THE FURNACE DOOR

[Stanley]

THE FURNACE DOOR

24 February 2005

(My primary reason for taking the trouble to publish evidence of my work is first to ensure that the work (flawed though it might be) is not lost when I die but available to those who have an interest. The secondary motive is to let my descendants know something about their roots, who Stanley Graham was and how his brain worked. I got mail from my old mentor Bob Bliss and here's my reply. In case you're wondering about the title, it stems from a description in 'From Russia With Love'. Rosa Klebs was summoned to a meeting of the Inner Praesidium where she was made party to secret information, this was described as a glimpse through the furnace door.)

(Bob's letter:)
While I agree that contemporary political discourse wants nobility and intelligence, and a few other attributes desired by Daniel Kerr, I don't think you should be too downcast about the differences between the past and the present. There's a danger of becoming identified with the decline and fall of western civilization brigade for one thing (e.g. Kenneth Clark), and for another you have to remember that particular circumstances (not just "the past") joined to make Daniel Kerr and the Putney debaters (1647) sit up and take notice of the world about them. One thing about Daniel and about the soldiers at Putney is that they had been through a lot. In a similar vein, my dad and his friend, Joe Mattes, both newspapermen (Joe actually, dad in his heart of hearts) used often to get drunk and say "what this country needs is a good depression." They were serious, even though had it come they might have had to give up their bourbon. 
I am not in favour of either depressions or wars, and it would be perverse to be so but if we look at seismic changes in general, e.g. the price and trade revolution of the 16th century, the industrial revolution we see circumstances forcing themselves on people. In such situations, people get much more interested in real life than they are (for instance) today in (for instance) Washington, DC, and Whitehall, London. They start thinking about it, trying to figure out "the world as it is, the world as it has been understood, and the world as it might be imagined" (to quote from a Missouri higher education document which I drafted) and are likely to come up with some fairly interesting views and conclusions. This desire to find out what the hell is going on is the essence of modernism (NOT post-modernism, of course, that is the speciality of Bush and many English departments, for surprisingly similar reasons). 
I haven't taught Putney or Puritanism for years but I used to tell my students that modernism may have begun with Descartes and Calvin, but the New England town covenants and the Putney debates prove beyond doubt that the modern world also impinged on the consciousness and improved the intelligence of ordinary folk too. In Anglophone political culture, indeed, I would be willing to defend the proposition that "the modern world began at Putney, in 1647." Austin [Woolrych] never did see this, which was a disappointment. I suppose he knew too much... 
Across the American middle west, men who had fought in the civil war and survived moved across the landscape and settled new towns. And their women, too. They'd been through a lot and were interested in where they had been and how things (real things) might turn out. Among other oddities, they read, and they got their children to read, too. I have an 1895 letter where Daniel's oldest daughter May writes (from Beatrice, Nebraska, of all places) to tell her kid sister (my grandmother Lillian) how to read Victor Hugo. Of course they were also interested in who was going with whom and who had married whom and all that stuff. There are some absolutely marvellous letters about that (see one, attached, from my grandmother's best childhood friend, Margaret Young). They were, oddly, human beings. But they also understood there was a bit more to be thought about, that things might not be as simple as ABC. So Margaret is aware of the comedic potential of all her gossip, and indeed of her life. To understand oneself is to be able to laugh at the subject. They or their parents had been places, seen great things, even done great things, been part of (and tossed about by) "history." Now, their third and fourth generation descendants, a long lifetime removed from the great depression and almost that far from the last great war, still living in Beatrice and Grundy Center and Possum Trot, have no reason to think very hard about anything outside their comfortable, circumscribed lives. They have never been there, done that. So they listen to cheerleader preachers assuring them (as did the established church in 1600) that if they keep their noses clean and wipe their butts well enough God will reward them, in this world and the next. And, lo and behold, it happens. Some get a lot more rewards than others, but as long as we can keep them agitated about gay marriage and stem cell research and axes of evil they won't think very hard about that disparity, because they don't have to think very hard about anything. 
So, failing a great depression or a terrible war, how do those of us who remain awake rouse our slumbering neighbours? You tell me.
And, if you are really, really good, I will tell you what is still modern about John Calvin. So my advice, as always, is to be not good. 
Cheers. Bob.

