Hunting Attitude

There is a great gentlemanly tradition of killing things for fun. Few people do it now, and even in the heyday of foxhunting, few men would have admitted that they liked it purely for the spectacle of death. To seek brutal death – to chase death down for its own sake – is the purview of the few. Loathe foxhunting as indeed many people do, we have nevertheless had cause in the past to be thankful for the few. This is not by way of a justification, but for a couple of hundred years at least it was thought that one could tell a good military leader, or a good soldier, by his prowess in the field. But the truth of foxhunting, not often told, is that while most men proclaimed how much they would dearly have loved to be in at the death, precious few ever really experienced it. And perhaps it is just as well, for the chasing pack may have been given to lose their hunting breakfasts in the least dignified manner. If there was no chance of seeing the end of the fox, you might at least break your own leg.

In what then, lay hunting’s manly virtues? In courageous riding: to go full tilt at a hedge with ditch of unknown width and depth on the other side was not for the faint hearted. In its rituals of language, procedure, and blood: young initiates had their faces anointed with fox blood, and the fox’s ‘brush’ was bestowed upon the most valiant. In its display, ocular, aural and olfactory: fine figures in cutaway pinks and shiny tops, horns and hunting parlance, hounds – the emblems of human ingenuity in breeding and analogues of aristocracy – scenting sagaciously. In its fair play, for a fighting chance was part of the ethos: death was the end in mind, but woe betide the man who caused the fox to be ‘chopped in covert’. Hunting also had a sociology of its own, based on skill primarily, but not without representing traditional ideals of social cohesion in the bonds between manorial lords, yeoman farmers, the clergy, and tenant farmers. Hunting men knew their respective places. For some, a hunt gathering was an arena for the manly arts; a place to exhibit the masculine equivalent of feminine accomplishments: conversation, politics, lore and friendship. All these were things, according to Anthony Trollope, quæ possunt esse homini polito delectatio.

A life of refined pleasures, indeed, with rough and tumble and a cracking pace for good measure. As early as 1870, MacMillan’s Magazine predicted that foxhunting would soon become ‘a problem for moral archaeologists’; that tally-ho ‘may only live in the pages of some historian of old enthusiasms’. In some ways I regret being that historian, fulfilling a remarkably prescient prophesy. In other ways, I see that it is fitting, modern sensibilities being what they are. That said, the modern debate bores me a great deal. Neither side has been given to tell the truth, and that bleak observation trumps any of the other virtues of their respective positions. It leads me to conclude that the manly foxhunter was an historical figure long before foxhunting’s actual demise. And if that is the case, there is certainly little left to say for it.

Only the Wrong Clothes

There’s no such thing as bad weather; there’s only the wrong clothes. So said Billy Connolly, of all people, although he probably didn’t say it first. Today in Boston it was minus 24C if you factored in the wind, which by most standards is pretty nippy (minus 45C was my personal worst, in Quebec City a couple of years ago). But still there are clothes for this kind of teeth-chattering inclemency, and if you’re bundled up, or better still, inside, it need not be unendurable. Most people today were suitably attired; but I see no reason to praise the general public for having common sense. It is, after all, supposed to be common. Allow me instead to dwell upon a little madness.

Today I observed numerous poor miserable slips of girls wearing open-toe shoes, some with heels, some flats. They sported short skirts, and fall jackets. These victims of vanity, had they brought mirrors with them on their ill-advised sojourns, would have had chance to reflect on their teary-eyed, snot-covered blue visages, with pained eyes, cracked lips and general air of quivering rigidity. Just what they were aiming for, I suppose. I also witnessed four different men, independently insane, wearing shorts and t-shirts. Shorts are difficult at the best of times, and I welcome the cold, for it saves the sartorial dilemma. What were they thinking? One, I surmise, regarded the distance between his college residence and the gym – a few hundred metres – as insufficiently far to warrant outdoor clothes. I saw him jogging stiff-kneed on the way in. I doubt very much that he survived the sweat-bathed return trip, which probably marks a good result for the gene pool. I also saw a man with a bald head wearing a coat with a hood: coat unzipped, hood down. Another man, gracefully aged, left his otherwise practical shearling coat unbuttoned. Sporting no gloves and no bonnet, his jaw assumed the set of grim death. Is this machismo? Vanity? Or is just plain stupidity?

