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Book review: Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet

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Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet by Fritz Redlich, M.D. Recommended.

In Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, psychiatrist Fritz Redlich, a Jewish contemporary, attempts to determine how physical ailments and mental disorders may have affected and influenced the Nazi leader.

This type of work, known as a “pathography,” has no set or determined structure. In the first part, Dr. Redlich describes “Hitler’s Life from Birth to Death,” including such topics as “Entry into Politics,” “Ascent to Power,” and “Warlord.” The second part, “Review, Comments, and Interpretations,” delves into more detail about the medical and psychological issues brought up in the first section.

This first part is the more problematic one. Dr. Redlich is not a historian and is not equipped to present or interpret history, especially history as fraught with the unknowns, distortions, and lies that surround Hitler. For example, he refers to the “billy goat story” several times. He notes that Hitler was not known to be cruel to animals as a child, except for the “dubious” billy goat story — a highly unlikely story of questionable origin that no historian would cite as an exception, even with the “dubious” qualifier.

He also discusses Geri Raubal’s death but provides no insight into what actually happened or how Hitler reacted to it. He briefly discusses a few innuendoes that Raubal was murdered, but there is nothing here — about a critical moment in Hitler’s psychological life — that is not covered more thoroughly and carefully in other books (Ron Rosenbaum’s Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, for example). On the other hand, there is sometimes too much detail about Himmler, Goebbels, et. al, which does not particularly relate to Hitler, his health, his psychology, or his actions. Indeed, much of the first section could have been eliminated as it often provides irrelevant information or biographical detail that is explored better in Hitler biographies and Nazi and WWII histories.

In the second part, Dr. Redlich attempts to diagnose Hitler, based on the scant and unreliable information available. He dismisses diagnoses when there is too little evidence or the known symptoms are inconclusive, although given that there is so little information and that neither Hitler nor anyone surrounding him is a reliable source, it is still primarily speculation. Dr. Redlich does conclude that Hitler had Parkinson’s syndrome, of unknown etiology, although at one point he mistakenly refers to it as Parkinson’s disease. He also provides a plausible explanation for Hitler’s headaches.

In his discussion of Hitler’s psychology, Dr. Redlich covers anxiety, depression, sexuality, and other obvious topics (often inconclusively) as well as such things as his lies and ambivalence. Again, there is nothing conclusive to say; many of these questions are still hotly debated by Hitler scholars (for example, whether he believed or came to believe his own fabrications).

The question of cruelty is an interesting one. It’s easy to say that Hitler was cruel, given the death, destruction, persecution, and torture he wrought against dissenting Nazi Party members, Gypsies, Jews, and others. This gets short shrift in Dr. Redlich’s analysis, because it’s not clear that Hitler was cruel in the conventional way many of us might think. Someone who gains pleasure from kicking a dog or witnessing the kicking of a dog is clearly cruel — but generally Hitler did not directly participate in or even witness what was happening in the concentration camps. He kept his distance from it. More discussion of such detached cruelty and distancing, with real-life examples, might be useful.

The reader does learn a great deal about the mundane details of Hitler’s health (including his ongoing problems with flatulence, which Dr. Redlich does not quite connect to his vegetarian diet), about the doctors who treated him, and about some of the medical practices still used in the 1940s (including leeches).

Dr. Redlich’s ultimate diagnosis of Hitler is one that few lay persons would recognize; it is part of the title. Hitler saw morality simplistically in black-and-white terms, he believed he’d been chosen by a higher power to do what he did (and was afraid he would not live long enough to accomplish it), and found a convenient scapegoat (the Jews) around whom to rally his followers. This is a cautionary tale that is especially relevant in today’s international political arena.

It’s important to note that Dr. Redlich’s effort could have been more condensed and focused. In addition, he is not a writer and fails to make what are necessary paragraph breaks to large chunks of text with multiple subjects (as does his editor).

Given how little is known of Hitler and how much of his own history he falsified, it would have been difficult to have produced a definitive work. Dr. Redlich honestly describes his personal reasons for writing Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, which ultimately is not a particularly significant contribution to the Hitler literature. Those who wish to try to understand every aspect of Hitler’s life (including his flatulence and bad teeth) or who wish to recognize political paranoia wherever it rages may find this a must-read.

7 November 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil

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Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum. Highly recommended.

