‘Times’ two letters on the significance and justice of the war. They
had a marked effect in England and were reprinted in America. In June,
1861, the Austrian government having refused to accept the minister
sent to Vienna, Motley was accredited to the mission. After discharging
the duties of his office with marked ability during the four troubled
years of Lincoln’s administration, and through two years of Johnson’s,
he resigned because of an affront offered him by his own government.[48]
During the political campaign of 1868 Motley gave an address in Music
Hall, Boston, on ‘Four Questions for the People at the Presidential
Election.’ On December 16, as orator at the sixty-first anniversary of
the New York Historical Society, he spoke on ‘Historic Progress and
American Democracy.’ In the spring of 1869 President Grant assigned
Motley to the English mission, and in July, 1870, recalled him. The
reasons given for this summary act have never been satisfactory
to Motley’s friends. It is a question for experts. If Motley’s
indiscretion (or offence) was great, his punishment was severe, and the
manner of it not undeserving of the epithet brutal.[49]
Motley’s health is believed to have been affected by distress of mind
over the recall. But the real disaster of his latter years was the
loss of his wife. He survived her only two and a half years. His death
occurred at Kingston Russell, near Dorchester, England, on May 29, 1877.
Dean Stanley in his tribute to Motley at Westminster Abbey used the
striking phrase, ‘an historian at once so ardent and so laborious.’
J. R. Green, who heard the sermon, thought the phrase ‘most happy.’
Said Green: ‘I should have liked Stanley to have pointed out the
thing which strikes me most in Motley, that alone of all men past and
present he knit together not only America and England, but that Older
England which we left on Frisian shores, and which grew into the United
Netherlands. A child of America, the historian of Holland, he made
England his adopted country, and in England his body lies.’
II
HIS CHARACTER
Motley’s letters afford the best insight into his generous,
affectionate, richly endowed, and manly nature. They mirror his
complete happiness in the home circle, his chivalrous devotion to the
woman of his choice, his loyalty to his friends, and his passionate
love of native land. They do not show--nor was it intended by the
editor that they should--his fiery impatience, his quick resentment,
his sensitive pride, his occasional and pardonable bitterness.
A dominant trait of Motley’s character was intensity of the patriotic
sentiment. Much was required of a ‘good American’ who, living in Europe
during the Civil War, frequented the circles Motley frequented--much
in the way of tact, patience, and, above all, courage and hopefulness.
Motley, who was far from being a placid, unreflecting optimist, had
need of all his philosophy as he saw everywhere proofs of satisfaction
in America’s misfortune. He had not only to meet a frank antagonism
which could be understood and dealt with, but a hostility which took
the galling form of suave assurances that his country was positively
going to the dogs, and on the whole it was a very good thing that
it was. If gentlemen did not exactly call on him for the purpose
of telling him so, they managed sometimes to leave that impression.
Motley’s services to his country in meeting every form of attack,
direct or insidious, in the spirit of high confidence, were very great.
The extent of his usefulness has not yet been fully measured.
He was free from literary vanity and would have been quite unmoved had
his books come short of their actual fortune. His way of accepting the
real or the superficial tributes to success shows the man. Honorary
degrees, elections to learned societies, drawing-room lionizing,
passing compliments, were taken exactly for what they were worth. He
was as far removed from the absurdity of being elated by these things
as he was from the absurdity of pretending not to care. No one could
have been more alive to the significance of a degree from Oxford, yet
Motley seems to have got the most of comfort on that occasion from the
odd spectacle of the Doctors marching in the rain, and among them old
Brougham ‘with his wonderful nose wagging lithely from side to side as
he hitched up his red petticoats and stalked through the mud.’
