Historical Heroes: Edward Jenner

Goodness, it’s been a while. For anybody wondering where I’ve been, I promise I’ve not been idle. On the contrary, expect to see three books from this author in the next year. Better still, expect them to not be too big a burden on your pocket books. Covering a range of subjects, they nevertheless speak to a number of the themes that have cropped up on this site over the years. I’ll keep you updated, okay? First up, a short biography of the father of the vaccine, Edward Jenner. Here’s a taste of what you can expect.

Edward Jenner, a country surgeon from Gloucestershire, England, was incurably curious. Mentored by the great surgeon, collector and experimenter, John Hunter, Jenner learned to see about him a natural world to be conquered, controlled, brought under the command of the human intellect. Such was the peculiar genius of Enlightenment science and medicine.

Activated by local talk of the powers of a minor disease contracted from the udders of cows, Jenner set about experimenting with cowpox to see if it really did protect a person from the deadly ravages of smallpox. Jenner’s innovation was, first, to infect a person with cowpox from the pustules of another person who already had the disease. This would prove that cowpox was transferable among humans. This he managed to do in 1796: the first vaccination, from vacca, the Latin for cow. His second innovation was to test the power of the vaccine by attempting to give the vaccinated person the smallpox. Lest that sound horrific, keep in mind that until Jenner pioneered a safe way to protect people from the smallpox, most children had been deliberately infected with the ‘speckled monster’ itself, in the hope that they would get away with a light dose of the dreadful disease. Often, those hopes had been dashed.

Jenner had essentially pioneered the clinical trial. While there was still a way to go before the vaccine was fully understood, Jenner’s experimental spirit and his indefatigable campaign to promote his discovery had a substantial impact. Despite fierce resistance in England that would outlast his own life, Jenner’s vaccine quickly made its way around the world, going viral courtesy of empires French, Spanish and British. Death rates from smallpox rapidly tumbled. Jenner is estimated to have saved some ten million lives. This medical victory came despite repeated attacks on the Jenner’s honour, his intellect, and his humanity from his own countrymen.

In 1980, after a concerted global campaign to spread the vaccine Jenner had devised to every corner of the world, the World Health Organisation declared smallpox extinct. It is, to this date, the only human disease to have been completely eliminated from the globe. Is that not the most heroic conclusion to a most heroic career?

Edward Jenner is published in the Pocket Giants series by The History Press this November. It is available for pre-order here and here.

What Goes Around...

‘I perceive,’ said Coningsby, pursuing a strain of thought which the other had indicated, ‘that you have great confidence in the influence of individual character. I also have some confused persuasions of that kind. But it is not the Spirit of the Age.’

‘The age does not believe in great men, because it does not possess any,’ replied the stranger. ‘The Spirit of the Age is the very thing that a great man changes.’

‘But does he not rather avail himself of it?’ inquired Coningsby.

‘Parvenus do,’ rejoined his companion; ‘but not prophets, great legislators, great conquerors. They destroy and they create.’

‘But are these times for great legislators and great conquerors?’ urged Coningsby.

‘When were they wanted more?’ asked the stranger. ‘From the throne to the hovel all call for a guide. You give monarchs constitutions to teach them sovereignty, and nations Sunday schools to inspire them with faith.’

‘But what is an individual,’ exclaimed Coningsby, ‘against a vast public opinion?’

‘Divine,’ said the stranger.

Disraeli, Coningsby, 1844.

Seve: Goodbye to a General

To define what makes a leader of men has always been difficult, but it is perhaps more so than ever in a world that lacks obvious examples. One such man has recently passed, albeit, his world was merely golf.

Sport is an analogy for life: it is contest, struggle, defeat and victory. It defines joy and misery. Men win and lose as individuals and as teams. In all this, through highs and lows, some stand out as shining examples of honour, charisma, magnanimity, inspiration, and courage. Seve Ballesteros was such a man. He combined the abilities to charm the media, to dazzle the ordinary onlooker, and to enthuse men with an unbeatable spirit. His talent was peerless, but even as physical deterioration deprived him, and us, of its use, he brought to bear his extraordinary leadership on a group of men who seemed otherwise to lack lustre and desire. The 2010 Ryder Cup was won, so the players attest, for him, on the back of a rousing speech given by telephone. We do not know the content of that speech, but it moved men first to tears and then to resolute action. Few can arouse such things.

