How different from us
Hilary Mantel
THE BICKERSTETH DIARIES: 1914-1918 edited by John Bickersteth, with an introduction by John Terraine Leo Cooper, £21, pp. 332 On television recently, that consider- able pundit Tony Parsons described a story by Julian Barnes as being the best writing on World War I since Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. It is all of three years since Bird- song appeared, and in between Pat Barker has completed her prizewinning trench-side trilogy. It may be that current fiction is making us think we know more about the Great War than we actually do. Historical novels must depend to some extent on empathy, on fellow feeling; a story that did not make 'them' a bit like 'us' would be austere and unattractive. The appearance of these diaries is a well-timed corrective to a tendency to over-identify. Every page demonstrates values and habits of mind that are alien to most of us today. Every page sets between present and past a distance that we should respectfully observe.
The Bickersteth family belonged to the high establishment. They were bishops, varsity men, servants of Empire. The diarist herself, Ella, was the daughter of a profes- sor of Sanskrit; photographed at Christ Church by Lewis Carroll, she was buttoned to the neck, a stiff-limbed figure more like a wooden doll than a little girl. She married Sam Bickersteth, who went into the church, and they had six sons, of whom two were ordained by 1914. One son served in the War Office, four at the Western Front. Morris, the fifth son, was killed on the Somme. They were a close and loving family, and the diary began as an attempt to keep in touch; Ella pasted into it letters she received from various quarters, having first copied them and circulated them. The multi-volumed result has now been edited for publication by John Bickersteth, grand- son of Ella and sometime Bishop of Bath and Wells.
The bulk of the edited diaries consists of letters home from Julian and Burgon, the third and fourth sons, both of whom would receive the Military Cross. Julian, a mili- tary chaplain, was in Melbourne when war broke out:
Most people think [he wrote] that she [Eng- land] will never get such another opportunity of smashing the German fleet, and it will give us a chance of crippling her commerce for generations.
His jingoism is what we would expect so is the consequent disillusionment. But the form and nature of the transition are fascinating. This is not a story that has been told before — it is a story that is dif- ferent for each individual.
Both Julian and Burgon wrote well, per- haps because neither of them strained for effect. If Julian castigates himself in the last months of the war for letters that are `short, dull and stupid' it is because they are subject to self-censorship. There is much that it would be pointless and cruel to spell out to the people at home. Burgon had, by some standards, a quiet war, chafing at the limited part the cavalry could play. Boredom was his enemy as well the Kaiser. A modern mother might have been glad of the occasions when he was out of danger; Ella lamented that he lacked opportunities to distinguish himself.
Julian's letters give a vivid picture of the exhausting duties of a committed military chaplain. Of one of his colleagues, the Archbishop of York remarked, 'he snorted like an old war horse when he donned his khaki once again'. Julian does a fair mea- sure of snorting. But all his certainties are tried by his days in the field hospitals, his nights with deserters who are due to be shot. The war ossifies spirituality; no one dares think beyond the here and now. Bur- gon's boredom will slide into a feeling of futility, then to uncomprehending horror at the hypocrisy and self-serving which grinds the machine of war forward across the devastated countryside, past wounded men drowning in shellholes, to the cheers of journalists and profiteers. Both brothers, by the armistice, will view the world with more humility, more subtlety, more ambivalence.
And yet, they retain their ideals. They examine their religious faith, but they keep it and it sustains them. Their letters emphasise always the stoicism of the men, their comradeship which is 'something past understanding, but sacred and wonderful'. In 1917, after a period behind the line, Julian writes, 'It was a real joy to get back again to the atmosphere of trench life.' They renounce jingoism, but they remain patriots. They want peace, but do not become pacifists. Their belief in duty and in self-sacrifice survives everything that they see — and is something of a reproach to those of us who have been trained to regard the Great War as an unmitigated catastrophe. Moving and instructive, the Bickersteth diaries are a valuable addition to its vast and terrible archive.
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