The State of/and Canadian “Culture”

As a rule, professional sports players are not notable for their Ciceronian eloquence. They get paid to play a game of some kind, though a small part of their job does involve being able to construct the odd platitude for media consumption. Although there have been poets who wrote eloquently about sports (e.g. Hemingway), there are no great poets that I can think of who are also professional sports players, with the possible exception of Yogi Berra. But by far the least articulate athletes around have got to be hockey players.

My mother had an interesting theory about this. According to her, in most sports, players would compete for scholarships to some college or university, from which they would hope to be drafted into a professional league. They may not have been scholastically inclined, but they had to at least attend an institution of higher learning for some period of time, which also meant that they had to get accepted into one. If they were lucky, the rudiments of something resembling an education could be instilled into them, if only by accident. Hockey players on the other hand, could be drafted straight out of high school, before they even got their diplomas, so they were less likely to have two IQ points to rub together. And this, my mother thought, explains those moronic and utterly tautologous interview exchanges with hockey players that are completely devoid of content or basic intelligibility:

INTERVIEWER: So, you’re a goal ahead coming out of the first period. What’s the plan for the second period, Gordie? [Substitute Dougie, or Bobby, or Donnie, or other typically Canadian name]

HOCKEY PLAYER: Well, you know, uh, like, we’re gonna get out there and, you know, play, eh? We’ll just go out there and give ‘er, eh? We’re gonna, you know, like, skate down the ice, and shoot the puck, and score goals. And then, you know, if we do that more than the other guys out there, we should, like, be able to win this, eh?

(For those unfamiliar with its dubious charm, the “eh” sentence ending is common among poorly educated, mostly white, Canadians — as professional ice hockey players tend to be. It is not entirely clear whether this locution, when uttered, is intended to be declarative or interrogative, but the rising intonation makes it sound like the latter. It is a most unattractive Canadian linguistic marker. What I cannot reproduce in written form, however, is the distinctive sound made as these words pass through the sweating, bleeding, and largely toothless mouth of a hyperventilating hockey player.)

I think my mother’s theory had some merit when I was a kid, though I don’t know if her political economy of sports recruitment still holds water today. Perhaps hockey players are now drafted out of colleges and universities, and perhaps, though not obviously, hockey players are getting incrementally more intelligent over time. But I can tell you that their fans only seem to get stupider by the day. In support of this latter claim, and especially for the benefit of non-Canadian readers, allow me to produce Exhibit A: the appeal of Don Cherry.

Although Mr. Cherry is a Canadian institution (to our eternal shame), I honestly don’t know how to adequately describe what he is for the benefit of my non-Canadian readers. Nominally, he is a hockey announcer and colour commentator. But I suppose one could better think of him as a one-man “whiteface” minstrel show. He wears loud suits made from your great auntie’s curtains, complete with Edwardian collar. The ensemble is often accented by those wrap-around sunglasses so favoured among working class Canadian white men. The sunglasses are a wise choice, since they serve to shield his audience from his dull and brutish eyes, the low brows of which frequently furrow like a confused or enraged chimpanzee’s. He speaks (“tirades” would be a better word, if I could pass it off as a verb) in a bellowing cascade of monosyllables, interspersed with grunts, and accented by the chopping motion of his hands.

Inexplicably, Canadians of the lower orders cannot get enough of Mr. Cherry’s shtick. Traditionally, his cretinous minstrelsy has consisted largely of obnoxious shouting and misogynistic and homophobic railing against assorted wimps, pinkos, tree huggers, and the perceived effeminacy of the style of hockey supposedly favoured by European players (“ballet dancers” as he charmingly calls them). In Don Cherry's world, Europeans need to do less playing and more punching, slashing, and bludgeoning.

However, lately Mr. Cherry has added considerably to this limited repertoire. First, as Canada’s late military adventure in Afghanistan escalated, he took to maudlin displays of “sympathy for the troops”, replete with pre-game puck-dropping ceremonies involving much waving of flags and fawning over veterans of various wars.

To this new routine he added the role of comic political mascot to his growing curriculum vitae: having been invited for no apparent reason to the inauguration of Toronto’s mayor and council, he proceeded to denounce the various “pinkos” and their media who had opposed the mayor’s electoral bid. (Full disclosure: I too despise mayor’s “progressive” opponents and the well-organized media vendetta against him. But Cherry’s display was shameful and the occasion chosen was utterly tasteless.)

