Here and there – George Will: The Conservative Sensibility

13/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

You get some idea of the tone and gist of this book from the following extracts from the Introduction.

Although it distresses some American conservatives to be told this, American conservatism has little in common with European conservatism, which is descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and–soil nostalgia, irrationality and tribalism. American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking….The label ‘liberal’ was minted to identify those whose primary concern was not the protection of community solidarity or traditional hierarchies, but rather was the expansion and protection of individual liberty. Liberals were then those who considered the state the primary threat to this…..In Europe today, the too few people who think the way American conservatives do are commonly called liberals, and people who think as American progressives do are called social democrats….Progressivism represents the overthrow of the Founders’ classical liberalism.

Later on, we get this – those who believe, as the Founders did, that first come the rights and then comes government, are adherents of the Republican Constitution; while those who believe, as progressives do, that first comes government and then come rights are the Democratic Constitution. The difference comes down to whether ‘We the people’ is a collective entity or ‘We the people as individuals.’

A number of things follow. First, this book is about theories and labels. (I agree with the late G H W Bush – labels belong on soup cans.) Secondly, it will offer little to the rest of the world because this conservatism is uniquely American and different to that of the rest of the West. Thirdly, the book will be completely foreign to Anglo-Australians because we prefer experience to theory, results to ideology. Finally some of the discussion will be as penetrable as the doctrine of the Trinity or the Real Presence, and provoke the question: What contemporary political issue might be enlightened by the application of these theories or labels?

But let us take the mission of this book on its terms. We are to seek the Founders’ thinking by going back to what they said. Lawyers are familiar with this process (and avoiding dogmatism in this context will be very tricky).

Let us put to one side that the Founders knew division – between, say, the focus of Jefferson on you and me, and the focus of Hamilton on Uncle Sam. The Founders had some things in common. They owned and traded in slaves. They might fairly be labelled patrician and they were horrified at the thought of what we call democracy. Alexander Hamilton spoke of the ‘unthinking populace’ and John Adams referred to ‘the common herd of mankind’. George Washington referred to the common people as ‘the grazing multitude’. He had the High Tory view that ‘the discerning part of the community’ must govern and ‘the ignorant and designing’ must follow. His successors now practise the reverse.

As a result, the Declaration contained two outright lies. The one about all men being equal is well known. Perhaps I may then refer to what I said in a book about the comparative history of Australia and the U S.

Well, this evasion, if that is the term, on the subject of slavery might be expected from a slave-owner from the largest slave-owning state. But what was not to be expected was the lack of candour on the causes of the revolt.

The American Declaration of Independence follows the form of the English Declaration of Rights. It records the conduct complained of to justify the termination of the relationship. (This is what lawyers call ‘accepting a repudiation’ of a contract.) The English did so in short, crisp allegations that were for the most part devoid of oratorical colour in the Declaration of Rights. The allegations are expressed in simple enough terms and were not phrased so as to encourage an evasive form of denial.

How does the American Declaration of Independence go about this process? Before it gets to an allegation that the king maintains standing armies, which is a relatively specific charge, it made ten allegations of misconduct that were so general that they would not be permitted to stand today as an allegation of a breach of the law on a conviction for which a person might lose their liberty. The fourteenth allegation, which is hopeless, but which appears to be an attempt to invoke the English precedent, is that: ‘He [King George III] has abdicated government here.’ Then there is the fifteenth allegation: ‘He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.’ If that allegation of plunder and murder – the old word was ‘rapine’ – had been seriously put, you might have expected to see it before an allegation of abdication – and before every other allegation. The eighteenth allegation relates to the Indians. The nineteenth was the allegation relating to slavery and which was struck out. Those drafting the Declaration were not evidently keen to get down to the subject of people of another race. Or tax.

Let us put to one side that all these allegations are made against the Crown, and not the government, and that none of these allegations refers to any statute of the British government. There is no history of the American Revolution that has been written that says that the American colonies revolted from their subjection to the British crown for any of the reasons that are set out in the eighteen clauses of the Declaration of Independence. The primary reason that history gives for the revolt of the colonists was the imposition, or purported imposition, of taxes upon them by the British parliament – when those being taxed had no direct representation in the parliament levying the tax. Most divorces are about money, and this one was no different.

But British taxation is only mentioned once in the Declaration of Independence. That reference is fallacious. It is against the King. The Glorious Revolution made it plain that he could not impose a tax. The only reference to the English legislature comes when those drafting the documents scold the English for ‘attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us’. Given that the 1688 revolution secured the supremacy of the English parliament over the English Crown and made it transcendentally clear that only the English parliament could levy a tax on its subjects, it may have seemed a little odd for Jefferson to be suggesting that the American colonies were somehow subject to the English Crown, but not to the English parliament. ‘Jurisdiction’ is a word that has come to bedevil American jurisprudence, and it looks like the problem may have started very early.

‘For imposing Taxes upon us without our Consent’ comes in near the end of charges against England. This Declaration is then a very dicey basis for any political theory or catechism. It’s not much of a rock to build a church on. And the descendants of the colonists are still skittish about tax. They are better at spending than paying. An endorsement of deceit, racial superiority and fiscal irresponsibility may be okay for the current president, but surely not for a Republican, much less a bona fide conservative.

The rest of the West think that the U S has been driven to at least two disastrous political failures by the application of the kind of theories discussed in this book by Mr Will – free universal health care and gun control.

If you think an ounce of evidence is worth a ton of theory, try this. In June 1908, David Lloyd George told the House of Commons:

‘These problems of the sick, the infirm, of the men who cannot find a means of earning a livelihood … are problems with which it is the business of the State to deal. They are problems which the State has neglected for too long.’

That proposition is still heresy for those to whom Mr Will appeals. For them, the State has no business in dealing with such problems. But Lloyd George and Churchill drove through this reform – as they called it – which would be the foundation of what we know as the Welfare State, and the start of the provision of a system of affordable health care that is taken for granted in every country in the West – except America. England was following the example set by Bismarck in Germany. Well over a hundred years later, Americans were still mouthing silly labels like ‘Socialist’.

What do Americans get for their primitive and puritanical purity? Not just the worst health system in the Western world, but the most expensive. And they get something from between pity and contempt from the rest of us who regard free universal health care as non-negotiable in a society that likes to call itself civilised. You can quote Plato and Hegel till the cows come home – decent health care provided by government is for us an inescapable part of our social fabric.

The same goes for gun control. Americans pay a frightful sacrifice in human life in obedience to what we see as a hideously loaded ideological reading of a clause in their Bill of Rights that had nothing to do with the cruel aspirations of the NRA. . The same Bill of Rights is part of our legal dispensation, but only a lunatic would assert that it has the same lethal consequences for us.

You get some idea of the depth of the gulf separating us when you read ‘So, constitutional lawyers are America’s practitioners of political philosophy.’ That is not our way here. English and Australian jurists would be horrified at the notion that they should engage in political philosophy while on the job. And we worry about Mr Will’s grip on reality when we read: ‘most Americans want altars kept apart from the state’s business.’ Is all that stuff we read about Evangelicals just fake news?

The Index to the book makes no mention of Trump, or, in a book riddled with –isms, populism. As best I can see, the book contains no discussion of the current status of ‘conservatism’ for Republicans in America. If they are the two main issues facing America today, then tossing intellectual playthings about like shuttlecocks makes Nero’s fiddling look while Rome burned positively sane. If this book correctly reflects a ‘conservative’ spectrum in America today, then we may better understand what many see as the moral and intellectual collapse of the Republican Party and any reasonable application of ‘conservatism’ to the U S in 2019.

