Books
Forty thousand molehills
John Stewart Collis
Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 Keith Thomas (Allen Lane £14.95)
When a professor gives lectures to a captive audience, can it be assumed that if he publishes them in book form he will capture the readers? Yes indeed it is possible. One of the greatest books of this century, never out of print, for ever dazzl- ing its readers, is Macneile Dixon's The Human Situation, which comprised the Gifford Lectures 1935 to 1937.
The volume under review is by the Oxford history don, Professor Keith Thomas. It is a big book with an evocative title, Man and the Natural World. At once we ask is there a spirit abroad here? Will we be exhilarated by the unfolding of some mighty theme?
Keith Thomas is modest. He is just con- cerned to point out that attitudes change. This is not surprising and might seem in- evitable. But the professor is anxious to show us the extent to which things have changed between 1500 anti 1800. In the 16th century, a formidable theological apparatus persuaded men to see themselves as unique beings so totally separated from the animals, who having neither souls, minds, nor feelings could be used or abused without compunction. But as time went on and science eroded this notion, the position became less tenable; and since an excess of cruelty can lead to tenderness it became possible at last for the RSPCA to exist. Also, it was pretty obvious in 1500 that the best thing to do with the wilderness was to cultivate it: but since the main characteristic of mankind is that of going to extremes, cultivation eventually also included ex- ploitation. In spite of his Introduction, Keith Thomas does not develop this second point much, and his title is rather misleading, for he has comparatively little to say about nature as earth. His chief con-
cern is with animals and man. He wants us to learn thoroughly what we already know in only a vague way. His book consists of 300 pages of text, and 100 pages of notes in reference to those pages. In all there are (I calculate) some 40,000 sources referred to, and on any given page there may be a row of six sentences each parasitic upon a numeral referring to the notes.
, He is certainly very informative. Here are a few examples (without attached numerals), the dots to be interpreted as 'a lot more of the same.' On country lore The vulgar were said to believe that the osprey had one webbed foot, so that it could swim like a duck, and one cloven one so that it could catch prey like a hawk. Toads were regularly killed because they were thought to have a jewel in their heads or because they were thought to be dangerous to cattle. In Staffordshire the mole was thought In Surrey they said .... In eighteenth-century Hampshire it was believed . . . Elsewhere it was asserted that a bittern used a reed as a pipe; that robins would bury dead persons with moss and leaves; that the hare changed its sex and slept with one eye open; that the badger's legs were shorter on one side than the other; that cuckoo' g spit was poisonous; and that snakes could not die until sunset.'
Or about shooting birds on the wing in the later 17th century. 'At Tenterden, Kent, for example, they killed over 2,000 jays in the 1680s. At Deeping St James, Lin- colnshire, in 1779, they killed 4,152 spar- rows. At Prestbury, Cheshire, in 1732, they killed 5,480 moles. At Northill, Bedford- shire, between 1666 and 1812 the toll in- cluded 95 foxes, 130 badgers, 917 hedgehogs, and 1,198 polecats.
Or on nomenclature of plants before the Latin. 'Some were based on supposed similarities to parts of animals: hound's tongue, bearfoot, cat's tail, bird's eyes, cranesbill, coltsfoot, goat's beard: some on the plant's edibility: poor man's pepper, sauce alone, hedge mustard, fat hen; some on fancied resemblances to parts of the human body: miller's thumb, old man's beard, maidenhair, dead man's fingers; or an item of clothing: bachelor's buttons, shepherd's purse, fool's cap . .
These three excerpts could be multiplied by 300 of a similar kind. Taken as a com- pilation of facts, a catologue of opinions, a dictionary of quotations, an encylopaedia, even a thesaurus or Guinness Book of Records, we must acknowledge that it is well done. There is nothing slap-dash about the professor. He has marshalled his 40,000 references into consequential bundles with
prodigious skill. Every sentence is relevant and interesting; yet though he can sometimes deviate into style or achieve a sardonic felicity, we are stunned by. the relentless parade of particulars; the agination cannot be engaged nor the heart stirred. Then there are the notes. Every book should strive towards the condition of art; and the essential of art is that we should see the finished article and not the scaf- folding. Overcome by the professor's shameless display of journey-work I snatch- ed from my shelves G. M. Trevelyan's English Social History: not one page 0,1 notes, and only the odd footnote. I look at Macneile Dixon's The Human Situation: no notes of any kind; swept along on hi.s own driving rhythm, the author governs his vast reference like a king. I shall be told that the Keith Thomas method is the modern one and highly ap- proved. It is the method of American academics. It is part of their assault uPort biography and history whereby imagination (often another word for love) is replaced bY information. Their greatest happiness is when quoting someone. An author need not show authority so long as he has 'authorities,' nor possess inner resource so long as he has 'resources.' It is an apProach which appeals to the masses, for it provides useful knowledge for useless ends such.as the writing of theses, or for defective in" tellects who seek to qualify as Masterminds' Keith Thomas has allowed his ocean of in- formation to drown his voice. Moreover, though he has been neat in his parcelling of fact and opinion, he has nOt been neat in choosing 1500 to 1800 as his It brief. It is not convenient to stop at 1800- c; doesn't work. He is continually comPelle to enter the 19th century. And then his em- phasis is faulty. He fails to understand that while there certainly is an evolution 01, change in attitudes, there is often a final sudden jump brought about by men ° genius. Havelock Ellis, in his great essay The Love of Wild Nature, points out that though in 1773 Dr Johnson could saY t° Boswell at Loch Ness 'these journeys are useless labours since it is easy to sit at home, and conceive rocks and heaths and waterf falls', that attitude was changed by men genius in France and England. 'Rousseau, with his new vision and the magic of his im- passioned eloquence, created a new feat! for Nature, a new sensibility, almost a Ile; sense. The attitude of men towards Natn.r was suddenly and permanently change% And he shows how Byron, by the immense prestige of his genius, acclimatised the England the new gospel of Nature. 'At tn, same time Wordsworth, a more subtle and more profound revolutionary, clut,etve elaborated on the heights of his own Ia.', country the spiritual significance of that gospel of Nature, and left little further to be said.' But the professor is not concerned_ with this sort of thing: he refers onlY t° Wordsworth's prose Guide to the Lake District, to Byron on fishing, toRN:: on orang utangs, and to Ruskin on g
flowers.
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