To the Future King and Queen

The announcement of a Royal engagement is newsworthy for precisely one reason: we discover who is to be our future Queen. It is not important for us to know if she can work, but if she will serve; not if she is happy, but if she is dutiful; not if she is pretty, but if she is healthy. And one might say that even these things should be beyond our ken, for it is nothing to do with us after all whom His Royal Highness chooses to wed. She is entering a public role, and this should have nothing to do with the paparazzi, or with intimate knowledge about whether she can cook, or with what she chooses to wear.

Our utter disrespect for the Monarchy is generally expressed through our interest in all the bits and pieces of their existence that are completely and wholly irrelevant. We reduce them to first names, follow them in celebrity magazines, pass judgment on their comments, their actions, their every move. We answer nonsensical polls about whether we ‘like’ them, or what they’re ‘good for’, and go about as if our opinions on such things matter. We are generally so dim-wittedly unaware of what the Monarchy is for, and from whence it came, that one wonders why we bother taking so much ‘interest’ in it at all, or rather, why they seem so intent on managing their media presence. The Monarchy is now on Facebook, and you can ‘like’ it, and for its part, it will delete offensive comments. The post- modern court is dull, plebeian, and hideously democratic. If Royalty is reduced to this, then how do we distinguish it from its opposite: the Anti-Monarchy Society, also of Facebook?

We really should take note of the Monachy mottos, and so might They

We are mistaken to think, and the Monarchy is mistaken to endorse the thought, that we all inhabit the same world; that they’re ordinary people, like you and me; that we have a right to know, and that they have an obligation to tell us. If all of that were true then they should not continue as a monarchy, but instead retire into middle-class ennui. The Monarchy has forgotten how to be a monarchy, it seems. They care what we think, and they appear on sofas talking to journalists who call them William and Kate. And this breeds nothing but contempt in those who look for reasons to abolish the whole lot of them, for they flaunt the lie of their special distinction, rubbing our noses in it. For God’s sake go back into your palaces, and occasionally deign to wave at us from a balcony. Be mysterious, aloof, eccentric. Be evasive, elusive, and above all have contempt for the media limelight. You do not need to court it, or to woo us. You are the Monarchy. You have to believe, or at least portray that you believe, that you are morally, spiritually, and constitutionally distinct from me, and from everyone else. It may be utter nonsense, but those are the terms, or else all bets are off. Either You reign, or You do not. Either You serve a constitutional function, or You do not. Either You appear on stamps and the money, or You do not. There is nothing democratic – meant in the crass modern sense, where everyone thinks they should have an equal say about everything – about You.

But who am I to tell you what to do? I’m just one man at court among millions.

Braving the Public

My dear and faithful Readers,

I have seen fit to make myself available to you, as it were, personally. Yes, in addition to the ample opportunities you have to engage with yours truly, here, on Twitter, and on Facebook, you can now send me a private message if the moment takes you (link over on the right). I can make no promises to respond directly to everyone, but in some cases I see there is a need for conversations to proceed further than the blog forum permits; in other cases, I may pursue questions or ideas that you might have for me on the blog itself. After all, we live in an age where the audience may directly inspire the author – why not take advantage of it? Credit will be duly apportioned. If you don’t hear from me, you may nevertheless be assured that I am reading, and taking you as seriously as you seem to take me.

My glass is charged with a fine twelve-year old single malt, given to me by an all-too-generous friend. Here’s to looking forward to making your further acquaintance!

Until then, I remain your humble servant,

VB.

Back on Track; or, the Five-minute Mile

For better or for worse, I am incurably goal oriented; without challenges I would sit and fester. Once I set my own targets I am stubbornly fierce about meeting them. I am much more pragmatic about goals set by others. After all, one might think one’s boss or, in the case of academics, one’s peer reviewers, to be ridiculous. Meeting arbitrary conditions is soul sapping. And even if you think the third-party goal worthwhile, the satisfaction is never quite fulfilling. Then again, hitting my own marks does not so much satisfy as stave off the worst kind of disappointment. How does that adage from school teachers go? ‘You’ve let the school down, you’ve let me down, but most of all you’ve let yourself down’. And there it is: I hate to disappoint myself. Therefore if I set out to do something, it had better get done. You might think this a bizarre masochistic streak, but I call it manliness. My intentions are to cultivate and enact self-reliance, determination (grit and pluck), organisation, resolve and purpose. As I said, I call it manliness (or part thereof). It can be plied back into a world full of things bigger and more important than I, and, with any luck, to everyone’s benefit.

It will be just like this

I suppose it has been long enough since my marathon exploits of September to let you in on the next goal. I confess that the long run, and the hundreds of miles that went into its preparation, took a toll on the legs. One particular ligament at the top of the fibula did not want to settle down for about a month, and then I took another month very easily so as not to aggravate anything. But for the last couple of weeks I’ve slowly been upping the intensity, and nothing has snapped, so I’m comfortable with stating my intentions. I timed a mile yesterday and clocked 6:45, which is somewhere near my pace as a 14-year old. Sigh. The target is 5 minutes, and I’m giving myself a year to do it. Oh, and I’ll run the Berlin half marathon in April, aiming for something under 1.40:00. As per the last challenge, I won’t bore you with the details, however gruesomely and deliciously they would read, until the deeds are done.