Explaining Hitler is a misleading title, for the focus is primarily on the Jewish academic community’s attempts to explain Hitler — to put it in grossly oversimplified terms, this is somewhat like the prey explaining the motivations of the predator. The result is that, while Hitler remains a mystery, the academic and personal biases of the explainers are revealed. To each person’s theories and comments Rosenbaum adds his own analysis, finding the flaws with precision.

Hitler explanation ranges from the deeply personal (abusive father, infection by a Jewish prostitute, mother’s painful death under the care of a Jewish physician) to the inevitable influence of historical forces (post-war inflation, depression). Rosenbaum discusses the personal in depth, including Hitler’s rumored Jewish ancestor and bizarre relationship with his half-niece Geli Raubal, the convolutions each theory takes, and the lack of facts or reliable information to support any of them. For example, Rosenbaum astutely points out the only real “proof” of the abusive father is Hitler’s own assertion and sarcastically suggests that there is reason not to trust Hitler’s word. One argument that immediately comes to mind that Rosenbaum only briefly alludes to later is that millions of people have abusive fathers, bad experiences with individual members of ethnic and other groups, and so forth, yet do not turn into war criminals responsible for the deaths of millions. In short, these theories might explain Hitler’s anti-Semitism, but not the results.

What is disturbing about so many of these explanations (some of which are advocated by such noted people as Simon Wiesenthal, who favors the Jewish prostitute theory), and more sophisticated ones that appear later in the book, such as George Steiner’s, is their insistence that a Jew or a group of Jews is responsible. In these theories, a Jewish ancestor, a Jewish prostitute, an Eastern Jew with a different appearance, or the Jewish “blackmail of transcendence” and “addiction to the ideal” is responsible for Hitler — implying Hitler is not responsible at all. Although the egotistical and monomaniacal Claude Lanzmann, maker of the documentary Shoah, is too self-centered and angry to clearly articulate the basis for his belief that Hitler explanation is inherently “obscene,” it could be because so much “explanation” has found a way to point a finger at the Jews, directly or indirectly, while minimizing Hitler. Perhaps for that reason, Lanzmann is interested only in how the Holocaust was accomplished, not with the motivations of Hitler or his followers. The major flaw is that Lanzmann has missed the point by dictating that his rule of “There is no why” must apply to all other individuals — and the irony of that.

As Rosenbaum repeatedly points out, no explanations for Hitler are acceptable that excuse him — that look to a bad experience with a Jew rather than to, for example, the influence of anti-Semitism surrounding him in Austria and Germany. Again, however, it can be said that anti-Semitic influence has surrounded many people (as Rosenbaum notes, pre-war France was more anti-Semitic than either Austria or Germany) who have not killed, let alone killed millions.

Rosenbaum’s approach is excellent, pairing individuals with complementary or opposing viewpoints, e.g., Lanzmann and Dr. Micheels, the theologian Emil Fackenheim and the atheist historian Yehuda Bauer in “The Temptation to Blame God.” Even revisionist David Irving is given a chapter. Rosenbaum saves what seems to be his preference for the last chapter — Lucy Dawidowicz’s belief that Hitler decided on The Final Solution as early as 1918, based on what he said and did not say over time, and on the “laughter” that is transferred from the Jewish victims to the Nazi victors. While this does not explain the origins of Hitler’s evil, it pinpoints the time frame and removes the notion that he was ambivalent or experienced a sense of moral ambiguity. Dawidowicz’s Hitler knows early on what he wants to do and lets insiders in on the “joke” he finds it to be. Presented in this way, Dawidowicz does seem to have come closest to the truth about Hitler. After all, how can one capable of ambivalence ultimately kill millions?

To me, one critical question is not why or how any one man became evil or chose an evil course of action, for the explanation could simply be that the capacity for evil in an individual may be higher than most of us are capable of realising or accepting. That is, everyday evil like John Wayne Gacy’s is accomplished in isolation and is therefore limited in scope. The intent and the desired scope given opportunity remain unknowns. The more frightening question is why and how so many chose to follow Hitler. I do not necessarily mean the German people, per se, but the thousands of bureaucrats, managers, and soldiers who physically carried out The Final Solution, knowing exactly what this entailed and what it signified. Hitler seized the opportunity offered by the political and social situation to institutionalize his personal evil. A single man may envision and desire genocide, but it takes followers and believers to carry it out. Explaining Hitler (or Stalin or Genghis Khan) is not enough to explain the scope of this particular human evil. Without followers, there are no leaders. And without followers, millions of Jews (and Cambodians and Indians and so forth) could not have died. The evil that is so hard to face goes well beyond Hitler to a place that no one could truly wish to discover.

