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The Sound of Stubbs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Robert Brentano
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Extract

“The biscuit is certainly exceedingly dry; but at any rate there are no weevils in it,” Lytton Strachey wrote, praising slightly one “scientific” historian that he might more thoroughly attack another. Strachey's amusing, contorted, perceptive, and sometimes ignorant burlesques of Victorian behaviour have lost favor; but they remain, more brightly outlined and self-mocking versions of common prejudices. Certainly the belief that the “scientific” historians produced dry biscuit is still commonly held even among those who one would suppose had read them; and the belief is probably held more clearly and widely about William Stubbs than about either Mandell Creighton or S. R. Gardiner, because as an historian his name is more eminent, more people have heard of him, or more people who have heard of him know that he is a “scientific” historian from the authoritative, the “dry” period. He was born in 1825 and died in 1901.

In fact the problem with Stubbs is in quite a different direction. Stubbs is more compelling than his evidence demands and more fascinating than his subject would predict. F. W. Maitland, before he was forced by profession to that sort of reading, found Stubbs's Constitutional History “in a London club, and read it because it was interesting.” Even at his weakest and dullest Stubbs is interesting; at his strongest and most flamboyant, as in his Benedict of Peterborough and Walter of Coventry introductions in the Rolls Series and in parts of his Constitutional History, he is dazzling. The problem is not overcoming Stubbs's dullness but explaining his brilliance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1967

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Footnotes

*

This essay grew out of work begun in Professor Mary Albertson's seminar at Swarthmore many years ago, and it has since been written particularly for her. R.B.

References

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2. Maitland, F. W., “William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford,” E.H.R., XVI (1901), 417–26, 422CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Maitland's obituary essay is a very exciting piece of intellectual history and a rare sort of penetrating criticism by one eminent historian of another, his contemporary.

3. Ibid., XVI, 421.

4. Hutton, William Holden, William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 1825–1901 (London, 1906), p. 31Google Scholar. It has been necessary for me to refer to this abridged edition of Hutton, as well as to rather peculiarly dated editions of the Constitutional History, because better or more conventional editions were not available to me at the time of the final preparation of this essay.

5. Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England, I (Oxford, 1891), 1.Google Scholar

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8. The web is taken from Stubbs, William (ed.), The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I … known commonly under the name of Benedict of Peterborough [Rolls Series] (London, 1867), II, xxGoogle Scholar.

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10. Maitland, , “William Stubbs,” E.H.R., XVI, 422 and 421Google Scholar, for the surprisingness of his talents' being employed in institutional history.

11. Ibid., XVI, 422, 419, 422.

12. Ibid., XVI, 419.

13. Ibid., XVI, 422.

14. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II (Oxford, 1906), 656Google Scholar.

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50. Stubbs, , Benedict of Peterborough, II, xi.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., II, xxvi, xii.

52. Ibid., II, xx.

53. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II, 102–03Google Scholar; Cam, Helen, “Stubbs Seventy Years After,” Cambridge Historical Journal, IX (1948), 129–47, 145Google Scholar.

54. For her comments on Petit Dutaillis's criticism, see Ibid., IX, 144–45.

55. Stubbs, , Richard I, I, xx–xxi.Google Scholar

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58. Stubbs, , William of Malmesbury, II, lxxxix.Google Scholar

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62. Stubbs, William (ed.), The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury [Rolls Series] (London, 1879–1880), I, xiGoogle Scholar; Stubbs, , Saint Dunstan, pp. lxii, cviGoogle Scholar.

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64. Ibid., XVI, 421.

65. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, I, iii.Google Scholar

66. Stubbs, , William of Malmesbury, II, cxviii, cxviiGoogle Scholar.

67. Ibid., II, lxiv.

68. Hutton, , William Stubbs, pp. 102–03Google Scholar; see too “A Lay of Ancient Oxford,” Ibid., pp. 25–26.

69. Ibid., pp. 180–82.

70. Ibid., p. 185.

71. Ibid., p. 182.

72. Ibid., p. 183.

73. Ibid., p. 208.

74. Ibid., pp. 182–83. Hutton repeatedly talks of the quick spontaneity of Stubbs's composition of humorous verse.

75. Ibid., p. 29.

76. Miss Church: ibid., pp. 139–41; Canon Holmes: ibid., p. 209.

77. Ibid., p. 106.

78. Stubbs, , William of Malmesbury, I, cxxxi.Google Scholar

79. Acton, Lord, “German Schools of History,” E.H.R., I (1886), 7–42, 32, 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Gervinus personates the average German, the average middle-class German from the smaller towns of the smaller states, crowded with indisputable information, sceptical and doctrinaire, more robust than elastic or alert, instructive but not persuasive, with a taste for broad paths and the judicious forcing of open locks.”

80. Stubbs, , Saint Dunstan, p. cixGoogle Scholar.

81. Hutton, , William Stubbs, p. 104Google Scholar.

82. Maitland, , “William Stubbs,” E.H.R., XVI, 421Google Scholar.