A Straight Deal Part 8

After this we got on better than ever; and as he went his way, he gave me some advice about the hotel. I should do well to avoid the reading room. The hotel went in rather too much for being old-fashioned. Ran it into the ground. Tiresome. Good-night.

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you the moral of my Salisbury anecdote.

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the French when they visit our sh.o.r.es? Not from the French do you hear prompt aspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverb about being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but they do not inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they like our hotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer their own, but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American in England and the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions.

Are the French more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder if there is not also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will say things about our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders to say those things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle, which makes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, which leads us by a seeming paradox to resent criticism more when it comes from England? I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when I pick up the paper and read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogs again, I am merely amused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I am sorry, to be sure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hate it, even when I know that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am right in my members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English and ourselves feeling free to be disagreeable to each other because we are relations, and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a relation who is being disagreeable. I merely put the point to you, I lay no dogma down concerning members of the family; but I am perfectly sure that discretion is a quality more common to the French than to ourselves or our relations: I mean something a little more than discretion, I mean esprit de conduits, for which it is hard to find a translation.

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, I have lingered long, feeling these to be not only of prime importance and wide application, but also to be quite beyond my power to make lucid in short compa.s.s. I trust that they have been made lucid. I must now get on to further anecdotes, ill.u.s.trating other and less subtle causes of misunderstanding; and I feel somewhat like the author of Don Juan when he exclaims that he almost wishes he had ne'er begun that very remarkable poem. I renounce all pretense to the French virtue of discretion.

Evening dress has been the source of many irritations. Englishmen did not appear to think that they need wear it at American dinner parties.

There was a good deal of this at one time. During that period an Englishman, who had brought letters to a gentleman in Boston and in consequence had been asked to dinner, entered the house of his host in a tweed suit. His host, in evening dress of course, met him in the hall.

"Oh, I see," said the Bostonian, "that you haven't your dress suit with you. The man will take you upstairs and one of mine will fit you well enough. We'll wait."

In England, a cricketer from Philadelphia, after the match at Lord's, had been invited to dine at a great house with the rest of his eleven.

They were to go there on a coach. The American discovered after arrival that he alone of the eleven had not brought a dress suit with him. He asked his host what he was to do.

"I advise you to go home," said the host.

The moral here is not that all hosts in England would have treated a guest so, or that all American hosts would have met the situation so well as that Boston gentleman: but too many English used to be socially brutal--quite as much so to each other as to us, or any one. One should bear that in mind. I know of nothing more English in its way than what Eton answered to Beaumont (I think) when Beaumont sent a challenge to play cricket: "Harrow we know, and Rugby we have heard of. But who are you?"

That sort of thing belongs rather to the Palmerston days than to these; belongs to days that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 1815, which a haughty England won, than to the Waterloo of 1914-18, which a humbler England so nearly lost.

Turn we next the other way for a look at ourselves. An American lady who had brought a letter of introduction to an Englishman in London was in consequence asked to lunch. He naturally and hospitably gathered to meet her various distinguished guests. Afterwards she wrote him that she wished him to invite her to lunch again, as she had matters of importance to tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to lunch with her?

Can you see? I think I do.

An American lady was at a house party in Scotland at which she met a gentleman of old and famous Scotch blood. He was wearing the kilt of his clan. While she talked with him she stared, and finally burst out laughing. "I declare," she said, "that's positively the most ridiculous thing I ever saw a man dressed in."

At the Savoy hotel in August, 1914, when England declared war upon Germany, many American women made scenes of confusion and vociferation.

About England and the blast of Fate which had struck her they had nothing to say, but crowded and wailed of their own discomforts, meals, rooms, every paltry personal inconvenience to which they were subjected, or feared that they were going to be subjected. Under the unprecedented stress this was, perhaps, not unnatural; but it would have seemed less displeasing had they also occasionally showed concern for England's plight and peril.

An American, this time a man (our crudities are not limited to the s.e.x) stood up in a theatre, disputing the sixpence which you always have to pay for your program in the London theatres. He disputed so long that many people had to stand waiting to be shown their seats.

During deals at a game of bridge on a Cunard steamer, the talk had turned upon a certain historic house in an English county. The talk was friendly, everything had been friendly each day.

