A Warm Winter's Lament

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A View of the Vancouver Games

Everyone is a pompous critic, but some are better than others and I was glad that someone other than yours truly noticed a few curious omissions from last week's opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics — and we don't just mean the unfortunate absence of the Queen of Canada.

Vancouver, British Columbia has an urban residential core denser than Manhattan, making it one of the world's most liveable cities
As Lona Manning from British Columbia writes, the opening ceremony seemed to feature a remarkable vanishing of Captain George Vancouver himself:

The so-called "Cultural Segment" of the Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games featured a giant bear, killer whales, maple leafs, a Druidic ballet among the towering Douglas Firs, totem poles, golden fields of prairie wheat, and some of our wonderful Canadian performers, most notably K.D. Lang.

But displays of Canada's astounding beauty do not a "cultural segment" make. In the entire ceremony, there was no reference to Canada's history -- no Jesuit missionaries, no fur trade, no transcontinental railway, no lumberjacks, no gold rush, no fishermen, no reference to our Britannic heritage. Because of course we couldn't touch on any of those subjects without making apologetic references to imperialism and environmental degradation. The dignitaries praised our multiculturalism of course. What else could they safely praise, after all. I really enjoyed, and was moved by, the First Nations segment, in which dozens of First Nations performers from across the country danced and sang and welcomed the athletes. But it was no surprise to me that the rest of us have reached the stage where we cannot -- cannot -- talk about ourselves. What is the fate of a culture that cannot talk about itself, I wonder. Thank goodness for the fiddlers, at least.

A Roman Catholic priest responds:

Two observations: "First Nations" dances tend to be religious in nature. Why are they the only people in Canada who are allowed to have religious ceremonies at state and national functions? She is right and wrong in saying "we cannot...talk about ourselves." We can but only negatively, condescendingly, and apologetically. The greatest civilization the world has ever known* (though now in serious moral and cultural decline) must humble itself before its detractors and inferiors.

*By the way, that is not an empty, puffed up boast. Choose the area (art, science, technology, politics, medicine, religion, justice, family life, world literature, philosophy, sports and entertainment) and I can make a strong argument that the West has contributed more in each of these areas than any and probably all other civilizations combined. Just one example. Arnold Toynbee estimated that there have been 21 major civilizations in world history. Did any of those civilizations substantially increase the life-expectancy of its population? In the last 200 years the West has increased the life-expectancy of its people from about 40 years to 80. From the point of view of human physical flourishing what compares to that from India , Persia or China ? And not only have we increased our own life expectancy but also that of most of the rest of the world. This is an unprecedented feat in recorded history! It is an achievement beyond measure and yet we are scorned. Detractors you will always have with you. A healthy civilization can deal with them. But one that has lost its sense of purpose and self-confidence is dead even while it lives.

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Farewell to the Last Tommy Canuck

John Babcock, Canada’s last living link to the Great War, has died at the age of 109. Only a 15-year-old when he went in search of military glory, Babcock was the last of the 650,000 men and women Canada recruited to serve in the “war to end all wars.”

John Babcock in a 1920 photo. Babcock, Canada’s oldest and last surviving
Great War veteran, died Thursday at age 109.
Babcock first attempted to join the army in 1915, but was turned down because of his age and sent to work in Halifax until he was placed in the Young Soldiers Battalion in August 1917. Babcock was then transferred to Britain, where he continued his training until the end of the war.

Having never seen combat, Babcock never considered himself a veteran and moved to the United States in the 1920s, where he joined the United States Army and eventually became an electrician. In May 2007, following the death of Dwight Wilson, he became the last surviving veteran of the First World War who served with the Canadian forces. From that point he received international attention, including 109th birthday greetings from the Queen of Canada, the Governor General of Canada and the Canadian Prime Minister until his death on February 18, 2010.

He was since the death of Harry Patch (who was the last surviving veteran to see action on the Western Front), the conflict's oldest surviving participant. There are now only three surviving veterans left: Claude Choules and Florence Green from Great Britain, and Frank Buckles from the United States.

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Bowler Hat Day

As should be obvious to any of our readers, The Monarchist suffers from an advanced case of Anglophilia (some might even call it Anglomania). And while the roots of this affliction go far back, there are certain milestones that can be ascertained. One of the earliest was discovering the noble and romantic concept of a gentleman (a most English invention) at a very tender age, the realisation that there once existed a certain superior standard of conduct that reached its high temple moment around the time the bowler hat came into style.

