On October 15th the relieving force, 42,000 strong, attacked the
Austrian centre at Dourlers, and made demonstrations upon its wings;
the attack upon Dourlers (which village had been taken and lost three
times) having failed, upon the following day, October 16th, the extreme
left of the enemy’s position at Wattignies was attacked and carried;
the enemy thus outflanked was compelled to retreat, and Maubeuge was
relieved the same evening.
In the first sentence (which bears the hall mark of the University)
every error that could possibly be made in so few lines has been made.
The numbers are wrong; the nature of the fighting is misstated; the
village in the centre is confused with that on the extreme right; the
critical second day is altogether omitted, and every portion of the
sentence, verb, adjective, and substantive, is either directly
inaccurate or indirectly conveys an inaccurate impression. The second
sentence, bald in style and uninteresting in presentation as the first,
has the merit of telling the truth. But—and here is the point—it would
be impossible to criticize the first sentence unless someone had read
up the battle, and to read up that battle one has to depend on five or
six documents, some unpublished (like much of Jourdan’s Memoirs), some
of them involving a visit to Maubeuge itself, some, like Pierrat’s
book, very difficult to obtain (for it is neither in the British Museum
nor in the Bodleian) some few the writings of contemporary
eyewitnesses, and yet themselves demonstrably inaccurate. All these
must be read and collated, and if possible the actual ground of the
battle visited, before the first simple inaccurate sentence can be
properly criticized or the second bald but accurate sentence framed.
None of these authorities can have been so much as heard of by the
official historian I have quoted.
It would be redundant to press the point. Most readers know well enough
what labour the just writing of history involves, and how excellent a
type it is of that “making of a book” which art is, as I have said,
imperilled by apathy at the present day.
Consider for a moment who were those that purchased historical works in
this country in the past. There were, first of all, the landed gentry.
In almost every great country-house you will find a good old library,
and that good old library you will discover to be, as a rule, most
valuable and most complete in what concerns the end of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. A very large proportion
of history, and history of the best sort, is to be found upon those
shelves. The standard dwindles, though it is fairly well maintained
during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Then—as a
rule—it abruptly comes to an end. One may take as a sort of bourne, the
two great books Macaulay’s _History_ and Kinglake’s, for an earlier and
a later limit. Most of these libraries contain Macaulay; some few
Kinglake; hardly one possesses later works of value.
It may be urged in defence of the buyer that no later works of value
exist. Put so broadly, the statement is erroneous; but the truth which
it contains is in itself dependent upon the lack of public support for
good historical work. When there is a fortune for the man who writes in
accordance with whatever form of self-appreciation happens for the
moment to be popular, while a steady view and an accurate presentation
of the past can find no sale, then that steady view and that accurate
presentation cannot be pursued save by men who are wealthy, or by men
who are endowed, but even wealthy men will hesitate to write what they
know will not be read, and for history no one is endowed.
Our Universities were framed for many purposes, of which the
cultivation of learning was but one; in that one field, however, a
particular form of learning was taken very seriously, and was pursued
with admirable industry; I mean an acquaintance with and an imitation
of the Latin and Greek Classics.
It was a particular character of this form of learning that proficiency
in it would lead to undisputed honours. The scholar recognized the
superior scholar; the field of inquiry was by convention highly
limited; it had been thoroughly explored; discussion upon such results
as were doubtful did not involve a difference in general philosophy.
With history it is otherwise. Whether such things have or have not
happened, and, above all, if they have happened, the _way_ in which
they have happened, is to our general judgment of contemporary men what
evidence is to a criminal trial. Facts won’t give way. If, therefore,
there are vested interests, moral or material, to be maintained,
history is, of all the sciences or arts, that one most likely to suffer
at the hands of those connected with such interests. Even where the
truth will be of advantage to those interests, they are afraid of it,
because the thorough discussion of it will involve the presentation of
views disadvantageous to privilege.
Where, as is much more commonly the case (for vested interests, moral
or material, are unreasoning and selfish things), the truth would
certainly offend them, they are the more determined to prevent its
appearance.
But of all vested interests none deal with such assured incomes, none
are so immune by influence and tradition as the Universities.
Now, if the rich man has no temptation by way of popular fame, and the
poor man no opportunity for endowment, in any branch of letters, there
remains but a third form of support, and that is the support of the
buying public. And the public will not buy.
I will suppose the case of a popular novelist, who in a few months
shall write, not an historical novel, but a piece of so-called history.
