Arnold J. Toynbee: a life

356 Pages·1989·6.77 MB·English

by  McNeill

J.
ARNOLD TOYNBEE

ARNOLD ] . TOYNBEE
A Life
William H. McNeill
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1989 by William H. McNeill
First published in 1989 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1990
Oxford 1s a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McNeill, William Hardy, 1917-
Arnold J. Toynbee : a life
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Toynbee, Arnold Joseph, 1889-1975. 2. Historians
Great Britam-Biography. I. Title.
DA3.T68M37 1989 907'.2024 88-23188
ISBN 0-19-505863-1
ISBN 0-19-506335-X (pbk.)
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3
Printed m the U mted States of Amenca
To My Wife

Acknowledgments
I
entered upon the task of writing this biography in 1986 at the invitation of
Arnold Toynbee's sole surviving son, Lawrence. He, together with his wife
and other members of the immediate family, have been unfailingly helpful and
cooperative throughout the book's gestation. Those to whom I am particularly
indebted, in addition to Lawrence and Jean Toynbee, include Mrs. Philip Toyn
bee, Margaret Toynbee, Polly Toynbee, Rosalind Pennybacker, Anne Powell
Wollheim, and Alexander Murray.
Judgments and opinions are my own, and inferences and guesses I have
ventured about some important aspects of Toynbee's life are no more than
hypotheses invented to make the story make sense. I have found that writing
biography required greater leaps of the imagination than I remember making
when writing world or any other kind of history. The reason is obvious: some
things are hidden, systematically and deliberately, because they seem shameful
or embarrassing. Hence the documentary record of anyone's life will have gaps
yawning gaps-which only an act of the imagination can fill in. I certainly
found this to be true for Toynbee, despite the abundance of his letters and
writings.
This biography is also, in a small way, an essay in world history, since the
contagion of Toynbee's ideas was something of a global phenomenon. The
country I needed most help in trying to understand was Japan. A long list of
correspondents and consultants helped me with that task, and with the practical
question of getting access to some of Toynbee's most important writings that
are lodged at Nihon University Library in Tokyo. Those to whom I am in
debted include Mikio Sato, Muneaki Naganuma, and Tokuharu Shoji of Nihon
University; Keisuke Kawakubo of Reitaku University; Shigeru Nakayama, whose
affiliation I do not know; Daisaku Ikeda and Fred M. Nakabayashi of Soka
Gakkai; Masao Nishikawa of the National Committee of Japanese Historians;
Kei Wakaizumi of Kyoto Technical University; Mike Mansfield and Eugene A.
Nojek of the U.S. Embassy, Japan; Donald Keene of Columbia University; my
Acknowledgments
Vlll
colleagues Akira Iriye and Tetsuo Najita of the University of Chicago and
R.E. Schecter of American Family Foundation. Yet as in the case of my efforts
to understand the dynamic of Toynbee's personality, my efforts to describe the
circumstances in Japan that led to Toynbee's sudden rise to fame in the 1970s
is a work of my imagination, feeding on the materials provided by those who
helped me. They ought not to be held responsible for my conclusions any more
than the family should be supposed to concur with all I have said about Toyn
bee's private life.
A fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation helped meet the expenses of
my time in England, and for that I am doubly grateful since it was a second
award to me and an unusual honor.
Another set of obligations is to the libraries that allowed me to use their
resources for preparing this book. Pride of place must go to the Bodleian Li
brary, Oxford, and particularly to Colin Harris and other members of the staff
of the Western Manuscripts division, where most of Toynbee's papers are stored.
The backbone of my biography comes from the array of materials under their
control. The vague style of annotation I have used when citing these holdings
conforms to the advice of the Curator of Western Manuscripts, who explained
that references ought not to be made to the cartons in which the Toynbee papers
are temporarily (and confusedly) stored, since in future, when they have been
properly catalogued, new carton and sheet numbers will be asssigned. Other
libraries used in the preparation of this book are the Library of Congress, Yale
University Library, the University of Chicago Library, and the interlibrary loan
system of the Beardsley Memorial Library of Winsted, Connecticut. The archi
vists of Time, Inc., New York also were very helpful.
Finally, a number of individuals went out of their way to share information
of one sort or another. These include Christian Peper, Imogen Seger-Coulbom,
Christopher Collins, Richard Stem, Jane Caplan, Spiros Doxiadis, David As
tor, Richard Clogg, Osman Okyar, George Curry, Father Columba of Ample
forth Abbey, Father Sweeney of Boston College, Dorothy Hamerton of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, P.-F. Moreau and Mme. Laffite-Lamaudie
of the Institut de France, and Robin Denniston and Sheldon Meyer of Oxford
University Press. Last but not least I owe a special debt of gratitude to Eliza
beth Meyer of Yale University, who translated Toynbee's Greek and Latin
poems for me, and to members of my own family who read the manuscript in
its formative stage and asked for explanations of matters that were self-evident
to one of my generation but not to theirs.
Colebrook, Conn. W.H.M.
21 January 1988
Contents
I. Great Expectations 3
II. Balliol and the Breakup of Toynbee's Parental Home,
1907-191 I 21
III. Grand Tour, Donhood, and Marriage, 1911-1914 38
IV. The Great War and the Peace Conference,
1914-1919 64
V. The Koraes Professorship, 1919-1924 92
VI. Chatham House and Ganthorpe: A New Equilibrium,
1924-1930 121
VII. Triumph and Defeat, 1930-1939 149
VIII. World War II, 1939-1946 179
IX. Fame and Fortune, 1946-1955 205
X. Toynbee as a World Figure, 1956-1965 235
XI. The Closing Decade of a Busy Life, 1966-1975 262
Conclusion 284
Appendix 289
Notes 291
Index 339