Sidelights of History

J.H. PLUMB CAME to Harvard in the Fall of to give a lecture on 18th century Britain. He lacked the exotic superciliousness conventionally ascribed to Cambridge dons; he appeared to be a short, erudite, well-dressed man, and he entertained his audience in a subdued way. Certainly his lecture was more interesting than most given within the History Department.

The first essay in his most recent book, In the Light of History, consisted basically of what he said a year ago. In both he discussed the development of an intellectual apparatus paralleling the developing bourgeoisie that littered the 18th century English countryside. Plumb is currently the foremost historian of the period, and consequently his essays carry a good bit of authority. But it is an authority conveyed in a very light tone. And as the world suffers from no lack of authoritarians, the addition of any easy-mannered tone to its histories has to be counted as an extra asset.

PLUMB WRITES ABOUT everything from Detroit today to insane asylums for the last half millenium, and in case anyone objects that the two really are not so different, he throws in reflections on Samuel Pepys's diaries, Victorian social habits, and the tempo of life in Edwardian England.

His choice of topics does as much as his prose style to contribute to the tone of the collection. Funeral customs, diplomatic protocol, astrology as a historical phenomenon, and the treatment of children are all bizarre little sidepaths that serious scholars rarely explore, yet their unusualness makes it easy to sustain interest in them for a few pages. His thumbnail sketches of those sorts of topics illustrate an implicit thesis about the way things were in Victorian England, or wherever. These essays don't prove his thesis, but they flesh it out, and they are, as a group, a remarkably pleasant way of presenting supporting evidence. Far pleasanter for example, than the charts and tables historical demographers are forced to rely on while they trace the history of the nuclear family, or whatever their subject may be.

A LARGE PART OF Plumb's advantage comes from the nature of the history he studies. A liberal, an intellectual historian, a biographer of great men, Plumb's interests lend themselves to a more stylish treatment than do the concerns of some Marxist or mathematically inclined historians. Of course, plenty of men with Plumb's interests fail as literary stylists, and it is to Plumb's eternal credit that he writes as well as he does. The liberal essayist is a dying breed, and the essay itself seems to be a declining form, not replaced, certainly, by the new journalism, but perhaps superceded by whatever it is that Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe write. It is a little difficult to imagine J.H. Plumb writing the novel as history or history as the novel.

The limits on Plumb's approach are obvious, though, from this collection of essays written over a span of almost ten years. He makes an effort to place the hippies in context, and it is a very restrained and civilized approach--placing them in historical perspective, giving them roots understandable to outsiders and making them less frightening for being so understandable. But only six years afterwards even his concern with the movement seems dated, and datedness is a particularly unfortunate failing in an essay that puts its subject in a historical context spanning six centuries.

IN THE WEAKEST essay in his book, Plumb comments on Detroit and modern American cities. It is evidently a subject he is remarkably ignorant of, and his points--though they may be perceptive--are generally tangential to the main problems which face American urban culture.

It is an odd suggestion that the Ford family build a Medici-like palace in downtown Detroit, though the observation prompting it--that one source of urban problems is that the American rich are a national upper class rather than a group of local coteries--is an astute one.

But Plumb is on much more familiar ground most of the time, and the diversity of topics he can discuss knowledgably is astounding. The essay on the British response to the American Revolution provides an unusual viewpoint on an often-studied subject. Plumb also writes with authority on clothes, riots and other historical things common to all times but taking a different coloration in each.

PLUMB REMAINS ON familiar grounds not only in the sense that he knows his subjects well, but also in the sense that they are topics sheltered by an ideological framework already well-explored by scholars like him. He stands before a divide, and seems aware of that. When he writes of trends in modern society, or outbursts of energy in modern times, he recognizes that they represent a breakdown of something and that the principle reason that such trends and outbursts have not produced a radically different order yet is that they posses no underlying ideology. The absence of this kind of ideology is one of the things that he muses on occassionally.

Then he seems like one of the final mature specimens of a soon to start decaying profession. With or without a new ideology it is soon going to be impossible to do Plumb's sort of scholarship. Historians may repeat his efforts in increasingly pallid imitations, or they may strike off in a new direction under the cover of a revitalized ideology, but they will hardly reproduce Plumb's efforts. Liberal individualism has lost its cutting edge as an intellectual doctrine.

