In Competition No. 2509 you were asked to provide an extract from a Victorian self-help book.
Self-help by Samuel Smiles was a hit when it was published in 1859. Almost 150 years later it is described on Amazon.com as ‘the precursor of today’s motivational and self-help literature’. This strikes me as a rather desperate attempt by marketing people to tap into the seemingly insatiable appetite of modern self-help addicts. They may be in for disappointment, though. There are no quick fixes from Smiles, who preaches hard work, thrift and perseverance, a message that won’t go down well with today’s debt-laden, I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now generation. There is a predictable absence of women as inspirational examples in the book (except as men’s ‘help-mates’). D.A. Prince, who gets this week’s bonus fiver, captures well the lot of the fairer sex in what could be a 19th-century version of that contemporary self-help classic If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single? The other winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 apiece.
Eyes are the window of the soul, gleaming bright and open to all the brilliance of God’s creation. It is every young woman’s duty to enhance both her spiritual centre and best feature by the exercise of deep contemplation and close attention. Consider the lilies of the field: how will your eyes light up when your amour presents a bouquet?
Consider the fall of a sparrow: can your eyes show appropriate sorrow? Are they communicative, compassionate? Can they encompass the ample scope of the Beatitudes, to whose expressive range all should aspire? When you practise meekness in your heart, confirm it also in your mirror, looking for that depth of sincerity that melts a man’s heart. When you are hungry, as the modern waist demands, let your eyes give it the spiritual dimension that wins a man’s affection and protection. Do not forget purity; its semblance is essential.
D.A. Prince
Though it is the duty of children to remain as invisible and inaudible as is practicable, questions may arise regarding the duties of a Father, Motherhood essentially being a branch of nursing for those lacking vocation. The principal duty of a Father is to remain aloof. This should not prove difficult; the male role in Matrimony provides a serviceable template. Conversation between Father and Son must be minimal — rigorous attendance at boarding school and the City on the part of the Son and Father respectively should attend to this — and confined to the administration of discipline and proper inculcation of the rules of Cricket. Having once been a Child is, naturally, a matter of tremendous shame to any Father, who must protect his Son from such knowledge. My own experiments having demonstrated the efficacy of solitude in hastening gravity of constitution, I insist in all cases upon the forswearing of Play.
Adrian Fry
Though we might hesitate to concur with all Mr Carlyle’s asseverations, we feel that in naming Work as ‘the grand cure of all maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind’ he has in no small measure justified his reputati1on for uncommon wisdom. Apply yourself manfully to a task, treat it, if you will, as holy duty by which your soul as well as your worldly success may be measured, and Fortune will be no longer a fickle soubrette but your faithful handmaiden. Never forget that ‘God helps those who help themselves’. Study the lives of men of achievement such as Andrew Carnegie, who raised themselves from humble beginnings to summits of eminence. Apply yourself to earning esteem in all the spheres of your existence. Then, once you are established, you will learn that, as Mr Carlyle further notes, ‘to a shower of gold most things are penetrable’.
Basil Ransome-Davies
It has been stated, that Lady Muck of Muck Inch would never attend prayers until she had summoned a scullery maid to kneel at her side. By this means she intended a public patefaction of how humbly she acknowledged, that all are equal before the Almighty. But it is not to be doubted that, after their devotions, her ladyship returned to her great room and the maid to her scullery. For there is in the sublunary world an accepted order of persons, as there is of things. However, within this order the path of advancement does truly lie open to all. For example, by dint of diligence, industry and perseverance that same maid might in due course rise by turns to the rank of housekeeper. And it is hardly conceivable that such a happy progression would not be of satisfaction to her all-seeing Maker.
W.J. Webster
The avoidance of self-abuse, with its consequent inevitable degradation of all physical and mental faculties, is not sufficient by itself, however, to guarantee a sane and rewarding existence. The healthy youth must also test his prowess in the world of affairs and business, where the ‘survival of the fittest’ and the thrusting, virile terms of man-to-man competition dictate that weaklings and degenerates camouflage their pathological inclinations.
This is where the mother-influence, that fount of the tender, nurturing emotions so needful in one’s early years, must give way to the forceful, thoroughly masculine outlook of the man of action — in short, to the spirit of Empire, that historic enterprise of our nation which has conquered the seas, tamed the wily Pathan and brought the saving light of civilisation to the darkest places on earth. So it is with Commerce, Industry and the Stock Exchange.
G.M. Davis
Industry and ingenuity are virtues without which no modern exposition of courtship etiquette, marital harmony or the art of making a comfortable home, soundly based on Victorian principles, can hope to prosper. Nostalgia not being what it was, our authors will have the transcendent capacity to elevate readers’ minds beyond dismal contemporary foothills to daunting yet scaleable eminences visible on the distant historical horizon; for no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, nor inroads into purse or pocket-book, until a great change is achieved in the fundamental constitution of our modes of thought.
That prescient observer of our times, Phineas T. Barnum, has remarked that every minute an opportunity arises to succour one’s neighbour and by so doing refresh oneself. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in one’s fortune. So, Produce! Produce! The world will make a beaten path to your door.
Simon Machin
No. 2512: Sobering thoughts
You are invited to submit a description of a hangover in heroic couplets (maximum 16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition 2512’ by 13 September or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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