Victorian Culture/What Fame Does

FOR the sake of Fame (says Hain Friswell*, in his interesting work, Footsteps to Fame,) towns have been built and continents explored: gallant deeds have been done, seas crossed and kingdoms discovered; forests have been levelled, roads built, wildernesses have been made into gardens. The earth has been searched to its farthest ends; men have gone forth alone into the frozen deep; or have panted at the line, and braved the fevered deaths of the torrid zone. Not only have they gone to and fro on the earth, but they have dug into the earth and ransacked its treasures, worked at its metals, weighed its component parts, and have measured, so to speak, the handiwork of God.

They have reared temples, and lifted stone upon stone till the edifices have grown to miracles of beauty; and Art, the handmaid of Labour, has charmed those who have watched her works. Down into the great sea have they gone, wandering to and fro upon its bosom; lightning and storm, thunder and hurricane, deadly quicksands and sunken rock have not daunted them. The have under-gone all, dared all, conquered all, for the love of Fame.

“you may laugh now,” says Disraeli, as he concludes his first speech, “but you shall hear me same day.”
“Left me out of the Gazette!” cries Nelson; “never mind, I will some day have a Gazette to myself.”
“Perhaps,” whispers dear, good, kindly Goldsmith to Doctor Johnson, as they are reading the names on the tablets in Poets’ Corner, “Perhaps, some day, we shall be found here.”
“I have built up a monument which is more lasting than brass,” writes Horace.
“Ay,” says Will Shakespeare, “not marble, nor the brazen monuments of kings, shall outlive my powerful verse.”
“They will speak of me in England,” says Wolfe.
“What do they say of me in Ireland?” writes the great fearless Dean of St. Patrick’s – that man of giant brain and heart.
“My system of philosophy,” said Coleridge, “will be the founder of many systems.” Do you not know me, sir?” cries an ironmonger, in an inn, to this same Coleridge; “I am the great Twamley, I invented the floodgate iron.”

We are all great Twamleys in our way. We all love Fame, we all want to be known. If we are big and strong we despise the raw and hurried ravings of the crowed, and fancy we can wait; they will pass by, we shall endure. The windfalls are not worth keeping, the worst fruit ripens first.

Fame is everywhere; in the acclamations of a village school, in the whispers of a home circle, in the applause of an empire; in the grateful praise of a Continent. It exalts; its want depresses. To be known to have done good; to have benefited mankind is Fame, and is worth having. Thus are great men generated. We have mental as well as corporeal parents; we are sons of men, also we are sons of Fame. But is must be of the right sort.

*James Hain Friswell (b.1825, d.1878) - British Author

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