Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

by a remark of Aristotle’s, that tragedy was “more philosophic” than history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned with merely what had been. This summed up for her what she had often felt, but could not have exactly formulated. She saw that the department over which she presided was at best an inferior one. She saw that just what she had liked⁠—and rightly liked⁠—in poor dear Herodotus was just what prevented him from being a good historian. It was wrong to mix up facts and fancies. But why should her present servants deal with only one little special set of the variegated facts of life? It was not in her power to interfere. The Nine, by the terms of the charter that Zeus had granted to them, were bound to leave their servants an absolutely free hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading the works which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once or twice in the course of a century, she would glance into this or that new history book, only to lay it down with a shrug of her shoulders. Some of the medieval chronicles she rather liked. But when, one day, Pallas asked her what she thought of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire her only answer was ὅστιϛ τοῖα ἔχει εν ήδονῇ ἔχει ἐν ήδονῇ τοῖα (For people who like that kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like). This she did let slip. Generally, throughout all the centuries, she kept up a pretence of thinking history the greatest of all the arts. She always held her head high among her Sisters. It was only on the sly that she was an omnivorous reader of dramatic and lyric poetry. She watched with keen interest the earliest developments of the prose romance in southern Europe; and after the publication of Clarissa Harlowe she spent practically all her time in reading novels. It was not until the spring of the year 1863 that an entirely new element forced itself into her peaceful life. Zeus fell in love with her.

To us, for whom so quickly “time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,” there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in the thought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and call of his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable that he has not yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the lady of his choice, and is still at pains to transform himself into whatever object he deems likeliest to please her. To Clio, suddenly from Olympus, he flashed down in the semblance of Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea (four vols., large 8vo, half-calf). She saw through his disguise immediately, and, with great courage and independence, bade him begone. Rebuffed, he was not deflected. Indeed it would seem that Clio’s high spirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form⁠—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of The Historical Review, the notebook of Professor Carl Vöertschlaffen⁠ ⁠… One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio’s secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history. These dry details of what had actually happened were a relief, she told herself, from all that make-believe.

One Sunday afternoon⁠—the day before that very Monday on which this narrative opens⁠—it occurred to her how fine a thing history might be if the historian had the novelist’s privileges. Suppose he could be present at every scene which he was going to describe, a presence invisible and inevitable, and equipped with power to see into the breasts of all the persons whose actions he set himself to watch⁠ ⁠…

While the Muse was thus musing, Zeus (disguised as Miss Annie S. Swan’s latest work) paid his usual visit. She let her eyes rest on him. Hither and thither she divided her swift mind, and addressed him in winged words. “Zeus, father of gods and men, cloud-compeller, what wouldst thou of me? But first will I say what I would of thee”; and she besought him to extend to the writers of history such privileges as are granted to novelists. His whole manner had changed. He listened to her with the massive gravity of a ruler who never yet has allowed private influence to obscure his judgment. He was silent for some time after her appeal. Then, in a voice of thunder, which made quake the slopes of Parnassus, he gave his answer. He admitted the disabilities under which historians laboured. But the novelists⁠—were they not equally handicapped? They had to treat of persons who never existed, events which never were. Only by the privilege of being in the thick of those events, and in the very bowels of those persons, could they hope to hold the reader’s attention. If similar privileges were granted to the historian, the demand for novels would cease forthwith, and many thousand of hardworking, deserving men and women would be thrown out of employment. In fact, Clio had asked him an impossible favour. But he might⁠—he said he conceivably might⁠—be induced to let her have her way just once. In that event, all she would have to do was to keep her eye on the world’s surface, and then, so soon as she had reason to think that somewhere was impending something of great import, to choose an historian. On him, straightway, Zeus would confer invisibility, inevitability, and psychic penetration, with a flawless memory thrown in.

On the following afternoon, Clio’s roving eye saw Zuleika stepping from the Paddington platform into the Oxford train. A few moments later I found myself suddenly