On the Death of a Soubriquet

Long-term followers of this blog will have noted that Vir Beatum is no longer with us. He was a well-intentioned sort, somewhat pompous and acerbic. He was prolix, doubtless, but defended his florid verbosity in the name of withering wit. This forum, which retains his collected works as an archive if not a testament, was his bullpen. Honing his art, many of his pitches went high and handsome, and some grubbed along in the dirt. Such is the nature of all warm-ups, before the tosses really start to count. Unfortunately for VB, he was not meant for the big stage or the real world. The moment of his call-up to the Major Leagues was a sign that this shade had to fade. He was, in the final analysis, only a character. Somewhat Wodehousian in orientation, VB boasted a snifter-full of verisimilitude and a magnum of fiction. Be assured of this: he shall not rest in peace. Vir Beatum will remain as an agitated figment of his architect’s imagination. Should you choose to remain a follower of these pages, doubtless you will occasionally recognise a glimmer of the old chap, fighting his way into the world of print in someone else’s name.

Bestiality in a Time of Smallpox

The news is rife with fear. Influenza is abroad. Worse still, measles is said to be making a big comeback. But disease is not the only problem. The flames of fear are being fanned by the opponents of vaccination. Measles, for example, is entirely preventable, but remains among us because of concerns that the vaccine prophylactic is worse than the disease. The thoroughly debunked notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism is still at large, and with it a cluster of nebulous fears of Big Pharma conspiracies and the risks of contaminating children with manufactured diseases. Yet such fears are not new. The fear of vaccination is as old as vaccination itself. Edward Jenner’s method for preventing smallpox summoned the spectre of sinful flesh. Vaccination was akin to bestiality; the vaccine itself was a beastly sexual disease.

The original ‘vaccine’, named after the cow from which it came, was a massive step forward in smallpox prevention. Until then, children were commonly inoculated with smallpox itself, which usually resulted in a light dose of the disease. Inoculation, however, killed many who underwent it, and left the rest fully contagious. Nevertheless, when Jenner’s Inquiry into the matter finally appeared in 1798, explaining how an animal disease would prevent a human one without resorting to dangerous inoculation, it attracted as much odium as it garnered support.

Wellcome Library, London

James Gillray’s popular 1802 print of the bestial effects of cowpox  strikes the modern viewer as ridiculous: cows emerging from heads, trunks and limbs. Jenner stands centrally, penetrating the arm of a terrified patient with ‘vaccine pock, hot from ye cow’. The patient has previously been ‘opened’ by a special brew. To the right, those already vaccinated undergo a series of horrors caused by contamination with animal disease. The image is shot through with innuendo about sexual transgression (communing with the beast) and venereal disease (syphilis).The pregnant hag on the extreme right seems at once to vomit and give birth to bovine progeny, while behind her another matron sprouts the satyr-like horns of the beast. The breeches of a bumpkin are breached. The faces of others are marked by monstrous eruptions of ‘the pox’.

The image reflects the intensity of the debates and fears around vaccination. Gillray’s caption directs us to the publications of the ‘Anti-Vaccine Society’: not a formal body, but a reference to Jenner’s principal opponents. The prominent physician Benjamin Moseley was the culprit in chief, responding to the ‘Cowmania’ in 1800 with a series of concerns. While Jenner had styled cowpox Variolae Vaccinae, smallpox of the cow, Moseley called it Lues Bovilla, bovine syphilis, with all the long-term mental and nervous consequences of the human ‘pox’. He asked:

Can any person say what may be the consequence of introducing the Lues Bovilla, a bestial humour – into the human frame, after a long lapse of years? Who knows, besides, what ideas may rise in the course of time, from a brutal fever having excited its incongruous impressions on the brain? Who knows, also, but that the human character may undergo strange mutations from quadrupedan sympathy and that some modern Pasiphaë may rival the fables of old?