It was not the first time. Seve’s speeches over the years have been said to count for a number of victories. And now, in death, I expect his memory will also serve to inspire men. At the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah, don’t be surprised if all Europe says with one voice, ‘win it for Seve’.

Rest in peace, genius.

Three Treatises On Nothingness

I beg you to forgive the filmic turn of late, but occasionally one taps a vein and finds that all the blood is running in the same direction. Hollywood has always been the purveyor of emptiness, but recently its hotshot female directors have been selling us some pretty, powerful critiques of our own meaningless existences. Hollywood created us, they say, and now we are as meaningless as it is. If we subscribe to these critiques – if we see in them the image of our own existence – then something profound and terrible has happened. All substance is gone, and all men are mere bodies, taking up space.

The Kids Are All Right (2010) is a manless movie in the extreme. Writer/director Lisa Cholodenko follows the bland domesticity of a lesbian couple whose kids secretly seek, and find, their sperm donor father. The overachiever and underachiever lesbian pair make for a drab existence who have drab sex and argue about alcohol consumption. Their suburban comfort has bred suburban, two-dimensional children, who seek not their father but “their moms’ donor.” This man, who has been reduced to his seminal fluid, transpires to be little more than that when encountered in the flesh. He’s a drop out, a womaniser, a grower of organic vegetables, and to all intents and purposes a loser. He sleeps with one of the moms, who has found herself dissatisfied with being a non-person. Of course, that just makes her an unfaithful non-person and serves to relegate the “donor” back to his position of obscurity. Mom and mom make it up and send their daughter off to college. The daughter seizes her independence, better for the failure of her one shot at garnering a male role model. The son does not know where to turn to find out how to become a man. There are glimmers of hope in the “donor,” but we are far from convinced that this man knows anything about being a man himself, let alone about being a father. On the point of self-realisation, he his thrust back into his trite life with a new found and heavy disappointment.

Somewhere (2010) is the latest film from Sofia Coppola, and looks like an indictment on her childhood. While daddy was busy crafting a masterpiece, his daughter was observing the reality behind the make believe. The idea of story telling is almost lost in Hollywood. Re-makes stand in for original ideas, and where original ideas do emerge they are entirely self-referential. We may have already been under the impression that behind all the LA glam there was nothing but grim vacuity. Ms. Coppola shows it to us in all its dull monotony. Stephen Dorff plays a famous actor. We do not know if he is talented, or if he is simply a celebrity. It makes no odds. His life is sedated, pointless, humdrum, seen blearily through a self-medicated haze. The only glimmer of hope is the 11-year old daughter of a broken marriage, whose notion of life has not yet been fully corrupted by the sleazy meaninglessness of showbiz. All the trappings of masculinity, defined in the American macho sense, are here: twin pole dancers, fast cars, groupies, booze. None of it raises our hero’s pulse above the barely alive, and ultimately he realises he is nothing. He is nothing and it is impossible for him to be something. He drives out into the desert and ditches his car, wandering off in search of revelation. But we shall be fools if we think Coppola intends him to find it. Ain’t nothing out there but heatstroke and rattle snakes.

If Stephen Dorff’s future is bleak, the possibilities for the rest of us, who do not even have the interference of the paparazzi to look forward to, is put forward with absurd candour in Miranda July’s The Future (2011). Preying on our irredeemable sentimentality, we are compelled to hate the protagonists by the first-person narrative of a stray cat, due to be adopted, but never in fact collected. The cat, whose wildness is masked only by the most tenuous veil of domesticity, represents the nature of the heroine (Miranda July, who also supplies the voice for the cat). The man of the film, meanwhile, is an anonymous home-working tech-support provider. Beyond their own four walls, nobody seems to recognise that they are alive, and in their meagre domestic life they are perpetually hypnotised by Facebook and Youtube. A crisis is brought about by the thought of owning a cat. They are thirty-five. By the time the stray dies they will be forty. Forty is practically fifty, and the rest, our hero reflects, is just “loose change.” In their last-ditch efforts to do something meaningful with their lives – her to dance, him to save the environment – they both realise that they are hopeless cases. She is a useless dancer (the acting here is magical. It takes a great dancer to be that bad). The planet is already doomed. She strikes up an affair with an older man, for fuck’s sake. It is dangerous and she can’t handle it. Our hero’s world comes to a standstill when he learns of the affair. His emptiness is thrown into relief. Both hero and heroine forget to pick up the cat, who is euthanized. The heroine returns. The hero offers her nothing. She says “okay”: “okay to nothing.” The visions of their future, which have haunted them throughout this movie, are accepted with fatalistic resignation. We’re all just strays, thinking we’re something, wanting to be loved, waiting to be put out of our misery.

