THE IMAGE OF THE KING: Charles I and II

by Richard Ollard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 19, 1979

Richard Ollard (The Escape of Charles II, Pepys) has re-examined the two, seemingly antithetical Charleses aesthetic, principled Charles I and his frivolous, seize-the-day son--in terms of the images both consciously projected, the validity of those images, and what later generations have made of them. The result is fascinating in its own right and a perfectly timed complement/counterthrust to Antonia Fraser's effulgent portrait of Charles II (above). In his brief, meaty text, Ollard pronounces the image and the reality of Charles I as one, the product of ""rigorous self-discipline"" and artistry. Had he been a feeble youth and faithless to the loyal Strafford? In the masques of Inigo Jones, the portraits of Van Dyck, and finally on the scaffold, he became what he wished to be; and, pro or con, the image endured--he would subsequently be venerated as a saint or denounced as an absolutist. Charles II, to Ollard, is also a self-definer, but one of less sympathetic mien--intent only on being taken for ""a man of the world."" And, with invocations of principle and honor, Ollard reviews all Charles' transgressions (the ""uninhibited appetite,"" the financial irresponsibility, the ""vile humiliation"" of Clarendon, etc., etc.) to the end of (a) undermining, in effect, the perennial popular appeal of Charles' untroubled commitment to ""pleasure before virtue,"" and (b) discrediting him as an exemplar of pre-Enlightenment skepticism and religious tolerance. His was, Ollard writes, ""a lazy, easygoing nature""; and in choosing Catholicism, he found ""a form of Christianity that he could reconcile with his preferred way of life."" More temperate, more balanced, more nuanced and original are his accounts of historians' representations of the two Charleses--from contemporary chroniclers through the Whig ascendancy to Scott, Macaulay, and Carlisle to modernists Gardiner and Ranke. But his final assumption that, today, the two are hors de combat--that we can now see them for themselves and not suit them to our own purposes--is disproven by Antonia Fraser's fervent partisanship. Read before or after her work, it's provocative, angular history.

Pub Date: Nov. 19, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION