(4) “Obliged to include accounts of many things of which I had made
no special study. The military history of the Thirty Years’ War is in
itself a case in point. No satisfactory monograph on the subject
exists, and I have often been obliged to confess myself at fault in
grasping the exact meaning of military terms, and the exact effect of
manoeuvres, in an art of which even in its modern shape I know
nothing.
(5) “But the times have so far changed,” he continues, “that I am able
to plead that I am probably not much more ignorant of the art of war
than the majority of my readers are likely to be.
(6) “In those archives” (the archives of Stockholm), “if anywhere, it
is probable that the true Gustavus Adolphus is to be found.” But
(7) He, Mr. Fletcher, “is a man who has no pretension to be a student
of archives.”
Here, then, we have an historian who admits that even the little he
has to offer is borrowed from the books of other people. He has not
taken the trouble to search and inquire for himself, and, content with
profiting by the labours of others more conscientious, he has of
course been unable to verify the accuracy of such labours. Nor has he
even taken the trouble to borrow from the latest sources, for he
informs us, “_and I cannot claim to have read even all the modern
authorities on the subject_.”
Mr. Fletcher does not thoroughly know the language of the country of
which he writes; he has included accounts of many things “of which I
had made no special study” in this precious book; and finally, the
historian of the Victor of Breitenfeld and Lützen knows absolutely
nothing of military history, the art of war, or the meaning of
military terms, in spite of which, at page 119, he declares (_a_) that
Gustavus was “certainly a greater master of tactics than Wallenstein,”
but “not a greater cavalry captain than Pappenheim;” and (_b_) “that
Pappenheim had not the _coup d’oeil_ which enables a man to grasp a
whole battle at once.”
How a man can dare to print such a cataract of admissions I do not
understand. At any rate, tested by the lowest standard, treated with
the utmost leniency, his book stands self-confessed as worthless.
However modest the author’s estimate of his work and the humility of
Heep was as nothing to the assumption of this preface, the book
_cannot_ under any conceivable circumstances be of the least use to
the student. It outrages every canon by which the most amateur of
historians should guide himself to write.
YET THIS BOOK IS RECOMMENDED IN THE EXAMINATION STATUTES TO BE READ BY
MEN WISHING TO TAKE HONOURS IN HISTORY WHILE THE WORKS OF JAMES
ANTHONY FROUDE ARE RIGIDLY EXCLUDED.
I would fain linger a little longer with Mr. Fletcher, possibly one of
the richest unconscious humourists who have ever written history. He
deserves to be known to a wider circle than the mere academic. In
these drab, hurried days, anything that makes for innocent gaiety is
to be welcomed. I think it was Ruskin who said that Edwin Lear’s _Book
of Nonsense_ was one of the most valuable books ever written. It is a
pity that Mr. Ruskin did not live to read Mr. Fletcher’s other work,
_An Introductory History of England_.
_Gustavus Adolphus_ was published in 1900, and Mr. Fletcher was then
described as “Late Fellow of All Souls’ College.” The later and more
mature work was published in 1904, and we then see Mr. Fletcher as a
Fellow of Magdalen.
In _An Introductory History of England_ we have, of course, the usual
preface, from which I wish I had space to quote largely. I have not,
but in turning the leaves, the eye at once falls on another
apologia:--
“I have no pretensions to be a scholar in the original document
sense;” and, “I fear it will be very easy for those who are such
scholars to find many mistakes in detail, as well as to question my
conclusions.”
Further, he speaks of the Honour School of Modern History in language
which I, for one, heartily endorse. “I do not consider,” he says (p.
vi.), “that the immense growth of the History School at Oxford ... is
at all a healthy sign for English education.”
I do not intend to do more than give one specimen of Mr. Fletcher’s
style in this book, though I have read the whole of it with pleasure
and amusement. The paragraph I am about to quote should live in the
annals of the Oxford Historicides for ever. I imagine that in writing
it, Mr. Fletcher had been slyly reading _Oceana_ in secret, and longed
to emulate the vividness of that august prose. The volume of Froude
was obviously out of the way when the purple passage was produced, but
if it loses in style owing to this circumstance, it gains in interest
as the unconnected revelation of a truly extraordinary mind.