There is no redemption in any of these movies; nor do any of the characters, especially not the men, deserve any. Are we supposed to see our own nothingness in these scripts? Are we meant to check ourselves in the mirror and say to ourselves, seriously, “who are we kidding?” We have no talent, no substance, no future? It’s all surface, and sham, and bodily fluids? Maybe some people could do with the wake-up call, but they won’t see these movies. As for the rest of us, it’s one long chapter of insults. Don’t watch these movies if you want inspiration, or if you crave a modern, or post-modern hero. But if you want to be stirred into action through indignity and defiance, these movies receive my seal of approval.

Man of the Year, 2010

The calendar is close enough to its terminal date to make the announcement of the first annual Being Manly Man of the Year. The decision process has been entirely personal and wholly undemocratic, but still it is more reliable than FIFA. The award, which conveys as much honour as its recipient would care to mention, comes with no formal prize. Nevertheless, the winner’s name will adorn this website for as long as it lasts, and I trust that the links to his endeavours will do him, and his causes, some good.

So, without further ado, the Being Manly Man of the Year is Australia’s own crazy runner, Tristan Miller, or ‘T-Bone’, if you will. Mr. Miller was implicitly introduced to you back in September, after I had met him on the Montreal Marathon course. I have followed his exploits on an almost daily basis since then, and can safely say that his is a rare spirit. A man of character if ever there was one, Mr. Miller is, at this moment, on the southern tip of Chile, preparing for a flight to Antarctica to run his 51st marathon this year, with one more to complete the set following shortly afterwards in Melbourne, Australia. 52 marathons in 52 weeks! The feat is superhuman, and has taken him to races on every continent. From a physical point of view alone, this is extraordinary, as anyone who has run 26 miles once will tell you. Then there is the mental factor : to remain focused and motivated, and to put mind over matter, through pain and illness, day after day, week after week, all in the name of seeing the extent of human possibilities – all this makes me believe Mr. Miller to be a man of singular strength of mind.

You will not need to know ‘T-Bone’ for long to catch his infectious humanity. I shared a meagre eight miles with the man, and can safely say it was the easiest eight miles of that race. Thereafter he sped away, as is his wont. Mr. Miller runs his marathons generally in the range of three to three-and-a-half hours. Sometimes he does that on consecutive days. With flu. If one wasn’t convinced, through personal association, of his flesh-and-blood constitution and his vivacious spirit, one might suspect him of being mechanical.

Although so much of Mr. Miller’s endeavour has been personal – a voyage into his own unknown – and a deeply moving individual story, he has never lost sight of things bigger than himself. In his mining of the limits of what it is to be a human being, he has helped us all to an understanding of our collective humanity, and of the social injustices that abide in this world. He has never stopped campaigning for those of us inspired by his exploits to donate to one of two charities – Facing Africa and Unicef – and he gives a very good account of why we should.

There is a nobility in his cause, and an old-fashioned sense of adventure in his swashbuckling run around the globe. Join me in wishing him well for the last two races, and salute your Being Manly Man of the Year 2010!



Mr. Miller’s website: Run Like Crazy
Mr. Miller on Facebook

Of Baseball and Bowties

On game nights, I used to be able to see Fenway Park from my apartment. The floodlights and the blimp were unmistakeable signs that Americans were playing baseball. I used to pass the ballpark on my way to work sometimes, but that was as close as I came to entering that hallowed arena. You see, despite baseball’s storied past and its penchant for the poetic, most Europeans simply don’t get it. The standard questions – I can imagine a continent getting set to roll its eyes – go like this: why are these so called athletes overweight and chewing tobacco? When does something happen? Why does the atmosphere have to be manufactured by an old woman with an organ? And what’s with the ‘World’ Series anyway? I don’t see too many non-American teams taking part.

