Gotham Diary:
George, formerly Baby Cambridge
24 July 2013
Thank goodness that’s over — I was checking the Telegraph site every two minutes. (“Baby Cambridge” was their idea.) I applaud the choice of George. With one exception (the Regent), the bearers of that name have been conscientious kings, even if they weren’t always appreciated at the time. It’s a bit unnerving, though, to realize that the new prince’s great-great-grandfather, George VI, was king when I was born.
Why have I been waiting to learn the baby’s name? I’ve been asking myself why it’s interesting, or trying to — since it just is, and has been for as long as I can remember. I memorized the royal succession from the Conquerer on down when I was in junior high school — a list that hasn’t changed since. In boarding school, I opened an account at Blackwell’s and purchased such worthy titles as GW Prothero’s Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (Oxford, 1894; Fourth Edition, 1913, reprinted 1964 and therefore hot off the press). (Don’t even think of asking how much of it I’ve read.) From the present perspective, it seems clear enough that I made this regal arcana (the mystery being: who cares?) into a sort of collector’s fantasy game that had the advantage of being played by nobody else that I knew. So I could be as good or as bad at it as I was, and keep things fun.
(I take little pleasure from congratulations for having done something necessary and difficult. I can only take pleasure if I enjoyed doing it, in which case necessity would be irrelevant and difficulty invisible. Balls of all kinds vex me, because unlike almost everything else in the world, they won’t stay put. I don’t think that I could explain my profound aversion to sports and unpleasant exertion more concisely.)
I collected facts about real people, mostly dead ones. The kings and queens of England began as baseball cards, but as I grew up, they became the principal nodes in ever-ramifying stories. I never regarded any of the crowned heads as heroes, or invested them with super powers. They just seemed to me to be extraordinarily privileged mortals, as prone to failure as the rest of us. But they had so much more to work with! At some point, this game of mine matured into an adult interest in the subject of English monarchy, which has certainly seen worse days as well as better. (Grander, anyway.) Over time, an interest in plain old regular history welled up around it. But the old expertise (such as it was) never faded much, and my ability to look back on the events of the past thousand years is kept limber by the armature of a thousand years of names and dates.
***
We have just heard news of rather more personal concern. Our son-in-law, Ryan, has been offered his dream job in San Francisco. Megan learned a few weeks ago that she would be welcome to transfer to her employer’s San Francisco branch, and that her package would include a moving allowance and temporary housing. Plans to move out there were cemented, however, long before either of them had jobs lined up, so we’ve had plenty of time to get over the shock of losing them, to the extent that their moving to the other side of the country is a loss. We have, as I mentioned the other day, our own plans, also cemented, to spend Thanksgiving with them there, and we look forward to annual Fire Island holidays. Wishing Megan and Ryan well makes it impossible to feel sorry for ourselves at any great length. But of course we do, momentarily, all the time.