Narrating the Revolution: Ideology, Language, and Form

N a rra tin g th e R e v o lu tio n :onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Id e o lo g y , L a n g u a g e , a n d F o rm L E S T E R H . C O H E N According to an anecdote which appeared in N e w Y o rk M a g a zin e in May 1791, when Sir Walter Raleigh was incarcerated in the Tower of London he viewed one day an absorbing scene from his window and related what he saw to a friend who visited him the next day. “He saw one man strike another, whom by his dress he judged [to be] an officer, and who, drawing his sword, run [sic] the assailant through the body....” The assailant thus impaled did not fall “till he had knocked down the officer with his fist. The officer was instantly seized while lying senseless, and [was] carried away by the servants of justice; while at the same time the body of the man he had murdered was carried off by some persons apparently his friends, who, with great difficulty, pierced through the vast crowd that was now gathered around.” The visitor was shocked by Raleigh’s account of the scene, not be* cause it was so gruesome and violent but because Raleigh “was per* fectly mistaken in his whole story.” He challenged every detail of Raleigh’s narrative, observing that Raleigh’s officer was no officer, but a servant of a foreign ambassador; that this ap~ 455 456 / ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA L E S T E R H . C O H E N parent officer gave the first blow; that he did not draw his sword, but the other drew it, and it was wrested out of his hands, but not till after he had run its owner through the body with it: that after this, a foreigner in the m ob knocked the m urdererdown, in order that he should not escape: that som e foreigners had carried off the servant’s body: and that orders had arrived from court for the murderer to be tried instantly, and no favour shown, as the person murdered was one of the principal attendants of the Spanish Ambassador. Raleigh, understandably upset by his friend’s challenges, defended his own perceptions. “Sir,” he said, “allow me to say, that, though I may be mistaken as to the officership of the murderer, yet I know of a certainty that all my other circumstances are strictly true; because I was a spectator of the whole transaction, which passed on that very spot opposite, where you see a stone of the pavement a little raised above the rest.” Delivering the co u p d e grace his friend replied: “Sir Walter, upon that very stone did I stand during the whole affair, and received this little scratch in my cheek, in wresting the sword out of the fellow’s hand: and as I shall answer to God, you are totally mis­ taken.” When his friend had left, Raleigh, clearly shaken by the whole transaction, looked at his manuscript H isto ry o f th e W o rld and asked of it and himself: “How many falsehoods are here? If I cannot judge of the truth of an event that passes under my eyes, how shall I truly narrate those which have passed thousands of years before my birth?” and consigned the manuscript to the fire.1 The author of this anecdote, John Pinkerton, a late-eighteenthcentury Scottish historian and essayist, used it to illustrate one of his favorite theories: “that there is no such thing as truth of fact, or his­ torical truth, known to man. History is merely a species of romance, founded on events which really happened; but the bare events as stated by chronologists are alone true; their causes, circumstances, and effects, as detailed by historians, depend entirely on the fancy of the relater.” Pinkerton exempted from this observation only “a cer­ tain species of truth, which consists in the relation and connection of things, ... in the propriety and consistence of event, of character, of sentiment, of language.” In short, he...