History as debunking

The Claremont Review of Books, the subject of a previous posting, prominently proclaims its reverence for the Founding Fathers, as do other conservative publications.

They are dismayed by the critical, even irreverent treatment of them by mainstream contemporary historians. Yet the debunking of the past is an old story. The glorious reign of Queen Victoria was debunked by Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians (1918). Possibly it was part of the reaction against glory during the bitter years after World War I. Written in the same tradition is Enter Rumour (1962) by Robert Bernnard Martin.

My wife bade me read the third of the four studies, titled "Better than Ambition: the Master of St. Cross Hospital", which is a magnificent Norman "hospital" on the outskirts of Winchester, hospital being used in the sense of hospitality. It s a home for worthy old people, and weary travelers are given a glass of free ale at the porter's lodge (WAISer travelers, take note!). I discussed St. Cross a few days ago with Bob Scott, author of the magnificent bookThe Gothic Enterprise. reviewed in a recent posting. It is a noble structure, but Martin relates in excessive detail the patronage struggles of which it was the object when the half-brother of Lord North, the minister of George III, was Bishop`of Winchester. The detailed account of the Church of England at the time depicts its leaders as being interested primarily in the financial proceeds of church properties. While this may be true, Martin says nothing about the devout members of the clergy or the scholarship of many of them.

All this leads up tp a discussion as to whether Winchester and St Cross provided the background for the novel The Warden (1855) of Anthony Trollope. This novel, which launched his fame, was the first in the Barchester series, in which Trollope described clerical life in a cathedral town called Barchester: While not as brutally anticlerical as some Spanish novels of the same century, it provided grist for later debunkers. Trollope was a student at Winchester College, which lies between the cathedral and St. Cross. Martin makes the astonishing statement that Trollope would not have seen either, and that therefore Winchester cannot be the model for Barchester. I do not know what Trollope experts say, but it would seem evident that Winchester was an important model. In most countries of the world there is a whole literature of novels debunking the past and historians who do so in a more scholarly fashion. Perhaps some WAISers will wish to comment on this in so far as it occurs in the countries in which they are specially interested.