"Well," said a very rich American to his English partner in the game, "those big estates will all be ours pretty soon. We're going to buy them up and turn your island into our summer resort." No doubt this millionaire intended to be playfully humorous.

At a table where several British and one American--an officer--sat during another ocean voyage between Liverpool and Halifax in June, 1919, the officer expressed satisfaction to be getting home again. He had gone over, he said, to "clean up the mess the British had made."

To a company of Americans who had never heard it before, was told the well-known exploit of an American girl in Europe. In an ancient church she was shown the tomb of a soldier who had been killed in battle three centuries ago. In his honor and memory, because he lost his life bravely in a great cause, his family had kept a little glimmering lamp alight ever since. It hung there, beside the tomb.

"And that's never gone out in all this time?" asked the American girl.

"Never," she was told.

"Well, it's out now, anyway," and she blew it out.

All the Americans who heard this were shocked all but one, who said:

"Well, I think she was right."

There you are! There you have us at our very worst! And with this plump specimen of the American in Europe at his very worst, I turn back to the English: only, pray do not fail to give those other Americans who were shocked by the outrage of the lamp their due. How wide of the mark would you be if you judged us all by the one who approved of that horrible vandal girl's act! It cannot be too often repeated that we must never condemn a whole people for what some of the people do.

In the two-and-a-half anecdotes which follow, you must watch out for something which lies beneath their very obvious surface.

An American sat at lunch with a great English lady in her country-house.

Although she had seen him but once before, she began a conversation like this:

Did the American know the van Squibbers?

He did not.

Well, the van Squibbers, his hostess explained, were Americans who lived in London and went everywhere. One certainly did see them everywhere.

They were almost too extraordinary.

Now the American knew quite all about these van Squibbers. He knew also that in New York, and Boston, and Philadelphia, and in many other places where existed a society with still some ragged remnants of decency and decorum left, one would not meet this highly star-spangled family "everywhere."

The hostess kept it up. Did the American know the b.u.t.teredbuns? No?

Well, one met the b.u.t.teredbuns everywhere too. They were rather more extraordinary than the van Squibbers. And then there were the Cakewalks, and the Smith-Trapezes' Mrs. Smith-Trapeze wasn't as extraordinary as her daughter--the one that put the live frog in Lord Meldon's soup--and of course neither of them were "talked about" in the same way that the eldest Cakewalk girl was talked about. Everybody went to them, of course, because one really never knew what one might miss if one didn't go. At length the American said:

"You must correct me if I am wrong in an impression I have received.

Vulgar Americans seem to me to get on very well in London."

The hostess paused for a moment, and then she said:

"That is perfectly true."

This acknowledgment was complete, and perfectly friendly, and after that all went better than it had gone before.

The half anecdote is a part of this one, and happened a few weeks later at table--dinner this time.

Sitting next to the same American was an English lady whose conversation led him to repeat to her what he had said to his hostess at lunch: "Vulgar Americans seem to get on very well in London society."

"They do," said the lady, "and I will tell you why. We English--I mean that set of English--are blase. We see each other too much, we are all alike in our ways, and we are awfully tired of it. Therefore it refreshes us and amuses us to see something new and different."

"Then," said the American, "you accept these hideous people's invitations, and go to their houses, and eat their food, and drink their champagne, and it's just like going to see the monkeys at the Zoo?"

"It is," returned the lady.

"But," the American asked, "isn't that awfully low down of you?" (He smiled as he said it.)

Immediately the English lady a.s.sented; and grew more cordial. When next day the party came to break up, she contrived in the manner of her farewell to make the American understand that because of their conversation she bore him not ill will but good will.

Once more, the scene of my anecdote is at table, a long table in a club, where men came to lunch. All were Englishmen, except a single stranger.

He was an American, who through the kindness of one beloved member of that club, no longer living now, had received a card to the club. The American, upon sitting down alone in this company, felt what I suppose that many of us feel in like circ.u.mstances: he wished there were somebody there who knew him and could nod to him. Nevertheless, he was spoken to, asked questions about various of his fellow countrymen, and made at home. Presently, however, an elderly member who had been silent and whom I will designate as being of the Dr. Samuel Johnson type, said: "You seem to be having trouble in your packing houses over in America?"

We were.

"Very disgraceful, those exposures."