WHITEWASH AND MUD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18996, 18 April 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHITEWASH AND MUD.

HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN. BY KOTAnE. The whirligig of time brings its revenges. If a man is lucky enough to escapo oblivion; to find, through something in his personality that posterity will not readily let die, or through some whimsy on tho part of malicious fate, a way out of the meshes of the net with which dire forgetfulness envelops all but tho odd man in tho million of the human race, he will usually have as his portion a posthumous praise or a posthumous blame that have as often as not no relation to his actual worth and work when he walked the living paths of men. This man fills the whole horizon, towers godlike, while he lives among the children of men. Then ho becomes a vague memory, with nothing left of him to excite partisanship in his favour or against him. A little later and not a whisper of all he was and all he did conies down the corridors of time. Another man moves misunderstood or maligned or neglected in his day and generation, and subsequent ages make up for contemporary neglect by an enthusiasm of over-praise. Except for tho very few who bestride the ages like a Colossus, and even they are not wholly immune from this law, most great men's reputations ebb and flow, according to the whim and caprice which we dignify with the noble title, "the spirit of the age." I suppose most of these great ones, if they could express an opinion on the subject, would assent to Oscar W r ilde's cynical comment that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. Or they might thunder forth the proud old Aberdeen challenge, "They say; what say they? let them say." Elizabeth. Some personalities that have played too big a part to be ignored still possess the power to excite passionate championship or equally passionate hostility. Queen Elizabeth was already a legend in her own day; she inspired the devotion of the most virile age in our history, and that among the men and women of noblest character and highest intellect. Tho adoration of men like Spenser and Shakespeare and Raleigh comes precious near adulation of a surprisingly servile type. True, she had been accepted as a symbol of the new England, for the first time conscious of itself, for the first time claiming for itself a chief place amoyg the nations. But making every allowance for that and for the survival of some of the ideals of medieval chivalry, the fact remains that the greatest minds of our race bowed in willing and humble devoticU before her whom they acknowledged as the supreme splendour "and glory of their race and of their time. No subsequent age has placed her on any such pinnule. She has many champions; Ixt her personality reaches through tbc years to stir some historians to an incredible frenzy of abuse and vituperation. You have only to read sturdy Cobbett to see how her very name can irritate a modern man of strong prejudices and convictions. Everv age has its prepossessions, its peculiar standards of judgment. Every individual historian has his own point of view, which embodies his sincerest convictions, his acquired and ' inherited prejudices. The facts upon which judgment is given are usually undisputed; there is not likely to be "adduced any. fresh fact that is' really vital. But individual critics put their own interpretation on what has all along been fully known, or assign new motives; and the spirit of the age judges according to the impulses that are dominant at the time. The Swing of the Pendulum. So tho pendulum swings back and forward. A Cromwell can be for nearly a couple of centuries the arch-hypocrite and scoundrel, with scarce a voice raised against the storm of vituperation. A Carlyle feels the greatness' of the man, deep calling unto deep across the years. A new age with new ideals has been born from the throes of the French Revolution, and Cromwell becomes tho "hero of the nineteenth century." The new world slowly coming to birth out of the maelstrom of the Great War may find as little to admire in Cromwell as the 18th century found; we have not lived the 20th century long enough to determine yet what are its special prepossessions, what will be its standards of judgment. So far as one can come to any decision in the matter, it seems that we have entered a period of strong partisanship. There have been many historical characters upon which history has apparently passed a final verdict, who have been served up for the consumption of the present generation garnished into shapes rich and strange. There was a perfect mania a few years back, and it shows few signs of fading away, for decking out notorious villains of tho past in robes of spotless purity. In the passion for novelty, for the bizarre and unexpected, that marks our volcanic times, it seems that the most hopeless sinner, as we had esteemed him, only needs to be regarded from the right angle to blossom suddenly forth as a saint and martyr. "Bless thee. Bottom ! Bless thee! Thou art translated," might, have been on the title pages of dozens of historical monographs written during the last few years. If this is due to a new-found passion for justice, it is all to the good. But one has one's doubts. A barrister presumably finds one of his highest satisfactions in makinu out a good case for a hopeless client. But the judge is there to decide between rival advocates. Tho advocate must have his place in historical research, but the true historian must always bo the judge upon the bench. Anyway, there has never been an age more keen on whitewashing unsavoury figures of the past. Irreverence. But, on the other hand, as vou might expect, there have been stirred into vigorous life a group of able historians who seek novelty by attacking the legendary figures of national saints and heroes and showing them to be only miserable sinners after all. Anvone who has read Lytton Strachey's brilliant studies of great Victorians will remember the shock of surprise and horror that came to him as under the artist's hands there grew pitilessly and relentlessly the lineaments of a strange and unlovely Gordon, a fierce, man-killing Florence" Nightingale. A Wordsworth, who had stood in the judgment of a century austere and remote from the ordinary frailties of man, is suddenly revealed as an impetuous lover over-riding convention and custom in the vehemence of his youthful ardour. It seemed as if the Alps had suddenly flamed forth volcanic fires. And Anatole France is scarce laid in his grave before his secretary comes to light with a picture of tho master that tears away all the glamour with which the imagination of our time had invested him. It is a queer ruin that is .'eft when the secretary has done with him. The aloof seeker after truth grimaces from the pages a colossal poseur, vain, insincere, pompous. The spirit of irreverence, with its malicious joy in pouring ridicule on the holy, in spattering with mud the memory of the great, may have at its root a genuine enthusiasm for the truth at all cost's. But I take leave-to doubt it. These are but symptoms of a grievous malady of our times', and there can be little hope for our national life till reverence and the sense of wonder and the delight in simple goodness are enthroned again in the hearts of men.