The letters reveal so many pleasant traits as to make it difficult to
comprehend the hostility which pursued the writer. Holmes throws a
deal of light on that question by a single remark. Motley, he says,
‘did not illustrate the popular type of politician.’ The fact is, he
illustrated everything that was opposed to that type. An uncompromising
upholder of the democratic theory, a bitter foe of absolutism, a
eulogist of the people, Motley was himself an aristocrat to the
finger-tips. ‘He had a genuine horror of vulgarity in all its forms,’
said one of his friends, and doubtless he showed it. An ‘instinctive
repugnance to bad manners and coarse-grained men’ was a trait
ill-suited to popularity. Motley’s high-bred bearing alone constituted
an offence. But he was incapable of so much policy as was involved
in pretending to a bonhomie that was unnatural to him. He had a
pliancy of nature fitted to the complex needs of a very complex social
organization, but that was not enough to satisfy all his exacting
countrymen. And among them were those who disliked him for being the
gentleman he was.
III
THE WRITER
The historian of the Dutch Republic writes as one who thinks nobly,
admires with enthusiasm, and hates without pettiness. ‘His thoughts
are masculine, full of argumentation,’ and as are his thoughts so is
his style. Often the language seems charged with his own energy and
chivalric impulsiveness. At such times the style is eager, mettlesome,
impetuous, it glows with intensity of feeling.
Motley was not a ‘fine’ writer in the sense of being visibly scrupulous
about the choice of words and the balance of sentences. He impresses
one as of the opinion that a man can ill afford to give too much time
to the problem of expression. But he is far from being indifferent to
the reader. He is not merely willing, he prefers to please, provided
that in so doing he is not diverted from his main purpose. The
prevailing characteristics of his style are a natural dignity and a
manly negligence.
He imparts vividness by means of detailed conversations among the
actors of the historic drama. These colloquies have at times the air
of being inventions of the historian, like the speeches in Xenophon.
Conscious that a device intended to give reality might affect the
sceptical mind quite otherwise, Motley more than once explained that
‘no historical personage is ever made, in the text, to say or write
anything, save what, on ample evidence, he is known to have said or
written.’
The reader who turns from Prescott to Motley at once discovers that the
younger historian weaves a dense, firm web. Appropriating an admirable
figure invented by Henry James and used with respect to Balzac’s style,
it may be said that if Motley’s work is not at every point cloth of
gold, it has at least a metallic rigidity.
IV
THE HISTORIES
The struggle of the Dutch for religious and political liberty was to
have been ‘only an episode’ in Prescott’s _Philip the Second_. Motley’s
broad treatment of the theme requires nine octavo volumes. _The Rise
of the Dutch Republic_ (in three volumes) covers the time between the
abdication of Charles the Fifth and the murder of William of Orange.
The _History of the United Netherlands_ (in four volumes) takes up the
narrative at the death of William and carries it on to the end of the
Twelve Years’ Truce. _John of Barneveld_, is ‘the natural sequel’ to
the two preceding works, and ‘a necessary introduction’ to the history
of the Thirty Years’ War.
These works from first to last are marked by passionate admiration of
the spirit which makes for liberty. Admitting the turbulent character
of that spirit in the early history of the Netherlands, the historian
does not deplore it. Sedition and uproar meant life. ‘Those violent
little commonwealths had blood in their veins! They were compact of
proud, self-helping muscular vigor.’ And to Motley ‘the most sanguinary
tumults which they ever enacted in the face of day were better than the
order and silence born of the midnight darkness of despotism.’
The treatment then is strongly partisan. There is a fervor in the
account of the deeds and sufferings of those patriots who thought no
sacrifice too great if thereby the sum total of human liberty was
increased.
Motley does not pretend that the leaders in this struggle were always
disinterested. The motives swaying humanity are wondrously complex.
But after all deductions are made, it was a struggle of light against
darkness, and with such a struggle it was possible to sympathize
unqualifiedly. There are cool-blooded critics who view such an attitude
with disdain. This, they say, is not the temper in which history should
be written. History must be calm, impartial, scientific. Perhaps
the reasonable reply is that history must be of many sorts and the
product of many types of mind; that one sort never really excludes
the other. Also it is well to remember that a great historical master
of our time,[50] and one whose creed was by no means narrow, pleaded
always for this deep and passionate motive in the work, and laughed at
the modern Oxford product which can balance questions but is able to
accomplish nothing.
