Remember about six years ago or so when suddenly everyone seemed to be an expert on Alexander Hamilton due to the release of the musical Hamilton? America seems to lag when it comes to reading history, but if someone makes a catchy, annoying musical that is quasi-historical, everyone is suddenly invested. My Dear Mr. Hamilton came out during this period. As a work of historical fiction, one expects it to be partly true, and partly contrived. On these points, there is nothing especially surprising about the work.
The problem, as noted in other reviews here at The Book Light, with historical fiction about this era of history is that the modern lens simply cannot resist interpreting what was written then through a modern mindset. Hence, Eliza Schuyler, the person whose perspective this book is written from, is actually the brains behind Hamilton and Mr. Hamilton just does not heed her advice, and so she has to deal with her “brilliant but not as smart as she is” husband. If this sounds to you like the plot of just about any sitcom from the last 20 years or so I suspect that you will discover that the overlap owes more to the modern convention than the historical fact.
Just to add another layer of modern pretense, we also get to play the “Which-founding-fathers-of-America-were-also-actually-Sodomites” take-home party game. It certainly is not the case that people were abstaining from practicing sodomy in any given time period (they simply kept it secret)–the issue however is the modern obsession with anytime one sees the word “love” written in a letter between two men of other eras the automatic conclusion is that they must have been engaged in a steamy, secret, forbidden, homosexual affair. That Hamilton was in an extra-marital affair and was blackmailed for it is factual. That this affair damaged Elizabeth Schuyler’s estimation of her husband is clear because she left him to go to her parents for some time. She eventually returned, however, and their marriage produced two more children for a total of something like eight complete children. This is not a marriage where a lack of intimacy was the norm.
To be clear, it is not to say the Elizabeth Hamilton is “less smart” than her husband. If anything, she is probably “as smart” in some other complementary way. It also is not the case that Hamilton could not have had a homosexual relationship. It is the case, however, that what commonly happened in the “old days” where marriages were concerned was that mistakes were made and most puzzling to the modern mindset actually also forgiven and moved beyond. My Dear Hamilton would have us believe that Eliza “Betsy” was simply a woman who was hurt and harbored longstanding grudges and eventually wound up rather poor after the death of Hamilton in a duel though she also started one of the first orphanages. In addition, she also started a “free school” to offer free education as well. Her main reason for doing these things was because she believed that all children should be literate enough such that they could read the Bible and study it. This is not a “bitter woman” response but rather a woman committed to Biblical values including marriage and her husband’s–imperfect though he might be–legacy. Likewise, when two men say the word “love” in the early history of America, it most often meant “brotherly”–something largely forgotten and not practiced here in contemporary times.
Modern literature with “feminist leans” and sneaky agendas completely miss these very obvious Judeo-Christian underpinnings and can only interpret in light of modern, unrestrained desires. No wonder terrible musicals have become the norm. When a people only want to relate to history as some kind of entertaining joke, it can only mean those people have themselves become jokes.
Sometimes, one can listen to a piece of music they have never heard and realize that something is discordant with the composition. Whether it be a new work, or an old re-interpretation, something just feels “off”–like the thumbprint of the original author is indelibly stamped on what should have been and the “mortal instrument” that does the rendering is lacking in properly conveying the intent. This feeling, which probably is best characterized as malaise, is present for the entire reading of this work. For one thing, the character of the work is about Eleanor of Aquitaine’s own malaise toward her marriage and duties. However, on a more immediate level there is a malaise that sometimes “Historical Fiction” induces in those who are familiar with the period and characters present in a given work. This “malaise” concerns itself with a certain noxious leakage of what would be termed a “rabid, modern liberalism” that tries to pass itself off as feminism.
While it is doubtless the case that many women did not have “great lives” concerning men and how they interacted with them in the Middle Ages–it does a disservice to women who also had ambition and drive as well as intellect that existed in those times to try to douse a given work with pagan feminist ideals from a modern vantage point. This is admixed with some more traditional “conservative” views of women who, at the core, want to find loving relationships–Queen or no.
This novel would have Eleanor have an affair with the Emperor of Constantinople, who, surprise, is serving the pagan God of Eros. Keep in mind that Eleanor of Aquitaine is the very same Queen, who with her husband Louis VII, went on a disastrous crusade to the Holy Land in an attempt to once again drive out the “infidels”.
The novel is billed as a romance, and so one suspects that most of the target audience will likely be women who are University educated–perhaps professors–and so maybe in order to help sell the book to these “smart-modern-women” the publisher leaned on the author and suggested large doses of modern heathenism to help pander to this market segment.
If anything, the Middle Ages, particularly those going on Crusades therein, were marked by a quest for piety. While infidelities and other unpleasantness surely happened, it is almost certainly not the case that those who went to the Holy Land were occupied with pagan Gods. If anything, they were saturated with an almost Messianic zeal for the land and the kingdom of Jerusalem as they saw and understood it. To convince a number of people to go into a land of “barbarians” requires some other belief than that of pagan Gods. One could do that and stay at home and as long as one was quiet about it–risking neither life nor limb.
This work then makes Eleanor feel like some kind of robot that the author decides to stick words into to make for good reading. Yes, there are facts in here. No, I doubt that Eleanor and Louis divorced on any other grounds than the lack of having any male offspring. Bad marriages, even royal ones, more often ended in death than divorces during the period. Rather, some key mojo was not working between Eleanor and Louis, and more than likely combined with the consanguinity argument there was a divine one as well–it seemed that God was not smiling on their relationship for the good not only of themselves but for the Kingdom itself. Therefore, their marriage was annulled.
