Make Do and Mend, II

It has been a while since I last harped on this subject, but I was put in mind of it during a recent trip to the cobbler, who has breathed fresh life into three pairs of shoes. It is a rare thing for me to be in the same country as all of my shoes, and I have wasted no time in fixing up these summery selections. Nothing irks me more than the way life leads us towards the disposable, the frivolous, the temporary. Contrary to the popular notion, they still do build them like they used to; it’s just that you have to look a bit harder to find them (whatever ‘they’ may be), and you have to look harder still to find those with the skills to maintain them. When I buy a pair of shoes, I buy them with a mind to them lasting at least ten years. Good shoes are expensive, but if you divide the price by ten, and then compare with the kind of shoes that will last you only a season before being binned, you will find that they make economic sense.

The only thing is to find a decent repair man. The shoes here in question presented a variety of challenges, all ably met in this instance. The penny loafers (Ballin, Italy) were the easiest job. A simple black heel.

These rather amusing summer loafers (Café Noir, Italy) came replete with wooden heel, capped in tan rubber. I think my man found a decent match for it.

And the final pair (also Italian, but I bought them five years ago and can’t remember the maker) represented the greatest challenge. The heel was easy enough, but due to a couple of unfortunate rain incidents and some over use in their early years, the leather around the top of the sole had split, and there was some looseness all around. My man successfully repaired the damage, sanding away the most afflicted areas, and making all secure. This pair is acquiring a lovely patina as they age, and I would be loathe to lose them.

On Becoming Manly, Part I

‘My spirits were divided pathetically between the wish to stay on, a guarded child, and to proceed into the world, a budding man, and, in my utter ignorance, I sought in vain to conjure up what my immediate future would be’ (Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 1907).

Few of us, I can only surmise, have to undergo the kind of wrench borne by Gosse (pictured left with his father) in his formative years. To break out from under a puritanical yoke and give full play to the inner voice of oneself, so long enshrined in suspicion and sin, is not any longer the kind of thing the ‘budding man’ has to accomplish. Children, at least in the West, are at full liberty to indulge in all manner of innocence-losing experiences, that we may wonder if there remains anything traditionally ‘child-like’ in them at all. Yet, all this to one side, Gosse’s dilemma, quoted above, strikes me as one more pertinent than ever for today’s youth. The issue is scarcely ever raised by anyone, and I doubt it arises so articulately within the minds of teenagers, if it arises at all. But the questions of when, how, and why to become a man are of pressing importance, lest we find ourselves among a generation of perpetual half-way houses. We shall not be surrounded by a multitude of Peter Pan figures, for innocence will be lost; but the passage into manhood does not follow effortlessly. The idea of a society of enduring adolescents should horrify us all.

I have written before on the rites of passage that I feel we have mislaid. In some respects, these have been inadequately replaced by the notion that university is a universal coming-of-age ritual that should be available to all. We should be wary of derogating the word ‘university’ to the point where it becomes a mere synonym for ‘party’, for I remain convinced that university is only for the intellectually able, rather than existing simply to boost alcohol tolerance and sexual experience. Still, I understand that the idea of university as a rite of passage has arisen precisely because of the general paucity of other opportunities in this regard. Boys and girls ought to want to grow up, or at least sense that they cannot go on in a puerile state. I am not sure that university fosters the right kind of attitude, but rather provides a space where the ‘spirits… divided pathetically’ are permitted to persist. It is, by all accounts, a space outside of the real world; an extension of adolescence; a not-so-pregnant pause. From this ‘curriculum’ (devoid of its character-building elements of old), why should we expect adults, apparently automatically, to emerge?

