John Aubrey - Biographical Methods

Biographical Methods

Aubrey approached the work of the biographer much as his contemporary scientists had begun to approach the work of empirical research by the assembly of vast museums and small collection cabinets. Collating as much information as he could, he left the task of verification largely to Wood, and thereafter to posterity. As a hanger-on in great houses, he had little time and little inclination for systematic work, and he wrote the "Lives" in the early morning while his hosts were sleeping off the effects of the night before. These texts were, as Aubrey entitled them, Schediasmata, "pieces written extempore, on the spur of the moment". Time after time, he leaves marks of omission in the form of dashes and ellipses for dates and facts, inserting fresh information whenever it is presented to him. The margins of his notebooks are dotted with notes-to-self, most frequently the Latin "quaere". This exhortation, to "go and find out" is often followed. In his life of Thomas Harcourt, Aubrey notes that one Roydon, a brewer living in Southwark, was reputed to be in possession of Harcourt's petrified kidney: "I have seen it", he writes approvingly; "he much values it".

Aubrey himself valued the evidence of his own eyes above all, and he took great pains to ensure that, where possible, he noted not only the final resting places of people, but also of their portraits and papers. Though his work has frequently been accused of inaccuracy, this charge is somewhat misguided. In most cases, Aubrey simply wrote what he had seen, or heard. When transcribing hearsay, he displays a careful approach to the ascription of sources. For example, in his life of Thomas Chaloner (who, Aubrey notes, was himself fond of spreading rumours in the concourse of Westminster Hall, coming back after lunch to find them changed), he recorded an inaccurate and bawdy anecdote about Chaloner's death, but subsequently found it to be in fact about James Chaloner. Aubrey let the initial story stand in his text, while highlighting the error in a marginal note. A number of similar occurrences suggest that he was interested not only in the oral history he was noting down, but in the very processes of transmission and corruption by which it was formed.