By contrast, near the end of Jefferson and Hamilton, John Ferling said:

Presciently, and with foreboding, Jefferson saw that Hamiltonianism would concentrate power in the hands of the business leaders and financiers that it primarily served, leading inevitably to an American plutocracy every bit as dominant as monarchs and titled aristocrats had once been. Jefferson’s fears were not misplaced. In modern America, concentrated wealth controls politics and government, leading even the extremely conservative Senator John McCain to remark that ‘both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.’ The American nation, with its incredibly powerful chief executive, gargantuan military, repeated intervention in the affairs of foreign states, and political system in the thrall of great wealth, is the very world that Jefferson abhorred.

Well, that was way back in 2103, and since then the abhorrence of Jefferson has got so much worse as the United States has fallen flat on its face in the gutter. And, yes, Hamilton was killed in a duel. And the rest of the world looks on in sadness as the United States increasingly looks more like its current president – the spoiled child who never grew up.

None of this would have surprised Alexis de Tocqueville.

…..in America the people regard this prosperity as the result of its own exertions; the citizen looks upon the fortune of the public as his private interest, and he co-operates in its success, not so much from a sense of pride or duty, as from, what I shall venture to term, cupidity……As the American participates in all that is done in his country, he thinks himself obliged to defend whatever may be censured; for it is not only his country which is attacked upon these occasions, but it is himself……Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans.’

And ‘irritable patriot’ is a reasonable title for the current incumbent at the White House.

Passing Bull 209 – Alarmists

13/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

In one tribunal where I sat, the internal loo had a sign on the door: ‘This door is alarmed.’ I had to stop asking myself who had done what to alarm it. Have you noticed that people who accuse others of being ‘activists’ are also prone to accuse others of being ‘alarmists’? I say ‘accuse’ because the word is used as one of denigration. Well, for much of the 1930’s Winston Churchill was alarmed about the rise of Nazi Germany, and he was widely dismissed as being ‘alarmist.’ The consequences of that dismissal could well have been fatal – because there was something to be alarmed about.

The problem came in the sixties when people invoked that history to shrug off suggestions that they were being ‘alarmists’ when the warned of the Yellow Peril and the ‘domino effect’ and we got locked into a losing war. So ‘alarmist’ is like ‘activist’ – it all depends on the object of the alarm or activity. ‘Alarmist’ is now used by those who lost the argument on climate change and are now seeking to cover their retreat with such dignity as they may command. It will continue to be invoked as a banal label by those who accuse others of ‘groupthink’ and who give every appearance of being incapable of any other kind of thought.

Bloopers

The woman I went to hear confirmed that personal desks had indeed disappeared at her firm after an office move, as is so often the case. A small alarm went off in my head as she began to list the alleged benefits of ditching dedicated desks: employees could ‘work fast and more agilely’ to give a ‘better experience to customers’. The alarm grew louder when she revealed the phoney slogan her company had used to describe the new system. ‘We didn’t call it agile working, we called it ‘fresh working’.’ Most regrettable of all, though, were signs of a mentality I can only describe as correctional. Hot-desking apparently goes cold when workers try to cling on to a desk by sticking a family photo on it or draping a coat over a chair, moves she described as ‘signs of encampment’.

Financial Times, 29 July, 2019

The writer showed uncommon kindness in describing the mentality as ‘correctional’. To describe an employee as showing ‘signs of encampment’ summons up images of the S S.

Here and there – A different kind of president

08/08/201908/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

Here and there – A different kind of president

Harry S Truman was substantially raised in a farm in Missouri. His family were simple decent people who shared in the life of their community. His mother would live to see him become President. He was educated at the local school in an undistinguished way, except that very poor eyesight meant that he wore glasses, and the he was taught to play the piano.

Then, when Harry was about seventeen, his father went broke after risky trading. (Young Harry won on a horse at 25 to 1 and did not bet on a horse again for 25 years.) Harry had to go to work to support the family. One job was in construction on the railroad – ten hours a day, six days a week, $30 a month plus board. He learned about all kinds of profanity from altogether a different class of person. ‘A very-down-to earth education.’ He learned how to get on with the men, and they responded in kind. ‘He’s all right from his asshole out in every direction.’ He learned to keep it simple. One night groping in the dark he ran right into a pump. The next day, he painted the pump white.

When the U S got into the Great War, Harry was medically unfit and his family relied on him. He was about to marry. He memorised the sight test and joined up. His troops elected him as an officer. He told Bess she would wait for him to come back to marry in case he did not. Harry put duty above personal interest. Always. This was ‘a job somebody had to do.’

In four months on the Somme, the Germans lost more than both sides in the entire U S civil war. Harry received intense training which he had to pass on. He was terrified when he first had to address his troops. But he was the boss. ‘I didn’t come here to get along with you. You’ve got to get along with me.’ For their first engagement, they arrived in pitch dark at 3 am, the rain pouring down, and men and horses exhausted. Harry lost twenty pounds when learning how to lead and look after men in the horror of war.

When he got back home, Harry went into business selling high end men’s wear, and he became heavily involved with the Masons. That business went broke, and he had to pay off its debts. The local Missouri Democrat machine was run by the Prendergasts – like English lords of the 18^th century. With their patronage, Harry went into politics and got into the Senate. His personal loyalty meant that he felt obliged to stand by his patrons even when that did not suit him politically –as when their chief drew heavy jail time. Then Harry felt that his career was over – but he hung on and recovered. Harry had not ducked for cover. (His opponent took a hit when it was learned that his chauffeur was required to give him a military salute.)

Harry made his name in the Senate inquiring into corrupt practices. He attacked Wall Street and the larger danger of money worship. He told Bess: ‘It will probably catalogue me as a radical, but it will be what I think.’ He was repelled by ‘wild greed’ and showed the traditional Missouri suspicion of concentrated power and the East.

How these gentlemen, the highest of the high hats in the legal profession resort to tricks that would make an ambulance chaser in a coroner’s court blush with shame?…..We worship money instead of honour. A billionaire, in our estimation, is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to the wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labour. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of the Homestead steel-workers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockefeller is founded on the dead miners of Colorado Fuel & Iron….People can only stand so much, and one of these days there will be a settlement….

Had the world heard anything like this since Lloyd George in 1909? We hear nothing like it now. Even if you could find someone who had those beliefs, they would be too scared to voice them.

When World War II came to the U S, Harry wanted to volunteer. Marshall told him he was too old. Harry admired Marshall above all others.

Truman hated McCarthy – as did Ike – but he refused to play dirty.

You must not ask the President of the United States to get down in the gutter with a guttersnipe. Nobody, not even the President of the United States, can approach too close to a skunk, in skunk territory, and expect to get anything out of it except a bad smell.

When Roosevelt died, Churchill was saddened, but he soon came to appreciate Truman. ‘He takes no notice of delicate ground, he just plants his foot down firmly upon it.’ He had no trouble dropping the bomb – to save American lives. He surrounded himself with men of the highest calibre – Marshall, Acheson and implementing the Marshall Plan, this veteran of the First World War reversed the two deadliest mistakes of the Allies at the end of the First. He repudiated nationalism, embraced and saved Europe, and helped secure three generations of comparative peace under a rules based order anchored on the stability and integrity of the United States.

