The Direct Characterization of Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere
By Ian Everbach, Victoria Price, Kylie Teller, and Kateri Sloat
Experience yet relatability
“…a bachelor of forty or thereabouts”
“…a sailor of distinction… He had seen much service.”
“…versed in the science of his profession and intrepid to the verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so.”
“In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation ‘ Starry Vere’… Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere.”
“Ashore… scarce anyone would have taken him for a sailor…”
“…not conspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia…”
Seriousness/Integrity
“He was the most undemonstrative of men…unobtrusiveness of demeanor, unaffected modesty of manhood, resolute nature”
“His settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion, social, political, and otherwise.”
“Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them not alone because they seemed to him insusceptible of embodiment in lasting institutions, but at war with the peace of the world and the true welfare of mankind.”
“But considerateness in such matters is not easy to natures constituted like Captain Vere’s….Their [people like Vere] honesty prescribes them directness.”
“…always acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction of discipline.”
“…an exceptional character”.
“…suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind”
“…lacking in the companionable quality.”
“…grave in his bearing, evinced little appreciation of mere humor.”
“…in general, a man of rapid decision, felt that circumspectness not less than promptitude, was necessary” (21)
“I strive against scruples that may tend to enervate decision.”
“Though something exceptional in the moral quality of Captain Vere made him, in earnest encounter with a fellow man, a veritable touchstone of that man’s essential nature…” (18)
Intellectualism
“…marked leaning toward everything intellectual. He loved books... His bias was toward those books… treating of actual men and events no matter of what era... a dry and bookish gentleman.”
“…he would be as apt to cite some historic character or incident of antiquity as he would be to cite from the moderns”
“Practical enough of occasion would at times betray a certain dreaminess of mood.”
“At the presentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts, he would show more or less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.”