Winter doesn’t bite here too much, but when it does its teeth are sharpened. Surely people know this? Where are the boots, the top-coats, the hats? Where are the scarves and gloves? The poor tramp I saw on the way to work this morning bravely wore everything. He knew about winter. How unjust, how insulting, to see the young and the wealthy stumble about wearing nothing but their lunacy. The ladies, frankly, looked dishevelled and sickly, like victims of gin, or a Hogarthian rake. Whatever image they aspired to, it was not this. The men, no doubt proud of their stern masculine resolve in the face of extremity, exposed their bodies and revealed the limited contents of their nigh-empty heads. It wasn’t big; it wasn’t clever; it certainly wasn’t manly.

I Like To Be Tied Up

Titter ye not.

Time was when the open throat of a man could make a woman weak at the knees. The reason: no one was accustomed to seeing anything exposed below the Adam’s Apple. There is a deal to be said for leaving much to be desired. The Victorians were sexual furnaces, engaging in every manner of depravity one might imagine. This was owed in part to the fact that the social formalities of public and private life demanded a buttoned-up approach to dressing (pictured: George John Romanes, personal hero of mine. No stain of sexual depravity marks his character). Imagine for a moment how the minds of today’s youth would be enlivened if only their eyes were not so readily gratified! In the West we are too accustomed to the sight of skin, and accordingly, the erotic has been lost in the grotesque.

Fortunately, a vestige of the erotic remains in individual experience. One’s mind is wont to dwell upon what lies under the clothes of a person who reveals little, for mystery is attractive, and also contemplative; the scantily clad is subject to the ocular gorge, but the moment is fleeting, the potential immediately reached. The tastefully dressed command a second, a third, a longer look. Consider the heightened ecstasy of the long-anticipated reveal.

For these reasons (not exclusively – there are more mundane ones) I advocate wearing a tie. Cover the male throat and animate it in the imagination. But I could not possibly extol the virtues of the tie without offering some prescriptions as to how it should look, and how it should be tied (although I will spare you the specific instructions – look them up). The rules, much like everything else these days, are more relaxed, and one should follow one’s impulses within reason. Wear a big Windsor knot to portray confidence, but bear in mind that with a cheap suit this knot will make you look like a thug or a footballer. The half-Windsor is often a good compromise knot, but the angle of the collar should dictate how much space the knot should take up. Of course, the thickness of the silk, its weave, and the width of the tie itself will all determine what kind of knot you can get away with. With thinner ties, a four-in-hand knot looks well, and ought not to arouse worries of looking juvenile, despite being known in some quarters as the ‘schoolboy knot’. The tie must never hang below where shirt meets trouser, and should not be more than two inches above it. Your girth will determine what looks best. If you’re overweight, eat less and go to the gym. And ties must be silk (or maybe cashmere and silk). No one fantasises about unpeeling layers of polyester.

Spare a thought also for the bowtie (one of mine pictured), although do not ever wear a clip on tie and expect your dignity and self-respect to remain intact. You can learn how to tie a proper one online, and there is really no excuse. A bowtie, if not carefully incorporated into a whole look, might raise an unwanted smile from the beholder; but thoughtfully deployed you may fascinate the passer by, who will spend the day contemplating that enigmatic chap he or she saw earlier.

I like to be tied up. It adds meaning to the times when I want to look relaxed. And it may elicit a desire in some to go for the throat. Carpe jugulum!

On Disappointment

I remember when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in; and, I believe, it was the type of all my future disappointments (Swift to Bolingbroke).