Sure, historically here were rumors about Eleanor and her uncle, but almost any court had rumors and scandals and gossip–most of which proves to be untrue and hides the intrigues of someone else within the court who–having spent little coin to start such a rumor–lose little in the making of the wretched piece of mischief and gain seeing a King or Queen have to bow under the untruth of their words. The small in stature have done this to those in power for quite some time, and it therefore is not unusual to see it present in Eleanor’s time.
It was hard to read this work, since one must mute a small, silent voice in their head the entire time that suggests “most of this is untrue of this person”. Rather, one is reading about an idea that someone has concerning the ideas another person thought interpreted through a time quite distant with an immense amount of modernism brimming in the prose to try to ultimately sell copies of a book. It does little to hide these agendas, or check these impulses. Really, by the end we are almost as relieved as Eleanor that they have her off marrying Henry the II if for no other reason than that is where this book ends.
Some books sit on shelves as silent witnesses to matters nobody really wants to know or talk about. It’s almost as if they exist to remind people of information that is unpleasant so that these same people can try to memory hole the fact that they ever saw them. Generally, you do not find these books in schools or colleges because educational dollars and funding do not follow those who promote such works. They simply do not fit the narrative that somebody, somewhere has decided is what we should teach. What Joseph Stalin Knew, is, assuredly, one of these books.
It is interesting to note that this book was published by Yale press, and perhaps Yale has a more expansive curriculum or maybe had one at one point that involved frankly discussing and researching academic material that exists well in the shadow. Indeed, most of the records of Soviet Russia under Stalin were destroyed because Stalin wanted them to be. Stalin wanted this record destroyed because the record would not reflect kindly on his decisions or the communist party. Therefore, he simply sought to eliminate anything and everything that might paint him in a less than favorable light.
What was it Stalin knew? Bluntly, Stalin knew that Germany was going to attack the USSR but because he trusted Hitler more than he trusted his own agents, he dismissed these warnings and reports. Some say he was trying to buy Russia time to get ready for such an attack, but what becomes clear is that Stalin, though he trusted hardly anyone, trusted, of all people, the words of Hitler. Perhaps it would be better to say that Stalin hoped that Hitler would do more damage before trying to invade the Soviet Union which would give Stalin the opportunity to launch some counter-invasion with many opponents of communism much weaker for the effort. From the point of view of war, this makes a kind of terrible sense. Attrition and weakening your opponents is a good military strategy. However, hoping that someone who actively hates your ideology and is keen on creating a master race which probably does not include you or at least you and your beliefs is not going to attack you so you can better divide the spoils between you and this other person is foolish. Stalin probably figured if Hitler centralized all of the middle of Europe and England, Russia could later join forces with other places closer to it and attack it on down the road. Of course, that is not what happened because Hitler decided that Russia was weak and could be taken quickly and its resources turned to the advantage of the Reich.
Weirdly enough, this book does not advance this theory which is fairly obvious to anyone who has ever studied any military strategy. The Soviet Union had lots of land, resources, and people. Germany had advanced military technology and had success with “fast lightening wars” but the Soviet Union due to sheer size alone was never going to be a fast event. In this Hitler had delusions concerning Ukraine and an uprising specifically, and the book does state as much. Between Stalin’s delusions, and Hitler’s delusions, and mutual paranoia and arrogance, it was perhaps inevitable that they would wind up at war with one another. Hitler, the book argues, eventually respected and even somewhat envied Stalin in what presumably is due to Stalin’s stalwart adherence to his principles. In the meantime, Stalin was busy ripping apart his own military apparatus for people that had been considered heros of the Soviet Union that he did not like that had spoken truth to him that he had rejected. He instead most often sought to scapegoat these loyal commanders, and in many cases ordered their deaths at a point he could blame them entirely for some failure that was ultimately his own.
In one instance, Stalin continually scapegoats an intelligence chief and installs him in various other military capacities until he ultimately orders his death for the simple reason that he could not control him. Anyone who spoke something to Stalin that Stalin did not want to hear was placed in the memory banks of Stalin as someone to later betray and destroy. Those that remained were too afraid to speak to Stalin about matters concerning Soviet security they knew to be true. Their choices where to face slaughter by German soldiers, or face slaughter by Joseph Stalin. It a terrible hidden tragedy of the war–service men who knew that their fates were sealed no matter which way they tried to steer things–patriotism for their country and service or facing an enemy with superior military power that would surely cut many of them down. Some of them, the book mentions, ran away only to be found later and shot by the army as deserters. The Nazis were cruel, but the Soviet leadership was savage. Both Hitler and Stalin had a fondness for repression and genocide.
One matter the book does not discuss is Stalin’s post-war conviction that Hitler was still alive and probably living somewhere in Argentina. At the same time, Stalin had received various forensic evidence to suggest that Hitler was actually dead. This, is, of course, quite interesting all on its own. Perhaps Stalin needed to insist on some manner of disinfo, or perhaps his instincts were right. It is certainly true that many Nazis did go to Argentina.
A final note concerns the eerie parallels to modern civilization and Russia under Stalin. If one replaces the word “de-platforming” with “purge”, one arrives at a process that sounds strangely familiar. In the online world, anything that does not fit the narrative has been subject to removal and silencing in the last five years or so in massive ways. Communist idealogy and issues are once again, prominent. The dictum that “history does not repeat, but it rhymes” appears to hold. If humanity does not have a terrible tragedy every sixty years or so, it seems to forget most everything learned during the last go-around. For this reason, this book should be required reading for high school or college curriculums. It is not a pleasant read, but then again, life and history is replete with unpleasant happenings. It does us no good to pretend that they never happened.