Reading Test 07

|Part 1|

Lotte and Wytze Hellinga

A As a student at the University of Amsterdam after the Second World War, Lotte found herself stimulated first by the teaching of Herman de la Fontaine Verwey and then by that of the forceful personality of Wytze Hellinga, at that time Professor of Dutch Philology at the University. Wytze Hellinga’s teaching was grounded in the idea of situating what he taught in its context. Obliged to teach Gothic, for example, he tried to convey a sense of the language rooted in its own time and environment.

B Study of the book was becoming increasingly important at the University of Amsterdam at this period, as the work of de la Fontaine Verwey and Gerrit Willem Ovink testifies. Wytze Hellinga’s interests, formerly largely in a socio-linguistic direction, were now learning more towards texts and to the book as the medium that carried written texts.

C Much of Wytze’s teaching followed his own research interests, as he developed his ideas around the sense that texts should properly be understood in the context of their method of production and dissemination. He was at this time increasingly turning to codicology and to the classic Anglo-Saxon model of bibliography in the realization that the plan to produce a proper critical edition of the works of Pieter Corneliszsoon Hooft, the seventeenth-century poet, dramatist and historian, depended on the application of the skills of analytical bibliography.

D Encouraged by his work, Lotte produced an undergraduate thesis on the printer’s copy of the Otia of Constantijn Huygens (The Hague, 1625). This work, incidentally, has never been published, although an article was regularly announced as forthcoming in Quaerendo during the early 1970s.

E On graduation in 1958, events took a turn that was to prove fateful. Lotte was awarded a postgraduate fellowship by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Zaiver-Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (or Z.W.O.) to go to England to study fifteenth-century printing, and Marie Kronenberg, the doyenne of Dutch bibliographers, arranged for her to be ‘taught incunabulisting’ (as she put it) by Victor Scholderer at the British Museum.

F As an honorary Assistant Keeper at the Museum, then, she came to England in 1959, assisting among other things with the preparation of BMC volume IX (concerning the production of Holland and Belgium) while studying the texts of the Gouda printer Gerard Leeu to see if the sources (and hopefully printer’s copy) for his editions could be identified. Although the subject proved difficult to define immediately so as to lead in a productive direction, most of this work was nonetheless to find its way into print in such collaborative publications as the Hellingas’ Fifteenth century printing types, the edition of the Bradshaw correspondence and the 1973 Brussels catalogue, to each of which we shall return. But during her time at the Museum, Lotte’s attention was also attracted by such things as English provenances on early-printed continental books, an interest which has stayed with her throughout her career.

G Wytze’s attention too was turning towards incunabula at this time, as witnessed by the fifteenth-century examples used in his Copy and Print in the Netherlands (1962), and there began a fruitful period of collaborative work which was issued in a stream of short bibliographical articles on Low Countries incunabula, and culminated triumphantly in the ground-breaking Fifteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries, commissioned (at Wytze’s instance) by Merino Hertzberger in 1961 and published in 1966. These years saw periods of intensive study in the libraries strongest in the incunabula of the Low Countries, with whole summers passed in Cambridge and Copenhagen as well as shorter visits to libraries from Oxford to Vienna.

H The partnership between Lotte and Wytze was also to lead to marriage and to the birth of their son. Between 1961 and 1975, the Hellingas were in Amsterdam. In 1965, Lotte had obtained a research assistantship for Dutch prototypography from the Z.W.O., and from 1967 she was teaching at the Institute of Dutch Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She continued to develop her interest in analytical bibliography in a number of directions, perhaps most strikingly in important work on early Dutch printing and an examination of the Coster question. She also contributed to the catalogue which accompanied the exhibition held in Brussels in 1973 to commemorate the quincentenary of the introduction of printing to the Netherlands, a collaborative work that still provides the best presentation of the work of the early printers of the Low Countries.

I The year 1974 saw the award of a doctorate by the University of Amsterdam for her thesis on the relationship between copy and print in a fifteenth-century printing-house, Methode en praktijk bij het zetten van boeken in de vijftiende eeuw. This seminal work, remaining as a Dutch dissertation of limited diffusion, has perhaps not been as widely read as it deserves. There followed a year’s respite from teaching in 1975 with the commission from Ensched, to edit Harry Carter’s translation of Charles Ensched,’s Type foundries in the Netherlands, at length published in 1978.

|Part 2|

Party Labels in Mid-Eighteenth Century England

A Until the late 1950s the Whig interpretation of English history in the eighteenth century prevailed. This was successfully challenged by Lewis Namier, who proposed, based on an analysis of the voting records of MPs from the 1760 intake following the accession to the throne of George III, that the accepted Whig/Tory division of politics did not hold. He believed that the political life of the period could be explained without these party labels, and that it was more accurate to characterise political division in terms of the Court versus Country.

B An attempt was then made to use the same methodology to determine whether the same held for early eighteenth century politics. To Namier’s charging this proved that at the end of Queen Anne’s reign in 1714 voting in parliament was certainly based on party interest, and that Toryism and Whiggism were distinct and opposed political philosophies. Clearly, something momentous had occurred between 1714 and 1760 to apparently wipe out party ideology. The Namierite explanation is that the end of the Stuart dynasty on the death of Queen Anne and the beginning of the Hanoverian with the accession of George I radically altered the political climate.

