Better a slow horse than a show horse

I am a fan of the Slow Horses television show. Based on a series of novels (also very good) by British author Mick Herron, the Slow Horses stories follow the escapades of failed British MI5 agents. Like in New York City, where incompetent schoolteachers are not fired but are instead sent to a building to while away the hours while collecting their paychecks, these failed agents are assigned to Slough House and given meaningless tasks. In a play on the name of their building, the denizens of Slough House are given the contemptuous moniker “slow horses” by the MI5 regulars. Not surprisingly, in the Herron novels the Slow Horses find themselves at the center of crisis after crisis in which they show themselves to be remarkably competent for castoffs.

The head of Slough House is Jackson Lamb, played beautifully in the television show by one of our age’s great actors, Gary Oldman. The descriptor “beautiful” is ironic as Jackson Lamb is one of the foulest men you are likely to encounter in literature. He dresses like a slob, with food-stained clothes, tattered socks, and greasy, unwashed hair. His language matches that of his appearance. He has mastered the ability to ridicule his disgraced underlings, using quite colorful adjectives and imagery, reminding them in the most vivid ways of their inadequacies and fall from institutional grace. With cigarette in mouth, whiskey on his breath, and flatulence that he calls up at opportune (and inopportune) times, he seems the perfect head of an office full of losers.

There is a hitch, however. As the stories develop you discover that Jackson Lamb, while appearing to be a pathetic slob, is actually a master of his craft, that craft being intelligence, spying, manipulation. During the Cold War he was a “Joe,” an embedded spy in the Communist East. The fact he is still alive is indicative of his capabilities. In truth, Jackson Lamb’s appearance is cover for the fact that he may actually be the smartest, most competent person in the whole Service.

Lamb is a character one regularly finds in literature. Perhaps the model for this character type is Socrates, the father of Western philosophy. Socrates’ greatest wisdom is that he has no wisdom; the root of wisdom being the admission that you know nothing. Socrates is a seeker. Not a knower. In the typical Socratic dialogue, as presented by Socrates’ student Plato, Socrates stumbles across someone who claims to know all about some important philosophical subject (piety, justice, love, goodness). Because he doesn’t pretend to know, Socrates only asks questions. By dialogue’s end it is clear that the pompous subject of Socrates’ interrogatories is remarkably ignorant of the dialogue’s subject while Socrates, who claims to know nothing, has a firmer grasp than anyone.  

Many people have noted that the great television detective Columbo bears remarkable similarity to Socrates. Actually based on Dostoyevsky’s detective Porfiry Petrovich from Crime and Punishment, Columbo is a stumbling, bumbling, disheveled detective attempting to solve a murder inevitably committed by someone who thinks himself or herself superior to the buffoonish Columbo. Like Socrates, Columbo pretends not to know, goading the criminal into taking Columbo lightly and perhaps revealing too much. Columbo’s absentmindedness, typified in his catchphrase of “Oh, just one more thing,” masks the fact that he is in command of the case from its inception.

We can think of Claudius in the BBC production of I, Claudius, a man who recognizes early that to be Roman emperor or to be perceived as a threat to the emperor equates with a short lifespan. Claudius makes the most of a childhood disability (a clubfoot) and an affected stutter to be consistently ignored and underestimated. He flies under the radar, eventually outlasting many seemingly cleverer, more ambitious men. This is similar to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal who takes on the persona of the drunken ne’er-do-well so that when he is called to rise to his station he “may be more wondered at.”

And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

There is often more to people than meets the eye. As the old saw has it (as interpreted by Bo Diddley):

You can’t judge an apple by looking at a tree
You can’t judge honey by looking at the bee
You can’t judge a daughter by looking at the mother
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover

I suppose we could take a Machiavellian interpretation of these characters. Perhaps people are just phony. The wise prince masks his desire for power by appearing the fool. Such deceptive personalities teach us not to trust each other. Just as the appearance of incompetence may be a mask for quiet cleverness, so might seeming virtue hide the truly ambitious scoundrel. People are inconstant, with true motives hidden behind façade and rationalization. Machiavelli (and Freud) teaches us not to believe appearances.

Perhaps I am just rationalizing when I express a preference for a Socratic interpretation. Maybe literary/philosophical figures such as Jackson Lamb, Socrates, Columbo and the rest exist to puncture our pretensions. In the specific case of those I just explicitly mentioned, the enigmatic characters exist to bring down the high and mighty, those who think they are smarter, wiser, better than everyone else. That is why each of those characters has a comic element. There is an ironic twist in, for instance, a Columbo story in which the seemingly mighty are brought low while the humble Columbo is shown to be the master of circumstances, always one step ahead of the pretentious fool who believes himself to be ahead of Columbo. This makes Columbo a comedic figure, the low man brought high. Yet, Columbo never lords over the criminal, rubbing the criminal’s face in his defeat. He mostly expresses pity that someone so obviously talented has gone so wrong.

We can draw from these characters the lesson of humility. Even Prince Hal, when he rises to Henry V, expresses doubts about his rule, agonizing over the cost of his decision to make war against France. Can we be humble in our successes? Can we avoid being the objects of the Socrates’ and Columbo’s, a person of inflated ego begging for someone to bring us down a peg? It may be better to be a slow horse than a foolish horse.