Telling the truth is dangerous: how Robert Dudley Edwards changed Irish history forever
Neasa MacErlean
(Tartaruga Books, £11.99 / €14.00)
By Ciaran Brady
Biographies and (worse) autobiographies of historians have become so common that one might imagine they were immensely interesting which, given the generally unexciting lives of scholars, they are not. There are, however, exceptions; and this book, despite its overblown title, is one.
It is in several ways timely. It is timely not least because it brings vividly back to life a figure of great personal magnetism whose remarkable impact on all those who encountered him is likely to be lost as the generations he taught themselves begin to fade into history.
The individual who emerges from Neasa MacErlean’s extensive set of interviews with those who knew Robert Dudley Edwards is indeed arresting, powerful , but not always attractive:
“Many who met him were able to recall decades later how he appeared the first time they saw him. For a powerful man he was surprisingly nimble, seemingly arising out of nowhere at the start of a lecture and able to quieten a room simply by entering it”.
Or again: “His height affords him the luxury of looking down on the viewer which gives him a sense of authority. His lips are full and sensual which makes him attractive to both men and women.”
These are well chosen observations which imply some less appealing characteristics in her grandfather from which MacErlean to her credit does not shrink.
Dudley
“Dudley”, as he was referred to generally by his contemporaries, could use his imposing physique to bully those whom he regarded as weak or insincere (whether or not they actually were); and on this matter MacErlean dutifully records his abuse of his very able and productive junior colleague at UCD, Kevin B. Nowlan.
Dudley could also be cruel – in word, though not in deed. MacErlean does a neat job in squaring this trait off with another of Dudley’s known defects, flirtation, in the following way: “he was not a softly spoken ladies man”; or again, “his recurring sin was that streak of cruelty which meant he could enjoy making people feel wrong footed or embarrassed”.
Nor does MacErlean evade discussion of the underlying disease which was the cause of so much of Dudley’s outrageous conduct: his alcoholism.
Those who actually wrote history were not distant authorities, but ordinary flesh and blood humans”
It is this unblinking acknowledgement of RDE’s faults that makes her assessment of his virtues and strengths all the more convincing. Of these the greatest and most comprehending was generosity. Though he could be a sharp reviewer, and an even more demanding external examiner (as the notorious controversy over Conor Cruise O’Brien’s doctoral thesis – discussed at length here – reveals), RDE was perennially encouraging and supportive of undergraduate and postgraduate students, even (as I have personal reasons to know) other professors’ postgraduates.
Among the many instances recurring throughout the book two may be noted. One was Dudley’s role as chair of the UCD committee of enquiry established after the student revolt (“the gentle revolution”) of 1968 when, even though few of its recommendations were enacted, he succeed in persuading the students that at least some of the academic staff were on their side.
The other, of longer lasting significance, was his initiation of and constant support for the Irish History Students Association’s annual conference. Its revelry aside, this annual jamboree where undergraduates from all the third level institutions were encouraged to give papers, and comment on each other’s research, was of inestimable value in generating an esprit de corps among budding historians, quite unknown among other arts students.
But it also had the wonderful effect of demonstrating that those who actually wrote history were not distant authorities, but ordinary flesh and blood humans. I still remember fondly an interchange between one undergraduate and a slightly pompous young historian: “You wrote that? I thought you were dead!”
Career
MacErlean’s account of these and similar instances lays the ground for what I believe is the central insight of her book: “ At heart”, she writes, “Dudley was not a teacher: he was instead a student who helped other students to learn. His provocative but comradely attitude electrified undergraduates who had previously learned by rote under authoritarian teachers”.
This is exactly right, and also very valuable.
For it casts in a different and more focused light several of the contradictions in RDE’s intellectual life which appear throughout this book: his mischievousness / high seriousness; iconoclasm / orthodoxy, and above all the gap between his industry (he even worked on Christmas Day) as researcher, reader and archivist, and his modest written output.
RDE’s writer’s block which led him in later years to resort (regrettably) to the dictaphone was doubtless the result of several causes. But an important source is to be found in the tension between the attraction to history which he felt as an enthusiastic reader and teacher, and the heavy responsibilities he felt as a “professor” of history as a rigorous scientific discipline.
Or between the enthusiastic lifelong reader of H.G. Wells’s Outline of World History and of Herbert Butterfield’s polemic against The Whig interpretation of History and the obedient follower of the austere contemporary philosopher of history, Michael Oakeshott.
Though Oakeshott features fleetingly in this book, the extent of his influence over RDE is somewhat underrated. Known to each other since their shared days in London in the 1930s, RDEs friendship with Oakeshott was, as RDE’s diaries show, well established by the early 1950s.
There was need to find alternative archives – no less biased, perhaps, but with different character and perspective”
Oakeshott’s monograph on the epistemological foundations of history, Experience and its Modes(London: Michael Joseph, 1933) was a set text on the UCD history graduate programme. Remarkably Oakeshott, though a trained philosopher and not an historian, was through RDE’s influence, appointed external examiner for history in all the NUI colleges between 1950 and 1954.
Oakeshott’s defense of the integrity of historical knowledge was powerful, but highly restrictive: historians must abide by one golden rule they must never go beyond the available evidence, must never ask questions to which the evidence cannot produce an answer, must never derive conclusions other than those which the evidence obliges historians to believe.
On the surface it might seem odd that the exuberant RDE should have been attracted to the philosopher of austerity. But for the historian of religion in early modern Ireland, which was how RDE began his scholarly career, such injunctions invited a particularly urgent imperative.
As the dominant surviving record of Ireland during the period – the English administrative and personal archives – was profoundly and irredeemably biased, the only way its true history could eventually be written was through the construction of an alternative competing archive against which the dominant source might be tested, questioned and qualified.
Given that the only readily available set of records – the Gaelic sources – were fragmentary, difficult to assess and no less biased, there was need to find alternative archives – no less biased, perhaps, but with different character and perspective which would allow of a process of adjudication which we might now call ‘triangulation’.
Archive
Of these the largest, most extensive and richest was the archive of the Catholic Church, and MacErlean’s book supplies ample detail of his indefatigable efforts, using all his charms and occasionally his less attractive traits to unlock the treasures of this indispensable body of material.
Research within this clerical archive has already yielded and will continue to yield precisely the hitherto unknown dimensions of Irish history which RDE had anticipated.
But though the largest the Catholic archive was by no means the only alternative. And throughout his career RDE expended so much of his energy on the great archive project, not only acquiring new sources, but establishing the framework for the training of professional archivists in Ireland, and finally, and selflessly donating his private diaries (of which MacErlean has made so much) as a special kind of archive in themselves.
There were occasions when the eternal student Dudley broke out, with all his exuberance, iconoclasm, mischievousness and outrageousness”
But the austere Oakeshottian philosophy of history demanded great sacrifices from its evangelist which included reticence, caution to the point of dullness, and the passing on to others of the opportunities afforded by his foundation work.
This was a surrender RDE was mostly willing to make. But there were occasions when the eternal student Dudley broke out, with all his exuberance, iconoclasm, mischievousness and outrageousness so well remembered by those who knew him.
It is the signal virtue of this book that it has lucidly and intimately captured the complexities and contradictions of the man who delighted in being “mysterious”.
Ciaran Brady was formerly Professor of Early Modern History and Historiography in TCD.
Throughout his career RDE expended so much of his energy on the great archive project, not only acquiring new sources, but establishing the framework for the training of professional archivists in Ireland, and finally, and selflessly donating his private diaries”