(My reply:)
Bob, I like Margaret’s letter. It’s a window on the world and I can see her sat in the schoolroom after the class has gone home with the fire dying down in the stove and a February storm building outside. (Was she more comfortable writing there than with the Dodds?) It sounds as though as well as teaching she had to sweep the school out and split the kindling, you lecturers are cosseted today! On the surface the report on liaisons is trivial but it wasn’t to her, if a woman’s position in society in Iowa was anything like women in Britain this was a serious subject and we would do well to listen to her.
You must have put a lot of work into these documents and I know only too well how complicated the relationships can be. I know too that after a while you begin to read between the lines, especially in letters like this to friends as opposed to duty letters. Two lines at the end give a clue to the pressure on her. “Mother is not very well, hasn’t been for a long while.” I wonder how much distress is enfolded in that short sentence.
As for your reply and its admonitions. I don’t think I’m downcast about the ability of the good guys to work out their philosophy and the difference between right and wrong. Nobility of thought still exists, indeed, it is alive and well. What is really bugging me, [and Gordon Prentice (Our local MP) picked it up the other day when he sent me a one line email “Blair has really got to you hasn’t he.”] is that I see little evidence of coherent principles or nobility of thought in our leaders. The Tomlinson Report on education has just been published to almost universal acclaim, even from the teachers. Basically what he proposes is to scrap the system of A levels and over 400 different ‘diplomas’ and replace them with four diplomas that undercut the yawning gulf between academic and vocational and make intercourse between the two not only easier but expected. He seems to be a good man, immensely experienced and what does Blair do? Immediately states that it is a good report but the ‘gold standard’ of A levels must be retained. In other words, don’t upset the middle class wannabees by throwing them in the same pool as the upstart lower classes. Alright, the chip on my shoulder is showing but I’m in very good company. I’m not going to start listing all the faults but this is something that is working strong within me.
I understand what you mean about avoiding being identified with the ‘decline and fall of Western civilization’. I’ve never believed that, indeed I’m not sure that a civilization could totally fail. It might be overtaken by a better or more vigorous one but this doesn’t mean the automatic destruction of all that is good.
I have never studied the Putney Debates, just read some of the transcripts and marvelled at the quality of the discourse. And yes, I understand that what drove them was their experience. I have been heard to say that National Service and a spell of food rationing might not be the biggest disaster ever to hit the young of the UK. That doesn’t mean I’m advocating a war but that I wish there was some way of bringing people to realize what is actually happening to them in the real world.
You talk of seismic change. One of the biggest changes I have seen in my lifetime has been the rise of modern marketing. I was always taught that the reason the United States' industry, transport and capital formation was on a bigger scale than the UK’s was because of distance, size of the market and availability of big power sources. You need a different scale of organization to run a trans-continental rail-road than one from Liverpool to Manchester. The modern equivalent seems to me to be globalisation. Walmart rules OK! The consequence is that marketing has to manipulate the customer to achieve the sales levels necessary to support such a monster. So some crook in India uses boot polish dye to make his chillis more attractive and bingo, 400 food items in UK and God knows how many world-wide contain a carcinogen. There are plenty more examples but this is the result of the exploitation of the market to generate profit. What is the real cost? Who will pay? How many people are even aware of this?
I don’t know enough about Descartes or Calvin to be able to argue for or against their affect on ‘modernism’. Like you I recognize it at Putney and if I knew something about the documents you have been studying I’d no doubt see the linkage there as well. However, movements of thought like these need a seedbed and my own private theory is that the seed bed was comprehensively poisoned when the concept of feudalism was adopted. This put the lid on the personal aspirations of the peasants and as long as you kept them more interested in the prospect of famine than education and discourse you had them by the balls. I reckon the thing that shattered this was the Black Death. Suddenly the peasants became a valuable commodity, as many as 50% of them had died so there was no longer a labour surplus. They had seen the priests die from plague as well so where was God? They actually demanded wage rises and if they didn’t get them upped sticks and moved to where they could get them, the tyranny of the Chain of Being was shattered. Alright there was a reaction and they were screwed down again but they had tasted power and never forgot it. I see the rise of rural manufacture, the yeoman farmer, the clothiers, accumulation of capital and economic independence all stemming from those Black Rat Fleas.
Then add the translation of the Bible, better standards of education and eventually printing and the genie is out of the bottle. A world turned upside down. Or so it seemed to some. Some sort of a gestation period had ended and a miracle like the colonization of North America became possible.
Now that’s when the crap really hit the fan. What do you do with the power? In whose interests should it be wielded? ‘We the People’ wasn’t a bad place to start but as Lord Acton said absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. There is much truth in this dictum.
Alright, I’ve raced through this but time marches on, I have things to do. So, how about the question. ‘So, failing a great depression or a terrible war, how do those of us who remain awake rouse our slumbering neighbours?'
The first thing we have to do is keep the faith and believe that good can prevail. None of us has absolute power, some have more power than others. I can’t set a course for everyone but I have made up my mind what I can do. I found I could write stuff that interests about 8,000 people a week. So what I do is tell them about the past in terms that they can understand, point out to them the inequalities and the position of women. Remind them about living conditions, lack of medicine and bad education. Alert them to how religion was used as a tool for social control and point out the feet of clay of the entrepreneurs who through an accident of fate got a town of 10,000 souls to play with. It won’t change the world tomorrow but it might just kindle a flame here and there in some head that encourages them to start thinking. God knows it might even have an effect on vandalism in the town!
My point is that we can't dictate what other people must do. All we can do is our best to foster a spirit of enquiry and questioning. Get hold of imaginations and tweak them into independent thought. Get the buggers to disagree with us. Whatever it takes to drag them away from the opiate of the masses, Big Brother and it’s fellow spawn of Satan. We are dripping water wearing a large stone away. This means that we are slow, but like God, we are very sure. Once we lose that optimistic view destroy all your research, hole up in the woods and never talk to anyone again.
I’m going to have my tea. Love, S.

24 February 2005