The history of history
Sometimes stories take on a history of their own.
Our consultant with the vast library is proud of a nicely-bound set of novels by Sir Walter Scott, inherited from a great-grandmother. Scott more or less invented the modern historical novel: the fictional story set in a past time, gaining some of its interest from mentions of people or events the reader may remember from nonfiction history. There had been stories set in distant places or times before him, of course. Shakespeare’s plays are examples. And using a semi-legendary place to make a current political point was common to Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Bacon and Johnathan Swift, to drop only a few literary names. But Sidney’s Pamphlagonia had nothing to do with the actual region of Anatolia (apart from distance from sixteenth-century England). So we may credit Scott with inventing, or at least popularizing, historical novels.
It was a bit discouraging, then, to find the author admitting in his introduction to a story set in Switzerland in the late Middle Ages that he’d never been to the country. Similarly, prefacing a story of the Crusades, he noted that he’d never been to the Holy Land, while quite a number of his countrymen had visited the region. Having omitted a basic bit of research expected of any modern writer, we are entitled to wonder what else he missed. How much trust can we put, for example, in his description of the habits and inclinations of the Muslims of the twelfth-century Levant in general, and of Saladin in particular?
Perhaps not a great deal; but there is another historical point. The Talisman was written almost two centuries ago. It tells us in a direct way what early Victorians thought of the Third Crusade. (It was written shortly before Victoria ascended the throne, and no doubt there were differences of opinion, but it was popular so the generalization is perhaps not too dangerous.) That in itself is a bit of history.
Much closer to Scott’s home is another example of historical fictionizing. Those familiar with the Scottish Clans, nominally family-based political entities based in the Highlands, will associate with each a pattern of woven wool plaid called a tartan. One of our consultants will, on occasion, sport a kilt in the red-and-black McLachlan plaid, based on his descent. Well, the current connection of name with pattern is of nineteenth-century origin. When the clans actually had power and independent existence, plaids were at best an indication of one’s locality. But note: the connection of the McLachlan name with the red-and-black pattern is now about two centuries old. In that way, it has an historical existence.
Physical scientists are (justly) suspicious of worrying about what people believe to be true. Historians are vitally concerned. And what people think happened can take on a powerful life of its own.
