The Reason Why - Cecil Woodham-Smith

I gave up history at school - Clive and the battle of Plassey, who cares? Then in my twenties I went with a friend to see the film, "The Charge of The Light Brigade". Chatting about it afterwards he said, "You need to read, The Reason Why". He lent me a copy, and I found myself immersed in the arrogant, privileged lives of 19th Century English aristocrats, amateur soldiers with delusions of grandeur who were at the head of the British army. History came alive; it wasn't about dates and events, it was about people, their character, their lives and their ambitions and I've been hooked on history ever since. 

The 25th of October 1854 saw one of the most foolish and disgraceful actions ever seen on a battlefield. About 700 mounted men of the British Light Brigade attacked a Russian army positioned at the end of a shallow valley in Crimea. 

The order to attack, written on a piece of paper, was short, ambiguous and misunderstood. Despite knowing it was against all rules of war, the Light Brigade trotted into the valley and into a cauldron of cannon fire. Shells hurtled down from the sides of the valley and from the Russian guns ahead, bursting among the men and horses. The slaughter was terrible. Yet many still reached the Russian guns and attacked the gunners, but as they passed through the smoke beyond the guns they met the massed ranks of Russian cavalry. They had no option but to retreat and run the gauntlet of the shells once again. It was worse than the advance. Only 195 of the 700 returned to safety.

When the poet Tennyson read the report of the charge in The Times he wrote his well-known poem which contains these lines: 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Someone had blundered" but what was the reason why? Cecil Woodham Smith answers the question by diving deep into the organisation of the British Army and the background of the three main personalities, Lords Raglan, Lucan and Cardigan.

The highest ranks in the army were held by aristocrats, and these ranks were obtained by purchase. This bizarre system was supposed to prevent a revolution. The army  would not be turned on King and parliament if it was commanded by Lords and Dukes. This resulted in experienced lower ranked officers who had seen action under Wellington or who had served in India and who knew their craft, being subordinate to amateurs who had never led troops in battle. 

"The unpleasant truth was that they were completely ignorant of the art of war, they had no experience, no education and no ability."

The ill-fated Charge of The Light Brigade was just one of a long catalogue of blunders in the Crimean campaign.

Woodham Smith has this to say about Lord Cardigan, who led the charge:

He was completely absorbed in one object himself. It was not, as one realised when one became familiar with him, that he deliberately disregarded other man's opinions and feelings, they simply did not exist for him. Like a child playing in a corner of a nursery with his toys, he was wholly absorbed in himself. The rest of the world was an irrelevance. Nor did he ever attempt to conceal his absorption. ... Like a child, however, he found opposition intolerable, and surprise was swiftly succeeded by furious indignation…….. The truth rushed in on him, there was a conspiracy against him.

Cardigan was under the command of Lord Lucan, the head of the cavalry. The two men were brothers-in-law, yet they despised each other, and Cardigan had no intention of being commanded by Lucan, a man of extreme stubbornness, and irritability, always certain that he was in the right. 

Lucan had estates in Ireland at the time when most of the population survived on potatoes grown on land they rented. Lucan was determined to bring in agricultural reform which he did with ruthlessness, driving tenants off his land with little regard to their suffering. When potato blight struck and the people began to starve, Lucan became an object of hatred. However, it seems this ruthless quality was the reason he was given command of the cavalry in the Crimea.

The third main character, Lord Raglan was Commander in Chief of the army. For forty years he had been the Duke of Wellington's right-hand man but had never himself conceived plans or taken decisions. He was a staff officer and had never led men in battle. He was absolutely unfit to command the army in the Crimea.

"The Reason Why" has 14 chapters with the charge of the Light Brigade coming at chapter 12. In the previous 11 chapters, Woodham Smith builds up to this debacle like a barrister presenting the case for the prosecution. She does this with skill and energy and a compelling style. The Reader takes in the evidence and sits as Judge and Jury. So what is my verdict?

Raglan, looking down into the valley from his command post on the heights above, and seeing the Russians removing British guns from southern ridge, issued this ambiguous order: 

Lord Raglan's  Original Order

"Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy & try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate."

Lucan, down on the vally floor, reads the order but the only guns he can see are the Russian guns at the head of the valley. He is a man of rigid mind-set, incapable of questioning an order. Cardigan has been irritated throughout the day because his Light Brigade has not been used, which he blames on Lucan, so he is eager for action.  Their arrogance, ambition, and mutual contempt prevent any rational discussion of what they clearly see is an act of suicide.

So who was at fault? A case can be made against all these foolish men, the product of a rigid class system that placed title, privilege and wealth above ability and intelligence. So the final verdict must be against the system itself. Unfortunately, the system changed too slowly to prevent further disasters in the Zulu & Boer wars a few years later.

Cannon balls  litter the valley. Photograph taken after the charge.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

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The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

This historical novel is based on seven formative years in the life of the German poet, Frederick (Fritz) Hardenberg at the end of the 18^th century. He adopted the name Novalis (clearer of new land) and along with Schiller and the Schlegels was a founder of German Romanticism.