By applying immense concentration and diligence, Truman made decisions such as those, and on Israel, Korea and Macarthur that others may have ducked. He did not seek personal praise. David McCullough said that more ‘than once in his presidency, Truman would be remembered saying it was remarkable how much could be accomplished if you didn’t care who received the credit.’

In January 1952, when I was six years of age, Churchill dined with Truman and leading members of his government.

The last time you and I sat across the conference table was at Potsdam, Mr President. I must confess, sir, I held you in very low regard then. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt. I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you more than any other man have saved Western civilisation.

Well, if you are a bona fide big hitter – and these two plainly were – you are entitled to make statements as large as that one.

Two of the biggest decisions this great man took were the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the decision to fire Macarthur. The two may be related. Macarthur had wanted to drop thirty to fifty atomic bombs on Manchuria and the mainland cities of China. If Truman had not prevailed, we might not be here.

But the comparison with the present White House is enough to make a man cry.

MY TOP SHELF – Chapter 31

08/08/201908/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

[These are serialised extracts of all the fifty books referred to in a book published in 2015 called ‘The Top Shelf, or What Used to be Called a Liberal Education’. The extracts are as originally published, and they come in the same order.]

AMERICAN MUSICIANS

Whitney Bailliett (1986)

Oxford University Press, New York, 1986; rebound in half-calf in vibrant and confrontational pink, with grey cloth, and grey label embossed in gold.

Hell, man, nobody can hear you read.

When the late Whitney Bailliett reviewed a novel by Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient), he said that the novelist wrote like an angel. The reviewer was well qualified to make such a judgment. Philip Larkin described Bailliett as a ‘master of language.’ Here is an example from this book of his contributions to the New Yorker on jazz between 1962 and 1986. (He was at the magazine a lot longer.)

Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young – the emperors of the tenor saxophone and the inventors of so much regal, original music – were opposites. Hawkins was a vertical improviser, who ran the chord changes and kept the melody in his rear view mirror. Young was a horizontal improviser, who kept the melody beside him and cooled the chord changes. Hawkins had a voluminous enveloping tone. Young had an oblique, flyaway sound. Hawkins played so many notes in each chorus that he blotted out the sun. Young hand-picked his notes, letting the light and air burnish them. Hawkins played with a ferocious on-the-beat intensity. Young seemed to be towed by the beat. Hawkins was handsome, sturdy and businesslike. Young was slender, fey, and oracular……But the two were not totally dissimilar. Hawkins eventually destroyed himself with alcohol, and so did Young, although he did the job quicker.

Many of these giants destroyed themselves on drugs. It was not just the burden of genius – they would be applauded by whites and then calmly told to go and sit, eat, or sleep elsewhere. They were prophets rejected in their own country.

Each of the fifty-six portraits in this book is beautifully written and composed – of anecdote, biography, word pictures of the music, and those who made it, and the celebration of an art form, the only one to come from a sterile century. Taken together they are the best picture that you can get of jazz outside of music.

The triumph of Mary Lou Williams’ style is that she has no style. She is not an eclectic or an anthologist or a copyist; she is a gifted and delicate appreciator who distils what affects her in the work of other pianists into cool, highly individual synopses. The grapes are others’, the wine is her own. In the late twenties and early thirties, echoes of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller and Earl Hines hurried through her work. The mountainous shadow of Art Tatum passed over around 1940, and by 1945 she had become an expert bebop pianist. Since jazz piano – the other-worldly convolutions of Cecil Taylor aside – has not moved very far since then, she is now a post-bebop performer, her chords and single-note melodic lines applauding such juniors as Bill Evans and Red Garland.

This is not idle academic chatter, but historical analysis of a high order. Bailliett was, doubtless unconsciously, trying to do for modern jazz what Maitland did for old law. He was trying to make it available to the untrained and the profane. For example, he said that Lester Young – called ‘Pres’ by Billie Holiday – ‘had an airy lissom tone and an elusive lyrical way of phrasing that had never been heard before.’ When the singer, Sylvia Sims, complained to Young about talkative audiences, Pres replied: ‘Lady Sims, if there is one guy in the whole house who is listening – and maybe he’s in the bathroom – you’ve got an audience.’ Bailliett had played drums when he was younger, and he idolized Big Sid Catlett, and loved writing about his rim-shots and general playing. Roy Eldridge – ‘Little Jazz’ – said of Big Sid: ‘Sid was a big cat, a fun-loving cat….What was so amazing about him, for all his size, was he was so smooth. He was smooth as greased lightning.’

It is nearly impossible to write about music in performance. Nevill Cardus could: so could Whitney Bailliett. Here he is on the great Fats Waller.

Whichever, or whatever, Waller was a funny man, even when he played the piano and kept his mouth shut. He was the last of the great stride pianists, and he perfected the style. Stride piano had grown out of the oompah bass and filigreed right hand ragtime. Its main concerns were rhythmic and melodic: keep that rocking two-beat motion going, no matter how slow, and keep the melody uppermost, no matter how strong the urge to embellish. It was a chordal way of piano playing, both in the left hand, where tenths alternated with seesawing chord-and –single-note figures (Waller’s huge hands spanned more than a tenth), and in the right, where chords, often played staccato or against the beat, were spelled out by pearly Lisztian runs.

The piece on Erroll Garner is headed Being a Genius, which Garner certainly was. Bailliett records Sylvia Sims offering the following anecdotes. ‘Tatum told me that he adored Erroll, and that was strange because they were so different. Tatum was something of a stuffed shirt, while Erroll was so articulate in his street-smart way. Erroll loved chubby ladies….He was a very generous man. I remember walking to Jilly’s with him in the sixties and I don’t know how many times he stopped to say, ‘Hey, baby’, and reach into his pocket and lay something on whoever it was.’

Bailliett said that recording tends to ‘stymie’ jazz musicians, but Garner loved them – in a 1953 session, Erroll ‘rattled off thirteen numbers, averaging over six minutes each with no rehearsals and no retakes.’ Erroll liked ‘to have his base player sit on his left, so that the bass player could see his left hand.’

Here Garner describes how he wrote ‘Misty’ – Garner never learned how to read music.

I wrote ‘Misty’ from a beautiful rainbow I saw when I was flying from San Francisco to Chicago. At that time, they didn’t have jets and we had to stop off in Denver. When we were coming down, there was a beautiful rainbow. The rainbow was fascinating because it wasn’t long but very wide and in every colour you can imagine. With the dew drops and the windows being misty, that fine rain, that’s how I named it ‘Misty’. I was playing on my knees like I had a piano, with my eyes shut. There was a little old lady sitting next to me and she thought I was sick because I was humming. She called the hostess, who came over, to find out I was writing ‘Misty’ in my head. By the time I got off the plain, I had it. We were going to make a record date, so I put it right on that date. I always say that wherever she is today that old lady was the first one in on ‘Misty.’

Another pianist said that ‘when Erroll walked into a room, a light went on. He was an imp. He could make poor bass players and poor drummers play like champions. When he played, he’d sit down and drop his hands on the keyboard and start. He didn’t care what key he was in or anything. He was a full orchestra, and I used to call him ‘Ork’. Another pianist said that what distinguished him ‘was his rich and profound quality of time…He was his magnificent pianistic engine.’