His classical reference might pass us by, but the invocation of bestiality would have been obvious to the educated in 1800. Pasiphaë, cursed by Poseidon, had copulated with a bull. Having built a wooden cow and covered it with cowhide, she had hidden inside it in order to receive her desired mate. She later gave birth to the Minotaur. Moseley played not only on the taint of venereal disease, but also on the fragility and sanctity of the human, warning of a hybrid and brutal progeny. Vaccination was not only dangerous, it was immoral.

Wellcome Library, London

The search was on for proof of the bestial consequences of being inseminated with animal disease. In 1805 Dr Rowley, who derived his living from the impugned technique of inoculating with smallpox, claimed to have found it and to have showed it to Moseley. Moseley marked the animalistic transformation and Rowley published exaggerated portraits of Gillray-esque figures, supposedly drawn from life. The ‘Oxfaced boy’ was presented as tangible proof of the brutal result of bestial infection. Beware the ‘modern chimera’, went the cry.

Vaccination did not properly shake the fear of bestial venereal disease until the end of the nineteenth century, with some still adamantly claiming an identity between cowpox and syphilis. From 1853, responsibility for administering the vaccine in England was put in the hands of the Poor Law Guardians. The association of vaccination with the workhouse caused a resurgence of the syphilitic fear among the well-to-do. Jenner’s innovation helped fuel concerns. After an initial vaccination from the cow, he realised that it could then be carried on from arm to arm. The matter from one vaccination pustule could be collected and inserted into the arm of the next child. What respectable mother would take her child to be contaminated with matter drawn from the arm of a ne’er-do-well? Cowpox was one thing, but what about all the other diseases that riddled the poor? The class system relied on bodies being kept apart. The State’s insistence on bringing them together seemed to risk the fabric of civilisation, even if the risk of disease was actually minute. While most doctors believed that cowpox was not related to syphilis, how could they be sure that the vaccine wasn’t tainted with the diseases of the immoral when incubated in the arms of the poor? Better to risk smallpox than to invite syphilis into one’s children.

The fearful kept their children away and a preventable disease continued to rage, often to epidemic proportions. The form taken by fear reflects the preoccupations of the society that produces it. In our times it is a fear of corporate medicine and its reckless advocates, forcing unknown risks upon our children. For early nineteenth-century anti-vaccinists, cowpox vaccination was a sordid and unholy communion, the embodiment of an immoral trinity: animality, bestiality and sexually transmitted disease. 

This post first appeared on Notches. To order Edward Jenner click here or here.

Missing Pieces, Part II

The nature of the response to the first post under this title was such that I think there is real value in it. Examples drawn from life apparently say more and go further than any form of prescription or wit on the part of yours truly. If we all think about it, I’m sure we can come up with many examples of the tragically flawed in our lives, and upon reflecting on those flaws we perhaps better understand ourselves as we are, or as we would like to be.

Between the ages of about 5 and 13 my neighbour was a man I shall call Thomas. He lived with his wife and his Old English sheep dog, apparently in quiet suburban boredom, just like everyone else. He washed his car; he went to work; he mowed his lawn; he entertained – or endured – his wife’s parents, and her brother, every weekend; he walked the dog; he grew a beard; he washed his car… Once he had a knee operation to fix a cartilage problem. For six weeks in a cast he struggled with bucket and sponge, lawn mower and hound. But then all went back to normal.

After a few years a baby was born, just as you’d expect. His wife’s parents, and her brother, now visited more often, and he struggled to establish any paternal or familial status for himself. Things deteriorated. His wife suffered from post-natal depression, which neither of them understood, and about which neither of them knew how to ask for help. Thomas began to doubt his own worth: what was the meaning of this life, with its dark loveless procession of in-laws, works and days? He started to drink. My brother saw him at lunchtime one day, parked in his car in a layby drinking Tennant’s Super. The pain was to be numbed, one way or another. I watched with childlike fascination as this well-meaning but ultimately lost man fell apart. He came home from work one day and hid a plastic bag full of beer cans within our compost heap. His escape from the problem had now become the problem, the identification of which covered over the real issues – depression, family, fatherhood, boredom. Alcoholism tends to be treated as an evil in its own right, but often, as in this case, it is merely a symptom. To treat it without treating the underlying cause is futile.

