Confused Panorama
By ROBERT RHODES JAMES
AHISTORICAL comprehension of any period usually carries with it the perils of a strong sense of personal identification. But it is surely not fanciful to detect in the social, economic, intel- lectual and political movements of the end of the nineteenth century similar themes, problems and controversies to those that dominate our attention today. The fascination of this period lies so much in its relevance to our own times that an historian studying it can justifiably ponder on the question of whether he is in reality more a student of cur- rent events than of history. The Great War used to be regarded as the finishing point of this epoch; 1870-1914 was a suspiciously convenient period with, it appeared, a dramatically satisfying form, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If this were the case, then it would be a period unique in human history. Mrs. Barbara Tuchman,* in a characteristic phrase, speaks. of the war lying 'like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours.' But was this really the case? Was not the war, in fact, merely an episode—a ghastly and critically important one—in a much longer and much more complicated period of human de- velopment?
Mrs. Tuchman rightly denounces the Golden Age nostalgia that once predominated about the pre-war epoch. As she remarks, 'we have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, in looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it.' Man is not a satisfiable creature, and will always complain whatever his situation. At the close of the nineteenth century there was much to complain of, and many who did so.
The central characteristic of the period, and one that makes it so difficult to describe, was one of fever and ferment. Yet Lipson, in his history of Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, described the period 1871-1914 as 'an era of consolidation,' which 'necessarily lacks the dramatic qualities which stir the imagination and hold the attention of observers.' It is not difficult to understand Lipson's somewhat startlingly brisk dismissal of the period. For to many it seems that the great revolutionary movements of the first half of the century had run their course. If one accepted this premise, then it was almost axio- matic that the Age of Revolution was followed by the Age of Consolidation, and that as Lipson wrote, 'the parliamentary annals of the different European states were devoid of general interest.' All that met this historian's eye were Consolida- tion, and what he called a 'confused panorama of events.' But if Lipson could detect no intelligible pattern in the events of these years, this would seem to justify another conclusion, that confusion is a consequence of ferment rather than of con- solidation.
It seems dangerous to talk of 'peace' in purely military terms. Even if there was no major Euro- pean conflict between 1870 and 1914, the period had a fever running through it. If one takes only
* THE PROUD TOWER: A PORTRAIT OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE WAR: 1890-1914. By Barbara W. Tuch- man. (Hamish Hamilton, 42s.)
one aspect of Europe-British politics, one is con- scious of the arrival of new men, of new ideas, of new conflicts and of a new virulence. The gulf between a Joseph Chamberlain and a Gladstone symbolised. although it could not entirely repre- sent, the change in manners. tone, styles and standards. But these changes can be clearly de- tected in almost every sphere of activity in Euro- pean civilisation during this period. In science, politics, technology, medicine, art and literature there was a dominating spirit of exploration, in- novation, and conquest and, above all, of impati- ence. The rise of European Imperialism between the 1870s and the end of the 1890s is a case in point. This was the period in which, in Rosebery's blunt phrase, the Powers 'pegged out claims for the future.' And in other fields as well. men were pegging out other claims. It is this urge for ex- ploration and conquest that linked people so dis- parate as Rhodes, the Wrights, Daimler, Lenin, the Curies, Freud, Chamberlain, Einstein and M ilner.
Mrs. Tuchman's technique in describing this highly complicated and difficult period is to pre- sent a series of portraits of people and episodes that she considers 'truly representative of the period,' and which 'exerted their major influence on civilisation before 1914, not after.' Thus, she says, she has omitted the automobile and the aero- plane, Freud and Einstein 'and the movements they represented ' It is of course true that these examples did not directly affect events before 1914, but to what extent are any of them not 'truly representative of the period'? The question is a very difficult one, and probably incapable of solution, but, with the best will in the world, I find myself incapable of following Mrs. Tuch- man's logic in her categorisations of men, move- ments and events. As she roundly remarks at the outset, 'there could be chapters on the literature of the period, on its wars . . . on imperialism, on science and technology, on business and trade, on women, on royalty, on medicine, on painting.' There could indeed! Instead. we have chapters on the British patricians, the anarchists, the shifts in American policies and attitudes, the Dreyfus Case, the Hague Conferences, Germany, the Par- liament Bill battles in Britain, and the socialist movements. 'The faces and voices of all that I have left out crowd around me as I reach the end,' Mrs. Tuchman writes. She must not be sur- prised if they crowd around the reader as well.
