Stewart Binns' 'Anarchy' 2013

 

Penguin paperback edition - 2013

To read this novel felt somewhat of a 'light relief' after the heavy biography of Lord Macaulay. I was a little perturbed to read on the back cover, though, that the two readers singled out to be quoted as praising the book were Lord Sebastian Coe and Alastair Campbell, neither particularly noted for their insights in the literary world.

It's now five days since I finished this novel and I am finding it difficult to recall what I wanted to say! It proves to me that I must Blog as soon as possible after I put a book down.

Stewart Binns certainly has a vivid imagination, backed up with some pretty impressive research. His 'Glossary' at the end of the novel runs to 26 pages and includes an eclectic range of headings, e.g. Bucentaur, Carucate, Onager, Corselet, Futuwwa, Kipchak Bow, Leine, Pugio, Turcopole. No, I hadn't heard of most of them, either! Using these words in the text does not diminish the fine flow of sentences and paragraphs. The whole book has a pleasing momentum, ensuring that the reader wants to know what happens next.

The slightly unusual format - whereby the real life Gilbert Foliot, in turn Abbot of Gloucester (1139), Bishop of Hereford (1148) and Bishop Of London (1163), sends a series of letters from Fulham Palace in 1186-87 to his long-time friend Thibaud de Vermandois, Abbot of Cluny (1180) and Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri (1184). In the letters, he relates a long story, told to me by a man who you will find intriguing. I first came across him in late June 1139...this first meeting seemed likely to be the only encounter between us, for he was badly wounded and near to death...miraculously, proving my surgeons wrong, Harold of Hereford not only survived but went on to play a significant part in England's future affairs. Eventually, he  returned - but not for almost forty years, in 1176 in fact - and when he did, it was to make his peace with God...

For the next 470 pages, Harold's extraordinary life is written down by Gilbert's monks, to the bishop's dictation, and then sent off to Italy. Perhaps, the title of the book - Anarchy - is a slight misnomer, as it is not until page 282 that we meet up with the Empress Matilda, daughter and heiress of Henry II, and one half of the combatants in what we now (anachronistically) refer to as the (English) Anarchy.

Harold's grandfather was Hereward of Bourne (we know him in the history books as Hereward the Wake), his father Sweyn of Bourne and his mother, Estrith of Melfi, (who, notwithstanding becoming an abbess, had a healthy sexual appetite. She helped to design the presbytery of Norwich cathedral and was commemorated as one of the gargoyles on its vaulted ceiling's bosses - as the naked strumpet over there, cavorting with the Devil!). Harold's parents formed a brotherhood - the Brethren of the Blood of the Talisman - with Prince Edgar (the Atheling) and Robert of Normandy. A secret society, no less! This mixing of real with fictitious people does not jar. Harold later takes on another guise as Robyn of Hode - the author really likes to upset traditional history!

Harold leaves England on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but stops off at Venice, where he takes service under the Doge in one of the city's ships, the Domenico Contarini.  He travels throughout the Adriatic and to Tripoli and Alexandria, survives a piratical attack off the Dalmatian coast, when the Venetian ship is sunk and eventually returns to Venice's Arsenale. He meets the Doge, the real life Ordelafo Faliero  (1102-1117), who is so impressed that he is made a Captain in his service  and subsequently excels during fierce fighting against the Dalmatian stronghold of Zadar. A new Doge, Domenico Michele (1117-1130) rewards Harold as a Knight of the Serene Republic of Venice and sends him on commission to take his sister Lady Livia Michele to meet up with her betrothed, Roger of Salerno, Regent of Antioch. Reaching the Anatolian coast, they are shipwrecked, but Harold saves Lady Livia. After landing on a forbidding shore, they eventually make their way to Roger, but only after falling in love with other. Harold chivalrously refuses Lady Livia ardent attempts to seduce him, but Roger turns out to be a very naughty boy. Suffice to say, he is worse than naughty to poor Lady Livia, who, in mental anguish, ends up committing suicide by drowning on the way back to Venice.