And here I must apologize to our readers for missing Bowler Hat Day, which took place on February 11th. For those who don't know, the bowler was devised in 1849 by the London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler, who were commissioned to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect gamekeepers' heads from low-hanging branches while on horseback. The keepers had previously worn top hats, which were easily knocked off and damaged. It was also hoped that the new style of hat would protect the keepers if they were attacked by poachers.

Contrary to popular belief, it was the bowler and not the cowboy hat that was the most popular hat in the American West, prompting Lucius Beebe to call it "the hat that won the West." Source: Wikipedia

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Eton College bans The Monarchist

The King's College of Our Lady of Eton has apparently banned us from their ether. It goes without saying that The Monarchist should be required reading for every aspiring Etonian, so imagine our palpable frustration and disappointment at not being able to corrupt that segment of the youth who happen to be co-located with Windsor Castle.

King's Scholars and other Etonians with their backs to The Monarchist
"Rex Henricus", a fellow Etonian now attending the prestigious institution, delivers us the shocking news:

It may also interest readers of TM that I am only able to access your journal at the moment because I am at home from school on holiday: the College, in its infinite wisdom, has always banned the ability to post to TM and other weblogs and recently blocked the site altogether, no doubt fearing that you would somehow poison my mind with counter-revolutionary fervour...

Egad, I was wondering why our visitors and hits from Eton had suddenly dried up. Now we know.

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Repatriate the Monarchy

The Princess Royal with British former athlete David Hemery at the Olympic Village Flag ceremony at the Winter Olympics, Vancouver, 12 February 2010. Her Royal Highness is a member of the International Olympic Committee, and President of the British Olympic Association. I suppose it was for this reason that Her Royal Highness was not invited to sit in the VIP box with the Governor General of Canada when our vice regal formerly declared the Games open on behalf of Her Majesty.

I do not believe this to be proper, that members of the Royal Family should come to a Commonwealth Realm to represent British interests. It sends the message that you are not one of us. It puts to lie the assertion that we have such a thing as a "Canadian Royal Family". We don't, of course, the Royal Family is obviously British, as much as Canadian monarchists pretend otherwise. There is nothing wrong with this, so long as the British Royal Family plays their Canadian part when in Canada.

The Vancouver Winter Olympics is about showcasing our athletes and our country to the world. If Her Royal Highness does not want to partake in that role, and wishes to cheer on British athletes at Canadian Olympic venues, then I have a very basic patriotic problem with that. Perhaps it is time we thought seriously of finally patriating the monarchy, one that we can truly call our own.

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For the Traditional Man

Jeremy Hackett is dedicated to all those men who like to dress stylishly and to whom quality is more important than the vagaries of fashion.

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The Eton Wall Game

The King's Scholars (the "Collegers") take on the "Oppidans" on what I presume is the traditional annual St. Andrew's Day match.

The school game, which is a cross between rugby and football and has been played since at least 1766 (the wall was erected in 1717), is arguably the world's most elite sport. It was the Duke of Wellington, after all, who famously remarked that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

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History? Old Hat

Sussex University wants to stop teaching British history prior to 1700.

Sussex University is one of the better establishments of our higher education system. It is proposing, because of cuts, to emasculate its history department by scrapping research into, and in-depth teaching of, British history before 1700 and European before 1900. One should not need a GCSE in the subject to see the insanity of this. Our country remains shaped today by the Reformation, the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, which happened between the 1530s and the 1680s. No one who does not understand the importance and nature of those events can understand why Britain post-1700 was as it was. And, of course, those events were part of a continuum that (working backwards) included the Wars of the Roses, the Hundred Years' War, the Crusades, the Norman Conquest, the arrival of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, the Roman invasion, and so on. For a university to be so limited attacks the credibility of the institution.

No words for it. Just rage. Blind and utter rage.

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No Home Rule

Pretty prophetic isn't it? Talk about a slogan for our times - which nation can actually claim home rule will be a reality in a future filled with increased globalism, cosmopolitanism, multilateralism, economic interdependence and international governance? The British Empire was a prototype for world government, which was not necessarily a bad thing when government of the day - compared to now - was a starkly limited affair. Sure the Grand Home Fleet was huge and officialdom was stretched-thin everywhere, but men and women wherever they far flunged themselves were largely on their own and mostly survived according to their own devices.

The original "No Home Rule" was always a difficult sale, especially at the peak of Empire when Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were winning home rule for themselves in leaps and bounds, albeit under the welcome guise of British and Imperial solidarity. It's tough not to give in to Paddy, John Bull, Sandy and Taffy, at precisely the time when Mick, Johnny Canuck and Uncle Sam are flaunting their independence. Our British masters saw full national independence and self determination as counterproductive to the wider collective goals; by the time it became a fait accompli they were too late in successfully encompassing all British nations under a broader constitutional framework, and could not afford big singular centralising government to keep it altogether.

