One can’t speak for Dr Johnson’s experience of London, but certainly it seems true that the point at which one becomes tired of Londoners is also the point at which one tires, quite suddenly and distressingly, of life.
Indeed, to be trapped at a dinner party next to a lawyer from The City, and to have to endure her earnest soliloquies on the sacrifices one must make to survive on £70 000 a year, is to be overcome by the urge to plunge a fish-knife into one’s eye. She has, after all, failed to take all the other hints so far and perhaps slumping, bleeding and blind, into the prawn starter might cause her some indefinable sense of unease.
It should have been easy to remain rational, to remind oneself that this paragon of loathsome self-interest was in no way representative of the great English race. It should have been easy, that is, had it not coincided with a curious statement in the press by someone called James Whittaker, who was described as a ”royal commentator”. One assumed at first that this was simply an understated insult, something like a ”right royal muppet” but with a lisp and a cheroot, until further reading revealed that he was, indeed, a commentator on royalty. Presumably when the revolution comes, he will provide running commentary. (A weak joke, to be sure, but then so is royalty.)
According to Whittaker, this week’s official break-up of Prince William and Kate Whatsername was entirely a matter of pedigree. ”I just don’t think she had the breeding, quite honestly,” he whinnied, ”and I’m not being snooty, I’m being factual.”
Perhaps an aside is needed at this point, to explain the idea of breeding to all those who are not sexually aroused by the brass candlestick holders on Bechstein uprights, or who have never coveted their neighbour’s porcelain Beatrix Potter figurines. In a nutshell, this notion derives from the European pastime of breeding thoroughbreds, whereby two athletic animals with small brains and nervous temperaments were forced to mate, and their offspring — sporting long faces and longer teeth — were hailed as superior beings. They also did the same thing with horses.
In other words, an ancient folly. But it does seem odd that of all Europe’s nose-measuring, tooth-yanking, hymen-prodding aristocracy fetishists, it should be the English who persevere so bravely in celebrating the imaginary world of human pedigrees.
Which is not to deny the disproportionate number of Britons who have towered above world events in the past 500 years. Indeed, today’s Londoners are standing on the shoulders of giants. Which is a good thing, because they’re all dwarves. The average six-footer who strolls down Bond Street or takes the air in Green Park will quickly find himself adrift in a Sargasso Sea of balding, mousy heads, bobbing like jellyfish in the drizzle, with distant islands popping up here and there as Nigerians, Dutch girls and the odd Australian wade through the tide of genetic mediocrity.
Of course, it is very unkind to write off the British masses as revenge for the racialistic verbal flatulence of some minor Lord Muck-on-Toast. But still, if one wanted to be unkind, one might suggest that an Englishman talking about breeding is rather like a McDonald’s burger-impinger lecturing on haute cuisine. Likewise, if you were really cruel, you might point out that in purely physical terms, Britain’s breeding programme reflects not so much a gene pool as a paddling pond, ankle-deep and worryingly warm. But, of course, one is neither unkind nor cruel, so one won’t.
In purely aesthetic terms, however, Mr Whittaker is quite right. Kate didn’t have the breeding, and was threatening to introduce normal-sized teeth and a full head of hair to the Windsor line, vile prole mutations both. The English monarchy has been saved to fulfil its destiny: to disappear in a fog of denial, recrimination and sentimental drivel in 2020, with Buckingham Palace sold to the Japanese and shipped intact to Hokkaido, where it will become Windsor Planet, a theme-park replete with a robotic queen pouring tea into the yapping bionic gobs of a fleet of corgi droids as she shrieks, ”Off with his head!”
Whittaker’s spleen was not unique: hours after the split, royalist rags were insisting that Kate, spineless colonial strumpet that she is, had ditched Wills because she didn’t fancy donning the noble straitjacket of royalty. Cue queenly clichés about the double-edged sword of monarchy: loving granny behind a mask of iron, servant of tradition, slave of duty…
And what a load of thoroughbred manure it is, this wheedling discourse that asks us to feel sympathy for a slave who believes so fervently in the institution of slavery. And as for the appeal to tradition, well, tradition is splendid, but there comes a point when one must gently explain to the cargo cultists and their corgis that the big silver birds are never coming back.
Thank God we live in a country where patronage and power are not automatically conferred on a select few by an accident of breeding, but are instead conferred on a select few by an accident of ANC policy. Viva democracy, viva. And I’m not being snooty, just factual.