Gently-told History

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 4

Gently-told History

The Song in the Streets. By Cornelia Spencer. Dennis Dobson. 164 pp. and Index.

Tabloid history, intended for adolescent reading, must necessarily present a rather over-simplified picture of the period under review. Entering into the spirit of this technique the author has written up one of the bloodiest episodes in Europe’s long history of conflict, as a more or less straight fight between •’goodies” and “baddies”—the former being a patriotic proletariat ranged against the latter—a corrupt regime in which monarchy, aristocracy and Church are alike without any virtue. The American philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, resident in France a few years before the Revolution had been much concerned with the sufferings of the common people, and his protestations about the conditions in which they lived influenced, in the author’s opinion, the leading figures in French revolutionary circles to model the forthcoming struggle on the lines of the one which had set up American democracy. In fact, as the revolutionary tide mounted after the storming of the Bastille in 1789 the illiterate mob is credited with recognising the significant origin of their new freedom and “The cry, ‘just like the Americans’ went from lip to lip.” Anyone conversant with the French peasantry of our own day would realise that this attribute to the political acumen of their forbears is a. slight over-statement I

The Terror, with its daily tool of falling heads — “goodies” as well as “baddies” —seems to discomfort the author a trifle, though in her eyes the great bourgeois patriots responsible for it were only imbued by their tender love and concern for the rights of “The People.” So too were the marchers from Marseilles who have been represented in less idealistic chronicles of the times as the sweepings of the docks and gutters of that city. “600 patriots” all tanned and strong marched in from Marseilles singing the song that was to become immortal ... to help the Parisians to overthrow the monarchy.” Louis XVI, the only one of his tyrannous dynasty to have tried to affect a few reforms, is represented as a heedless playboy, who seemed to be always out hunting when some decision had to be made. The author has an uncanny insight into the royal mind, and gives several instances of his thoughts at given moments. She is too kind to regard Marie Antoinette as downright wicked, but her estimate of the Queen's character matches her perspicacity in regard to the King’s. In such a small compass the phases of the Revolution are necessarily telescoped into a few pages, and Napoleon’s part in restoring France to something like order is also brought in for good measure. The author’s chronological account of events is correct, and could form a basis of dreading for the young. Her | interpretation of them, howI ever, remains her own.