Big Imperial Government controlled and commanded from London would never have worked in the long run. We may all be fantastically similar countries, but our national perceptions and self interests were different enough to still require maximum freedom of movement. Only a grand federation of the loosest kind would have been remotely plausible, one that would effectively cede all authority to national governments except perhaps in customs and trade. Defence and foreign affairs could be cooperative arrangements, but even these would have required a large measure of local control. The monarchy would most definitely be centralised, but princes would be required to live year-round in the realms in order to promote just the right amount of loyalty, solidarity, patriotism and common purpose to keep it all sufficiently united. They did this for a while (remember the grand old Duke of Connaught?), but of course, having achieved home rule for ourselves, we have since never asked and they never offered. Loyalty dwindled, patriotism cheapened.

The incredible cheapening of patriotism we see today has somehow managed to reduce basic love of country (which requires a not so profound understanding of one's native identity) into a corporate branding exercise, where people paint their faces and party hardy. As far as brands go, Canada has an excellent one, very distinct and instantly recognisable, which will be on full display at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Naturally, the "British Queen" will not be there to officially open up the Games, since Her Majesty might place a different - even contradictory - image on Canada's obviously very cool - much cooler than Toyota - brand. The patriotism of yore has been replaced with the barely skin deep pride of place we have today.

No Home Rule sounds like a slogan that would put a smile on the face of any modern Eurocrat, who is busy taking over the fisheries and everything else by way of a thousand directives. Brussels is trying to get away with the impossible, and is succeeding where Britain failed because we live on an increasingly post-national, post-patriotic planet. Who really cares about home rule anymore when people are more concerned with accumulating their frequent flyer points? Where is home anyway? - New York, London, Paris, Stockholm, Zurich, Vancouver, Christchurch, Sydney...or is it all of the above, wherever it is I happen to be? Have we've gone all cosmopolitan all the time?

And where is the room for home rule when the buzz is all about global rule and global summits? Copenhagen, eat your heart out. 200 nations and at least as many limousines talking about controlling the environment. The environment is about as local as you can get, the very grass we walk on and the very air we breathe. Yet we give in to the global technocrat and actually talk about trading the clean air we breathe in return for pollution credits from China. The jolly green giant will not fade silently into the night.

The roles have reversed too. No Home Rule is now a left-leaning goal, and no longer a right-leaning one. The political stripe of individuals who were once the enemies of Empire, yet bask in the possibilities of world governance is one of those intuition defying paradoxes. The cosmopolitan elite who promote modern globalism are the same people who constantly remind us that conservatism is cold doctrine. But if you walk down a big urban street past the corner Starbucks, you will never hear a friendly hello or a cheery good morning, the cappuccino swillers are in fact a quite distant, self-interested and individualistic lot. For warm community you have to go rural, where all the so-called "Red Necks" live, where the guys and gals keep voting "Tory". Conservatives are warm people alright, they just like their politics cold, they only want to put the freeze on government. People put the freeze on politics a long time ago, they just haven't done much about the growth of government. That will happen soon enough, if for no other reason than the fact that governments around the world are literally bankrupting themselves.

No Home Rule is the seemingly unstoppable wave of the future. The decline of politics and patriotism, the urbanisation of civilisation, the blurring of national borders, the emergence of a technology savvy, interconnected transnational network of people all coming together of whatever ethnic background and all speaking the same language, that will not go away. I will not relinquish my armorial bearing passport for an international document that shows children holding hands under a rainbow, but I won't be around forever either. So to the monarchy doomers and the protagonists of republican inevitability, I say it is time for you to be relevant again. You need to focus on the more important and fundamental issue facing all of us: not the end of the monarchy, but the end of the nation-state.

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Who Needs the House of Commons?

Thus asks the High Tory Gerald Warner of Scotland on Sunday.

For generations, British schoolchildren were educated – or brainwashed – into an exaggerated respect for parliament and its associated institutions. Even as the British Empire went into receivership, imitation chambers emerged in former colonies, with Speakers and clerks decked out in the horsehair wigs that replicated the supposed gravitas of the circus on the Thames. Reinforcing this spurious deference was the Whig interpretation of history, which attempted to imbue an infamous gang of self-serving bandits and tyrants with a "democratic" veneer and an invented romance.

Mr. Warner concludes:

Now, the challenge is to explore all our existing resources, as is the British way, to replace this failed legislature. We must be the only tribe in the world to have a council of elders that we relegate to ceremonial duties: time to make more use of the Privy Council. An executive monarch, too, curbing the power of a prime minister, was until recently unthinkable; but, considering the record of recent prime ministers, it now seems a positive alternative. Undemocratic? Technically, yes – but how far have our pseudo-democratic institutions recently reflected the public will, whether on war in Iraq or any other topic? Think about it.

Wrote Gerald Warner eight months ago:

The constitutional principle is this: dismissal of a government by Royal prerogative is not undemocratic, provided it is immediately followed by a general election, giving the electorate the right to choose the government it wants. In the present circumstances, with a revolving-door Cabinet, more and more unelected ministers being drafted in via the House of Lords and election results pouring in that show the electorate's overwhelming rejection of the government, a compulsory dissolution would be perfectly justified.

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A Street Named Coronation

The British sure know how to do soaps - not the rich and famous variety, but the poor and downtrodden. My kind of poor, never too poor for a few pints!

Coronation Street, a British soap opera set in a fictional area of Greater Manchester, welcomes The Duchess of Cornwall to the set, 4 February 2010. Her Royal Highness paid the visit to mark the programme's 50th anniversary.


The Duchess of Cornwall pulls a pint behind the bar of the Rovers Return pub during a visit to the set of the long-running British soap opera, Coronation Street, 4 February 2010. The drama is set in the fictional area of Greater Manchester called Weatherfield. There is no such street as Coronation Street. Only in our dreams!

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Gunning Down the Old Order

The revolutionary wave and protests of 1968. Ironically, it was the only year of the twentieth century during which no British serviceman or servicewoman was killed in action. The below movie - the final scenes of If - notwithstanding.

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Pimpernel Smith - 1941

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Darkest England and an Old Way Out

The Return of Hogarthian Britain:

Figures released for launch showed 1,000 young people, aged between 15 and 25, receive serious facial injuries in alcohol-related attacks each week while 18,000 suffer permanent scars every year.

Separate figures show some 5,500 people are "glassed" every year while more than 80,000 others are threatened with glass or a broken bottle.

Treating such injuries costs the [National Health Service] NHS £2.7 billion a year.

Follow the Kipling brain at work here, or not, depending on your perspective. This story proves that Britain needs a monarchy. Yes, exactly. I don't mean the media monarchy of today, I mean the sort that Queen Victoria projected. A values monarchy. That was largely the current monarch's plan. She of the older stiff upper lip generation. Not how it turned out. Between coming down that tree in Kenya (see below), and her eldest son's nasty divorce, the Royal Family became a sad joke. Actually the same joke, repeatedly endlessly. The modern Royal Family is no more or less dysfunctional than its predecessors. The difference is that whenever one of them says or does something daft, it gets included as part of a snarky headline in The News of the World.

Imagine living your life with Rupert Murdoch's minions waiting, often up a tree, for you to do something silly or tactless. No matter how bright and decent you might be, you'd wind up looking like a prat within days. Had the modern tabloid media existed in the medieval era, they would have accused St Francis of practicing bestiality. It's the way they work. The problem here is democracy, not the political sort, though that's partly to blame, but its cultural tributary. When you establish vox populi, vox dei, you establish at the same time a vulgarian ethos.

It's worse in Britain, than in America and Canada, because of the war on manners and civility. North America, lacking an aristocracy in the traditional European sense, never generated the lower class themes of alternating resentment and aspiration. In America it was shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. Sir Robert Peel's father and grandfather were pioneer industrialists, yet neither would have, despite their obvious talents, been considered as possible ministers of the crown. Their hands had been sullied in trade. That block to merit was the spur for genuine, and understandable resentment.

As so often in history, the understandable soon married with the vicious. Socialism, either Marxist or on the rocks, worshiped the working man as victim of the modern world, and soon to be heirs of the glorious utopia of tomorrow. Whatever smacked of the elites and their bourgeoise lackeys - including manners, civility and restraint - was automatically despised. Generations of intellectuals, and their avatars in the teaching profession, began a war against the painfully constructed world of Victorian manners.

By manners I mean something far broader than personal conduct in a public setting. Social reformers, many of whom were also humourless puritans at heart, in the early nineteenth century sought to moderate the excesses of Hogarthian Britain. The rampant alcoholism and promiscuity - sound familiar? - was to be replaced by moderation and personal restraint. Acting upon your impulses rejected, and behaviour subordinated to an understanding of morality, however imperfect it may seem in hindsight. If the stoicism of these reformers, and the Britain they created, seems harsh and alien to us, the Rome in later days decadence of modern Britain would seem no less strange, and repulsive, to them.

The call here is not for reaction. What was was not always good. Restraint too often drifted into repression, and rules of thumb into commandments. A more flexible approach would be needed, the details of which are really beyond the purview of this post. We are talking about means, in particular about the means of the monarchy as projector of better values. It's often remarked that the monarchy is doomed. It has lost the magic, and once lost it cannot be regained. Yet magic is only a metaphor. Bagehot's monarchy was a Victorian creation. As was the Victorian world. As is the modern world. History is not a teleology, men possess free will and what has been made can be unmade.

One of the standard saws of Canada's crypto-republicans is that the monarchy is no longer relevant to Canadians. Neither is castor oil. The reason is the same for both, neither is used in modern schooling, If you don't teach people things, good or bad, they won't know them. A few intrepid minds will discover the treasure trove, but ignorance is the fate of the less curious. Along with monarchy is manners, in the broad sense we are employing here. I join the two because they were once seen as synonymous in the public's mind.

At the end of the film version of The Madness of King George, the much missed Nigel Hawthorne (playing George III) remarks about how his vast progeny must become the model family. It's a bit of anachronism. It was Victoria that created the model family with her tremendously clever, if perhaps too ambitious, consort. The Britain of the 1840s and 1850s wanted and needed an ideal family. Whereas future generations would look to television sitcoms, that Britain looked to the Royal Family, for the serious and the trivial.

Prince Albert liked Christmas Trees, they became a fad and then an institution almost as entrenched as images of the Nativity. George IV had been a notorious rake. Albert was the perfect husband and father, preferring family duties to carousing. Real men in Georgian England went out and stayed out. Real men in Victorian Britain stayed home. As projector of an ideal few have, or could have, done better at creating a new conception of manhood. There is little reason why Prince William, who looks ever inch the future monarch, cannot play that same role. It's been said that modern monarchy is celebrity with a conscience. We here, at any rate, aspire to something a little higher and broader for the crown. A sort of cultural touching stone. The monarch in Britain, and in the fifteen other Commonwealth realms, does not rule, she reigns. The influence of the monarchy cannot today be felt by brute force, but by persuasion. The power of a good example. Staring the media monster straight in the face and being as anti-vulgarian as possible. The original meaning of aristocracy is "rule by the best." It's a meaning the monarchy needs to reflect again, if neo-Hogarthian Britain is be reformed.

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Ascended into a Tree and onto the Throne

For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen — God bless her.

Edward James Corbett (1875-1955)

Plaque commemorating Accession at Aberdare Treetops Lodge, Kenya

For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell

Roger Whittaker (born 1936 in Nairobi)
bids farwell to the Land of Endless Sunshine

The current Aberdare Treetops Lodge

On the eastern shore of the great Lake Victoria of Africa, source of the mighty Nile, lies the Land of Endless Sunshine. It was in this beautiful gem of the British Empire the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh came in the early days of 1952. Here lies the magnificent Aberdare Mountain Range. Here lies the beautiful Aberdare Forest. Here lies the mighty Mount Kenya.


The waterhole at Treetops Lodge

58 years ago, on February 5, 1952, Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh ascend into a tree. On that night the Princess Elizabeth ascends the Britannic Throne. The Princess becomes Her Britannic Majesty. Unknowing of the Accession, the Royal couple descend from the tree the next morning, returning to the Royal residence of Sagana Lodge in the foothills of the mighty Mount Kenya. It is at Sagana Lodge Her Britannic Majesty receives the tragic message about her father – His Late Britannic Majesty.


Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh at the grounds of Sagana Lodge before the night at Treetops

It is said that it was the first time in more than two centuries that a Sovereign succeeded the Throne whilst being abroad. George I succeeding Queen Anne was the previous time. Queen Elizabeth II was simply in another part of the British Empire. Her Majesty ascended to the Throne on firm ground where she was Sovereign, or at least in a tree that stood firmly on such ground.

During an uprising in the 1950s the original Treetops lodge was destroyed. A new and larger lodge was built at a nearby location.

Upon independence, Sagana Lodge was given to the government of Kenya. Upon independence, Her Britannic Majesty was given the title of Queen of Kenya, a title which she retained for exactly one year.


A waterfall in the Aberdares

Congratulations to Her Britannic Majesty on Accession Day!

Happy Accession Day!

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Happy Waitangi Day!

170 years ago today, the Treaty og Waitangi was signed.


Happy Waitangi Day!

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