Courage is not just a virtue; it is the form of every virtue under test. For a kindness or honesty which is only kind or honest while it is safe is not very virtuous. Pontius Pilate was merciful – till it became risky. (C.S. Lewis)
It’s not just virtue that needs courage. Jokes can need a little courage too. On one of Prince Philip’s visits to Australia, a virtue-signalling politico decided he would be asked the same questions as any immigrant.
Border Official: “Do you have a criminal record?”
Prince Philip: “I had no idea it was still a requirement.”
Witty remarks need wit – and timing (the worthlessness of ‘l’esprit d’escalier’ – that clever retort you think of whle descending the starcase after the party – has been proverbial for centuries). Humour cannot survive a too-timid inner censor (“Can I really say that? Dare I really say that?”) stealing the moment.
I’m not just talking about the overt courage some jokes need. That can be very real of course. Christabel Bielenberg fell in love with a German in 1932 and married him in 1934.
‘There can’t be many weddings in which the father of the bride stops the car on the road to the church and says to his daughter, “You can still call it off.”
In the very last days of WWII in Europe, she walked into the mayor’s office in the German community where she lived and noticed that the picture of Adolf Hitler was missing from the wall. Seeing her glance, the mayor explained he had put it in the fire the day before. Christabel thought of a joke about Adolf and his picture, automatically reminded herself not to say it out loud – and then realised with delight that for the first time in many years she could say it out loud, she no longer had to think first whether everyone present was ‘safe’. In the joke, Adolf muses to his picture, “I wonder what will happen to us after the war?” The picture replies, “I don’t wonder – I know: you’ll be hung and I’ll be unhung.” The mayor, like the vast majority of Germans, had never heard it – and till the day before would not have dared laugh at it. He spent the rest of the aftenoon suddenly guffawing and murmering, “hung – unhung”. Despite everything, the new freedom to laugh seems to have been a relief to him too. He – unlike Christabel but like too many Germans – had not had the courage to remain aware of his inner censor during the Nazi years; it had become part of him.
It’s not just the comedian who needs a little courage. The audience can also use a little of it. Prince Philip once joked to a British student in China that if he stayed there too long he might acquire ‘slitty eyes’. Thinking people (people not too scared to think) know that a joke does not mean what it literally says (and that Prince Philip did not imagine that the facial features of other nationalities could be caught through proximity, like a disease). Imagine that, back in 1937, visiting a family funeral in Germany, he had told a British student there to beware staying too long lest his head become squarer. The alleged ‘squareheads’ of native Germans in the first half of the 20th century betokened the too ordered, too obedient, too constrained thoughts within them, as the alleged ‘slitty eyes’ of native Chinese in the second half betokened the deceitful propaganda of the CCP. It should not be hard to get the joke’s point – unless of course, the very idea of thinking about an ethnic slur before condemning it is too terrifying to contemplate. “Do not trust China. China is asshole.” as a chinaman in Hong Kong more recently put it.
Orwell explained that putting the mind in a politically-correct box kills a writer’s creativity. Such cowardly conformity also hurts the sense of humour – the sense of humour.
The courage to joke also helps if your position tends to make others nervous:
“I realised afterwards that all his so-called ‘gaffes’ were quite the reverse. They were masterclasses in putting people at their ease. If he’d kept the royal drawbridge up and encouraged deference, all he would have had in his 73 years as the Queen’s husband would have been a series of terrified, tongue-tied people to talk to at a thousand events. For a serious, curious, clever man, that would have been agony. What he wanted was information, and perhaps a few laughs.” (The Truth about Prince Philip’s Gaffes)
And facing your death with courage will often mean facing it with humour. When the brilliant Oxford mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah (not so long before his own death) told Prince Philip how sorry he was to hear he was standing down from official duties in late 2017, Prince Philip replied:
‘Well, I can’t stand up much longer!’
The freedom to make a joke. The freedom to take a joke. Freedoms worth tending in the garden of your mind.
Excellent.
Thank you, Niall – one of your most insightful pieces.
Though the man is gone, his legacy is inspiring.
RIP
All men go, it’s the legacy that counts.
I’ve long said Philip just said the things other people think, he said them with more panache. Absolute legend 😎
‘The freedom to make a joke. The freedom to take a joke.’
Joking, banter, or whatever you choose to call it is fine if it goes both ways. We see it in many environments: work-places sports teams etc. and on TV we see the three presenters of Top Gear doing it. It’s fine.
Did it go both ways with Prince Philip, or did he know that there was next to no chance of anyone throwing a joke back at him?
