The Young Roger Scruton
Also: On forensic linguistics, Mesoamerica in color, the Renaissance line, teaching literature today, and more.
Good morning! Dan Hitchens has a long essay in The Critic that you will want to read on 1970s British conservatism, Roger Scruton, and the forces and people that shaped him:
If you could be transported back 50 years, to the London of 1974, where would you choose to be a fly on the wall? Surely at 52 Campden Hill Square in Holland Park, the home of Sir Hugh Fraser — the charismatic war hero, Scottish aristocrat and Tory MP — and his wife Lady Antonia, the historian, writer and part-time society beauty.
At a Fraser party, Hugh’s right-wing friends and Antonia’s left-wing ones would socialise with writers, bohemians and arts-world panjandrums. Posh Catholics rubbed shoulders with sweary, shaven-headed actors. And in one corner you might find a quartet laughing, debating and — though none of them would have put it so pompously — fostering a revival of intellectual Toryism.
They were a striking group: Hugh Fraser himself, a longstanding critic of the Heath leadership now entering its terminal crisis; Fraser’s friend Jonathan Aitken, an eager new MP dismayed by the gloomy atmosphere amongst the parliamentary party; the Cambridge don John Casey, a formidable mind and a candidate for the original Young Fogey; and Casey’s protégé, a quiet, red-headed 30-year-old who had just published his philosophy PhD in book form, and whose fame would one day grow too great for England to contain.
In 1974 Roger Scruton was still finding his way. Along with the PhD, he had written a handful of book reviews for the Spectator, where his friend Maurice Cowling had briefly been literary editor, and a few technical philosophy articles.
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Jonathan Aitken thought him “very shy. Shy but steely”. Already Scruton knew what he believed: ever since spending May 1968 in Paris — when, as has often been recounted, he watched the ecstatic scenes of student rebellion and realised he was on the other side — he had thought of himself as a conservative.
The philosopher David Papineau, Scruton’s student in Cambridge from 1968–69, recalls that even then “he had his persona and attitudes formed”. He was “rather sniffy”, for instance, when King’s College announced in 1969 that it would go co-ed. By the time Scruton was teaching Palmer in the early seventies, he was already developing his line in deadpan provocations. “People who are not repressed are unbearable,” went one typical remark. “They go around expressing themselves all over the place.”
In 1971, when Scruton arrived at Birkbeck, his new colleagues — who came to work in t-shirts and jeans — were amused to meet this young right-winger in a jacket and tie, plus occasional yellow waistcoat and pocket watch. Given an office in the department’s newly-acquired building on Gower Street, he asked Birkbeck not to bother furnishing the room, but just give him the cash to spend at auction houses.
He covered the floor in Persian rugs, installed what his then colleague Dorothy Edgington describes as “a very elaborate desk”, and restored the boarded-up fireplace to working order. Another colleague’s wife was heard to say that the office resembled “a boudoir on the Champs-Élysées”.
In other news, Julia Webster Ayuso writes about how forensic linguists “use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases” in The Dial:
On the evening of October 16, 1984, the body of four-year-old Grégory Villemin was pulled out of the Vologne river in Eastern France. The little boy had disappeared from the front garden of his home in Lépanges-sur-Vologne earlier that afternoon. His mother had searched desperately all over the small village, but nobody had seen him.
It quickly became clear that his death wasn’t a tragic accident. The boy’s hands and feet had been tied with string, and the family had received several threatening letters and voicemails before he disappeared. The following day, another letter was sent to the boy’s father, Jean-Marie Villemin. “I hope you will die of grief, boss,” it read in messy, joined-up handwriting. “Your money will not bring your son back. This is my revenge, you bastard.”
It was the beginning of what would become France’s best-known unsolved murder case. The case has been reopened several times, and multiple suspects have been arrested. Grégory’s mother, Christine, was charged with the crime and briefly jailed but later acquitted. Jean-Marie also served prison time after he shot dead his cousin Bernard Laroche, who had emerged as a prime suspect. The investigating judge, Jean-Michel Lambert, who was assigned the case at age 32 and made critical mistakes early in the investigation, killed himself in 2017.
More than three decades after Grégory’s murder, police brought in a team of Swiss linguists from a company called OrphAnalytics to examine the letters and their use of vocabulary, spelling and sentence structure. Their report, submitted in 2020, and part of which was leaked to the press, pointed to Grégory’s great-aunt, Jacqueline Jacob. The results echoed earlier handwriting and linguistic analysis that had led to Jacob and her husband’s arrest in 2017. (The couple was freed later that year over procedural issues.)
While the new evidence has not yet been presented in court, some believe it could help to solve the case that has haunted an entire generation. It has also shone a spotlight on the little-known field of forensic linguistics. In France, the use of stylometry — the study of variations in literary styles — has largely been confined to academic circles. The Grégory case is the first time it has been applied in a major criminal investigation.
Phil Christman explains why he still teaches literature: “Before I am replaced by an automated grader, an ‘AI’ tutor, and an underpaid, non-union ‘learning facilitator’ who is making a third my salary to coach three times as many students through a college experience for which, somehow, Silicon Valley will figure out how to charge even more than we do, I want to try to get a grip on what that loved thing I do actually is. What is it worth? Who is it for? Why is it important to me that the academic study of literature and writing should survive? I ask myself this, and the answer is as unambiguous as it is indefensible. Literature seems to me – and I say this with no intention to denigrate theology, the ancient claimant to this title – the queen of the sciences.”
