"Perhaps because it was larger. But then it would be still better to love one's continent, and best of all to love one's planet."
Wrote Rose Macaulay, in "The Towers of Trebizond" (1958).
I ran into that quote because — as you see in the previous post — I looked up "muse" in the OED.
This is a novel about some English people traveling in Turkey.
A Turkish feminist doctor attracted to Anglicanism acts as a foil to the main characters. On the way, they meet magicians, Turkish policemen and juvenile British travel-writers, and observe the BBC and Billy Graham on tour. Aunt Dot proposes to emancipate the women of Turkey by converting them to Anglicanism and popularising the bathing hat....
The first sentence in the book is "'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."
Aunt Dot — AKA Dorothea ffoulkes-Corbett — is, according to the Turkish feminist doctor, "a woman of dreams. Mad dreams, dreams of crazy, impossible things. And they aren't all of conversion to the Church, oh no. Nor all of the liberation of women, oh no. Her eyes are on far mountains, always some far peak where she will go. She looks so firm and practical, that nice face, so fair and plump and shrewd, but look in her eyes, you will sometimes catch a strange gleam.
And there's one of those lower-case double-f English surnames. If you want to delve into that strange question of capitalization, let me recommend "That’s all, ffoulkes!" (Grammarphobia).
I won't quote all the history and explanation, just 2 things at the end about novels.
First, in the 1853 novel, Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, there's a Mr. ffoulkes, who “looked down upon capital letters and said they belonged to lately invented families.” He met a Mrs. ffaringdon and — “owing to her two little ffs” — married her.
Second, there's this, from “A Slice of Life,” P. G. Wodehouse (1926):
“Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?” said Wilfred.
“ffinch-ffarrowmere,” corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.
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My family prefers fFartenham, thank you.
No WONDER this Lady is so confused about countries.
What IS her "country"
The British Empire?
The United Kingdom?
Great Britain?
England?
Wessex?
I KNOW what country *i* live in.. The country that kicked the brits OUT
"When I speak of my country, I refer to the Commonwealth of Virginia."--John Randolph of Roanoke
She's still not getting it. It is simply best just to love. The unfortunate thing is not everyone has the luxury or the choice.
"It was thought"
"Some people say"
sure sound better than "I pulled this unsupported assertion from my nethers" but mean pretty much the same thing.
The loving of large things justifies the doing of enormous things, whether good or evil. Look to the difference between a large thing lover like Thomas Paine and a smaller thing lover like Edmund Burke.
Gee, might have been this old guy Paul of Tarsus who wrote that we should love one another, especially our neighbors, and then venture out from there to show love for the village, the neighboring villages, the country next door. Then when you are overflowing with love demonstrate it to the farther reaches and eventually the world. Of course he wrote in Greek, which helpfully has several specific types of love unlike our Swiss-knife like English word that does it all. Philadelphia embodies one definition.
A pinch of Wodehouse always brightens my day, but I must take him in small doses or I'll lose my sense of consequence.
On the subject of ff surnames (you'd think there would be some ff impersonal nouns if ff had any real significance), after Roger Moore became tiresome in the role of James Bond, he got the title role in the first and only installment of the action hero series, ffolkes!, which bombed like Hiroshima on a summer's morning. The title character (guess who) is a near-legendary semi-retired SBS operative (that's Special Boat Service to you mundane non-operative types) who refuses all assignments, obsessively knits long striped scarves, lives inside one of the eponymous structures of Tower Bridge, and introduces himself like 007, "My name is ffolkes, two small effs."
I often wonder why successful writers so often invent highly improbable characters. Take Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot for example. Have you ever met anyone disgusted by asymmetrical poached eggs? I haven't. Add in the waxed moustache and you might as well have your detective wear a neon sign on his hat reading Warning! Absurd Idiosyncrasies Approaching. Then there's Miss Jane Marple of St. Mary Mead who's blood kin to every falsely accused murderer in the British Isles, topped only by Jessica Fletcher, the favorite relative of every murder suspect in the Northern Hemisphere.
That's all for now. Thanks for indulging my ffatuous fflummery. I'm offff to the offffice.
It is best to love the world at large and all in it, and worst to love only one's home and those in it. All that lies between these poles follows this course, and motivates most or all conflict large and small between humans in all of our history.
Then I went on musing about why it was thought better and higher to love one's country than one's county, or town, or village, or house."
"Perhaps because it was larger. But then it would be still better to love one's continent, and best of all to love one's planet.
Screwtape approves:
"Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don't, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father's house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there."
He met a Mrs. ffaringdon and — “owing to her two little ffs” — married her.
See, ladies, throw a few little f's a guy's way and he just might marry you!
"ffolkes!, which bombed like Hiroshima on a summer's morning. The title character (guess who) is a near-legendary semi-retired SBS operative (that's Special Boat Service to you mundane non-operative types) who refuses all assignments"
Thanks, I have a memory of that, watched long ago on something called television. I think it involved terrorists attacking a drilling rig in the North Sea. Ill have to try to find it.
"direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary."
Screwtape does make an excellent point here.
Forster had something to say about that. Chesterton, too.
The way to make a living thing is to make it local. -- GK Chesterton
You love something massive (or in American, humongous) in a different way than you love something small, accessible, close at hand. The feeling is more abstract and intellectual, and the link between thought or feeling and action is less immediate and discernible. Loving humanity or the planet can lead to great injustices against actual people. But of course, your love for the local and for those closest to you shouldn't make you hate people further away.
Quaestor- I thought that ffolkes with Roger Moore was a movie and not a series but I could be wrong. I remember seeing it when I was about 14 and I thought it was the coolest thing ever - I wanted to live in a castle too.
I remember it as a good movie but I was 14 so what did I know? I also thought a movie called Modesty Blaise was good too, though that one definitely had it's female attractions.
Thinking of movies from that era there was also Casino Royale with Woody Allen and David Niven et al. There is a scene with David Niven being seduced by sisters in a Scottish Castle that is hilarious. David Niven was great in anything.
"Then I went on musing about why it was thought better and higher to love one's country than one's county, or town, or village, or house."
"Perhaps because it was larger. But then it would be still better to love one's continent, and best of all to love one's planet."
Rose Macaulay, let's introduce you to a little story called "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"
People who love grouping larger than their family / clan are what's known as "amoral familists". These are people you can never trust unless you're part of their small little grouping
People who "love the planet" dont' actually love anyone but their own class / social grouping. Because "I love X" means "I value X more than the rest". If there's no "the rest", then you're lying about loving it.
To love one's country takes a heart that is big enough to care about more than just your small grouping, which is why it's better.
But it also takes a heart that's willing to love / value / care about people who aren't just like you. They're not part of your social class. They're not in your family. They are different from you in ways that the small heart can't span.
But you value them, care for them (open borders destroys the wages of the "low skilled" who have to compete with those new comers. Do you care about your fellow Americans who have fewer job skills than you? Or do you just want the cheapest price, and "screw them"?), and bond to them. And they do the same for you
Which is what makes a nation worth valuing.
Which is what the Left fundamentally opposes
Administrative scope. #PrinciplesMatter
Oh, Hell, don't stop there. Love your solar system. Love your galaxy.
Love is slippery, even without the KY.
Some decades back, a couple of writers in National Review proposed a political/social organization they called a "shire". A state or a nation was too big to love or identify with and a county or anything smaller was not sufficiently self-supporting to generate a sense of place.
Should have its own flag, army, and customs ( the tax kind).
Rural counties, now. If, as a matter of statistical necessity, you know fifty people; neighbors, kids' friends and their parents, couple of teachers, some people at church, some you do business with, maybe some other categories. And your county has 5500 people. And maybe 4000 of them, not kids or the elderly, get around on business from time to time. And the only place for business beyond gas stations and associated convenience store is the county seat. And it's so small that you have three or four blocks surrounding the Courthouse where such business--lawyer, dentist, clothing/shoe store, grocery store.... You can't not see somebody you know when you go to town.
And the war memorial...familiar names.
I'd put sense of place in a rural county against that of Wayne County in Michigan, home to Detroit and numerous burbs. As an example.
"Love is slippery, even without the KY."
Love is prickly, even without the prick.
Jesus said, love thy neighbor as thyself. If you can't do that, you are not eligible to extend your love further.
Love the universe and its Creator.
I highly recommend Rose MacCauley's "What Not" about Britain's "Ministry of Brains" which confronts the limits of government. The Towers of Trebizond" is on my list. My husband really enjoyed it. Her characters don't necessarily speak for her.
I can't love my neighbor as myself, and the older I get the less inclined I am to try.
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