A PORTRAIT OF RALEGH

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29354, 5 November 1960, Page 3

A PORTRAIT OF RALEGH

(Reviewed by A.R.J

That Great Lucifer. A Portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh. By Margaret Irwin. Chatto and Windus. 320 pp.

When a novelist turns historian, the result is usually disastrous But sometimes the outcome is a more dramatic presentation of an old story than we have previously had *and, in biography, a more vividly drawn pen picture than any sketched by more orthodox historians. Margaret Irwin, well known for her many historical novels, has brilliantly succeeded in writing an account of the life of Sir Walter Ralegh, which will challenge comparison with any written in the past. In her preface, as if to make apology for undertaking a more serious enterprise than is usual with her, Margaret Irwin writes: “This is not a novel, or a fictional biography. There are no imaginary scenes or conversations in it; and Ralegh’s own words are quoted continuously. But it is a portrait of him and some of his contemporaries rather than a comprehensive life.” Miss Irwin spent six years working up the material for this “portrait” and, while she does not make any very important contribution to orginal knowledge on the subject, she must be credited with having written a highly attractive account of a quite remarkable man.

The author unashamedly takes sides with Ralegh against those who attacked him in his own day and against those who have done so since. With her ability as a story-teller and her deep womanly sympathies to help her, she has recreated a most appealling Ralegh, a man who was at one and the same time a grand leader of men, a vigorous man of action, a cultured poet and something of a scientist, a good father and husband—in a word, an outstanding Elizabethan. Miss Irwin does not indicate sufficiently how arrogant and how careless of conventions Ralegh could be, but she does succeed in telling his story in such a way that she wins the admiration and sympathy of the reader in favour of the illtreated patriot. Probably only Miss Irwin could have explained as she does how Queen Elizabeth could overlook the crime of Essex in getting her maids of honour with child but could never forgive Essex and Ralegh for daring to marry her

maids of honour. She says: “Her sexual, and especially marital, jealousy has been called almost pathological; the ‘almost’ seems an understatement, for she was, in this respect only, a little mad.” Elizabeth could not bear to have her favourites marry women of the court and so cease to be her completely devoted servants. But the same Miss Irwin can write at times with mannish gusto of people and events. For example, she refers to Sir John Perrot as “that gigantic genial bastard of Henry VIII” and she caustically mentions that Bess Throckmorton, Lady Raleigh, "bad begun to be with child, over two years after she had been imprisoned for conceiving one—the longest labour ever recorded for a lady who was not an elephant.”

This book is disappointing in relation to Ralegh’s claims to be an empire-builder because, although Miss Irwin generalises about Ralegh's persistency which “drove him on to make an English empire overseas,” she does not examine his contributions to colonisation in any detail But if she does not deal very fully with Virginia and Roanoke Island she does discuss the two expeditions to Guiana at length. She tells of Ralegh’s experience with the Indians in his own words and holds that his book on “The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana” “is about the best true adventure story ever written, in the freshness of its wonder, and sense of beauty and of terror.”

If Ralegh is Miss Irwin’s hero, then James I is her villain. She goes too far in holding James responsible for the Civil War, but her denunciation of his treacherous treatment of Ralegh is fully justified. Probably out of her desire to show Ralegh in the most favourable light, she concentrates, in dealing with his trial, on the ridiculous charge that he “had a Spanish heart” when she could have spent longer on the charge that he had conspired with Lord Cobham to seat Arbella Stuart on the throne. She makes a strong case for the claim that James was anxious to proclaim Ralegh a traitor and to get rid of him, irrespective of the justice of the charges levelled against him.

This biography of a great Elizabethan who rose to power, influence and fortune only to be dragged down to dishonour, imprisonment and death by execution is frankly partisan but nonetheless worth reading. It is not surprising that it should be a Book Society choice.