The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

328 chapter 28English traveler, who, with his brave young wife, went to the stronghold ofthe [slave] traffic in Africa, and grappled with it there,” or hundreds of othertales of derring-do. It is 1911, remember, and the place is London for theBritish edition and New York for the American. In 1911 even sophisticatedparents in the English-speaking world would not laugh out loud at thedescription of Sir Samuel’s “British pluck,” or of “the gallant Lady Baker, thefirst white woman ever to visit these parts, [who] supported him heroicallyin his determination.” 24The volumes are drenched in ethical stories in the style of the violent,imperialist, muscular-Christian, and neopagan courage-worshiping worldabout to be blown to pieces at Verdun. “The Child’s Book of the UnitedStates” in the same volume 14 reproduces a painting of Commodore Perryat Lake Erie, together with a sophisticated criticism of the painter’s inaccuracies,since the painter was of course not there. The narrative ends withPerry’s “We have met the enemy, they are ours: two ships, two brigs, oneschooner and one sloop.”“The Child’s Book of Famous Stories” gives a vividprécis of The Count of Monte Cristo, ending with the novel’s last sentence:“‘My friend,’ said Valentine, ‘has not the count just told us that all humanwisdom is contained in these two words—wait and hope?’” No wonder thatthe bourgeois boys and girls in the 1910s and 1920s who consumed such stuffgrew up in the 1930s and 1940s to be saints of stoicism, and in the 1950s and1960s the conquerors of suburbia. 25What makes “courage” applicable to us humans or to us Chicagoans or tous English-speaking bourgeois children 1911–1955—and not merely toabstracted rational beings from nowhere in particular—are such stories, ourown stories, much beloved, “real” or imagined, the stories of Father Damien,of Lady Baker, of Shane, of Horatius at the bridge, of Jeanne d’Arc in 1431refusing it is usually claimed on pain of death to reassume women’s clothing,of Bishop Hugh Latimer in 1555 remarking calmly to his stake-mate as thetorch was applied, “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man. Weshall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shallnever be put out.”What makes someone South Asian is not merely an abstractbelief in the doctrine of transmigration of souls but a cherished remembranceof stories from the Puranas, even if transmitted mainly through Bollywood.What makes someone Japanese is not merely a theoretical devotion to thedoctrines of Zen but a familiarity with the stories of the Noh, Kyogen, andKabuki theater, even if transmitted mainly through comic books.