“As the ice-sheet advanced, the wild animals gradually moved
southwards; the primitive Briton, unhindered by English Channel or
Mediterranean Sea, walked after the mammoth and the hippopotamus,
shooting at them with wooden arrows tipped with flints. And the
grizzly bear and the sabre-toothed tiger walked after the primitive
Briton.”
We must bid farewell to Mr. Fletcher, the historian preferred to
Froude by certain people! I do not wish to give pain to any one in the
world, much less to one who has given me so much pleasure. But even at
the cost of that, I would ask gentlemen who are reading history at
Oxford, and gentlemen who are sending their sons to read history at
Oxford, to pause and reflect before they entrust grave interests and
momentous personal issues to the mercies of such writers as Mr.
Fletcher, to the direction of the historian _manqué_.
Let us leave the _mala gaudia mentis_ provided by Mr. Fletcher, and
proceed to more considerable men.
In his case we have a person, though ill-equipped by nature or
temperament, engaged in an honest endeavour to write with vigour and
picturesqueness. Grotesque as it may seem to us, the “Primitive Briton
walking after the hippopotamus, and the sabre-toothed tiger walking
after the primitive Briton” shows a genuine attempt at style. It is
from the rude carvings of savage races that the Venus of Milo has been
evolved, and from the mural decoration of the cave-dwellers has the
perfected art of Velasquez or Murillo come.
There are, however, other writers in Oxford to-day who merely
chronicle facts. This is not writing history, of course, but a careful
chronicle of _accurate_ fact is certainly valuable to the student, and
may serve as a ladder by which he may mount into the realms of true
history. Some one must do the spade work, dull and uninteresting as it
may be, and all we ask of the gardener’s labourer is that his toil
should be accomplished thoroughly and well.
One of the books that is put into the hands of history students at
Oxford as a useful work of reference is _European History_ 470-1871,
by Mr. Arthur Hassall, a student and tutor of Christ Church, Oxford.
Let me here explain for the general public that “a Student” of Christ
Church is in the same position as the “Fellow” of another college.
The book at first sight does certainly seem to supply a need. It is a
chronicle, in parallel columns, of the events which occurred in every
country between the dates named. A man who is preparing an essay for
his tutor might well be at a momentary loss for a date. “What was the
exact year in which so-and-so succeeded, or the battle of
such-and-such a place occurred?” he might ask himself, and turn to Mr.
Hassall’s book for answers.
Let us take a particular instance. When was Napoleon III. proclaimed
Emperor? According to Mr. Hassall he was proclaimed twice; in 1852 and
again in 1853. Under _1852_ I read: “The French nation, by a large
majority, sanction the restoration of the Empire (November), and
Napoleon is proclaimed Emperor (December 2).” Lower down, on the same
page, under _1853_, I am told that “Napoleon consults the people on
the subject of the restoration of the Empire, and secures a large
majority in its favour (November 21).... Napoleon is declared Emperor
of the French as Napoleon III. (December 2).”
The right date is 1852. These strange contradictions occur in the
second as well as the first edition of Mr. Hassall’s book, for which
minute accuracy is the only _raison d’être_.
Another “handbook,” this time purporting to be an outline of the
_Political History of England_, and much in use by the long-suffering
student of to-day is published by the Right Honourable Arthur H. Dyke
Acland, M.P., and Cyril Ransome, M.A., Merton College, Oxford. This
book also makes no pretensions to style and any one who buys it has a
right to require that its statements should be minutely accurate.
Nevertheless, in it I find the following conflicting statements.
“1792, April 23. WARREN HASTINGS IS ACQUITTED,” and “1795, Acquittal
of Warren Hastings.” Which is right? A later edition of the handbook
tells me that 1795 is. Yet it is odd, to say the least of it, that in
the seventh edition the wrong date was impressed on the student by the
words, “Warren Hastings is acquitted” being printed in larger type
than they were under 1795.
I am not going to multiply instances of this sort of thing. When it is
necessary to produce a completer indictment of the pseudo-scientific
historians I am able to assure them that it will be done. A great
awakening has come to the University, and a hundred keen, hostile eyes
are focussed upon its chief anachronism. There are many men in Oxford
to-day who can say in their hearts: “So will I break down the wall
that ye have daubed with untempered mortar and bring it down to the
ground.”
I will pass at once to Professor Oman, Commander-in-Chief of
retrograde Dondom.