Incident follows on incident; the novel is almost too packed with them. Harold meets up with the (to be) famous Hugh de Payens (who proves to be even more of a naughty boy than Roger) and becomes one of the original nine crusaders who formed the Knights Templar. Harold quickly becomes disillusioned with Payens and his authoritarianism and cruelty, and hoofs it back to England. Falling foul of the irascible Henry I (who could not forgive the fact that Harold's grandfather had fought against his father, William I), he flees to Normandy. It is then that he meets up with Matilda/Maud, who is not enamoured with her new toy-boy husband Geoffrey. The biggest flight of fancy in the book now occurs. Not only do Harold and Matilda become lovers, but he is the real father of the future Henry II and his younger brothers, William and Geoffrey. And no one ever guessed!

The details of the Anarchy are well covered and pretty accurate, albeit very much from the viewpoint of Matilda's side (her escape in the snow from Oxford castle is particularly atmospheric). Count Geoffrey, Earl Robert of Gloucester, King David of Scotland, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, Brien FitzCount and several other real life figures are well described and given a judicious role in the events. Moreover, the portrayal of King Stephen, his brother Bishop Henry of Winchester, and their supporters are believable. It ends, as we know, with Matilda's failure to become Queen of England, not just Lady of the English, but with the more important successful crowning of her (and Harold's!) son, as King Henry II in 1154.

Final thoughts? It is a thrilling adventure story; almost too jam-packed with incidents. The author, through his mouth piece Foliot, castigates the scandalous early history of the Knights Templar, and the hypocrisy and immorality of the wicked and duplicitous Hugh de Payens. The portrait of the Empress Matilda is compelling.  The minor characters, who I have not mentioned here, also add to the depth of the story-telling.

Robert E. Sullivan's 'Macaulay. The Tragedy of Power ' 2009

 

Harvard University Press first edition - 2009

This biography is certainly not aimed at the 'general reader' and is not for the faint hearted. In 487 densely-packed erudite pages (and a further 90 of Notes), the reader requires stamina, fortitude and, probably, regular incursions to the spirits decanter. I finished the book feeling that the biggest gap between the 19th century elite (and the author - Associate Professor of History and Associate Vice President at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana) and those of the 21st century, is the study and knowledge of the Latin and Greek, the Classical, world - its languages, its thinkers, philosophers, historians, modus vivendi. A classical education once integrated England's leaders intellectually, socially, and ethically. I studied Latin for several years at school - and Greek for a single year! -  but this certainly did not equip me to understand a sizeable chunk of what Professor Sullivan was referring to. Nowadays, in Britain the two languages are rarely taught outside of the public schools, and are as dead as the proverbial Monty Python parrot. This means that a major aspect of Macaulay, his life-blood really, cannot readily be empathised with, or even understood. Sullivan, in his useful Introduction, suggests much of the English-speaking reading world has demoted him from an Eminent Victorian...to a name known only to liberal-arts graduates of a certain age and to students of nineteenth-century culture.

Sullivan provides a valuable sketch of Macaulay's father, Zachary (1768-1838) - a member of the Clapham Sect (a group of mostly rich evangelical Anglicans living in a pious commune), who wanted to impose their morality on the public by abolishing the slave trade and to strangle slavery throughout the empire. They were nurtured and regulated through Bible-reading and prayer. Zachary insisted that his son's pleasing him was the condition for enjoying God's favour: "Unless you are thus docile and obedient, you cannot expect that Jesus Christ shd. love you or give you his blessing." Try that tone in 2025! The younger Macaulay read incessantly as a youngster - before he was seven he produced a compendium of Universal History. His education marked him for the rest of his life - what he studied and how he studied had more in common with the Renaissance, with late antiquity, than with the early 21st century. Studying the classics was inseparable from classical rhetoric. Sullivan charts the increasing distance between father and son, but a distance often skilfully masked by Macaulay. At Cambridge, the latter became a keen competitor, writing Latin epistles and English declamations. For the rest of his life he was more at home as an orator, rarely taking part in, or enjoying, actual debates. He never forgot  the ancients' timeless lesson that "the object of oratory...is not truth but persuasion".

