Putting the Story into History

The year 1905 was not the zenith of the British Empire in territorial terms (surprisingly perhaps, that was 1947, before Indian independence), but imperial confidence was about as high then as it would ever be. No baleful auguries of the Western Front had yet been observed, no rumours of equal political rights for native peoples had reached suburban English parlours. The future would be a triumphant continuation of British supremacy, built on hard-won principles of good governance and justice. There can be few more solid expressions of that faith than the publication, in that year, of the children’s history book Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall. It is a stirring compendium of tales, beginning with Neptune raising himself from the waves and giving ‘his sceptre to the islands called Britannia, for we know: “Britannia rules the waves.”’

It proceeds via Romans, Vikings, Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts and Hanoverians to the ‘great and glorious reign’ of Queen Victoria. But it is not an uncritical chronicle of Kings and Queens. Many of them are roundly condemned as bad, and the narrative is alive with anecdotes of lesser heroes and heroines: Judge Gascoigne, for example, who sent Prince Hal to prison for contempt of court, and Jenny Geddes, who threw a stool at the Dean of St Giles in Edinburgh for reading from the new Prayer Book ordered by Charles I. And as early as Edward the Confessor, when he promised the crown of England to his cousin William of Normandy, we read that he ‘had no right to do this . . . The kings of England had really no power to act in great matters without calling together a council of the nobles and wise men. The English had always been a free people, who had a share of governing themselves. Their kings had been kings, not tyrants.’ However much one might wish to contend the truth of this statement applied to eleventh-century England, it is interesting that it was felt to be a notion suitable for a nursery in 1905. Many readers will remember, as I do, reading Our Island Story when they were children, with its stirring tales of Hengist and Horsa, William the Conqueror, the Siege of Calais, Cromwell and so on. They may also remember the wonderfully dreadful sub-Pre-Raphaelite pictures: Boadicea (looking rather like Lizzie Siddall), the Black Prince (also reminiscent of Lizzie Siddall, despite being clothed in black armour), and those girls besieged by Indian mutineers at Lucknow (decidedly Siddall-like too), calling ‘Dinna ye hear them?’ A new edition appeared in the 1920s with additional chapters covering the First World War and the League of Nations, and there was a third edition in 1953. Each was reprinted many times, but by the late 1970s received opinion had it that the book was politically equivalent to Baden- (or Enoch) Powell: beyond the pale. Copies were scarce, however; people kept them – in cupboards, perhaps, never in the drawing-room. (Or were they afraid to take them to Oxfam?) In 1988 I found a copy of the 1920s edition high on a shelf in a secondhand bookshop and furtively bought it. As a bookseller I had often heard it referred to in wistful tones, for there was a dearth of history books for children, and I suppose I thought I would sell it on. But I remembered it with such fondness that I couldn’t bear to part with it, for it seemed inconceivable that it would ever be reprinted. Now there is an anniversary edition, produced by Galore Park and the right-wing think-tank Civitas. What has happened? Is this a putsch? An attempt by diehard crazies to repaint the map pink, force us unwillingly to church, take the vote from women? Intrigued, I asked my 10-year-old daughter Flora to read it (for a consideration) and to compare notes after I had read it again myself. The first thing to say is that, despite the consideration (Fashion Pollies multiplying in her mind’s eye), Flora enjoyed it. The narrative voice is robust and energetic: people are wise or foolish, brave or cowardly; monarchs are loved or hated; and children are assumed to appreciate adventure stories (don’t we all?). In her 1905 introduction, Henrietta Marshall tells us that she hopes her book will sit on a shelf ‘beside Robinson Crusoe and A Noah’s Ark Geography’ rather than with school books: ‘When you find out how much has been left untold. . . do not be cross, but remember. . . that I was not trying to teach you, but only to tell a story’. Later, in the context of Merlin bringing over the stones for Stonehenge from Ireland, we read, ‘Most people say this is a fairytale . . . I dare say they are right, but fairy tales are very interesting.’ It is surprising to see her so unapologetic about subordinating facts to her narrative, and interesting to see why: the point is that at one time people must have believed such stories to be true. There is a hint already that the book is as much about the structure of our beliefs as it is a simple chronicle. But isn’t this just the objection? Under the guise of all those tales of romance and derring-do, isn’t the author purveying pernicious doctrines to innocent children – Empire, patriarchy, militarism and all that other redundant claptrap? I tentatively asked Flora (who goes to a thoroughly multicultural school; thirty-three first languages, they say) if she thought the book was ‘unfair’ to anyone. She pronounced that it was a bit unfair to the Danes and the Normans. What about the account of the Indian Mutiny? ‘Well, she doesn’t explain the Indian point of view very well: the Indians’, said Flora, ‘were fighting for their freedom.’ What about the Maori? ‘She doesn’t dislike the Maori in the way she dislikes Ethelred the Unready, but she doesn’t think it’s right that they are cannibals.’ Hard to argue with that, I thought, and moved on to the American question. ‘She thinks it was a shame we lost America, but she admires the Americans for standing up for themselves.’ So where are all those devilish attitudes with which I have supposedly corrupted my daughter? Turning back to my old edition, in a chapter concerning the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery, I find this: ‘In the old, rough, wild days no one cared about the sufferings of these poor, black people. They were only niggers.’ The use of the word ‘niggers’ is distracting here because it is nowadays considered offensive regardless of its context. Its removal leaves a passage that is (and always was) unequivocal in approving the abolition of slavery. More awkward are one or two matters in the Antipodes. Marshall says, ‘although they were cannibals, the Maoris were not nearly such a low kind of savage as the Australian, and a missionary called Marsden, hearing about these islands and their people, made up his mind to teach them to be Christian’. The dated, objectionable racial characterizations have been excised from the new edition but Marsden remains, although many would now dispute his virtues. It is irritating to find no note on the textual changes in the new edition, but I don’t believe there are many. They are limited to cases of historical inaccuracy, such as the location of the Stone of Scone, which was removed from Westminster to Scotland in 1996, and to instances where language has become dated by changed attitudes, in particular towards race; that is to say where Marshall’s words carry implications for modern readers that divert us from her point. But it should not be supposed that the book has been purged of value judgements. It remains full of them. They invigorate the narrative and are integral to its appeal for children (think of Harry Potter). Moreover, it is striking how different these values are from those which the book was supposed to express in the days of its disgrace. Time and again the author takes the side of those who champion the principles of no taxation without representation, no imprisonment without trial, and freedom of worship. It is no wonder that Ethelred is a baddy, because he taxed the people without their consent to pay off the Danes. Richard III is evil because he shoved the poor princes in prison and murdered them without giving them a trial. Jenny Geddes is described as striking a blow for freedom. I am told that Civitas wanted to publish Our Island Story because it gives a good account of how Britain has struggled for its institutions. The idea is that children should learn to value these institutions and not take them for granted. At a time when even habeas corpus is threatened, republication of the book seems more like an embrace of liberalism than a retreat to neo-imperialism. If Flora thinks that Marshall does not properly explain that the Indians were fighting for their freedom during the Indian Mutiny, it is partly because reading Marshall has prompted her to think that right might have been on their side. And if Marshall does not describe the savagery with which the British put down the Mutiny, perhaps that is one of the untold stories which she hopes her readers will learn not to be cross about. Every story Marshall chooses to tell has countervailing ones in the shadows, and simplifications are essential to history for children (and adults too). Questions about what simplifications are appropriate or helpful are highly politicized, but the result, until recently, is that very few engaging history books for children have been available, which is supremely unhelpful. Flora has emerged from this account of the Indian Mutiny with the knowledge that it happened, the feeling that violence was unfortunate and the belief that the Indians were in some way being abused in order for it to have occurred at all. This seems better than holding all learning hostage to knowing about the savage but complex aftermath, and the accompanying conviction that the British imperial enterprise was wicked. She can get there in due course, if she wants, and it is worth noting that the essence of the objection to Marshall’s omission is that Flora’s mind should be made up for her about events, which is precisely what Marshall does not do. A recurring point in her book is that there is more to be said on any given subject. There are always untold stories, but unless you allow events to flow as stories, no one will ever learn anything. The determination to impose contemporary value judgements on history has been extraordinarily successful in stifling children’s interest in it for a generation. It is a great educational and cultural tragedy, and the lack of decent history books for children is symptomatic of it. It has now been addressed by the publication of Rebecca Fraser’s excellent A People’s History of Britain and Robert Lacey’s two-volume Tales from British History. The success of the reissue of Our Island Story suggests a further desire to alter the trend. It has already sold 30,000 copies and sponsorship is in place to provide a copy to any UK primary school that asks for it. It is cheering too to note the success of Ernst Gombrich’s A Little History of the World. First published in Vienna in 1936, it was translated into many languages but never into English. Despite the vast later success of The Story of Art, the author felt that the English view of history was too Anglocentric to appreciate his early book. However, towards the end of his life he came to believe that there was a shift in perception and that his first book could be adapted for English children. Intriguingly, it was not published by his usual publisher Phaidon but by Yale, and it is a superb work, suitable for adults who have been robbed of a historical education as well as for children. Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Persians, Greece, Rome, India, China, Christianity, the Arab world and Islam, the Mongols, America . . . and then Europe, the Age of Chivalry, the Renaissance and the Reformation . . . it is amazing how wide-ranging Gombrich is, and effortlessly so. The narrative is directed at children – ‘I imagine you’d like to know exactly what happened to Gautama [the Buddha] as he sat under that fig tree’; ‘When I was a schoolboy, China was to us, as it were, “at the other end of the world”’ – but he is kindly without ever being patronizing. He shows what a colossal wealth of interesting ideas, events, phenomena and objects are to be found in the past. There is a sense of generosity, of a man sharing what he knows with others, telling a story, awakening interest. He pays his readers a compliment by assuming that they will follow him, and respectfully prompts them to ask questions for themselves. There has been one fascinating, vitriolic attack on the book – not for what the author says, but for what he does not say. The absence of any condemnation of Stalin, and Communism in general, has been perceived by one right-wing critic to be a culpable failure. That Gombrich’s wise and civilized book has been described as if it were a Marxist-Leninist tract will astonish anyone who reads it. Once again, an untold story is being used to stop children from being told any stories at all. But children will learn to interpret things for themselves, and they are not necessarily as stupid as we try, with all our good intentions, to make them.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 9 © John De Falbe 2006