‘Who chi coo’ stood for magnificent obsession. ‘People who don’t really know me call me Erroll. But Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae all know me as ‘Who chi coo’ and that means they love me as much as I love them.’

Bailliett ended the piece by recording the reaction of Garner when someone mentioned that he could not read music. ‘Hell, man, nobody can hear you read.’

Bailliett said: ‘Jazz, after all, is a highly personal lightweight form – like poetry, it is an art of surprise – that shaken down, amounts to the blues, some unique vocal and instrumental sounds, and the limited elusive genius of improvisation.’ How do you write about that art? It is a testament to the high art of Whitney Bailliett that he could do so with so much conviction and so much charm.

Well, if any one book on this shelf was going to be dressed in pink leather, this was it – this most beautiful book is just full of magic and treasure. Indeed, pound for pound, there is for me as much magic and treasure in this book as in any other on this shelf. This is not just a desert island book – it is a book of last resort when you think to yourself, again: We are surrounded by savages – in the name of God, is there nothing left in the whole world with any form or grace? And who knows? If they found someone who could talk about music, perhaps we might find someone who can talk about God.

Passing Bull 208 – Decrying decency

05/08/201905/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

It is highly entertaining to watch parts of the commentariat – the loudest voices in which call itself ‘the political class’ – decrying expressions of decency in big business – especially BHP and its CEO, Andrew Mackenzie. Some people think that people in business should steer clear of moral and political issues. They are just not clear about why this should be so.

We may put to one side the fact that those taking this position have a very shrill ideological commitment to a claimed ‘freedom’ of religious fundamentalists to condemn one in ten of us to Hell, but we can comfortably spot four reasons for them to be very jealous of Andrew Mackenzie. He is much smarter than them. He is much better educated than them – primary degree at St Andrews (geology); doctorate at Bristol (organic chemistry); Humboldt Research Fellow in Germany (nuclear science); the publisher of 50 research papers who speaks five languages (according to Wikipedia). Finally, Mr Mackenzie does not just comment on others, which is the function of his critics – he creates jobs and wealth. (There are not many of those about. The BHP website refers to 62,000 employees and contractors.) And, finally, he has leadership written all over him.

BHP has been outspoken on issues like indigenous recognition and relations with the First Nation generally; same sex marriage; climate change and coal; and diversity. There are obvious reasons why a company engaged in mining in Australia or the Americas must have and profess strong policies on dealing with indigenous people. Putting that to one side, there are at least three reasons why a company like BHP might be vocal on some moral and political issues.

One is the appalling failure of government to show anything resembling leadership on issues like same sex marriage and climate change. Business has no alternative but to seek to fill the vacuum. (The U S army decided years ago that it could not afford to wait until its Commander in Chief saw sense on climate change. Insurers are now forcing others to act in the same way.)

Next, many shareholders expect this of their business; some demand it. To describe such people as ‘activists’, as if you were articulating some truth, merely shifts the arguments down a rung. In a society that calls itself capitalist, why should not the owners of capital deploy that fact to achieve social or political objectives? Why should the owners of the business be precluded from expressing views about the position that the business adopts in the community? As for the employees, is it not fundamental that a business goes better when its employees are happy in their jobs and proud of their work?

Finally, and perhaps as a result of the first two grounds, BHP should adopt the position it does because it is the right thing to do. BHP has succeeded, and in my view all social groups depend upon those who have succeeded giving back to the community to those coming after them. It is called noblesse oblige, and it is as essential for a company as it is for a family, a cricket club, a law firm, a small town, a political party, or a nation. Mr Mackenzie looks to me to be the embodiment of this ideal.

May I relate this to my shareholdings in my super fund? I hold shares in only eleven companies – four banks, three mining and exploration companies, two safe licensed investment companies, and CSL and Westfarmers. I expect the businesses that I invest in to take care about their standing in the community generally. I am broadly familiar with the management of all of those companies and, with one exception, I am content with that management. The exception is three of the banks. I am not happy with their management, or their standing in the community generally. But – I am confident that they will change their ways; and in the meantime I have little option but to stay with them because the smallness of my fund and my reliance on it for income mean that I need to look for a safe yield above 6%.

Two anecdotes will show the value I put on good community relations. When that dam that BHP had an interest in flooded a village in Brazil, Mr Mackenzie was over there within days and personally assuring villagers that the company would look after them. It was very, very impressive. I have acted for many large corporates, including BHP, and I can well imagine those in well-cut suits and under furrowed brows telling him such a course was risky and downright unwise. This was leadership made visible.

When flying to the Bungle Bungles, I flew over the Rio diamond mine – a vast inverted ziggurat some distance from its lifeline airstrip – and I felt the thrill of ownership. More importantly, at Broome I was told what a good job Woodside was doing in the local community. I was also told a story that sounds like it has grown in the retelling. A Woodside employee was making a pest of himself with a young woman at one of those fly-in, fly-out strips. A Woodside executive told the miscreant of his lofty standing in the company, and that unless that man apologised to that young woman, he would be on the next plane back to Perth –and probably unemployable in that industry.

As a result of those incidents, I increased my holdings in BHP and Woodside (and, for that matter, Rio). You may think that is a zany way to invest – well, it is my capital. BHP is by far my biggest holding and I am very content with it – not least because it and Mr Mackenzie are acting in a way to attract criticism from those whom I least admire.

And when that criticism comes from those publicly associated with the IPA, which was, until recently, less publicly associated with coal and Gina Rinehart, then I know that our capacity for pure bullshit is unlimited. And that’s also before we recall that those advising BHP how to run their business have never got with a bull’s roar of running any business. Never mind – they don’t even draw the line at offering gratuitous but quite useless legal advice.

Bloopers

Asked earlier if Johnson’s team had sought any talks with Brussels, a Downing Street spokesman said: ‘What we’ve done is set out our position and say that we are very ready and will be energetic in beginning talking, but we’re also clear-eyed about what needs to happen if we are going to be able to secure a deal which parliament can support.

‘As I say, we are ready to begin talking, but we are clear what the basis for those discussions needs to be.’

The Guardian, 27 July, 2019

One problem with that is that it suggests that this government accepts that any deal must be supported by parliament.

MY TOP SHELF – 30

02/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

FOUR PLAYS

Henrik Ibsen (1890)

Oxford University Press, The Franklin library, 1983; translated by Eva Le Gallienne; illustrated by Tony Eubanks; fully bound in black leather, worked and embossed in gold, with humped spine moiré pearl endpapers and ribbon; gold edged pages.

Play-time is over now.

Henrik Ibsen left Norway because he was stifled by it. He said he wanted to put a torpedo under the ark. He went to Rome and was captivated by Michelangelo and Bernini because, he said, ‘they had the courage to commit a little madness now and then.’ That is a very revealing remark. He was a member of the Scandinavian Club, that was doubtless as conservative as ex-pat groups tend to be. The torpedo launched in Rome was a proposal to give women at the Club the vote. This was 1879. The motion was narrowly lost. Members were uneasy about how Ibsen might react.

No one would have guessed it – but Ibsen came. He looked magnificent, in full panoply, with medals to boot. He ran his hand ceaselessly through his rich, grizzled hair, greeting no one in particular, but everyone in general. There was a deep peace in his face, but his eyes were watchful, so watchful. He sat alone. We all thought that he had forgiven his fellow mortals, and some even supposed him penitent…Then he began, softly, but with a terrifying earnestness. He had recently wished to do the Club a service, he might almost say a great favour, by bringing its members abreast with contemporary ideas. No one could escape these mighty developments. Not even here – in this community – in this duckpond!….Now he was no longer speaking calmly, no longer thoughtfully stroking his hair. He shook his head with its grey mane. He folded his arms across his chest. His eyes shone. His voice shook, his mouth trembled…He resembled a lion; nay, more – he resembled that future enemy of the people, Dr Stockmann….He repeated, and repeated: what kind of women are these….?