A brief Blog such as this is not the place to chart Thomas Macaulay's life (1800-1859), in all its vicissitudes, but one can pick out some salient pointers: 

• crucially, his family taught him to be Janus-faced...he succeeded in crafting an intricate and winning public face that often belied him. He believed that "morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God..."
• His Whiggism was accommodating rather than dogmatic, an attitude that eventually made him a bellwether.
• elected as an M.P., Macaulay soon made his name as a compelling orator. Interestingly, he supported religious toleration, not so much for protecting religious minorities, but as a way of subordinating their diversity to the authority and control of the state.
• Tom was permanently celibate. An area which Professor Sullivan tries to unpick is Macaulay's 'incestuous' feelings for his two youngest sisters, Hanna (10 years younger) and Margaret (12 years his junior). Psychologists would have (and have had) a field day. Even accounting for 19th century sentimentality, his amorous language and clear dependence for emotional satisfaction upon the two girls is disturbing. Margaret's early death left him distraught and his subsequent attachment to Hannah and her daughter was intense. 
• His time in India as a legislator (he sailed with Hannah. who met and married Charles Trevelyan there, caused further emotional distress to her brother) was admired but, from a 21st century  viewpoint, deeply disturbing. Natives were "a nest of blackguards", "beggarly Musselmans", "scare-crows". On the other hand, the "brave, proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude", the English, were "the greatest and most highly civilised people that the world ever saw". And moreover, "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Macaulay argued that it was clear India could not have a free Government, but could have the next best thing - "a firm and impartial despotism".  Whilst in India he created a regimen of reading Greek and Latin "for three or four hours" every morning before breakfast. Macaulay believed that England's imperial mission was civilizing, not Christian.
• Ireland? to many Englishmen, including Macaulay, the indigenous Irish appeared barbarous, perhaps savage, and hence even lower on the scale of civilization than the Indians. There were shades of an ethic of civilizing and imperial extirpation in his views; his attitude to the awful years of the Irish famine make for very uncomfortable reading. Civilizing and progressive slaughter in history amounted to the secular expropriation of Providence. From projecting the eradication of aborigines' languages and literatures, it was a manageable stretch to recommending the eradication of aborigines who resisted the civilization that would uplift future generations. You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.
• England's responsibility to extend its superior civilization made conquest a moral imperative to be rewarded with growing prosperity and power. "all nations, civilised and uncivilised,", should know that "wherever an Englishman may wander, he is followed by the eye and guarded by the power of England" (a view soundly endorsed by Palmerston in his foreign policy).
• Of course, the publication of the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) brought the imperial idea, dressed in toga and sandals and armed with a sword and shield, alive to Macaulay's countrymen. They taught that Rome's invented traditions inspired its citizens to devotion, slaughter and sacrifice - defining modern "ardent patriotism".
• The History of England from the Accession of James II (1848, 1855) was not to be an objective history. His book was the product of a classically trained orator inspired by the art of Thucydides and the other great ancients. Re-reading the ancients during the late 1840s in dread of democratic revolution convinced him to see the past from their vantage and to look down on ordinary people as "politically too insignificant for history". High politics was his story, and political actors were his characters, More than Walter Scott or even the hero-worshiping Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay depicted the powerful movers of great events as the agents of historical change. For Macaulay, England superseded Christianity as the font of national unity. He also wanted to make history lively. English history was the triumph of reason and the state over barbarism and the church, and the unparalleled greatness of England depended on the Revolution of 1688. William III was "the greatest prince that has ever ruled England". Macaulay's disdain for "the multitude" was huge - "Rabble", "Common People", "the vulgar", "Clowns", "Rustics" and "ignorant populace". There was a permanent underclass threatening respectability, property and order and waiting to assault - "the human vermin".
• other aspects worth noticing -  Macaulay hated the Quakers - the dullest, vilest, most absurd of Christian  sects. The History  was unreliable in its transcription of documents (reminds me of Abbot Gasquet!) For Macaulay, the civilizing imperative was integral to modern England's identity and power. It required establishing "the ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority", first over the domestic "mob" or "multitude", then over the Celtic fringes, and finally over a global empire, above all over India.