He shall call it, for instance, “England’s Heroes.” Before you tell me
his name, or what he has written, I can tell you here and now what he
will write on any number of points. He will call Hastings Senlac. In
the Battle of Hastings he will make out Harold to be the head of a
highly patriotic nation called the “Anglo-Saxons”; they shall be
desperately defending themselves against certain French-speaking
Scandinavians called Normans. He will deplore the defeat, but will say
it was all for the best. Magna Charta he will have signed at
Runnymede—probably he will have it drawn up there as well. He will
translate the most famous clause by the modern words “Judgment of his
peers” and “law of the land.” He will represent the Barons as having
behind them the voice of the whole nation—and so forth. When he comes
to Crécy he will make Edward III speak English. When he comes to
Agincourt he will leave his readers as ignorant as himself upon the
boundaries, numbers and power of the Burgundian faction. In the Civil
War Oliver Cromwell will be an honest and not very rich gentleman of
the middle-classes. The Parliamentary force will be that of the mass of
the people against a few gallant but wicked aristocrats who follow the
perfidious Charles. He will make no mention of the pay of the
Ironsides. James II will be driven out by a popular uprising, in which
the great Churchill will play an honourable and chivalric part. The
loss of the American Colonies will be deplored, and will be ascribed to
the folly of attempting to tax men of “Anglo-Saxon” blood, unless you
grant them representation. The Continental troops will be treated as
the descendants of Englishmen! The guns at Saratoga will be Colonial
guns; the incapacity of the Fleet will not be touched upon. Here again,
as in the case of the Battle of Hastings, all will be for the best, and
there will be a few touching words upon the passionate affection now
felt for Great Britain by the inhabitants of the United States. The
defensive genius of Wellington will be represented as that of a general
particularly great in the offensive. Talavera will be a victory. The
Spanish Auxiliaries in the Peninsula will be contemptible. No guns will
be abandoned before Coruña, but what are left at Coruña will be
mentioned and re-embarked. The character of Nelson will receive a
curious sort of glutinous praise; Emma Hamilton, not Naples, will be
the stain upon his name; the Battle of Trafalgar will prevent the
invasion of England.
This is a lengthy but not unjust description of what this gentleman
would write; it is rubbish from beginning to end. It would sell,
because every word of it would foster in the reader the illusion that
the community of which he is a member is invincible under all
circumstances, that effort and self-denial and suffering are spared him
alone out of all mankind, and that a little pleasurable excitement,
preferably that to be obtained from his favourite game, is the chief
factor in military success.
I have omitted Alfred. Alfred in such a book will be the “teller of
truth”—but he will not go to Mass.
Given that the name is sufficiently well known, there is hardly any
limit to the sale of a book modelled upon these lines. Contrast with
its fate the fate of a book, written no matter how powerfully, that
should insist upon truths, no matter how valuable to the English people
at the present moment. These truths need by no means be unpleasant,
though at the present moment an unpleasant truth is undoubtedly more
valuable than a pleasant one. They could make as much or more for the
glory of the country; they could be at any rate of infinitely greater
service, but they would not be received, simply because they would
compel close attention and brain-work in the reader as well as in the
writer of them. An established groove would have to be abandoned; to
use a strong metaphor, the reader would have to get out of bed, and
that is what the modern reader will not do. Tell him that the men who
fought on either side at Hastings’ plain cared nothing for national but
everything for feudal allegiance; that _lex terrae_ means the local
custom of ordeal and not the “law of the land”; tell him that _judicium
parium_ means the right of a noble to be judged by nobles, and has
nothing to do with the jury system; tell him that Magna Charta was
certainly drawn up before the meeting at Runnymede; that not until the
Lancastrians did English kings speak English; that Oliver Cromwell owed
his position to the enormous wealth of the Williamses, of whom had he
not been a cadet, he would never have been known; tell him that the
whole force of the Parliament resided in the squires and that the Civil
Wars turned England into an oligarchy; tell him the exact truth about
the infamy of Churchill; tell him what proportion of Englishmen during
the American War were taxed without being represented; tell him what
proportion of Washington’s troops were of English blood; tell him any
one illuminating and true thing about the history of his country, and
the novelty will so offend him that a direct insult would have pleased
him better.
What is true of history is true of nearly all the rest, and the upshot
of the whole matter is that there is not, either in private patronage
or in popular demand, a chance for history in modern England.
You can have excellent literature in journalism, and it will be widely
read. I would say more—I would say that the better literature a
newspaper admits, the more widely will that paper be read, or at any
rate the greater will its influence be on modern Englishmen. But when
it comes to the kneaded and wrought matter of the true Book, neither
the public nor the centres of learning will have any of it, and the
last medium which might make it possible, patronage, has equally
disappeared, because the modern patron does not work in the daylight in
the full view of the nation and with its full approbation, and he is no
longer a public man (though he is richer than ever he was before). His
patronage, therefore, though it is still considerable, is expended in
satisfying his private demand. Private architects build him doubtful
castles, private collectors get him manuscripts and jewels, but
Letters, which are a public thing, he can no longer command.
It might be asked, by way of conclusion, whether there is any remedy
for this state of things. There is none. Its prime cause resides in a
certain attitude of the national mind, and this kind of broadly held
philosophy is not changed save by slow preaching or external shock. As
long as modern England remains what we know it, and follows the lines
of change which we see it following, the Book will necessarily decline
more and more, and we must make up our minds to it.
Of other evil tendencies of our time, one can say of some that they are
obviously mending, of others that such and such an applicable remedy
would mend them. Our public architecture is certainly getting better;
so is our painting. Our gross and increasing contempt of
self-government (to take quite another sphere) is curable by one or two
simple reforms in procedure, registration, the expenses of election,
and voting at the polls, which would restore the House of Commons to
life, and give it power to express English will. But a regard for, a
cultivation of, above all a sinking of wealth upon, English Letters is
past praying for. We must wait until the tide changes; we can do
nothing, and the waiting will be long.