Motley’s historic canvas is crowded with figures. The eye is at first
drawn toward the personages, the military, ecclesiastical, and princely
chiefs, William of Orange (who is Motley’s hero), Egmont, Alva, and
Granvelle; but the eye does not rest on these alone. Surrounding them
are the multitudes of aspiring, suffering people becoming more and more
a preponderant force in the life of the nation, refusing to be disposed
of in the lump, or driven about like a flock of sheep to be sheared or
slaughtered at the whim of a monarch.
Here lies Motley’s sympathy. His indignation flames out when misery
is brought upon thousands, by the caprice of kings or the selfishness
of secular and ecclesiastical politicians. Note his sarcasm on the
battle of Saint Quentin, a game in which ‘the players were kings and
the people were stakes--not parties.’ Note his fine scorn of that type
of government ‘which was administered exclusively for the benefit
of the government.’ Note his loathing for that type of vanity which
presumes to dictate how a man shall worship God. The temper in which
Motley writes is admirably epitomized in the picture of Caraffa, as
papal legate, making his entry into Paris, showering blessings upon
the people, ‘while the friends who were nearest him were aware that
nothing but gibes and sarcasms were falling from his lips.... It would
no doubt have increased the hilarity of Caraffa ... could the idea have
been suggested to his mind that the sentiments, or the welfare of the
people throughout the great states ... could have any possible bearing
upon the question of peace or war. The world was governed by other
influences. The wiles of a cardinal--the arts of a concubine--the
speculations of a soldier of fortune--the ill temper of a monk--the
mutual venom of Italian houses--above all, the perpetual rivalry
of the two great historical families who owned the greater part of
Europe between them as their private property--such were the wheels on
which rolled the destiny of Christendom. Compared to these, what were
great moral and political ideas, the plans of statesmen, the hopes of
nations? Time was to show.... Meanwhile a petty war for petty motives
was to precede the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that
principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of
merchants and manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and
risk all their blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a
sacred cause.’[51]
The historian is a hard hitter. The enemies of liberty and their agents
are not spared. Philip, Granvelle, Alva, and a score besides are
characterized in withering terms. Of Philip, for example, Motley says:
‘It is curious to observe the minute reticulations of tyranny which he
had begun already to spin about a whole people, while cold, venomous,
and patient he watched his victims from the center of his web.’ The
historian is fiery in denouncing the tortuous and Machiavellian
politics of the Sixteenth Century. It was an age when honesty, plain
speaking, and respect for a promise had nothing to do with the conduct
of affairs of state. He who could lie most adroitly was the best man.
Granvelle fills his letters with innuendoes against Egmont and Orange,
all the while protesting that he would not have a hair of their heads
injured. It is he, according to Motley, who puts into Philip’s mind
the thoughts he is to think, almost in the words in which he is to
utter them. Philip had his own strength, but he was slow to come to a
conclusion. Granvelle knew how to clarify that muddy stream of ideas.
The preceding work shows the Dutch states in the beginning and
progress of their struggle against the tyranny of Philip; the _United
Netherlands_ shows Holland as a rising hope of Protestantism, as a
nation to be reckoned with in the diplomacy of Europe.
The Spanish king is still writing letters, still concocting schemes
for conquest, still enmeshing friends and enemies alike in a web
of falsehood. He is drawn off for the moment from his mission in
the Netherlands to extend his conquests elsewhere. These proposed
conquests have exactly one object--to enable the spirit of despotism
‘to maintain the old mastery of mankind.’ ‘Countries and nations being
regarded as private property to be inherited or bequeathed to a few
favored individuals, ... it had now become right and proper for the
Spanish monarch to annex Scotland, England, and France to the very
considerable possessions which were already his own.’
A picturesque episode of the attempt upon England was the Armada.
To this enterprise Motley gives one of his best and most thrilling
chapters. Equally fascinating is the account of the attempt upon
France, the battle of Ivry (when the white plume of Henry of Navarre
carried the hopes of all liberal-minded men), and the terrible siege of
Paris which almost immediately followed. ‘Rarely have men at any epoch
defended their fatherland against foreign oppression with more heroism
than that which was manifested by the Parisians of 1590 in resisting
religious toleration, and in obeying a foreign and priestly despotism.’
