Bling! Or, Put It Away, Sir

Now then. As it ‘appens.

The image of sad-old-man friendliness when I was a child was Jimmy Savile. Anyone outside of Britain will not know who this is/was. He is/was a kindly fellow – once upon a time he was a Radio Luxembourg DJ, and the first ever presenter of Top of the Pops, if he needed any cred – who had a show in which he ‘fixed it’ for children to have their hearts’ desires. I wouldn’t usually think of the ‘80s as an age of innocence. But then there was Jimmy. Sir James, as he later became, was very fond of his mum – lived with her always so far as I know – and when she died he kept her room just as she had left it. It was a shrine, and Jimmy will go to his grave a mummy’s boy, in the nicest possible way. He is a good lad, now pushing 85 I should think; always a fit man – ran dozens of marathons – but a perennial cigar smoker; and a huge benefactor of noble causes and charities. The English tend to think of him as a national institution; a classic English eccentric. He wears a lot of jewellery, for which he is famous. He looks like this:

He used to look like this:

Sportswear and jewellery remain his most recognisable motifs, save for a few choice phrases. He kind of reminds me of this:

Which is to say, that unless you’re a kind-hearted English eccentric, beloved by old and young alike, and honoured by the Queen, you look like a bit of an idiot in jewellery and sportswear. But you know that. The point I’m leading to is rather more positive. What jewellery can you wear if you happen not to be said national institution, or an idiot? Why this, for example:

Gold and mother-of-pearl cufflinks. Edwardian I think. Picked up by my wife at what I call a ‘rifle shop’ (so named because you have to rifle through a lot of junk to find the good stuff, which is always there if you’re patient). My brother has the matching pair, which I gave to him on the occasion of him being my Best Man.

Keep it clean, simple and honest and you cannot go wrong.

How’s about that then?

Scotch Myths

A boy of twelve, fair-haired and freckled, essentially innocent but with suspicions, went to the Highlands of Scotland. He lamely fished for salmon in river and loch, and later saw them spawning in their thousands. Fat-bellied monsters threw themselves against rocky waterfalls, and he was impressed by their determination. He gathered mushrooms in the woods, and learnt which ones not to pick. He went all the way to the Northern coastline, to eat a fish supper with the gulls, and over to Skye to see that there really was nothing there. Winding through glens on narrow roads, craning over dizzying precipices, noting eagles and ospreys, he discovered a hallowed trail. It has stayed with him since, although he does not appreciate it. The amber reward at the end of this trail that thrust him into adulthood is with him yet.

It was the distillery trail: a marked route that networked the producers of the stuff of libations since time immemorial; the noble spirit that Scotland may consider its most worthy contribution to the world. Nestled in heady country, higher than any other, was the Tomatin distillery. The boy looked around at row upon row of barrels of oak, some of which once contained Spanish sherry. A dram was passed around, of their standard twelve-year-old single malt, and he was not overlooked. Two things the same age, one mature, the other fresh, met. The moment of imbibing brought blood to the lips and the cheeks, a momentary numbness, a rush of aroma – malt, apples, pears, bonfires – and then sheer joy, followed by a molten feeling of the generation of internal heat, as if he had swallowed an exothermic elixir. The moment passed; the world began again; the boy had taken a step towards manhood.

It is many years later. The boy is a man. He has not thought of these things for a long time. He is in a foreign land, surrounded by unfamiliar things, and he is walking. It is winter; a harsh winter. He passes a liquor store that seems to have an air about it. He stops in his tracks, agog, and presses his nose against the plate. When the fog of his breath clears he sees what his mind had told him must surely have been an apparition: a row of bottles labelled Tomatin. There are twelve-year-old and fifteen-year-old varieties. He is transported; connections are made; synapses in the brain tripped. He is twelve again, taking steps into an incipient manhood. How came he here? By what route? The man enters the establishment and purchases a bottle. It feels like buying a memory, but somehow more substantial than that.

The man writes to all his friends. ‘If you can find it, I strongly urge it upon you. It makes men of boys’.

Disraeli's Ideal?

This peer was a noble Crœsus, acquainted with all the gradations of life; a voluptuary who could be a Spartan; clear-sighted, unprejudiced, sagacious; the best judge in the world of a horse or a man; he was the universal referee; a quarrel about a bet or a mistress was solved by him in a moment, and in a manner which satisfied both parties. He patronised and appreciated the fine arts, though a jockey; respected literary men, though he only read French novels; and without any affectation of tastes which he did not possess, was looked upon by every singer and dancer in Europe as their natural champion. The secret of his strong character and great influence was his self-composure, which an earthquake or a Reform Bill could not disturb, and which in him was the result of temperament and experience (Disraeli, Coningsby).

Who anymore straddles high culture and low, cockpit and opera box, gin house and gallery, like the old Tories of the late Regency Fancy? A rum bunch, they bridged the chasm between the Rake and the rich, the gambler and the gamboller. Only the extravagantly wealthy could maintain a civil reputation whilst slumming it with the depraved, for commoner and Lord were of a piece, if their own traditionalist rhetoric was anything to go by. They were united by a common bond of being freeborn and a love of pluck, derring-do and deep play. The horses the one owned, the other trained; the arts the one patronised, the other performed; and the money won by one would be lost by the other. These self-described Great Men knew a thing or two about courage, having handled dozens of cocks in the heat of battle, spurring them on to pluck victory from the jaws of certain death. For self-composure read self-assurance. Never was there a more conceited coterie of self-congratulators. Doubtless they grew rich and fat and saw their names into the history books (gout excluded). Regency nobs could visit the gutter without becoming of the gutter.

The ultimate fancy story, Pierce Egan's Life in London, 1821

I doubt we can entertain such luxury, or buy such a pass through society’s dark enchantments, without being marked by the journey. We must regard the noble Fancy as an historical fact, but as historical nonetheless. Our lines of life, be they blue-blooded or otherwise, are narrower but not necessarily less rich. For although the Fancy aristocrat of Disraeli’s experience consorted with company high and low, his nature was ultimately low. Racing and horses, loose women and political skulduggery he knew through and through. Regarding high culture he was a dilettante, or a pedantic, not a connoisseur. Now, the vagaries of the democracy we enjoy being what they are, none of us is excluded from this once most exclusive of possibilities. Of course, one must be properly raised, exposed, educated. But the appreciation and understanding of the beautiful is, as never before, available. How interesting it is to observe that so few take the opportunity. What was once an aristocracy by birth, with all the possibilities for the failure of the blood, is now an aristocracy of choice. Surely that is a safer bet than Disraeli’s ideal?

Keeping It In The Family

‘Tis said that tweed only comes into its own when passed down to the next generation. Generally speaking, it’s worth hanging on to well-made, well-cut clothes, so long as there is someone on hand to wear them. The following example is a case in point. No longer doing quite the job for my father-in-law, this Aquascutum lovely has come my way, just as I was needing a new overcoat. Its splendidness is matched only by its having come freely my way, from one who was pleased as punch to see its life not only extended, but kept in the family to boot.

Oddly enough, I was wearing this coat on the plane back from Canada, and as I was disembarking in London, the purser (male) looked me up and down, sighed, and exclaimed, ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about! A proper Englishman!’ I was tempted to reply in German, but as always when this kind of thing happens, I offered humble thanks and went on my way, wondering what, precisely, makes me look so English. On this occasion, wearing an entirely Canadian coat built on the foundations of English sartorial heritage, I wondered how my father-in-law would have reacted to such a statement (he is ancestrally French, with a touch of Scandinavian; until now, the family has been unsullied by English blood). Sacrebleu!

The Grand Tour

If it were possible, illustrious philosopher! to write to you without that respect which hinders the imagination by introducing a degree of fear, I should flatter myself that I could entertain you with an account of my tour of Italy. I shall do my best; and if I am not successful you will know what to ascribe my failure to.

    You were indeed right to congratulate me when my father gave me permission to travel in Italy. Nine months in this delicious country have done more for me than all the sage lessons which books, or men formed by books, could have taught me. It was my imagination that needed correction, and nothing but travel could have produced this effect (Boswell to Rousseau, 1765).

Athens, 1813

Aristocratic I am not. But then, seldom few are anymore. And yet, as only an aristocrat could in days of yore, I have travelled and learned, consuming culture as if I were entitled to it. I am not alone in this. Travel has been democratised to an impressive, if not alarming, level. What, for the millions who pack up and jet off, is it for?

I have a sense of loss, or rather, of opportunity lost. For modern travel is an empty experience for most travellers. The masses who line up to escape set about recapitulating the things from which they run as soon as they arrive at their destination. In the West, we tour in crowds of our peers, consuming kitsch that has no bearing on its location other than that it is sold there. For years, as an undergraduate living in the north of England, I sold Christmas decorations in the shape of Royal Guards to Americans. The decorations were made in China, and marked up 300 per cent. And now they sit, in their thousands, annually adorning the plastic trees of Texans, as memorials of their European tour. The English (not all of them, naturally, but as a composite generalisation) seek only a warm place to eat the same greasy food, drink the same bland lager, and engage in the same meaningless ‘relationships’ as can be found in any sleazy nightclub at home. From what I can gather, the discerning classes (a term I use to denote a relatively rare cosmopolitan intellect) of each Occidental nation carry a degree of shame with respect to their countrymen who, when abroad, represent their respective national characters in the worst possible light.

Emil Brack, Planning the Grand Tour

The world is small to us, but has become so only in proportion with the narrowing of our minds. When it took purpose, planning, and considerable effort to travel, it was undertaken with a view to enrichment – of the mind (and perhaps the purse, for some). For certain, there have always been voyeurs and opportunists, but the ideal of travel was to complete one’s education; to be enriched by cultures and histories richer than one’s own; and to return with a broadened, a more experienced mind. This possibility is upon us now, and with a simplicity of execution hitherto unknown and, for aught we know, for only a small window of time. Most of us spurn this opportunity, instead wreaking havoc on the lands upon which we trespass, in both senses.

The world, despite its borders and restrictions, is, to the privileged West, largely open. What if we were to visit it with an open mind?