Thump! A lady, Countess B, fell to the floor. She, like the rest of us, flinched from the unspeakable. So she took time by the forelock and swooned. She was carried out. Ibsen continued. Perhaps slightly more calmly. But eloquently and lucidly, never searching for a word. …He looked remote and ecstatic….And when he was done, he went out unto the hall, took his overcoat and walked home. Calm and silent.

(Could all Scandinavian people write like that back then?)

This volume has four of the plays – A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, and Hedda Gabler. With The Master Builder, they are the plays most put on now. After these, the going gets tough. For example, Romersholm ends on a double suicide and in Little Eyeolf a child is crippled while his parents are making love and becomes subject to the whiles of the Rat-woman leaving his parents to make Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf sound like a nursery rhyme.

It is hard for us now to recapture just how shocking A Doll’s House was. Nora is treated like a doll by her husband until she can take it no longer and she just walks out. The last words before the curtain are: From below is heard the reverberation of a heavy door closing. That sound must have echoed round Stockholm and Berlin like a rifle shot. Women just did not do that – walking out was not an option.

Helmer, the husband, is insufferably patronising. ‘When a man forgives his wife wholeheartedly – as I have you – it fills him with such tenderness, such peace. She seems to belong to him in a double sense.’ But it is not long before he is staring into the abyss.

It doesn’t occur to you, does it, that though we’ve been married for eight years, this is the first time that we two, man and wife, have sat down for a serious talk…..You never loved me. You just thought it was fun to be in love with me….I’ve been your doll wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played games with me….I have another duty just as sacred…my duty toward myself…..But don’t you see – I don’t really know what religion is.

Then the husband says that he could not sacrifice honor for the sake of love, and he walks straight into this bell-ringer.

Millions of women do it every day.

This would have been all Mandarin in the south, but it electrified the nations of the north. People sent dinner invitations endorsed ‘We will not discuss THAT play.’ One traditionalist complained that ‘one does not leave this play in the mood of exaltation which, ever since the days of the Greeks, has been regarded as the sine qua non for every work of art and literature.’ You can therefore see Ibsen’s contribution to modernism. As with King Lear, some demanded a happy ending. But as Michael Meyer observes in his wonderful biography: ‘So explosive was the message of A Doll’s House –that a marriage was not sacrosanct, that a man’s authority in his home should not go unchallenged, and that the prime duty of every person was to find out who he or she really was and become that person – that the technical originality of the play is often forgotten. It achieved the most powerful and moving effect by the highly untraditional methods of extreme simplicity and economy of language….’

Hedda Gabler is another snap of heathens living in a world that calls itself Christian. It must be the most lacerating role known to the stage. The ‘trolls’ have stalked mankind right into civilized society. Hedda is caught between a twerp of a husband and a sleazy judicial pants man. She is left to face the roles of mother and mistress and she rejects both of them. She is like a caged animal, and she becomes both vicious and lethal. She is revolted by any kind of intimacy and cannot bring herself to use ‘du’ with her husband’s aunt. Her only release is in inflicting pain.

I sometimes think there’s only one thing in this world I’m really fitted for….Boring myself to death…..I say there is beauty in this. [Suicide of a former lover.] Ejlert Lovborg has made up his own account with life. He had the courage to do – the one right thing…..It gives me a sense of freedom to know that an act of deliberate courage is still possible in this world – an act of spontaneous beauty.

We are near the realm of Ayn Rand or something worse. This play could just be a study in fascism.

For once in my life I want the power to shape a human destiny.

There is something demonic about Hedda. Ibsen said ‘She really wants to live the whole life of a man.’ In the result her exit comes with a different sort of bang, and she might just be the most terrifying creature ever put on the stage. The last way anyone would want to go to God would be with Hedda’s vine leaves in their hair. Fascists are empty incomplete people who live on front and insignia. They see their heroes – themselves – as champions wreathed in laurels. They are also fascinated by guns. Guns are a source of power to shape human destiny. The external insignia of fascists betoken their internal emptiness. They are an uncomely husk of humanity, a sad, pale mockery. Hedda Gabler is indeed a very dark and evil invention. This is a chick who kills for kicks.

On film, you can choose between Juliet Stephenson and Claire Bloom for Nora and between Ingrid Bergman and Diana Rigg for Hedda. If the plays have a structural problem, it is that the men are door-mats. Michael Redgrave is as wet a wimp as you could find for Hedda’s husband and Ralph Richardson is just nauseating as the revolting Judge Brack – he reminds you of the whining, insinuating Iago of Cyril Cusack.

Ibsen may be the only playwright who can hold a candle to Shakespeare. One difference is that there is hardly any comedy. But they both have one important thing in common. They were both devoted to theatre and they both spent their professional lives writing plays for profit with the view to giving the public a good night out at the theatre. The rest, I suspect, may be little more than moonshine.

Passing bull 207 – The Common Enemy

01/08/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

Technology now permits and encourages anonymous lies and attacks. It is a bonus for cowards, fools, and crooks. Just witness its role in the rise of people like Farage, Trump, and Johnson. It has exposed the soft underbelly of democracy – enough people may be credulous enough to get you a very bad result. Are we only as strong as our weakest link? The democratic process is vulnerable because of its very openness.

Many lies were told during the last election. That is about par for the course. But it has been made much worse by corporations like Facebook. It participated in lie that said that one party intended to introduce a death tax. When challenged on this, Facebook responded:

I understand that your preference would be for Facebook to remove all content that you believe constitutes misinformation – which in this instance mean all content that discussed whether or not Labor intends to introduce a death tax – rather than demote it; however Facebook only removes content that violates our community standards.

Calling a lie ‘misinformation’ is enough to expose the credibility of the author. We are talking about a straight lie, and if the original author was Clive Palmer, it could hardly be anything else. We are in the distressingly familiar area of a contempt for truth.

Then there is that weasel term ‘community standards.’ But it is here qualified by ‘our’. Who are we? Not bloody me mate. And if your community standards allow for barefaced lies – and they do – you have a problem and you are a problem.

Bloopers

The Hungarian government denies it is trying to shape the way that history is written. In a blog post, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs characterised the 1956 Institute’s absorption by Veritas as ‘a minor administrative change to make research more efficient by integrating related fields into the same structure’.

Financial Times, 26 July, 2019

Greg Sheridan visited Hungary as a guest of the MCC Hungarian think tank.

The Weekend Australian, July, 20-21, 2019

And, he delivered on that investment. MCC acolytes did not mention Orban’s name.

Yet according to the high organs of international liberalism, Orban is a fascist. Surely fascist leaders promote a cult of personality? Yet there are no statues of him in Budapest, no great memorials, and supporters of his government seem to be just like supporters of any other government.

Becoming a paid propagandist is does not look good for a journalist.

Here and there – An exquisite irony in Ireland?

