Self Condemned (17 page)

“From this it will be seen, that Professor Collingwood regards ‘genuine history’ as accepting without demur the fact that man’s actions are in general irrational. He considers a man who separates the story of the past into examples of rational and of irrational behaviour, as no true historian. For he has not the true historian’s appetite for the good and the evil, the rational and irrational, indeed whatever it may be that can be proved to have
happened
. For him the true historian must go to these happenings, of whatever kind, without any prejudices, relating to ethics, taste, intellectual fastidiousness, etc. He is, therefore, diametrically opposed to Professor René Harding, whose view is that we should reject entirely anything (notwithstanding the fact that it undoubtedly happened) which is unworthy of any man’s attention, or some action which is so revolting that it
should not
have happened, and must not be encouraged to happen again. In other words, that it is time that men ceased proudly unrolling the blood-stained and idiotic record of their past: it is time that they should as a minimum become adult.

“The following is more from Professor Collingwood, analyzing the eighteenth-century attitude of historians, which in some ways is very reminiscent of this new objector to the past.

“‘… writers like Voltaire and Hume … were not sufficiently interested in history for its own sake to persevere in the task of reconstructing the history of obscure and remote periods.Voltaire openly proclaimed that no securely based historical knowledge was attainable for events earlier than the close of fifteenth century: Hume’s
History of England
is a very slight and sketchy piece of work until he comes to the same period, the age of the Tudors. The real cause of this restriction to the modern period was that with their narrow conception of reason they had no sympathy for, and therefore no insight into, what from their point of view were non-rational periods of human history; they only began to be interested in history at the point where it began to be the history of a modern spirit akin to their own, a scientific spirit.’

“Returning to what we were saying before we introduced this very appropriate matter from an unpublished MS of Professor Collingwood, Professor Harding believes that the Golden age of ‘peace and plenty,’ a typical Victorian dream, was actually upon us on the eve of the World War, and we should be enjoying it at the present moment had it not been for an evil principle of unexpected virulence.

“This seems to me to be turning the blind eye to that non-Marxian barbarity, the great nationalist war of 1914–18, which made the Russian revolution possible. But I suppose that Professor Harding would reply that that last great Christian war would probably have been as Lloyd George asserted ‘a war to end war,’ had it not been for the social-revolutionary complications which it engendered. Finally, however, Professor Harding dismisses all this as a dead issue: for as he eyes the approaching war, and the vast mountain of debt which will be of dreadful dimensions by the time this is over, not to mention all the other things involved and easily predictable, he sees no hope of anything but a plunge backward into the barbarism from which, not so long ago, we imagined we had emerged for good. The present century provides Professor Harding, as we have seen, with his first illustration. Some of his other illustrations are even more illuminating small working models of his plan for a new sort of history. The ‘century of genius,’ for instance, is particularly interesting, for we see political events of the first importance, according to the old idea, such as the execution of Charles I, and the Cromwellian epic: and then side by side with this, we are offered the spectacle of events of great magnitude of a different order altogether, such as, at the beginning of the century, the Tudor Stage brought to an abrupt close by the black-coated enemies of the Renaissance spirit — the Newtonian system, Milton’s epic, and Bunyan’s allegory, the political philosophies of Hobbes and of Locke, the innovating scientific mind of Bacon, to mention no more, upon the plane genius, rather than upon the plane of the gibbet and the headsman’s block, the Old Testament battlefields of one of history’s biggest ruffians, Cromwell, and all the other ‘great events’ characteristic of
that
plane.

“In the historical blueprint offered us by René Harding, we see something like a tapestry of transparencies. We see what are the true great events, which gave the name ‘century of genius’ to this period, as a white foreground frieze, and through this one can see, like a swarming of shadows, struggling Kings, helmeted and booted gang leaders, Nellie Gwyn and Guy Fawkes and a thousand other things upon the mental level of the dime novel, or of Fanny Hill, ‘infallible artillery,’ and of course pints of blood squirting everywhere. We have, in short, the two planes in starker contrast than perhaps in any other century; especially since the adherents of the old view of what deserves commemoration have a lot of big shots, like Cromwell, to set up against the Newtons and the Shakespeares.

