Danger and Inconsistency Abroad

By winter Hamilton's health was beginning to decline. The mysterious events of his ill-fated walking tour through Amsterdam, though they occured twenty years before, were taking their toll. Friends and acquaintances noted that his hands trembled when he whistled. His morning stroll, timed at 45 minutes exactly by an uneducated field hand just one year prior, began to vary. Some days he might stroll for as few as 44, or worse, 37 and a half! The perfectly wound watch that had been T.R.Hamilton was disintigrating with each revolution of the gears. Word spread that his days were numbered. A few unkind souls even suggested that Edgar Hamilton's ghost had returned to Caedcrandudly to wreak revenge on the world's favorite Welsh philosopher.

The Society for Supporters of Hamilton Throughout His Old Age, (led by the famous Ms. E.R. Fields) held a debate on the subject entitled: 'What Should Be Done For The Old Man Now That He Is Done For?,' afterward taking a collection in their namesake's name. An agreement was reached, following weeks of frenzied deliberation, that urgent action ought to be taken on Hamilton's behalf, although no such action was taken until that historic day, April 19 when arose from the back of the room an unknown supporter, referred to in obscure documents only as Richard, or in Ms. Fields' letters (in code, of course.) as T. Lethless. Lethless pointedly suggested that perhaps “Mr. Hamilton might like a change of airs for his health.”

The plan was simple and was implemented by means of funds siphoned from Craxton's recently defunct committee on the abuses of iambic pentameter. Ms.Fields and company elected to send Hamilton on an all-expense paid walking tour of the North American continent. According to their plan, he was to be equipped with a guide, a walking stick, his favorite pipe, and a new tweed coat. His supporters booked him passage on a DC 10 left over from the war, flown by a former RAF officer who also happened to be the treasurer of the aforementioned S. S. of H. T. H. O. A. We know little about the flight apart from Hamilton's own journal, which only notes, "The air over the Channel is not as stiff as in the old days," before it proceeds to, "an inquiry on the mind in relation to epistemology with provisional nod to the Pre-Socratics."

Hamilton's inquiry would have been a classic had not his journal been stolen by a baggage attendant shortly after he landed at O'Hare. Indeed, to this day the journal remains Hamilton's most controversial work. Only three of its reputed 137 pages have been recovered. One was found torn out and floating in the Chicago river three days later. The second surfaced on auction at Christie's in 1965, selling for L1500. The third fell into the hands of the Nixon administration and was not released until some time later, though even then with several startlingly obvious omissions.

Eyewitnesses recall a smile on Hamilton's face when he deplaned. As usual, his mind was elsewhere, busy with more important thoughts than life itself. It is hardly surprising that he walked past the welcoming committee at the gate, past a man holding an orange placard that read, "HAMILTON" in bright letters, out the door into the sleet and rain where he hailed a cab. He asked to be driven to the nearest eating establishment. That happened to be the airport lounge, to which he was conducted by the rapid switch of the vehicle into reverse, depositing him again at the door, whereupon the cabbie demanded payment for his services. Hamilton, already beginning to note the absence of his journal, in which he remembered writing on the way, flew into a panic, gave the cabbie his wallet, and stormed into the airport lounge muttering about the cost of eternity to the stamina of cosmic strings.

Hamilton's famous rebuke to the "Gentlemen's Club" of Uxbridge

Let me introduce you to a particular beast. Nothing less than an ingenious aspect inhabits this beast, something more akin with the human. Lethargy, inhabiting the worst part of our being, cohabits with truth- there securing what we so far refuse to acknowledge, what we so far dare name only in our dreams, what we so far say to ourselves, "Here it is safe because here it can be forgotten."
But we so far do not forget.
We dream.
And for what it is worth gentlemen, your dreams could comingle with those of a Wombat!

BBC interview with Malcolm Muggeridge 1958 (links added by blog maintenance for purposes relating to historical context.)

It is bandied about that in my youth I was expected to be a barrister. Whence this silly supposition comes is a mystery to me. My father being a good Welshman, and my mother loving him anyway, knew that such a thing would never do! Another rumor however, that they expected me to go to missionary school, is correct. Unfortunately, the Russo-Japanese war
[http://www.russojapanesewar.com/index.html] intervened, bringing instability to the waters near foreign boarding schools just when I came of age to be sent away to live with Presbyterians. My father, a stubborn man prone to wild conjecture, utterly lacking in philosophical aplomb, and completely unaware of affairs on the Somme,
[http://www.thesomme.net/] decided when I was older that I should be sent on a backpacking tour through France, the Pyrenees and various parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Despite his best intentions, world events again intervened,

[http://www.firstworldwar.com/] to the detriment of all concerned. I spent the latter days of my youth as a shop boy in Caedcrandudly, the self-same town in which I was born and bred. There, confined, ensconced in a literal high tower of boredom, I developed an appetite for enthusiasm which I hope, shall never be extinguished.

Pense 42

42. A statistician without guile is no longer a statistician.

Hamilton on the Theatre [to which he seldom went.]

Hamlet saying "I do prophesy the election lights on young Fortinbras" in his dying breaths, could not have been a stronger propponent of enthusiasm.

C.W. Peters - Appendices to T.R.Hamilton: Life and Works

Hamilton was barely three years old when he established his reputation as king of the lecture hall. His parents, returning from a series of lectures on the common uses of the Greek accent marks, are said to have lost him on the carriage ride home. In fact it was Mrs. Hamilton who first noticed her son missing. When she posed this proposition to her husband, Mr. Hamilton merely snorted the famous reply:
"My dear, he is sure to be amongst the caravan of our relatives. Let us send a letter of inquiry to his Aunt Lucille."
Hearing this, Mrs. Hamilton presumably forgot the whole thing.
Three days later, when Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton arrived at the house in Caedcrandudly, young T.R. Hamilton was nowhere to be found. In utmost haste, Mr. Hamilton called for someone else's horse. He rode bareback for three rainy days and nights to the university, catching his eventual cause of death (pneumonia) on the way. When he dismounted, the elder Hamilton was astonished to find his son safe and warm, surrounded by multiple professors emeritus in the lecture hall. Young Hamilton was delivering an appeal for the reestablishment of first person narrative within the bounds of trans-stansative norms to great approval.

The Second State-from A Conversation Overheard In The Street

But this term, first coined by Lithuel (1843) is  the very antithesis of enthusiasm! Notice,  he divides pleasure laterally, as Euclid would with a well put bisection. Is it any wonder that mothers do not allow children to play beyond the white picket fence even in daylight! How shall we manage to save some scrap of dignity for ourselves, yea for posterity, when monsters such as these are on the loose?