Tomorrowland
is in your hand
I stand on the edge of a vast undiscovered land
barren of inhabitant
I claim, settle, conquer this land
Here my heirs will make a nation
Tomorrow is my empire
It’s all too easy. Raising your kids to have and raise good children who will have and raise good children is a solved problem.
We have more to say in these transmissions, a lot more, but we have to admit that we are in the 20% region of the 80-20 rule. We hope you continue to subscribe as much for the encouragement, support, and creativity as for that last 20% of information that helps you put the polish on.
There is one glaring gap though. Courtship is still to be solved. One of the bare minimums for family survival.
While its easy to describe a functional courtship system on paper—they have existed in their multitudes throughout history—standing up a new one in the middle of a lethally broken courtship system is much more challenging.
While its easy to raise your family right, raising your children’s spouses is impossible. Natalism in One Family should work about as well as Communism in One Country.
Your children want to pair up as they grow. That is a healthy instinct and you have raised them to be healthy. If they see dim prospects of finding someone while continuing with the family project, they are likely to defect from the family project.
Social entrepeneurs, take note. Courtship is broken enough that whoever can solve it in a repeatable way is going to accrue wealth and power.
What are the models for a healthier courtship system in the middle of a suffocatingly-large sick one?
Southerners have their fraternity-sorority system. Non-mainstream religions have their private universities: the LDS at BYU, for example; TLM Catholics at Ave Maria. And the French aristocratic remnant have their rallye mondain.
One of our steaders, it turns out, has married into the french aristo-bourgieous milieu of the rallye and was kind enough to put us wise.
That endogamous milieu is the subject of today’s transmission.
The French Aristocratic Courtship Project
Take a look at an excellent new substack, the Accelerationist by noted Franco-tweeter Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry.
Keep an eye on that stack. There is life yet in that corner of the west, and lessons to be learned.
Two weeks ago @pegobry_en introduced the natalist sphere to the French rallye.
A taste:
All historically elite groups typically find ways of intermarrying as a way of preserving themselves into the next generation. I am told that American WASPs still have more-or-less secret clubs and débutante balls and the like; indeed, even the African-American aristocracy (a group which is taboo to acknowledge on both right and left for different reasons) has such institutions. Where the French aristocracy is different, it seems to me, is that it has managed to pass on not just family names and socioeconomic status and superficial cultural codes, but a certain esprit and set of views. In other words, while the average American WASP is likely to embrace fashionable causes and political views, the average French aristocrat is much more likely to attend Latin Mass, to subscribe to “far-right” newspapers, and to draw from his status, not a form of privilege guilt, but a sense of duty and leadership.
. . . .
[T]here exists another French aristocratic institution which, to my knowledge, has no foreign equivalent. . . . This institution is calledle rallye mondain.
The closest Anglo-American analogue of le rallye is the institution of the débutante ball (a French expression, you will note), and indeed this is the most visible feature ofle rallye: formal dancing soirées where only “the right kind” of young people are invited.
But such dancing soirées are only the visible part of the iceberg, andle rallye is much more than the débutante balls that have existed and may still exist in some form in the US and the UK.
In reality a rallye is a membership organization of families that want to, well, to put it crudely but not inaccurately, breed their children together. Membership is by invitation only, and to my knowledge there isn’t a single rallye that even has a website. According to lore, the rallyes were founded after World War II, when arranged marriages went out of style, to ensure that the same kind of “selectivity” that was previously ensured by arranged marriages would endure.
. . . . The goal of the rallye is to select the “right kind” of young people with the explicit goal of increasing the odds that they pair up with other young people who are the “right kind” and marry and, well, breed.
Children of the right families are typically invited to join a rallye between the ages of 12 and 14. . . .
The children take part in a course of extracurricular activities over several years, which includes things like cultural outings and étiquette and dancing lessons. . . . The goal of the program to teach them certain social skills as well as their history and culture . . . , but also, for the rallye organization, it serves as a kind of audition to make sure that they are the right kind of people. It is really a multi-year course designed to select the right kind of people for, yes, courtship, love, marriage, of course, but also, in a word, for breeding.
Much more at the link.
He has a highly interpretive frame related to aristocratic breeding, but taken at the base level he describes parents who have something distinctive about themselves and who have a generational outlook. Naturally they are concerned that their children will be able to marry.
For us, the distinctive thing simply is wanting children and grandchildren, and everything that goes along with that. Base steading.
Now from Our Man in France
Our French correspondent married into that milieu and confirms the particulars. These people exist, they are distinctive, and they do have a sustained endogamous courtship effort that perpetuates their existence.
Once you train your eye, these people become easily visible: they wear lighter colours, boat shoes, scarves around the neck, etc.
On the other hand, they will rarely wear jeans, colours like olive, ties outside formal contexts. They even have a different physiognomy. More subtle facial features than Americans. Compared to the average French: gracile, lower facial fat, brighter eyes, brighter hair (but can be quite dark). My wife, who came from this milieu, is better than I at identifying them, and often says when we walk: "look, he's a Catholic" only by looking at the face. The following examples are so obvious that even I could immediately tell:
Macron has an advantageous face, but he undoubtedly looks like an Anglo-Saxon actor, not a French Catholic aristo-bourgeois. The superciliary arch is too low, the jaw and head too wide, the nose too convex. Here he is,
To compare, here is a young Frenchman with the physiognomy I describe:
Notice the gentler facial features, the elongated face and lower facial fat leading to visible cheekbones.
