Ruth Scurr. John Aubrey: my own life.

Witcher, Robert

Ruth Scurr. John Aubrey: my own life. 522 pages. 2015. London: Chatto & Windus; 978-0-70117907-6 hardback 25 [pounds sterling].

Bronwen Riley. Journey to Britannia: from the heart of Rome to Hadrian's Wall, AD 130. 2015. 335 pages, 7 b&w illustrations. London: Head of Zeus; 978-1-78185-134-0 hardback 25 [pounds sterling].

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From biography to autobiography. Or, more precisely, two experimental approaches to autobiography that engage directly with some of the issues of authority, storytelling and fiction raised in Subjects and narratives. First is John Aubrey: my own life by RUTH SCURR. Straightaway one might object that a book about one person by another is biography not autobiography. But as the jacket blurb proclaims, this book is "genre-defying". The book is an experiment in writing biography in the form of an imagined diary. The subject is John Aubrey, a key figure not only in antiquarianism ("the first English archaeologist" p. 427), but also a number of other areas including--not coincidentally--biography. Aubrey's life spanned turbulent times--the Civil War, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, plague and the Great Fire of London. Against this backdrop, Aubrey sought to document and preserve the stories and monuments of England's past.

Aubrey lived in a pre-disciplinary world and was fascinated with everything around him. Influenced by figures such as Francis Bacon and William Camden, he collected notes on natural history, folklore and scientific observations; he visited and documented monuments and collected objects; he was enamoured of astrology. Much akin to William Bankes, Aubrey was so busy with these interests that he found no time to keep a diary, and his life must therefore be reconstructed almost entirely through his correspondence. But as Scurr observes, "When I was searching for a biographical form that would suit the remnants of his life, I realised that he would all but vanish inside a conventional biography, crowded out by his friends, acquaintances and their multitudinous interests" (p. 11). The solution is a fictionalised journal ("No-one gets crowded out of his or her own diary" p. 12), which draws, where possible, on Aubrey's own words--updated for the modern ear--and interpolates around them. Scurr explains: "I have not invented scenes or relationships for him as a novelist would, but neither have I followed the conventions of traditional biography. When he is silent, I do not speculate about where he was or what he was doing or thinking" (p. 13). The concept briefly sketched, Scurr (or rather Aubrey) begins his diary in 1634: "I was born [...]" (p. 17).

For archaeologists, Aubrey is best remembered for his observations about a monument close to his childhood home: Stonehenge. The site unsurprisingly features several times, with Aubrey remarking that: "it must be possible to count and number the stones. I will do so one day" (p. 24) and "I have returned to Stonehenge and discovered some new holes" (p. 143)--the latter, of course, subsequently named after him. Aubrey was also one of the first to reject the idea that Stonehenge was a Roman temple (although the Romans "would have been delighted with the stateliness and grandeur of it" pp. 143-44). Of course, all of these observations have been well worked over by historians of archaeology already, and here, scattered across entries spanning decades, we do not find any direct new insights into the monuments he visited. What we do get, however, is an appreciation of how Aubrey's fascination with these sites sat alongside his other passions--natural history, astrology, geology and so on.

Although best known for his work at Stonehenge, he visited many other sites including the Roman town of Silchester, noting cropmarks, and the stones at Avebury that "rival the ones I have known since childhood at Stonehenge" (p. 75). He even guided Charles II around Avebury in order to promote the site's protection. Other sites, however, did not fare so well. Of the 'Roman temple' at Blackheath, Aubrey laments: "What a pity a drawing of the temple was not taken some hundred years ago. Posterity would have been grateful!" p. 222). A concluding chapter, 'Aubrey's afterlife', tracks his legacy, built on his collection of papers and artefacts donated to the Ashmolean Museum.

As flagged in Scurr's introduction, the text is full of gaps and unevenness in the attention paid to particular topics. It is a book of fragments. But it also works as a coherent narrative, drawing the reader along with Aubrey's insatiable curiosity. Flow is maintained by banishing references to the endnotes, which are listed by page to avoid in-text citation. Even so, it is not always easy to work out exactly where Aubrey ends and Scurr begins. Does it matter? The answer is presumably contextual. As a story about Aubrey's life, it is highly readable. As a traditional biography or as a source of information about Aubrey's life, it must be treated more cautiously. Most importantly, the format is eminently suited to the subject and his own philosophy of knowledge and life.

Scurr ponders whether "we honour or betray the dead when we write about them" (p. 12)--this very question was raised in the first volume considered here. She offers no explicit answer, but her admiration, even fondness, of her subject matter (described as "wonderful company" p. 10) suggests that she believes the former. She continues: "Aubrey's approach to his own and other lives was imaginative and empirical in equal measure. In imagining his diary by collating the evidence, I have echoed the idea of antiquities--the searching after remnants--that meant so much to him [...] I have done so playingly [...] but with purpose" (p. 13).

