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| Private Collection; On Loan To The National Portrait Gallery, London |
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Sir Edmund Verney, father of Ralph Verney, by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, oil on canvas, circa 1640. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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Forty years ago, historians began to think small.
Sweeping narratives about kings and queens, wars and nation-building became
passe. The new "social historians" were going to write history from the bottom
up. Rutgers University professor Philip Greven, credited as a pioneer of the
genre, described his goal as exploring "the basic structure and character of
society through close, detailed examinations of individuals."
It was a bold project. But most social history is difficult to read. First,
there is the problem of obscurity: It takes a special kind of writer to stir
reader interest in, say, 17th-century probate records and property deeds from
Andover, Mass. (one of Greven's projects). The genre often feels one small step
removed from someone's boring PhD thesis.
Second, there is the numbing veneer of political correctness. Many social
historians self-consciously reject history as told by "dead white men," and
focus instead on recreating the past from the point of view of women, children,
servants and slaves.
But as the story of a certain dead, white Englishman shows, social history
does have its virtues. In the right hands, it yields narratives as gripping as
any modern soap opera.
---
Ralph Verney never did anything particularly heroic or historically
noteworthy during his 82 years of life. The 17th-century Buckinghamshire
estate-owner spent most of his time worrying -- about money, his dissolute
brother, the English Civil War, his sisters' feeble marriage prospects. Yet the
man eventually became one of the most closely studied figures in British
history. This transpired for one simple reason: Ralph Verney never threw
anything out.
Every letter he received, every bill he paid, every personal note he drafted,
every playbill, summons and report card -- Ralph kept them all. His document
trove, discovered generations later by a distant relative rummaging through the
family attic, has now been distilled into an extraordinary new book by British
historian Adrian Tinniswood. The Verneys presents not only an engrossing
portrait of 17th-century English life, but also a testament to the sheer
literary power of unadorned narrative history.
Much of The Verneys touches on important historical events -- including
England's Civil War, the early settlement of North America, European trade with
the Muslim world, 17th-century sectarian conflict, Oliver Cromwell's brutal
Irish campaign and the Great Fire of London. All fascinating stuff. Yet this is
not what you remember after putting the book down. Instead, it is the
heartbreaking personal details of the Verneys' day-to-day existence.
Life was usually hard and short in the 17th-century, even for the well off.
It was an age when smallpox swept through the country at regular intervals, and
a quarter of children died before their 10th birthday. Of Ralph's own six
offspring, only two made it to adulthood. The deaths of the four others are
poignantly chronicled in Ralph's personal correspondence. In one especially
wrenching scene, which I cannot get out of my head, Ralph's wife learns in the
same instant that both her four-month-old baby and eight-year-old daughter have
died of unrelated illnesses.
Astonishingly, just a few days later, she was able to find solace in God,
"for He gave [my children] to me and He took them from me, and I hope and I
trust He will in His good time deliver me out of all my troubles." In an age far
removed from therapists and Internet support groups, this is what passed for
emotional closure.
The hardships of war also figure prominently. Ralph Verney's father served as
Charles I's standard-bearer at the start of the Civil War, and died at the
Battle of Edgehill under heroic circumstances. Brother Edmund was stabbed to
death in the aftermath of Cromwell's siege of Drogheda. And another brother,
Henry, partook in the savagery of the continent's Thirty Year war. All of it is
chronicled in the correspondence compiled by Ralph.
The language in these letters is exquisite, bearing no relationship with the
sloppy vagaries that characterize modern interpersonal communication. After
entering into his military service with Charles I, for instance, Ralph's father
wrote thusly to his son of his dark premonitions: "It cannot be long ere by
course of nature we must be severed, and if that time be prevented by accident,
yet we must resolve to bear it with the patience and courage as becomes men and
Christians; and so the great God of heaven send us well to meet again, either in
this world or in the next."
Yet even amidst such miseries, the Verney clan managed to distract itself
with greed and pettiness. Almost all of the letters from Ralph's siblings seem
to begin with obsequious praise and end with piteous requests for cash. Ralph's
lying, dissolute brother Tom was a particular master at the genre. In one
specimen, he reported "I take God to witness, I have lived upon bread and beer
and nothing else for Thursday, Friday and Saturday last." In another, he begged
"that I may receive but one smiling and merry countenance from you" -- and cash,
of course.
No one who mattered seemed to bother much with education or work: It was
taken for granted in this pre-capitalist age that the only way to acquire real
wealth was through inheritance or marriage, and so that is where the ambitious
focused their endless machinations. All of the Verneys' various "romantic"
courtships --except the disgraceful ones -- were nakedly mercantile affairs. In
some cases, years passed before the betrothed were allowed to tie the knot, a
period during which the families negotiated fantastically detailed contracts
specifying who would bring what to the marriage, and what each would get if the
other died before a male heir had been produced.
If there was any love involved in such unions, it was strictly by
coincidence. Certainly, there was no expectation of male sexual fidelity: As
Ralph made clear in one particularly vulgar letter, a gentleman was more or less
expected to keep pretty mistresses among his servants. Ralph's eldest son, Mun,
was a shameless philanderer, a fact that drove his long-suffering wife Mary
quite literally insane with jealousy.
---
Death, anguish, greed, war, adultery, madness: Ralph Verney bequeathed to the
world one of the greatest soap operas ever told. And yet, Tinniswood might still
have found a way to ruin this extraordinary material had he followed in the
footsteps of other modern social historians, who too often distort their
narratives with heavy-handed attempts to re-interpret events through the lens of
identity politics.
There is none of that here. Indeed, Tinniswood seems to take pride in
eschewing any sociological agenda. "If [Mary] were a character in a novel, then
we could … see [her] as a case study in female disempowerment … a rebel [raging]
against the sexual conventions of her age," he writes of Mun's crazed wife. "But
we can't reinvent Mary Verney as an anachronistic feminist heroine, no matter
how persuasive the idea might be. She was not a character in a novel. She was a
real person, she was scared and confused -- and she was almost certainly mad."
A madwoman who's just a madwoman? What a concept -- and not one sufficiently
appreciated by today's historical writers. As Tinniswood clearly understand,
sometimes, a great story is just that. The theory just gets in the way.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Illustration:
• Color Photo: Private
Collection
• On Loan To The National Portrait Gallery, London / Sir Edmund
Verney, father of Ralph Verney, by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, oil on canvas, circa
1640.
Idnumber: 200709250064
Edition: National
Story
Type: Column
Length: 1208 words
Keywords: MONARCHY; VISITS
Illustration Type: CP
PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20070925
NUPDATE: 20070925
DOB: 20070925
POSITION: 1