Perhaps there are not to be found in the historian’s works more
striking passages than those in which are described the last days of
Philip the Second. To Philip’s fortitude, in agony as poignant as
any he had visited upon his miserable victims, the historian gives
unstinted praise. The account, which rests upon documentary basis,
presents an accumulation of horrors from which a Zola or a Flaubert
might have learned a lesson. The king died with a clear conscience,
having upon his soul the blood of uncounted numbers of human beings,
and providing in his will that ‘thirty thousand masses should be said
for his soul.’
‘It seems like mere railing to specify his crimes,’ says Motley.
‘The horrible monotony of his career stupefies the mind until it is
ready to accept the principle of evil as the fundamental law of the
land.’ Motley’s conclusion is that Philip the Second of Spain was
Machiavelli’s greatest pupil.
What remains of the book after Philip’s death lacks neither literary
interest nor historic value. But we have something akin to the feeling
which comes over us when the chief character in a play dies before the
last act; we question for a moment whether the interest will hold. That
dominant and sinister personality leaves a void which the exploits of
Prince Maurice hardly serve to fill. With these exploits, however, and
a discussion of the causes leading to the Twelve Years’ Truce, Motley
concluded the _History of the United Netherlands_.
In the last of his three great works, _John of Barneveld_, Motley
gave full expression to his generous partisanship of all that seemed
to him to stand for the spirit of liberty. With a contempt for the
subtleties of theological speculation, the historian was by instinct
‘Remonstrant,’ that is, anti-Calvinistic, and found in Barneveld one of
his heroes. He has painted a wonderful picture of the old advocate’s
trial and death. Hounded daily by twenty-four judges, many of them his
personal enemies, compelled to rely on his powerful memory in reviewing
the events and explaining the acts of his forty-three years of public
service, denied books, denied counsel, denied a knowledge in advance
of the charges made against him, denied access to the notes of his
examination as it proceeded, denied everything suggested by the words
‘law’ and ‘justice,’ Barneveld came out of the ordeal so triumphantly
that the announcement of his sentence might well have moved him to say:
‘I am ready enough to die, but I cannot comprehend why I am to die.’
In characterization of men, in searching analysis of causes and
motives, in brilliant description, and in manly eloquence, Motley’s
_John of Barneveld_ equals its predecessors, while the note of passion
is if anything intensified by the bitter experiences through which the
historian had so recently passed.
* * * * *
A fitting postlude to Motley’s work as a whole may be found in the last
sentence of the _United Netherlands_. It makes clear the motives other
than scholarly and creative which led to the writing of these splendid
narratives. Says the historian: ‘If by his labors a generous love has
been fostered for that blessing, without which everything that this
earth can afford is worthless,--freedom of thought, of speech, and of
life,--his highest wish has been fulfilled.’
FOOTNOTES:
[46] O. W. Holmes.
[47] _Merry-Mount_ is more readable than its predecessor. Such
characters as Sir Christopher Gardiner and his ‘cousin,’
Thomas Morton with his hawks and his classical quotations,
Esther Ludlow and Maudsley, Walford the smith, Blaxton the
hermit, together with the human grotesques Peter Cakebread,
Bootefish, and Canary-Bird, repay one for the trouble he
takes to make their acquaintance.
[48] For a defence of the part played by the Secretary of State in
this affair see John Bigelow’s paper entitled ‘Mr. Seward and
Mr. Motley,’ in the ‘International Review,’ July-August, 1878.
[49] John Jay: ‘Motley’s Appeal to History,’ in the ‘International
Review’ for November-December, 1877.
[50] J. R. Green.
[51] _Dutch Republic_, i, 162.
XIV
_Francis Parkman_
REFERENCES:
=Edward Wheelwright=: ‘Memoir of Francis Parkman, LL.D.,’
_Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts_, vol.
i, 1895.
=C. H. Farnham=: _A Life of Francis Parkman_, 1901.
=H. D. Sedgwick=: _Francis Parkman_, ‘American Men of Letters,’
1904.
