‘John Aubrey: My own life’ by Ruth Scurr

Last month marked four hundred years since the birth, on 12th March 1626, of John Aubrey who is chiefly known and remembered for writing a compendium of short biographical essays about the prominent men of his own time and some who had lived in the previous century. He included a few women too, and some men who were not English, but not so many. He called the book ‘Brief Lives’ and over time it became a widely read classic, giving Aubrey a much greater posthumous reputation than he was ever able to build for himself in his lifetime.

He did not write any kind of autobiography or memoir, and if he ever did have a go at keeping a personal diary in the manner of contemporaries such as Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, it has not survived. Nonetheless a great deal of information about him was left behind after his death in November 1697, mainly in the form of the very many letters he wrote to people in his large circle of acquaintance, and it is these, as well as other scattered writings that Ruth Scurr has been able to draw on to write this highly engaging, original and extraordinarily well researched ‘biography’. The term has to be used in inverted commas because her approach is very unconventional, but it works splendidly, making this book (originally published in 2015) a hugely enjoyable read.

What Ruth Scurr did was to construct from all the surviving bits and pieces of information about Aubrey’s life the personal diary that he could potentially have kept. There is an introductory essay about him at the start that puts his life into some perspective, and another at the end about his ‘afterlife’, editions of his writings and the various books written about him. But for the most part she simply tells his life story using his own words with some of her own, but no invention on her part at all as to what he actually did. This is in every way a work of non-fiction. In this way his personality is conveyed very effectively in a manner that never quite happens in conventional biography when the author’s voice and interpretation inevitably and necessarily interpose between reader and subject. What makes this book so extraordinarily effective is that this aspect is absent. Ruth Scurr explains her rationale in the introduction as follows:

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. Aubrey lived through fascinating times and has long been valued for what can be seen through him; there is no shortage of scholars who appreciate the use that can be made of him. But the biographer has other purposes: to get as close to her subject and his sensibility as possible; to produce a portrait that captures at least something of what that person was like.

In this she succeeds in spades. The problem of course is that a constructed diary like this has to appear to be entirely authentic, and that means that as readers we do not get provided with the kind of extensive contextual detail that is usual in a conventional biography. Aubrey, had he really kept a diary, would not have explained who his friends were or summarised their backgrounds for any putative reader, nor would he have seen any need to introduce the events of his time. He would have focused entirely on himself and not the backdrop against which his life was lived.

So when reading Ruth Scurr’s book, it is sometimes necessary to look things up. I have a pretty good grounding in Seventeenth Century British history, but it is a long time since I was seriously familiar with the main civil war battles, the names and roles of the major Restoration statesmen and the role played by people such as Titus Oates in the politics of the time. So I referred to other sources from time to time to give me the context that a traditional biography would have provided. The same is true if the many well-known people with whom John Aubrey was friendly or acquainted with - Thomas Hobbes, Robert Hooke, Elias Ashmole, Anthony Wood, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren etc. But here Ruth Scurr has done her readers a great service by including an extensive ‘dramatis personae’ at the start of her book with summary facts about these and the many other people who she refers to in Aubrey’s 'diary'. I found myself referring to it a lot.

But much more is gained than lost by the approach she takes. The book is also already pretty long as it is - 440 pages - and it would probably have become unwieldy had vast numbers of explanatory ‘editorial’ footnotes been included as well. Moreover, of course, there are conventional Aubrey biographies around to read if you are looking for more context and interpretation. Two, being those by Anthony Powell (1948) and Michael Hunter (1975) are particularly recommended here as being complementary both to Ruth Scurr’s own book and to one another.

The book is hugely enjoyable to read despite these little caveats. This is partly because it is a terrific scholastic achievement, albeit with that scholarship worn quite lightly. But it is mainly because John Aubrey himself was such a fascinating man and also, it would appear, a very likeable one. He was born in Wiltshire into a minor gentry family, got a good education at Blandford School and Trinity College, Oxford, going on to develop and foster a huge range of intellectual interests. He is usually labelled an ‘antiquarian’, but the collection of books, papers and fossils was only one of his many scholarly pursuits. He was a consequential member of the Royal Society and fascinated by all the sciences, medicine and maths too. He wrote topographical studies of various counties, contributed to debates about the origin of the stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury, had an interest in natural history, archaeology, education, linguistics and also, rather less impressively to modern eyes, astrology too.

In Ruth Scurr’s reckoning Aubrey was not, however, very much either a political or a religious animal, steering clear of active involvement in the big controversies of his time and maintaining friendships across the divides. He met King Charles II and would have loved a post in the royal household, but never managed to secure one. He was not a mover and shaker, but a keen observer of events and of scientific developments particularly. He was well connected to leading figures, but more a recorder of the currents and temper of his time than a leading figure in their evolution.

In many respects his life was disappointing to him. He inherited land and property, but also huge amounts of debt. He never secured any kind of stable income, quarrelled about money with his brother, failed in his attempts to secure a wife and published little in his lifetime. In this account he is portrayed as a fringe figure; decent, enthusiastic and convivial, but a touch eccentric and disorganised. He would surely have been astonished to know how celebrated he would become after his death.

All in all, this is a first rate biographical study. Hugely engaging, innovative and extraordinarily well-informed. It really does breathe a kind of life into its long-dead subject most effectively.