The Gentle Reader Part 12

As vivid a bit of history as one may read is the Journal of Sally Wister, a Quaker girl who lived near Philadelphia during the period of the American Revolution. She gives a narrative of the things which happened to her during those fateful years. In October, 1777, she says, "Here, my dear, pa.s.ses an interval of several weeks in which nothing happened worth the time and paper it would take to write it."

The editor is troubled at this remark, because during that very week the Battle of Germantown and been fought not far away. But Sally Wister had the true historical genius. The Battle of Germantown was an event, and so was the coming of a number of gay young officers to the hospitable country house; and this latter event was much more important to Sally Wister. So omitting all irrelevant incidents, she gives a circ.u.mstantial account of what was happening on the centre of the stage.

"Cousin Prissa and myself were sitting at the door; I in my green skirt, dark gown, etc. Two genteel men of the military order rode up to the door. 'Your servant, ladies,' etc. Asked if they could have quarters for General Smallwood."

"I can see just how they did it," says the Gentle Reader, "and what a commotion the visit made. Now when a person who is just as much absorbed in the progress of the Revolutionary War as Sally Wister was in those young officers writes about it I will read his history gladly."

Some otherwise excellent histories fall into the abyss of unreadableness because of the author's unnecessary pains to justify his heroes to the critical intelligence of the reader. He is continually making apologies when he should be telling a story. He is comparing the deeds of one age with the ethical standards of another; and the result is a series of moral anachronisms. There is a running fire of more or less irrelevant comment.

What a delightful plan that was, which the author of the Book of Judges. .h.i.t upon to avoid this difficulty! He had a hard task. His worthies were not persons of settled habits, and they did many things that might appear shocking to later generations. They were called upon to do rough work and they did it in their own way. If the author had undertaken to justify their conduct by any conventional standard he would have made sorry work of it. What he did was much better than that. Whenever he came to a point where there was danger of the mind of the reader becoming turbid with moral reflections that belonged to a later age, he threw in the clarifying suggestion, "And there was no King in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes." This precipitated all the disturbing elements, and the story ran on swift and clear. It was as if when the reader was about to protest the author antic.i.p.ated him with, "What would you do, reader, if the Philistines were upon you and there were no King in Israel?" Undoubtedly under such circ.u.mstances it would be a great relief to catch sight of Gideon or Samson. It would not be a time for fastidiousness about their shortcomings; they would be hailed as strong deliverers.

"That is just the point of it," cries the Gentle Reader. "They were on our side. The important thing is to recognize our friends. To teach us who our friends are is the purpose of history. Here is a conflict that has been going on for ages. The men who have done valiant service are not all smooth-spoken gentlemen in black coats--but what of it? They have done what they could. We can't say that each act was absolutely right, but they were moving in the right direction. When a choice was offered they took the better part. The historian should not only know what they did, but what was the alternative offered them. There was the Prophet Samuel. Some persons will have no further respect for him after they learn that he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord. They think he ought to have stood up for Free Religion. They take for granted that the alternative offered him was religious toleration as we understand it. It was nothing of the sort. The question for a man of that age was, Shall Samuel hew Agag in pieces, or shall Agag hew Samuel in pieces, and my sympathies are with Samuel."

Having once made allowance for the differences of time and place, he follows with eager interest the fortunes of the men who have made the world what it is. What if they do have their faults? He does not care for what he calls New England Primer style of History:--

"Young Obadias, David, Josias All were pious."

Such monotony of excellence wearies him, and the garment of praise is accompanied by a spirit of heaviness.

"I like saints best in the state of nature," he says; "the process of canonization does not seem good for them. When too many of them are placed together in a book their virtues kill one another, and at a little distance all halos look very much alike."

There are certain histories which he finds readable, not because he cares very much for their ostensible subject, but because of the light they throw on the author's personality. He, good man, thinks he is telling the story of the Carlovingian Dynasty, or the rise of the Phoenician sea power, while in reality he is giving an intimate account of his own state of mind. The author is like a bee which wanders far afield and visits many flowers, but always brings back the spoil to one hollow tree. The Gentle Reader, like a practiced bee hunter, is careless of the outward journeys, but watches closely the direction of the return flight.

"If you would know a person's limitations," he says, "induce him to write on some large subject like the History of Civilization, or the History of the Origin and Growth of the Moral Sentiment. You will find his particular hobby writ large."

He takes up a History of the Semites. "What a pertinacious fellow he is," alluding not to any ancient Semite but to the Author, "how closely he sticks to his point! He has discovered a new fact about the Amalekites,--I wonder what he will do with it. Just as I expected! there he is back with it to that controversy he is having with his Presbytery. I notice that he calls the children of Israel the Beni-Israel. He knows that that sort of thing irritates the conservative party. It suggests that he is following Renan, and yet it may only prove that he thinks in Hebrew."

The Gentle Reader regards ambitious works on the Philosophy of History with mingled suspicion and curiosity. So much depends, in such cases, upon the philosopher. In spite of many misadventures, curiosity generally gets the better of caution.