Rather, I suppose that some notion of what adulthood is and why it is necessary should be let loose somewhat earlier in life, and that emerging men should be aware of the choices and imperatives in bringing it about. It is no use, so I think, for a child to try to conjure with the future apropos of nothing at all; it is yet worse merely to proceed through life on a pre-determined course. A sense of responsibility, knowledge of the virtues, ingrained good habits and manners, a stout character: these things are to be built. We are not entitled to them, but must shift for them. If we merely wait until graduation ceremonies end before we inform the incipient citizenry of their roles as adults, we shall hardly be surprised if the alumni fail to live up to expectations. If, as I have said before, we are to give credence to the old adage that the child is father to the man, then we must make sure that our children are given a map, a compass, and the sage advice of those experienced in the lay of the land. Left to fumble through the uncharted territory of their adolescence alone, we must not wonder if they fail properly to emerge at the other side.

The Storm; or, Community of the Joyfully Afflicted

‘While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling’ (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939).

For a week, in the North East of the American continent, have we laboured in the unremitting heat, compounded by the bone-wearying humidity, of torturous summer. I shall maintain my vow not to bore you with tails of marathon-training woe, merely pointing out en passant that to run in such heat is to add sweat and blood to the tears of sultry misery. Yet we soldier on, for nothing so trivial as the weather shall deter us from our task.

Today we had a most welcome relief sent in the form of passionate of rain. Mrs. VB and I were taking our morning constitutional, undeterred by the oppressive air, and were met with a deluge the likes of which I have seldom known outside of biblical tales. The streets flowed as rivers; our clothing hung from us, saturated by the weight of walls of water; and steam rose from the scorched earth. Sharing a moment of relief, we laughed and stomped through the storm, knowing it to be better to enjoy our fate than to resist it.

As we continued we met others, also promenading through the thunderous and teeming sky. The sense of shared experience, our mutual reduction to primal pleasures, broke the usual boundaries of stifling urbanity and communal anonymity. In this most peculiar of circumstances, there was great joy. Greetings were shared; smiles proffered; shouts of joy raised in exultant and common relief. Those in cars, reduced to a crawl by the severity of the downpour, looked on with smug satisfaction from their dry refuges, while we happy few pitied their torpid inertia, knowing well that a pedestrian life was, for once, to live.

Forgive an Englishman for talking of the weather. It is a national pastime, if not a veil for our awkwardness. But then, an Englishman never met with such drama in his perambulations.

Think Italian: Avoid Italy

I was in Italy recently. My ruminations on Italian men are still to come, but in the meantime, since it is forty Celsius outside and nobody knows what to wear, I thought I’d offer a thought or two on Italian threads.

Contrary to proverbial knowledge, the roads led me away from Rome to Sienna, Florence and Milan. Along the way I mentally pressed my nose against the glass of many a tailoring establishment, savouring the finest in Italian couture, and I marvelled at the wealth of quality shoes, in the home of fine footwear. But I neither wet my beak, nor dipped my toes. Oh no. A sage Italian shoe salesman, actually the proprietor of a fine establishment in Montreal, told me before I left that I would shop in Italy in a state of awe but, if I would be sensible, I would buy nothing. He was right. One does not buy Italian in Italy.

Italy is, amongst other irritations, very expensive. In Europe this is not exceptional, but elsewhere one may indulge in the vulgarities of ‘The Sale’, which in Italy seems not to exist. The price is the price is the price. And it is too much. The going rate for a respectable pair of shoes, for example, is anything between 300 and 800 Euros, more if you want a quality pair. Some may not scruple at such a price tag, but to be manly is to be responsible – to know the distance between the price and the value – and to act accordingly. One must ‘go around the block’, and compare. Once one leaves Italy, one finds Italian finery everywhere, at a fraction of the price.

Thus it is with pleasure that I introduce an item of my Italian summer wear, purchased outside Italy, of course. Some of you will perhaps remember my penchant for plaid, and this I couldn’t resist:

The jacket is by Mario Matteo, in a loose-weave linen. The attention to detail makes all the difference. One cannot overestimate quality stitching. One might even be permitted to fawn over an accomplished button hole. The surgeon’s cuffs are a lovely bonus, especially when the heat might give one cause to let one’s wrists breathe. I will not dwell on numbers and figures; suffice to say that it cost no more than 20 per cent of its suggested price.