What if the ‘slitty-eyed’ comment had brought about the respionse
‘There’s no chance of that, Phil. After all you’ve lived in Britain for decades but you’re still a greasy Greek.’
Another story. Prince Philip, out on a visit being greeted by someone who asked ‘How was your flight, sir?’
Reply ‘Have you ever flown?’
‘Yes, sir. Many times,’
‘Well, it was like that?’
Was that an amusing riposte or a smart-arse reply from a protected person?
Was Prince Philip open to banter from those he met on official occasions or was he regularly relying on the differences in status and power to keep him safe from jocular replies?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, and I doubt if you know the answewrs either. But they are worth asking.
This from a resident of Scotland.
Nah. This is not some medieval king we are talking about, someone who could have your head if you looked at him sideways. He was just quipping like a public schoolboy (trust me, I am one), just with the unusual feature of getting his asides reported by the press he so rightly loathed.
Doubt no longer. 🙂
He’d been through that kind of thing before. In the days when princess Elizabeth was clearly starting to fall in love with him and her mother was not yet won round to the idea, the latter was wont to refer to Philip as ‘the hun’ – a reference to his Germanic family connections (the joke enhanced by his nordic looks). So if you want to imagine the student’s reply, a better one would be along the lines of: “Don’t worry, sir; even if I looked more like the people here, I still wouldn’t believe everything I’m told. After all, you’re as Aryan-looking as they come but you chose to follow your German-Jewish refugee headmaster to Gordonstoun school, not your siblings to Germany.”
It was his 5000th reply to the question, “How was your flight?” I don’t think my 5000th reply to that question would be as witty or as mild – and I doubt yours would be either. 🙂 (The guy he made it to probably dined out on the story for years.)
[BTW, we should all be reflecting on what our 5000th reply to “Are you a racist?” would be – though maybe we’ll be lucky if the 5th let alone the 5000th time of asking treats it as a question. 🙂 ]
My penultimate quote testifies it was the latter. The extensive evidence that those who served under him in the navy thought a lot of him suggests that testimony is reliable – that he could handle the integration of banter and discipline well.
The following story I owe to a British consul – if it has entered the public domain (before now), that is news to me, though I’ve no doubt she also told it to others.
– At one point during a long event (seeing the great wall, IIRC) in China, Prince Philip murmured to his minders, “I could do with a pee.” This seemingly led to a certain amount of consternation amongst their Chinese handlers, ending with the reply, “Please tell his highness velly solly but peas out of season”.
– One can show oneself a bigoted racist by mocking the Chinese interpreters’ cluelessness – or wonder if that was a CCP joke at Prince Philip’s expense. Anyone suspecting the latter can again show bigoted racism by noticing such a joke is just a bit practical, so less kind than any joke by Prince Philip – or be too woke to notice that. For the record, I think the Chinese interpreters had been trained on Jane Austen and Dickens (and the belief they were contemporary UK writers describing conditions in the UK under Thatcher) but not on British vernacular.
– The consul had the story from Prince Philip who thought it very funny. He thought what I do about the Chinese interpreters comical mistake – but also thought that, in terms of ‘mischievous fate’, the joke was on him.
Excellent post.
The Guardian newspaper said that Prince Philip was a “man of his time” – they forgot to mention that it was a better time, a time when people could speak without fear.
Niall Kilmartin writes, “the latter was won’t to refer to Philip”
I’m pretty sure that autocorrect has betrayed you and substituted “won’t” for “wont”.
James Strong, I think your question was worth asking. But in practice the Royals aren’t protected persons in the sense you mean. If your boss makes a smart-arse comment it really is dangerous to your career to answer him or her back. Your boss has power over you. Modern royalty, not so much.
To quote the reply a chum of mine made when asked that: “No, I’m not a socialist of any kind.”
He called overtly fascist-types “the old racist Right”, and used the term “the neo-racist Left” to refer to what we now call The Woke. I think neo-racist Left is a term that needs to get used more often.
Perry de Havilland writes, “He was just quipping like a public schoolboy”. Or like a soldier or a sailor.
By far the most exciting part of Philip’s life must have been active service in the Navy during WWII, e.g. as second in command of HMS Wallace. That sort of banter is typical of men who have seen combat. It must have been strange to go from that atmosphere to a life mostly constrained by protocol and where he played second fiddle to his wife who is completely constrained by protocol.
But to repeat, I do think James Strong makes a fair point. I also think, with all due respect to Philip – which in my book is a lot of respect – that like all witty people he sometimes could not resist making the quip that popped into his head even though it crossed the line.
