95 Piccadilly
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One of my earliest memories is an old family Bible. I couldn’t tell you whether it belonged to my parents or my grandparents. I was too young to think of such things, but I can recall the feel of its red leather cover, the thin, yellowing pages near the front, and handwritten names carefully scribed – some which had long since grown still. Births. Marriages. Deaths. Every generation had left its mark.
Years later, my cousin Alisha and I discovered an 18th Century divorce. A ‘dissolution.’ We were equally delighted and scandalized, as though we had uncovered a great family secret. But even before I knew for certain, I knew the names and pages in that Bible mattered. The names I recognized and those I didn’t. My paternal uncle recognized that I would be the one to remember. I took it more seriously than most, at a far younger age.
The truth is, we all have a history and every generation adds something to a bigger story. I think about those things particularly on occasions like Independence Day, which has occupied a peculiar place in my family. We have observed it often enough – I even oversaw a whole town’s celebration for years – though, for me, it was never quite the holiday it is for others. There were historic flags in my family, cookouts, and, on occasion, fireworks. My late sister even delighted in playing “God Save the Queen” on a fairly regular basis in July. Though others have laughed over the years, for her, it seemed little more than humor. I get that.
For all the talk of independence, America has never entirely ceased being an heir.
As the nation approaches its 250th birthday, I’ve been surprised by how little actual celebration surrounds the occasion. Not in my hometown. Not anywhere. We still describe ourselves as a young country, but a quarter of a millennium is no small feat. Few republics have endured so long. Fewer still have shaped the course of the modern world so profoundly. Benjamin Franklin’s famous warning – “A republic, if you can keep it” – feels no less relevant today than when it was first spoken, and, yet, here we are.
The older I get, the more I realize that inheritance isn’t confined to just property or surnames. We inherit habits of mind, loyalties, affections, and ways of seeing the world. We are products of environments, of all the people who have come before us.
Americans sometimes speak as though history began in 1776, as though the country emerged fully formed and entirely dissimilar from the empire from which it sprang. I’ve never found that convincing – personally or culturally. We speak the language of Shakespeare. We inherited the common law, Parliament’s quarrels and systems, parish traditions, religion, and an understanding of liberty and democracy that crossed the Atlantic long before the Declaration of Independence. The United States became something undeniably new, but never ceased carrying something old along the way (including the dreaded taxation system most Americans believe started the whole ordeal!).
Just this week, I read a travel essay by a man who had wandered through Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. He admired the countries for what they are, but openly confessed that none felt quite like home. Only upon arriving on the shores of Britain did something quietly click. Reading those words, I understood exactly what he meant. It’s because Britain doesn’t feel entirely foreign. It feels like a member of the family – someone from whom we’ve inherited more than we’ve admitted. And that has nothing to do with the last king – George III – or the current.
It seems to me that when we’re born, we don’t arrive at the beginning of a story but are merely a chapter in it. And perhaps that’s what this semiquincentennial should remind us all. That nations, much like families, don’t exist solely in the present. They’re deep partnerships between those who came before us, those entrusted with the present, and those who will inherit what we leave behind. Independence from Great Britain gave America the freedom to choose her own course. That’s true enough, but it never required her to forget where she learned to walk or where she came from.