"Teach Us Our Recollections"

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. xv + 557 pp. Illustrations and index. $28.95.

As W. H. Auden once implored our patient muse: "Teach us our recollections" (in "Homage to Clio"). And quite a few historians have answered this call. Autobiographies written by historians are now sufficiently abundant that they nearly constitute a sub-genre; like the automobiles produced by diversified companies, they come in many different models that vary by size, style, and the degree of comfort as well as safety provided for the operator. ¹ A four-cylinder model customarily treats only the author's youth and early manhood. One thinks of Louis B. Wright, Barefoot in Arcadia: Memories of a More Innocent Era (1974), Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (1972), Myself: The Autobiography of John R. Commons (1963), Samuel Eliot Morison, One Boy's Boston, 1887-1901 (1962), and Marquis James, The Cherokee Strip A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood (1945). Although these are not high-powered, they tend to have a lyrical, literary touch, frequently infused with infectious nostalgia. The six-cylinder model carries the reader through far more of the author's lifetime, and therefore the odometer has a special space for marking the appearance of publications and the receipt of professional honors. One thinks of Roy F. Nichols, A Historian's Progress (1968), John D. Hicks, My Life with History: An Autobiography (1968), and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., In Retrospect: The History of a Historian (1963). Less lyrical and less evocative, these models are more likely to appeal to former students, colleagues (most if not all, perhaps), and fellow historians specializing in the same field or sub-field who want to see whether their own work is cited or disparaged.

The eight-cylinder model comes equipped with a retractable roof for enhanced visibility, and is the least common of the three. It is a rarity, in fact. Jill Ker Conway appears to be custom-designing a blend of the three models. She has already published The Road from Coorain (1989), a superb exemplar of the four-cylinder type, and True North: A Memoir (1994), a variant of the six. Presumably there will be a third, upscale model before long, perhaps bearing the title A Woman's Education. ² Meanwhile, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has now produced the stretch limousine among historians' autobiographies. His father took 203 pages of text to cover 75 years. The son, age 83, is offering 523 pages covering only his first 33 years. Because he has almost always been an eight-cylinder man, we should anticipate a total of 1,500 pages before he is finished. Because he runs on high octane fuel, a martini before lunch and bourbon before dinner, I have every expectation that he will reach his objective. After all, George Bancroft lived into his ninety-first year, and young Schlesinger's middle name was Bancroft before he changed it to Meier at some time in his youth (possibly 1931) for reasons left unexplained (p. 57).

This book, which is certainly a stretch in several respects--including the achievements of his first wife's parents (pp. 181-85) and other people's romances and extramarital affairs during World War II (p. 280)--becomes a vehicle of self-vindication, though that is scarcely surprising. How many autobiographies are notable for self-flagellation? Even the hedonistic young Augustine eventually became a saint. Confessions come more easily when one has achieved a bishop's mitre. And Schlesinger frequently expresses regrets, acknowledges errors of judgment, impetuosity, and even, at least once, pomposity. He is candid about his misguided isolationism in 1938-40 (p. 232), wishes that he had not rebuked W. E. B. Du Bois to his face at a banquet in 1947 (p. 404), and acknowledges the ways he would change aspects of The Vital Center (1949), one of his most controversial works (pp. 514-16). On the...