For the last 3 decades, Bill and I shared
his excitement of explorations which took us across continents. We explored the
past and present on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In this blog, I want to
concentrate on the ‘American’ side of Bill. Bill had been to the United States
a number of times before we met. First, in the mid-1950s, as part of a group of
British cadets, he went to the United States, hosted by that country in an
effort to create a close alliance between the U.S. and its allies in the post-World
War II world. The cadets landed at Bolling Airforce base near Washington D.C.
from where they were escorted to a number of parties and tours for their
benefit. He said that it was from this
experience, he became infatuated with America. I remember Bill telling me that
he thought to have a career as a pilot but in the end this did not happen.
Instead, he continued with his education and in 1957 entered The Queen’s
College, Oxford. Never-the-less, the idea of America stayed with him. Later, when I asked him why he liked my
country so much, he replied, “Because it works.” I, on the other hand, loved
Britain and at one point spent more years living in the U.K. than in the U.S.
Bill’s entrance into academia enabled him
to use the opportunities afforded him to visit America on a number of
occasions. His year at Yale (1969-1970) working on the Poems of Affairs of State project and later as a visiting lecturer
at Iowa University deepened his connection to America. However, it was from the
latter part of the 1980s that Bill began to make more trips to the United
States, in particularly to my home state of Pennsylvania. Bill had just
finished Reluctant Revolutionaries in
1988 when the tercentenary of the 1688 revolution was being celebrated in
Washington D.C. by the British and Dutch embassies. Bill was invited to give a
paper on the consequences of 1688 and so off we went.
It was at this time as a graduate student
that I was swept up in Bill’s amazing intellectual curiosity and energy. His
enthusiasm was infectious motivating me to deepen my understanding of 17th
century English politics by studying the political life of the English
politician, Sir John Reresby. By the time I finished my thesis, the mention of William
Penn in Reresby’s Memoirs gave rise
to more questions about the Quaker’s role as an English politician as well as
proprietor of Pennsylvania. Bill was already guiding me away from my myopic
view of Penn from the American perspective. From this point, we began our
transatlantic trek in earnest as he concentrated more and more on the theme of
British America. Although he published a number of works on this theme,
beginning with British America, a
pamphlet for the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (1985), this
transatlantic approach later culminated in our collaboration in the publication
of Colonial America: from Jamestown to
Yorktown (2002). The year before, Bill was staying with me when the infamous
attack on the American mainland occurred. This murderous assault inspired the
preface to the book.
Bill embraced my home state so much that he
extended his already prodigious knowledge of British colonial affairs into
Pennsylvania politics. In the summer of 1991 and 1992, he received the Barra
Fellowship at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Library Company of
Philadelphia, as well as the Mellon Research Fellowship at the American
Philosophical Society which enabled him to work in Philadelphia with me while I
worked on my Ph.D. The following year, Bill held the Harrison Professorship at
the College of William and Mary. This was a one semester position which enabled
him to explore the southern colonies. Throughout this time, however, Bill was also
working on other projects that involved Britain and Europe. In the autumn of
1992, Bill travelled back to Europe to hold a fellowship at the Netherlands
Institute of Advanced Studies to examine the connection between Britain and the
Dutch republic.
During these years, between teaching
duties, we used my home in Lancaster County, as a base for exploring the east
coast and putting faces to names, so to speak, when visiting historic sites
such as Independence Hall, Jamestown, Yorktown, and Plymouth Plantation. Later,
we explored the west coast and spent the summer of 1998 teaching at Portland
State University. For him it was the third time since 1971. The year before that,
in 1997, and for the fourth time, he held a fellowship at the Huntington
Library in Pasadena, California.
Continuing on with the Anglo-American
theme, Bill stretched toward the backcountry of Pennsylvania and up the
Susquehanna River while moving forward in time in the 18th century.
He seamlessly knitted together the transatlantic link in examining the English inventor,
controversial preacher, and contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Priestley
who migrated from England to Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Priestley’s house still
stands on the banks of the Susquehanna. The picture above shows Bill at
Priestley’s house with the river in the background. Although Bill’s first work
on Priestley, and for that matter, the poet, Robert Southey, did not emerge
until later, he was already gathering materials for them in the second half of
the 1990s. Also while teaching a course on English literature in the long
eighteenth century, Bill was working on his next book, Literature and Society in Eighteenth Century England (1998). He
spent his early retirement in 1997 finishing the book near the Susquehanna
while I held a temporary teaching post at the nearby university. The idea of
creating a utopian community was something that Southey and Coleridge
contemplated in their Pantisocractic plans, the location of which would be
along the Susquehanna. Bill was intrigued with the idea since he always thought
of the river in romantic terms. One result of that was to travel toward
Pittsburgh in search of another utopian sight called Beulah, which was settled
in 1794 by a Welsh radical, Morgan John Rhys. Out of these explorations we
attended and gave papers at a conference at Johnstown on the subject of utopian
communities.