Another evening: this time he arrived home already three sheets to the wind, and found himself locked out. He banged on front door and back, urinated against the side of the house, and then banged on the doors some more. Eventually she let him in, but it was now clear that his alcoholism had made her afraid – afraid of the animal in the man, the brute that all of us carry and suppress. No longer coherent, and no longer strong enough to be human, with all the sensibilities and sensitivities that guide our relations, he succumbed through alcohol to the bare beast.

A few days later an ambulance arrived in the morning and took him away in a wheelchair. He was ashen, resigned, a wreck. He died of septicaemia within a day or two. He was 34. His wife, when asked how she was, said it was ‘a relief’. Her son was raised by her and her brother, who moved in and took over the washing of the car and the mowing of the lawn. Thomas’ life insurance paid off the mortgage.

Pugilistic Encounters: Pierce Egan's 'Boxiana'

Tom Cribb, Britain's finest champion?

Pierce Egan was out of step. A sporting journalist for the common man (and by that I refer not to matters of class, but to matters of taste), he was cast in sharp contrast to his hobnobbing foxhunting contemporary, Nimrod. Egan celebrated the ‘fancy’, just as the ‘fancy’ went out of style. These were the dog fighting, cockfighting, rat worrying set. These were the prototypes of the modern athlete. These were boxing men. The culture of sensibility that grew up in the late eighteenth century would eventually see to it that these men would look incongruous in a well-heeled empire. Yet this was not mere rough and tumble, even if it was the gutter press. Egan’s love of sports masculine had, at its root, those concerns that motivated his more refined compatriots of the horse and hound, field and stream.

In the dedication to Boxiana, a four volume compendium of English boxing biography from 1829, Egan addressed Captain Barclay, that redoubtable pedestrian:

In viewing you, Sir, as a LOVER AND PATRON OF THOSE SPORTS that tend to invigorate the human frame, and inculcate those principles of generosity and heroism, by which the inhabitants of the English Nation are so eminently distinguished above every other country, is the sole reason of dedicating to the attention of Captain Barclay, the work entitled Boxiana…

To those, Sir, who prefer effeminacy to hardihood – assumed refinement to rough Nature – and to whom a shower of rain can terrify their polite frames suffering from the unruly elements – or who would not mind Pugilism, if BOXING was not so shockingly vulgar – the following work can have no interest whatever. But to persons, Sir, who, like yourself, feel that Englishmen are not automata, and however the advantages of discipline may serve for the precision and movement of great bodies, that it would ultimately lose its effects, were it not animated by that native spirit, which has been found to originate, in a great measure, from the fastidious term – vulgar Sports, Boxiana will convey amusement, if not information.

Egan’s argument may be lost on us. It seems that something specific, in fact, has been lost. To be sure, violent sports still exist, and not solely in the realms of illicit gambling and extra-legal gatherings. Ultimate Fighting’s popularity – its usurpation of the boxing fan’s attention – would suggest that Egan’s rough Nature is alive and well. But I see nothing of the spirit that these sports were deemed to activate in Egan’s time. They were to:

Impart generosity to the mind, and humanity to the heart, by instilling those unalterable principles in the breast of every Briton, not to take an unfair advantage of his antagonist.

If they also served to foster ‘the daring intrepidity of the BRITISH SOLDIER in mounting the Breach, producing those brilliant victories which have reflected so much honour on the English Nation’, well, for the men of Egan’s time, so much the better. But what of us? Upon what reserves, and upon what experience, do we derive our mettle? Are we so assured that we do not need it? Will our looking-on at cable television from comfy couches ignite the sparks of generosity of mind and humanity of heart, and do we care? Where is our well of heroism?