This foray into politics having gone so well, Mr. Cherry now feels himself qualified to enlighten the public with his views on Canadian foreign policy. In his opinion it is “nuts” that Canada has donated $50 million in aid to Haiti. The man is a true polymath, wise in hockey, wise in international relations. I see an ambassadorship to the UN in his future. Or at least a Senate seat.

In all seriousness though, there is a not-so-subtle melding of hockey, politics, and citizenship in Canada that I find disturbing. I watched television two nights ago (something I rarely do), and was treated to a commercial wherein it was more than implied that a “true Canadian” plays hockey. I wish this message was new to me. Unfortunately, I cannot count the number of times in a given week on the airwaves of the CBC — our nation’s once venerable public broadcaster — that I am glibly assured that all Canadians love hockey, that hockey is “what makes us Canadian”, that all Canadians yearn for an end to the NHL hockey lockout, that all Canadians spend every spare moment during our long winters on some backyard rink playing shinny, etc. etc.

Contrary to CBC and establishment mythology, the overwhelming majority of Canadians live in urban areas. Few of us have backyards big enough to contain a hockey rink. A sizable chunk of the Canadian population are immigrants, many of whom come from countries where a snowflake is about as common a sight as a unicorn. I was born in Canada, but I can barely skate, and I have not attempted to do so since sometime in the early 1990s. The simple fact is, more Canadians in my city (the largest in Canada) follow soccer than hockey. Last year one of our national newspapers, admittedly a relatively highbrow one, The Globe and Mail, conducted a poll. It was hardly scientific, and I conveniently can’t find it now. It asked readers how they felt about hockey, but it was clearly framed in such a way as to elicit answers favourable to hockey (e.g. asking “How often do you watch hockey?” without offering the option of answering “Never”). And yet, the long and short of the results was that more than two-thirds of readers actually couldn’t care less about hockey; they neither follow it, watch it, nor play it. This tallies with my suspicion that hockey spectatorship is largely the bastion of white, undereducated males, who find its goonery and insensate violence appealing, and who are not inclined to follow any sport or other event that involves too much strategic thought. Hockey is not a thinking man’s game. It is the sporting equivalent of a monster truck show.

(If you are reading this and you love hockey but don’t fit into that demographic because you are affluent, well-educated, well-spoken, you won’t get an apology or a retraction from me. I feel it my duty to tell you that you suffer from a condition known as localized stupidity, a form of mental retardation that only manifests itself in certain areas of one’s life. The good news is that everyone suffers from some form of this malady, so you are not alone. For example, localized stupidity is partly the explanation for my love of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The good news is that it can be cured. In your case, the first steps are to stop watching hockey and to stop spending time with people who watch it, especially if said people suffer from generalized stupidity. Generalized stupidity is indeed a terrible disease. It is highly contagious, and I understand that it has become endemic in rural areas of Canada.)

The equating of hockey with Canadian citizenship used to be something to chuckle at. It was a kind of joke we Canadians told ourselves, in our ongoing vain attempts to form a cohesive national identity. However, it is no longer amusing. It is pathological. Media propagated hockey-worship manages to alienate from their own national culture the two-thirds of Canadians who don’t care for hockey. Ironically, these very people whose claim to citizenship is called into question by their indifference to hockey are arguably better citizens precisely because they don’t care for the violence, gracelessness, and stupidity the sport epitomizes. And because of the constant harping on this myth that you are not a real Canadian if you don’t like hockey, some of us — some 66% of us, if the Globe and Mail poll is any indication — are learning to despise our putative Canadian identity because we are being taught to equate it with such a shameful and degrading spectacle.

