Lost worlds

Still plodding through Grote’s History. He’s one of those writers who seems to rise and fall with his subjects: there’s an arid stretch on the migrations of the Hellenic peoples which consists largely of Grote disagreeing with earlier writers. He concludes that we can’t know anything for certain from the contradictory literary sources, most of which were written hundreds of years after the events they describe – this is a history that pre-dates the development of archaeology. It picks up a little when he reaches the early history of Sparta, but even here he is firm about the limits of what, barring “positive evidence,” can be said. Several hundred pages of sensible nitpicking doesn’t make for an exciting read, and I’ve occasionally skimmed over his respectful and patient dismantling of the opinions of O. Muller and Mr. Clinton. Still, there’s an interesting overview – if, that is, you find that sort of thing interesting – of mid-nineteenth century scholarship and copious footnotes in a variety of languages – Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and, more rarely, German (the German scholars he cites usually write in Latin). Grote has read widely, and seems to include everything. His discussion of the Homeric epics makes comparisons with the Northern Sagas, the Mahabharata, the epic songs of the Balkan bards, the Mediaeval Arthurian cycle and early Christian Hagiography, all in an attempt to recover the mental attitudes of a remote period. It’s an impressive, if somewhat dusty, monument.

Also read: the Autobiography of Benjamin Robert Haydon, the self-aggrandising memoirs of an artist whose work never quite lived up to his ambitions, and who blames his lack of success on the Royal Academy. It’s a lively, bad-tempered book, with occasionally vivid, if unfair, portrayals of peers. Hazlitt, for instance: “that singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely, on whose heart no one could calculate . . . With no decision, no application, no intensity of self-will, he had a hankering to be a painter, guided by a feeble love of what he saw, but the moment he attempted to colour or paint, his timid hand refused to obey from want of practice. Having no moral courage he shrank from the struggle, sat down in hopeless despair, and began to moralise on the impossibility of Art being revived in England . . .” Haydon argues with Shelley about atheism: “We said unpleasant things to each other, and when I retired to the other room for a moment I overheard them say, ‘Haydon is fierce.’” It’s true: Haydon is fierce, and his autobiography makes no attempt to hide his ferocity. He’s sometimes shrewd (“Wordsworth must always be eloquent and profound, because he knows he is considered childish and puerile.”), sometimes perverse (“Unfortunately I provoked all this clamour by asserting my belief . . . that the negro was the link between animal and man”). He is forever being advised to calm down, but forever throwing himself into controversy, and he identifies enemies everywhere (“I saw pride and revenge lurking beneath the smoothness of their manner”). His heroes are military men: Alexander, Caesar, Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. There’s a vivid account of France in 1814, overrun with foreign troops, with Napoleon still on Elba. Characteristically, he finds himself drawn to Napoleon: “though detesting [his] government, I was affected with something like sympathy for his private habits.” He is wary of the French women: their manners are exquisite, “but they had all more or less beard . . . they looked like skeletons in petticoats.” In fact, he doesn’t trust the French as a whole: “their vain ingratitude and unprincipled restlessness will be more apparent. Not a hundred years will pass before the great nations of Europe will be obliged . . . more effectually to crush them.” His autobiography tells the same story with variations: he works on a picture, he is let down by fair-weather friends and feckless aristocrats. His pictures are popular successes and admired by the cognoscenti but that damn cabal of Academicians and portrait painters conspire against him, and he has to start all over again. He petitions the government, but politicians are not interested in art. The autobiography stops suddenly: there are journals for the succeeding years. He is in debt almost continually. He commits suicide in 1846, at the age of 61. Representative sentence: “If I had the power I would spit fire at such insignificant wretches!”

 

 

 

~ by robertdickinson on January 28, 2011.