This is a slightly odd post in that it’s about something I haven’t actually seen myself (for reasons which will be discussed below). 18 Folgate Street is regularly mentioned in lists of London’s ‘best kept secrets’ and best museums. I first heard of it years and years ago and have always been fascinated by the idea. It’s a house in Spitalfields in which the (late) owner, Dennis Severs, created a ‘still life drama’. As you move through the rooms, you pass through the lives of the fictional Gervais/Jervis family invented by Severs and consequently through a fictionalised history of the house 1724-1914. Severs also wrote a book about the house, which is beautiful and fascinating.

It’s emphatically not a reconstruction. Severs occasionally takes great pleasure in undermining the museum effect, pointing out the anachronisms and inaccuracies. And of course the whole project revels in fictionalisation and trickery. It is about ‘aura’, not authenticity. Visual and aural effects are used to give the impression that the family are just out of reach, that they have just left the room: half eaten food, ruffled bedsheets, whispers.

Crucially though it seems that visitors are not expected to empathise with the characters in the personal way that would be expected in a more conventional Living History experience. The family are archetypes. We experience the mood of each period through them; we don’t try to relate their experiences to our own.

Something about it reminds me of Collingwood on re-enactment. It’s explicitly about rethinking the era, about recreating its thought processes. For instance, in the book Severs describes how he came to understand the Georgian mentality by rethinking the steps which had led them to move the fireplace to the centre of a wall. This seems to be close to what Collingwood meant by saying that history ‘is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian’s own mind’.

According to my interpretation of Collingwood, thoughts can be ‘re-enacted’ or ‘re-thought’ because they are, in a sense, a-historical. Collingwood’s experience of rethinking Euclid’s thought that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal will be shaped by his own character, by his relation to Euclid and by his knowledge of the intervening centuries. Yet the thought: ‘the angles are equal’ remains the same. He cannot feel like Euclid but he can think like him.

Similarly, Severs’ discovery of Georgian aesthetics is mediated by his desire to communicate with the past, by late twentieth century taste and by the changed meanings of hearth, home and family. Yet something about it remains the same.

Despite this, something doesn’t quite fit. First, Collingwood specifically repudiates the idea that his kind of ‘historical knowledge’ could be gained by ‘some Wellesian machine for looking backwards through time’. And second, Severs is quite adamant that guests need to surrender to the experience, to feel, to be, not to think.

It may be that these are semantic points: 18 Folgate Street isn’t a time machine, it’s a thought experiment; and its visitors are being invited to rethink the past but not to analyse the illusion. Or it may be more than this. I’m still not sure. Has anyone been?

Oh, and on the question of why I haven’t been myself. To tell the truth, I’m scared. That whole boundary between past and present, reality and fiction does something funny to me. I know that’s the point, but it doesn’t help. I’m always a little bit scared in museums. One which is specifically about ‘unsettling’ our relationship with the past may be a step too far. Severs admitted that he tried to push his ‘guests’ to their limits. I think my limit might lie somewhere in the pages of his book.

This is a holiday photo (Crete, last summer). My initial reaction was to be disappointed that the brochure on the right hand side of the picture spoiled the timeless impression of the rest of the scene. I was going to crop it. But why? Why pretend that I somehow managed to travel through time rather than just across Europe? Why would that be a more accurate/impressive record of my holiday?

I now have it as a screensaver to remind myself of all the problems associated with our everyday approaches to the past.

I have recently been giving some thought to the opposition between history and heritage. Raphael Samuel and Patrick Wright covered this subject very engagingly in the 1980s and 90s and I have been largely drinking in their ideas. It was only last night when it struck me that as part of the first generation of historians (born 1980) to have been brought up on Living History, my own experience must necessarily differ from theirs. Rather than observing the growth of the popular heritage industry from afar, I have been immersed in it for as long as I can remember. I experienced recreation and reconstruction long before reading history books and contemplated Historical Re-enactor as a career choice before really knowing about the existence of Historians. This must have a bearing on the way that historians of my generation view their craft. Is ‘resurrectionism’ more natural, less suspect to us than to our mentors? Or have we been sucked into the formalities/prejudices of the discipline?

In my third post of the day…

A recent conversation about atheism and the privileging of faith, made me think about the privileged status the past has in our society. Things are so often justified on the grounds simply that they are old. In a particularly irksome example, the standard defence of prostitution on the grounds that ‘it’s the world’s oldest profession’ has been trotted out again this week in response to the criminalisation of men who use controlled/pimped/trafficked prostitutes.

Slavery also has a long pedigree. It doesn’t make it right.

I went to a very interesting workshop on Friday, discussing Roger Smith’s book, Being Human. It was organised by the History of Emotions group set up at Queen Mary University, in conjunction with the Wellcome Centre. They have lots of other seminars planned and I am quite excited about them. I hadn’t really thought of my project in scientific/medical terms before, but talking to people who are working on the history of emotions has opened up some new avenues. Perhaps I’m looking at the history of the emotions of history! This is probably too much of a new departure for my thesis but I’m currently very keen on moving in that direction afterwards…

My full review of Waltz with Bashir is now online at the DFG Docs website: http://www.dfgdocs.com/Resources/Doc_Reviews/137.aspx

Enjoy!

I’ve just finished teaching a seminar, which a student said was ‘actually fun’. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted!

I’ve recently been working on an article, based on the idea behind the post below on ‘The historical shiver’. I’m in the final drafting stage and am getting ready to submit it to a Journal (my first time).

Then, on Friday, someone pointed me in the direction of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. It’s a wonderful book, which I unreservedly recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it. But there it is. A beautiful, playful, engaging encapsulation of everything I was trying to say. She even follows the same trails – Freud, Derrida, Michelet. But of course it is far more than that, she weaves together so many strands – from a social history of dust, to a meditation on the meanings attached to rag rug. And all with a lightness of touch I can’t imagine ever matching.

So where to go from here? Part of me is encouraged that I managed to arrive at (some) similar points on my own, part appalled by the gulf between my writing and Steedman’s. Of course I can revise my article, making it more of a reflection on her study. But my point – the point I thought was mine alone now seems so sad, so pointless. Essentially, my article has turned to dust.   

I went to the British Library’s Taking Liberties exhibition on Saturday. it was incredible to see all those hugely important documents in one room. And so many of them were huge physically as well as politically/symbolically. These massive scrolls and sheets of vellum really show how our relationship with the written word has changed. They are imposing objects, not just working documents. My personal favourites were The Agreement of the People and Charles I’s death warrant. Also some of the suffragette material was amazing to see – particularly Emily Davison’s purse and return train ticket to London. 

All in all though (and bearing in mind the theme of this blog) I was surprised that I didn’t feel The Shiver. I stared and stared at them, trying to imagine the documents being touched, signed and sealed or the purse being dropped, but somehow it didn’t happen. Perhaps I tried too hard. They are all So Significant and presented in such numbers that in a way it’s hard to feel a connection in the way that you might seeing each individually.

Certainly deserving a second (and third) view though! 

I have very little to add to the vast amounts of commentary but felt I couldn’t let it pass without a note. The references to ‘making history’ and to ‘historic change’ are everywhere. There is an undeniable sense of laying history to rest – of overcoming its legacy. But at the heart of the celebrations is a strong element of commemoration. We don’t set past suffering and brutality aside, we carry it forward as a foil against which later achievements make sense.