I’ve completely missed out on TV this week; blame Jenny Uglow. I’ve been reading her account of Charles II and his first ten years on the throne; A Gambling Man has been impossible to put down.
Generally, I’m a sucker for biography. This isn’t because I believe in the ‘great man’ theory of history and think that the decisions and character of certain individuals determine the flow of history as a whole. That’s not what I get from biography, even from the biography of great world historical figures like Winston Churchill. As often as not, it is the flow of history as a whole that makes great individuals, or gives them the circumstances that make them more or less great. If Churchill had died in 1938 he would be largely forgotten today, seen at best as a brilliant but erratic and fatally flawed politician much like his father. If Abraham Lincoln had lived out his second term, it’s quite possible that history would remember him with less reverence than it does now. The scandals, quarrels and failures of Reconstruction might well have tarnished his image, and Lincoln’s instincts to treat the defeated (white) south kindly might look less like charity and more like racist solidarity with fellow whites against newly freed slaves. Had Mikhail Gorbachev been assassinated by some furious communist in 1990 he might be revered today all over the world, and people would still be saying that if Gorbachev the Great had only survived, Russia would never have descended into post-communist chaos and misery — and he would have steered the country into a bright, democratic future.
In any case, I note that even the most fanatical adherents to the ‘Great Man’ theory (yes, Thomas Carlyle, I’m thinking of you), spend a lot of time writing about circumstances and forces that act on their heroes. Carlyle might be right that the French Revolution would have proceeded differently if Mirabeau had lived longer or Lafayette been less of a blockhead, but the whole grandeur of his extraordinary history is his depiction (in terms often taken from classical epic) of the more-than-human forces that were shaking France to its foundations, dissolving the old order, and forcing people to grope blindly and frantically about in search of some new foundation on which they could build.
Biography isn’t about our mastery of history; it is about living in history, being shaped by as well as shaping culture and events, about charting paths through a wilderness, about living at the intersection of historical forces and trying to make do. In that sense, Charles II is an excellent biographical subject. Born heir to the English throne, his earliest years were lived in the luxury of the cavalier court of Charles I. That paradise was lost as the royalists were defeated in the English Civil War; Charles received the news of his father’s execution when his chaplain entered the room, hesitated and addressed the exiled teenager as ‘Your Majesty.’ Invited to Scotland (where his grandfather and his great-grandmother Mary Queen of Scots had once reigned), Charles led an invasion of England to regain the throne; defeated in the Battle of Worcester, he climbed an oak tree to hide from pursuit, and then made his way across England in disguise until he found a ship that would take him to safety over the seas.
For most of the next decade, as Cromwell made England respected, Charles was an embarrassment to the sovereigns of Europe. They needed to deal diplomatically with Cromwell, and his government seemed stable and lasting. At the same time, the execution of anointed sovereigns and the exile of their heirs were not acts of which the guild of kings could approve. Charles wandered, poor and restless and without prospects, among his cousins, claiming the kingship but often living on air — a kind of seventeenth century Willie Loman living on a shoeshine and a smile.
Cromwell died; his son was weak. The English, weary of religious quarrels and unsettled institutions, called Charles back to the throne in 1660. Many of those who recalled him were among Cromwell’s closest associates; men who connived at and profited from his father’s execution would never be far from Charles, and the thought that the mercurial nation could change its mind again and send him packing was never far from his thoughts. Crowds of the sick crowded round him to receive the ‘king’s touch’ reputed to heal (especially in cases of scrofula); courtiers plotted with republicans and foreign ambassadors to subvert him, or to bar his controversial brother from the succession to the throne. His cousin Louis XIV was busy constructing the elaborate court ceremonial that would make the French king the most admired and feared figure in Europe; as an impoverished royal hanger on and later as a sometimes ally and sometimes rival to Louis Charles would always keep one eye on the French court where his mother and his sister lived.
It is perhaps not surprising that Charles had a passion for the theater, and the period of his Restoration remains one of the most prolific (though not always the greatest) in the history of the English theater. Charles’ interest was heightened by the newly introduced custom of having young women rather than boys play the female parts on stage. Many of Charles’ long and short term amours, including the famous Nell Gwyn, got their start on the stage and he always had a soft spot in his heart for ‘bad boy’ courtiers who played their roles to the hilt.
His intellectual background was as interesting and varied as his life story. Educated originally in the high Anglican atmosphere of his father’s court, he would later be powerfully affected by the Catholic faith of his French mother Henrietta Maria. At the same time he knew and admired Thomas Hobbes — who served briefly as his tutor before Henrietta Maria figured out just what Hobbes believed; once on the throne Charles supported the foundation of the Royal Society, today the oldest and most prestigious scientific society in the world.
Charles was a sea king; not always successful in his wars, he had an extraordinary grasp of the role of sea power in his time. It was under Charles that New York was taken from the Dutch; the diarist Samuel Pepys was one of his naval officials and thanks to Pepys we know more about the admiralty under Charles than about the inner workings of any great institution of the day. But for Charles, there was no such thing as terra firma in politics. He knew that his throne was no steadier than the deck of warship, and his intense feel for the subtle movement under the surface and for the possibility of violent storms rising up out of a calm sky helped him survive for twenty five years in a role which killed his father and from which his brother was expelled after three short years.
Uglow’s biography is one of those wonderful books that brings an era alive. She helps you not only keep track of what the main characters are doing (no easy task when in that irritatingly English way the main characters keep changing their names; Edward Hyde becomes the Earl of Clarendon; Thomas Osborne becomes Viscount Latimer and then Earl of Danby en route to his full glory as the Duke of Leeds) but to help you understand what moved them. Charles II, whose mask of easy geniality concealed deep distrust and many secret plans, is one of history’s enigmas. Uglow does much to make him comprehensible.
But there are reasons to read A Gambling Man. The Restoration was a vital time in English constitutional and political history. The ‘tories’ and the ‘whigs’ both trace their roots back to the factions in Charles’ parliament and court; when the American founding fathers debated independence and the form of the constitution the events of Charles’ reign were much on their minds. Names like the ‘whig martyrs’ Algernon Sidney and William Russell were on the lips of American Civil War orators as both sides in our Civil War sought to claim the mantle of liberty and legitimacy by ransacking English history for suitable examples and models. The intellectual and political ferment of that era shaped American culture and our political battles today continue in patterns visible then. The fight, for example, of an outraged and patriotic ‘country party’ of commonsensical English patriots against the dissolute, anti-national and out of touch court is the template for today’s populist revolt against the ‘inside-the-beltway’ elite. The fights between the king and the House of Commons over budgets and foreign policy not only provided the context in which Americans learned to think about politics and constitutional law; they illustrate patterns of power and events that enable readers to look at politics today with fresh and sharper eyes.
Old books, or new books about old times: it’s hard to think of better, more useful ways to pass the time.