I Knew No Harm Of Bonaparte And Plenty Of The Squire

[poliphilo]

Another thing about us Brits: we do love a worthy opponent.

George Washington, for instance. England is studded with places claiming to be his ancestral home. Churchill went so far as to claim (not I think entirely in jest) that bluff, squirearchical Washington's victory over George III and his Hessian and Hanoverian troops was yet another victory of the British over the Germans. Played 4, won 4.

Then there's Napoleon. We're sorry he lost at Waterloo. We feel his pain. 19th c.British pictures of him looking pitiable on Elba, St Helena or the Billy Ruffian are as plentiful as those showing the death of Nelson. No-one bothered to paint Wellington in his hour of triumph. Or sing about it. I know a couple of mournful, admiring folk songs about Boney- none about his British conqueror. The sub-text here is that quite a lot of us wouldn't have been too put out if he'd come over here and liberated us from our native oppressors- of whom snooty, hawk-nosed Wellington was a fine example. 

Kipling wrote a poem congratulating the fuzzy-wuzzies ("who broke a British Square"), there was a lot of admiration (and support) for the Boers. We didn't warm to Kaiser Bill (who could?) but we adored The Red Baron. Hitler was similarly unlovable but we rooted around for a Hun to honour and lit on Rommel. James Mason got to play him on screen. No-one has ever bothered to make a movie about Monty.

Gandhi took India away from us and we adore him for it. He has a statue in a London Square, and the hero-worshiping biopic was directed by a Brit and starred a Brit. Why, he is almost one of our own- just like Washington.  Don't you know he was totally inspired by Ruskin and Morris and the Toynbee Hall crowd?

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Kipling was very much a fan of the underdog - his poem The Pict Song makes me wonder what he was trying to warn the British Empire of.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The characterization of Kipling as a block-headed jingo is so totally wrong.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I think we've had this conversation before - but yes - you only have to read Kim (for example) to see the love that he has for India, and Indians.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Also, Arthur is an honorary Englishman, despite fighting - if he existed at all - to keep the English out of Britain. (I do think this may be more an English than a British trait, by the way.) Cf also Robert the Bruce, admired by the English almost as much as by the Scots.

Saladin is more admired than Richard I, and Joan of Arc more than Henry VI (and even Talbot is largely forgotten).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh- and then there's Bonnie Prince Charlie. Even Dr Johnson (with his pretended scorn for all things Scottish) couldn't help succumbing to the romance of Jacobitism (and Flora Macdonald).

You're right. I should have written "English" not "Brits".

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Did Saladin and Richard ever meet? I always got the feeling of a bromance with those guys. Fundamentally they quite liked each other.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether they met historically, but perhaps that doesn't matter?

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Wellington was an Irishman (Ascendancy, natch), a fact he spent plenty of time trying to cover up. Unfortunately the consequences of this act of birth meant that although he is forgotten in England we have no choice but to remember him in Dublin thanks to a ginormous stone knob erected (there really is no other word that can describe the process) in the Phoenix Park named the Wellington Monument.

We also had Nelson's pillar until it was blown up, leading to many pre-1990 lubricious jokes saying what did Dublin and Winnie Mandela have in common? (Answer: neither had seen said item for 27 years)

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

And here is the offending article:

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Jesus! What a huge erection!

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I apologise. I should have given that an NSFW tag ;)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Will somebody think of the children!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Apparently is it traditional to be photographed on the steps of it with one's offspring. When our daughter posted the photos of our son-in-law with our granddaughter, she explained that this was so. (Our SIL is a Dublin man originally.)

Except now I am seeing it as a giant pagan fertility symbol!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Wellington isn't exactly forgotten over here, he's just unloved. I don't think he ever was loved (unlike Nelson).

Manchester has a Wellington Memorial. Not a knob (alas) just a rather dull statue. Liverpool, on the other hand, has a lovely knob with a statue on top of it.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Well no wonder he was unloved then, the horrible arrogant willy-waver.

Pretentious too. His last name was Wesley and he changed it to Wellesley, I think to sound less Irish, tho I don't get his logic as it was a pretty Anglo name in the first place. Probably just because he was ragingly insecure.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Or maybe because he was afraid of being taken for a Methodist.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I find this more than passing strange. The English had nothing but contempt for Washington. They were very up-front about it and acted accordingly. It's what makes Cornwallis's pantsing one of the most satisfying military defeats in history. The contempt that Brits showed for us and everything about us was both a cause of the Revolution and, arguably, one of the principle contributors to British defeat. Feigning respect for the man after the fact is, at best and I think rather obviously, a disingenuous, face-saving maneuver.

Besides, aside from the siege of Yorktown, Washington was really bad at his job. Had it not been for Lafayette, British incompetence, and our Scots-Irish riflemen, we would still be British subjects, I suspect.

Look at how you treated William Wallace. That's far more typically British. The savage cruelty, the arrogant contempt for non-English life and anything that dares oppose you: it's all there.

Monty was an inept popinjay and the only reason that he's remembered at all was, again, to save face.