 (Wiki entry here)

The Blue Flower of the title is an image from an unfinished novel by Novalis and is a symbol of a deep, unfulfilled longing of the human spirit. It stands for desire, love, and the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable. It symbolizes hope and the beauty of things. The symbol has remained an enduring motif in Western art. 

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_flower

The heart of the novel is the strange relationship between Fritz and a 12-year-old girl, Sophie von Khun. As soon as he sees her at her father’s house Fritz falls in love and determines she will be his wife when she comes of age at 16. Sophie is astonished when he declares his love and wish to marry her. She is scarcely more than a child and more interested in playing with kittens than thinking about romance. Fritz friends and his siblings (he daren’t tell his father) are appalled and try and dissuade him from this folly but he is swept up in the romantic idealism of the Blue Flower and calls Sophie his ”Philosophie”.

Penelope Fitzgerald is a skilful writer. The short chapters and well-crafted sentences interspersed with humour and acute observations make for a very enjoyable read. The book is cleverly structured to include direct quotes from letters and diary entries and she creates dialogue and situations that closely reference actual events.

Novalis was a polymath, a student of the sciences, mathematics, history and philosophy; he was also a writer and poet. Penelope Fitzgerald takes the narrative approach that less is more which can be frustrating when you are wanting detail. Nevertheless, even with a deliberately limited palette  she creates compelling images for the reader; you find yourself drawn into 18th Century Saxony society, immersed in the lives of the characters, turning the pages as events unfold but then pausing to think about some provocative philosophical statement.

Penelope Fitzgerald was set on the trail of The Blue Flower by reading The Fox by DH Lawrence who pours cold water on the Blue Flower symbol; he sees it as a trap. He writes:

The more you reached after the fatal flower of happiness, which trembles so blue and lovely in a crevice just beyond your grasp, the more fearfully you became aware of the ghastly and awful gulf of the precipice below you, into which you will inevitably plunge, as into the bottomless pit, if you reach any farther.

Fitzgerald seems to agree with Lawrence by portraying Fritz as a naïve, privileged student; a dreamer more interested in airy-fairy ideas than the hard realities of daily living. His pious Moravian father didn’t have any sympathy with his son’s philosophising and forced him into a sober career as an inspector of salt mines. Fitzgerald also brings Fritz down to earth by putting common sense into the mouths of the strong, young women of the novel -  his sister Sidonie, Karoline Just and Sophie’s sister, Friederike.

Fritz: That is my Sophgen to the life. It is Raphael’s self-portrait of course….But how can a girl of twelve look like a genius of 25?
Sidonie: That’s easy. She cannot.
Fritz: But you have never so much have seen her.
Sidonie: That’s true. But I shall see her, I suppose, and when I do shall tell you exactly the same thing.

Fritz: She dies because the world is not holy enough to contain her.

Karoline: She dies because Goethe couldn’t think what to do with her

Fritz: Courage makes us dreamers. Courage makes us poets.
Friederike: But it would not make Sophgen into a competent housekeeper.      

Sophie on the other hand is shown as a simple unsophisticated child. Her diary is as empty as her head. Her tutor has made no impression on her and quits. She is distracted by her dogs. If reincarnated she would like to have fair hair. According to Hofmann the painter, even inanimate objects ask a question of us, but Sophie asks no question. There is no communication from her soul.

Karoline Just asks Erasmus, “How could he?”.  And Erasmus says to Fritz, “Sophie is stupid”

However, is this a true portrait of Sophie? Fritz’s brother Karl wrote flatteringly of Sophie in a memoir:

Not long after he came to Tennstedt he became acquainted with Sophie von Kuhn from the nearby estate to Grunningen, and that first moment of seeing her set the course of his resolution for eternity. Sophie was of such tenderly deserving loveliness and exalted appearance, that already at that time when she was in her 13th year, one could not help but recognise her native affinity to heaven.

And Constanein Just in his memoir of Novalis says:

During the course of a business journey he took with me, he made the acquaintance of Sophie von Kuhn, a girl of 13 years old. She possessed the judgement of a grown-up person, joined to the attraction and animation of youth, beauty, wit and excellence. The charming creature became his Madonna; and the hopes of one day calling her his, gave him the assurance of that happy home for which he longed.

To the modern reader Sophie is not the realisation of some poetic ideal but simply a strange and to us creepy, infatuation. It could be argued that Fritz who has had a narrow escape from a previous liaison realises he must keep his passions in check so fixes his attention on someone who he cannot marry for another 4 years. Also, does the piety of his upbringing make a connection between Sophie, whose name means "wisdom" and the Book of Proverbs?

“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom: And with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: She shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.” Proverbs 4:7-9

Fritz, the young romantic, is searching for meaning. On the one hand there is religion, philosophy and poetic imagination, on the other is mathematics, chemistry and salt mines. The novel skilfully brings out the conflict between these worlds.