“I prefaced this study of Professor René Harding’s work by stating that we have, in him, a perfectionist or, if you prefer it, an idealist. The term
perfectionist
is more expressive and perhaps, in this case, more useful. Now Professor Harding is not at all a naïve perfectionist.

“This is another fact to remember, of first importance. He is completely aware of all that ensues from such a position as his. To propose so profound a revolution on the writing of history can be little more than a gesture: obviously the historians could make no such change in their routine, unless, at the same time, men in general were in the act of revolutionizing their ways of thinking.

“So this is not merely a reform in the writing of history that is in question, but an implicit proposal for revaluation, moral and intellectual, throughout society. Which is absurd. Men do not turn their lives upside down in response to the summons of a professor of history. Professor Harding perfectly understands all this; he is not a deluded dreamer. But he simply asks, ‘What else could I do?’ and proceeds quite undisturbed by the reflection that he is building a road which will be trodden by no one but himself, for perhaps a hundred years.

“Professor Harding’s way of seeing the world is, then, analogous to the Vision of the Saints. But it is not necessarily in any way connected with saintliness. What this system amounts to, in reality, is a taking to its logical conclusion the humane, the tolerant, the fastidious. It is really no more than that with great rigidity and implacability, you pursue these things logically to a point where all that doesn’t belong to them or that contradicts them is absolutely repudiated. But René Harding would say, ‘Why not take these things to their logical conclusion? What is the use of them indeed, if you do not take them to their logical conclusion? They do not exist, they are no more than mere words, until they are logically developed in this way: there is no half-measure in such matters.’

“This is, of course, all very well: but in life nothing is taken to its ultimate conclusion, life is a half-way house, a place of obligatory compromise; and, in dealing in logical conclusions, a man steps out of life — or so it would be quite legitimate to argue.

“The questions above attributed to Professor Harding actually occur in his text. But he knows that they are purely rhetorical questions. He knows that they are sensible questions to ask — questions that
are
asked, from time to time, by men like himself: questions which would be quite otiose were it not for the fact they have a tonic effect, and that the conventional life of men (and of historians) would be even less satisfactory than it is without these uncompromising interveners. He feels that his is a function of authentic value, as a counsellor of perfection, in spite of the fact that it would be quite impossible to convert most historians to his standpoint, as it would mean the end of their careers. Conversions of such scope can only be attained under the threat of torture and death: and René Harding has somewhere admitted that he has put the cart before the horse, and that if he had not been tainted with scepticism he would long ago have given up history, and have attacked those more fundamental obstacles upon which history and everything else depends.

“In other words, this idealist carries a sceptic on his back. — Figuratively, the concentration camp (and it is not always figurative merely, at that) which awaits the anti-vivisectionist, the pacifist, he who proposes artificial insemination, the vegetarian, the egalitarian, and in fact all those anti-animal eccentrics, is a familiar landmark to this trained historian. I should perhaps say, however, that this implacable perfectionist is, in his personal life, gaily capable of unregenerate behaviour. He must not be visualized as a bloodless and solemn ascetic.”

René Harding’s head swung slowly round, showing his comically painful grimace of bouffonic reproach to his follower, who was actually slowing down before this occurred, in anticipation of such a reaction upon his master’s part.

“Yes?” Rotter shot his question at the dumb show staged by René, which he looked at sideways, his head still bent over the typescript. “Anything wrong?”

“The
argumentum ad hominem
is justly disapproved of, and I see no reason why the American public should be invited to invade my private life. It does not affect the validity of an argument denouncing the evils of drink if the speaker is himself an alcoholic, though I suppose it would be tactful to do what he could to keep his red nose out of sight.”