The Three Pillars of Harperism

If fascism ever comes to Canada, it will come wrapped in a hockey jersey. I submit that we’re already nearly there. Ominously, the sport seems to have become one of the Three Pillars of the political philosophy (or iconography) of Harperism:

1. Military

2. Monarchy

3. Hockey

For years now, we have been given to believe that our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is beavering away at a book about hockey. I doubt this, simply because I doubt that he has what it takes to write a book all by himself. We are, after all, talking about a man whose speeches are written for him by others or are plagiarized from former Australian Prime Ministers. We’re talking about a man who took nine years to finish a one-year Master’s degree in political science, but who gives it out to the media that it’s an economics degree so that they can refer to him as an economist — which he clearly is not. No, I don’t think we’ll see Harper’s Book of Homespun Hockey Wisdom in my lifetime, but it’s a convenient myth. To the hockey-loving plebeian class of Canada, it lends his carefully cultivated persona the right mixture of man-of-the-people and intellectual. But not too intellectual, mind, for that would be a sign of effeminacy his electoral base will not tolerate. You can almost see him there, by the quiet fireside of a winter’s eve, wearing his powder blue sweater vest, scribbling away after a long day spent protecting virtuous rural Canadians from the hordes of pot-smoking communists, urban tree huggers, and homosexual intellectuals waiting to steal their hard-earned paychecks to pay for subsidized heroin and free abortions for all.

Fig.1

The connection between Harperism’s Three Pillars of Military, Monarchy, and Hockey is patent. One need only begin by looking at the roundel of the Royal Canadian Air Force [Fig. 1], which has in the past couple of years been appearing inexplicably on winter coats across the land. It is obviously a military symbol (First Pillar). But less obvious is the fact that this roundel also invokes the Second Pillar of Harperism: Monarchy. You see, up until August 2011, Canada’s army, navy, and air force were part of the same umbrella military organization. Stephen Harper’s government separated the three branches and renamed them. Canada’s former Air Command was officially renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and the Maritime Command was renamed the Royal Canadian Navy. In case you dared forget that we are a proud quasi-independent subaltern of the British Crown, our military is royal and presumably at the Queen's disposal.

Now compare this RCAF roundel with the logo of Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada [Fig. 2]. There is obviously more than a passing resemblance, no?

Fig. 2

But perhaps more disturbing is the comparison between both of these figures and the two-year-old logo for the Winnipeg Jets hockey team [Fig. 3], which, incidentally, Harper is known to be inordinately fond of. Indeed, he likes it so much that a 25 cent piece has been issued by the Royal Canadian Mint and is in general circulation, so that each and every Canadian in this wide land can have her very own reminder of the Three Pillars of Harperism in her pocket or purse. It can be fondled, like a rosary. Or it can be spent on beer.

Fig. 3

Other nations, proud and great nations, put the faces of their founding fathers, national liberators, great writers, orators, or Nobel Prize winners on their currency. Canadians apparently prefer to put hockey players and team logos on theirs. And that, ladies and gentleman, is the current state of what passes for Canadian “culture” in the Year of Our Harper 2013.

The Spectacled Avenger’s Reading List, 2012

In keeping with established tradition, and to satisfy the curiosity of those readers who wish to know how the Spectacled Avenger passes the long winter nights, he offers below his list of books read over the course of the preceding year. It is rather a mixed bag.

As with previous annual lists, bolded entries denote those books that the Avenger particularly enjoyed and would recommend without hesitation. If he could “half bold” something, it would be the Schulman volume, the first half of which he thought was one of the most fascinating, sad, and beautiful things he has read in a long time, while the second half managed to annoy, infuriate, and ultimately bore him to tears.

*    *    *    *    *

ADDISON, Joseph and Richard STEELE. The Spectator (Vol. 3). Edinburgh: J. and J. Ruthven, 1809.

AINSLIE, George. Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motivational States within the Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

ALEXANDER, Gregory S. and Eduardo M. PEÑALVER. An Introduction to Property Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

BACON, Francis. The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis. Thomas Case (ed.).Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

BERRYMAN, Jeffrey. The Law of Equitable Remedies. Toronto: Irwin Law, 2000.

BERTELLI, Anthony Michael. The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

BIX, Brian H. Contract Law: Rules, Theory, and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

BODANSKY, Daniel. The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

BOLDRIN, Michele and David K.  LEVINE. Against Intellectual Monopoly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

BOLINGBROKE, Henry St. John, Viscount. Political Writings. David Armitage (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

BRANDOLINI, Aurelio Lippo. Republics and Kingdoms Compared. James Hankins (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

BUCHANAN, James M. The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 7). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000.

BUCHANAN, James M. Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice (Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 4). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999.