How pleasant to cut a bella figura. How satisfactory to cut the price!

La Gloire

… do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; by my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1831).

Of all the noble feelings which fill the human heart in the exciting tumult of battle, none, we must admit, are so powerful and constant as the soul’s thirst for honour and renown… Although other feelings may be more general in their influence, and many of them – such as love of country, fanaticism, revenge, enthusiasm of every kind – may seem to stand higher, the thirst for honour and renown still remains indispensible. Those other feelings may rouse the great masses in general, and excite them more powerfully, but they do not give the Leader a desire to will more than others, which is an essential requisite in his position if he is to make himself distinguished in it… It is through these aspirations we have been speaking of in Commanders, from the highest to the lowest, this sort of energy, this spirit of emulation, these incentives, that the action of armies is chiefly animated and made successful. And now as to that which specially concerns the head of all, we ask, has there ever been a great Commander destitute of the love of honour, or is such a character even conceivable? (Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1832).*

Curious, these passages, in our world. Of course, Clausewitz was in deadly earnest, whereas Shelley at least sought to challenge such a notion; but it seems that the very subject makes us liable to squirm in our easy chairs. We are sorely lacking aspirational figures: our wars are only dimly connected to our sovereignty, and there is scarcely anything left intrepidly to discover (nothing particularly entices us to the microscope, much less to particle colliders under the Alps). Our idols of honour are as likely to be football professionals as anyone else, and I can think of nothing more damning to say of us than that. Yet I raise the subject because I believe it still to be worthy.

Much as I have previously extolled the virtues of work, of occupation, of indefatigability, and of resolution, I must stress that there should also be a point. What drives us to keep on, to continue when our spirits are depressed? What inspires us to create, to lead, to cut a swathe through the dross of life? It is, after a fashion, a love of honour. We may wish to cover ourselves in glory, but it would not be something we should wish to boast, for we do not live to be braggarts; we aim to wear it modestly, and inwardly strive to outdo ourselves. True honour is duly recognised by our peers and, we hope, by our descendents. In this, we achieve our immortality, for does not a man wish to live forever? We seek not wealth, nor luxury: honour is its own reward.

As a matter of reflection, therefore, I wonder if we can look ourselves in the eye and honestly proclaim that the point of what we do is bigger than ourselves. There is no glory in serving oneself. There is no honour in merely meeting our own desires. What is our greater contribution? What of us will be left when we are but dust and ashes? For what can we be honoured? Every man will perhaps have an idea of what he can do. No time like the present to start to do it.

*Von allen großartigen Gefühlen, die die menschliche Brust in dem heißen Drange des Kampfes erfüllen, ist, wir wollen es nur gestehen, keines so mächtig und konstant wie der Seelendurst nach Ruhm und Ehre… Alle anderen Gefühle, wieviel allgemeiner sie auch werden können, oder wieviel höher manche auch zu stehen scheinen, Vaterlandsliebe, Ideenfanatismus, Rache, Begeisterung jeder Art, sie machen den Ehrgeiz und die Ruhmbegierde nicht entbehrlich. Jene Gefühle können den ganzen Haufen im allgemeinen erregen und höherstimmen, aber geben dem Führer nicht das Verlangen, mehr zu wollen als die Gefährten, welches ein wesentliches Bedürfnis seiner Stelle ist, wenn er Vorzügliches darin leisten soll... Diese Bestrebungen aller Anführer aber, von dem höchsten bis zum geringsten, diese Art von Industrie, dieser Wetteifer, dieser Sporn sind es vorzüglich, welche die Wirksamkeit eines Heeres beleben und erfolgreich machen. Und was nun ganz besonders den höchsten betrifft, so fragen wir: hat es je einen großen Feldherrn ohne Ehrgeiz gegeben, oder ist eine solche Erscheinung auch nur denkbar?