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No man is a hero to his valet

https://lovetobreathair.blogspot.com/2026/01/no-man-is-hero.html

Tue 24 Oct 2006 at 16:11

No man is a hero to his valet

No man is a hero to his valet, runs a famous saying. That much-quoted line is attributed to several sources. It suggests that the valet, working closely with the leader or hero, sees the clay feet underneath the heroic dress. It is a variation on the old saying that familiarity ultimately breeds contempt. Information Age In an information-age, where images and

As a people, we have become accustomed to disappointment in our leaders. Tribunal and public enquiry chase each other in the manner of a dog trying to get a grip on its tail. Politicians and institutions have come under the scrutiny of the media magnifying glass and are not flattered by the results. Even the dead are not spared the spotlight of investigative journalism. The bones of past heroes and leaders are picked clean in the search for evidence of wrongdoing. The ‘secret’ lives of past leaders and heroes are uncovered, or partially invented, and hung out for public scrutiny. It is a difficult age for those who carry the cross of leadership.

‘No man is a hero to his valet’, runs a famous saying. That much-quoted line is attributed to several sources. It suggests that the valet, working closely with the leader or hero, sees the clay feet underneath the heroic dress. It is a variation on the old saying that familiarity ultimately breeds contempt.

Information Age

In an information-age, where images and programmes are wall-to-wall and sound is always surround, we have all become valets, familiar with the everyday foibles and failings of leaders in church and state and of those whom the entertainment industry calls ‘stars’.

There are many celebrities but few heroes around and the shelf-life of those cast in the former role has become increasingly short. ‘Stars’ often burn out following an intense period of brilliance or become falling stars, shooting off into nowhere, having shone brightly for a while. There is little public tolerance of failure, past or present and a lack of generosity in granting time to deliver. The public demands the instant gratification of constant success and results. This is most obvious in the world of sport and especially in the delicate reputation of football managers on a losing streak. How difficult any of our lives would be if ‘results’ were persistently demanded and verdicts delivered with the sensitivity of football fans or back-page sports hacks or if the opinions and observations of the ‘valets’ in our lives could be sold to cheque-book reporters.

These thoughts pursued me as I made my way back across the MI Motorway and across the river Dee into Ardee for a function held in my honour. It is part of the tradition or rural parish life to make presentations to their priests following a period of service in the community and on taking up a new appointment. The community pulled out all the stops for me, organising catering, entertainment and presentation speeches and lining up patiently to shake hands again and to say farewell. The young dressed up and presented their pantomime-pieces and joined in the music-making and acting. Honoured guests had their photos taken and allotted front seats for the show. The Parish Hall assumed the role for which such buildings were famous in the pre-television age.

Heartening

It is heartening to be thanked and to have one’s contribution recognised in a formal manner. It has been the lot of too many people to die without hearing the thanks that was their due. Patrick Kavanagh wrote of his feelings of well-being and recognition following a short period during which he lectured in U.C.D. This was one of the few times that he had a steady job and an income from his poetic craft. In the course of the poem, which he called ‘Thank You, Thank You’, he reflected on our common humanity and the feelings that occasionally haunt us.

‘We are not alone in our loneliness’, he wrote, ‘Others have been here and known/ Griefs we thought our special own./ Problems that we could not solve./ Lovers that we could not have/ Pleasures that we missed by inches’. He went on to express his gladness at having had the experience of knowing what he called a ‘holy, hearing audience’, into whose ‘caressing’ hands he delivered the wisdom and the particular flavour that was his personality.

He thanked what he called ‘fate’ for allowing him the experience, the ‘joyful chance’ of claiming what he termed his ‘inheritance’. He said that he felt proud to have had this privilege and opportunity. In the final lines of the poem he remarked ruefully that, ‘most have died the day before/ the opening of that holy door’. 

No man is a hero...

Write a page long poem using this "No man is a hero to his valet."

In the quiet hour before the morning light,

When shadows stretch across the marble floor,

The world prepares to see the champion’s might,

But I am he who guards the dressing door.

The public sees the medals on the chest,

The steady hand, the gaze that never yields,

The orator in velvet finery dressed,

The conqueror of distant, bloody fields.

But here, amidst the scent of starch and tea,

The mythic stature shrinks to common bone.

There is no grandeur in a trembling knee,

No thunder in a stifled, weary groan.

I see the silver creeping through the hair,

The corset tightened on a heavy frame,

The practiced mask of courage and of care

Put on like silk to hide the sudden shame.

The boots I polish carry heavy feet

That stumble when the heavy drapes are drawn;

The voice that makes a thousand hearts retreat

Is thin and raspy in the gray of dawn.

He fumbles with a button, curses low,

And frets about a wrinkle in his sleeve;

The secrets that the cheering throngs forgo

Are precisely what I never can un-leave.

To them, he is a titan carved in stone,

A pillar of the state, a god of war;

To me, he is a man who fears the known,

And wonders what the struggle was all for.

He spills his wine and forgets where he has placed

The very keys that lock the city gates;

A monument of pride, so soon defaced

By all the tiny flaws that time dictates.

For greatness needs a distance to survive,

A pedestal to lift it from the clay;

It cannot breathe or hope to stay alive

When seen in such a naked, honest way.

No man is a hero to the one who waits,

Who folds the discarded linen of his pride;

Beyond the cheering crowds and iron gates,

I am the mirror where he cannot hide.

 

And Away We Go!https://t.co/rjiJBAdaMM

— AJ (@Rooofer) January 5, 2026

AJ Unicycles Daily Too