Hold On A Mo; or, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It is November and therefore the month of the moustache. This recent convention is in aid of prostate cancer research and awareness, and on that score it is unimpeachable. But what of the moustache itself? Clearly identified as a masculine symbol by the orchestrators of this movement, the moustache is nevertheless of uncertain historical status. At the very least, Jeeves was highly circumspect about matters of the upper lip, and that should give us pause. Of course, the ladies of the Wodehouse world thought otherwise, but they were universally awful and had poor taste. Further pause. By no means do I suggest that P.G. tips offer the best insights into the manly life, but then again, they aren’t far off.

Barbarian lipwear, c. 300 BC.

 

The first reported depiction of a moustache was on the face of a Scythian warrior. The civilised world at that point in time would doubtlessly have considered him a barbarian. This is an inauspicious beginning. Still, the Greeks coined the thing, calling it mystax, and her philosophers were no strangers to the cultivation of facial hair. Our modern associations with the hairy lip don’t help settle the thing, with everyone from Ned Flanders to Stalin to confuse us.

Flanders

Stalin

The most sensible words on the subject can be extracted from Household Words, via the pen of Dickens, in 1853. We must be on our guard, for Dickens was not averse to quackery and nonsense, and we can quickly disregard his arguments about the bodily expulsion of carbon and the body being thrown into chemical imbalance by daily chin scrapings. More persuasive are his allusions to the symbolic importance of the thing:

The idea that there existed a connection between a man’s vigor of mind and body, and the vigor of growth in his beard, was confirmed by the fact that Socrates, the wisest of the Greek philosophers, earned pre-eminently the title of the bearded. Among races of men capable of growing rich crops on the chin, the beard has always been regarded more or less as a type of power… The beard became naturally honored, inasmuch as it is a characteristic feature of the chief of the two sexes (I speak as an ancient), of man, and of man only, in the best years of his life, when he is capable of putting forth his independent energies. As years multiply and judgment ripens the beard grows, and with it grows, or ought to grow, every man’s title to respect.

Still, this deals in zones rather lower than that upon which we currently gaze, and Dickens hastens to draw our attention to the mistaken mystax of the nineteenth-century aristocrat. The association of whisker and rank was stamped into the popular imagination, so that after the revolutions of 1848 the Germans did away with their hairy adornments so as not to be confused for members of the old order. The Hungarians, however, continued to place great esteem in the thing, and famous Generals sported moustaches that might have been caught under foot. Despite this nonsense, Dickens averred that it was better for Englishmen to lay down their razors, for it would save them a year over a lifetime. And this, ultimately, speaks against the moustache, for it saves no shaving time, and indeed probably makes for fiddly shaving and, if you will, mo’ maintenance. It should be beard or nothing, and even then it should be tended and trimmed, just as the philosophers insisted.

I don’t aspire to any of these labels.

All this having been said, and with my former assertions about the joys of shaving in mind, I am attempting to grow a moustache, if only to demonstrate to myself that the judgements of history are not wrong. I doubt it will last, for Mrs. VB is not a fan, and there are certain acts that should not be compromised, as this fellow in 1855 discovered:

A caution during the approaching festive season to young gentlemen who wear sharp-pointed moustaches: Pretty cousin: ‘What a tiresome great awkward boy you are! Just see how you have scratched my chin!’ (Punch)

Charm: Offensive? Part IV

Ambition – it is the last infirmity of noble minds (J.M. Barrie, The Twelve-Pound Look).

Who deserves to be charmed, and who are the charming? It should so far be clear that I am no advocate of false charm, but rather see that the rewards of charm must reflect its genuine qualities. The charming man is usually superior to his audience in this respect, for he sees in them what they most wish to see in themselves, but they are incapable of returning the insight. It is true that, in the case of despicable people, the charming man may choose to withhold that which would charm, for he may see no purpose in inflating the bad. Then again, if, as I maintain, everyone has something to redeem them, then the accentuation of this quality may nudge the bad man toward the good. We are wont to do that which brings us popularity and success, and it is as well that these things are wrought by that which is good in us, for history reveals ample proof that they need not be. It is possible, therefore, for the charming man to facilitate power without necessarily taking it. It would indeed be so much the better if charming men were our electors, for then we should have leaders chosen for their better qualities, instead of leaders who put themselves forward with inflated ideas of their own virtues.

The great pleasure of being truly charming is to see people basking in the goodness of themselves, and to know that it was you who put them there. They will, perhaps, love you and reward you for it. Insofar as charm is to offer generosity, therefore, it also reflects back and serves the interests of the charming. I must be clear, again, that these interests cannot determine charm, for this will lead us to flattery and deception. Rather, one must assume that good follows good, and that what we sow we shall someday reap, without knowing in advance the nature of our crop. The charming man therefore actively pursues the good, but he does not reduce his goals to ambition. He may seem self-effacing, but in reality he knows that his rewards will be just.