'A Consecrated Isle In the Lake of Forgetting'
Thoughts on 'First Glimpses', the second chapter of England: An Elegy, by Roger Scruton, And A Heritage Site Update
I doubt many school pupils have been at their teacher's home to eat dinner while helping themselves to whisky and a music collection. Roger Scruton tells of such an experience and reasons: ‘Teachers who entertain their pupils to dinner run a great risk of appearing ridiculous, especially if, like Mr Chapman, they have no wife to take charge. But Mr Chapman was not ridiculous as he waited on those tongue-tied louts at table, serving unfamiliar delicacies like smoked salmon and duck in orange sauce. He treated us as men and even referred to us as men.’
Ridiculous is not all a male teacher without a wife or partner runs the risk of appearing if his regular home guests are teenage boys. Scruton does not say anything untoward happened, and he is clear that for men like Chapman, ‘homosexual desire was an abomination’.
‘Plato argued that homosexual love, when it achieves physical release, sullies both subject and object. When, however, it is sublimated in discourse, so as to impart knowledge and culture to the young, it becomes one of the highest of human goods, higher in its way than the love between man and woman'.’ Here, Scruton invokes Plato to describe Chapman's interest in another pupil. It is probably fair to say Chapman had a platonic love for Scruton and other students he hosted. High Wycombe Royal Grammar School was founded in 1562. Scruton met Chapman after he became a student there in 1954.
Chapman taught physics at Cambridge before coming to High Wycombe and ‘helped to give substance’ to Headmaster Tucker’s ‘fantasy of a suburban Eton’. 'His deep chest, regular features, clipped moustache, and a complexion reddened and hardened by the tropics made him an easy caricature of an archetypal British imperialist.' He was an Assistant District Commissioner in Nigeria, responsible for the Igbo territories. When he taught Scruton, the imperial mission Chapman went to Africa for was no longer acknowledged or remembered. Scruton was brought up to sneer at the British Empire, but he ‘could not sneer at Mr Chapman for whom the empire was not a commercial enterprise but a moral task’. Chapman saw his role in Africa in altruistic terms. ‘He was bringing civilisation to the uncharted jungle. The taxes he collected were justified by schools, clinics and the necessities of life.’ He loved the Igbo people with ‘the severe just love of a Victorian father’, and ‘he recorded their habits, gods, sacred tales, and rituals’.
Scruton bonded with Chapman over their shared interest in science and music. He saw in him the epitome of older English values and qualities that were fading away, and he writes approvingly of his heroism but also his reserve and sense of duty. Scruton learned Chapman was divorced and had a son at public school.
England had changed so much while Chapman was away, but this ‘only enhanced its holy ambience in his memory. England for him was no longer a real place, but a consecrated isle in the lake of forgetting, where the God of the English still strode through in an imaginary Eden, admiring His works.'
Scruton won a place at his local grammar school thanks to the eleven-plus exams. These tests enabled children from poorer backgrounds to progress on merit. Today, this path to academic success is denied because of the phasing out of grammar schools during the 1960s and 1970s. Scruton reveals his achievement did not sit well with his father, who favoured the abolition of grammar schools and anything with elite resonances, including the monarchy and the Church of England.
Scruton’s father was born and bred in industrial Manchester and ‘acquired the full emotional repertoire of the unwilling underdog’. Scruton says his father became an egalitarian because he was 'conscious of his superiority’ while trapped inside the lowest rung of the teaching profession.
The philosopher credited grammar school for improving his chances in life and opening up prospects few people without money enjoy.
Anyone familiar with Scruton and his work will understand that to say he rebelled against his father would be to state the completely obvious.
Without the grammar school Scruton attended, he would not have had the education that made him one of England’s most significant philosophers of recent times.
Dutifulness, of the kind recognised in Chapman, is a crucial part of the English character as described by Scruton. It is this English character that is the subject of the next chapter of England: An Elegy.
THE HERITAGE SITE UPDATE
Hello all, I want to take this opportunity to offer a heartfelt thanks to those who are now paid Heritage Site subscribers. This support means a lot to me and is a great source of encouragement.
From now on, I will aim to post between three and four times a month rather than once or twice.
I am currently working on historical projects. Should I post a series of short pieces or articles on matters that seem more contemporary, this does not mean that historical writing will not be forthcoming. Conversely, should consecutive historical essays be published, it will not be an indication that short works and those with a contemporary slant will not soon appear.
Articles in the categories of Review and Reaction may come in the near to mid-term. Reviews could involve an exhibition at a museum, another place of interest, or even a product. Reaction pieces may analyse articles, videos, or events of note.
References
Roger Scruton, England: An Elegy, 2000
Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, Sir Roger Scruton FBA FRSL https://www.pet.cam.ac.uk/news/sir-roger-scruton-fba-frsl
Scruton sets the standard: by how he wrote, how he presented himself, how he acted, through his values and how he spoke. For many of us it is a standard that is hard to live up to but his memory remains.