Summer XVIII. The English class character

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XVII. Class struggle

It is easy to understand that common judgement of foreigners regarding the English people. Go about England as a stranger, travel by rail, live at hotels, see nothing but the broadly public aspect of things, and the impression left upon you will be one of hard egoism, of gruffness and sullenness; in a word, of everything that contrasts most strongly with the ideal of social and civic life. And yet, as a matter of fact, no nation possesses in so high a degree the social and civic virtues. The unsociable Englishman, quotha? Why, what country in the world can show such multifarious, vigorous and cordial co-operation, in all ranks, but especially, of course, among the intelligent, for ends which concern the common good? Unsociable? Why, go where you will in England you can hardly find a man -- nowadays, indeed, scarce an educated woman -- who does not belong to some alliance, for study or sport, for municipal or national benefit, and who will not be seen, in leisure time, doing his best as a social being... Sociability does not consist in a readiness to talk at large with the first comer. It is not dependent upon natural grace and suavity; it is compatible, indeed, with thoroughly awkward and all but brutal manners...

Yet it is so difficult to reconcile this indisputable fact with that other fact, no less obvious, that your common Englishman seems to have no geniality. From the one point of view I admire and laud my fellow countryman; from the other, I heartily dislike him and wish to see as little of him as possible. One is wont to think of the English as a genial folk. Have they lost in this respect? Has the century of science and moneymaking sensibly affected the national character? ...

Two things have to be borne in mind; the extraordinary difference of demeanour which exists between the refined and the vulgar English, and the natural difficulty of an Englishman in revealing his true self save under the most favourable circumstances.

So striking is the difference of manner between class and class that the hasty observer might well imagine a corresponding and radical difference of mind and character. In Russia, I suppose, the social extremities are seen to be pretty far apart, but with that possible exception, I should think no European country can show such a gap as yawns to the eye between the English gentleman and the English boor. The boor, of course, is the multitude; the boor impresses himself upon the traveller... To understand this multitude, you must get below its insufferable manners, and learn that very fine civic qualities can consist with a personal bearing almost wholly repellent.

Then, as to the dogged reserve of the educated man, why, I have only to look into myself... set me among a few specimens of the multitude, and am I not at once aware of that instinctive antipathy, that shrinking into myself, that something like unto scorn, of which the Englishman is accused by foreigners who casually meet him? ... If I know myself at all, I am not an ungenial man; and yet I am quite sure that many people who have known me casually would say that my fault is a lack of geniality. To show my true self, I must be in the right mood and the right circumstances -- which, after all, is merely as much as saying that I am decidedly English.

Alpha.

Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I hope he wasn’t really hoping to change anyone’s mind here. The English are sociable and genial if you define those terms in a very tenuous way.

I can’t be too harsh as his last paragraph could just as well be describing me. In the right company I will talk your ear off, otherwise I can do a good imitation of a sullen Calvin Coolidge. (The story goes that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him that she had bet a friend she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, "You lose.")

If I were chronically ill but had the occasional good day, I wouldn’t describe myself as healthy. So I think it would be misleading to describe myself as genial.

Ryecroft lived in a very social time, if we define that term to include civic and special interest activities of all kinds. I attribute this primarily to boredom in the pre-TV/radio/recorded music/video game age. My great grandfather belonged both to the Masons and to an American fraternal organization of the 19th century called The Red Men. There is also a photograph (which I can't find) of a Prussian Junker type, a member of a model train club of this period, lying on the floor engrossed in a little train. The American Chautauquas were also aspects of this civic/social mania. I would argue that, as charming or odd as all these activities were, they didn’t really make their participants “social” in the sense one usually means when describing an acquaintance as being “social” or “outgoing.”

But now lets talk about the “gentlemen” and the “boors.” It interests me that Ryecroft doesn’t put this in any sort of political context, but England is in the middle of a class war at this time, with the repeal of the Corn Laws and changes to Inheritance laws attacking the upper, landed, classes (and the rural economy as a whole). The way the Corn Laws were a “Popular” cause to undermine the economy that supported many of the people eager for change; was a 19th century equivalent of our “popular” enthusiasm for the Wal-Mart economy which has so wonderfully destroyed both the local retail economy and the national manufacturing economy. It is fairly depressing that now, as then, people will answer “yes” if you ask them if they want cheaper goods or cheaper food without stopping to ask what they will have to pay to get this supposed improvement.

I was thinking that today’s American equivalent of the class division Gissing is writing about would be racial, and that does work to some extent, but I think “intellectual” might be the better contrast. Today it’s the people with limited intelligence (and education) that are at a disadvantage. The people here who protest the Google Buses are mostly people for whom that form of employment is unimaginable. They are as effectively excluded from the “nerd” world as if they had been born into the wrong family in the 19th century. There are plenty of other reasons to object to the Google Economy and the Google Life-style, but I suspect a large part of the hostility is simply that this is a party they haven’t been, and will never be, invited to.

The story about the common man in the fancy restaurant, also got me thinking about language. Since 1066, the landed elite in England used language to place the common people at a disadvantage. The language of the court and of the courts was either French or Latin (possibly Dutch and German much later). While vernacular languages gradually gained status across Europe (initially as a result of Protestants translating the bible), French and Latin retained a special status. And this was true in Russia as well -- which reminds me that Russia is mentioned here as having a similar class divide. What I don't know is if it was less true in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Could the common Frenchman understand the language of the court in 18th century France?

You can’t structure society so as to place the common man at a disadvantage -- English, for most of English history, was the language of the outsider only a little less than Gaelic or Welsh were -- and then complain that they lack sophistication.

The funny thing about English becoming the new lingua franca is that it has absorbed so much of French and German and Latin (and Yiddish and Hindi and Spanish) that it almost is a common language. If you go back in time more than a few centuries no one in England would be able to understand the English of today.

Next: Summer XIX. The English class character.