BURKE, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works of Edmund Burke, Vol .2). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999.

CALDWELL, Peter C. Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

CICERO. Pro Milone, In Pisonem, Pro Scauro, etc. N. H. Watts (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

CLARENDON, Edward Hyde, Earl of. The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Vol. I, Part II). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1816.

COWLEY, Abraham. A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy. London: Henry Herringman, 1661 (facsimile, Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1969).

DE LOLME, Jean-Louis. The Constitution of England. London: Baldwyn and Co., 1821.

DICEY, A. V. Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982.

FLOOD, Colleen M. and Lorne SOSSIN. Administrative Law in Context. Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2008.

FOLEY, Elizabeth. Price. The Tea Party: Three Principles. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

[FRANCIS, Sir Philip]. The Letters of Junius (Vol. I). Dublin: J. Beatty, 1787.

[FRANCIS, Sir Philip]. The Letters of Junius (Vol. II). Dublin: J. Beatty, 1787.

GOLDSMITH, Oliver. Essays. London: W. Griffin, 1765 (facsimile, Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1970).

GORDLEY, James. Foundations of Private Law: Property, Tort, Contract, Unjust Enrichment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

GRANT, George. Lament for a Nation (40th anniversary edition). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.

GRIBELIN, Simon. A Book of Ornaments Engraved by Simon Gribelin II in the Year MDCCIV. Philip Hofer (ed.). Meriden, CT: Timothy Press, 1941.

HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY. The Federalist. New York: Modern Library, 2000.

HARRIS, William V. War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327-70 BC. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

HEUSTON, R. F. V. Lives of the Lord Chancellors, 1885-1940. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

HOBBES, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1967.

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell. Collected Legal Papers. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920 (reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007).

HUME, David. The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. A. Wayne Colver and John Valdimir Price (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

HUTCHINSON, Allan C. Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

JACOBS, Alan M. Governing for the Long Term: Democracy and the Politics of Investment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

KAMES, Henry Home, Lord. Elements of Criticism (Vol. I). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005.

LOXLEY, John. Public Service, Private Profits: The Political Economy of Public-Private Partnerships in Canada. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2010.

MAITLAND, F. W. The Forms of Action at Common Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

MALTHUS, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Donald Winch (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

MARTIN, Lawrence. Harperland: The Politics of Control (updated edition). Toronto: Penguin, 2011.

McMAHAN, Jeff. Killing in War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009.

MENCKEN, H. L. Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series. New York: Library of America, 2010.

MENCKEN, H. L. Prejudices: Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Series. New York: Library of America, 2010.

MOLESWORTH, Robert. An Account of Denmark. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011.

MORTON, F. L. and Rainer KNOPFF. The Charter Revolution and the Court Party. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2000.

NEDHAM, Marchamont. The Excellencie of a Free-State. Blair Worden (ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011.

NICHOLAS, Barry. An Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Unfashionable Observations (Complete Works, Vol. 2). Richard T. Gray (trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.

PAINE, Thomas. Collected Writings. New York: Library of America, 1955.

PLUTARCH. Lives (Vol. VIII): Sertorius and Eumenes, Phocion and Cato the Younger. Bernadotte Perrin (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.

POLLOCK, Sir Frederick and Frederic William MAITLAND. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (Vol. I). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.

PRATT, James. Ethics as Integrity: The Moral Psychology of Character. PhD dissertation. York University (Toronto), 2007.

PRICE, Richard. A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals. D. Daiches Raphael (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948.

RAPHAEL, D. D. The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

RAWLS, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

RESCHER, Nicholas. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

ROBBINS, Caroline (ed.). Two English Republican Tracts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

ROSE, H. B. The Economic Background to Investment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.

SAMUELS, Warren J. Essays on the Economic Role of Government, Vol. 2: Applications. Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1992.

SANTE, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

SCHMITT, Carl. The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. George Schwab (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

SCHULMAN, Sarah. The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.

SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (Vol. II). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001.

SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (Vol. III). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001.

SHAVELL, Steven. Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

SOSA, Ernest. A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

SPENCE, Michael. Intellectual Property (Clarendon Law Series). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

SWIFT, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub. London: John Nutt, 1710 (facsimile, Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1970).

TAYLOR, Charles. Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2006.