Paul Beston remembers journalist and essayist Lance Morrow: “Over 40 years at Time, Morrow would author more “Man of the Year” articles than any writer, winning the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism in 1981. Though Time’s influence had begun to diminish, the magazine remained ‘the superpower of print.’ Working in its legendary offices in the Time-Life Building, polishing copy in late-night sessions lubricated by Johnny Walker Red or Bombay gin—'the Luce operation was famous for its good liquor’—Morrow wrote every week with the knowledge that the magazine would be delivered by motorcycle courier to the White House, where Lyndon Johnson eagerly awaited its arrival.”
Ted Gioia argues that today is the day of the independent creator: “There are now 27 million people in the US working as creators on web platforms. That’s a stunning number—it represents 14% of the working age population. Some 44% of them do this as a full-time job. These numbers come from the Keller Advisory Group, but other sources tell the same story. Citi believes that 120 millon people worldwide are working in the creator economy—a career path that didn’t exist just a few years ago.”
Alan Jacobs is not so sure: “It’s important to remember that people on Substack, like Ted, are not ‘indie creators’ in the fullest sense — they’re dependent on a platform that sets the terms of engagement. Now, to be sure, if I were going to write on any social-media platform it would be Substack. Most people who write there make little or no money, but it’s possible to do very well indeed, and the 90/10 split of the subscription revenue is remarkably generous. (‘Remarkably’ because if they had chosen 80/20 or even 70/30 — the latter being Apple’s cut for app creators — not many people would have complained.)” But, Jacobs goes on to argue, it is not hard to imagine a situation where Substack is less appealing financially and less free.
The color code of Mesoamerican art: Tim Brinkhof reviews the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art: “One of the first things visitors to We Live in Painting learn is that, for ancient Mesoamerican artists, picking the right color was about more than just aesthetics. The artists generally divided colors into five categories—black, red, blue-green, yellow, and white—and each was associated with unique concepts. As shown in the exhibition, blue-green and yellow represented the circle of life, and were used to paint things like water, breath, and sunlight.”
The Renaissance line: Michael Prodger reviews two exhibits on Renaissance drawing:
The first is an overview exhibition – a spectacular array of drawings that shows how the availability of cheap paper in the period unleashed not only myriad imaginative possibilities but also new techniques. Here are portraits and compositional studies, architectural schemes and decorative designs, presentation pieces and doodles, drawn in graphite, charcoal, pen, metalpoint and chalk.
The second takes as its theme the moment when the three most revered names of the High Renaissance were in one place at one time. In Florence in 1504 the artists were at different points of their careers but twitchily aware of what the others were up to: a dynamic developed that was a mixture of emulation, learning and, importantly, competition. Where the King’s Gallery exhibition stresses the sheer number of hugely skilled artists at work in Italy between 1450 and 1600, the RA’s focus is on the “great man” theory of art history. Together they function as two parts of one exhibition, that might be entitled: “This is what drawing could do.”
August Lamm writes about giving up his smartphone:
Five years ago, I was sitting on the tile floor of a rental kitchen, trying to take a photo of myself to share online.
It was not an easy photo to take: The lighting was harsh; the walls were a weird pink color; and I had become so focused on taking the photo that I was no longer crying. I needed my sadness to be visible—runny nose, blotchy cheeks, shiny eyes—and I needed it in a 9:16 aspect ratio. How else would my followers know I was truly suffering?
I set down my phone. In an attempt to get more tears flowing, I thought about my circumstances: single, alone in a foreign country, recently diagnosed with a degenerative spinal condition. I was renting a cramped yet expensive apartment, and quickly running through my savings. I had built a whole career as an art influencer but, since my diagnosis, I could no longer produce the drawings required to keep my online audience engaged—the pain made it so that I could hardly write my own signature, let alone draw. As I considered all this, I began to cry again. I reached for my phone and this time, I got the shot.
I posted the crying selfie, which I hoped would tastefully walk the line between tragic and attractive. I refreshed my inbox for sympathy, and I got it. But I was still alone on the kitchen floor. These strangers were my whole world, but to them, I was just one tear-soaked face in an endless stream of images. I stood up and, before the impulse could leave me, I disabled my Instagram account. I had 170,000 followers and no one to call.
William Benton writes about his friendship with James Salter:
I glanced up from my desk as an attractive couple came into the gallery. We exchanged greetings. They made a cursory tour of the space. I’d seen only a postage-stamp headshot on the back of a book, but thought I recognized him.
“Are you James Salter?”
“Yes.”
That monosyllable was worth recording. Uttered almost as an abrupt sigh.
“I’m a great fan of yours,” I said.
The conversation moved quickly beyond pleasantries (who and what I was: a poet, running an art gallery) to a level of reciprocal energies in both Jim—as he had introduced himself—and Kay, his partner, all underscored by my exuberance in meeting them. They’d driven down to Santa Fe from Aspen and had been in town for a day and a half.
“We’re staying at La Fonda,” Jim said. “Come over and have a drink with us when you finish up here.” . . . La Fonda was three blocks from my gallery, at one corner of the plaza. Jim had given me their room number. I crossed the dark lobby with its ancient tiles and climbed the stairs to the third floor.
“What would you like to drink?” Jim said.
“What have you got?”
“Everything.”
Stephen King to shut down his Maine radio stations: “Stephen King is taking a big old ax to his Maine radio empire. The prolific author bought Bangor-based station WLBZ in 1983, renaming it WZON in honor of his 1979 novel, The Dead Zone, per Billboard. Over time, WZON grew into The ZONE Corporation, which also ran WKIT (‘Stephen King’s Rock Station’) and WZLO (‘Maine’s Adult Alternative’), both under the ownership of King and his wife, Tabitha . . . Now, it’s time for all three stations—which, according to a statement from the ZONE Corporation, never made even a little bit of money—to go to their grave once and for all. King is citing his age (77) as a reason for the shutdown, but this writer is guessing the good people of Bangor probably got as sick of hearing ‘Mambo No. 5’ on their morning commutes as King’s wife did.”
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