He wrote: We think we know the laws that govern our existence. We get glimpses, perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime of a totally different system at work behind them. One day, when I was reading between Rippach and Lutzen, I felt the certainty of immortality, like the touch of a hand……As things are, we are the enemies of the world and foreigners to this earth.

He has a vision of a young man in the church yard: He said aloud. The external world is the world of shadows. It throws its shadows into the Kingdom of Light. How different they will appear when this darkness is gone, and the shadow-body has passed away. The universe, after all, is within us. The way leads inwards always inwards.

These brief moments when it seems another world breaks into normal existence are epiphanies that leave him with a deep, unsatisfied longing.

DH Lawrence considers the Blue Flower motif and search for an unattainable happiness to be destructive, but Christians like CS Lewis see a far more potent meaning, nothing less than the longing of the soul for God.  “Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.” (St Augustine).

Lewis writes about his own conflict in his biography, Surprised by Joy, where he records three key moments when it seemed that light from another world broke through. He took inspiration from the writings of George MacDonald a Scottish congregational minister who translated the poetry of Novalis, wrote fairy stories and is sometimes called the father of fantasy writing. Lewis called MacDonald, “his master”. The Narnia stories are partly a device to open our thinking to the possibility of other hidden worlds.

Emily Dickinson, in one of her poems wrote:

This world is not conclusion, a species stands beyond, invisible as music and positive as sound….

Much gesture from the pulpit, strong hallelujahs roll. Narcotics cannot still the tooth that nibbles at the soul.

Summary

The Blue Flower is an intelligent, witty and provoking book. I consider myself to be a scientific rationalist but also a romantic. These two forces pull in opposite directions and create an unresolved tension. I am sure that science and mathematics are the best tools to understand the physical world but am not convinced this is the whole story. In The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald cleverly encapsulates the dilemma between the rational and the non-rational worlds that Fritz wants to explore and reconcile. His journey was unique to him as our journeys are unique to us. The Bernard, Fritz's young brother puts his finger on that uniqueness:

He had been struck – before he crammed the story back into Fritz’s book bag - by one thing in particular: the stranger who had spoken at the dinner table about the blue flower had been understood by one person and one only. This person must have been singled out as distinct from all the rest of his family. It was a matter of recognising your own fate and greeting it as familiar when it came.

Vision at Sophie's Grave

Novalis recorded this in Hymns to The Night

Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren mound which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my life -- lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anxiety unspeakable -- powerless, and no longer anything but a conscious misery. -- As there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing: -- then, out of the blue distances -- from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight -- and at once snapped the bond of birth -- the chains of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning -- the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world -- Thou, Night-inspiration, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me -- the region gently upheaved itself; over it hovered my unbound, newborn spirit. The mound became a cloud of dust -- and through the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved. In her eyes eternity reposed -- I laid hold of her hands, and the tears became a sparkling bond that could not be broken. Into the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years. On her neck I welcomed the new life with ecstatic tears. It was the first, the only dream -- and just since then I have held fast an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night, and its Light, the Beloved.

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The Shortest History of Germany by James Hawes

Being woefully ignorant of the history of every country but my own I thought I should read this history of Germany particularly as it claims to be the shortest.

The author takes the dividing line of the River Elbe as the fixed point of German history, from the Romans through to the present day. During the centuries this line represented in turn, the separation of the power of Rome in the West from the Slavic hordes in the East, the Catholic West & South from the Protestant East and the nationalism and militarism of Prussia in the East from the democracies to the West

UK children find understanding history tricky, or perhaps boring, but at least the sea is a fixed border and the reigns of Kings and Queens, and the lives of major figures help fix the chronology, so pity then German children faced with shifting borders, 3-way power struggles between The Emperor, The Electors (not electorate!) and the Pope. Add to the mix the changing alliances and aggression from all the neighbours and you could forgive any German child from throwing in the towel. Do not despair. This book picks its way at great speed through the mess and brings order to the chaos. Above all it makes one realise yet again how the ordinary lives of the hoi polloi (you and me) meant almost nothing to the rulers and the rich. The book is full of helpful, simple equations, such as:

Theory: radical belief in change through conflict + Practice: worship of state power = The perfect philosophy for extremists of both left and right.

At the end of WWII when Germany was partitioned along, yes, you've guessed it, the line of the Elbe, the map looked uncannily like the map of 814CE, at the death of Charlemagne.

I've no idea what a historian would make of this book, though the author studied German at Hertford College, Oxford and UCL, and held lectureships in German, but for this ignorant layman it helped fill in some of the yawning gaps in his knowledge, and it was a quick, easy read. It was also an important reminder that my UK-centric view of history creates a distorting lens which should be cast aside to let us see more clearly the mass of humanity beyond our shores as individuals engaged in the same ups and downs of life as me, rather than foreign nationals who want a slice of my cake.

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