29/07/201929/07/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

In 1366 – three centuries to the year after the Conquest – the English passed the Statutes of Kilkenny. The English part of Ireland was called the Pale. Those outside the Pale were ‘Irish enemies’. This version of apartheid was based on the contempt felt by the English for the inferior peoples of Ireland. The problem was one of race. English settlers were to be protected from degeneracy by various prohibitions. It was only much later that differences in religion further soured relations between the English and Irish. It is therefore ironical that the original English invasion of Ireland – at least in the view of Paul Johnson – was carried out at papal request and with papal authority.

Ireland will forever stain the name of England. Six centuries after the Statutes of Kilkenny, Ireland was still convulsed by divisions wrought in and upon it by the English. For two hundred years prior to that time, enlightened English rulers – like Pitt the Younger and Gladstone – had sought to extricate England from Ireland. On each occasion they were blocked by radically conservative members of the aristocracy – and in at least one case (George III), the monarchy.

Let us take two examples of radical aristocratic opposition to Irish Reform. Lord Curzon’s family went back to the Normans. He went to Eton, of course, and had more indicia of nobility than you could point a stick at. On Ireland, he was fanatically opposed to Home Rule. During the Irish War of Independence, but before the introduction of martial law in December 1920, Curzon suggested the ‘Indian’ solution of blockading villages and imposing collective fines for attacks on the police and arm. He was the apogee of the aristocracy.

My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,

I am a most superior person.

My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,

I dine at Blenheim once a week

Lord Halsbury was another aristocrat who was manic about Ireland – possibly because of Irish blood on his mother’s side. He was not, poor fellow, educated at Eton – his Daddy looked after him at home before packing him off to Merton College, Oxford. In speaking against a Home Rule Bill, Halsbury said that some races were unfit to govern – ‘like the Hindoos and Hottentots’ – and the Irish.

In 1972, Paul Johnson said that Halsbury was a ‘white supremacist.’ In the name of heaven, which builder of the British Empire was not a white supremacist? Did they go into Asia or Africa believing that the natives were their equals, or that the meek would inherit the earth? And when their sons and daughters spread out over America and Australia, did they believe that the indigenous people they were killing were their equals? You might recall that that paradigm of the Tory aristocracy, the Duke of Wellington, remarked that the Irish could put a reasonable army in the field – provided they had white officers.

Is it not therefore an exquisite irony that Ireland may finally become unified because of the radical opposition of the boys from Eton to the dilution by Europe of the purity of the English nation?

And they may even lose Scotland and Wales as well. It is impossible to resist quoting the well-known lines of Gibbon.

But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.

Here and there – Fidelity and Emma

26/07/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

[How England broke faith with its greatest sailor, Lord Nelson. Final part.]

Part II

The Nile was a world changing event. Nelson had destroyed the French fleet. He had immunised his country from Napoleon’s threatened invasion. It was as if he had saved the civilisation of the whole world. The Ottoman Sultan and the Tsar of Russia joined in homage to this new Caesar (from which the word ‘Tsar’ derived) who, like the old, did now bestride the world like a colossus. The First Lord of the Admiralty fainted when he heard the news (but he later he got mean with the honours to Nelson on a point of precedence and rank). Haydn wrote a mass. Crowned heads of Europe would bow before their saviour.

Nelson, his body broken, returned to Naples. And to the solace of Lady Emma Hamilton. We have the canvas of George Romney and other artists to attest to her beauty. She was drop-dead gorgeous – and God had done her no favours when he made her that way. The mutilated body of Nelson bore frightful witness to the physical toll of war. It would be silly to suppose that his psyche had stayed in mint, virgin nick.

Nelson sailed to Malta and while doing so, he wrote to his Commander-in- Chief, Lord St Vincent. He said that ‘I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton…..our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter. Naples is a dangerous place and we must keep clear of it.’ His Lordship was a man of the world and he quite understood. He wrote to Lady Hamilton.

Ten thousand thanks are due to your ladyship for restoring the health of our invaluable friend, on whose life the fate of the remaining governments in Europe whose system has not been deranged by those devils, depends. Pray, do not let your fascinating Neapolitan dames approach too near him; for he is made of flesh and blood and cannot resist their temptation.

Since word of the relationship, as we now incline to say, had already reached Admiralty and Lady Nelson, you can interpret that admonition as you will – but it does look like a suggestion that if Emma were to bite the apple, there could be one Hell of a price to pay.

Who was Emma? She is worth a book of her own. From a humble background, she took service as a maid at twelve. (It is a symptom of how different these times were that both these future lovers were thrown on to the work-force at the age of twelve.) She then did bucks’ nights for the better people, sometimes starkers it is said, and then she got pregnant. It must have been dreadful for a young girl – and an under-age one at that – to dance nude on a table top before drunken, gruesome oafs who were morally blinded by ingrained caste. Emma then took to the stage and she became a sensation in London as Romney’s model. She became the mistress of a leading politician, a loathsome jerk called Greville.

When Greville needed to take a rich wife, he palmed Emma off on Sir William Hamilton, the ageing British envoy to Naples. Emma was shipped out to be Hamilton’s mistress, but they fell in love and they got married. She was twenty-six. He was sixty. Emma was at the commanding height of her powers of attraction. About two years later, she met Nelson. She was by then resigned to not having a child by her husband – as was the case with Nelson with a wife who was older than him.

There, then, was the powder keg just waiting to go off in Naples.

And now a whole new threat arose. Nelson had to confront the price of fame. Nelson was not enjoying being ensainted. He wrote to Lady Hamilton.

To tell you how dreary and uncomfortable the Vanguard appears is only to tell you what it is to go from the pleasantest society to a solitary cell, or from the dearest friends to no friends. I am now perfectly the great man – not a creature near me. From my heart I wish myself the little man again! You and good Sir William have spoiled me but for any place but with you.

There may well be some male coquetry here, but there is little reason to doubt the main premise. Nelson was content to play the part allotted to him in battle by England and Shakespeare, but dolling it up in peace or being divorced from his true office were steps too far.

To go back to Gibson, the English nation came alight at the news that Gibson had led a daring raid that had blown up German dams. Overnight, Gibson became a household name, a celebrity. Churchill made him into what we would call a poster boy. Richard Morris says that Gibson ‘intensely disliked being exhibited as a war hero.’ Before Gibson set off to tour America with others, Antony Eden warned of ‘the torrents of alcohol and adulation with which they will be deluged, and such tours of fine fellows can degenerate disastrously.’ Later, Bomber Harris told Cochrane that he thought the Americans had ‘spoiled young Gibson.’ Harris was sorry that his protégé had had his head turned – and he would be sorrier when Gibson kept what now looks to have been his inevitable appointment with death over Holland.

Then two things happened that also look to have been inevitable. The two ladies met, and Lady Nelson snapped. We may be sure that as with the wife of Wellington, Lady Nelson’s friends kept her tightly hooked up to the grapevine.

Nelson’s solicitor was with them at breakfast one morning when Nelson mentioned Emma. ‘I am sick of hearing of dear Lady Hamilton, and am resolved that you shall give up either her or me.’ What else could Fanny have done? The solicitor’s account looks like it may have been taken from notes made at the time.

Lord Nelson, with perfect calmness, said, ‘Take care, Fanny, what you say. I love you sincerely, but I cannot forget my obligation to Lady Hamilton or speak of her otherwise than with affection and admiration.’ Without one soothing word or gesture, but muttering something about her mind being made up, Lady Nelson left the room, and shortly after drove from the house. They never lived together afterwards.

