One of the satisfactions of history is the pleasure of nostalgia. All of us have moments when it seems as if things were better when we were younger; and from that it’s only a step to the feeling that some earlier period in our history was somehow better in most if not all respects than the present. It was something of this feeling, we admit, that gave rise to the special issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE on the Twenties, last August; and we have received a gratifying number of letters showing that the feeling was shared by many of our readers. Among them was one from Mr. Frederic B. Leach, of Nutley, New Jersey, who was reminded of a parody he once heard of Edward Arlington Robinson’s famous poem, “Miniver Cheevy.” The parody, called “Miniver Cheevy, Junior,” ends:
Miniver longed—as all men long—
To turn back time—(his eye would moisten)—
To dance the Charleston, play Mahjongg,
And smuggle Joyce in.
Miniver Cheevy, Junior, swore,
Drank till his health was quite imperiled;
Miniver sighed, and read some more F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The article about Burma-Shave jingles in our December issue also stirred fond recollections, and we are beginning to get notes complaining that the author, Frank Rowsome, Jr., ignored “the best one,” or “my favorite.” The first such remonstrance came from Mr. Richard M. Ketchum, of Bronxville, New York, who regrets the omission of: THE BEARDED LADY / TRIED A JAR / SHE’S NOW / A FAMOUS / MOVIE STAR.
The Vindicators
Closely related to nostalgia for a former era is admiration for some individual historical figure who in one way or another has particular appeal. It may be a man whose personality was powerfully attractive to his contemporaries, like George Washington, or it may be quite the reverse. There seems to be a type of history buff who especially enjoys trying to vindicate the memory of someone who in his own lifetime fell into disrepute. For example, we got a letter from the General Charles Lee Research Committee, of Lee, Massachusetts, objecting to the reproduction of Emanuel Leutze’s long-lost painting of Washington cursing at Lee at the Battle of Monmouth (AMERICAN HERITAGE, June, 1965). This, they said, was “a further extension of the unfair legend of General Lee,” after whom their town is named. We have written the committee, pointing out that we never claimed historical precision as one of Leutze’s virtues; and we are glad to note further, here, that this group of Lee champions does not seem inclined to romanticize their hero. While they claim that Lee was “a philosopher, an expert soldier, and a lover of liberty,” and that the testimony at his court martial was inadequate proof of his guilt in the Monmouth incident, they also upbraid Leutze for showing Lee “with a rather nice face,” when in fact he was “probably the homeliest man who ever donned a United States Army uniform”—a harsh judgment, we feel.
We also have a communication from the American Society for the Faithful Recording of History, of Buffalo, New York—which despite its broad title appears to be narrowly focussed on correcting “the prolonged President Harding smear.” Mr. Edwin K. Gross, who is listed without company on the society’s letterhead as “a Harding Historian” as well as “Founder and National Executive,” was much annoyed by Bruce Bliven’s article in our August issue, “Tempest over Teapot,” which went into the peculations of the Harding administration in some detail. We must admit that he has caught us and Mr. Bliven in one flat-footed error: the statement that Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior, was “dismissed by Harding’s successor, President Coolidge.” Mr. Gross is quite right in saying that Fall resigned from the Cabinet while Harding was still President.
Pride Followeth a Landfall
But if devout dissent is what can be expected from associations given to the vindication of famous men who have long been considered cads, it is nothing to the fuss aroused when a veritable folk hero like Christopher Columbus is thought to have suddenly had his reputation dimmed. In our October issue we were proud to share with the Yale University Press the announcement of the finding of the now widely known Vinland Map of 1440, which furnishes indisputable evidence that the Norse discovery of America at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries was not (despite long belief to the contrary) unknown to pre-Columbian scholars. Public reaction to the announcement was quick and surprising. Every newspaper carried the story, many to the accompaniment of amusing cartoons (see opposite); but what astonished us was the roar of outrage that went up from partisans of Columbus all over the country, and particularly from many Italian-Americans. Now, this fascinating map, though it indirectly adds substance to the reputation of Leif Ericsson, certainly takes little from that of Columbus, whose rediscovery of America was an independent triumph and the beginning of the permanent development of the New World.
Yet all over the country, Italian-Americans hit the ceiling, shedding a tutti-frutti of charges against map, Yale, and the Norsemen themselves. On a wall in the Italian section of Boston someone scrawled, “Leif Ericsson is a fink.” Across the river in Cambridge a city councillor named Alfred E. Vellucci cried that Yale was making an attempt “to disgrace the Italian race of America,” and demanded that Harvard suspend all athletic contests with Yale until that institution apologized.
Down in New York, girding itself for the vast annual Columbus Day parade, the Vinland Map put a Yale man on the spot. Mayor (but then Candidate) John V. Lindsay, facing an Italian audience, shrugged off Alma Mater and declared, “Saying that Columbus did not discover America is as silly as saying that DiMaggio doesn’t know anything about baseball, or that Toscanini and Caruso were not great musicians.” Lindsay’s host at the rally, John Napoleon La Corte, general director of the Italian Historical Society of America, could not contain himself. He would not send his son to Yale, he announced. “Many good American families will not send their children to Yale,” he added. Having thus dashed the university’s hopes, Mr. La Corte said that he would enlist the help of “the Vatican, world historians, and the National Geographic Society” in proving that its new map meant nothing. “We’re going to put Yale University against the wall,” he said.
In Chicago, where putting people against the wall is more or less traditional, the chairman of the local Columbus Day parade, a lawyer named Victor Arrigo, called the map “a Communist plot.” Referring no doubt to The Tartar Relation, one of the manuscripts accompanying the map, he added that “You can almost see the Russian influence in the title.” How could Mr. Arrigo know that the Relation was written some six centuries before the birth of Karl Marx? How could Mr. La Corte know that the National Geographic Society sponsored the dig that recently found the archaeological evidence of Norse settlement in Newfoundland?
Well, one group concerned with the discovery of America remained magnificently calm, their claim to priority completely beyond contest. “You will forgive me for saying,” observed Mr. Richard Halfmoon, a chief of the Nez Perce Indians, “that this controversy does not interest me or my people.”
The Voiceless Dead
Dead men, of course, tell no tales, either in defense of their lives or in explanation of how and why they died. Many of our readers found Gene Smith’s article about the dead of World War I, “Still Quiet on the Western Front”—also in our October issue—very moving. One of the most eloquent letters we received came from Thomas J. Cummins, of Oakland, California.
“Even now,” Mr. Cummins writes, “the trumpets are sounding once again.… And the harvest of white crosses and Stars of David, and the boatloads of flag-draped coffins will testify to the endless capacity of man to kill. The swivel-chair patriots and the street-corner heroes don’t die in these wars they extol so vehemently.… How comfortable it must be, to demand that someone else go out and die for your ‘honor.’ How glorious, the knowledge that your bones will be animated to a safe old age, rather than fertilizing a patch of muddy turf on a ‘field of glory!’ And the only ones who really know, have their mouths stopped with that same mud. On behalf of them, I thank you.…”
