That brings us to Miniver Cheevy.
‘Miniver Cheevy’
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam’s neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediæval grace Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.
Fancies and Fallacies
Here’s a man whose predicament begs for hoots of laughter. Reread his take on the Medici and how though “he had never seen one/ He would have sinned incessantly” had he joined those Florentine aristocrats and bankers. Consider the ironic juxtaposition of “mediæval grace” with “iron clothing.” That scratching of the head in the final quatrain calls to mind some bumpkin declaring, “Well, I’m just plain bumfuzzled how I got here.”
Yet here too is Miniver the Romantic. He is tragic for his addiction to nostalgia and the escape he seeks at the bottom of a bottle. If only he’d carried that bright sword while astride a prancing horse in the days of Lancelot and Arthur, or stormed Troy alongside Achilles, he might have drawn the breath of life as a hero rather than as a foundling in a world he scorns.
Miniver idealizes that lost world of his fantasies. He dreams of a time when he might have kissed the hand of a Guinevere, while failing to acknowledge that filth, lice, and disease were as ubiquitous in that age as today’s cellphones and tattoos. A trip by time machine into one of those cities “of ripe renown” might soon send him scuttling back to the modern world.
Moreover, his obsession with the past, though admirable in its idealism, is misdirected in another way. A different man might have absorbed the valor and virtues of the ancient Greeks and Romans, fitted them to the modern world, and become heroic by that transformation. He might have taken as his own the knightly code of a Galahad or Gawain as expressed in legend, protecting women, defending the poor and the helpless, practicing generosity, and demonstrating loyalty to the deserving. Miniver has the opportunities to do so, as evidenced by the fact that he is resting from his labors, meaning that he must have interactions with others.
Living in the Moment
Esolen’s point is valid. Miniver fails to enrich the present with gifts from the past, indulging himself instead in a faux nostalgia cobbled together from romances and ancient poems. Those seeking today to cancel our culture by destroying statues of renowned men and women, bowdlerizing books, and eradicating customs and holidays, also despise the age in which they live, though they blame the past rather than idolize it.
Here I would add a third group of people whose unhappiness prevents them from fully engaging the present with energy and love. Like Miniver Cheevy, these men and women, many of them of a conservative bent, admire the “days of old,” whether it’s the deeds of America’s Founders, ancestors who fought in the Civil War, or The Greatest Generation who endured a Great Depression and won a world war. These are the people who, having determined that the place and time they inhabit are beyond redemption, can find nothing worthy of their love in our present age. Miniver Cheevy drinks from a bottle of alcohol, and they drink from a bottle of despair. Like Esolen’s progressives and like Miniver, they curse the commonplace, seeing the evils of the present but turning a blind eye to its goodness and virtues.
We needn’t end like Miniver Cheevy, a self-proclaimed victim of fate. If instead we hope to reinvigorate our culture, return virtue to our public square, and live meaningful lives, we must work to restore the past’s treasures, blend them into the present, and bring greater meaning and depth to ourselves and to our culture.
