We had always understood that the purpose of our going on Tour was twofold: social and educational, yes, but also strategic, commercial. One day, Edgar and I would inherit the Bowen Maritime Company. The Tour would be our chance to develop the social network our parents did not possess. We would go and meet English people, the ‘good’ kind of people, and they would become not just our friends, but also our future customers. This was clearer to my father than my mother perhaps: while he was pragmatic, she had more romantic notions of the project. Our mother continued: ‘It will be so beneficial for your refinement and connections.’
My brother, like my father, was a devotee of the world my mother had created. He knew what she had planned for us, and he wanted what she wanted. ‘Oh, Mother,’ he gushed. ‘Oh, how exciting. Benjamin and I have longed for this day. How many years we have been waiting, and now it is here.’
My brother spoke for both of us but I had not said anything myself, and my mother knew that. She heard every statement – and every silence too. ‘And what about you, Benjamin?’ she asked then. ‘You don’t seem much excited!’
I paused a second or two. I let the moment hang, the possibility of dissent. Edgar’s eyes were on me, hesitant. I knew I could make him feel anxious near my mother. Rebellions in that house were barely comprehensible. He only ever wanted to please her, just as my father did. My father coughed and pulled forward in his seat. ‘Why don’t you speak up, Benjamin?’ I heard his soft, rolling Welsh syllables. ‘Why don’t you tell your mother what a good idea you think this is?’
My father’s voice made me jump. His was a different presence in the house to my mother’s: quieter yet darker. ‘Oh, yes, Mother, I am really very excited,’ I said.
My mother was gazing at Edgar and me, a smile hovering on her lips. ‘All this knowledge –’ she raised her hand towards the bookcases lining this and every other room in the house ‘– has led to this moment.’ She sighed and added, ‘You will be great successes,’ and nodded to herself in agreement with what she had just said. ‘You will see all the vestiges of the classical world, and the triumphs of the Renaissance. You will experience first-hand the foundations of our enlightenment.’ Then she clapped her hands together: ‘Now, my sons, we will play the Minute Game.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Edgar. ‘Let’s! But on which subject?’
The Minute Game was my mother’s invention, devised long ago – no one remembered when – to test the fruits of our intense study. Suetonius or Spinoza! Pliny or Petrarch! In sixty seconds, we were to demonstrate what we had learned on a historical, literary or philosophical subject of Mother’s choosing. She believed nothing was more crucial than the ability to demonstrate one’s knowledge.
‘Why, on the two most important subjects for each of you in the coming year,’ Mother said. ‘For you, Edgar, the Renaissance.’
Edgar was immediately on his feet, clearing his throat. When playing the Minute Game, he adopted a pose like an actor on a stage, declaiming to a great audience that was only ever we four. ‘The Renaissance,’ he began, ‘is from the French for rebirth, and in turn from Rinascimento, the Italian, the land of its origin. It is the great rebirth of classical study after the long barren interlude of the Dark Ages, and the elevation of refinement, learning and achievement in the European mind and culture. It begins our own current apotheosis as the finest moment of humanity, and for this, we often call the intellectual currents of the Renaissance “humanism”. The Renaissance began in the fourteenth century in northern Italy. Then, the country was fragmented into a number of small city states, whose rulers had become rich with trade and who, in a desire to show their elevation and authority, began to encourage scholars and artists to make new strides, and to re-engage with the lost knowledge, writings and technical expertise of the Romans and the Greeks. Technological advances such as the invention of the printing press rapidly increased the transference of knowledge among peoples and centres of study and art. For whom shall we give credit to the Renaissance, not just these forward-looking merchants –’ I looked at my father, who nodded supremely ‘– but also to the great fathers of the new learning, such as Dante and Petrarch; and the innovators of new painting, from early masters through to the likes of Botticelli, who were interested in capturing the real and the physical, the dimensional, and stories that were not strictly religious, but philosophical, dramatic or sensual—’
Whilst my parents were watching him, my brother glanced at me momentarily. As he did, I closed my mouth and filled my cheeks until they popped out round, flicking my eyes left and right, left and right. Edgar let out a short, sharp laugh. I saw my mother turn to look at me, but I was quick enough to return my expression to one of a bland composure, and smile and nod to her.
‘Are you two boys playing at goats?’ she asked.
‘No, Mother,’ I said, ‘I am not a goat. I am not sure about Edgar.’
My brother started to laugh, pointing at me: ‘He put me off! It’s not fair, he put me off!’
When we were young, Edgar liked to remind everyone that he was a year my senior, but now it was he who sometimes acted – was even seen to be, perhaps – as a child. My mother giggled a little at his protest. She was not a martinet. She liked fun and she liked to laugh. We all did. This was her world, however, and we all had to understand that. ‘Now you, Benjamin,’ she said, ‘you shall speak on our own dear Enlightenment …’
My mother was the greatest devotee of our Enlightenment and clung hard to its beliefs. She held its values – of reason and reform, of fairness and progress – in the highest regard. She expected Edgar and me to do so, too. I will say this, quite openly. There was much to respect in my mother’s modernity. She disapproved of absolute monarchs and of the slave trade. She wanted people to be free across Europe – and she was a great admirer of the freedoms of her adopted country.
I began to speak: ‘Our era of Enlightenment is the manifestation of the advances of the Renaissance. In bringing European civilisation to its apex, it has produced the greatest flowering of human understanding and knowledge yet. Descartes laid the foundation for our Enlightenment ideals with the development of his rational way of thinking, breaking decisively with the dominance of the Church.’ My mother tilted her head to one side and nodded, now and then briefly closing her eyes. ‘This was the end of a long period of religious war in Europe in which conflicting churches had used their power to slaughter millions of Europeans. People no longer tolerated church dominance. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding was an important milestone.’
Mentioning my mother’s favourite writers was always an easy win, and she loved John Locke very much. I could just about see Edgar arching an eyebrow, but I kept a straight face. ‘In it, he stated that newborn humans were tabula rasa, blank slates, and could develop their senses through education. Locke has been much challenged, for instance by Leibniz, who argued for the innateness of idea in an innate soul. And Spinoza disputed Descartes over matters such as the separation of the mind and the body in the conception of a soul, and the nature of God. But these challenges formed a new language of debate and enquiry into the nature of existence that over time led to a different way of thinking, in which the human mind, and not the existence of God, was of paramount importance for civilisation. These advances led to the development of ideas of individual liberty, freedom of expression, and saw the end of theology as a basis for morality. People have freed themselves from the Church.’