Now, that account may be partial, but it is what you might expect from an English gentleman who was used to command, but who found himself unable to deny to his wife that, for better or for worse, he had fallen in love with another woman. In truth three people had been on a collision course that providence and nature had made inexorable. That is the stuff of tragedy.

Lady Nelson said that her husband’s last words to her were ‘I call God to witness, there is nothing in you or your conduct, I wish otherwise.’ Carola Oman does not know whether Lady Nelson sent the following letter.

My dearest Husband,

Your generosity and tenderness were never more strongly shown than…for the payment of your very handsome quarterly allowance, which far exceeded my expectations….Accept my warmest , my most affectionate and grateful thanks. I could say more but my heart is too full. Be assured every wish, every desire of mine is to please the man whose affections constitute my happiness. God bless my dear husband…’

It is a fact of life that marriage breakdowns commonly involve a descent into Hell. This separation doubtless caused grief, but it looks to have been made in heaven when put beside the usual case. Shortly after the separation, Emma bore Nelson a child, a daughter they named Horatia. The couple was very happy, although the customs of the times precluded public acknowledgment of the parenthood.

We know now that Nelson dared death once too often at Trafalgar and lost. Emma had been an object of prey before her adulthood, and gradually she slipped back to that condition after the death of the father of her child. Crushed by predators, debt and a turning public, Emma, the sometime slut, took to drink and died a miserable death at Calais before turning fifty. The woman in these stories never gets the monument.

That then is the sad tale of Nelson and Emma. How is it that anyone could claim to sit in judgment on either of them – or of Wellington? I have no idea. First, I am not God. That self-evident proposition is sufficient to dispose of the issue. Secondly, and relatedly, we have no chance at all of understanding the social or military forces of a different era and place. For starters, we now have little understanding of their view of marriage or their law of divorce; or bastardry; or caste.

It was the insight of the great German historian von Ranke that every age is ‘equally immediate to God.’ This is to look eternity in the eye – all ages are equal in the eye of God. God is not subject to the constraints of time as we are. The historian has to look at each period in its own terms. It makes little or no sense to say that the Renaissance was in some way better than the Middle Ages. In a different way, it is very silly to seek to compare the infidelity, if that is your chosen word, of Wellington with that of Nelson.

It is enough to say that the evidence is that Nelson fell in love with another woman and that Wellington did not. These things can happen; if it were otherwise, Hollywood would go bust. The fascination that some feel for the gory details is a reminder of the meanness of our mediocrity. As Shelley remarked about those nasty people that sent the Cockney John Keats to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, we are like gnats straining at a camel.

But we would have loved to have been a gnat on the wall when these two very great men came to meet by accident in 1805 not long before Trafalgar. They had both been asked to call on Lord Castlereagh, but they were kept waiting because Cabinet was sitting. Wellington recognised Nelson because of the eye and the arm – and the notorious egotism. ‘He entered into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side, and all about himself, and, really, in a style so vain and silly as to surprise and almost disgust me.’ But then Nelson must have guessed he was talking to somebody, so he stepped out to inquire. (How very English! But what a clash of egos!) Nelson came back quite a changed man.

All that I thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked … with a good sense….in fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman….I don’t know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more.

Then came the news of Trafalgar and the death of the man that England until then had relied on to defeat Napoleon. Wellington was there at the Guildhall where Pitt, the nation’s youngest ever Prime Minister, was thanked for saving Europe. He heard Pitt utter perhaps his most famous statement.

I return you my thanks for the honour you have dome me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England saved herself by her exertions and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.

A long time after he had defeated Napoleon, His Grace, as he had become, said: ‘That was all; he was scarcely up two minutes; yet nothing could be more perfect.’

Well, the wars killed Pitt as surely as they had killed Nelson. Wellington would survive and go on to lead the nation in another capacity, and it may not be fanciful to suggest that in that role, he helped England avoid its version of the French Revolution. But you don’t have to be Burns to know that no matter how high a man rises, he stays a man. People who forget that wind up in the wrong end of Shakespeare.

When quitting Portsmouth to go to Trafalgar, Nelson had tried to escape quietly by the back entrance of the George Hotel. He could not fool the crowd.

He pushed his way through a pressing multitude, explaining that he was sorry he had not two arms, so that he could shake hands with more friends, and it was soon evident that his Portsmouth following felt more poignantly than the admirers who had mobbed him daily in London. As his figure came in sight, some people dropped to their knees in silence, uncovered and called out a blessing on him; tears ran down many faces….After the Admiral’s barge had pushed off…he turned to Hardy as the regular dip of oars gained pre-eminence over Portsmouth cheers on an afternoon of flat calm, and said, ‘I had their huzzas before. I have their hearts now.’

On the morning of the battle, and within sight of the Combined Fleets of France and Spain, Nelson got Hardy and another captain to witness what he called a codicil.

…I leave Emma, Lady Hamilton, therefore a Legacy to my King and Country, that they will give her an ample provision to maintain her rank in life. I also leave to the beneficence of my country my adopted daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson; and I desire she will use in future the name of Nelson only. These are the only favours I ask of my King and Country at this moment when I am going to fight their Battle.

When news of the victory in battle and the death of Nelson made the London papers, something entirely out of the English character happened on the streets of London.

Many contemporaries attest that when London newspapers appeared on November 6, with the heading ‘Glorious Victory over the Combined Fleets. Death of Lord Nelson’, the instinctive comment of the British public was: ‘We have lost Nelson!’ and strangers stopped one another in the street to repeat the news and shake hands to an accompaniment of tears.

For many years, some English families kept framed copies of The Times:

If ever there was a man who deserved to be ‘praised wept and honoured’, it is LORD NELSON. His three great naval achievements have eclipsed the brilliancy of the most dazzling victories in the annals of English daring.

But Pitt died before the King and Country could honour Nelson’s last wish ‘when I am going to fight their Battle’ on behalf of Emma and Horatia. King and Country did not honour their obligation to two people who had depended on Nelson, and the course of their breach of faith with their hero is too painful to relate. People who feel the need to rate infidelity might care to dwell on this one.

Nelson’s prayer for Horatia was eventually answered. She married a clergyman, and she had many children who got on. She had a full and happy life. She died at the age of eighty-one. She had lived more than thirty years longer a life than that of either her mother or her father – she later discovered who her father was, but she was never to learn or accept who her mother was.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The transit of Emma Hamilton from gutter to gutter was a dreadful tragedy. We defiled Emma as a child and we defiled her as she aged and in her death. We just used her up and dropped her each time. We were obliged to Nelson and he sought our assurance that we would answer to that obligation for the woman he loved and his daughter when he was gone. So, when he was gone, and of no more use to us, and he could not bear witness to what we did, we built a great monument that made us feel good. And we forbade Emma from attending his funeral and we would not allow Horatia to know her mother. Whatever fidelity might mean, we did not show it to Nelson. Our breach of faith was complete.

You may wish to bear this in mind the next time you are in Trafalgar Square underneath Nelson’s Column mixing it with the tourists and their cameras and the pigeons with their shit. Grandeur usually comes at a price; but discomfort is one thing; dishonour is something else altogether. What a falling-off was there!

*Wellington said something about this that escaped the liberators of Iraq. ‘I always had a horror of revolutionising any country for a political object. I always said, if they rise of themselves, well and good, but do not stir them up; it is a fearful responsibility.’

