, 199200
Lvi-Strauss, Claude, 1012
Lewes, George Henry, 94
Lewis, Cornwall, 131
Life and Errors of John Dunton (Dunton),
144
Life of Johnson (Boswell), 142
Lindbergh, Charles, 22225, 281n34
literary history, 17, 60, 14054, 264n6
Lives (Plutarch), 221
Livingston, Donald, 250n47
Livy, 15, 43, 49, 93, 183
Locke, John, 62
Logan, John, 8990
Logan, William, 109
Lord W. Russells Last Interview with His
Family (Smirke), 179
Macaulay, T. B., 12, 9, 70, 81, 94, 11516,
127, 139, 197
MacDonald, George, 213, 216
Machiavelli, Niccol: Discourses, 1415,
22, 43, 47, 4950, 5355, 221, 245n14; the
exemplary and, 1415, 3343; Florentine Histories, 2123, 3341, 43, 5758;
methodology of, 2123, 25, 2728, 4750,
289
290
Index
Index
Philip II (of Spain), 198
Phillips, Ruth B., 278n8
Philosophical and Critical History of the
Fine Arts (Bromley), 163
Pisa (city-state), 5557
Pleasures of Hope (Campbell), 83
Pleasures of Tragedy (Wasserman),
254n46
Plot Against America (Roth), 18, 207,
20910, 22232
Plutarch, 49, 92, 12324, 144, 221
Poetics (Aristotle), 160, 244n5
poetry, 16165
political history, 2642, 6267, 7071, 73,
15154, 18788, 19498, 20718
Pope, Alexander, 14748, 152
popular history, 18, 150
Portraits of Eminent Architects (Smirke),
180
poststructuralism, 196, 199200
Presence of the Past (Rosenzweig and
Thelen), 18, 20918, 278n5
Prince (Machiavelli), 41, 4647, 245n14
Progress of Human Culture (Barry),
165
Protestant Church, 128, 131, 249n8. See
also Reformation
providentialism, 2930
Pugin, A. W. N., 17, 11621, 123, 131, 137,
260n11
Puritans, 7475, 78, 12223, 175
Pyramid of Statistical Inquiry (Sinclair),
1012, 102
Quarterly Review, 81
Rain, Steam, and Speed (Turner), 137
Ransom, John Crowe, 208
Raphael, 161
rationalism. See Enlightenment
Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (Barry),
165
recognition, 194, 197
291
292
Index
Index
Tresham, Henry, 175
Trudeau, Pierre, 213
Truth and Method (Gadamer), 238n15
Turner, J. M. W., 137, 16869, 215
Twain, Mark, 45
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, 201
understanding: aesthetics and, 1112;
formal structures and, 16, 23, 2541,
11516; generality and, 1, 67, 18, 4647,
5960, 7980; literary history and,
14054; mediation and, 410, 6769;
microhistories and, 910; perspectives
benefits for, 8890. See also Enlightenment; epistemology; historical distance;
Romanticism
United States. See America
Upheavals of Thought (Nussbaum),
193
Utopia (More), 127
Venice (city-state), 5657
Vermeer, Johannes, 9
Verstehen (distance concept), 2
Vico, Giambattista, 4
Vietnam War, 195, 23336
Village Politicians (Wilkie), 135, 183, 184,
185
Villani, Giovanni, 2122, 2536, 241n12,
242n25, 243n26
Virgil, 110
293