Elegy For The Not-Famous

A very interesting piece by Charles Moore in today's Telegraph is really worth taking the time to read. It is about the unnoticed and the unsung, the average, common people without an ax to grind or a message to howl. The good and decent and mostly silent majority.

A friend who had just opened her house for a day in aid of the village church wrote to me this week. The opening had been a success, she said, despite the rain. The crowd were "the best people in the world, unsung and unnoticed by politicians and press simply because they are so nice".

I received this letter shortly after listening to an item on the Today programme. It was a joint interview with Will Rigby, whose twin brother, John, was recently killed serving in Iraq, and the twins' father, Doug.

Like John, Will Rigby was also a soldier in Iraq. When John was fatally wounded in a bomb attack in Basra, Will was able to be with him at his bedside, reminiscing, "telling a few jokes", holding his hand, until he died. It was their 24th birthday.

Will Rigby did not sound like a poetic type, but there was something of the beautiful Prayer Book funeral service in him when he said that he found it "a great comfort" to think that he and John had "come into the world on the same day" and that on that very day "he left us".

Corporal Rigby is still a serving soldier, and he may therefore be going back to Iraq. He was asked what he thought about that. He said that the Army was doing good work there. "I have a job to do," he said. "Where they say, I go."

What did his father think of the risk to his surviving son? "We have steeled ourselves to the possibility," said Doug Rigby. "We will support him."

The Rigby family came originally from the Sussex village in which I live, and they still live and work in the area. But I do not think I am indulging in sentimental local patriotism by suggesting that they represent those "unsung and unnoticed" people whom my correspondent praised.

Luckily, for the past 60 years at least, the great majority of such people have not been asked to defend their values with their lives. But let John Rigby, who did so - and his suffering family - stand for them all.

It is true that press and politicians find it difficult to notice such people. We are both, in our different ways, schooled to look for trouble, grievance, noise. The MP pays more attention to the constituent who moans than the one who gets on with his life. The reporter is more interested in the very small number of people who commit murder than the very large number of people who don't. That is inevitable…..

…..Popular history, as it was taught until the last 30 years, worked successfully on the "famous men" theory. It furnished a narrative of heroism (and villainy) from which people could understand the achievements of their country and culture and derive examples to follow or avoid.

Now such history is disapproved of, partly because it allegedly ignores the achievements of the common man and woman. This is a misunderstanding. Those of us who live everyday, apparently unremarkable lives are not insulted by examples of greatness, but inspired by them.

What is true, though, is that we are also inspired by others not known to fame. This theme has run through the letters on the page opposite in recent days about epitaphs. There is great eloquence and power in the message that can be sent by the death of someone unknown, or even nameless.

That is why Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard remains one of the greatest poems in our language (recently celebrated as such, I notice, by Gordon Brown). It is entirely about people who never did anything that the world heard about; it gives them dignity by setting them beside those who did. For similar reasons, the story of young John Rigby touches us.

It is fashionable these days to tear down heroes almost as soon as they are minted. The media lives by the motto, "If it bleeds, it leads." Reporters and politicians pay attention to whoever is able to howl the loudest. And the decent, quiet, good people are forgotten. Overlooked as if they did not exist. Moore mentions a poem I had quite forgotten reading years ago. One wonders if it is still taught at all these days when the curriculums at schools are increasingly laden with pop theory nonsense. Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard captures the lives of the unsung, unnoticed people. If you haven't read it, now is a good time. If you have read it, but forgotten it, as I did, now is a good time to reacquaint yourself with it.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

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  By Lars Walker, Saturday, 4 August , 2007 @ 8:20 am

  Splendid. Thanks for that.

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  By Chris, Sunday, 5 August , 2007 @ 5:42 am

  You are correct in noting that the impulse in today’s society is to bring the exemplary back to the herd, to sully the individual’s (or the nation’s) achievements, to disparage their contributions or sacrifices.

  We used to look for heroes. Now we need to search for them.

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