I started discovering this milieu when I visited the chaplaincy of my university, without knowing it had been infiltrated by them. The first thing you notice is the amount of de in the last names, meaning "from". In the past, nobles wore the names of their lands. With the Republic, it was abolished, and only some old families could keep the "de".
They are in a sense easily accessible, but not easily joinable.
They are intertwined with the Catholic community, even if it is not publicly acknowledged. A man I know who married in volunteers at the bishopric. Likewise I became introduced to their circles through the chaplaincy. Such displays are necessary to unlock doors. They have their own networks (Le bon coin is the French Craigslist, while Gens de confiance is their Craigslist), and places: the Saint-Roch parish in Paris, Sainte-Geneviève (or Ginette as they call it), as their top elite school (while the top public ones are Louis-le-Grand and Henri IV). Note that only some of them are traditionalist. Some go to modern communities, like the communauté de l'Émmanuel.
If you wish to join, you must also set a realistic goal. You will not marry in to a family that is very strict about status, perhaps because their ennoblement is more recent, so strict that they are able to distinguish people from two different districts in Paris by their accent, something unnoticeable. The exclusivity is strong and sometimes tragic.
While outsiders do marry in, it often seems when you are introduced to their circles that “all the good ones are taken.” It starts very early: the private schools by nuns, then the scouts, then the rallyes. Parents manage the familial diplomacy very carefully, the avowed goal of rallyes is to find a suitable partner. University chaplaincies might be most practical route [for an outsider].
Their microcosm is allowed to exist due to an informal truce with the State, as long as the Catholic aristo-bourgeois remain in the private sphere. It probably comes from the traumatism of the Revolution + the annexation of the papal states. Religion and ethics became a private matter, especially after Vatican II. The result is that they are fine with the society collapsing, as long as they can survive: they have their private schools, etc. Of course, from time to time, the State breaches the truce and interferes in the private sphere, and they feel betrayed (see the Manif pour tous: more than 1 million people demonstrating. They mobilised everything they could) but have no real power (homosexual unions became recognised under Hollande, homeschooling became illegal under Macron, etc.).
Their schools are gender-segregated, from middle to high school. Boys and girls may live there, and during their holidays, they participate in activities from their milieu (the scouts). They are, therefore, "locked in towers" until their majority. After that, the youths are often aware of their situation and consciously seek their partner by themselves, still in the structures of the community (chaplaincies, choirs, helping beggars, etc.).
Since it is mostly a social group, the benefits require that you frequent such a group. However, I do not know if you can find an equivalent in the United States. Otherwise, you can still practise their codes: dress well, speak a formal language, learn manners, develop your culture, learn skills such as choir singing, horse riding, fencing, acquire good taste (many Americans see mixtures of classical/rustic elements as traditional, whereas Europeans see them as horrors), and socialise as much as possible with other people exhibiting such codes. If possible, get closer to the traditional Catholic communities.
My guess is that they are successful at mostly in-group marriage due to some combination of early imprinting (as to whom are the correct objects of one's attention), snobbery (vis-a-vis lesser sorts), and tower-locking (to guard against social contamination and avoid near occasions of sin).
[In response to an observation that elite eugenic schemes have an incentive to consolidate bloodlines as a means for wealth consolidation, to the eventual dissipation of both.]
It is difficult to say what the TFR is precisely, but large families are common. At a recent event, the family who sat in front of me had at least 8 children, and the mother seemed to have around 35 years.
Clothes for men
For your interest and edification, our steader also had something to say about their style.
What must primarily be understood is that they mingle aristocratic and bourgeois values. While the result is sometimes unfortunate, I believe it strikes a good balance in clothing. I remember how difficult it was to dress well when I lived abroad. The best places for that seem to be France and Italy (and then Britain) in Europe.
The most important criterium is that clothes should fit well (but not skin-tight, which is effeminate). The shirt is always tucked in the trousers. The general idea is to emphasise the elegance of the body (slenderness and muscles when well-fitted). For examples, scarves are worn to highlight the jaw (usually better developed than the average Frenchman/with less chin fat) even in warm weather (they are then made of silk). This is preferred to the business tie (never worn when avoidable!). Trench coats in winter make your legs look taller. The BBC Sherlock is a good example of these practices, and how these people dress casually.
Except for the colours. The dark tones are characteristic of the bourgeoisie, whereas aristocrats like the joy of colours. The synthesis is made with pastel colours: not extravagant to please the bourgeois's austerity, but lighter and colourful. The preferred colours are blue (light to navy), white, ivory. These trousers are extremely common in the Parisian streets:
These are general guidelines, and people may not follow them exactly. In other contexts, the rules are stricter. For your wedding, as usual, no tie or business suit. Always a lavallière (like the cravat introduced by Louis XIV) with a wing collar. Unfolded, it looks like this:
It is held by a pin. On top of that, you wear a jacquette, similar to the coat of the morning dress. An example:
You may ask: "is that green allowed?". The answer is "yes. We are not mere bourgeois. We are aristocratic bourgeois".
Lessons
Dancing (on which more to come), a sense of status, heritage—but by far the most important lesson is simply that courtship is not left to take care of itself.
This is a mature, highly developed courtship system. Something to aspire to. Less than that should still be enough to do the job.
The first step is for parents and future parents to start networking themselves.
Along those lines, consider attending the Natalism conference early this December in Austin, TX. We would like to meet you there.