Historical Hero: Walter B. Cannon, 1871-1945

In 1913, Walter B. Cannon, Chair of the Dept. of Physiology at Harvard Medical School, made a courageous address concerning the ‘Ideals of the Man of Science’. First, his vision; afterward the context that made this courageous:

Through the long history of the extension of civil habitation there runs a record, often imperfect, of a brotherhood of venturesome men who have served as the world’s explorers and pioneers. For such men the zest of life lies in discoveries and conquests in the unmapped wilderness. To stagnate in self-satisfied contemplation of things accomplished is for them intolerable. Their restless spirits demand the stir and eventfulness of fresh endeavour. Of this ancient brotherhood the man of science is a member… He sets out from the frontiers of knowledge and he attempts to penetrate the unexplored realms of reality – treasures of new facts and explanations. Then the unfailing charm of novelty and the allurement of further search seize upon him and urge him day and night to go forward. Hardship and privation he can bear, if only he may be foremost to enter that unexplored territory, foremost to behold with his own eyes its undiscovered wonders. It is the spirit of the explorers and pioneers, ‘conquering, holding, daring, venturing as they go the unknown ways’, that is the moving spirit in the search for truth.

All this is noble enough, and easy to say for a man at peace. But this was a man at war; a man whose worldview was challenged by a powerful lobby that would have seen him incarcerated before it would see another discovery in the name of science. Cannon, as chairman of the Council for the Defense of Medical Research, championed those who would conquer diphtheria, rabies, smallpox, tuberculosis and syphilis. To do so, he had to fight off swathes of well-funded quacks and cranks whose moral outrage at vaccination and vivisection, borne on the backs of misinformation, paranoia and fanaticism, threatened permanently to shut the door on scientific research. Cannon fired back at them in New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in Washington. Over forty years he did not tire, nor shirk from what he knew was his responsibility. Yet he did not do so with empty rhetorical propaganda. He did not stoop to the level of his assailants. From the first, Cannon believed in the integrity of the public, of its willingness and preparedness to learn. He was assured that people could be educated, if only given the chance. He fought bluster with substance, closed-mindedness with vision, and facetiousness with cutting severity and sincerity. In 1915 Cannon coined the term ‘fight or flight’ to describe the ways in which animals responded to threats. As sure as this was a man of moral fibre, this was a man who stood and fought.

Eric Bloodaxe: Teacher and Mentor

I had the great fortune, aged seven, to spend a year in the class of Mr. Eric Jacks, Primary School Teacher. Mr. Jacks was a complicated man, but a man of straight talking and straight justice. He once asked me to draw for him an icon of Eric Bloodaxe, which thereafter adorned his classroom door for many years. Eric Bloodaxe, a tenth-century Scandinavian king, was famed for his prowess and his strength. It was this with which Mr. Jacks identified; that and a reputation for merciless punishment, which can also go a long way.

Eric Bloodaxe

It is a cliché that everyone remembers a good teacher, but what that means, or how it comes to be, is rarely explained. I have had twenty-five years to reflect on my encounter with Mr. Jacks, and I cannot escape the conclusion that his influence was truly profound. Mr. Jacks taught the curriculum, just like all the others. But most importantly, Mr. Jacks taught the difference between right and wrong; between courage and stupidity; between tomfoolery and vandalism; between good manners and slovenliness. It was in that class, at the tender age of seven, going on eight, that I learned self-reliance, self-defence, and discipline. Mr. Jacks taught boys how to be men.

I cannot, in good faith, provide a biography of this man. A child carries a small and skewed set of memories into adulthood, and my account will certainly say more about me than it will say about him. Nevertheless, I maintain that I was shaped and directed by this man whom I did not really know, in ways of which he himself was probably not aware. And for every me, there are hundreds of men who passed through this able mentor’s hands. He taught, I should think, for forty years. Woe betide us if we underrate the power of teachers!

