BOOKS AND READING
BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE
A SOLDIER OF THE PEOPLE
I came into the House one morning, well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily appareled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hatband. His stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swoln and reddish; his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervor.
And here is a characteristic outburst by the man himself:
I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than what you call a gentleman, and is nothing else.
A great democrat, this Oliver, and a mighty fighting man; but, above all, a man who looked upon himself as chosen by the Lord to the winning of His battle. After defeating the king at Naseby, he wrote to his friends in this wise:
I can say this of Naseby, that when I saw the enemy draw up and march in gallant order toward us, and we a company of poor, ignorant men. . . I could not, riding alone about my business, but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that are.
After the battles were all won, and the king was dead and his son defeated at Worcester, Cromwell ruled England for five years as protector. A short, but surely an amazing, interlude in the long line of kings and queens from William the Conqueror to George V.
Charles fled to Carisbrooke after having surrendered to Cromwell's army at Holmby House. In a book written for young people by S. R. Keightly, “The Cavaliers” (Harper, $1.50), this period of time is given with much interest and sympathy. Cromwell is, of course, one of the chief characters. And there is one of Captain Frederick Marryat’s stories that pictures the fortunes of a Royalist family at about the same time, “The Children of the New Forest.”
There are two stories by Beulah M. Dix that you must certainly try to get. One is “The Fair Maid of Graystones,” and it pictures the atmosphere and the manners of the day with the greatest felicity, meanwhile telling a delightful tale; the other is “A Little Captive Lad,” with scenes in Holland and England. This book is perhaps even more charming reading than the first. In both, the author has striven to create the very feel and look of those passed days, and in both she has succeeded to a remarkable degree.
A different type of book, but accurate historically and full of adventurous incidents, is one of Henty’s books for boys that covers the period from the outbreak of the civil war to the execution of the king, and defeat of the second Charles. It is called “Friends Though Divided,” and relates the fortunes of a Roundhead and a Royalist youth who fought on opposite sides.
I dare say many of you have read Dumas’ story “Twenty Years After,” and remember the thrilling adventures leading up to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, and the moving narration of the king's death. Dumas does not bother particularly about historic accuracy, to be sure, but he tells a splendid story, and he gets into it much of the fire and fury of the age.
One of G. P. R. James’s novels takes up the Royalist cause with immense fervor. Its title is “Henry Masterson,” and it walks right into the Roundheads in the roughest kind of a way. It is full of vigorous portraiture, however, and very well worth the reading. In a case of this sort, one wants to see what people have to say on either side. Between the two, you get a pretty fair notion of how those who really lived through the business came, each of them, to be so sure that he was right and the other fellow wrong.
So, after you have read James’s book, turn to Amelia Barr’s “The Lion’s Whelp.” Here Cromwell stands a true hero before you, with his stout captains about him, and in his heart the dream of a great Commonwealth of Saints. This dream failed, and after Cromwell’s brief rule, England returned to the Stuarts, to king-rule and an extravagant court, to jewels and May-poles, and all the fun and frippery which the stern Puritan would have naught to do with. Nevertheless, this failure of Puritanism and democracy was only apparent. In truth, the bulk of Englishmen remained serious and purposeful, free of mind, determined to take their full share of the government, men who respected them-70