Much of what Oxford has to bestow of honour and distinction Professor
Oman has received. Some of the rewards of the greatest University have
been his. He may be called the leader of the pseudo-scientific school
now publishing, and in the past has enjoyed such eminence as this
confers, among a corporation whose members are not so famous for the
books they have written as for the books they ought not to have
written.
Professor Oman, in his _Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History_
(1906) said: “I am indignant at all the cheap satire levelled against
the college tutorial system, the curriculum of the schools, the
examinations and their results, which forms the staple of the
irresponsible criticisms of the daily, weekly, or monthly press, of
the pamphlets of a man with a grievance, and of the harangues
delivered when educationalists (horrid word) assemble in conclave.”
I can well understand it. Three months before this lecture was given,
I remember reading an article in the _Army Service Corps Quarterly_,
certainly neither irresponsible nor cheap, though composed by two
writers whose grievance was the inaccuracy of the Chichele Professor.
* * * * *
“Napoleon was so profoundly ignorant of the character of the
(‘Spanish’) nation that he imagined,” wrote the Professor in his
_History of the Peninsular War_, “that a few high-sounding
proclamations and promises of liberal reforms would induce them to
accept from his hands any new sovereign whom he chose to nominate.”
At the date when Napoleon is supposed by the Professor to have been
behaving like a Professor, not of war but of history, he was writing
to Murat (May 16, 1808): “Je vous recommande de prendre toutes les
mesures nécessaires pour donner du mouvement dans l’arsenal. _Ce sont
là les meilleures proclamations pour se concilier l’affection des
peuples._” Three days before (May 13), he had warned Murat not to
“flatter the Spaniards too much.... I have,” he wrote, “more
experience of the Spaniards than you. When you told me that Madrid was
very tranquil, I said to every one that you would soon have an
insurrection.”
The article referred to utterly contradicts this statement of
Professor Oman’s. Hundreds of original documents were examined, and
the point was proved with entire brilliance and clarity. The pamphlet
is quite unanswerable, and has never been answered. The quotation from
the Professor’s lecture illustrates the temper and attitude of the
typical unprogressive. Why all criticism of the Professor and his
friends should be cheap and irresponsible I do not know. When Mr.
Herbert Paul writes of Stubbs’s _Constitutional History of
England_--the Bible of the pseudo-historians--that it “may be a useful
book for students. Unless or until it is rewritten, it can have no
existence for the general reader,” and “a novice whose mind is a blank
may read whole chapters of Gardiner without discovering that any
events of much significance happened in the seventeenth century” is
Mr. Paul irresponsible and cheap? Mr. Paul obtained the highest honour
possible in his degree examination; he was a member of Parliament for
South Edinburgh, one of the most cultured constituencies in the
kingdom; he is a member of the present Parliament. As historians,
indeed, the relative positions of Mr. Paul and Mr. Oman, are those of
banker and pawnbroker respectively.
This publicly expressed irritation of the Chichele Professor is
symptomatic.
When Froude gave _his_ inaugural lecture Mr. Oman was present, and
was, he tells us--
...“carried away at the moment by his eloquent plea in favour of the
view that history must be written as literature, that it is the
historian’s duty to present his work in a shape that will be clearly
comprehensible to as many readers as possible, that dull, pedantic,
over-technical diction is an absolute crime, since by it possible
converts to the cause of history may be turned back and estranged.”
Mr. Oman was not carried away very far. The works of the man who was
genius and moralist, man of letters and historian, are still excluded
from the “curriculum,” while the works of the Professor who was
temporarily carried away are still included in it.
It is, indeed, perfectly true, as Mr. Oman very candidly admits, that
“even five years spent as a Deputy-Professor have not eradicated the
old tutorial virus from his system.” He suffers, and I suppose must
always suffer, from the inability to write his history so that it is a
pleasure to read it. The literary instinct is wanting, the artistic
temperament is absent, and like all those writers of whom he is the
most able and the chief, the Chichele Professor can repeat but can
neither create nor recreate.
On the very page where I read “educationalists” (horrid word), I also
read these melodious and polished sentences “equipped with a severely
specialistic curriculum.” _Quip! lis! tic! ric!_ how horribly these
words jar and offend, what a barbarous jargon is this!
