Judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman

I like Livy's approach to history. Provided with materials about early Rome that he knows are shot through with myth and borrowings from the history of Greece, he admits that no one can know these things for certain and simply presents them leavened with his best judgment. I like also that, without denigrating religion in general, he doesn't mind telling us that Romulus was said to have been taken up to heaven in a cloud (but may in fact have been torn apart by jealous senators) or that a prominent Roman pretended to have a vision of the dead Romulus to reassure the people.

For Livy, history is the study of events driven by human character, and his portraits are striking. Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, is noted for his piety and his emphasis on building Rome's moral fibre through attention to religious rites (though Livy notes that Numa constantly pretended to commune in private with the goddess Egeria to support his program). Tullus Hostilius, his successor, respects religion but lives for the glory of conquest in war. Discovering the treachery of Mettius, a confederate king, Tullus has him tied to two chariots that are driven in opposite directions, tearing the traitor apart before the eyes of the horrified crowd. Tullus later comes to grief over religion: attempting a complicated rite in a temple of Jupiter, Tullus gets the formula wrong, whereupon the angry god destroys the building with fire, consuming Tullus in the conflagration.

His successor, Ancus Marcius, is called by Livy one of the greatest Roman kings who ever lived, equally respectful of religion and alert to the need for a powerful stance toward Rome's dissatisfied and sometimes marauding neighbors. Refusing to hold the entire warmaking power in his own hands, he inaugurates a principle that war is to be formally declared by envoys acting on behalf of the entire Roman city state—a lesson that American Presidents of the last 50 years would have done well to heed.

I was reminded of character when reading of George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, who variously served both the Royalists and later the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War and finally, alarmed and exasperated by Britain's near-anarchy, contrived the Restoration of the Monarchy in the person of Charles II. So balanced in his perceptions of the merits of each side and calm in his temper that he was regularly suspected of disaffection by extremists in whichever side he fought for, Monck was above the rancor of party wrangling, firm in his convictions, prudent in command, blessed with the confidence of the men who served under him, and firm to the point of severity when required. His own brother, a clergyman, was sent by the Royalists to sound Monck out on his plans to restore the Monarchy, and as Hume relates:

"When [Monck's brother] arrived, he found that [General Monck] was then holding a council of officers, and was not to be seen for some hours. In the mean time, he was received and entertained by Price, the general's chaplain, a man of probity, as well as a partisan of the king's. The [brother], having an entire confidence in the chaplain, talked very freely to him about the object of his journey, and engaged him, if there should be occasion, to second his applications. At last, the general arrives; the brothers embrace; and after some preliminary conversation, the doctor opens his business. Monck interrupted him, to know whether he had ever before to any body mentioned the subject. 'To nobody,' replied his brother, 'but to Price, whom I know to be entirely in your confidence.' The general, altering his countenance, turned the discourse; and would enter into no further confidence with him, but sent him away with the first opportunity. He would not trust his own brother the moment he knew that he had disclosed the secret, though to a man whom he himself could have trusted.

"His conduct in all other particulars was full of the same reserve and prudence; and no less was requisite for effecting the difficult work which he had undertaken."

As Franklin observed, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."

© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.

You can't turn it off

Beowulf begins with the bard exclaiming Hwaet! (the ancestor of our "What!" but meant, in this context to stand for "Listen to this!"). That arresting moment occurs in a different type of production when you realize that the conventional frame doesn't contain the story; it comes early in Noises Off when the action on the stage is suddenly interrupted by the director of the play, striding down an aisle of the theatre from behind the viewer and upbraiding the performers on the stage for getting it wrong; it comes at the end of EXistenZ, a film about virtual reality, when one participant, dazed by the ordeal, plaintively inquires, "Tell me the truth, are we still in the game?" In The French Lieutenant's Woman, you're aware of it from the first and watch the actors go continually from the 20th century to the 19th and back again, but it also adds to the viewer's uncertainty about the motives of both the Victorian characters and the modern actors who play them in the film within a film.

In England, My England, Tony Palmer's "experimental biography" of 17th-century composer Henry Purcell, the "What!" moment comes immediately after watching Simon Callow crowned as Charles II upon the Stuart Restoration in 1660; with no warning, someone off camera hands Charles an already-lit cigarette, which he begins to enjoy as the camera pulls back and reveals a 21st-century London theatre employee assisting Callow backstage during a performance about the dissolute monarch and his court. Though much is known of Restoration England, and the works he composed even during a short life of 35 years guaranteed Purcell a place among the immortals of music, there are few verifiably documented facts about the composer's own life, a condition reflected in the movie itself, which conveniently has Purcell born in 1660, the year of Charles's Restoration, whereas it is more likely that he had actually been born the year before. The haunting march that begins the funeral music he composed for the 1694 funeral of Mary II, Queen and Consort of William III (the same music was used for Purcell's own funeral a year later) may be remembered as the music that begins Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, where its use was either boldly apt or a travesty, depending on how you look at it.