The History was an immediate triumph. The first print run of 3,000 copies was quickly sold out; volumes one and two went through thirteen printings. To most contemporary readers it told a generally accepted story. It is interesting to read that Macaulay was allergic to criticism. When confronted with indisputable factual errors, he corrected them, but grudgingly and surreptitiously and never for the Quakers! More than ever, he respected domination as the precondition of civilization. England's history was a winner's tale. Democracy would enable the poor to plunder the rich and civilization would perish. The Irish were ill-suited to benefit from England's civilizing and imperial mission. The Scots were fit to be anglicized!

During the 1850s Macaulay pioneered in making belief in "perpetual progress" English public doctrine. The 'Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations' vindicated his vision of progress. The Crystal Palace housed "more than 100,000 exhibits...from Britain, its colonies and dependencies, and numerous other countries". Macaulay saw English nationalism as the exhibition's principal column, the outward and visible sign of England's inner strength and progress. He "could hardly help shedding tears" on his last visit.

Near the end of the biography, Sullivan had this perceptive comment to make about his subject: His indifference to his family's ambitions, desires, and well-being captures his emotional consciousness. Neither a psychiatrist nor psychologist, I am unwilling to inflict incompetent theories on someone long dead. Thomas Babington Macaulay understood my subject: his sensibility. Lifelong patterns in his interactions and words - mostly to himself - reveal him as a powerful and ultimately tragic man. His stunted emotional consciousness caused him to live barely attentive to and mostly unconcerned about the people and places in front of him, while his masterful intelligence empowered him to interpret and help shape the English public mind during his nation's century. Macaulay's sensibility also made his life a tragedy. Blind to the humanity he shared even with the unseen thousands whom he recommended killing, he lived as if riveted to a mirror, contemplating himself hopelessly, and finally alone.

Having read this biography, I got the feeling that Professor Sullivan didn't actually like his subject. Admired, was in awe of - yes. But Macaulay's denigration of nearly every other race apart from the English is so antithetical to the present mindset (at least to the majority of thinkers) that it is hard to 'like' the man. However, always study the 'context' of a person's life and times. Macaulay expressed the predominant view of mid-century Victorian England - a firm belief in History as progressive and in England as a civilising power, even greater than that of the ancient world. After this intellectual blockbuster, I am in need of a brain-rest, so I shall turn to a simpler book next!

Merryn Williams' 'A Preface to Hardy' 1993

 

Pearson Education paperback edition - 1993

Some while back - I haven't checked my Blogs, but it was around the time of the infamous 'lockdown' - I re-read a Thomas Hardy novel. At 'A' level, one of our set books for our English Literature paper entitled 'The Novel' was Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Encouraged to read other works by the chosen authors, I found The Woodlanders in the school library, and remember thinking 'I wish this had been the set book'! Hardy is much more to me than his books; I have had several holidays or short breaks in what is now termed 'Hardy Country' - Dorchester is one of my favourite small country towns; the trail from Stinsford, where his heart lies, to  Higher Bockhampton, where he was born, is still by-and-large timeless, with a reading of the author's Under the Greenwood Tree whisking you back nearly two hundred years. Fortuitously, several cinematic versions - of Tess, The Woodlanders, Far from the Madding Crowd and Under the Greenwood Tree - have been pretty faithful to their literary origins.

