Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid, wrote Goethe, but it isn’t true

12 December 2009

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

I finally managed to propose the following day — and she said no. But she did agree to live with me on a ‘trial basis’ and we were married 15 months later.

Of course, I’m not really the master of my fate any more than Nelson Mandela was of his. In the scenario I’ve just described, Caroline had a greater claim to that title than me. Yet when I made the decision to propose it felt like taking control. She had already dumped me twice at this point and only agreed to come to Val d’Isère because I’d bought the tickets and booked the chalet when we were still going out with each other. ‘We’ll just be going as friends,’ she said, opening her eyes wide to emphasis the point. Proposing to her was a last-ditch effort — what fans of American football call a ‘hail Mary pass’. When I doubted the wisdom of this course I would quote a line from another poem, this time by Goethe: ‘Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.’

That’s not true either, not least because there are no such thing as ‘mighty forces’ in the sense that Goethe had in mind, i.e., divine intervention. But if we labour under the illusion that we can conquer the vicissitudes of fortune, we will end up marginally more in control of our destiny that we otherwise would be. Henley refused to listen to the surgeons who advised him to amputate his right foot, found a doctor who favoured a less drastic form of treatment, and went on to lead an active and fruitful life.

Most of the next decade of my life will be occupied with my efforts to set up a new school in Acton, though I hope to God it doesn’t take that long. At present, all I can see are a series of obstacles stretching to the horizon, each one larger than the last. But the spark of inspiration came from the same thought that animates Henley’s poem: a refusal to accept my fate. Parents are told that the only way they can secure a first-class education for their children is by sending them to a private school, moving to within the catchment area of a high- performing comprehensive or by being a member of a particular faith. Not so, I said. There is another alternative and that is to start your own state school. When it opens I intend to carve Henley’s words above the gates: ‘I am the master of my fate:/ I am the captain of my soul.’

Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.