He opens Comte's "Positive Philosophy" and reads, "In order to understand the true value and character of the 'Positive Philosophy' we must take a brief, general view of the progressive course of the human mind regarded as a whole." Then he is conducted through the three stages of the theological or fict.i.tious, the metaphysical or abstract, and the scientific or positive; which last circle proves large enough only for Comte's own opinions. He is caught in a trap and goes round and round without finding the hole through which he came in.

"When a learned person asks one," says the Gentle Reader, "to accompany him on a brief general survey of the progressive course of the human mind, regarded as a whole, I am apt to be wary. I want to know what he is up to. I fear the philosopher bearing historical gifts."

Yet where the trap is made of slighter fabric, and he feels that he can break through at will, he enjoys watching the author and his work. How marvelous are the powers of the human mind! How the facts of experience can be bent to a sternly logical formula! And how the whole trend of things seems to yield to an imperious will that is stronger than fate!

Here is a book published in Wheeling, Virginia, in 1809. It is "A Narrative of the Introduction and Progress of Christianity in Scotland, before the Reformation; and the Progress of Religion since in Scotland and America." We are told that the history was read paragraph by paragraph at a meeting of the Reformed Dissenting Presbytery at the Three Ridge Meeting House, and unanimously approved. At the beginning we are taken into a wide place and given a comprehensive view of early Christianity. Then we are shown how in the sixteenth century began a series of G.o.dly reformations. Christianity, bursting through the barriers of Popery, began its resistless flow toward the pure theology of the Three Ridge Meeting House. As the articles of the true faith were increased the number of persons who were able to hold correct opinions upon them all diminished. The history, by perfectly logical processes, brings us down to the year 1799, when secession had done its perfect work and the true church had attained to an apostolic purity of doctrine and a more than apostolic paucity of members.h.i.+p. It is with a fearful joy that the historians proclaim the culmination of the age-long evolution. "O! the times we live in! There were but two of us to defend the doctrine of the Bible and the Westminster Confession." At the time the history of the Progress of Christianity was written there were but two ministers who held the uncorrupted faith; namely, Robert Warwick and Alexander McCoy. These two brethren were the joint authors of the history, and in their capacity as church council gave it ec.u.menical authority. Had McCoy disagreed with Warwick about Preterition, or had Warwick suspected McCoy of Sublapsarianism, then we should have had two histories of Christianity instead of one. It would have appeared that all the previous developments of Christianity were significant only as preparing for the Great Schism.

"There is a great deal of this Three Ridge Meeting House kind of history," says the Gentle Reader, "and I confess I find it very instructive. I like to find out what the writers think on the questions of the day."

The fact is that there is a great deal of human nature even in learned people, and they cannot escape from the spell of the present moment.

They are like the rest of us, and feel that they are living at the terminus of the road and not at a way station. The cynical reflection on the way in which the decisions of the Supreme Court follow the election returns suggests the way in which historical generalizations follow the latest telegraphic dispatches. Something happens and then we look up its historical antecedents. It seems as if everything had been pointing to this one event from the beginning.

"Here is a very readable History of Fans. The writer justly says that the subject is one that has been much neglected. 'In England brief sketches on the subject have occasionally appeared in the magazines, but thus far a History of Fans has not been published in book form.... The subject amply repays careful study, and will not fail to interest the reader, provided the demands on both his patience and his time are not too great.' I confess that it is a line of research I have never taken up, but it is evident that there is ample material. The beginning inspires confidence. 'The chain of tradition, followed as far as possible into the past, carries us but to the time when the origin of the fan is derived from tradition.' It appears that we come out upon firm ground when we reach the Mahabharata. But the question which arouses my curiosity is, How did it occur to any one that there should be a history of fans? The author reveals the inciting cause,--'The Loan Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1870 gave a great impulse to the collection and decoration of fans.' I suspect that almost all readable histories have some such origin."

The t.i.tle of Professor Freeman's "History of Federal Government from the Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States" was timely when the first volume was published in 1863. The terminal points seemed closely connected in 1862 and the spring of 1863.

Gettysburg and Appomattox destroyed the line of communication. But there was a time when the subject had great dramatic unity.

One May morning the Gentle Reader saw in the newspapers the account of the victory of Admiral Dewey at Manila, and learned how the English people rejoiced over the success of American arms. "This will remake a great deal of history," he said, "and there will be a great revival of interest in Hengist and Horsa. These primitive Anglo-Saxon expansionists kept their own counsel, but it's evident that the movement they set on foot must go on to its logical conclusion. When a competent scholar takes hold of the history it will be seen that it couldn't stop with the Heptarchy or the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was a foregone conclusion that these Anglo-Saxons would eventually take the Philippines."

When one by one the books began to come out he read them with eager interest. That there should be histories of the triumphant progress of Anglo-Saxondom, after the Spanish-American war, he looked upon as something as inevitable as the history of fans, after the South Kensington Exhibition. It was manifest destiny.