THOMSON, James. The Seasons. London, 1730 (facsimile, Meston, UK: Scolar Press, 1970).

ZAJAC, Edward E. The Political Economy of Fairness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.

Of Moral Physiognomy

December 21, 1757

Dear Mr. Avenger,

In your last, you told me of a witty Author of your Age (Mr. ORWELL, I believe you call’d him), who declar’d that by his fiftieth Year, every Man hath the Face he deserves. This is more than mere Wit on your Author’s Part, for only a little Reflexion will convince us that that Action which is oft repeated, over a Course of many Years, must needs leave its Traces upon a Man’s bodily Constitution. We ought not to be surpriz’d in discovering that the angry cholerick Man, who inclines much to Displays of Rage, being oft flushed, will carry with him a perpetual redness of visage, even in his cooler Hours. And your gloomy and splenetick Fellow, being much given to the furrowing of his Brow, will in Time find he hath carv’d deep Furrows thereon. Indeed, I once knew a Man, of this Neighbourhood, a Drunkard and perpetual Gin-Sot, whose Hand had cramp’d it self into a veritable Claw from the constant grasping of his Mug, which he was never without. He hath long since pass’d from this Vale of Tears, a Martyr to his particular Vice, his Children put upon the Parish.

Not only will our outward Actions, by much Repetition, produce alterations of the outward Body, but our inwards, that is, our Passions and Affections, if they be swol’n to steady Dispositions, will also work their inevitable Effects upon the outward Physiognomy. It is for this Reason that my Lord VERULAM declar’d that “the Lineaments of the Body do disclose the Disposition and Inclination of the Mind in general” [Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Second Book, IX.2 — Ed.].

The reading of Character from Body and Countenance is not modern Philosophy, but rather ancient Lore. We read in the courtly SENECA that omnia rerum omnium, si observentur, indicia sunt et argumentum morum ex minimis quoque licet capere: inpudicum et incessus ostendit et manus mota et unum interdum responsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum. Inprobum risus, insanum vultus habitusque demonstrat [“all acts are always significant, and you can gauge character by even the most trifling signs. The lecherous man is revealed by his gait, by a movement of the hand, sometimes by a single answer, by his touching his head with his finger, by the shifting of his eye. The scamp is shown up by his laugh; the madman by his face and general appearance” Epistles 52.12 — Ed.]. (You shou’d know, my good Avenger, that in the Roman Times, scratching the Head with one’s little Finger was taken as a sure Sign that a Man was a Molly, that is, a Member of that infamous Race of Woman-Haters, practisers of that abominable Vice which shou’d ever be passed over in Silence.) In time, these outward Signs of Character become stamp’d upon us through much Repetition. Whether we will or no, in the very process of Age, we reveal our Minds to the World; our Souls are laid bare to Friend and Foe alike through our Habits and steady Dispositions.

You see, we wear Footpaths upon our Bodies in the Course of our Doings. Both our Virtues and our Vices leave their indelible Marks. And so it is that nec auguria novi nec mathematicorum caelum curare soleo, ex vultibus tamen hominum mores colligo, et cum spantiantem vidi, quid cogitet scio (PETRON. Satyr. 126) [“I know nothing of omens, and I never attend to the astrologer’s sky, but I read character in a man’s face, and when I see him walk, I know his thoughts.” Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon, ch. 126 — Ed.].

But the Relation of Cause and Effect may also run in the reverse Direction, from the Body to the Mind. That ill Action which is oft repeated will beat a Path to ease the Way for its after-Travellers, the Result being a well-worn Road to customary Vice. Where we once stick at committing some one Indiscretion the first Time, the third, fourth, or fifth Time finds our Will less reticent and more yielding, until she hath become a very Courtizan of easy Virtue. Whence it is that my Lord SHAFTESBURY justly observes that “the least step into Villainy or Baseness, changes the Character and Value of a Life” (Characteristicks Vol. I, p. 121).

The difficult Passage of the first Traveller invariably makes the Passage of the next Traveller just so much easier. And if enough Time be not left for the Thickets and Brambles to grow back, the soil becomes packt, trodden down, and instead of a mere Footpath, a fixt and permanent Road is form’d. As the divine EPICTETUS warns us, “the man who has had a Fever, and then recover’d, is not the same as he was before the Fever, unless he has experienced a compleat Cure. Something like this happens also with the Affections of the Mind. Certain Imprints and Weals are left behind on the Mind, and unless a Man erases them perfectly, the next time he is scourged upon the old Scars, he has Weals no longer but Wounds” [Discourses, II.18 — Ed.].

