Suggestions:
Without quoting (or summarizing) first what Parkman had to say on
Wolfe's death, we are treated to Schama's argument that Parkman was reflecting
not only his own pain, but his love, not of the Wild West, but the Natural,
older beauty of Nature in New England, a beauty remembered by a nearly
blind man who felt that that beauty was the real essence of America, not
the West of the Beadle Dime Novels?
Schama first mentions the murder of George Parkman on p. 57, for no apparent reason, and then dissolves into a discussion of Parkman's marriage that is MOST confusing. Why? (pp. 58-59) When did Parkman marry? When did she die? When did his son die? How old was the son when he died? How careful a biographer is Schama?.
Why does Schama like Parkman as a historian? Is it because "Parkman had evolved into a craftsman who energies were pinpointed into minute detailed task. He had become a stitcher of tapestry, albeit with slowness, like those at Bayeux ... . As in such a tapestry there were brilliantly fabricated moments, flights of pure fanciful embroidery, stitched into the epic" (p. 63)?
In sum what is most important to Schama in the writing of history? Imagination?
Schama ends his chapter with Parkman dissolving into Wolfe and Wolfe dissolving into Parkman, the writing of the history unstoppable until the death of one or the other? Yet there is not sense of what Parkman really had to say about Wolfe's death. That moment seems strangely irrelevant to Schama, or is it?
Why does Schama end the chapter the way he does? What other
painting is he concerned about? Why Is Katherine Lowther concerned about
it? (p.19?). Could she, at that point, have known of Wolfe's will?
The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose the British
cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan. Some of the corps
pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing. The clansmen drew
their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as bloodhounds. At the
English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire
was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes
and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more. Here Wolfe himself
led the charge, at the head of the Louisbourg grenadiers. A shot shattered
his wrist. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot
struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He
staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers,
one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier,
aided by an officer of the artillery who ran to join them, carried him
in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so,
and asked if he would have a surgeon. "There's no need," he answered; "it's
all over with me." A moment after, one of them cried out: "they run, see
how they run!" "Who run?" Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep.
"The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!" "Go, one of you, to Colonel
Burton," returned the dying man: "tell him to march Webb's regiment down
to Charles river, to cut off their retreat from the bridge." Then, turning
on his side, he murmured, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!" and
in a few moments his gallant soul had fled. (Parkman, Montcalm and
Wolfe (1915 ed.), III, pp. 140-141.)