In addition to the literature and society
course that he taught in his final year at Leeds, I think the combination of spending
time in Pennsylvania, exploring the Susquehanna valley, the utopian idea, literature,
and politics motivated Bill even more to concentrate on Southey. He applied and
received the Douglas W. Bryant/ASECS Fellowship at Harvard University in 2000
where he was able to work on material related to Southey. Also, by this time,
he was publishing an article (setting out his stall, as he would say), “Robert
Southey’s Letters to Edward Hawke Locker” in the Huntington Library Quarterly (October, 2000). This would be the
first of a number of works on the man. It
was also at this time that he began to consolidate his hold on his subject by
moving to Carlisle in England to be near Southey’s home in the Lake District.
He was appointed Visiting Professor to University of Northumbria which gave him
an academic foothold in Carlisle. Later, and crucially, he was appointed
Special Professor in English Studies of the University of Nottingham where he
collaborated with Southey expert, Professor Lynda Pratt, on the Letters of the
poet. Ultimately, his book, Robert Southey, Entire Man of Letters
(2006), was published to critical acclaim. Bill’s insight into his subject was
so deep that sometimes, it was difficult to separate the author from the
subject. I will always maintain that to understand Bill is to read Southey.
Bill continued to search out material for
Lynda, but once again, he began to look across the ocean with an eye to the
American Revolution. This time, he lit upon Thomas Paine. So, from about 2007,
the east coast, in particularly, Pennsylvania, became home plate. From there we
travelled to New Rochelle, New York, to a conference where Bill presented a
paper on Paine. The Political Biography
of Thomas Paine (2013) became a definitive work on the man not only because
Bill expertly weaved the transatlantic aspects of Paine and his time, he established
the point that Paine’s radicalism did not develop until later in his career. For
Americans like me who were fed on Paine’s radical credentials, it was a little
surprising to learn that perhaps what we were taught in high school lacked a certain balance.
Throughout Bill’s time in the United
States, he combined his research with his search for great jazz venues whether
it was the Newport Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, or on the west coast. After discovering Philadelphia’s Jazz scene,
he made sure to explore what the city had to offer. Philly was particularly
appealing because of its nearness to New York City – only about an hour by
train. On Bill’s first visit to Philadelphia, he suggested that we go to
Ortlieb’s, a jazz bar that he had heard about. Knowing that it was not in the
best part of town, and I with an undependable car, hesitated, but Bill insisted.
The music was great, but I kept thinking about my car in the parking lot at
midnight and whether I would have trouble starting it. Bill seemed oblivious to
the possible dangers of going into such a section of the city just as he was not
concerned when I took him to Baltimore, Maryland in search of food and music (Big
cities, in that period, had their challenges in certain parts and being street
smart was an acquired skill). Bill liked most forms of music but even though I
introduced him to Blues and B.B. King, who he liked very much, and to new
country, his heart remained with jazz. I asked him why and he simply replied
that, for him, it was the most intellectual of the music genre.
Bill made friends wherever he went and I
was often surprised by who he knew whether it was in the academic, music, or
the political world. He returned to the States many times until the last couple
of years when it became more difficult to travel. I was just as happy to spend
my time in Carlisle helping him visit the cats in the local shelter as he was chairman
of the local branch of the R.S.P.C.A., and sitting in his garden sharing wine,
listening to Jazz Record Requests and talking about the latest project. During
those times, he would remind me that it didn’t get better than that.
I was fascinated and more than a little
intimidated by Bill’s thought process. It was never linear and certainly not
just lateral. He had the ability, like all world class scholars, to be able to
juggle many ideas at one time while picking them out as he needed them,
ultimately showing their connection. He did this with apparent ease and, most
of all, with modesty. Anybody who knew him, as a friend or student or loved one,
felt his charm and genuine concern for getting the best out of them. His
unflagging energy and insatiable curiosity could be summed up in the music of
Shorty Roger’s Shortstop and B.B.
King’s, Enough is not Enough.
M.Geiter.
No comments:
Post a Comment