FINIS

My Top Shelf – 29 – Hume

26/07/2019 / Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

ENQUIRIES CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

David Hume

Edited by L A Selby-Bigge, Second Edition, 1902; reprinted from the posthumous edition of 1977; rebound in stone cloth boards with Mediterranean half blue leather, with gold print on red label.

Either as a man or as a philosopher, the name of David Hume is fit to be mentioned in the company of Spinoza and Kant.

He was born in Edinburgh on 26 April 1711. He was happy to have come from a good family. His father was a lawyer who owned a large estate at Ninewells that had been held in the Hume or Home family for centuries. His mother was the daughter of the President of the Court of Justice. He lost his father when he was very young. His mother was a strict Calvinist. Like Spinoza, Hume lost God early; like Kant, he was put off religious fanatics early. The Scottish Sunday tended to be very dour and drab.

David spent three years at Edinburgh University, starting when he was not quite twelve years of age. He did a general course in Greek, Logic, Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy. University as such left no deep imprint on him; nor did the Church.

At the age of only eighteen years he embarked on the work that was to be his most famous, A Treatise of Human Nature. He experienced a psychosomatic condition that turned him from a ‘tall, lean, raw-boned youth’ to a ‘sturdy robust healthful like fellow … with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful Countenance’. The portraits of Hume do show a very full face, at peace, with a kind of restful somnolence. The portrait by Allan Ramsay shows a face at once serene yet somehow vulnerable. While he was still ill, Hume described it as ‘the Disease of the Learned’. His doctor helpfully prescribed a ‘Course of Bitters & Anti-hysteric Pills’ and ‘an English pint of claret wine every day’, a course of treatment that is still faithfully followed to the letter by some who suffer from a ‘Disease of the Learned’.

Hume never married. Sir Alfred Ayer was qualified to speak on this and said that Hume was ‘too thoroughly immersed in intellectual pursuits to qualify as an amorist’.

Hume spent two years at La Flèche, where Descartes had been educated, writing the Treatise. It was published and, said Hume, ‘it fell dead-born from the Press’. He went on to publish an Abstract, setting out the substance of his arguments. He also published essays and later came to write The Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding which was a re-write of part of the Treatise. The present work has a section on miracles that Hume had deliberately omitted from the Treatise. In it he said that ‘no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that which it endeavours to establish’.

Hume had odd jobs in government positions, but he derived substantial income from his writing. His six volume History of England was a great hit and a great money earner. He was more famous for his History during his life than for his philosophy. Montesquieu was impressed with the essays and he and Hume kept up a correspondence. Voltaire said that ‘nothing can be added to the fame of this History, perhaps the best ever written in any language’. It is still extremely readable. Here is part of his judgment –and Hume was certainly judgmental in his History – on Mary Queen of Scots.

Her numerous misfortunes, the solitude of her long and tedious captivity, and the persecutions, to which she had been exposed on account of her religion, had wrought her up to a degree of bigotry during her later years; and such were the prevalent spirit and principles of the age, that it is the less wonder, if her zeal, her resentment, and her interest uniting, induced her to give consent to a design, which conspirators, actuated only by the first of these motives, had formed against the life of Elizabeth.

It is all there – balance, grace and rhythm. As writers go, Hume was a natural. The marginal note for the next paragraph reads: ‘The Queen’s affected sorrow’. As Russell dryly remarked, Hume ‘did not consider history worthy of philosophic treatment’. But what was entirely fundamental to Hume was that to be a philosopher was to be a man of letters. That, sadly, is no longer the case.

When Adam Smith vacated the Chair of Logic, Hume would have been a natural selection, but the opposition of the church faction prevented the appointment. But when he went to Paris, Hume was an instant success. The French took to him with the same zeal that they were later to show toward Miles Davis. As Lytton Strachey said, ‘He was flattered by princes, worshipped by fine ladies, and treated as an oracle by the philosophers’.

He was, like Gibbon after him, fluent in French. One of his women admirers was the Comtesse de Boufflers. She was younger than Hume, le bon David – and the mistress of a Prince of the Blood, the Prince de Conti. Although she wanted to marry the Prince after presumably outliving her husband, she appears to have fallen for the corpulent Scot.

The relationship was not consummated and le bon David may have been well out of it. It is difficult to avoid the impression that he was punching well above his weight with these French women. In one petulant letter to Hume, the Comtesse asked, ‘Do you want to confirm me in the idea which I hold, that your sex like to be handled roughly … to confess to you my opinion, the majority seem to have by nature servile souls?’ On one occasion the Comtesse upbraided the Maréchale de Mirepoix, her intimate friend, for associating with Madame de Pompadour, saying, ‘She is, after all, merely the first prostitute of the Kingdom’. It is said that Madame de Mirepoix quietly returned, ‘Don’t ask me to count up to number three’. That is cattiness of a very big hitting calibre, the stuff of European championships.

Hume was taken in by Rousseau – as, surprisingly enough, Kant was to be. They got on famously until Rousseau’s paranoia broke out and he behaved appallingly toward Hume, as he tended to do to anyone who ever got close to him (such as his children).

Hume was wealthy and successful and feted. He built a house in New Town off St. Andrew’s Square, which came to be known as St. David’s Street in his honour. He worked on his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. They were published after his death, for the same reason that Spinoza left his Ethics to be published after his death.

Like Spinoza and Kant, Hume had run-ins with government over his views on religion, but like them, Hume died at peace with himself. He told his doctor that ‘I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire’. He could not understand why people were asking him if he would retreat from his unbelief in God in the face of death. According to Ayer, Boswell intruded on him to see ‘how he was handling the prospect of death; Hume convinced Boswell that he faced the prospect serenely; equally characteristically, Dr. Johnson insisted that Hume must have been lying’.

In his autobiographical Memoir, Hume said this of himself:

I was a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments.

Hume had a mind like a lightning conductor. He was like one of those who come along every hundred years or so in the law, who can put novel ideas so simply and surely that you wonder how people of goodwill could seek to argue the contrary. They have a beguiling simplicity that charms those who are not so gifted, and for that reason they are greatly feared by the guardians of the intellectual peace who are also not so gifted.

Hume had said that ‘Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous’. Russell said: ‘He has no right to say this. ‘Dangerous’ is a causal word, and a sceptic as to causation cannot know that anything is ‘dangerous’.’ Russell then went on to say:

In fact, in the later portions of the Treatise, Hume forgets all about his fundamental doubts, and writes much as any other enlightened moralist of his time might have written; he applies to his doubts the remedy that he recommends, namely ‘carelessness and inattention’. In a sense, his scepticism is insincere, since he cannot maintain it in practice. It has, however, this awkward consequence, that it paralyses every effort to prove one line of action better than another.

Hume’s scepticism in philosophy never interfered with his enjoyment of life. Those who fear a void opening up after Hume’s destruction of empiricism and his questioning of causation should take solace from the six volumes of his History of England. How could anyone write a history of England from The Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution in 1688 without giving full weight to what every person understands by the word ‘causation’ on every single page? Even the little citation above, about Mary Queen of Scots, is laced with references to causation from beginning to end. We may therefore doubt whether the philosophy of David Hume was as much a guide for him in the conduct of his life as has appeared to be the case with Spinoza and Kant. After Rousseau had affronted Hume for the third time, and as Hume realised that Rousseau was mad rather than bad, he wrote to his Comtesse:

For the purpose of life and conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all the genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility.