A Doctor looks at Oliver Cromwell

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12507, 24 July 1926, Page 12

A Doctor looks at Oliver Cromwell

Until recently there has been a tendency in standard biographies and historical works to single out and overemphasise the wonderful achievements of great men, while intimate personal details, gossipy items, and tit-bits of scandal, if any, were disappointingly meagre, or so toned down and retouched as to be almost valueless.

Biographical portraits, to be convincing, should include accounts of shortcomings, kinks of character, and sundry human weaknesses. The truth of this statement is illustrated in the case of Oliver Cromwell. We are well acquainted with him as an austere Puritan, as a consummate cavalry leader, as a masterly tactician, as a ruthless avenger, as an invincible sovereign, and as one of the most enlightened statesmen of all time. Put what do we know of him as a man? Practically nothing. Such scraps of information as we possesses are mostly colled from violently partisan sources—the lives, lampoons, and divergent traditions. Naturally, an Irishman’s opinion on the Drogheda massacre and the “curse of Crummel” generally, will differ diametrically from an Englishman’s on the hero of Marston Moor and Naseb.v.

As far as one can gather, Oliver’s youth was given over to coarse, rowdy, dissolute ways—sowing wild oats, and being tested in. the world’s refining fire. He had a blazing temper, not by any means sweetened by periodic attacks of gout, high blood pressure, and malaria. Moreover, definite neuropathic symptoms marked his conduct throughout life, as they did his whole family. As a child, he was subject to nightly visions and prophetic: dreams, and when on one occasion he recounted how a spirit appeared to him, and told him he would be the greatest man in the kingdom, his painfully pious father caned him unmercifully. “From infancy to childhood ho was of a cross and peevish disposition,** wrote one of his many critics, who also claimed that while a Cambridge undergraduate he indulged in “roystering, extravagance and vice.” According to the first really reliable records, although always given to rough jests, we_find him in. early manhood with a spirit of intense religious earnestness. with a stern father, a zealous Puritan schoolmaster, a Puritan college with a Puritan head, with his father’s premature death, his veneration for his devout mother, his early responsibilities and marriage, and Bible language, it is hardly likely that the “sinful” stage lasted long. Probably he was “converted,” for at the age .of 39 he wrote, “You know what my manner of life hath been. . Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, arid hated light- I was a chief, the cfctel of sinners.’ : ■ ■

Physically, he was a splendid animal, with 'perfectly-balanced glands: A big, burly, hulking fellow, with the-muscles of an ox, suggesting Kipling’s“‘mountainous mammoth,uncouth and. rugeed—the brawn of a football forward and the* brain ef a genius. He was just;under six feet in height, with powerful frame, strong limbs, and well-knit, though somewhat heavy, figure. Large,, square head, and massive face hard, weatherbeaten and red.

Thick and prominent, “raw-beef” nose; gnarled brows, with the thtozis wart on the right side; eyes steely-blue, keen and penetrating; square jaw, firmly-drawn, fleshy lips, and scanty tufts of hair on lip and chin. He was essentially a man’s man, almost overpowering in personality and strength; a dominating temperament, breathing energy, resoluteness, passion, pity, and sorrow. He was utterly careless about his clothes, wearing a plain, almost untidy suit, cut by a provincial tailor, uppearance being too trivial a tiling to bother about. Hampden, on his death-bed, muttered, “Save my bleeding country,” Cromwell did. With all his inults—the defects of his qualities—he lived and died in tiie service of England. The absolute grandeur, •sincerity, and single-mindedness of the man warrant universal admiration. Foreign nations have constantly acclaimed his greatness, while we prefer to worship “the unknown god,” like the little fat bluff from Corsica, who demolished, but failed to build. It is all very strange and queer. Weakened by overwork, worry, and fevers, Oliver Cromwell died of tertian malaria, at the age of 59, on September, 3rd, the fateful clay of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. His epitaph, “The greatest ruler England ever had.’» —“Macquarie Street,” in the “Daily Telegraph.”