The two friends gazed with their usual cold fondness at one another. In any article he wrote about René’s work, Parkinson invariably, sooner or later, dragged in the historian’s personality: in the first draft, that is, but removed it under indignant pressure when the typescript came to be read, as in the present case.

Rotter smiled sedately. “I am most apologetic, but in indicating how, in your private life, you fail to discipline … to
prune
in the way one would expect you to, as a reader of your books, no disrespect was intended. My purpose was to dissipate the idea that you might be some pale little purist. You know how people speculate about the kind of man the author of a book may be, and how, from the standpoint of publicity, they should be prevented from imagining something disenchanting, which in fact is not there.”

René gave his head a violent shake. “I think the recently introduced habit of thrusting under the public’s nose a publicity photograph of a pretty girl to make them buy Miss So-and-So’s book, if the book is by a male, a portrait as much like a screen star as possible — this is especially done in America — I think this shows that the publishing business is attempting to rival Hollywood in cheapness.” Some such remark was usually made by René, during the discussion which followed the reading of an article, and Parkinson smiled appreciatively as it made its appearance. He sat quite silent.They were smiling at one another if they had been watching, with paternal satisfaction, the parts played by those two accomplished mimes, René Harding and Henry Parkinson.

“I think those personalities are quite unworthy of you, Rotter.”

Rotter laughed. “They are deleted. We eschew the personal.”

“Thank you, Rotter.”

After this the reading continued. Although Parkinson always read such things to René, the text did not differ enough to escape monotony: Rotter had his formality for teaching René in transatlantic publics. The present article was, however, one of his best efforts. When Rotter’s voice stopped and he put his manuscript down on the table, René stood up and stretched vigorously, and then complimented and thanked his friend with great sincerity, and his friend looked straight at him as if he did not hear what he was saying. Parkinson was one of those Englishmen who is calculated to baffle the men of other nations. His façade was at times forbidding, but his intimates paid no attention to it: they knew it was merely a screen stuck up by this “sensitive,” behind which he could give his feelings play, even if necessary drop a tear.

Why, in this instance, he looked so strong, was of course for English reasons. He was being praised; what he had written was the object of the most lavish compliments. Now, his writing he took very seriously, and consequently his sensitive nature was most exposed at that point. What is more, the man he almost worshipped was speaking of what he most prized — and, to add to this, René was better qualified than anyone else to judge the value of his writing. So naturally his stoniest and most unresponsive façade was kept stiffly in position.

But René’s cynical eye, when it rested, upon Rotter, rested gently. All master-and-follower relationships, especially so matured a one as this, have in them something of religion and something of love. The pair are a love pair, and they are god and his dedicated. But when they are an English pair, the lovers are evasive, the devout is
sans façon
. There was even, at times, a mockery in the Rotter’s eye. He knew he could only love from a position of complete independence: could only be devout with familiarity, and his incense was the reeking smoke of his pipe.

When the master-follower pair are a literary pair the sacred text is one thing for the master and another thing for the disciple. For the master the whole process of publicity is imbecile, and he is degraded in his own estimation when he thinks of himself squatting down to listen to a solemn exegesis of his literary labour; to be seriously assisting at the building up of a name, at the contriving of a superstition. To arrive, in process of time, at a point when he will be described as “great” necessarily appears to him paltry and absurd, for he has no illusions about the quality of those who are destined to employ this silly epithet.

Under these circumstances, René would have far preferred not to participate at this particular kind of seance. It was a failure of understanding on good old Rotter’s part to ask him to do so. “He even imagines that I like it,” he once reflected. But he saw quite well that to enjoy the advantages of a kind of minor god, he must not decline to provide the devout with this satisfaction. — But what did he write books for? Partly the pleasure of writing them, but partly in order to attract the absurdities which inevitably ensued. No, he was by no means a perfectionist.