If one accepts Mrs. Tuchman's limited objective of providing men and events 'truly representative of the period,' battle can be joined at once on her often very odd interpretation of true representa- tion. She starts in 1890 which, one might suppose, would automatically remove important per- sonalities whose main work was done before then. But figures like W. T. Stead and Richard Strauss have literally pages devoted to their characters, lives, and achievements, whereas others like Krupp, Northcliffe, and Rhodes are totally ignored. There is nothing about the struggle for Irish Home Rule. The Wright Brothers do not merit any mention at all, and descend to oblivion in Mrs. Tuchman's pages, together with the Curies, Freud, Einstein, Renoir, Northcliffe and other individuals whom historians of the period
had hitherto regarded as being of some con
sequence. '- The disturbing feature about Mrs. Tuchman's portrait is that she gives the impression of really believing that the Dreyfus Case was more impor- tant and more 'truly representative of the period' than the Russian revolution of 1905, or the Jame- son Raid or Imperialism or the rise of European technology; and that Richard Strauss was really a more significant and representative figure than Milner or Lenin. It is this fundamental irre- levancy of much of her book, rather than its lack of depth, that is so troubling.
Depth it certainly does lack. Statements such as 'the Twentieth [century] was already unmistak- ably modern, which is to say that it was absorbed in pursuit of the material with maximum vigour and diminished self-assurance; it had forgotten decadence and acquired doubt' arc valid themes; but here they are not themes, just remarks lost in a sea of detailed narrative. 'Darwinism became the White Man's Burden. Imperialism acquired a moral imperative.' Another likely theme, at once abandoned for an hour-by-hour and man-by-man account of the first Hague Conference.
Of course, one can understand, and sympathise with. Mrs. Tuchman's dilemma. The vitality and complexity of the period are its most intimidating features. Mrs. Tuchman, as she demonstrated in her lamentable opening chapter to her otherwise admirable book on August 1914, unfortunately has a compulsive love for the glamour and facade of pre-1914 Europe. As she says, she has sincerely tried to get away from the Belle Epoque portrait- ure, but the final impression is exactly that which she declares she wishes to avoid. In the best sense of the words, this is a naïve and sincere book. Mrs. Tuchman is seldom inaccurate on a point of fact, but the reader is left with the conviction —that is strengthened by a second reading—that she has presented all that she knows about the period. There is nothing more to say. The reader is not led off into obscure and significant by-ways, and this is because the authoress seems wholly un- aware of their existence. We are left with a series of highly personalised, vivid, fascinating portraits of selected episodes and individuals. Each portrait is excellent, but the final impression is one of superficiality and conventionality.
Is it being unreasonable to complain thus? Mrs. Tuchman, except when she becomes endearingly dazzled by the drama, the pomp and the pagean- try, writes amusingly, interestingly, and well. She is blessedly free from pretension, and by her warmth and enthusiasm disarms even the most infuriated reviewer. It would he easy to judge her work on the level of entertainment, but I believe that it is simply not fair to her intelligence and assiduity merely to accept her book on this level, for, as we know, she is a more competent and sophisticated historian than such a judgment would inevitably imply. I remain baffled that a writer and student of such thoroughness and skill could have produced a portrait of an age that is, and I repeat the adjective with regret, so funda- mentally irrelevant. One returns to Mrs. Tuch- man's remark about her selection of events and men 'truly representative of the period.' If the period represented—as I believe it did—turmoil, questioning. challenging conquering, would it not be right to say that one must seek the most repre- sentative figures if such things exist—from the ranks of the Lenins. the Clemenceaus, the Lloyd Georges, the Nuffields, the Wrights, the Renoirs, and the Stalins? Was it not, in fact, the age of the innovator and the entrepreneur, in every field? Did thty not most truly represent that 'internal dynamism' which Zweig believed eventually des- troyed the Europe of pre-1914? And is this not a theme worth pursuing at length?
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