Horizon

Takes a while to figure out which Hitchens brother we're reading but he does get around to the invective.

B-P could not even keep his nature notes under control: he told his trusting readers that industrious bees were to be admired: "They are quite a model community, for they respect their queen and kill their unemployed."...

Funny to remember that Kropotkin saw the hive insects as models of cooperation. Guess he had aristocratic notions about what's "voluntary."

Here's a Famous People Dinner Party: at the table, Baden-Powell, Kropotkin, T.H. White, and E.O. Wilson, and let them talk about hive insects. If it didn't end in fisticuffs it might make an interesting evening.

Glad Hitch explained the "brick" expression. I've been puzzling over that one since the Chronicles of Narnia.

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 12, 2004 10:31 AM

Here's a Famous People Dinner Party: at the table, Baden-Powell, Kropotkin, T.H. White, and E.O. Wilson, and let them talk about hive insects.

Don't forget Bernard.

There's also the dissident entomologist in Utz who studies flies as his form of personal rebellion against the Communist authorities in Prague because they are "nature's anarchists".

Posted by: Alan Allport at May 12, 2004 10:40 AM

I B-P's bees pissed you Martha, get a load of Canterbury's in Henry V:

Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.

Posted by: ROBBIE at May 12, 2004 11:21 AM

"...Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience:..."

Don't tell me Robbie approves of that?

About ants, there's also Thoreau (skip to Paragraph 12), who I'd bet was an inspiration for White.

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 12, 2004 12:22 PM

There's also the ancient legend of the Myrmidons, which emphasizes the industriousness and obedience of ants. In Plato's "Phaedo" Socrates points to bees and ants as models of social co-operation.

Posted by: David Tomlin at May 12, 2004 01:15 PM

And there's "Go to the ant, thou sluggard."

That one and many more are in this list.

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 12, 2004 01:34 PM

Returning to the topic of Baden Powell; Thomas Pakenham has a cutting portrayal of him in his Boer War:

"That Mafeking was not surrendered was largely due to B-P's remarkable professionalism - the will to win, behind the mask of good clean fun. He was a junior member of Wolseley's magic circle [1], one of the elite of British officers thrown up by those endless little frontier wars of the new imperialism. He served as Chief of Staff in Rhodesia in 1896. The War Office Intelligence Department recommended him as a man who could be trusted to succeed in an independent command. He paddled his own canoe. Indeed, he had paddled it on the Limpopo almost too single-mindedly during the Matabele War (though this incident had been hushed up). He had been accused by the Colonial Office of murdering an African chief, whom he had taken prisoner. He admitted killing him, but claimed that the man deserved what he got. The case had been referred to Lansdowne [Secretary for War], but Lansdowne had backed B-P, and it fizzled out.

There was, it must be said, one rather chilling facet to B-P's character: he played to win, and he made his own rules as he went along. But the charge of murdering an African chief had lost him no friends amongst white Rhodesians. In fact he was something of a hero to them - and this was one of the main reasons why the War Office had chosen him for this present command. He had also published a popular book on the Matabele campaign that showed he could out-Boer the Boers, both in his skill at scouting and in what he called the 'sport' of 'nigger-hunts'" ...

Shades of Breaker Morant there.

[1] Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley - the original Modern Major-General of the Pirates of Penzance.

Posted by: Alan Allport at May 12, 2004 01:34 PM

"...There was, it must be said, one rather chilling facet to B-P's character: he played to win, and he made his own rules as he went along. But the charge of murdering an African chief had lost him no friends amongst white Rhodesians. ..."

One of the webloggers has been quoting this Monty Python bit lately:

"Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs? Yours etc. Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic."

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 12, 2004 01:48 PM

I spent some time in the Boy Scouts. We spent most of our time recycling newspapers. I learned how to cover myself with sticks and call it a lean-to. One of the kids blew his hand off with a firework. I later learned that one of the boys (extremely awkward and not very bright, but also very large) subsequently killed one of the other boys, apparently for teasing him one too many times. A few went on to be Eagle Scouts but I'll spare everyone those stories.

All in all not what B-P had in mind.

Posted by: Alan Hogue at May 13, 2004 10:01 AM

At least your troop was lively.

I joined the Brownie Scouts expecting to learn about camping and instead found myself in something that felt more like custody than voluntary activity, being told to make an imitation bird feeder decoration out of a pill bottle and some cardboard. Making real bird feeders would at least have been interesting, tho it still wasn't woodcraft. But imitation bird feeders?

Dunno why I stayed in through not only Brownies but up into the senior scouting level. It never really did get interesting except for this one cool lesson in Japanese cooking. Got a merit badge in rollerskating, though.

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 13, 2004 12:07 PM

My father went into scouting in a big way when I was a kid as he led Cub and Scout troops for almost a decade. My dad and I consequently had a reverence for B.P. that bordered on the mystical-- when I was 8, we went to the Boy Scout Museum in Ottawa and I bought a comic book version of his life which made it all seem incredibly interesting, while my Dad owned reprints of Scouting For Boys and the original Wolf Cub Handbook. We owned old radio recordings of B.P. (I can still hear it now, talking almost like Colonel Blimp: "My fellow Scouts", giving a tidy little sermon about true happiness and other virtues). We even--and I can't believe I'm admitting this--had a picture of B.P. on top of our mantle for a couple of years (it was supposed to have been temporary-- my Dad bought the picture for the Scout Troop but it stayed, like a picture of a khaki uncle). We sort of developed an idea that B.P. wasn't as great as he seemed later on-- I think my Dad read a less than flattering account of Mafeking, so Hitchens' fascinating piece isn't that shocking (though his tacit support of the Hitler Youth is)

I actually have lots of fond memories of the scouting experience-- I don't think my father was more alive than when he was trying to get a bunch of rowdy nine year olds to do a grand howl. Nor was I as a rowdy nine year old.

Posted by: Graeme Burk at May 13, 2004 09:29 PM

I took a deferment; I had other priorities.

Posted by: Alan Allport at May 14, 2004 07:29 AM

You should have tried Camp Fire Girls. It was started in 1910 by the wives of the men who brought Boys Scouts to the U.S. It didn’t have a religious bent and was pretty diverse from beginning.

I was involved for eighteen years. I had a great time. We really learned how to camp - I can put up a tent without a flashlight on a rainy night and manage to have a dry place to sleep.

I think the Blue Bird Wish, which is the main creed, shows how the organization really differs from Boy Scouts:

To have fun
To learn to make things
To remember to finish what I begin
To keep my temper most of the time
To learn about nature and living outdoors
To have adventures with people, places, and things
To make friends

Posted by: Barbara MacDonald at May 15, 2004 04:12 PM

Thx re: Camp Fire Girls. My grandmother, aunt and great-aunt were all active in the Camp Fire Girls but that was in Pennsylvania. We didn't have a local Camp Fire organization in Massachusetts. That "Blue Bird Wish" is very nice, including the substitution of "wish" for "oath."

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 15, 2004 04:31 PM