18 January 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Theodore Rex

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Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Highly recommended.

Theodore Rex (from the dubbing given Theodore Roosevelt by author Henry James) is the second part of a trilogy-in-progress by Edmund Morris but is easily read on its own as coverage of Roosevelt’s presidential terms. This installment covers Roosevelt’s life from the day of McKinley’s assassination and his swearing-in to seven years, one hundred sixty-nine days later, when he departs Washington, D.C., by train and “did not show himself [at Baltimore], as if to emphasize to a small, wistful crowd that he was no longer public property.”

Roosevelt’s partial and whole terms are set during a time of unsettling transition — rapid developments in military technologies and abilities, influx of immigrants from Slavs to Japanese, growing global trade and interdependencies, spreading racial violence, uncontrolled combinations and trusts and corporate greed, and an increased awareness of the mismanagement of and need to conserve natural resources. In Theodore Rex, reflecting the logistics of Congress and the waning powers of a president not returning to office, the shorter first term covers more pages than the full second term.

During his presidency, Roosevelt adds the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, begins the Panama Canal after nudging Panamanian independence, supports the liberation of Cuba, resolves a Moroccan crisis, prevents a German-Venezuelan war and all that would imply, settles the Russo-Japanese conflict and wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, balances capital (much to its chagrin) and labor, rebuilds the U.S. Navy and solidifies the U.S. as a world diplomatic and military leader, and preserves an unprecedented amount of land (including five national parks, thirteen national forests, and fifteen national monuments — the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods among them).

Morris shows, through personal and family writings, the letters of friends and enemies, speeches, newspaper accounts, commentary (especially that of “Mr. Dooley” — Finley Peter Dunne), and other contemporary sources Roosevelt’s intelligence, erudition, strength of will, personal conviction of righteousness, foresight, and uncanny ability to manipulate everyone from the media to senators and diplomats. He is a man who knows what he wants, that what he wants is right, and how to make what he wants happen. His determination and conviction lead to greatly expanded executive power — which in his mind is not incompatible or inconsistent with democracy. He has his weaknesses, too — most notably, an utter lack of understanding of business, finance, and the markets.

Although Roosevelt achieves much that directly benefits the public (such as settling the United Mine Workers strike and passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906) and earns popular support bordering on adulation, neither he nor his wisdom is perfect. Morris darkly hints that Roosevelt’s enemies may have found their privacy compromised, for examples, senators who find their correspondence has already been opened by the Secret Service, although he later casts doubt on Roosevelt’s involvement.

More importantly, he discusses the Brownsville (Texas) incident at length, which reveals what can happen when democracy is subverted and power is abused. Roosevelt orders three entire companies of black soldiers — including at least one career soldier with whom he had served in Cuba — dishonorably discharged and banned from the military for life based on an incident that may have been fabricated by resentful white townspeople. Morris writes, “Brownsville had been proof to many, and perhaps even a warning to himself, of the truth of Lord Acton’s famous dictum.”

Morris succeeds in bringing not only Theodore Roosevelt and his compelling personality to life, but those of many others as well: wife Edith Kermit Roosevelt; daughter Alice; son Quentin; House Speaker Joseph Cannon; United Mine Workers president John Mitchell; Cabinet members such as John Hay, Philander Chase Knox, Elihu Root, and George Cortelyou; long-time nemesis Mark Hanna; successor William Howard Taft (“who must have been a very pink and white baby,” according to Kate Carew); and confidantes such as Captain Archie Butt.

Theodore Rex is not limited to political life, however. Roosevelt is portrayed not only as a writer, reader, hunter/sportsman, adventurer, hiker, swimmer, and athlete. He is shown as a difficult father to Alice (who resents his silence about her own mother, the late Alice Hathaway Roosevelt), didactic disciplinarian to Quentin (along with his “White House Gang” of friends), and favourite uncle to broods of Roosevelt clan children at his Sagamore Hill summer retreat in Oyster Bay, New York. Even in his family relations, however, Roosevelt is always mindful of his image and that of his progressive platform, hence, his “posterity letters” — seemingly personal letters to family and friends, often signed with his full name, he uses to document his viewpoints for posterity.

