Nelson & His World

Just spent some of the holiday wallowing (again) in the lush prose of my hero Arthur Bryant. I didn't pay much attention to history when I was at school, but I think I might have if I had known about Arthur. He has a unique way of presenting history - not always objective perhaps, but it still reads like a novel. Since he was writing about Napoleon in 1944 his parallels with Hitler are fascinating. I could ramble on for ages but I wonder is there are Bryant lovers or haters out there, and why. I searched this board for mentions of him but there were none, so I thought I would bring him up.

Happy new year, and now back to my wallowing.

Chas:

having heard only vaguely of Bryant, I picked up, for a fiver, 3 nice hardback volumes of his writing on the period 1793-1822 in a bookshop in Hay on Wye and, like you, admired his wonderful narrative gift.

I Googled him in curiosity and was surprised to see the degree of animosity he arouses amongst historians. Criticism of popularisers by academics is no new thing, and Bryant is accused of plagiarism, lack of scholarly credentials etc. Not being an historian, it's difficult for me to know how valid these criticisms are, and how much they derive from envy at his success. There's no doubt he was a gifted writer.But there is also a pervading moral outrage amongst his critics about his political stance in the 1930s - he was very sympathetic to Hitler and Nazi Germany, and, it is suggested, he continued to be so even after war was declared, and used his 'patriotic' wartime writing as a smokescreen for his Nazi beliefs. Andrew Roberts, quite a right-wing historian himself, is particularly critical of him, as was J H Plumb.

If he's a poor historian - and I'm not qualified to judge that - then perhaps one should be wary of his opinions and judgements and read more widely to get a better perspective on his work. But if he was a Nazi? What then? Should that influence your opinion of what he wrote? Well, I haven't detected any lying Nazi propaganda in his writing so far, so maybe his personal political viewpoint, however repugnant, shouldn't stop you reading him if it doesn't result in a malevolent misrepresentation of historical fact. Interestingly, there are a good number of Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and E.P Thompson, who don't arouse the same obloquy - but they are academics and presumably, only 'theoretical' Marxists, untainted by Stalinist excesses! But it is a difficult one, this. I'd be interested in others' opinions.

How interesting. He is certainly patriotic in the extreme but also an anglophile. I suppose I could see him as a member of the Truly British party. Judging by his writing he also seems to have a very poor opinion of foreigners. I find it hard to see him as a Hitler-fan for two reasons.

1. The beginning of The Age of Victory compares Napoleon with Hitler and shows strongly to me his hatred of dictators and fanatics. So perhaps by 1944 his admiration for Hitler had waned somewhat.

2. He parallels the history of the Napoleonic wars and WWII and describes their similarities and their inevitable outcome. With this historical knowledge it is hard to see that he would feel it sensible to support Hitler.

I too picked up these volumes for a song but they are wartime 'utility' editions, printed on newsprint. The way he describes historical events seems no worse than much of what I have read, and more readable than most. So I will continue to wallow!

Having googled as you did, I got a better picture. He does appear to have had right wing sympathies, and even to have been an early admirer of Hitler, but then many Brits at the time, including members of the Royal Family and much of the British nobility, were too. Although he was slated for his political views after his personal papers were publicised he seems to have espoused the labour cause in his later years. He also appears to have had the approval of some prominent historians such as Trevelyan, as well as being Harold Wilson's favourite historian! Over all, my impression is favourable, and he certainly does it for me. As someone mentioned, he was one of the first to bring social history to mere history, which is why I find his work so entertaining I expect. As I was looking for a readable history that I could draw on to provide background for the biography I am writing he seems perfect for that.

First, apologies for an apparently stuffy historian's rant about Google, but bear with me, it gets positive pretty quickly.

Most of what we find from that source is self-selective, and often biased in favour of today's PC perspective, particularly what is in fashion at 2.30 in the morning on a wet Tuesday in November. Which is why Wikipedia should not be regarded as a reliable source of information for anyone really interested in history. Read good historians - in tatty second-hand editions by all means. And don't be put off by changing fashion and political correctness. Read to expand your mind, question everything and have fun!