Again, “they hope to find this one rather less rebarbative than Law or
Mathematics.” From what sewer of language did the writer drag
“rebarbative” to grace his prose?
It is the same with everything this gentleman writes, or to be exact,
in everything I have read of his.
He speaks of Cæsar’s “chequered and oragious political career.”
He tells us of himself, “I was one of those exceptionals.” You have
only to open any single page of any single book Professor Oman has
written to realize that he either knows nothing of or cares nothing at
all for the art of writing prose. I admit that it is easy enough to
find, and print, faults in the writings of any one, even, here and
there, in the work of a Master. I was re-reading _Oceana_ the other
day, and noticed that Froude has written, “there was no undergrowth,
no rocks or stones, only fresh green grass.” ... But an error such as
this is exactly like a musical discord, inadmissible in the exercise
of a student of harmony, but as nothing in the composition of a
Master.
I do not wish to say whether, in my opinion, Professor Oman’s views of
history are generally sound or if they are not. He would not be where
he is, I suppose, were he not credible and generally accurate. But
what I do know, and what I have a right to say, is that his prose is
turgid, clumsy and without flexibility. He can only tell us that
something has happened, he cannot make that happening live and pulse
within the brain. He is without the first quality of the true
historian, the knowledge and mastery of the medium in which he
expresses his thoughts, and lacking all kinetic power he does not even
know of what wood to make a crutch.
Mr. Oman and all his school are the legitimate descendants of their
Master, Stubbs--the Great Cham of the Historicides. It is a mournful
fact that the incredibly vicious style of William Stubbs has had a
most malign influence over that of lesser men.
The samples of it that I give here will amaze those people who have
not read the learned Bishop, and who have been in the habit of
regarding him as a literary man as well as a historian.
“The steam plough,” Stubbs writes at p. 636, vol. iii. of _The
Constitutional History of England_, “and the sewing machine are less
picturesque, and call for a less educated eye than that of the
plough-man and the seamstress, but they produce more work with less
waste of energy; they give more leisure and greater comfort; they call
out, in the production and improvement of their mechanism, a higher
and more widespread culture. And all these things are growing instead
of decaying.” With what is the historian comparing the steam plough
and sewing machine? And does a sewing machine “call out” a higher
_culture_? and do the things that are “growing instead of decaying”
include a steam plough?
We are also told on page 634, that religion ... “has sunk on the one
hand into a dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot
pass either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere
war-cry.... Between the two lies a narrow borderland.” Religion,
therefore, “sinks into a war-cry.” Between the war-cry and the dogma
is a narrow borderland. The dogma is “fenced about with walls.”
The recurring word is a constant phenomenon. In paragraph 498, for
instance, we find the sequence “evil,” “debased,” “noble,”
“beautiful,” “good,” “noble,” “beautiful,” “evil,” “debased,” “evil,”
“good,” “good,” “great,” “great,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “noble,”
“greatness,” “great,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “evil,”
“good,” “evil,” “good,” “evil,” “evil,” “good,” “good,” “evil,”
“good,” “good.”
It is true that the devoted and determined fellowship of Oxford men
who are destroying the last position of the Historicides have long
known that Bishop Stubbs was nothing more than a writer of slovenly
text-books. But the general public has not known, and, occupied with
wider interests, has been forced to take the statements of the
pedants on trust.
Yet, if Oxford is to continue to be the chief University of the world,
it will only be by permission of the public. This is a truth which the
pedants will only realize when it is too late. If every father who has
a son whom he hopes will proceed to the University reads what I have
set down here--reads it, and trusting nothing to the assertions of one
man’s pen, makes further and more exhaustive inquiries--we shall very
soon see the frantic capitulation of the Old Guard. I believe the dons
and pedants of whom I have been writing to be honest men enough. They
are sincere in their attitude, no doubt. It is comfortable to think
that everything is for the best in the best of all possible
Universities, but the obstinacy of a dozen mules in a mountain pass
impedes the progress of an army, and because his stupidity is not the
hybrid’s fault is no argument against his removal.
A certain number of Oxford dons are convinced that the Oxford system
is without flaw.
The Historicides are the worst offenders, though some of their
brethren who control the study of Pagan Theology and Philosophy are
not far behind them. Both classes alike are convinced of their
infallibility.