Does this not describe the nature of most, if not all disappointments? For who has not felt, with good reason, that a positive outcome in some affair or other was likely, only to have expectation summarily dashed against the rocks? To be consistent with my previous animadversions on this head, I shall resist invoking hope and luck, but I feel we may safely identify with the man who feels he has been done an injustice. In these times of difficulty and dearth – I say this with a vagueness such that anyone may identify with it – a fish on the line causes a greater anticipation of its being landed securely on the bank than it might in times of ease and plenty. To lose the fish through, say, a fault in the hook, might be thought by the fisherman to be an injustice, especially if he paid good money for a properly functioning hook. A certain ire is wont to arise under such circumstances, and who could fault it?

The question is, what to do about it? Alcohol provides temporary relief but quickly magnifies the hurt; breaking something in a fit of violence only leads to regret, and does nothing for the problem. The bottom line is that the only cure for missing that fish is to catch another one, and better still to ensnare it on a hook of one’s own fashioning. There is a reason for the platitude “there are plenty more fish in the sea” (although its factual status is increasingly in doubt). Where a chance goes begging, another can be engineered. Perseverance and indefatigability are laudable qualities. Ingenuity and entrepreneurialism, when superadded to the former qualities, make for a formidable character, resistant to setbacks and resolute about the chosen path. Not everyone is blessed with equal amounts of these qualities. But they are to a large extent to be defined in terms of spirit, which can be cultivated, trained, even incanted.

Somebody wise once said, ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down’. That seems to be a sound enough maxim for the disappointed among us.

The Gentleman's Club

[T]he Drones, where a certain standard of decency is demanded from the inmate. Ask anyone at the Drones, and they will tell you that it was a black day for the dear old club when this chap Glossop somehow wriggled into the list of members… the universal consensus of opinion is that the fellow is a bounder and a tick, and that the moment he showed signs of wanting to get into the place he should have been met with a firm nolle prosequi and heartily blackballed (P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves).

In my time I’ve had the good fortune to frequent a number of gentlemen’s clubs. Most of them were perfectly frightful, but anthropological curiosities nonetheless. As a teenager, I watched the awkward sociology of the private golf course club house, not knowing then quite what was wrong. Lower middle-class golfers acting up; upper middle-class golfers trying to be of the people; over made-up women golfers posturing, not realising their hopeless subjection; the odd working-class golfer, spitting old-school venom and being anonymously reported to The Committee. After 8 o’clock, no male was allowed past a certain pillar, upon which hung a brass bell, without donning a jacket and tie. Nothing distinguished the one half of the room ‘past the bell’ from the other, except the haughty stiffness of those who dressed up, looking at the casual slum of monstrous costumes on the other side. Such a bizarre line in the sand, this. Incidentally, the television resided on the formal side of the line. Want to watch Coronation Street with your whisky and water? Get a tie on!

At age fourteen I was bemused. Now I see the point, but I confess that this small mindedness was pushing the envelope of pointless snobbery. Dress codes serve a meaningful purpose, but the boundary should have been the club as a whole. It serves no one to stratify a single room, for God’s sake. It might surprise, perhaps, to note that the higher up the social scale one travels, the more relaxed the regulations. Some institutions exclude by reputation. A man who feels he doesn’t belong automatically stays away; for those who assume a place, the door opens (there are always ways around the money question). A brass neck can take you far, if you know where to stick it. As a case in point, a number of esteemed institutions have recently opened their doors to me, and I haven’t parted with a farthing. Jolly decent of them.

The social dancing and niceties aside, I mention all this merely to make an objection. Perform a Google operation on the phrase ‘gentleman’s club’ and you will be appalled to find that the vast majority of institutions listed rather fall short of the description. No doubt, gentlemen have always visited houses of uncertain repute, but the institutions had not the audacity to presume that the presence of gentlemen signified for them a like status. I know that the word ‘gentleman’ has been emptied of its meaning in the last hundred years, but that is no reason completely to derogate it. It is horrifying to think that the drunken hordes who tonight revel at post-modernity’s rather tangible version of the greasy pole will wake up tomorrow and think themselves upright men of social standing. The gentleman’s club need no longer be the exclusive resort of the social drone, but it ought still to be something more than a grotesque projection of the gutter.