But if you want an example of cruel wit from a member of the British royal family, consider what Elizabeth I said to poor Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. In 1693 John Aubrey wrote that:
Natalie Solent (Essex) (April 12, 2021 at 9:15 am), thanks: “won’t” has now been corrected to “wont” – and I’ll agree with your tactful suggestion that it was the autocorrect that perpetrated the typo (after all, it may well have been). 🙂
I’m sure that is true – because it is also my point. Some people are always making mistakes. Others often act well. No-one I know acts at all while never making an error. Prince Philip did not let the fear of error freeze him in combat or in conversation.
As regards
it is also my point that we live in a time when the lines are being erased and new ones – intentionally vague and shifting – drawn to confine us. The Grauniad calls Philip “a man for his time” instead of “a man for all time” lest he inspire us with his common-sense attitude toward the old lines and his lack of fear for the new.
We are living through an age of cancel culture assault on our freedom of speech. Wrongthink humour is taboo – apart from there is a comedy club that specialises in non-PC humour – Comedy Unleashed. Their Youtube playlist is a fucking gem. This is my fave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d8U7AVLJro
Among the myriad of stories I particularly enjoyed the time he was engaged in competitive sailing at Cowes and was told by a fellow skipper to “Get out of the way Stavros”. His reply apparently was “it’s my wife’s f**king ocean and I’ll do what I f**king like on it”.
If true (and if not it should have been) he clearly was able to take it as well as dish it out.
I thought it was Peter Cook who said that. But Peter Cook was a fair bit younger than Prince Philip, so it may be that Peter Cook nicked his joke.
Jokes? Apparently the biased broadcasting company have had 170,000 complaints that coverage of his demise interfered with their viewing of Eastenders and Masterchef. Yes, the jokes are out there and they breed . . .
Courage in comedy is critical, but in practice, honesty about what’s being called “comedy” is just as important. Too much of what’s called “humour”, in both life and the media, is thinly-disguised flippancy, bullying and ridicule that’s only “funny” to those who already despise the target, or are willing to join in despising it. If these SJ advocates’ childhood experiences were like mine — where “Can’t you take a joke?” was the universal and hypocritical defense against any accusations about such bullying; hypocritical, because if the target could take such “jokes” the bullies wouldn’t have bothered making them in the first place — it doesn’t surprise me that they would see it only as a weapon, and fit for use only against those one hates.
The freedom to make and take a joke turns on having enough good faith in one’s fellows to be able to tell shared humility from hostile humiliation, and enough faith in oneself to put up with the latter when inevitably dished out. If that social trust has been eroded, both sides have to show themselves willing to laugh at themselves first before it can be restored, and that’s more difficult than most realize — everyone has thresholds beyond which the joke stops being funny, and many don’t even realize what those thresholds are until they’re violated.
One way we know that the Left is becoming increasingly fascistic and totalitarian is because the Left is decreasingly able to take a joke or give a funny one.
Q. How many comedians would it take to change a light bulb?
A. Don’t bother- the lightbulb just went home after all those comedians made up jokes about it.
Going back to what The Jannie said about complaints to the BBC about their coverage of the death of Prince Philip.
I was one of those who complained. I think it would have been appropriate to clear the schedules on BBC1, which is still regarded as their main channel.
But the BBC cleared the schedules on BBC 1 and BBC 2, and showed the same programmes at the same time.
(I have heard, but diddn’t see it myself, that they stopped all broadcasts on BBC 4.)
I asked the BBC: why they cleared both channels, how many viewers they think can receive BBC 1 but not BBC 2, and vice versa, who made the decision, and was one element of their decision that they diddn’t want anyone to be able to compare viewing figures between channels that broadcast tributes to Prince Philip and channels that conitinued with usual programmes.
I worded my complaint very carefully, and I don’t expect a satisfactory answer.
However, would any of the libertarian-minded readers here like to justify the BBC’s decisions?
The libertarian-minded solution is obvious: the BBC can not be ‘fixed’, abolish the absurd anachronistic thing & the problem goes away. At the very least defund it and let non-tax-funded economic reality do the rest.
I noticed the BBC’s odd behaviour too and wondered at it – though I did not complain because one of my conjectured answers was that they were compensating themselves for being (almost) unable to criticise him by ensuring there would be complaints about their coverage. So I did not complain because I did not wish to be ‘played’ by beeboids.
Making both major BBC channels mono-subject was a very odd decision. Having one channel cover the death fairly wall-to-wall would have been expected, just as it would be for a royal wedding, a major historical anniversary or any such. Prince Philip would certainly have had something to say about their flooding both channels – “I said not too much fuss.”