C The accession of George I to the throne in 1715 was not universally popular. He was German, spoke little English, and was only accepted because he promised to maintain the Anglican religion. Furthermore, for those Tory members of government under Anne, he was nemesis, for his enthronement finally broke the hereditary principle central to Tory philosophy, confirming the right of parliament to depose or select a monarch. Moreover, he was aware that leading Tories had been in constant communication with the Stuart court in exile, hoping to return the banished King James II. As a result, all Tories were expelled from government, some being forced to escape to France to avoid execution for treason.

D The failure of the subsequent Jacobite rebellion of 1715, where certain Tory magnates tried to replace George with his cousin James, a Stuart, albeit a Catholic, was used by the Whig administration to identify the word ‘Tory’ with treason. This was compounded by the Septennial Act of 1716, limiting elections to once every seven years, which further entrenched the Whigs’ power base at the heart of government focussed around the crown. With the eradication of one of the fundamental tenets of their philosophy, alongside the systematic replacement of all Tory positions by Whig counterparts, Tory opposition was effectively annihilated. There was, however, a grouping of Whigs in parliament who were not part of the government.

E The MPs now generally referred to as the ‘Independent Whigs’ inherently distrusted the power of the administration, dominated as it was by those called ‘Court Whigs’. The Independent Whig was almost invariably a country gentleman, and thus resisted the growth in power of those whose wealth was being made on the embryonic stock market. For them the permanency of land meant patriotism, a direct interest in one’s nation, whilst shares, easily transferable, could not be trusted. They saw their role as a check on the administration, a permanent guard against political corruption, the last line of defence of the mixed constitution of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The reaction against the growing mercantile class was shared by the Tories, also generally landed country gentlemen. It is thus Namier’s contention, and that of those who follow his work, that by the 1730s the Tories and the Independent Whigs had fused to form a Country opposition to the Court administration, thus explaining why voting records in 1760 do not follow standard party lines.

F It must be recognised that this view is not universally espoused. Revisionist historians such as Linda Colley dispute that the Tory party was destroyed during this period, and assert the continuation of the Tories as a discrete and persistent group in opposition, allied to the Independent Whigs but separate. Colley’s thesis is persuasive, as it is clear that some, at least, regarded themselves as Tories rather than Whigs. She is not so successful in proving the persistence either of party organisation beyond family connection, or of ideology, beyond tradition. Furthermore, while the terms ‘Tory’ and ‘Whig’ were used frequently in the political press, it was a device of the administration rather than the opposition. As Harris notes in his analysis of the ‘Patriot’ press of the 1740s, there is hardly any discernible difference between Tory and Whig opposition pamphlets, both preferring to describe themselves as the ‘Country Interest’, and attacking ‘the Court’.

|Part 3|

The Changing Bedside Manner

A The medical profession is currently under siege as never before with a spate of high profile malpractice cases. This attack is taking place at a time when the National Health Service is undergoing a ‘culture change’ brought about by a shift in the public’s attitudes to authority, in general, and, more specifically, by the demystification of medicine. The perception that doctors are a race apart is finally beginning to wane.

B These forces have, fortunately, already led to a number of radical developments in the last five or six years in the way doctors are being trained, with greater emphasis now being laid on a more patient-oriented approach. Whilst, in the past, communicating effectively with patients was left basically to chance, this is no longer the case. As part of their final assessment, doctors now have to take a practical examination where their communication as well as clinical skills are carefully scrutinised.

C If you ask most people what makes a good doctor, they will not say someone with sound medical knowledge. The first thing that will spring to mind is a good bedside manner; in other words, good communication skills. But what does a good bedside manner, or communication skills, entail?

D All too often people complain about the lack of sensitivity of the doctors they encounter whether they be generalists or specialists. Some other frequently voiced criticisms are that doctors sound as if they are delivering a lecture when talking to patients; pontificating from on high. Or that they lack basic social skills; or indeed that they are bad listeners, concerned only with delivering their message rather than becoming involved with any kind of negotiation with the patient. So it would be safe to say that the most important aspect of a good bedside manner is good interpersonal skills.

E From the patients’ point of view, the interaction they have during their consultation with a doctor is very personal and hence emotional, while for the doctor it is merely a logical and objective process. And so, the chances of the doctor/ patient communication breaking down are high if the doctor is not sufficiently skilled in handling the patient’s emotional needs. A doctor must be able to deal with the full range of a patient’s feelings, showing sympathy and empathy especially when handling difficult situations, like breaking bad news etc.

F Another aspect of the good bedside manner, which is more often than not overlooked, is having the ability to talk to patients using lay language that they understand, while, at the same time, avoiding any hint of condescension, or being patronising. The inability to do this has a number of effects. When doctors use medical jargon, patients feel that they are trying to hide something. Doctors can also give the impression that they do not know what they are talking about; or even that they do not know the solution to a problem.

G It is also essential that the doctor at all times is able to maintain authority. For example, doctors need to deal with some patients’ belief that medicine is infallible, i.e. that the doctor has the panacea for every woe! This is certainly no easy task, as most people’s expectations are raised by the daily diet of wondrous developments in medicine.

H The other side of the coin is that, as people’s awareness and knowledge have increased, albeit often misinformed by the internet etc, the stronger their doubts about the medical profession have become. And coupled with the rise in general educational awareness, the public have consequently a lower regard for doctors. This, in turn, has affected doctors’ ability to communicate. They are not able to hide behind the veneer that technical jargon created.

I At last, the pendulum has swung in the patient’s direction. The onus is now upon doctors to adapt themselves to the patient’s needs rather than the patient approaching some awesome god-like figure. The veil has been lifted and the temple violated.