I had not before seen a male teacher. In fact, I was under the impression that all teachers were women. It was a fearful day, therefore, when I was inducted into Mr. Jacks’ care, in loco parentis. He announced to the assembled class that his name was Eric, and he wrote it on the blackboard in cursive script. I recall his languid and rather fluid handwriting (later replaced with stern block capitals as commentary for shoddy work). Cursive script had been banned up until this point at school. And until then, no teacher had ever had a first name, let alone divulged it. This was transgressive, exciting, and also scary. Did he mean to speak to us as people?

Any sense of familiarity was soon followed by an unequivocal introduction to authority. A beating stick, broken into two halves, was produced, with the (I am sure apocryphal) tale that it had been broken on the behind of an unruly boy, before corporal punishment had been outlawed in England. Mr. Jacks lamented the demise of the cane, but liked to threaten its reprise in exceptional circumstances. In one fell swoop, he had gained our trust, and then our respect. For one knew implicitly that it would not be advisable to cross this man, but that fair play would be rewarded.

There used to be more latitude given to teachers in the exercise of their authority. Mr. Jacks always claimed that many parents had given him permission thoroughly to discipline their children, and his full-throated shout alone was enough to petrify the most agitated. Yet he was not a dictator, and the ethos of his authority could carry down to those he taught. A bully, he averred, was a coward. Always. The best cure for being bullied, therefore, was to punch the bully on the nose. Invariably, this cured the problem, and it came with a good deal of manly satisfaction. Mr. Jacks despised cowardice, and taught that the key to self-reliance lay, more often than not, at the end of one’s own arm.

It was not all fisticuffs and shouting, however. I felt that Mr. Jacks was a tender, Godly man, whose vigorous manliness did not get in the way of his love of tradition, the fine arts, the religious calendar, and the piano. He introduced me, and the rest of my cohort, to the ballet. Imagine compelling thirty scamps to sit through The Nutcracker Suite, which lasted for an age. He sold it to us. Could not balance, poise, elegance, and all the finest qualities of the finest footballers be inculcated through ballet? Maybe that was a cheap trick, but I’ve always remained convinced of it. Mr. Jacks had us singing ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God’ (Matt., 6:33) in rounds, and loving it, as he roughly chopped out chords on the school upright piano. If anyone mucked about, he’d bring his whole weight down on the bass keys like so much thunder. Music was joy; music was force. These things he taught us, without telling us.

Mr. Jacks was also the man to see for school drama. He always had a spare play up his sleeve, and directed ridiculously ambitious performances with complete confidence in his young cast’s ability to remember its lines. Of course, they would go wrong like all school performances do. But the sense of engendered trust was invaluable, and I think a rare thing for children to feel. Trust inspires responsibility and arouses an awareness of consequence. You cannot put that kind of thing on a school curriculum, but that does not mean it cannot be taught.

School was only nominally about the three Rs. School was substantially a preparation for a life among people who would judge you on intangible qualities – style, comportment, manners. Mr. Jacks critiqued our posture, corrected our speech, taught us that cursive script (having allowed us to bring in our own fountain pens – this was a coming of age). We had a class competition to see which of us would be chosen to write to the Queen. I forget the occasion, but I didn’t win and it still hurts.

Eric Bloodaxe. Well, maybe not. But Mr. Eric Jacks was a king among the men in my life.

The Perfect Saturday

Let me preface this entry with the disclaimer that today was definitely not the perfect Saturday. Adverse weather and a persistent sinus headache have put paid to that. But two recent compliments have given me pause to think about what the perfect day would look like (and I am presupposing that the perfect day simply must be a Saturday). So, before indulging in the fantastic, I extend my thanks to the Modern Traditionalist and to Bow Tie Guy for their respective nods in my direction. In times of inclement weather, the perfect Saturday would undoubtedly see them included on my morning’s reading list, along with the Telegraph and the following eight:

The Sartorialist
Paper Flowers
Dandyism
Art of Manliness
Older Brother’s Advice
Modern Gentleman’s Blog
An Aesthete’s Lament
Rose C’est La Vie

Gongs dispensed, on with the idealising (with absolutely no mind to geographical impossibilities. Photographs invoke each place as I go, and I publish them with not a little nostalgia).

