"The Many Deaths of General Wolfe," Schama, pp. 3-72

Discussion topics: What are Schama's goals in writing this first section of Dead Certainties and how well does he achieve them?

Suggestions:

• AT THE FACE OF THE CLIFF- attempts to recreate the setting and drama of the actual event by seeing it through the eyes of the soldier who ultimately delivers the message of victory to the dying Wolfe. Begins with the moments leading up to the battle on the Plains of Abraham using the poor spelling and dialect of the soldiers to convey a sense of being present as well as authenticity. Then moves to a brief review of Wolfe's career, relations with his family, his betrothed, his officers; state of Wolfe's health. (p. 16)How much was left out? Would it change the impressiion left by the letter? Source? Story of the use of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard": the paths of glory lead but to the grave. Although not noted, this story is taken from Francis Parkman, Montcalm & Wolfe,, vol. 3, p. 129. To what degree is Schama correct when he writes about Wolfe: "He held in his hands the design of his posterity. By making Britain's history he could at last make his own. He was at the cliff face." (p. 20).

• IN COMMAND- Schama jumps to April 29, 1771, and a discussion of the creation of Benjamin West's painting. Schama largely accepts the argument that West's painting defied convention (although he acknowledges that the details of what 'convention' means and Galt's account is the subject of historical debate). (see another view). According to Schama, West "had exposed a serious contradiction in [the requirements of the painting] --both to be strictly faithful to the details of narrative and to render them poetically noble by the exercise of the imagination." He produces a "grandiloquent lie," of which the most startling fiction was the Indian who emodied "the esssence of natural aristocracy in his Michelangelesque torso and noble, even Roman, profile? To Schama West intended to "celebrate America itself; the raw fibour of the New World, a place of buckskin and forest virtues that might supply the necessary power and resources to regenerage a decadent and enervated Europe." (pp. 30-31). It was an "icon that told a story." Basically the painting blotted out history (p. 37). Thus Wolfe's painting replaces history or, rather, becomes history. "What more could possibly be said?

• DEEP IN THE FOREST- Schama then jumps ahead to November 21, 1893. Why? Is it to place the foremost literary rendition of Wolfe's death, that by Francis Parkman, into context as a counter point to the painting or, perhaps, as an extension of the painting? Is Schama attempting to demonstrate that the historian and the hero are blended and confused through the pen of the historian? Is it to demonstrate how Parkman soared above his sources and escaped from "the archive, places where the spirit became desicated?" (p. 50).

  Without quoting (or summarizing) first what Parkman had to say on Wolfe's death, we are treated to Schama's argument that Parkman was reflecting not only his own pain, but his love, not of the Wild West, but the Natural, older beauty of Nature in New England, a beauty remembered by a nearly blind man who felt that that beauty was the real essence of America, not the West of the Beadle Dime Novels?

  Schama first mentions the murder of George Parkman on p. 57, for no apparent reason, and then dissolves into a discussion of Parkman's marriage that is MOST confusing. Why? (pp. 58-59) When did Parkman marry? When did she die? When did his son die? How old was the son when he died? How careful a biographer is Schama?.

  Why does Schama like Parkman as a historian? Is it because "Parkman had evolved into a craftsman who energies were pinpointed into minute detailed task. He had become a stitcher of tapestry, albeit with slowness, like those at Bayeux ... . As in such a tapestry there were brilliantly fabricated moments, flights of pure fanciful embroidery, stitched into the epic" (p. 63)?

  In sum what is most important to Schama in the writing of history? Imagination?

  Schama ends his chapter with Parkman dissolving into Wolfe and Wolfe dissolving into Parkman, the writing of the history unstoppable until the death of one or the other? Yet there is not sense of what Parkman really had to say about Wolfe's death. That moment seems strangely irrelevant to Schama, or is it?

• ON THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM- 9 a.m., 9/13/1759. Schama returns to his narrator, the messenger of victory to the dying Wolfe. We at last have the death of Wolfe laid before us, unvarnished and, we assume, accurate (but how accurate?). How do we know what we know? Who can we trust and why?

  Why does Schama end the chapter the way he does? What other painting is he concerned about? Why Is Katherine Lowther concerned about it? (p.19?). Could she, at that point, have known of Wolfe's will?

• PARKMAN'S ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF WOLFE:

  The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan. Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as bloodhounds. At the English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more. Here Wolfe himself led the charge, at the head of the Louisbourg grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of the artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. "There's no need," he answered; "it's all over with me." A moment after, one of them cried out: "they run, see how they run!" "Who run?" Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. "The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!" "Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned the dying man: "tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles river, to cut off their retreat from the bridge." Then, turning on his side, he murmured, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!" and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled. (Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1915 ed.), III, pp. 140-141.)

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