I
HIS LIFE
The Parkmans are descendants of Thomas Parkman of Sidmouth, Devon,
whose son Elias settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1633.
Francis Parkman was a son of the Reverend Francis Parkman, pastor
for thirty-six years of the New North Church in Boston. Through his
mother, Caroline (Hall) Parkman, he was related to the famous colonial
minister, John Cotton. Two of his maternal ancestors used to preach
to the Indians in their own tongue. Parkman’s deep interest in the
‘aborigines’ may have been ‘partly inherited from these Puritan
ancestors.’ ‘It does not appear, however, that he ever learned their
language, and it may be regarded as certain that he never preached to
them.’
Born in Boston on September 16, 1823, Parkman prepared for college
at Chauncy Hall School and was graduated at Harvard in 1844. During
his college course he ‘showed symptoms of Injuns on the brain,’ as a
classmate phrased it. In 1841 he began those vacation wanderings which
gave him such an intimate acquaintance with the American wilderness.
Before taking his degree he had planned a book on the conspiracy of
Pontiac. The year after graduation he visited Detroit and other scenes
of the historic drama, collected papers, and, wherever it was possible,
‘interviewed descendants of the actors.’
At his father’s instance Parkman then entered the Dane Law School at
Cambridge and obtained his degree (1846), but took no steps to be
admitted to the bar. He studied by himself history, Indian ethnology,
and ‘models of English style.’ The passage in _Vassall Morton_
describing the influence of Thierry’s _Norman Conquest_ in directing
the hero of the novel towards ethnological study, is thought to be
autobiographical.
Having weakened his sight by immoderate reading, Parkman (in 1846) made
a journey to the Northwest, ‘partly to cure his eyes and partly to
study Indian life.’ He was accompanied by his friend Quincy Adams Shaw.
For some weeks he lived in a village of Ogillallah Indians, sharing
the tent of a chief and following the wanderings of the tribe in their
search for enemies and buffalo. The hardships of the life ruined his
health. His sight was made worse rather than better, and his first
book, _The Oregon Trail_ (1849), describing these western experiences,
had to be written from dictation.[52] It was followed by _The
Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (1851), and that by _Vassall Morton_ (1856), an
attempt at fiction. This ends the initial period of Parkman’s literary
life.
In 1850 Parkman married Catharine, a daughter of Doctor Jacob Bigelow
of Boston. She is said to have been a woman of a sweet and joyful
disposition, having a keen sense of humor, and, above all, endowed
with ‘the high courage requisite to tend unfalteringly the pain and
suffering of the man she loved.’[53] It was a perfect union, but
unhappily it was not to last long. Mrs. Parkman died in 1858.
The historian’s health steadily declined. For years together his chief
study was to keep himself alive. As a part of this study he took up
floriculture, and soon found himself absorbed in it for its own sake.
He became famous for his roses and lilies, and was the recipient of
prizes innumerable from horticultural societies.[54] Yet at no time
did he lose sight of his main object, the history of France in North
America. Little by little his store of materials accumulated. Even
when he was at his worst physically, some progress was made. It might
be only a step, but the step had not to be retraced.
As his strength returned he began to travel. To renew his acquaintance
with the Indians he went to Fort Snelling in 1867. He was repeatedly in
Paris consulting archives and doctors. He visited Canada in 1873 and
explored over and over again the region between Quebec and Lake George.
The great historical series to which its author gave the title of
_France and England in North America_ began to appear just at the close
of the Civil War. The volumes in the order of their publication are:
_The Pioneers of France in the New World_, 1865; _The Jesuits in North
America_, 1867; _The Discovery of the Great West_, 1869;[55] _The Old
Régime_, 1874; _Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV_, 1877;
_Montcalm and Wolfe_, 1884; _A Half-Century of Conflict_, 1892.
The merits of this extraordinary series were recognized at once as
many and varied. It is a question to which of three types of reader
the books most appealed,--the scholar, who is bound to read critically
whether he will or no, the utilitarian in search of facts chiefly, or
the mere lover of literature. Each found what he was seeking in these
narratives, and each paid homage to the author in his own way.