No Culture, No Creed

Years ago, long before cable and streaming, a film from Hollywood’s golden age starring the sublime Leslie Howard, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), frequently aired on television. At a moment of high danger, facing death, the elegant Sir Percy Blakeney finds strength in reciting poetry. Since he’s engaged in courageous opposition to what the Revolution at its bloodiest is doing to France, what comes to mind is Shakespeare’s Richard II, in which John of Gaunt memorably describes England as

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in a silver sea. . . .

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

I don’t remember what tender age I was when I first took in that moment