Even if a collection of essays is only as strong as its weakest part, Plumb's work is still very good. He brings to his writing a style and authority that makes him more than palatable. Historical writing has generally ceased to provide pleasurable reading since analysis and interpretation replaced narrative and biography, but Plumb's work is nothing if it is not enjoyable.

The first essay in his most recent book, In the Light of History, consisted basically of what he said a year ago. In both he discussed the development of an intellectual apparatus paralleling the developing bourgeoisie that littered the 18th century English countryside. Plumb is currently the foremost historian of the period, and consequently his essays carry a good bit of authority. But it is an authority conveyed in a very light tone. And as the world suffers from no lack of authoritarians, the addition of any easy-mannered tone to its histories has to be counted as an extra asset.

PLUMB WRITES ABOUT everything from Detroit today to insane asylums for the last half millenium, and in case anyone objects that the two really are not so different, he throws in reflections on Samuel Pepys's diaries, Victorian social habits, and the tempo of life in Edwardian England.

His choice of topics does as much as his prose style to contribute to the tone of the collection. Funeral customs, diplomatic protocol, astrology as a historical phenomenon, and the treatment of children are all bizarre little sidepaths that serious scholars rarely explore, yet their unusualness makes it easy to sustain interest in them for a few pages. His thumbnail sketches of those sorts of topics illustrate an implicit thesis about the way things were in Victorian England, or wherever. These essays don't prove his thesis, but they flesh it out, and they are, as a group, a remarkably pleasant way of presenting supporting evidence. Far pleasanter for example, than the charts and tables historical demographers are forced to rely on while they trace the history of the nuclear family, or whatever their subject may be.

A LARGE PART OF Plumb's advantage comes from the nature of the history he studies. A liberal, an intellectual historian, a biographer of great men, Plumb's interests lend themselves to a more stylish treatment than do the concerns of some Marxist or mathematically inclined historians. Of course, plenty of men with Plumb's interests fail as literary stylists, and it is to Plumb's eternal credit that he writes as well as he does. The liberal essayist is a dying breed, and the essay itself seems to be a declining form, not replaced, certainly, by the new journalism, but perhaps superceded by whatever it is that Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe write. It is a little difficult to imagine J.H. Plumb writing the novel as history or history as the novel.

The limits on Plumb's approach are obvious, though, from this collection of essays written over a span of almost ten years. He makes an effort to place the hippies in context, and it is a very restrained and civilized approach--placing them in historical perspective, giving them roots understandable to outsiders and making them less frightening for being so understandable. But only six years afterwards even his concern with the movement seems dated, and datedness is a particularly unfortunate failing in an essay that puts its subject in a historical context spanning six centuries.

IN THE WEAKEST essay in his book, Plumb comments on Detroit and modern American cities. It is evidently a subject he is remarkably ignorant of, and his points--though they may be perceptive--are generally tangential to the main problems which face American urban culture.

It is an odd suggestion that the Ford family build a Medici-like palace in downtown Detroit, though the observation prompting it--that one source of urban problems is that the American rich are a national upper class rather than a group of local coteries--is an astute one.

But Plumb is on much more familiar ground most of the time, and the diversity of topics he can discuss knowledgably is astounding. The essay on the British response to the American Revolution provides an unusual viewpoint on an often-studied subject. Plumb also writes with authority on clothes, riots and other historical things common to all times but taking a different coloration in each.

PLUMB REMAINS ON familiar grounds not only in the sense that he knows his subjects well, but also in the sense that they are topics sheltered by an ideological framework already well-explored by scholars like him. He stands before a divide, and seems aware of that. When he writes of trends in modern society, or outbursts of energy in modern times, he recognizes that they represent a breakdown of something and that the principle reason that such trends and outbursts have not produced a radically different order yet is that they posses no underlying ideology. The absence of this kind of ideology is one of the things that he muses on occassionally.

Then he seems like one of the final mature specimens of a soon to start decaying profession. With or without a new ideology it is soon going to be impossible to do Plumb's sort of scholarship. Historians may repeat his efforts in increasingly pallid imitations, or they may strike off in a new direction under the cover of a revitalized ideology, but they will hardly reproduce Plumb's efforts. Liberal individualism has lost its cutting edge as an intellectual doctrine.

Even if a collection of essays is only as strong as its weakest part, Plumb's work is still very good. He brings to his writing a style and authority that makes him more than palatable. Historical writing has generally ceased to provide pleasurable reading since analysis and interpretation replaced narrative and biography, but Plumb's work is nothing if it is not enjoyable.