Slightly Foxed No 9 Spring 2006

Johnny de Falbe, Hazel Wood & Gail Pirkis

Editions

Review

This issue contains an article by Johnny about the reissue in 2005 of Our Island Story hbk £19.99, and Gombrich's book A Little History Of The World hbk £14.99. Here is the text:

Many readers will remember, as I do, reading Our Island Story when they were children.  Those stirring tales about Hengist and Horsa, William the Conqueror, the Siege of Calais, Cromwell and so forth; and the wonderful, dreadful sub-Pre-Raphaelite pictures: Boadicea (looking rather like Lizzie Siddall), the Black Prince (also reminiscent of Lizzie Siddall, despite being clothed in what we are told is black armour although it looks more like black rubber), and those girls at Lucknow (decidedly Siddall-like too) calling ‘Dinna ye hear them?’…

The book was first published in 1905.  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 one in 1953.  Each one was reprinted many times, but by the late 1970s received opinion was 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, which I furtively bought.  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.  Not knowing what had become of my childhood copy, I wished to be sure of possessing it so that if I had children…  It was 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 paint the map pink, force us unwillingly into church, take the vote from women and round up the hoodlums behind barbed wire?  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 about the experiment is that Flora enjoyed it.  Despite the consideration (Fashion Pollies multiplying in her mind’s eye), I am certain that she found the tremendous, old-fashioned narrative entertaining.  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 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.’  And of the story about the English pilgrim Gilbert and his Muslim wife, Rohesia, who were Thomas à Beckett’s parents, Marshall says again, ‘some people say that this… is only a fairy tale.  Perhaps it is.’  It is surprising to see her so unapologetic about subordinating facts to her narrative, and interesting to see why: the point is ‘certainly at one time people must have believed it to be true.’  There is a hint already that the book is as much about the structure of our beliefs as 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 of racism to the innocent children?  Empire, patriarchy, militarism and all that other redundant claptrap?  (Oh! our Brave New World!)  I tentatively asked Flora (who goes to a thoroughly multicultural school; 33 first languages, they say), if she thought the book was in any way ‘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 does not 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 that 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, I wondered, 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 entitled ‘Story Of Two Peaceful Victories’, I find ‘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 regarded as 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 characterisations have been excised from the new edition but Marsden remains, although many would nowadays dispute his virtues.  It may be telling that the name of the first Governor of Australia was spelt wrong by Marshall (‘Philip’ for Phillip): prejudice is worst where ignorance is deepest.  For different reasons it is perhaps telling that the original error has not been corrected.

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 (pace Phillip) 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 towards the subject, 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 make the Danes go away.  Richard III is evil because he shoved the poor princes in prison and murdered them without giving them a trial.  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, 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, it looks more like an embrace of liberalism rather than a retreat to neo-imperialism to say that this is a good thing.  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 it has occurred to her precisely from reading Marshall 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.  There are always untold stories, but unless you allow stories to flow, no one will ever learn anything.

The determination to impose contemporary value judgements on history has been extraordinarily successful in stifling historical awareness 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 was addressed by the publication of Rebecca Fraser’s excellent A People’s History Of Britain and Robert Lacey’s two volumes of Tales From British History.  The success of the reissue of Our Island Story suggests a substantial 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 the 1930s, 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 publishers (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.

There has been one fascinating, vitriolic attack on the book.  Not for what the author said, but for what he did not say.  The absence of any condemnation of Stalin, and communism in general, was perceived by the right-wing critic to be a culpable failure.  Gombrich’s wise and civilised book was described as if it were a Marxist-Leninist tract, which 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. - review by Johnny de Falbe