Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid, wrote Goethe, but it isn’t true

At the age of 25, the poet and critic William Ernest Henley lay in hospital suffering from an illness that had kept him bedridden for three years. He had been diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone at the age of 12 and his left foot was amputated just below the knee. He’d just been told that he’d lose his right foot, too. It was in these circumstances that he composed ‘Invictus’, the poem that ends with the following verse:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Those are words to live by — and, indeed, Nelson Mandela did just that. In his darkest hours, when he was rotting away on Robben Island, he would recite Henley’s poem from memory in order to boost his morale.

As 2009 draws to a close, I like to think I am the master of my fate. Things are certainly looking up compared to the same period ten years ago. On December 31 1999, I was planning to propose to Caroline but we had a row over dinner when a group of Scottish men in kilts at the next-door table invited her to a New Year’s Eve party. We were in Val d’Isère at the time and I had a bottle of champagne on ice back at the chalet. I was planning to get down on bended knee just before midnight and my hope was to toast our engagement as the clocks struck 12, not ring in the New Year with a bunch of drunken Scots. She was so angry that I refused to go to the party — particularly as I couldn’t explain why — that she insisted on heading back to the chalet and going straight to sleep. As 12 o’clock approached, the engagement ring was still burning a hole in my pocket.

I finally managed to propose the following day — and she said no. But she did agree to live with me on a ‘trial basis’ and we were married 15 months later.

Of course, I’m not really the master of my fate any more than Nelson Mandela was of his. In the scenario I’ve just described, Caroline had a greater claim to that title than me. Yet when I made the decision to propose it felt like taking control. She had already dumped me twice at this point and only agreed to come to Val d’Isère because I’d bought the tickets and booked the chalet when we were still going out with each other. ‘We’ll just be going as friends,’ she said, opening her eyes wide to emphasis the point. Proposing to her was a last-ditch effort — what fans of American football call a ‘hail Mary pass’. When I doubted the wisdom of this course I would quote a line from another poem, this time by Goethe: ‘Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.’

That’s not true either, not least because there are no such thing as ‘mighty forces’ in the sense that Goethe had in mind, i.e., divine intervention. But if we labour under the illusion that we can conquer the vicissitudes of fortune, we will end up marginally more in control of our destiny that we otherwise would be. Henley refused to listen to the surgeons who advised him to amputate his right foot, found a doctor who favoured a less drastic form of treatment, and went on to lead an active and fruitful life.

Most of the next decade of my life will be occupied with my efforts to set up a new school in Acton, though I hope to God it doesn’t take that long. At present, all I can see are a series of obstacles stretching to the horizon, each one larger than the last. But the spark of inspiration came from the same thought that animates Henley’s poem: a refusal to accept my fate. Parents are told that the only way they can secure a first-class education for their children is by sending them to a private school, moving to within the catchment area of a high- performing comprehensive or by being a member of a particular faith. Not so, I said. There is another alternative and that is to start your own state school. When it opens I intend to carve Henley’s words above the gates: ‘I am the master of my fate:/ I am the captain of my soul.’ 

Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.