In the Purcell film, it's interesting to see that the actor Callow encounters when he returns to his dressing room is Murray Melvin, who was wonderful in his minor role as Lady Lyndon's chaplain in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and does a brief turn here that reminds me of Tom Courtenay in The Dresser. Callow himself is always great; he was memorable as Emanuel Schikaneder in Miloš Forman's Amadeus, with Tom Hulce, as well as in Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral, but for me, one of his most characteristic and loathsome roles was the cynical barrister in an earlier Newell film, The Good Father, with Jim Broadbent and Anthony Hopkins. Callow often portrays the kind of sang froid that would have enabled him to write the entry in Samuel Pepys' diary for October 13, 1660, upon witnessing the execution for treason of Thomas Harrison, one of the Parliamentary regicides:

I went to see Major General Harrison hung, drawn, and quartered; he looked as cheerful as any man could in that condition.

In fact, that line is spoken in England, My England, though it is used to refer to the posthumous fate of Oliver Cromwell.

© Michael Huggins, 2008. All rights reserved.

Brother, can you spare a writ?

My third-grade teacher read us the story of a fashionable gentleman of the early 19th century, who approached a shabbily dressed old man and offered him a dollar to carry his parcels. The old man turned out to be Chief Justice John Marshall.

I think I've found the original of that story in The Laws of Etiquette, published in 1836. I like the author's overall tone:

We must here stop to point out an error which is often committed both in practice and opinion, and which consists in confounding together the gentleman and the man of fashion. No two characters can be more distinct than these. Good sense and self-respect are the foundations of the one—notoriety and influence the objects of the other. Men of fashion are to be seen everywhere: a pure and mere gentleman is the rarest thing alive. Brummel was a man of fashion; but it would be a perversion of terms to apply to him "a very expressive word in our language—a word, denoting an assemblage of many real virtues and of many qualities approaching to virtues, and an union of manners at once pleasing and commanding respect—the word gentleman."* The requisites to compose this last character are natural ease of manner, and an acquaintance with the "outward habit of encounter"—dignity and self-possession—a respect for all the decencies of life, and perfect freedom from all affectation. Dr. Johnson's bearing during his interview with the king showed him to be a thorough gentleman, and demonstrates how rare and elevated that character is. When his majesty expressed in the language of compliment his high opinion of Johnson's merits, the latter bowed in silence.

I'm glad John F. Kennedy made hats unnecessary, but I still like this passage:

If an individual of the lowest rank, or without any rank at all, takes off his hat to you, you should do the same in return. A bow, says La Fontaine, is a note drawn at sight. If you acknowledge it, you must pay the full amount. The two best-bred men in England, Charles the Second and George the Fourth, never failed to take off their hats to the meanest of their subjects.

And this is one of my favorite passages out of the whole work:

Sir Joshua Reynolds once received from two noblemen invitations to visit them on Sunday morning. The first, whom he waited upon, welcomed him with the most obsequious condescension, treated him with all the attention in the world, professed that he was so desirous of seeing him, that he had mentioned Sunday as the time for his visit, supposing him to be too much engaged during the week, to spare time enough for the purpose, concluded his compliments by an eulogy on painting, and smiled him affectionately to the door. Sir Joshua left him, to call upon the other. That one received him with respectful civility, and behaved to him as he would have behaved to an equal in the peerage: said nothing about Raphael nor Correggio, but conversed with ease about literature and men. This nobleman was the Earl of Chesterfield. Sir Joshua felt, that though the one had said that he respected him, the other had proved that he did, and went away from this one gratified rather than from the first.

The anonymous author is sometimes sardonic ("A funeral in the morning, a ball in the evening, so runs the world away") but very perceptive; his book can be finished in a couple of hours and could be profitably read alongside Emerson's "Social Aims."

The author declares that there is only one example of the true gentleman in literature: the character of Mr. Paulet in the novel Sydenham, published in 1833, and its sequel, Alice Paulet. Curious about his claim, I casually searched for the books online for a couple of years but could only find copies through rare book sites, being offered from the libraries of English country houses at about £700, which is roughly £690 more than I could afford, so thank goodness for Google Books.

The two novels, by one W. Massie, read like Jane Austen without the genius. Sir Matthew Sydenham, the narrator, is a wealthy young man from the lower ranks of the English aristocracy, entering London society and observing its foibles; he believes he is above the fashionable and foolish people he mingles with until he suddenly encounters a group that is outside the fashionable set but even more exclusive, and with a sort of inner refinement that leaves him uneasy and embarrassed. Here are his first observations on Mr. Paulet:

The obtrusive self-confidence and vanity of the coxcomb seemed unknown to this celestial gentleman; yet I could perceive in his air a calm consciousness of propriety and a sense of equality, at least with all who moved in the society which he frequented. The refined humanity of manner, the easy gracefulness of movement which, when seen in other men, are evidently achieved by elaborate study, and preserved by vigilant care, appeared in Mr. Paulet to be the actions of his nature, which would be violated by a different behavior.

I read about half the book today and am curious to see where this all leads; the word "celestial" in the author's description of Paulet is a little too apt, since it seems he is at risk for erecting a figure of such high ideals that mortals can't follow it.

© Michael Huggins, 2008. All rights reserved.