Year-End Renewal; or, Logging Off

I’ve turned into one of those: an absentee blogger. Here’s the deal.

The last quarter of the year was a total turnaround, and 2012 looks set to be on an upward curve. For two years I extolled, in these pages, the virtues of work. For a good portion of that time I considered this space as my workspace, and I gave it my full attention. Now somebody is paying me not just to do what I want to do for a living, but to be who I want to be. My first line of business was always the historian’s craft, and that’s where I’ve been the last few months. The next couple of years will require some serious writing on my part and I’m determined that it will be good.

The end of year involved the usual escape to Montreal. It is still home, regardless of where I happen to be living. It’s even better to be home when you’re feeling good about who you are and where you’re going. The holiday has been packed with the kind of manly activities typical of the repertoire you’ve been used to reading about here: Handel’s Messiah at the new symphony hall – a carpenter’s wet dream if ever there was one; proper steaks at The Keg; being a good guest, and a good host; the new wing of the Musée des beaux-arts; and a number of visits to the best tailor in town.

Montreal symphony hall. Pic from Audiophilia.com

On the latter score, I must give an extra nod in the direction of H. Padar on St. Catherine W. downtown. Mrs. VB is the proud owner of a new bespoke suit, readied from consultation to final delivery in one week. One week! Three pieces, navy blue super 120s merino. Truly remarkable. When you live in Berlin and your tailor is in Montreal, you either have to be extremely organised and plan months ahead, or you have to rely on great service. H. Padar gives you the latter, in addition to an excellent cut. He doesn’t hit you too hard in the pocket either. While he was at it, he completely transformed a Simon Horsley tweed suit, given to me by my dear brother, which unfortunately hung from my slight bones like a marquee on a corpse. To cut and shut a fine suit is no easy thing, but I am delighted with the re-modelling. A good tailor knows another good tailor when he sees one, and I’m sure Mr. Horsley would be happy to hear one of his creations has been given a new twenty-year lease on life.

It’s wonderful to feel well fitted. That my friends, is how I feel, in my suits as in my life. BeingManly is, therefore, to rest easy, not to die. Occasionally it may stir, when inspiration compels, but I think on the whole it will slumber happily. It’s been a joy making so many acquaintances and not a few friends along the way. Long may our associations continue.

I leave you with this: be manly if you can, and if you can’t, at least be polite. Happy new year!

Remembering the Civilian Cost of War

There is a raking light and a hint of frost in the air. Nobody has bothered to rake the leaves among the grave stones. The moss growing over the footpaths suggests desertion, a return to nature. A few early twentieth-century mausoleum facades stick out here and there among the hoary branches, fraktur engravings signalling a sense of self-importance that died with Weimar. One or two of the living are titivating, laying a winter rose for their family stone with cursive script. Death here is well organised. At the entrance to the graveyard is a florist. Directly across the street, a grave stone merchant. Adjacent to that, a large old-people’s home.


In the middle of this large suburban graveyard, a row of diminutive stone blocks hides among the fallen leaves. Nothing about them invites you to investigate. They are black, unadorned, inconspicuous: ignorable. But if you kick away the autumnal detritus you will discover that each stone bears the same date: April or May 1945. These people, mainly civilians, some of them without names, all perished during the fall of Berlin. Perhaps they met with disease, starvation, or a stray bullet. Who knows what privations they endured before the terminal date?

Remembrance Sunday in Berlin simply isn’t. Despite all of the recent moves to make the annual marking of the armistice about the general cost of war, the triumphalism of the victors still casts a pall. In any war, innocence is a grey area. People are caught up, swept along, killed, maimed, forgotten. Whatever their stories, the why of their deaths is filled with a futility that ought to move us. Wars, we expect, have a military cost. But among the celebrated fallen and the vanquished enemy lie the rest. I, for one, would like to remember them.

On Charisma

A charismatic figure possesses above all power. For sorcerers, the power consists in their supposed ability to control nature or humans. The modern scientist as a “wizard” in popular culture disposes over traces of this charisma. Other figures, such as athletes and actors, display more nebulous sorts of charisma. But in general, a person exudes charisma because he or she succeeds as a leader, a hero or Führer, in religious, martial, or other arts. Charisma thus emerges from and inheres in a social relation. A group of people ascribes certain extraordinary abilities or powers to a person. That person has charisma in relation to the ascribing group, whose members become active or passive disciples or followers or fans (William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, Chicago, 2006).

In the world of easy ‘likes’, Twitter armies, and the blogosphere, I rather feel that there is a surfeit of charisma kicking about the internet. There are enough scary nouns in Clark’s little charismatic reduction to make us most wary of it. The concatenation, Joe Public is a monster is a leader, is terrible, and the ethereal world makes it plausible. How many trolls have a few thousand followers or fans, more or less active? Vigilance, more than ever, is required. If charisma is to be so democratic, all the more reason to advocate goodness, virtue, manliness.

Onward, charismatically.

Edward Hyde is Everyman

I recently read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and knew that in its pages there was something of value for Beingmanly. But the moral was lost in the chimera, and in my closeness to the text I could not unravel it. I therefore sent a letter to an historian friend of mine, who thinks about these things, and occasionally has a sensible word to say on such matters. With his permission I submit to you his reply, unedited, and with his wish to state the opening proviso in full:

My dear VB,

Your letter finds me between one article and another, and thinking about things far removed from the subject you present. In answering you I must confess that I have had a drink or two, and am in a somewhat altered state. But often the way to divining one’s real thoughts on a matter come in such moments, and since I do not have time to give serious thought to the matter you will have to make do with this.

The chemically induced alter ego of Dr. Jekyll is far too well known for me to shed any further light on Stevenson’s exemplary novella. I’m sure you of all people aren’t too lazy to look after this yourself. But since you crave something useful for your odd little blog, I might say that the Strange Case could well illuminate our own lives to a degree uncomfortable to admit. Taking away the extraordinary excesses of Mr. Hyde, we are left with the statement of Dr. Jekyll that lends the story verisimilitude. For in this statement, civilised men will recognise themselves:

And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.

I will not dwell on Freud. Lord knows, enough people have done that. Nevertheless, here we have a description of the internal schism, of propriety and gratification, that blights the lives of men. We measure other men by their adherence to the former, and by the degree to which they fall from this standard. Moreover, men measure themselves in this way, wreaking guilt, anxiety, shame, and so forth, upon themselves.

Our contemporary American Macho type of man, about which you have written, and which is represented, needless to say, across the civilised world, overcomes this schism by simply paying no heed to the marks of civilisation that have, in a roundabout way, produced him. On the contrary, he listens only to the democratic culture – in the Platonic sense – that has fostered his freedom to be licentious, promiscuous, ill-tempered, ill-spoken, and indulgent. The specific manner of this man depends largely upon his access to money, but the differences are of degree rather than of kind. Striking out for himself, he is not gnawed by guilt or anxiety. He is not riven by an internal schism. No, he is already fully realised as civilisation’s Edward Hyde, devoid of conscience, on the make, leaving no avenue of gratification unexplored.

This is one solution to the shackles of propriety. If everyone ignores the restraints we may merrily go the way of the beast. For some, life will be a cruel victimhood. For others it will be nasty, brutish and short. And for yet others it will be an epicurean delight. Let the dice fall as they may.

I would humbly submit that we are not all fighting, internally, against propriety. We shall only be faced with an eternal demon if we give credence to the duality within us. I doubt not that men’s passions overflow on occasion, but this is not our internal other, beating down our public face. We are one, whole, complicated certainly, but ultimately intelligible. Propriety need not be the external force from which we are alienated, but the embraced standard by which men can live. Like the man who tells a lie so often he comes to believe it, propriety can be truly felt. A man must give himself to civilisation, not secretly fight it. He will then find his gratification through his propriety. His desires and his standards will fall into line. He will shake off this Victorian curse and live, contentedly, among the civilised.

Such is the limit of what I can presently communicate on the subject. The whiskey bottle has scarcely enough in it to merit leaving for another occasion, so I will adjourn with it and return to serious thinking. Trusting you will not embarrass me, I shall remain

Your humble servant,

PRB

P.S. There is such a thing as too much tweed, you know. You’re at risk of becoming a bore, if not a boor.

Timothy Everest Online

I’m willing to bet that a fair portion of you will be putting hints in the way of your respective better halves about things you are craving for Christmas. Now that Timothy Everest has an online store, you will have something concrete to tell them about. I am the proud wearer of the Spitalfields tie you see here, and can attest to its quality and all around spiffiness. To be sure, I can think of things I’d rather take out of stockings, but in the realm of common decency this is as good as it gets. Happy shopping.