Stalin airbrushed out of soviet records those he came to dislike. Something similar has happened in Britain’s museums. Here, the ideology being airbrushed out is Christian faith.
This article explores three museums: Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, Grasmere, Jane Austen’s home at Chawton, Hampshire, and Samuel Johnson’s house in Gough Square, London. Each museum has good things to share, but each ignores, or largely ignores, the deep faith of the literary giants whom they claim to champion.
Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, Grasmere
Wordsworth’s home at Dove Cottage Grasmere is mecca for Wordsworth studies. The curators celebrate Wordsworth as ‘the young radical who celebrated the French Revolution’. They see his work as akin to ‘mindfulness’. Yet, they make no reference to Wordsworth’s faith. This is strange in that it was specifically during his years at Dove Cottage that the poet grew much more deeply attached to the Christian faith in which he had been brought up, as a result of grief over his brother’s death in 1805. And Wordsworth, even in his radical years, had never abandoned that faith, in any case. By the time of his Dove Cottage years, he was no starry-eyed devotee of the French Revolution and not exactly “young.” Yet this Wordsworth is absent from the museum.
Austen’s Home in Chawton, Hampshire
Wordsworth’s contemporary, the novelist Jane Austen, spent her later years in the village of Chawton, Hampshire. The museum notes that faith was part of her make up and that of her family – but gives it scant mention. Yet it is increasingly recognized that Christian faith was fundamental to Jane Austen, arguably the greatest woman writer in English. Her commitment to regular prayer and worship were constant throughout her life. Austen was ready to ridicule priggish clerics, but her novels are underpinned by Christian faith and practice. The leading characters show a quiet, but deep, commitment to Christianity. It is the dodgy characters – like Whickham, Willoughby, Henry Crawford and Mr Elliott – who show little or no interest in faith.
A video on the Chawton website introduces high school children to ‘five key things’ about Austen. It says some useful things. The presenter even feels it appropriate to narrate part of the video naked in a bath, her modesty preserved only by judicious daubs of bubble bath. Austen’s deep personal faith is, of course, not mentioned.
Johnson’s Home at 17 Gough Square
Samuel Johnson, also known as ‘Dictionary Johnson’, is one of the greatest literary figures in the English language. Writing in the 18th century, he was the complier of the first comprehensive English Dictionary and author of a diverse range of works. He was also a devout Christian. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson shows him refuting Enlightenment skeptics like David Hume. Johnson wrestled also, all his life, with mental illness. And it was often in Christian faith that he found solace.
As with the other museums, the curators of Gough Square take immense pains to recreate the details and atmosphere of the house as Johnson would have known it. They make much, rightly, of Johnson’s love of people and his particular concern for people of all races, for women and for his pet cat. But of Johnson’s deep Christian faith, almost no mention is made.
A museum which boasts of its possessing Dr. Johnson’s desk, chair and walking stick manages to ignore Johnson’s Christian faith, even though it was central to the man himself.
Promoting Ignorance
Museum Stalinism has two deeply pernicious consequences.
First, telling untruth. These museums depict Wordsworth, Austen, and Johnson as if they were wholly or mostly secular. They were not. By so doing, the museums misrepresent key figures in English literature. This airbrushing out of Christian faith makes them look much more like secular Western culture and passes over ways in which they could critique many parts of the contemporary West. In so doing, a false, less human, portrait is given. Supposedly ‘cultural’ institutions are promoting ignorance.
The second failing is the promotion of prejudice. For British museums, in the main, sidelining Christian faith is acceptable bigotry. Â Curators of the homes of Wordsworth, Austen and Johnson claim to understand those whose memory they try to preserve. Yet these museums do their best to obscure the faith that was central to each of these authors.
It is impossible to imagine treating Gandhi’s Hinduism or Marx’s socialism with the same indifference. The Stalinism of these three British museums needs calling out. And so does the Stalinism that many other cultural institutions show towards Christianity.
British museums, all too often, are happy to strap great figures from the past into the corset of contemporary prejudices. In so doing, they find – surprise, surprise – that those figures thought ‘just like us’. How convenient, how intellectually bankrupt.
And a recognition of the centrality of Christian faith for these giants of Western culture (and we could find many more examples) is also vital for Christians. Wordsworth, Austen, and Johnson were far from perfect, but each shared a deep commitment to Christ amidst profound personal challenges as they crafted some of the greatest writing in history. We learn much from Wordsworth, Austen, and Johnson; and within that learning, we can learn much about how to keep the faith in Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Dr. David Goodhew is vicar of St. Barnabas Church, Middlesbrough, England, and visiting fellow of St John’s College, Durham University.