Secondly, Arthur Bryant is of a specific school of historians who believed in telling a story, interesting an audience and bringing historical characters to life. I was brought up on his works by my father - a professional soldier and an amateur historian of previously classical education - and an enlightened history master at school. I still read Bryant's books with great pleasure and to be quite frank have never thought about his own political views - but then, I could be stupid or a closet Fascist.

As an historian myself (and actually of Whiggish bent if of Old Tory upbringing), the frustrating thing about Bryant is his lack of references and occasional bald statements based on supposition, but then that is just because he sometimes offers ideas about an historical person or event which I would like to follow up and verify for myself. I should chill out - and do my own research!

Of course, very few historians of his generation, or before and even afterwards, ever did cite their sources. The pendulum has now swung too far the other way, and for sheer pleasure I would turn to Bryant rather than many another later, list-making, footnote-crazed professional.

He makes mistakes of course - all of us do - but more often pins down elemental truth. His multi-volume biography of Samuel Pepys is old-fashioned, frustratingly devoid of source material and occasionally just plain wrong, but still amongst the very best of the genre and a damned good read.

If we are to entice young people to study the wonderful, difficult, horrible, frightening and uplifting history we all share, we must engage their imaginations, as well as encourage them to question and to search for truth. Historians like Bryant, and Churchill too, can still do that, and with a quality of literary writing which makes many of today's fashionable best-sellers appear weak-minded and dull.

Keep on with Bryant, Chas - a great investment and all the better for being a new discovery for you.

Justin

Justin:

Many thanks for that passionate and eloquent defence of Bryant. I picked up the books only recently. It was Christmas and the demands of the Minst Pye Foundry that caused the halt, not what I’d read about Bryant on Google, though the comments there made me think, not simply about Bryant’s political sympathies, but about the debate, or rather enmity, between academics who seem to think it is a virtue to speak to, and in some cases be understood by, only their own restricted audience, and academics who gain fame (and money) by appealing to the general reader. There is the imputation, tacit or overt, that to appeal to a wider audience one must necessarily have sold out and abandoned academic rigour, when the truth is usually that the ‘populariser’ can actually write polished, vigorous, engaging English far removed from the arid pedantry of the Ph.D. thesis. I think my one criticism of Roger Knight’s monumentally scholarly biography of Nelson is that the writing, though factually scrupulous, is really rather dull: a valuable work of reference, a careful chronicle of a life, but for me, somehow, bloodless, lacking passion.

And what about the books that are referenced and footnoted with fanatical exactness but nevertheless reach dishonest conclusions and conceal personal bias through suppression of evidence (Terry Coleman’s biography of Nelson) or through misinterpretation of it, possibly unwitting (Winifred Gerin, in her biography of Horatia.) There’s Harris Nicolas, too, who not only deliberately suppressed material about Nelson's true relationship to Horatia, but made assertions about it that he knew to be untrue. What are we to make of a work of magnificent scholarship insofar as its scrupulous pursuance and recording of detail is concerned, but which, nevertheless, contains wilful suppressions and distortions of historical evidence?

So: to write an enthralling narrative is not necessarily to betray academic rigour and to footnote yourself and your reader to the point of blindness is not necessarily to reach the truth.

P.S. Amusing footnote (!) re: Google

I read an apparently authoritative report in the Times, no less, some time ago that the on line Encyclopedia Britannica had more factual errors than Google. I believed this because it was in THE TIMES.

Then I came across an article in The New Scientist that dismissed this report and gave blindingly incomprehensible (to me) statistical evidence to show that this 'authoritative' report was untrue.

I now believe this because it was in The New Scientist, and my husband, a statistician, agreed with it. Should I believe either of them?

I'm grateful to Justin for his input on this subject. I think the message is that it is OK to read and enjoy Bryant!