So much for the clichés. The real reason I didn’t much take to the thing – and I have tried, mind you – is that its men didn’t strike me as being particularly worthy of emulation. The sport’s leading lights do tend to carry too much weight in the gut; the spitting is ugly; there are rumblings about drug abuse and cheating; and the game is not rich in articulate speakers. In the main, there is not a lot of obvious joy in the game, and what grim determination there is tends to be concealed beneath an arrogant nonchalance. Whereas the game itself will richly reward the devotee in its surprising complexity, the playing staff simply do not reach comparable depths.

I am always, as I have oft noted, open to change, given a convincing enough argument. It strikes me that famous sportsmen are, first and foremost, role models. When I was a child I did not want to be like my heroes; I wanted to be my heroes. Since I don’t count myself as being particularly unusual in this regard, it ought perhaps to make all parents alive to the question of who it is their children wish to be. In baseball’s recent past, are there heroes that, without qualms, we would introduce to our offspring? Well, perhaps now there might be. I was really taken by the image of Tim Lincecum arriving for the final game of the World Series besuited and bowtied. That is a most welcome change. Having done a little digging, I found he had this to say:

But who doesn't want to believe their kid is amazing? I'm going to be hoping the same thing for my kid when I get older. What better feeling can parents have than when they brag about their own kids?

So, a man with an eye on the future; a man with an eye on being the best at his job; and a man with style. Oh, and he also does Sinatra. Baseball, I’m interested.

Cheats: Nobody Prospers

‘Not cricket’ is a phrase that goes beyond those cultures where the game is actually played. Even Americans understand that it refers to acts of impropriety that simply go beyond the pale. It stems from the traditional uprightness of the sport itself, its respected laws, and the sporting conduct of its practitioners. When John Major unwisely (at least as far as political expediency is concerned) told us to ‘get back to basics’ in the ‘90s, he exemplified the point by saying that it would be a good idea for people new to Britain to understand the laws of cricket, for therein the foundations of civil society lie exemplified. To Tom Brown, cricket was ‘more than a game’: it was ‘the Birthright of British boys, old and young, as trial by jury and habeas corpus are of British men’. The historical weight of this kind of symbolism makes it all the more galling that cricket is being besmirched by corruption and greed, and is taking place in an atmosphere of suspicion and bad blood. Cricket at the moment is, for want of a better term, ‘not cricket’.

In Pakistan, cricketers are the nation’s rock stars. At the top of their profession, these men are incredibly well paid and serve as the admired idols of millions. Amid Pakistan’s social, political and environmental catastrophes, the national cricket team has had the opportunity to represent the spirit, the pride, and the hope of a nation. The abject miseries of a people can be lifted by experiencing vicariously the successes of their brethren. The spirit of emulation – in diligence, perseverance, and skill – may foster better days. The charges before these young and privileged professionals, and the officials surrounding them, are grave. What shall we think if it transpires that they had not the strength of character to refuse the advances of bookmakers and the glistering prizes of corruption? It would be a disgrace. That the Pakistani Cricket Board throws stones from within its small glass house is shameless. That honourable men must consider defamation suits against dishonourable men within the world of cricket will do long-term damage to the game. And above all, that the people of Pakistan, in desperate times, may see their heroes on the make, will pour scorn on their own travails. A wounded nation can not be expected to endure these insults.

Although I am certain that the cancer will be cut out of the game, the recovery will be slow. It is not only the cheats who will not prosper. The honest are tainted by the misdeeds of their peers, and the public has had its trust shaken. Decisive action is necessary in order to demonstrate that the game values its integrity before all other considerations. I trust that the authorities will have the courage of their convictions.

A Robust Diversion

My friends, I am still without a reliable internet connection in Berlin, and in any case I have been tied up with the coarse twines of bureaucracy. It is to be expected after such a move. All will be functioning somewhat normally by the middle of next week, I hope. In the meantime, allow me to direct your attention to a growing repository of film reviews that take a more serious tone than the genre typically allows. In particular, I was struck by this four part review of First Blood, seen through the eyes of a man who was not born at the time of the film’s release. I grew up drawing pictures of Stallone, having found something in his characters that reached the incipient man in my boyhood imagination. In Rocky and Rambo, Stallone created emblems respectively of the American dream and the American nightmare, and I would humbly suggest that whatever sins the man later committed in the world of film, these two pictures stand as masterpieces. Each holds rewards that surely makes them worth revisiting.

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?

Looking On

It is always better to play any game, however inexpertly, than to stand on the side lines and cheer the playing of others.