To bring this my tedious Lesson to a close, it is wise Advice when ’tis said that if we wish to gain knowledge of a Man’s Vices, we shou’d canvass his Enemies; if we wou’d know more of his Virtues, we shou’d speak with his particular Friends; and where we wou’d know about his Habits, Customs, and Times of coming and going, we shou’d press his Servants. But no little Intelligence can be glean’d of all these things by the mere observing of his Outwards, his Form, his Countenance, and his Frame.

I am, Sir, as allways, your Servant,
Jos: Darlington, Esq.
Darlington Close
Horton-cum-Studley, Oxon.

A Little Useless Learning

Sometimes, in the course of one’s scholarly travels, one stumbles upon a problem, mystery, or interesting fact that, while being too small in import to spin off into a paper, still demands to somehow reach an audience beyond the scholar himself. That is precisely the purpose of this post. It will be a depository for some matter overflowing from my scholarly waste books that I frankly don’t know what else to do with.

The learning contained herein derives from my researches on my favourite philosopher, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), about whom I’ve written before.

The best place to begin is with the picture above. It is a portrait of Shaftesbury painted by John Closterman c. 1700-1701. Considerable scholarly ink has been spilled concerning the identity of the figure to the viewer’s right, who holds the Earl’s robes of state and seems to beckon him toward the outside world and away from his books. Hypotheses as to who this figure represents have included: Thomas Stringer (superannuated steward to Shaftesbury’s father); John Wheelock (Shaftesbury’s own steward); Shaftesbury’s grandfather, the first Earl; or a psychoanalytically split-off version of Shaftesbury himself (à la the advice proffered by Shaftesbury in his work Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author). For more on this, I would simply refer the interested reader to the fascinating — though idiosyncratic and ultimately unconvincing — Chapter 3 of Lori Branch’s book, Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006).

The first edition of Shaftesbury’s 3-volume masterwork, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times appeared in 1711. It was intended as a sort of collected edition of his previously published works in two volumes, tied together by a new third volume, written in the form of a free-wheeling tongue-in-cheek commentary on the foregoing by Shaftesbury in the voice of an anonymous but generally favourable modern critic.

Towards the end of his life, Shaftesbury had become gravely ill and left England to live in Naples in hopes of recovering his health. From Naples Shaftesbury directed a new edition of Characteristicks, for which he designed intricate emblematic engravings, to be executed by the masterful engraver, Simon Gribelin. These engravings were to be keyed to certain passages of the text and were to consist of three frontispieces (one for each volume), six headpieces (one for each of the separate treatises contained therein), and the circular emblem by Gribelin that had already appeared in the first 1711 edition. Shaftesbury had at hand a young Irish draughtsman named Henry Trench, to whom he dictated his plans for the designs. Trench’s preliminary drawings, along with detailed instructions for the plates and the general layout and editing of the book, were then sent to Shaftesbury’s agent and general factotum in England, Thomas Micklethwaite.

Shaftesbury died in Naples, having only seen the finished versions of three of the nine new plates for the second edition. The second edition of Characteristicks appeared in 1714/15. At some point during the process of publication two new plates somehow crept into the book. (Actually there was also a third new plate, as some copies had Shaftesbury’s work “The Judgment of Hercules” appended to them, with accompanying engraving by Gribelin of Paolo de Matteis’ painting of the same. However, this was a separate work, never intended for Characteristicks.) Who decided to add these plates (and who ultimately paid for them) is a mystery. It may have been Micklethwaite, or perhaps it was Shaftesbury’s widow. What we know is that it was not Shaftesbury himself.

Consider, for instance, one of these additional plates, the headpiece to the Preface, depicting Shaftesbury’s coat-of-arms. In his detailed instructions regarding the layout and illustrations for the second edition, Shaftesbury is very clear that there is to be no ornament over the Preface, for he writes: “The wooden Flourish or Flower-Work over the Preface [in the 1711 edition] must be taken away, and the Page left plain.” In addition, the instructions make clear throughout that, aside from the cryptic subscription to the Preface, there is to be nothing to mark the identity of the author, which obviously the coat-of-arms would have done. It should also be noted that Shaftesbury’s name was added to the title page of the second edition, contrary to his evident wish to remain anonymous.

The other of the two unintended plates would have gone even further towards identifying the work’s authorship. This was an engraved portrait frontispiece of Shaftesbury himself, again by Gribelin, modeled after the painting by Closterman already described. The engraving is a mirror image of the original, and the beckoning figure has been removed, and in its place has been added a garden landscape.

There is at least one scholar who has been unable to resist the temptation to assume that this garden is a depiction of the grounds at Shaftesbury’s seat, Wimborne St. Giles, in Dorset. David Leatherbarrow, on rather flimsy evidence, writes: “The appearance of a landscape in an eighteenth-century portrait is not uncommon, nor in earlier portraits. But this is not any landscape. I believe it is a representation of Shaftesbury’s garden at Wimborne St. Giles, the only such representation, and, as I shall try to show, of Shaftesbury’s conception of perfected nature” (Leatherbarrow 147).

If this were true, it would be very interesting, given Shaftesbury’s own influence on the history of gardening and his own writings on the same. Leatherbarrow largely bases his claim on Shaftesbury’s description of his gardening work at St. Giles, claiming it matches up with the grounds in the portrait. But alas, the evidence does not support his claim in the slightest.

First, Gribelin’s depiction seems highly stylized, and in any case it is on too small a scale to support any inference in this direction. Second, Leatherbarrow provides no evidence that Gribelin had seen St. Giles, nor that Shaftesbury had sent him any directions regarding their illustration. This does not rule out the possibility that Micklethwaite, who had seen the grounds at St. Giles, could have instructed Gribelin. But that would be pure conjecture.

In addition, there is even more reason to dispute Leatherbarrow’s claim. The latter writes: “As the engraver had already finished one emblem by the time of Shaftesbury’s arrival in Naples it is safe to assume he was in contact with Gribelin before his departure. Thus he could have supervised the execution of the portrait. I believe that he did” (p. 147). Besides being, again, little more than conjecture, this claim suffers from what I take to be a fatal flaw, for, to reiterate, Shaftesbury’s instructions concerning the illustrations to Characteristicks makes clear that there was to be no such portrait. His plans clearly dictated that the work was to contain only the circular 1711 title page emblem, the three volume frontispieces and the six treatise headpieces. In case there is any doubt of his intention, here are Shaftesbury’s exact words: there is to be no other illustration or ornament “besides what the Author furnishes, and are compris’d in the Three general and Six particular Plates, together with the round Frontispiece-Devise allready current” (“Virtuoso-Coppy-Book” 252). This list was explicitly intended to be exhaustive. There were to be no additional illustrations. He was adamant about this. Thus, it is not “safe to assume” that Shaftesbury supervised the execution of the portrait. And as I have already pointed out, the instructions make clear throughout that, other than the cryptic subscription to the Preface, there is to be nothing to mark the identity of the author.

In any case, garden historian Suzannah Fleming, Chair of the Temple Trust, has worked extensively on the grounds at St. Giles, and in a conversation in September of 2012 she reliably informed me that the terrain at St. Giles is quite flat and possesses nothing corresponding to the hills seen in the distance on this plate. Having never been there myself, I'll take her at her word. She did however tell me that a doorway has been uncovered at St. Giles, long disused and bricked up, that might correspond to the one in Closterman’s original painting. This would make sense since, as is not the case with Gribelin, we know that Closterman had been to St. Giles, and the portrait was done there. If there are actual elements from St. Giles in Gribelin’s version, it is because he copied them from Closterman’s portrait. Any new elements in Gribelin’s version have no authority as an accurate depiction of Shaftesbury’s home.

Bibliography

BRANCH, Lori. Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006).

LEATHERBARROW, David. Topographical Stories: Studies in Landscape and Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of. PRO 30/24/24/13. (“Virtuoso-Coppy-Book”, consisting of Shaftesbury’s instructions for the engravings in Characteristicks, contained in the Public Records Office.) Reproduced in Standard Edition (Vol. I,3), Wolfram Benda (ed.). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Fromman Verlag, 1992.