On the subject of sources, my utility editions do have footnotes, and a short list of abbreviations or source books at the end, but no detailed bibliography, the reason given being that is was to save paper. I wonder if there are later editions that do have more detailed sources.

I agree absolutely that history should be readable and entertaining for all but the most demanding scholar, who will presumably be consulting the primary material anyway, because history is still about life and human failings.

I was amused by Bryant's references to Emma Hamilton. He seems to view her as some sort of vacuum cleaner, sucking in Nelson whenever he came within range. Can we add 'misogynist' to Bryant's virtues as well as political incorrectness?

Re Emma H and Bryant's possible misogynism, I read it as an historian taking a personal view based on his own taste and morals. Not altogether the right objective view, but damning by ignoring unpleasantries is the writer's preorogative.

We do, of course, look at the work of earlier historians through a prism of hindsight. Misogynism, like racism, is reprehensible to us, perhaps even incomprehensible, but I don't think we should burn earlier writers' books for such un-PC behaviour, not even if it had then the obvious goal of division, such as the anti-Jewish propaganda of the mid-1930s in Germany (and Britain, France, USA ...).

We cannot revise the facts of history, and should not revise earlier historians. Good historians like Bryant need to be read objectively.

In their lifetimes Emma and Nelson suffered a significant degree of ostracism from a somewhat hypocritical society, notably the Court which was itself rife with adulterous intrique but decided to "cut" Nelson at levees on his return from Naples.

He soon became again their darling (especially of course, at the end of the Peace of Amiens when invasion seemed all too possible and he appeared to be the only hope), but others of a more fastidious nature still managed quite elegant slights, such as the then Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim in 1802. His true friends could put up with Emma even if disapproving of his conduct. See Colin White's very good recent articles on Frances Nesbit-Nelson for an exposiiton - indeed, a realisation - of that approach.

Bryant seems to have been of the old school - I join ranks with him - who thought / think that N's treatment of his wife was disgraceful, and who consider Emma to be, as my grandmama would say, "no better than she ought to be". Others of course, have recently adopted Emma as some kind of laudable standard-bearer, which I don't quite get, but I too am of the opinion that the country treated her (and by extension, Horatia) very shabbily after N's death.

Bryant was writing for a wide audience entirely sheltered from modern celeb multi-media culture. His readership was expected to include children of school age (sigh, "educational experts" do not expect these days that young people can read and enjoy serious history - the fault, Horatio, lies with themselves, as Shakespeare might very well have put it), so Bryant would have been circumspect in his treatment of N's sexual peccadiloes. Incidentally, N wrote a very steamy letter to Frances N on his departure for the Mediterranean in 1797 which almost never gets a mention even these days.

As for Bryant's referencing, I had forgotten that several of his books in fact set a new standard in that respect. My most recent reading of his (for current research and therefore more sensitive to any deficiencies in that area) has been his multi-volume Pepys, in several disparate editions including 1 first edition (oh! calloo calay!), 1 post-war utility reprint, and 1 1980s paperback.

The first edition (Years of Peril), is sparsely footnoted but has a wonderful Bibliographical Notes (for which read "end-notes" or "references in the text") section; the 1950s thin reprint (The Saviour of the Navy, which I also have in other editions somewhere in my library (must weed out the wood-pulp to see the mighty oaks), has almost no footnotes and no end references, like most of the books I was brought up with; but the p-back The Man in the Making - reprinted from Bryant's 1967 revised edition - has again the detailed bibliographical notes.

So it seems I was deprived during my early history education (1950s and early 1960s) of Bryant's then newish-fangled source citations, as a direct result of Hitler's machinations in central Europe in the 1930s. Ah, the connections of history!

Moderator, forgive me if this appears to be a rant against modern social mores - I'm just a grumpy old man, as my daughters often remind me!

Justin
girding his loins to read and transcribe 21 unpublished letters from Edward Gayner to Nelson at the BL in the morning, thanks to Colin White's scholarly generosity

Interesting stuff, Justin! Keep ranting!

I'm going a little off-topic here, but I too am intrigued by the varied representations of Emma Hamilton in the dozen or more biographies of her that I have on my shelves, ranging from the very earliest hatchet-job by Watkins to Kate Williams' recent 'Emma the Megababe', and it is fascinating to observe how differently she has been viewed by her biographers over the last 200 years, and how, as you say, she is seen by them in the light of social attitudes current at the time.

I have actually scribbled in my notebook a few observations on this very point. I might open another thread if I can gather courage. I am, as you will realise, an enthusiast rather than a scholar or trained historian, so I hope you - and others - will be merciful and regard what I write as reflective musing rather than a properly structured argument.

I could, and probably will, make a defence of Emma. Flawed, yes, but a much-maligned woman, in my opinion, with much to commend her. Prenez-garde, monsieur!

On the subject of Google as a source of information, the problem is of course that anyone can publish anything on the Internet, without it being subjected to expert peer review, or going through any sort of publisher selection process. Because material is constantly copied and regurgitated, it can also start to give the illusion of being authoritative just because it is so often repeated. Having said that, I am also constantly amazed at the rubbish you find in books. Google is also highly selective in the links it gives you, using its own weird and wonderful algorithms for deciding what it thinks is more ‘authoritative’, and what is more popular. It is also open to manipulation by content publishers through ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, although fortunately that is less of an issue for non-commercial subject matter.

I think Wikipedia is often pretty good on technical and scientific subjects, but can be very bad on biographical detail, which can be hard to check and can go uncorrected for years, particularly for less well known people. On historical subjects and people, much Wikipedia content comes from public domain material that is out of copyright such as the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and thus misses out on any reappraisal of the subject during the last hundred years! But it is a quick starting place to get information for double-checking elsewhere or for pointers to other sources.

But as has been said in this thread, everything you read in books has been selected by the author, whether consciously or unconsciously. If it is consciously done, in order to produce an engaging narrative, that is perfectly legitimate otherwise most biographies would be pretty unreadable. But you always have to bear in mind that you are reading a selective portrayal. The question is how far the selectivity should go. Sometimes when you go back to original sources you find, for example, that a quoted extract from a letter almost reverses its meaning, second-hand and later recollections are presented as first-hand contemporary accounts, and swathes of other material is omitted because it doesn’t quite fit the intended portrayal. Short of doing the research yourself, I find the best (but time consuming) answer is to read a number of different studies of the same subject and pick the one that best matches my own prejudices! I wish I could claim I was more open-minded.

Your comments on the subjectivity and selectivity of biographers is one that resonates very much with my own experience of reading a number of biographies of Emma Hamilton. I had made a few observations in my notebook on this very subject which I've posted on a new thread: The many faces of Emma Hamilton.

Hi - I'm new to this forum and I know this is an old topic, so sorry in advance!

I can't find this steamy letter - I have Naish's Nelson's letters to his Wife. Where else can this letter be found? I find the whole story of Frances very sad and I have a great deal of sympathy with her.

Thanks

Caitlin Spokes

Welcome to the forum, Caitlin!

I too have spent some time looking for this 'steamy letter' in several reference books, biographies etc. to no avail. All Nelson's letters of this time have the affectionate tone of a comfortably married man: 'Rest assured of my perfect love, affection and esteem....'

Mira - if you are looking in, maybe you can help us out?

Thinking more about the gaps in our knowledge about the Fanny-Nelson relationship, I have always been intrigued by the comment in one of his letters as he returned to sea after the loss of his arm. (These comments are from a scribbled note in my notebook and I carelessly forgot the reference. It's late, but I'll look it out tomorrow.)

