Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His
position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of
friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing
to a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a
precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons
the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds
that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the
patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins
to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become
abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I
am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come
to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000
costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of
work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the
nineteenth century.
Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on
historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or
another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset,
which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the
twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green
would contribute the archaeology and history. In many ways they were
well equipped for the task; but the materials had not been sifted and
the demands on their time would have been excessive, even if they
abstained from all other work. Another scheme was for a series of Lives
of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Green was much attracted by the
subject. Already he had made a special study of Dunstan and other great
holders of the See; and he believed that the series would illustrate,
better than the lives of kings, the growth of certain principles in
English history. But with other archbishops he found himself out of
sympathy; and in the end he was not sorry to abandon the idea, when he
found that Dean Hook was already engaged upon it.
A project still nearer to his heart, which he cherished till near the
end of his life, was to write a history of our Angevin kings. For this
he collected a vast quantity of materials, and it was a task for which
he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc
Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the
race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark
force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make
them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to
realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to
tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the
subject from his wife and from Miss Norgate, which owed their origin to
his inspiration.
During his time as a London clergyman Green used to pay occasional
visits to Dawkins in Somerset; and in 1862, when he went to read a paper
on Dunstan to a society at Taunton, he renewed acquaintance with his old
schoolfellow, E. A. Freeman, a notable figure in the county as squire,
politician, and antiquarian, and already becoming known outside it as a
historian. The following year, as Freeman's guest, he met Professor
Stubbs; and about this time he also made friends with James Bryce, 'the
Holy Roman', as he calls him in later letters.[57] The friendship of
these three men was treasured by Green throughout his life, and it gave
rise to much interesting correspondence on historical subjects. They
were the central group of the Oxford School; they reverenced the same
ideals and were in general sympathy with one another. But this sympathy
never descended to mere mutual admiration, as with some literary
coteries. Between Freeman and Green in particular there was kept up a
running fire of friendly but outspoken criticism, which would have
strained the tie between men less generous and less devoted to
historical truth. Freeman was the more arbitrary and dogmatic, Green
the more sensitive and discriminating. Green bows to Freeman's superior
knowledge of Norman times, acknowledges him his master, and apologizes
for hasty criticisms when they give offence; but he boldly rebukes his
friend for his indifference to the popular movements in Italian cities
and for his pedantry about Italian names.
[Note 57: The first edition of Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_ was
published in 1862.]
And he treads on even more delicate ground when he taxes him with
indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the
arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings
Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green
for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous
subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his
narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after
describing the capture by the French of the famous Château Gaillard in
Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls we see not
merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but also the sedgy flats of our own
Runnymede'. Thereby he meant his readers to learn that John would never
have granted the Great Charter to the Barons, had he not already
weakened the royal authority by the loss of Coeur-de-Lion's great
fortress beyond the sea, and that to a historian the germs of English
freedom, won beside the Thames, were to be seen in the wreckage of
Norman power above the Seine. But Freeman was too matter of fact to
allow such flights of fancy; and a lively correspondence passed between
the two friends, each maintaining his own view of what might or might
not be permitted to the votaries of Clio.
But before this episode Green had been introduced by Freeman to John
Douglas Cook, founder and editor of the _Saturday Review_, and had begun
to contribute to its columns. Naturally it was on historical subjects
that his pen was most active; but apart from the serious 'leading
articles', the _Saturday_ found place for what the staff called
'Middles', light essays written after the manner of Addison or Steele on
matters of every-day life. Here Green was often at his best. Freeman
growled, in his dictatorial fashion, when he found his friend turning
away from the strait path of historical research to describe the humours
of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the
charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the
drawing-room--above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his
best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any
one who turns over the pages of the volume called _Stray Studies from
England and Italy_, where some of these articles are reprinted, will
probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The
subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes
are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style
which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of
mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its
richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble
setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless
Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the
pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the
impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he
puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town
which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the
history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named
streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill
beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in
the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of
their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with
oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'
In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry
II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne
coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock
pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of
the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud.
Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking
contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard
Coeur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow
brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged
jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate
details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No
countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in
both there is the same look of repulsive isolation from men. Richard's
is a face of cultivation and refinement, but there is a strange severity
in the small delicate mouth and in the compact brow of the lion-hearted,
which realizes the verdict of his day. To an historical student one
glance at these faces, as they lie here beneath the vault raised by
their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of history.'
Our reviews and magazines may abound to-day in such vivid pen-pictures
of places and men; but it was Green and others of his day who watered
the dry roots of archaeology and restored it to life.
But from his earliest days as a student Green had looked beyond the
figures of kings, ministers, and prelates, who had so long filled the
stage in the volumes of our historians. However clearly they stood out
in their greatness and in their faults, they were not, and could not be,
the nation. And when he came to write on a larger scale, the title which
he chose for his book showed that he was aiming at new ideals.