My first theory was that the virus year has left them struggling to fill schedules so they grasped the opportunity – they can always show the bumped stuff later. But I will watch for whether any woke ‘use’ is made of the complaints.
Pointless as well. I thought that it was pretty stupid of the BBC to cancel the regular programming on both Beeb one and two to broadcast the same coverage of the Royal demise on both channels at once.
If it is indeed true that Prince Philip was being asked the same questions as anyone else arriving in Oz, then Peter Cook would have been asked that question too. It may well be that Cook reused the Royal joke, but it is also possible to imagine a somewhat similar joke occurring independently to each of them.
Niall and Perry are correct – when people were rude to Prince Philip, and they sometimes were, he took it in good heart.
The Queen is polite to everyone – and expects everyone to be polite to her. Prince Philip had no such expectations – and did not give a toss what people said to him.
Even tyrants (and Prince Philip was no tyrant) sometimes do not care what people say about them – as long as it is open and to their faces.
For example Louis XIV (the “Sun King”) was once confronted by a servant woman who started to shout at him (in obscene language) about his love of war, guards moved to arrest her but the King stopped them. The woman came to no harm. The “Sun King” was most certainly a tyrant – but he was also concerned about his reputation, to arrest a powerful noble is one thing, to arrest a peasant woman (who could do you no harm) is quite another – too much like “punching down”, not being a Gentleman. Already by the late 17th century – the more powerful you were, the better you were supposed to behave towards people who had no power at all.
As for “medieval Kings” – well some Kings were known for their short temper and nasty language.
For example, Louis X did not get his nickname of “Louis the Quarrelsome” by being polite to everyone.
But Louis X also abolished slavery in France, broke the back of serfdom (he did not formally abolish it – but he made it unenforceable), allowed the Jews back into France, and gave the Provinces charters that lasted till 1789.
Not bad for a Medieval King who did not have good health and, if I remember correctly, died at the age of 26 – having only been on the throne a couple of years.
George III was known for being polite to people – and personally nice. Hence, his campaign to get the clockmaker Harrison the money he had won for solving the longitude problem – no one else really cared that the clockmaker had been cheated by the government, but George III was outraged by it.
For example, when a man tried to stab him to death and was grabbed by guards the King called out “please do not hurt him – can you not see he is mad?”
A sad omen for the future – because George III himself went mad, due to badly treated disease.
On the other hand some monarchs do seem to have had bad moral character.
For example, one can not really blame the illness of Henry VIII (started by his jousting accident) for his cruelty – because he had always had that streak in him.
Someone who made a point of personally writing out (in his own hand) how someone was to be executed (for example Robert Aske), and personally ordered new ways of torturing people to death (“I cooked the cook”), is not nice.
This was not normal behaviour for a monarch of the time – they might have people executed, but they did not tend to write out detailed (and sadistic) instructions about how it was to be done.
By the way – in the 18th century the Empress Elizabeth of Russia swore an oath to have no one executed, and kept that oath (in spite of fighting major wars), this was at a time when execution was common in many countries (including England) for quite small scale thefts.
History might have been very different had the Empress Elizabeth lived a few months longer – her armies had defeated the armies of Frederick of Prussia and Prussia looked like it was going to be removed from the map (which in our “timeline” did not happen till 1945), but then she died and Czar Paul was a Frederick fan. So no Cossacks riding into Berlin.
Goebbels used to read the deliverance of Frederick “the Great” to Hitler in the bunker in the last days – how defeat can seem certain and then your enemy suddenly die.
Part of Pontius Pilate’s problem was that he was not a nice or merciful guy by habit. He was regarded as a bad guy _by Romans_. So he didn’t really have any practice at being the good guy, and he wobbled.
Suburbanbanshee (April 13, 2021 at 9:55 pm), IIRC, a while earlier, Pilate had attempted a ‘targeted elimination of troublemakers’ by sending selected (but not very well selected) men to mingle with a crowd, and it had gone very badly wrong for him (and for many in the crowd). He’d been formally reprimanded for that. Therefore to have it reported that he’d crushed a riot caused by denying another crowd their customary choice of which passover prisoner to release would not have helped his career. Whether Pilate was unusually “not nice or merciful” by the standards of Rome’s cruel civilisation is debatable. (Even the ancient Romans sometimes noticed that, by the standards of their own times, they were a hard lot both in their work and in their entertainments.) I suggest that careerist timidity played as much a role as Roman cruelty in Pilate’s contribution to the many human faults that propelled Christ to the cross.