Morris is clearly passionate about Roosevelt, and it shows in the life he brings to events that are more than one hundred years old. Whether you are interested in American history, the U.S. presidency and its holders, turn-of-the-century events, or Theodore Roosevelt himself, Theodore Rex is not to be missed for its honest portrayal of a complex man in changing times and for the light it throws on today’s political climate and workings. Be sure to read the notes, which contain many anecdotes, quotes, and other material.

18 October 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

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A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar. Recommended.

The prologue to Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nobel Laureate John Nash, Jr., summarizes the mathematical marvel’s life thus: genius, madness, reawakening.

Nash, who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics in a controversy that would ultimately change the nature of the prize, is the child of mostly unremarkable parents. His father, John, Sr., held a middle-manager position with the Appalachian Power Company inspecting power lines, while his mother, Virginia, was a “public-school thinker.” Despite his mother’s efforts to push him, he remains socially isolated, without any close friends. In the fourth grade, he begins to demonstrate the original approach to problems that will become his hallmark as a genius. Interestingly enough, it will be an extensive network of friends and peers that helps to ensure Nash’s place in academic and Nobel history.

Nash may have a “beautiful mind” with a unique way of looking at difficult problems, but Nasar does not portray him as a likeable man in his pre-mental illness heyday. Lacking in social skills and graces but not in ego, he is a class snob. Like many boys and young men, he plays pranks — but many of his have pathological undertones. Some cause serious physical pain and embarrassment. Others have the potential to cause death (one person recounts how a Nash prank might have resulted in electrocution of the victim). As a student and young academic, he delights in one-upmanship and in the humiliation of less-gifted men. In a recurring theme, he will flirt romantically with other bright young men. Much is forgiven Nash by his mentors and peers, however, because of his unquestioned mathematical gifts and because such behavior (at least, to some extent) is expected of great mathematical minds.

At the peak of his career, Nash succumbs to what is diagnosed as schizophrenia, which Nasar implies may have been the result of stress brought about by concerns about being drafted and Nash’s insistence on tackling near-impossible problems and the resulting frustrations. Whatever the cause, Nash becomes delusional, thinking aliens are speaking to him through The New York Times and feeling a compelling need to renounce his U.S. citizenship and to become a world citizen. For the next 30 years, Nash — and his genius — will be lost to the world, which, if it thinks of him at all, thinks him dead.

It is only a few years before he is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics (for his contributions to game theory) that Nash will slowly emerge from his illness. During this time, much of the mathematics community, including friends and rivals who were uncomfortable with his illness, rally behind him. Through most of his adult life, his wife, Alicia, is there to take care of him — even after marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

To write A Beautiful Mind, Nasar read and interviewed dozens of mathematicians, physicists, economists, and other academics as well as psychiatrists and mental health experts, making the book more than just a biography of John Nash, Jr. It is also an insightful overview of the tightly knit mathematics worlds of Princeton, MIT, and RAND Corporation during the 1940s and 1950s. Nash’s treatment at several private and public mental health institutions is revealing and sometimes horrifying, especially when he is treated with insulin shock therapy. The political climate — the draft for the Korean conflict, anti-Semitism, McCarthyism and its chilling effect on American academia, and the arms and space races with the Soviets — are all vivid parts of Nash’s story.

It is probably in the nature of biography that the author cannot be entirely subjective toward his or her subject; after all, he or she must have enough passion about that subject to research and write hundreds of pages about it. Nasar is clearly a fan of Nash’s; she often excuses or glosses over his youthful bad behaviour, his capacious ego, his poor treatment of those he considers inferior (including his girlfriend Eleanor and their son John David Stier), and his obsessive competitiveness. She describes him repeatedly as “handsome” with an “Olympian body” and “finely modeled” or “chiseled” features. (The photos included show Nash to have an average face and body.)

Nasar speeds through the 1970s and 1980s, no doubt because they were uneventful for the “Phantom of Fine Hall.” This leaves the reader to wonder what Nash’s official position was at Princeton (he tells a visitor he shouldn’t go into the faculty club). At this time, he appears to have had an office and is tolerated by students and staff alike.