The _Short History of the English People_ is the book by which Green's
fame will stand or fall, and it occupied him for the best years of his
life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar,
the printer, and the industrial mechanic--'not many mighty, not many
noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the
life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of
Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of
battles and dynastic schemes.
The periods into which the book is divided are chosen on other grounds
than those of the old handbooks, where the accession of a new king or a
new dynasty is made a landmark; and a different proportion is observed
in the space given to events or to prominent men. The Wars of the Roses
are viewed as less important than the Peasants' Revolt; the scholars of
the New Learning leave scant space for Lambert Simnels and Perkin
Warbecks. Henry Pelham, one of the last prime ministers to owe his
position to the king's favour, receives four lines, while forty are
given to John Howard, a pioneer in the new path of philanthropy. Besides
social subjects, literature receives generous measure, but even here no
rigid system is observed. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare take a
prominent place in their epochs; Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson are
ignored. This is not because Green had no interest in them or
undervalued their influence. Far from it. But, as the history of the
nation became more complex, he found it impossible, within the limits
prescribed by a _Short_ History, to do justice to everything. He
believed that the industrialism, which grew up in the Georgian era,
exercised a wider influence in changing the character of the people than
the literature of that period; and so he turned his attention to Watt
and Brindley, and deliberately omitted the poets and painters of that
day. With his wide sympathies he must have found this rigorous
compression the hardest of his tasks, and only in part could he
compensate it later. He never lived long enough to treat, as he wished
to do, in the fullness of his knowledge, the later periods of English
history.
In writing this book Green had many discouragements to contend against,
apart from his continual ill-health. Even his friends spoke doubtfully
of its method and style, with the exception of his publisher, George
Macmillan, and of Stopford Brooke, whose own writings breathe the same
spirit as Green's, and who did equally good work in spreading a real
love of history and literature among the classes who were beginning to
read. It was true that Green's book failed to conform to the usual type
of manual; it was not orderly in arrangement, it was often allusive in
style, it seemed to select what it pleased and to leave out what
students were accustomed to learn. But Green's faith in its power to
reach the audience to whom he appealed was justified by the enthusiasm
with which the general public received it. This success was largely due
to the literary style and artistic handling of the subject. Green claims
himself that on most literary questions he is French in his point of
view. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that on all points of literary art we
have to sit at the feet of French Gamaliels'; and in his best work he
has more in common with Michelet than with our own classic historians.
But while Michelet had many large volumes in which to expand his
treatment of picturesque episodes, Green was painfully limited by space.
What he can give us of clear and lively portraiture in a few lines is
seen in his presentation of the gallant men who laid the foundation of
our Empire overseas. By a few lines of narrative, and a happy quotation
from their own words, Green brings out the heroism of their sacrifice or
their success, the faith which inspired Humphry Gilbert to meet his
death at sea, the patience which enabled John Smith to achieve the
tillage of Virginian soil.
Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of
great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid
descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley.
Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel
that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on
religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair
spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like
Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his
readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As
a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on
many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty
of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed,
and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other
critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point
we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious
historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and
original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see,
under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and
sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no
department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think
I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes
and the cogency of his historical arguments.'
Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in
1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the
essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness,
the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of
grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best
friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing
to the _Saturday Review_, in order to free his style from the character
imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of
these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was
to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him.
But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other
friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class
Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their
solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there
is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he
must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.
Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman,
written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering
the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning
(1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented
years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he
confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at
times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try
to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and
even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my
head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of
connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which
makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the
English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be
of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the
intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the
labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the
delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what _are_ facts, and
what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?
[Note 58: Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to
their practical lessons.' _Concise Oxford Dictionary._]
Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters
to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little
Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who
had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved
so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of
continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish
in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding
factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult
to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same
liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to
politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish
honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this
time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity.
Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on
the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting
the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside
the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have
been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health
mending.
Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his
old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling
abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he
fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his
literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with
San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in
the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under
the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter
periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in
his sympathies but not over-conscientious in sight-seeing. When Brooke
left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant
pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to
the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for
confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while
ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old
civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and
thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'--and to such
purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant
paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its
monuments--but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for
discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other
men passed by and ignored.
Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful
of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the
simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he
stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of
the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety
of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in
the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that
seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards
creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures
and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental
roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and
remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".'
'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom
silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound
save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a
thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry
of a bird to break the spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile
on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as
they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions
under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this
haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he
worked more rapidly and confidently--when his health allowed.
From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to
continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for
the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers,
dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general
reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan,
Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by
Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on
English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he
has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit
an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from
the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the
scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it
in 1886.