I have a love hate relationship with sleep. It gets in the way of action, but also provides the platform for action to take place. Presuming the perfect day to be free of guilt, I begin with a sound lie in, to be followed by the weekend papers, a full English breakfast (which I shall have to describe, because it has lost its way), and my favourite blend of imported tea. Mrs. VB suggests that this would be more congenial taken al fresco in the morning sunshine, against the backdrop of the Rockies in Vancouver. I concur.

Vancouver

Contrary to popular belief and low expectations, English breakfasts are not a festival of grease, but a thoroughly delicious and nutritious repast. None of the ingredients should ever be bought in a supermarket. Ever. Black pudding ought to be home made by the butcher who slaughtered the pig that produced the meaty sausages, home-cured bacon, and fried kidneys that adorn your plate. The sausage and bacon must be grilled, not fried. Eggs should be organic free range, not because I’m an eco warrior, but because that’s how hens are supposed to be. It is only to be expected that such things will taste better. Tomato, fresh from the vine, will be seasoned and grilled. Bread, dipped briefly in the bacon fat, should be fried in a hot pan. You’ll find it crispy, not dripping with lard. The finishing touch, for me, is a sliced and well-fried field mushroom. The umami original. This should be followed by wholegrain toast and some good English preserves. Black current will do nicely. Of course, I like it best when I cook it myself, but failing that, I’ll have Marc Cohen of Sparrow in Montreal do it. I’ve never had a finer brunch than there.

Montreal

Eating over, time for a round of golf with a couple of chums, preferably on a course otherwise empty. So long as I’m fantasising, I might as well dispense will all the hackers! I haven’t played in a long while, but on this fair day in May (for this perfect day will be in that merry month) I will card a round in the 70s and be satisfied. The club house where I used to play, on the edge of the North York Moors, was actually a rather charming pub. After polishing off a couple of jars of real ale – nobody in North America knows what this is, I guarantee – I am homeward bound.

Ampleforth Golf Club

An essential ingredient of the perfect Saturday is the happiness of my wife. How else can one expect to maintain a joyful demeanour if the love of one’s life is not also blissfully at peace? At home I find her just arrived back from a successful outing to the shops with like-minded friends, heavily laden with fine fabrics at a fraction of the fare. She craves coffee and cakes, and we know just the place. Leysieffer is a German chocolatier of international repute, and their cafes are brilliantly indulgent places, but with a firm grip on civilised ideals. My favourite location was at the top of KaDeWe department store in Berlin, amidst the most sensuous and glorious food hall, and with views across the city.

Berlin

Having gone home to change, we venture out to Les Deux Magots at Place Saint-Germain des Prés, Paris, for some light but deliciously complicated French cuisine, accompanied by fine wine and a literary buzz. Tourists will all have decided to go somewhere else for the evening, and the place will be occupied only by those Parisians exceptionally known for their politesse.

Paris, St. Germain

An after-dinner stroll in the dusk along the banks of the Seine takes us home in time for Match of the Day, and an exceptional single malt from the Highlands called Tomatin, which I first tasted as an eleven year old. Not inappropriately for such a day, I nod off over the pages of T.E. Lawrence’s translation of The Odyssey.

