29 NOVEMBER 1957, Page 9

T HIS book* is enthralling for one reason which I do

not think any reviewer will deny. It sustains the narrative of one of the most compli- cated and fantastic political episodes in English history over 350 pages with a lucidity and a dramatic skill which rival each other. The episode is the mere fifteen months, following the destruc- tion of the Whig Junto, during which the Tories engineered the downfall of the most powerful man in Europe, Marlborough, and unashamedly betrayed England's allies in the War of the Spanish Succession. A mere fifteen months! But was there ever in this country, in fifteen years, let alone fifteen months, such an accumulation of perfidy, such intrigue, such a merciless com- petition in trickery? The, most spectacular piece of treachery in English history,' Mr. Foot calls it. Little of the spectacle escapes him. As he tells it, the involved story unfolds, not only clearly but with breathtaking excitement, and I defy anyone to read his account of how St. John pressed for- ward the preliminary negotiations with France, betraying Marlborough behind his back while praising his victory at Bouchain to his face, with-

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RIDER LONDON

The Rise of Grub Street

BY HENRY FAIRLIE

out acknowledging that it is a fine piece of historical writing.

'Ahem,' I can hear the professional historians saying, 'historical writing, maybe; but history?' The book has obvious faults. Mr. Foot, assuming a journalist's licence, indulges too often in specu- lation about events and motives. 'The supposition is clear . . .,' he writes at one point; but the sup- position is not clear, and it still remains only a supposition. It is only fair to Mr. Foot, however, to point out that, as the story advances and centres more and more on the personalities in whom he is primarily interested, Harley, St. John and Swift, the speculation grows less and he becomes in- creasingly confident—and usually right—in his recounting of events. He is less confident, how- ever, in his judgments on the characters and motives of the men and women who were the main actors in the drama. He seems unable to make up his mind about any of them : in particu- lar, no sooner has he exposed one particularly vicious or deceitful action than he is immediately excusing it, asserting that nothing could have been achieved at the moment except by, for example, Harley's intriguing or St. John's un- scrupulous daring.

The fault is in the man himself, it is the reverse side of his supreme virtue. Mr. Foot is incapable of bitterness against any man. In his everyday fife he is able, to a quite extraordinary degree, to detach a man's actions, which he will censure with sulphuric rancour, from the man himself. He is always excusing the man, while attacking his policies with concentrated venom. This attractive quality in Mr. Foot, the man, unfortunately diminishes the value of Mr. Foot, the historian. He withholds, or constantly modifies, his judg- ments. We are not certain, even at the end of the book, even at the end of the epilogue, whether he thinks Harley, St. John and Swift were justified in their base treachery. We are not certain of this, even though Marlborough emerges, from his telling of the story, as the hero of the whole degrading episode. One rubs one's eyes at this and turns back to the title of the book. 'The Pen and the Sword.' Is Mr. Foot, the great commoner among journalists, really siding with the Sword? Is this another Bevanite apostasy? Unfortunately, one cannot tell.

But these faults seem .slight to me compared with the book's real value as a work of history. In a lively appendix, Mr. Foot defends his use of the terms 'Whig' and 'Tory' against those historians who would have us believe that they had no mean- ing in the context of the political struggles which raged in Queen Anne's reign. In short, Mr. Foot takes on the Namierite school, and one can expect that every complicated Mendelian variety of Namierite, not only the black-and-white ones, but the khaki- ones as well, will be after him. Mr.

* THE PEN AND ME SWORD. By Michael Foot. (Mac- Gibbon and Kee, 30s.)

Foot's argument, though he argues it with more subtlety and skill, is the simple one that the terms obviously meant something real to those who used them at the time. It is the virtue of the book tha without pressing the point but simply by his re counting of the story, this becomes crystal deal This was the moment when the two-party system was emerging; and, however complex the motives and connections of the principal politicians, their awareness of party was increasingly a supravening factor; and their awareness of party meant not only a growing awareness of the strength which came from party ties, but also a growing attach ment to the beliefs and mythologies which helped to make those ties binding.

The clarity with which this emerges is the main justification of the part which Mr. Foot allots to the political journalism of the day. The theme by which he unites his story is the effectiveness with which Swift used the new power of the printing presses to help dislodge Marlborough. But, whY did this new power exist? It was not just because the Licensing Act had been allowed to lame, thu removing political censorship, vitally important though this was. Equally important was the fact that the existence of the embryo parties encour aged the growth of precisely the kind of public opinion which political journalism and pamphlet eering could help to form. As Mr. Foot says :

Public opinion with the press as its mail engine, in the country at large and particular)l in London coffee-houses, was now a considerabli force. It could help sway votes in Parliament settle elections, sink the public credit or raise mob in the streets. It had wrested some part 01 the real power in the state from Kings ant courtiers and Captain-Generals. '

This new public opinion, which could never have made its force felt at all if not through parties, was the real reason why when the Stamp Duty succeeded the Licensing Act, after seventeen years of freedom, political journalism survived. By his use of the sheets and pamphlets of Grub Street, Mr. Foot makes an invaluable contribution to the political history of the time. He demon- strates the existence and interdependence of party, public opinion and press in a manner which routs the Namierites more convincingly than any more scholarly analysis.

* *

This emphasis on the part played by Grub Street leads Mr. Foot into some distortion which may appear to make him vulnerable. In particular, he exaggerates the part played by Swift in the counsels of St. John and Harley. This is quite different from the part played by Swift's pani• phleteering, which I do not think' he exaggerates in the least : at least twice Swift intervened decisively by his writings, and on more occasions he made the path of Harley and St. John easier. But he exaggerates, also, Swift's independence.