What is sport? To my mind it is the active playing of the game by the individual in place of being merely one of the crowd looking on or having sport done for you.

By true sport I mean any kind of game and activity that does you good and which you play yourself instead of looking on.

Robert Baden-Powell, Rovering to Success: A Guide for Young Manhood

Sir Robert Baden-Powell – founder of the Scouts, hero of Mafeking – thought so little of ‘looking on’ that he denounced it three times. He admitted that if he knew the men involved in a sport, or if he was watching a horse that he himself had trained, then watching became active, and was different. But in general, the rôle of what we would now call ‘the spectator’ was not one for a man emerging from the rutting season of adolescence, much less for one claiming a full manly stature.

The problem with watching is that it stunts doing. It is passive: an energy experienced only vicariously through the endeavour of others. Nothing is ventured, nothing is gained, not in terms of health, fortitude, esprit de corps, courage or valour. Any sense of achievement is borrowed; the adrenalin rush is second-hand. The sporting hero as aspirational figure becomes a mere idol; the spirit of emulation dies. Criticism follows: the overweight armchair punditry of ‘experts’ who know only how to talk.

America in particular could benefit by reading Baden-Powell. A good friend of mine tells me that the aggregate number of ‘fans’ who turned out for last Saturday’s college football games at Alabama and Auburn was 154,529. Perhaps there is a peculiar vested interest in ‘school spirit’ that ought not to be disparaged wholesale. But this kind of worship leads to further abdications of activity in later life unless we remind ourselves most self-consciously that we must not forget to do. For a man who does not, a man who merely looks on, is not much of a man in Baden-Powell’s book, of which, suffice to say, I am rather fond.

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?

The Hero and the Villain

Who knows any more what is a hero? So-called heroes today are glibly labelled, devoid of heroic qualities, and utterly democratic. If ever democracy should be opposed to anything, it should be the hero. In his preëminence, his strength, his courage, his valour and his deeds a hero commands. A hero does not ‘do what anyone would have done’. A ‘have-a-go hero’, as the Press likes to style him, is generally summed up by the adjective, not by the noun. A real hero does, or he dies. There is no volition, no mind over matter; only pure drive, pure spirit: the complete identification of coming hour with coming man. Nor does a real hero depend on being appointed, or worse, being voted in. These things may happen to a hero, for sure, but a true hero does not depend on them. A hero’s vision, and his modus operandi, will be striking for its lack of conformity, its resistance to accessibility. And for all these things, democracy – that is, we – should hate heroes. And that is why we invent sham heroes and flaky heroes, to reassure ourselves that the hero, whom we intuit to be inherently good, cannot be so fundamentally opposed to the values we hold dear.

Leon Benouville, The Wrath of Achilles, 1847

Let us reconsider. Who is the archetype of a hero? Not Hector, but Achilles. Our tender and sensitive hearts go out to Hector when he turns and runs at the crucial moment, the breaker of horses turned unbroken mustang. But this is ignominy, and in the context of god-like heroes, his death is just. Achilles, for all his anger, for all his tortured railing at an authority to which he does not defer, and for all his violence, is the hero. He ensures victory. He does that for which he was fitted, if not fated. He does it without flinching. He does it all with honour, in the context of the war he wages, intact. Modern readers do not ‘like’ him. They do not ‘identify’ with him. Hollywood has to rewrite Homer and employ Brad Pitt in order to make him ‘appealing’. But why should we like him? Should men who wage war be likeable? Ought professional killers to have qualities, in the midst of battle, with which we readily identify? Would you prefer it if your country’s army was made up of men thought generally to be ‘appealing’, softly spoken, deferent ‘have-a-go’ types? A hero is necessary. That does not mean you’d have him round for tea.

Of course, not all heroes are warriors, but they share the mentality. There is scope for political heroes, sporting heroes, scientific heroes, exploring heroes and even artistic heroes. They do that for which some will thereafter be grateful or inspired. Around a hero myths of greatness will arise that will bathe in reflected glory those who claim kinship, by nation or by ancestry. But heroes necessarily divide as they conquer, and garner hatred as they sow love. The competing narratives of gall will follow. We have countless examples of our historical need for heroes, and we seem to show no signs of ceasing to need them. Yet so long as we insist on the possibility of them being everyman, and so long as we insist on liking them, we shall probably not see their like.