I am always interested in genius, especially genius derailed by an enigmatic mental illness such as schizophrenia. A question (not to be answered) might be: Is Nash a genius despite schizophrenia, or is the schizophrenia an inherent part of what makes him a genius? Are the two conditions distinct, or are they inseparable? At any rate, while Nash may not have what I would consider a “beautiful mind,” it is certainly a gifted — and cursed — one.

25 June 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson

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The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. 752 pages.

While I was visiting my aunt in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, she suggested a road trip: first, to Luray Caverns, then down Skyline Drive to a town where we’d stay overnight, then over to Charlottesville for the triple play of Monticello, Michie Tavern (lunch), and Ash Lawn. Off we went, stopping in Charlottesville first at the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center. It was at the center that I first started falling in love with founding father and American sphinx Thomas Jefferson. Here and at Monticello, Jefferson’s inventive mind and hands-on applications are revealed in a variety of ways, including the oddities he imagined and the nails he made.

In The Road to Monticello, Kevin J. Hayes explores that Enlightenment mind set through the books Jefferson read, acquired, and cherished and through his writings, from personal letters to his major works, from his “Head and Heart” letter to Maria Cosway to the Declaration of Independence, Notes on the State of Virginia, and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom. The biography is more or less chronological, from his early life under the tutelage of George Wythe, during which he developed his interests in law and languages, to his design for his epitaph and his death on July 4, 1826 — followed five and one-half hours later by that of friend and foe John Adams.

Hayes covers Jefferson’s many advanced interests and everything that can be known or conjectured about his library, his passion for books as objects, his political and religious beliefs, his travels, his family and friends, and the influences and experiences that informed his views and convictions. By the end, Hayes seems to have created that which he set out to: a comprehensive portrayal of Jefferson’s life and mind gleaned from his books and intellectual pursuits.

Hayes falls short in two areas, one of which he concedes at the beginning. Like Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson was keenly aware that he would become a historical figure and that future Americans would pore over his words and life story. Adams and Franklin wrote their letters and messages accordingly, knowing that they would become part of posterity. Adams in particular seems to have held little back; both wanted to be understood. In contrast, Jefferson worked to efface his personal life and feelings from the record. The “Head and Heart” dialogue, and the form in which it’s written, reveal Jefferson’s discomfort with emotions as well as his apparently inability to express them directly. Perhaps he found this frustrating; “Head” poses a hyperbolic argument against forming attachments, but “Heart,” according to Hayes, gets in the last word and “rejects the pleasures of solitude and upholds the value of friendship.”

The second problem is Hayes’ lack of objectivity and the skewed picture that results. While he lavishes attention on such details as the backgrounds of the booksellers from whom Jefferson acquired his books, he mentions little that is controversial or negative about Jefferson. He glosses over his attitude toward his slaves and his refusal to free them, his relationship with Sally Hemings, his proclivity for overspending, and the financial straits in which he left his family. The uninformed reader won’t learn from Hayes about the unapologetic Jefferson’s secret collaboration with Benjamin Franklin Bache to smear John Adams’ character or how deep was the bitterness that grew between the two men. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought they merely disagreed on some key issues, become estranged over them, and reconciled late in life. Jefferson’s duplicity and manipulations are as protected from public view as he would have wished them to be.

The Road to Monticello is a solid if lopsided biography that delivers part of its promise, a glimpse into the life and mind of Thomas Jefferson, but only in idealizing soft focus. His heart and soul are missing, and so are the negative traits that round out his character and make him more than just an Enlightenment thinker; they make him a human being as flawed as the rest of the species. You can’t go wrong reading The Road to Monticello; knowledge of the breadth and depth of Jefferson’s readings and interests alone will expand your mind and thought process. But you would do yourself — and, dare I say it, Jefferson — a real disservice if you stopped here and didn’t dig deeper to explore the darker aspects of his enigmatic nature. For all its length and the research behind it, The Road to Monticello is just a detailed sketch. Supplement it with a full portrait, shade and shadows included.

11 March 2011
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2003. 608 pages.

As the Founding Father who spent most of the American Revolution in France, Benjamin Franklin often seems more caricature than patriot in today’s American imagination. In children’s cartoons, he’s portrayed as an eccentric old man flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Adults think of him as a lusty old man charming the ladies of Paris. In Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson attempts to flesh out a man who defies description — a printer turned writer turned postmaster turned inventor turned Enlightenment scientist turned patriot turned diplomat. Franklin, a man of the “middling class,” did as much to establish the American dream as to define American democracy.

