Chapter 1 - Introduction: two decisions

Summary

With characteristic humility, Hallam Tennyson omits to name himself as the recipient of this advice from his father:

I cannot refrain from setting down his talk to a young man who was going to the University. – ‘If a man is merely to be a bundle of sensations, he had better not exist at all. He should embark on his career in the spirit of selfless and adventurous heroism; should develop his true self by not shirking responsibility, by casting aside all maudlin and introspective morbidities, and by using his powers cheerfully in accordance with the obvious dictates of his moral consciousness, and so, as far as possible, in harmony with what he feels to be the Absolute Right.’

This advice is familiar in the Victorian public school fiction which promotes a ‘muscular Christianity’. Heroism is selfless before it is adventurous; responsibility exists in facing the morbid, and bowing to the moral necessity of ‘the Absolute Right’. This is an example of something that John R. Reed might describe as moving from the Romantic to the Victorian, from ‘aggressive heroism, or what might be called the imperial will, to controlled heroism, or the reflective will’. Napoleon and Wellington are replaced by the model citizens of SamuelSmiles’ Self Help.