After he lost his arm, Nelson spoke of Fanny to Lady Spencer in highly appreciative terms 'she is an angel...' etc. However, once he was setting out to return to sea, there were some acerbic letters from HN to Fanny about deficiencies in his kit etc. but then he writes to her:

'I had written to you yesterday before I received your kind and affectionate letter. Indeed I have always felt your sincere attachment and at no one period could I feel it more strongly than I do at this moment and I hope as some years are past, time enough to know our dispositions, we may flatter ourselves it will last'.

Now - what had he written 'yesterday'? An angry letter in response to one of hers which might have been less than pleasant? And why had she then speedily sent 'a kind and affectionate letter'? To apologise and assure him of her affection? His response: 'Indeed I have always felt your sincere attachment...' has the ring of a man reassuring someone who has expressed the fear that she has given him cause to doubt it.

But that conclusion - 'some years are past etc....and that final 'we may flatter ourselves it will last' - does the 'it' refer to Fanny's affection or to their marriage? Nelson's grammar and his use of pronouns could be shaky on occasions. And note that 18th century use of the word 'flatter' which the OED defines as 'to inspire with hope, usually on insufficient grounds'.

Am I being too fanciful to infer from this that, even before his involvement with Emma, they had gone through far greater upheavals than previously realised; that they might even have considered their marriage stretched to breaking point; that they had confronted the issues of incompatibilities in their respective temperaments ('time enough to know our dispositions' - note that he doesn't apportion blame) but had agreed that, with a bit of effort, they could rub along and hope, perhaps against the odds, that they could make the best of it?

Anna,

I am not so sure that Nelson ever did actually 'love' Fanny in the true sense of the word, even when they were married in Nevis, but managed to persuade himself that he was 'in love' with her. For all his protestations of 'love', these seemed to be more often than not tempered by his 'esteem', his 'regard' and other such terms, hardly real love.

In 1787 he was the senior officer on the Leeward Islands station, had already had a couple of romantic attachments (Mary Simpson and Mrs Moutray) both of whom were unattainable, was also aware that his fellow officers around him were getting married and thus thought that it was high time that he was as well. Being largely confined to the island society, which must have been somewhat limiting, he saw it as the 'thing to do'. He was also then twenty nine and probably saw himself as getting left behind, so of course in this state of mind, he made almost a beeline for the most eligable woman there, Fanny. (I wonder if also his head was not a little turned by the fact that Prince William Henry was also present, and we know how he behaved around royalty, so getting him to give the bride away would, literally, have been the icing on the cake. Or am I reading too much into it?)

I suspect that all of the above were added to by later difficulties, such as the five years on the beach in Norfolk (I would imagine that in such close confinement at the rectory, Fanny and Nelson were on each others nerves much of the time), Nelson's indiscretions with Emma and the continuing problems with Josiah. As time went on feelings, which had been out of sight, rose to the surface even though it seems as though they both made efforts in public (hence Nelson's speaking to Lady Spencer about Fanny in glowing terms, but probably thinking something else entirely). It should also be borne in mind here that Lady Spencer was also the wife of the First Lord of the Admiralty, so he would have thought it wise to paint a good picture of their relationship in that regard.

All of this doesn't seem to answer the question as to whether they were actually compatible, and I suspect that they weren't. They were of two different temperaments, on the one hand Fanny trying to do her best to make Nelson love her (but of course doing the wrong things in the process) and Nelson carrying on with Emma and expecting Fanny to accept it. I would imagine Nelson thought Fanny 'clingy' (for want of a better expression) almost motherly, which he didn't want – especially as an Admiral! As if her failures as a packer of his linen and smalls were not enough her later thought, to descend on his flagship to look after him, would certainly not have been welcome. (I don't know it it is a women thing, but I seem to remember that Emma attempted to do the same - and she received short shrift too! it would very likely have become the talk of the fleet in no short order!

The 'it' Nelson referred to was probably their marriage, but I am not so sure in his heart of hearts that he believed they could remain together as husband and wife - after all, he had found another wife 'in the eyes of heaven' and with whom I think he was 'in love'. So it would seem that Nelson wanted to make the break.

Indeed, welcome to the Forum, Caitlin!