An old chapel in Cheltenham is now home to the chain of bars Revolution. via.
The first entry in Simon Leys’s idiosyncratic and highly personal book of quotations, Les idées des autres (Other People’s Ideas), is from Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian Antarctic explorer who, thanks to his meticulous organization, was the first man to reach the South Pole, not only beating Captain Scott to it but—unlike Scott—living to tell the tale. “Incompetence,” he said, “is the origin of adventure.” (This was hubris, and he paid for it. He died in a Polar expedition.)
But we in Britain love, or perhaps I should say once loved, noble failure. Success somehow seemed to us almost vulgar by comparison, and certainly much less romantic. We believed that failure offered a man a better opportunity to demonstrate his true character, his moral fiber, than success ever could. I think this a mistake: success is merely a moral examination of another type.
One of Captain Scott’s last companions was Edward Wilson, the doctor, naturalist, and watercolorist. He, Wilson, is also the most famous son of Cheltenham, the spa town in the West of England otherwise famed for its Ladies’ College, its annual racing week that attracts a quarter of a million Irishmen, and its elegant Regency terraces.
Its municipal museum and art gallery is named after Wilson, but is now coyly called “The Wilson” rather than, say, “The Wilson Museum and Art Gallery.” It is