If Thomas Jefferson bequeathed us with lofty philosophical prose, Franklin left us with his streamlined homilies and plans for personal improvement. Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey would have felt at home with the practical and prudent Franklin, who, naturally did not always live up to his own standards. At times Franklin’s business practices seemed questionable, his friendship with men many but shallow, and his marriage breezily detached. Strangest of all was his relationship with his son, William, who was firmly ensconced on the British side of the conflict. Each time William reached out to his father, the normally conciliatory Franklin rebuffed him, his loyalty to colonies and cause stronger than bonds of blood. Conscious of his place in history and eager to shape the future’s opinion of him, Franklin intentionally distanced himself from William — yet positioned his autobiography as a letter to his son.

For the most part, the discoveries and inventions that established Franklin among his Enlightenment peers came in the prime of middle age, after his retirement from business. His accomplishments raised him in society, especially in France, above his middle-class roots. Compared to his fellow Founders, Franklin was well traveled and well connected. With his extroverted personality, pragmatic approach, and cachet as a scientist, Franklin was the natural choice to represent the rebellious colonies and to woo allies to their cause.

Franklin spent most of the war in France and did not have much face-to-face interaction with his fellow rebel leaders except those sent to Paris to assist him or to keep an eye on him. Isaacson cites numerous passages from his correspondence, describes his rocky relationship with the somewhat dubious John Paul Jones, and recounts highlights from his friendships with luminaries such as David Hume, Joseph Banks, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, and the duc de la Rouchefoucauld, yet Franklin and Franklin, both man and biography, seem distant from the action. As Isaacson notes, however, he was “instrumental in shaping the three great documents of the war: the Declaration of Independence, the alliance with France, and the treaty with England.” Indeed, one of Franklin’s small edits to the Declaration altered its tone; Jefferson’s “We hold these truths to be sacred” became Franklin’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Benjamin Franklin illuminates much of what is fascinating about the birth of American-style democracy; a unique combination of personalities, backgrounds, beliefs, and temperaments came together to define and strive for freedom, with no consensus on what that meant. Washington brought natural leadership; Jefferson, an understanding of and appreciation for Enlightenment philosophy; Sam and John Adams, passion and fire; and Franklin the practical sensibilities of the middle class blended with worldly knowledge. They did not always get along (John Adams: “That I have no friendship for Franklin I avow. That I am incapable of having any with a man of his moral sentiments I avow.”) Contrary to current popular belief, they did not agree on democracy. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts declared, “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy,” while Roger Sherman of Connecticut said the people “should have as little to do as may be possible about government.” Franklin, according to Isaacson, “favored direct elections, trusted the average citizen, and resisted anything resembling elitism.” His constitution for Pennsylvania “was the most democratic of the new states’.” Years after Franklin’s death, John Adams “even cast Franklin’s lack of religious commitment, which he had once derided as verging on atheism, in a more favorable light: ‘All sects considered him, and I believe justly, a friend to unlimited toleration.'”

Franklin, the middle-class espouser of middle-class virtues like prudence, frugality, and temperance, used his gifts to rise above his station, but didn’t lose sight of it. When today’s pundits talk about the intentions of the Founding Fathers (as though they were agreed on anything) and try to force an uncomfortable marriage between capitalist greed and religion, they might consider the real Benjamin Franklin, not the caricature: A self-made man who moved with ease among the ranks of the noble and the wealthy but never joined them and who believed in every man’s right to practice his own religion in his own way.

15 March 2009
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age

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The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age by Christopher Hibbert. Not recommended.

The adjective “Elizabethan” invokes a vision of an era of sumptuous dress, religious strife, European conflict, and the flourishing of the dramatic arts. The Virgin Queen is a study of the ruler for whom the time is named, and her rule, which lasted for an almost-unprecedented 45 years.

Hibbert takes a primarily episodic approach to Elizabeth’s life, from her birth as the unwanted daughter of Henry VIII and his second, ill-fated wife, Ann Boleyn. When Henry finally produces a legitimate male heir, Elizabeth is reduced from “princess” to “lady.” After her unpopular, Catholic half-sister Mary ascends to the throne and she is vaguely implicated in some plots against the new queen, Elizabeth is imprisoned despite her seeming subservience and her pleas of innocence, devotion, and loyalty.