Historical Heroes: George Romanes, 1848-94

Now here’s an all round good egg. Romanes embodied that great Victorian dilemma: what to do about religion in the face of all this science? Here’s the standard biography: independently wealthy, he was raised without scholarly rigour and was destined for holy orders. Then he read Darwin and his world turned upside down. In public, Romanes backed Darwin to the hilt, but secretly always wrestled with the possibility of God. Revelling in the elegant truth of natural selection, Romanes nevertheless thought that the theory robbed nature of its ‘soul of loveliness’. He dedicated his life to science – physiology and psychology chiefly – but could not rid himself of the anxiety that it was all pointless. Juggling materialism, agnosticism and monism, Romanes eventually returned to the church. It wasn’t the betrayal of his life’s work so much as it was the taking of Pascal’s Wager. He was dying, in his forties, of a tumour on the brain.

Now, the spiritual ‘better safe than sorry’ approach might seem to lack conviction. Yet a more nuanced narrative would depict a life defined by conviction, even if Romanes himself was never sure quite how to describe the horse he was backing. Once convinced of Darwinism, he was fiercely loyal to his mentor, and never publicly wavered from the theory of Natural Selection. But he was not blindly uncritical or slavishly sycophantic. He wrestled with the immaterial, knowing that Darwinism had not disproved the existence of ‘God’ (the label was merely convenient). True agnosticism, he thought, had to cut both ways. It was not fair of scientists to demand proof of divinity from theists if science itself could not disprove it. Natural Selection provided a new story, but it did not answer all the questions.

What was bold about this was its singular vision. Surrounded by canting Creationists on one side, ranting atheists on the other, Romanes was unique in his attempt properly to understand Darwin’s theory and theology. Most compromisers got one or the other hopelessly wrong. Where black was pitched against white, Romanes risked ridicule from both by preaching complex shades of grey. Unfortunately for Romanes, posterity rather lost track of his work, his ideas, and his intellectual legacy. Had he lived he would surely have been at the forefront of research on genetics, but his untimely death occurred just prior to the rediscovery of Mendel’s work. Death put paid not only to life, but also to relevance. Romanes’ greatest tragedy was the rapidity of his obsolescence.

With that in mind I raise a glass to an unsung hero. Or rather, just a brave soul.

Historical Heroes: Grantley Berkeley, 1800-81.

‘Who?’ you ask. Rightly so, for this was not a preeminent man. He was, however, a man who stood up for the preservation of bluff English tradition in the face of reforming sensibilities that to him just seemed all too bloody French. He was a living atavism; his life a lament more than a triumph. Yet the spirit of the times never conquered his own esprit de coeur. This was a man who recollected feeling manly from the age of six! I celebrate his life not by way of condoning his actions, but rather by way of advertising his strength of character.

Berkeley cut his teeth in the Regency period; he was what you might call a no-nonsense Renaissance man. Not averse to a bare-knuckle box (he was taught the arts of pugilism by Gentleman Jackson, who also taught Byron), he was at home in the study, at court, and in the company of ladies. As Member of Parliament for Gloucester in the Liberal interest, he backed tradition over innovation, stoicism over effete sensibility. As a writer of political broadsides, novels, and sporting adventures in the American wilds, in addition to his extensive autobiographical pomp, he was irreverently proud. He pursued options closed to us ethereal scribblers: upon receipt of an unfavourable review of his first novel in Fraser’s Magazine he beat the proprietor of that eminent journal with his hunting whip, and fought the reviewer in a duel. Hang the law for honour’s sake!

Berkeley’s chief love was cockfighting, unless it were hunting (he was Master of Fox Hounds and Stag Hounds). The latter was entirely seemly in his age, but the former was criminalised in Berkeley’s prime, causing consternation among those who fancied the sod. Berkeley decried the prohibition as ‘un-English’, and carried on regardless, remaining unapologetic even in the dock at Uxbridge Magistrate’s court.

Think what you will about his pursuits: chacun à son gout. His defining spirit, however, was one of fair play in all things. State interference in morality was absurd; a careless libel was unjust; the intervention into what he saw as fair sports was ‘improper’ and ‘underhand’. The Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, MP, MFH knew with great self-assurance what it was to be a gentleman in all things.