Our next 'biography' also creatively experiments with the genre and strays into territory well worn by archaeological feet. In Journey to Britannia: from the heart of Rome to Hadrian's Wall, AD 130, Bronwen Riley narrates the journey of the incoming governor of the Roman province of Britannia, Sextus Julius Severus, as he travels from the city of Rome, via Gaul, to the empire's northern frontier: Hadrian's Wall. That journey, as seen through the eyes of Severus, might be considered biographical and--as we also travel with the governor, experiencing the same sights, sounds and smells--perhaps even autobiographical.

Across ten chapters, we travel from Rome, via Ostia and Lyon, crossing the Channel from Boulogne and arriving at Richborough. The year is AD 130, chosen because it provides an unusually full dramatis personae of known individuals for Roman Britain--even if they largely remain names. The core chapters focus on the journey from Richborough via the provincial capital, London, to the civitas capitals at Silchester and Wroxeter, the spa-town of Bath and the legionary fortresses at Caerleon and Chester, and up to Hadrian's Wall.

The introduction, 'Evoking the past', spells out Riley's aims and methods. Her ambition is "to capture the flavour of life" (p. 15) in Roman Britain. She rightly states, however, that in order to understand Roman Britain, we first have to know something about Rome itself. Hence Severus starts his journey in the Roman Forum (although Riley concedes that we do not know whether he travelled from Rome or somewhere else to take up his gubernatorial responsibilities). Situating an imagined journey at a specific moment in time presents advantages and disadvantages. It avoids the creation of 'time-less' travellers, able to experience people and events separated by centuries. Equally, however, it exposes just how patchy our evidence is--even from such a well-studied case as Roman Britain. Thus, there are holes to be avoided, or filled with archaeological evidence from elsewhere or with insights from the Classical texts. Although the latter may assume too much similarity between the Mediterranean and frontier provinces, Riley is generally good at contrasting Britain with other parts of the Empire, portraying a place rather less familiar than often assumed.

Arriving in London, Riley describes the scene: "Looking left, upstream from the bridge, where the mouth of the River Walbrook meets the Thames, there are extensive quays lined with stone warehouses and jetties. Downstream, east of the bridge, the port is expanding rapidly, with masonry as well as timber-framed stores, warehouses and shops alongside the quay and set back from it" (p. 93).

The 'p-word' is never uttered although there are obvious links here to the phenomenological studies most closely associated with British prehistory. In fact, there is greater resemblance to the work of Classical archaeologists writing imagined journeys, comprehensively elaborated by Diane Favro (1996) and that run parallel to, and exhibit little cross-reference with, phenomenology. None of these studies, however, was Riley's point of departure.

Rather, her inspiration--as series editor of the English Heritage Red Guides--was the reconstruction drawings in site guidebooks that "help to breathe life" (p. 305) into the past (on which topic, more shortly).

As hinted already, Riley's approach presents the quandary of what to do with archaeological knowledge that was not accessible to her protagonists. In this case, as omniscient narrator, she tells us about what's hidden in a pot at the bottom of a well at Silchester ("a regular witch's brew" p. 121) or the fate of buildings (redecoration, demolition and so on) in the years after AD 130. As the reader is not really expected to suspend their disbelief and imagine that they are actually in Roman Britain, this privileged information is welcome. Indeed, it is the time-travelling component that occasionally trips the reader; when Riley starts a sentence 'Today, [...]', does she mean now or then?

Riley's biography-travelogue is neither fiction nor non-fiction. As with Scurr's book, it blurs the boundaries. For those concerned about policing such things, in the final accounting it falls on the side of non-fiction. Does it work? Certainly not as a novel, not least because Riley is too concerned to document her evidence, and the combination of numbered endnotes and additional footnotes using a hotchpotch of symbols is distracting. Equally however, to maintain the flow, some of the material is quickly passed over, but this simply whets the appetite--what is the basis for this particular detail? Having been tempted to consult the endnotes, the reader's task is complicated by a misalignment between the running head and the reference numbers.

If we cannot easily classify this book as either fiction or non-fiction, it is surely wrong to judge it by the standards of either. An 'evocation' is perhaps the best term for it. It is well researched, accessibly written and full of fascinating detail about Roman Britain. It is also interesting to compare Riley's imagined narrative with Scurr's. I was more tempted to check the endnotes provided by Riley, perhaps encouraged by the superscript references, but perhaps also because we have moved decisively to the archaeological. Are we seeing the ethical and epistemological differences between biography and archaeology; between historical texts and material culture; and between telling a good story and staying close to the evidence? Juxtaposed, these books raise questions about disciplinarity, authority and narrative.

doi: 10.15184/aqy.2016.24