 

 

 

After purchasing Merryn Williams' little paperback last year in Derby's Oxfam bookshop, I finally got down to reading it. First published in 1976, she brought out this second edition seventeen years' later, as she felt she had originally given too much attention to Hardy's novels at the expense of the rest of his work. This time, Williams has written a new chapter on the short stories and The Dynasts and greatly expanded the one on the poetry. Notwithstanding this, I found the first Part - The Writer and His Setting - the most interesting; but I have always found biography and the 'context' of someone's life more nutritious. There are three chapters in this first Part. Hardy's Life inevitably trod familiar ground for me, but I did find the comments on his time in London (visiting, for instance, the Great Exhibition of 1862 and the Science Museum); his relationship with his cousin Tryphena Sparks; and the influence of Horace Moule, whom Hardy went to see in Cambridge in June 1873; all well worth recalling. I had forgotten that Hardy was struck off the list of the Architectural Association in 1872 for not having paid his subscription! Merryn Williams deals astutely with Hardy's 'middle years', quoting from The Life of Thomas Hardy (although published under his second wife's imprint, actually mainly written by Hardy himself) which got to the nub of a problem which would remain with him until he gave up novel writing - he perceived that he was 'up against' the position of having to carry on his life not as an emotion, but as a scientific game...that hence he would have to look for material [for his fiction] in manners - in ordinary social and fashionable life as other novelists did. Yet he took no interest in manners, but in the substance of life only.

 When The Mayor of Casterbridge came out, reviewers complained that it was gloomy. There were hostile reviews when Tess was published, but most critics were enthusiastic. However, Jude the Obscure was banned from public libraries, and a bishop said he had burned it. Review headlines included 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate'. Although attitudes mellowed during the 20th century, Hardy retained a reputation for pessimism. Ironically, having endured the 2020s with its mindless and pernicious 'cancellation' of any literature that does not fit the ghastly mindset of a too-important and noisy section of the 'intelligentsia' (more often than not the so-called Zoomer generation), one can have a certain empathy with Hardy's increasing disillusionment. 

I found the next two chapters on Hardy the Countryman and Hardy the Victorian particularly interesting. His deep respect for Dorset's traditions and culture (and language) infuses nearly all his work, particularly encapsulated in the delightful Under the Greenwood Tree. I think Williams is right to suggest that Hardy's use of dialect was considerably more subtle and varied than William Barnes', whom the much younger man often turned to for advice. Many of Hardy's greatest novels also reflect the social realities of Dorset in the 19th century - hiring fairs, child labour, the extension of the railway system and the abolition of the Corn Laws. He bitterly regretted the destruction of the class to which he and his parents had belonged. The skilled craftsmen, the shopkeepers and others were being gradually squeezed out by the landowners and larger farmers, who hated their independence. Hardy was not the typical Victorian (if there ever was such a person). He was an agnostic; in many ways a man of the left; and someone who hated war. Throughout his life he was haunted by the suffering of the innocent, particularly of animals. He was influenced by the ideas of Keats and Shelley, of John Stuart Mill and Swinburne. Hardy was in the central agnostic tradition when he denied that there was any such thing as Providence - a force which made everything in the world work towards good.

Part Two: Critical Survey, focused on the Hardy hero and his predicament, on The Mayor of Casterbridge, and the Short Stories and The Dynasts. From reading the extracts from the latter (I have never read the full poem), I tend to concur with Williams that it is generally agreed that its language, with a few exceptions, is commonplace and uninspiring and that it also looks as if he had no gift for blank verse. Williams calls it 'the great white elephant of Hardy studies', remarking that the author seemed to have thought it was his finest achievement, yet few people have read it, those who have agree that much of it is poor and it is unlikely ever to become popular. Another reason for Hardy's pessimism! I much prefer Prose to Poetry and often find it difficult to understand what the latter is going on about. The present Spectator's contributions usually leave me cold! I know it's my failing, not the poets'.