There is one page in the history books which the Gentle Reader looks upon with a skeptical smile; it is that which contains the words, "The End."

"The writer may think that the subject has been exhausted, and that he has said the last word; but in reality there is no end."

He is well aware that at best he gets but a glimpse of what is going on.

The makers of history are for the most part unknown to the writers of it. He loves now and then to catch sight of one of these unremembered mult.i.tudes. For a moment the searchlight of history falls upon him, and he stands blinking in the unaccustomed glare, and then the light s.h.i.+fts and oblivion swallows him up.

He stops to meditate when he comes upon this paragraph in Bishop Burnet's "History of his Own Times."

"When King James I. was in Scotland he erected a new Bishopric, and made one Forbes Bishop. He was a very learned and pious man; he had a strange faculty of preaching five or six hours at a time. His way of life and devotion was thought monastic, and his learning lay in antiquity; he studied to be a reconciler between Papists and Protestants, leaning rather to the first; he was a simple-hearted man and knew little of the world, so he fell into several errors of conduct, but died soon after suspected of Popery."

"That man Forbes," says the Gentle Reader, "doesn't cut much of a figure on the pages of history. Indeed, that is all that is said of him, yet I doubt not but that he was a much more influential man in his day than many of those bishops and reformers that I have been reading about. A learned man who has a faculty for preaching five or six hours at a time is a great conservative force. He keeps things from going too fast. When one reads about the Reformation of the sixteenth century, one wonders that it didn't make a clean sweep. We must remember the number of good Protestants who died suspected of Popery."

But though he loves to get a glimpse of Forbes and men of his kind, he knows that they are not of the stuff that readable histories are made of. The r.e.t.a.r.ding influences of the times must be taken into account, but after all the historian is concerned with the people who are "in the van of circ.u.mstance." They may be few in number, but their achievements are the things worth telling.

"Every history," says the Gentle Reader, "should be a Book of Genesis. I want to see things in their beginnings and in their fresh growth. I do not care to follow the processes of decay. Fortunately there is no period when something is not beginning. 'Sweet is the genesis of things.' History is a perpetual spring-time. New movements are always on foot. Even when I don't approve of them I want to know what they are like. When the band strikes up 'See the Conquering Hero come,' it's sheer affectation not to look up. The conquering hero is always worth looking at, even if you do not approve of him. The historian who undertakes to tell what men at any period were about must be quick to detect their real enthusiasms. He must join the victorious army and not cling to a lost cause. I have always thought that it was a mistake for Gibbon to call his great work, 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' The declining power of the Roman Empire was not the great fact of those ten centuries. There were powers which were not declining, but growing. How many things were in the making,--Christianity, Mohammedanism, the new chivalry, the Germanic civilization. As for the Roman Empire, one could see that _that_ game was lost, and it wasn't worth while to play it out to the last move. I couldn't make those shadowy Emperors at Constantinople seem like Caesars--and, for that matter, they weren't."

On this last point I think that the Gentle Reader is correct, and that the great historian is one who has a certain prophetic gift. He is quick to discern the signs of the times. He identifies himself so thoroughly with the age of which he writes that he always seems to be at the beginning of an era peering into the yet dim future. In this way he shares the hopes and aspirations of the men of whom he writes. For there was a day when all our familiar inst.i.tutions were new. There was a time when the Papacy was not an established fact, but a vague dream of spiritual power and unity, a challenge to a barbarian world. It appealed to young idealists as the federation of the world or a socialistic commonwealth appeals to-day. There was a time when const.i.tutional government was a Utopian experiment which a few brave men were willing to try. There was a time when Calvinism was a spiritual adventure.

The historian whom we love is one who stands at the parting of the ways, and sees ideals grow into actualities. He is not reminiscent. He is forward-looking as he speaks to each age out of intimate acquaintance with its new hopes, as one

"Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones For prophecies of thee, and for the sake Of loveliness new born."

The Evolution of the Gentleman

"What is your favorite character, Gentle Reader?" "I like to read about gentlemen," he answers; "it's a taste I have inherited, and I find it growing upon me."

And yet it is not easy to define a gentleman, as the mult.i.tudes who have made the attempt can testify. It is one of the cases in which the dictionary does not help one. Perhaps, after all, definitions are to be looked upon as luxuries, not as necessities. When Alice told her name to Humpty Dumpty, that intolerable pedant asked,--

"'What does it mean?'

"'Must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.

"'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh. 'My name means the shape I am,--and a good handsome shape it is, too.'"

I suppose that almost any man, if he were asked what a gentleman is, would answer with Humpty Dumpty, "It is the shape I am." I judge this because, though the average man would not feel insulted if you were to say, "You are no saint," it would not be safe to say, "You are no gentleman."

And yet the average man has his misgivings. For all his confident talk, he is very humble minded. The astral body of the gentleman that he is endeavoring to project at his neighbors is not sufficiently materialized for his own imperfect vision. The word "gentleman" represents an ideal.