HISTORICAL MEMORY

Good readers interested in history will be aware of the value of historical memory. That is, memories of the past with which there is a direct connection to the present, such as what your grandparents might tell you about what life was like when they were young. Without these testimonies the past fades until it is revived in what we call 'history'. Sometime, perhaps thirty years ago, the Times of London (then still a distinguished newspaper) asked its readers to submit authentic stories which they had heard, live, in their own lives. The idea behind the query was to find the person with the oldest historical memory, and as I recall, it was won by a grizzled Devonshire gentleman who had in his youth been dandled by his great-grandfather and told tales how his grandfather had served as a cabin-boy at Trafalgar (1805).

I was beaten out by a few years, for my historical memory goes back only to the Napoleonic kingdoms of Italy. My great-aunt Elisabetta Publicola-Santacroce was, on the only time I saw her in Rome after the war, a formidable old lady who lived in an ancient and spacious apartment just behind the Pantheon, on the Pozzo delle Cornacchie (Crow's Well). She stomped about with a heavy wooden tripod as support and told me tales of how enamored of Napoleon's French officers her grandmother had been in her youth, how 'liberating' they had been, how colorful, how unstuffy. Stendhal, who was then French consul in the Roman port of Civitavecchia, in his correspondence, confirms meeting members of that great-great-great-grandmother's stories.

None of which may be of great interest to others, but confirms the advice I give all young people: while you've got them, ask as many questions as you can from your Elders, for once they're gone, you are adrift in the history of others.