24 SEPTEMBER 1977, Page 13

Keith Felling

Robert Blake

Sir Keith Felling, who died last Friday at the age of ninety-three, was a most distinguished historian who never quite received the credit that he deserved. To some extent this was due to the ascendancy of Sir Lewis Namier in the field of eighteenth-century studies. Namier was a great man and he was a great gatherer of disciples. He never wrote anything against Feiling, but his followers brooked no rivals to their master and Feiling's major contribution, The History of the 'Second Tory Party 1714-1832 (1938), suffered not so much from criticism — which was difficult — but silence. To survive in such a struggle one needed a comparable troop of devotees. Felling was not the sort of man to collect followers, nor did he write with the clarity of Sir Lewis whose genius he fully recognised in print on many occasions. But as a scholar of the period he was unsurpassed. It is perhaps to,be regretted that he was in some respects too much of an historian's historian, too allusive, too subtle, too unobvious.

The eighteenth century, however, was by no means Feiling's sole field of history any more than it was Namier's. Feiling's first major work was his History of the Tory Party 1660-1714, published in 1924, the same year in which he founded the Oxford University Conservative Association — a body which has flourished ever since and never more vigorously than today. Six years later he produced another important book on the same period, British Foreign Policy 1660-1672. He was also an expert on nineteenth century English history, and his Sketches in Nineteenth Century Biography (1930) demonstrates his expertise in that period.

Felling's career was quintessentially Oxonian. Educated first at Malborough then at Bailie] he gained an excellent first in History in 1906 followed Sy a Fellowship of All Souls. After a brief sojourn in Canada he was elected to a 'Studentship' (a position known as 'Fellowship' in other colleges) of Christ Church in 1910. He served in the Black Watch in India during the first world war — an experience which must have been of help to him in writing nearly forty years later one of the best of all his books — Warren Hastings (1954). He was, by all accounts, an excellent tutor, member of a very distinguished trio of Christ Church historians, Sir John Masterman and Ernest Jacob (who was followed by Nowell Myres), being the others. The record of the Christ Church history 'school' from 1918 to 1936 when Felling became for the next four years a Research Student was one of great success and the tradition has continued ever since.

In 1940 with the departure of younger colleagues to wartime activities Feiling reassumed the direction of history teaching in his College. For a long while it had been clear that he ought to be elected to one of the major chairs in Oxford (he would never have moved elsewhere) and the obvious position was that of Chichele Professor of History which is tied to All Souls. Unfortunately the sitting tenant, Sir Charles Oman, who had been appointed in 1905 at the age of forty-five, possessed, under the old university statutes, life tenure. A retiring age of sixty-five had been imposed in 1926, but vested interests were respected. As the years passed, it seemed all too likely that Felling would miss his chance. I went to Christ Church as a young don in April 1946 and I well remember Felling with his engaging stutter observing over the port, 'While there's d-death there's hope, you know. . While there's d-death there's hope'. In June Sir Charles died. Feiling was appointed in his place and the University gave him an extra year. He retired in 1950.

Feiling's historical work was by no means completed with his major books on British seventeenth and eighteenth century politics. In 1946 he wrote at the request of the family a biography of Neville Chamberlain which has stood up remarkably well to the test of time. He had been on the Chamberlainite side in the pre-war controversies — an attitude anything but popular in 1946 — and it showed much courage to write a sympathetic, though scrupulously fair, life. In 1950 he produced his History of England from the Coming of the English to 1918 — a wonderful single volume work written more lucidly and readably than any of his others — perhaps his greatest achievement. Four years later came his Warren Hastings, and in 1960 a delightful volume of essays, in Christ Church Hall, which attested to his love of and learning about that remarkable College. In 1964 a festschrift, Essays in British History, written in his honour was edited by one of his most distinguished pupils, Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Feiling was in his pre-war writings a strong Tory of the romantic type, antiLiberal rather than anti-Socialist. The fashion today is different and Conservatives tend to look to nineteenth centufy liberalism as a sounder guide than Tory paternalism. They are probably right, but it would be a pity to forget entirely the. other side of the coin. His essay on Coleridge in his biographical sketches is well worth reading even now as a reminder.