January 2011

Just where and how are the novelist’s skills useful to the historian?

Some of them, obviously, the historian picks up only at the risk of his professional integrity. The bestseller lists in years past (to say nothing of the longer list of books which aimed at that target and missed) are full of distressing examples of “fictionalized” history, “reconstructed” events for which there can be no documentation, conversations invented to fit historic situations, accounts of thoughts and emotions which imaginative writers have put into the heads of historic characters. For all of these, in works which claim anyone’s serious attention, there can be no real justification.

Yet there is one talent which the historian can properly borrow from the novelist—namely, mastery of the art of communication via the written word. When he is addressing the general reader this is a talent which he desperately needs. At the very least, he wants the reader to stay with him while he tells his tale; he wants, in short, to be read. To be read he must be interesting.

When an empire falls apart the cracks usually can be seen ahead of time. There may never be an actual crash—a moment of final disaster of which, long afterward, men can say definitely: Here is where it all ended. Instead there is likely to be a long period in which things just don’t seem to go right. We may not see the fabric coming unstitched, but we do begin to notice that a good many big jobs are held by rather small men. There is a failure here, a piece of bad luck there, a cumulative deterioration in the way society works. It may not seem like much at the time, but afterward it is clear that what we thought was just a shutter banging in the wind was the noise of the house coming down.

Not without reason, this sort of thing tends to have a morbid fascination nowadays; and an excellent case history on the clinical symptoms which a dying empire can display is provided in James Duffy’s compact little book, Shipwreck and Empire .

Not with a Bang but a Whimper The Creative Imagination The Unpronounceable Man The Great Crevasse Current Books in Brief A Check List of New Books

In New York City around the middle of the Nineteenth Century almost all household products, from lamp oil to strawberries, were hawked directly from the crowded streets. Many of the street vendors became strongly attached to one locale, among them an old apple woman who for many years set up her chair at the front door of A. T. Stewart’s dry goods store. When Mr. Stewart prospered and moved to fancier quarters, the old woman shyly absented herself until Mr. Stewart himself saw to it that her chair was moved and placed exactly as before.

The charming water colors on these pages are the work of an Italian painter, Nicolino Calyo, done in 1840. They were recently presented to the Museum of the City of New York and were welcomed as a magnificent example of street-vending in the city’s early days. Calyo executed his series with freshness, humor and real sympathy for the people who called out the lilting “Cries of New York.”

Those who watched from the pier knew the emotions usual at sailings. They felt the initial pain of separation as the gangplanks dropped away and the first feet of clearing water divided them from those who were departing. Then, as the eye’s focus shifted from the waving figures at the railing and took in the majestic whole of the ship now pulling back into the river, with its graceful lines beneath the gay banners fluttering from its masts, those who had been left behind felt the sting of envy as they imagined the adventure, the gaiety, and the fun that awaited those aboard during the week of freedom ahead of them.

Envy and regret were the dominant emotions on May 1, 1915, as the Cunarder Lusitania set sail from New York. A new summer season was about to begin, and many of those who stood on the dock were themselves anticipating the coming joy of a tour, despite the ugly war in Europe. To the shouted farewells were frequently added the promises of meetings somewhere across the ocean.