Raised away from the court by hired nobility and taught by Cambridge scholars, Elizabeth appears to be both demure and autocratic. The important point is “appears,” because, while Elizabeth in her correspondence is deferential and in her appearance demure, her peers invariably see her as withdrawn, haughty, and “proud and disdainful” — traits that “much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person” (Sir William Sidney). Mary, not unjustifiably paranoid, does not believe in Elizabeth’s humility, honesty, or loyalty. Hibbert’s portrayal of Elizabeth, who craves the adoration of peers, councilors, and subjects alike, seems to support Mary’s assessment.

Elizabeth proves to be arrogant and autocratic, allowing no one to question either her or her rights as ruler. She is keenly aware of the importance of having the support of the populace, which she enjoys in contrast to the despised “Bloody Mary.” She ignores the advice of privy council, however, when it suits her, occasionally to the detriment of her popularity.

Hibbert does not explain why or how Elizabeth, kept out of the way during the reigns of her half-brother and half-sister, became so popular. This points to one of the flaws of Hibbert’s episodic approach; recounting Elizabeth’s life in terms of “Subjects and Suitors” (although not all of them), “Papists and Puritans,” “The Queen in her Privy Chamber,” “Traitors and Rebels” (again, not all of them), and so forth, veils or distorts much of the historical context of Elizabeth’s development and reign. Within one chapter, she may be young at one point and in late middle age at another. With England’s changing allegiances and relationships with France and Spain, it is difficult to track what is happening at a given time and why. Elizabeth’s most noted accomplishment, England’s defeat of the Spanish armada, is covered briefly and superficially, almost as an aside, leaving the reader with the impression that it was happenstance that no one, including Elizabeth or the privy council, had much to do with; it just happened, with little explanation.

The tale of Elizabeth’s suitors can be equally confusing. Hibbert describes her negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou (later Henry III of France), when he was 20 and, “in fact, twenty years younger than herself.” A few pages later, Hibbert discusses her negotiations with his younger brother Francis when Francis is “not yet nineteen” and she is 39, yet it appears that the talks with the older brother occurred first, which would make sense. Even more confusing, the negotiations with younger brother Francis continued until she was 45 (they would be the last hopes of getting her married).

Elizabeth’s treatment of religious conflict is glossed over. While Mary is noted for her brutal repression of Protestants, Elizabeth, at least in this biography, is a conservative Protestant who fears and loathes radicals of any kind, Protestant or Catholic. During her reign, repression is focused primarily on the rebellious poor; she is less interested in punishing the wealthy nobility than in grabbing their riches.

As portrayed by Hibbert, Elizabeth is a parsimonious, greedy, emotionally needy woman who wishes to rule absolutely but who cannot make a necessary, definitive decision, such as signing the death warrant for her conniving cousin, Mary Stuart. The privy council, led by Lord Burghley, the Earl of Leicester, and others, devote much of their efforts to manipulating this indecisive autocrat into decisions they want and to making sure that she cannot renege on them — an ironic situation for the woman who says to Burghley’s son, “Little man, little man, the word must is not to be used to princes.”

There are several weaknesses in addition to the episodic structure. For example, the queen herself is not quoted often enough in key areas, yet Hibbert devotes one-third of a page to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem speculating about how she might have felt during her confinement in the Tower of London.

Most notably, however, the book’s subtitle is never explained — neither why the era is “golden” nor why the queen was the “genius” of it. While the biography makes it clear that Elizabeth had a strong personality, as did her parents, the nation’s successes seem to have been the work of the privy council under the leadership of Lord Burghley and of adventurers like Sir Walter Ralegh. Elizabeth is not shown even to have played a role in, for example, nurturing the famed playwrights of the time, such as Shakespeare, Marlow, and Beaumont. The subtitle implies that Elizabeth’s brilliance inspired a benign, cultured age, while the text shows a woman so cold and petty that, when her best friend and seeming lover Leicester dies, she worries only about controlling his estates and monies, and so indecisive that her own privy councilors avoid working with her whenever possible. The age itself is brutal, with the crowd “disgusted by the spectacle” of a drawing and quartering performed, against tradition, while the victims are still alive.

At best, The Virgin Queen is a brief, superficial biography that leaves the reader hungry for more — more about Burghley, Leicester, Mary Stuart, and others, but not about Elizabeth herself, who somehow becomes a supporting player in her own biography.

13 March 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf