Christmas Every Day

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” So said G.K. Chesterton, in his 1910 Alarms and Discursions. “Not silent enough,” is the verdict of poetry lovers who have encountered the following:

Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds


We have seen the Queen of cheese,

Laying quietly at your ease,

Gently fanned by evening breeze --

Thy fair form no flies dare seize.


All gaily dressed soon you'll go

To the great Provincial Show,

To be admired by many a beau

In the city of Toronto.


Cows numerous as a swarm of bees --

Or as the leaves upon the trees --

It did require to make thee please,

And stand unrivalled Queen of Cheese.


May you not receive a scar as

We have heard that Mr. Harris

Intends to send you off as far as

The great World's show at Paris.


Of the youth -- beware of these --

For some of them might rudely squeeze

And bite your cheek; then songs or glees

We could not sing o' Queen of Cheese.


We'rt thou suspended from a balloon,

You'd caste a shade, even at noon;

Folks would think it was the moon

About to fall and crush them soon. 

– James McIntyre, 1884

Scotsmen may boast of William McGonnigal as the world’s worst poet but Canadian hearts beat faster at the mention of James McIntyre. To be sure, McIntyre was born in Scotland in 1828 and emigrated to Canada in 1851, but is in the True North where McIntyre’s muse led him to a career of hymning the praises of cheese. His greatest work is printed above but connoisseurs of the pressed curds of milk also point to his “Oxford Cheese Ode”: The ancient poets ne’er did dream/ That Canada was land of cream,/ They ne’er imagined it could flow/ In this cold land of ice and snow,/ Where everything did solid freeze/ They ne’er hoped or looked for cheese.

An annual cheese-themed poetry competition is held in his adopted home of Ingersoll, Ontario.

Time for some remarks on national characteristics, mostly offensive.

The British don’t like music very much, but they do like the noise it makes. – Sir Thomas Beecham

The serpent, the origin of all ill, who first beguiled mankind by various frauds and illusions, that he might draw them to perdition, perceiving in these latter days, that the French nation was more capable of wickedness than any other, has poured without measure into their souls the poison of apostacy; and having first instigated them to civil war, and barbarous regicide, has finally plunged them into every species of impiety and ungodliness . – Patriarch Gregory V  of Constantinople on the French Revolution

The English are the people of consummate cant. – Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Pakistan has many of the characteristics of mid-Victorian England – few, unfortunately, of the better ones. – John Bushell, British Ambassador to Pakistan

A few years back there was an opinion poll which asked the gentlemen of Italy, France, Germany and so on which country’s women they would most like to sleep with. If I remember rightly, the Italian babes came top, while British women – perhaps on account of their slatternly behaviour, weight problems, screeched obscenities and propensity to vomit – were at the bottom. However, when the question was turned around a little and the men were asked which country’s women they had already slept with, British girls topped the poll by a mile. – Ron Liddle, The Spectator

Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend. – Saki (H.H. Munro)

In New York every rainbow has an empty pot of gold at the end with a chalk outline of a dead leprechaun. – Bob Sarlatte

1940

The hideousness of the First World War (1914-1918) had made statesmen extremely reluctant to resort to armed force and in the late 1930s British and French foreign policy aimed at securing peace by giving into the demands of Adolf Hitler. At the Munich Conference in 1938, President Daladier of France and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to let Hitler dismember Czechoslovakia if he promised that this would be his last claim to alter the map of Europe. The very next year Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to invade Poland and World War II was launched. Chamberlain was discredited and in 1940 he was forced from office, to be replaced by Winston Churchill.

Rather than heap any more shame on the head of his predecessor, Churchill paid tribute to him in the House of Commons, showing a generosity of spirit that many politicians today lack. On announcing Chamberlain’s death he said:

It is not given to human beings, happily for them — for otherwise life would be intolerable — to foresee or predict to any large extent the unfolding of events .… History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions….

It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart—the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, even at great peril and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity….

I think it’s time for some more wisdom from dead white guys. 

Time for some more wisdom from the ancients or, at least, dead white men.

John Adams Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right… and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

Edmund Burke To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Joseph Conrad The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Joseph Henshaw One doth but breakfast here, another dines, he that liveth longest doth but sup; we must all go to bed in another world.

Even more historical wisdom:

I reveal myself in my true colors, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men have not changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves. I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings by satisfying our own egos. I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. – Kenneth Clark, Civilization

The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest. – Martin Luther

It is always disagreeable to say: “I do not know. I cannot know.” It must not be said except after an energetic, even a desperate search. But there are times when the sternest duty of the savant, who has first tried every means, is to resign himself to his ignorance and to admit it honestly. – March Bloch, The Historian’s Craft

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. – Theodore Dalrymple

Some assorted historical wisdom today:

The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true; Cor ne edito; “Eat not the heart.” Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that lack friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.  – Francis Bacon, “Friendship”, Essays

It tickles human vanity to tell us that we are wiser than our fathers; and it is one of those propositions which is likely to pass without contradiction, from the circumstance that all those most interested in denying it are dead and gone. But if the grave could speak, and the churchyards vote upon the question, we living boasters would be in a most pitiful minority. – James K. Paulding, The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham.

Someone asked Diogenes why people gave to beggars, but not to philosophers. He answered, “Because they think it’s possible that they themselves might become lame and blind, but they don’t expect that they’ll ever end up philosophers.” – Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers.

There are two phases for each period in history. The first phase is called “What Can It Hurt?” and the second is called “How Were We to Know?” – Mark Shea

“Oh, Jeeves,’ I said; ‘about that check suit.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Is it really a frost?’
‘A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.’
‘But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.’
‘Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.’
‘He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London.’
‘I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.”

I gave a little talk at my church the other night about one of my favourite folk, a man before whose altar I daily offer my admiration, my gratitude, and the still-pumping heart of one of the indentured servants on my estate who has grown old and whose existence would otherwise serve no purpose. I refer, of course, to Dr Samuel Johnson, late of Lichfield and London, writer, thinker, talker; foe to hypocrisy, liberals and Americans; friend to corporal punishment, learning and prayer.

Since Christmas is fast approaching, I am going to quote from a sermon the Great Man wrote on the necessity of charity.

This was written over 50 years before Charles Dickens created the character of Ebenezer Scrooge but observe how closely Johnson’s description and Scrooge’s life and personality coincide:

When any man… has learned to act only by the impulse of apparent profit, when he can look upon distress, without partaking it, and hear the cries of poverty and sickness, without a wish to relieve them; when he has so far disordered his ideas as to value wealth without regard to its end, and to amass with eagerness what is of no use in his hands; he is indeed not easily to be reclaimed; his reason, as well as his passions, is in combination against his soul, and there is little hope, that either persuasion will soften, or arguments convince him. A man, once hardened in cruelty by inveterate avarice, is scarcely to be considered as any longer human; nor is it to be hoped, that any impression can be made upon him, by methods applicable only to reasonable beings. Beneficence and compassion can be awakened in such hearts only by the operation of divine grace, and must be the effect of a miracle, like that which turned the dry rock into a springing well.

Scrooge was indeed fortunate that such a miracle, or rather a whole series of miracles, intervened and turned the dry rock of his soul into a springing well. But few of us will be frightened into a change of heart by ghostly visitations. Why therefore should we become dispensers of charity? Listen closely, because Johnson is speaking on this very subject:


The chief advantage which is received by mankind from the practice of charity, is the promotion of virtue amongst those who are most exposed to such temptations as it is not easy to surmount: temptations of which no man can say that he should be able to resist them, to estimate the force, and represent the danger.

We see every day men blessed with abundance, and revelling in delight, yet overborne by ungovernable desires of increasing their acquisitions; and breaking through the boundaries of religion, to pile heaps on heaps, and add one superfluity to another, to obtain only nominal advantages and imaginary pleasures.

For these we see friendships broken, justice violated, and nature forgotten; we see crimes committed, without the prospect of obtaining any positive pleasure, or removing any real pain. We see men toiling through meanness and guilt, to obtain that which they can enjoy only in idea, and which will supply them with nothing real which they do not already abundantly possess.

Did you get that? The chief beneficiary of charity is the giver! It saves him from becoming someone he should not want to be — someone insensitive to what is truly important and a slave to an obsession that will bring him only meanness of spirit. We often see a character on television cry with an impassioned sneer: “I don’t need your charity!”Perhaps not. But we need to give it.