A new biography of a great man, especially one whose life is already rich with lore, is a delicate task. There is the temptation to attempt something new, or worse, to try to make the story “relevant”—even “urgent,” heaven forbid—by inserting into the great one’s life some zippy contemporary narrative (usually sexual). Contemporary biography imagines that people of the past only matter if they are to some degree secretly, transgressively, or subversively working to promote one of today’s controlling ideas. It’s a fundamentally gnostic approach to people’s personal histories, which insists that individuals only matter insofar as, in their own remote eras, they participated in the secret knowledge of the cultural mores of the late 2010s.
And so Joanne Paul’s biography Thomas More: A Life is a pleasant surprise. Paul attempts none of the trendy choreography of many contemporary biographers. Her account of the saint and statesman is beautifully and simply biographical, devoid of unnecessary commentary, speculation, evaluation, or assessment. The book is not perfect; it would have benefited from a keen-eyed editor. But Paul clearly believes that the greatness of an extraordinary life originates in the details of that life, the day-to-day habits of mind and body, and what’s more, she has such confidence in this belief that she is willing to let those details speak for themselves—a vital practice for a biographer.
In a quote printed on the front cover of the book, The Wall Street Journal describes Thomas More: A Life as “cinematic.” This is not, perhaps, the compliment the newspaper thinks it is. The term “cinematic” might lead prospective readers to expect a grandiose but grievously oversimplified narrative, the very opposite of what Paul gives us. Probably what the WSJ reviewer meant by “cinematic” is that the book is imaginatively interesting and has lots of images alongside its political and historical reporting. I was relieved to find that Thomas More: A Life is not, in fact, cinematic. Rather, it is literary, an unusual blend of virtuosic and restrained. Paul is not afraid of description, and she is secure enough in her material to weave a tapestry of images to support her historical research. The descriptions throughout the book are not spurious, however; the images she chooses become key to her subtle argument about the nature of great men in general, and St. Thomas More in particular.
History as Story
The book opens with a description of a citywide Candlemas procession in 1478 in London. “When seen from above,” she writes, “the thousands of small flickering flames, as they met and merged through the streets of London, might appear as a single unwavering light.” Add in the chapter’s epigraph from More’s Four Last Things—“For as the flame is next to the smoke, so is death next to an incurable sickness, and such is all our life”—and the book immediately has the atmosphere of 15th-century London. I was impressed by this imagery from the outset, but when the book unostentatiously returned to the symbol of a candle flame at the end, this opening took on new meaning. Paul is not simply a historian; she is also a storyteller.
The book is pleasingly arranged, moving easily from detailed descriptions of More’s daily life to deep dives into cultural and political intricacies. Paul consistently makes good choices about how to organize her material. For example, early in the book she moves from a description of More’s young childhood days (before he started grammar school) into an account of the chaotic time after King Edward IV’s death. She closes the section about Thomas’s childhood with the sentence, “While Thomas slept next to his siblings, the rest of the city was meant to join him, but much business could occur in the darkness of the London streets.” The next section begins, “Dodging the night watch, William Mistlebrook rushed through the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate…” This is simply a good transition, and a smart way to embed the details of her subject’s life in its historical setting.
Individual sentences themselves, however, leave something to be desired: “the rest of the city was meant to join him” is an unpleasant construction. There are a number of moments like this where a small syntactical flaw interrupts the flow of the story, which made me wish Paul’s editor had been more rigorous.
Paul’s facility with her material is clear from her apparent delight in interweaving quotations, historical records, and her own descriptive prose. Though the biography is about St. Thomas More, it also gives detailed portraits of characters like John More (Thomas’s father), Margaret (More) Gibbs (his daughter), Erasmus, Germain de Brie, Edward IV, Cardinal Wolsey, Francis I of France, and scores of others.
Perhaps the most striking of these portraits is that of Henry VIII, who is usually remembered solely for actions in his last 15 years or so of life: his divorce of Catherine of Aragon and his many subsequent marriages. In Thomas More: A Life, we stand alongside a teenage Thomas More and meet a young Henry, a scholarly second son. From there, Paul documents how the kingdom—and More—welcomed Henry after his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales’s death, and saw his coronation as the possible beginning of a golden age of justice, wisdom, prudence, and courage in English rule. Paul devotes considerable space to More’s scholarly relationship with Henry and expounds on Henry’s book responding to Luther. She rounds out the character of this archvillain of history beautifully, so much so that I hope she writes a biography of Henry VIII next.
Questions Answered and Unanswered
A figure like Thomas More is wrapped round with questions. What motivated him? Was he driven by ambition, called by greatness, or compelled by fate (or all three)? How consistent were his character and his desires throughout his life? Throughout Thomas More: A Life, the question of More’s motivations remains hazy. The clearest answer Paul gives is from More’s own Utopia, where his main character, Morus, says, “Whatever play is being performed, perform it the best you can […] what you cannot turn to good you must at least make as little bad as you can.” Perhaps that is all we’ll ever know about More’s ambitions, but it seems that, in his volumes of writings and countless letters, there must be a little more clarity.
The chief question for me, however, was this: What caused More to decide that signing the Oath of Succession, which recognized Anne Boleyn as the king’s lawful wife, was a bridge too far? By the time he was asked to agree that Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid, More had already participated to some degree in various injustices in the name of the king. After the Evil May Day Riots of 1517 that saw mobs assault foreigners living in London, which More tried personally to stop, More had to oversee executions (in his capacity as undersheriff of London at the time) that he apparently knew were unjust. Yet he did so, in service to his king. Why, then, was More immoveable when it came to signing the Oath, even after his entire family did so?
Paul deals with this question skillfully. The temptation with biography, as with all writing, is to tell rather than to show and in so doing to reduce an individual to a single moment. Paul resists this temptation ably, showing us Thomas More’s character developing over time, documented in letters, anecdotes, journal entries, and specific historical situations. Rather than telling us what we ought to think about the man, she shows us what he was like.
What emerges is a lovely surprise. Unlike the somewhat austere Thomas More of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (which takes its title from a letter by Erasmus, referring to More), Paul introduces us to a cheerful, charming, industrious man whose decision to support his faith against his king came about somewhat by happenstance. The cataclysmic moment of his life came after his career was nearly over, after he had reached the summit of his ambitions and was beginning to descend the other side into a quiet and retiring life. Yet the faith that pushed him to his decision to be “the king’s good servant, and God’s first” was there throughout, shaping and guiding him in his conversations, reflections, and choices.
Thomas More: A Life is not a perfect book. It needed a heavier editorial hand. In its caution to avoid dictating the terms of its narrative, it sidesteps some fairly obvious questions. What motivated Thomas More throughout his relentless, often grueling career? He was financially prosperous by mid-career, and he frequently lamented the increasing demands of his work. Did he simply accept new challenges as they arose, or was he seeking more influence? Again, I wonder if the answers are to be found in More’s correspondence. But it is a valiant book and well worth the read. Even as it demystifies the saint, statesman, and martyr, Paul’s account reminds us that our lives are shaped not by one momentous decision but by the thousands of tiny decisions that form the core of who we are.
