BRITISH UNCOMMUNICATIVENESSBY A. C. BENSONAuthor of “From a College Window,” “The Upton Letters,” etc.IATTENDED a public dinner the other day in London, and sat between two really quite eminent men. One of them, indeed, would be regarded as being in quite the front rank of eminent Englishmen. I took my place with a mixture of interest and decorous trepidation, and naturally waited for one of the two to open conversation. But neither of them showed any signs of wishing to address either myself or the adjacent guests on each side; they sipped their soup, they toyed with their sherry, they looked about them with an air of mingled curiosity and benevolence. I thereupon selected the least formidable of the two and began to talk. He listened to me indulgently, as one might listen to the prattle of a child; he answered direct questions with a half-amused air; when I had said all I could think of on the subject, the matter dropped. My neighbor made no further observations on that or any other head. He was perfectly courteous and amiable, but it did not occur to him that it was his business to talk. I thereupon conducted a boarding expedition upon the still more eminent man’s vessel, which bristled, so to speak, with guns. I met with exactly the same fate. He heard me with courtesy, and he replied without any show of animation. But I was more fortunate here; it emerged in the course of the talk that he was a collector of books, and he gave me an account of a recent purchase which he had made of a famous and rare book under rather curious circumstances. I tried to advance a little further upon this line; but he was not to be drawn, and so that conversation also dropped. I believe that both my neighbors would have sat quite contentedly in silence during the whole of dinner; but it happened that the guest who was sitting on the farther side of the great man opened fire on a political question in which our hero had taken a prominent part, accompanying his question with deferential compliments which I should have thought would have been distasteful, and which certainly seemed to me to partake of the nature of palpable flattery. To my surprise, the great man beamed all over, and rose to the fly with a swirl. Not to be outdone, I went back to the lesser notability on my right with an effusive compliment, which I can only say I myself would have found highly embarrassing. The ruse succeeded, and my neighbor began to expatiate on the point with every appearance of genuine interest.I thought the experience rather a painful one. No doubt both my neighbors were men full to the brim of important concerns, they were possibly tired by their work; but it seemed to me to be a violation of all the elementary laws of social intercourse that they should come to a public dinner without any intention of making themselves agreeable to their humbler neighbors, and casting upon their fellow-guests the onus of entertaining and amusing them if they could. What was still worse to my mind was to find that they were accessible to patent adulation, and that their geniality could be elicited by flattery which was not even adroit.I think there is a strong tendency among Englishmen not to realize their social duties in this respect. An Englishman is inclined to mistrust and dislike ornamental accomplishments such as conversation, and to believe that if he has nothing particular to say, he need not trouble himself to say anything. I was struck the other day by a remark made to me by an American friend of mine, who was commenting upon the social usages of England. He said to me:“What is so disconcerting to many of us Americans in England is the appalling capacity for silence on social occasions which characterizes so many of your solid men. We in America think that if we are invited to a festivity of any kind, we are bound to contribute all we can in the way of geniality, to pay, so to speak, for the hospitality extended to us; but many Englishmen seem to think that they are invited to a festivity to be looked at, and that they have no sort of duty to talk unless they feel disposed.”I think there is a good deal of truth in this. We in England do not think of talk as a kind of art which ought to be exercised; we look upon it as an optional thing. We have a feeling of caution and even of suspicion toward other people. We have a dislike of giving ourselves away; we think it safer to be supposed not to have views or ideas, and it is that which makes our official classes on the whole so dull. We rather tend to promote to honor and emolument safe men who can hold their tongues; and if a man, in the gaiety of his heart, flourishes about airy considerations and conversationalfriandises, we think of him as rather a light-minded person, who is likely not to be a good man of business. “A man of business”—hateful phrase! I do not mean that one undervalues the sound qualities which underlie it; but if business is a thing which is to overflow into all our waking hours, to preoccupy and comprise all our rational thoughts and aims, what is to become of us? It is this intense concentration on material interests, the dreadful supremacy of property, which hampers not only our intellectual and social life, but actually our material prospects as well. I have no sort of doubt that the rapid rise of Germany even as a commercial rival corresponds to the alertness which comes from having a strong intellectual and artistic life behind it; or, rather, that the nation which has fewer interests is simply no match for the nation with wider and more eager interests, because its national vitality is inferior.I do not take a pessimistic view of the future of England, nor do I think that because we cannot talk lightly and brightly at dinner we are ill-equipped for national greatness; but I do think that our caution, our stolidity, our stodginess are not things to glory in, but faults to be amended. It seems to me—and I say this not fancifully, but from careful observation—that the younger generation of Englishmen have in childhood a good deal of aptitude for intellectual and artistic things. They are easily stirred and actively inquisitive. Then comes school life; and there the dreariness of much of our education, the weary athletic conventions, the so-called “sticking to business,” begin to exercise a coercive effect. Little or no attempt is made in our schools to cultivate the imagination or the emotions, or even to teach boys how to fill their leisure rationally. Then there is often an awakening at the university. Ideas are to a certain extent in the air; if life does not exactly become all fire and music, as Browning found it, at all events, there are lights on the horizon—there are:“Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.”Even here I have noted with discontent the fact that the school conventions exercise a certain leveling power, and make themselves felt more markedly than they did in my own undergraduate days. The papers are full of sport; and a young man is considered just a little abnormal who has not a due respect for athletic renown.Then the young men go out into the world; and there it does seem to me that the curtain of darkness does too often drop again. A man of strong individual tastes does no doubt contrive to keep up some touch with intellectual or artistic interests; but even so, that is often regarded as a hobby, a private indulgence, not a matter of perfectly healthy and natural concern. And then too often the dreary specter of business comes menacingly on the scene; after all, a good income, a definite occupation, time for golf—those are the “solid joys, and lasting pleasure” which life can yield; there is nothing vague or fantastic aboutthem. The abusive word “esthetic” cannot be applied to life lived on these sturdy lines.Now, I do not wish to discredit the sturdy bourgeois virtues of common sense and honesty, but I do not really believe that a nation can advance on those lines. It cannot advance because it ends by being unsympathetic. It puts personal success and personal comfort above all ideas and causes. It respects men not for their power of subordinating their own welfare to that of others, but for their capacity to secure their own position. A witty Frenchman once said that the two great vices of Englishmen were cant and bashfulness; by which he meant that the Englishman professes a standard of virtue which he does not practise, and that he cannot at the same time be both frank and amiable. When he is frank, he is censorious; when he is amiable, he is insincere.And there is no doubt that though we are respected for our force, we are not a popular nation. It is easier to us to censure than to praise, however genuinely we admire. Our bashfulness does not arise from modesty, but from vanity. We are so much concerned with what other people think of us, so anxious to make an impression of dignity, that we are hypocritical about our standards, and glum when we might be frank. We are deeply conventional, and most of us arrange our lives not on our own lines, but on the lines which we believe are expected of us. Thus I find it impossible to believe that our common sense is based upon simplicity. It is really an elaborate ideal, painfully adapted from what we believe to be the ideals of other people. Our fault is really an inverted sensitiveness. We are sensitive to what is thought of us and said of us, and our repression of emotion and extravagance is dictated not by our sentiment, which is a strong characteristic of Englishmen, but by our terror of public opinion. This keeps us perhaps from making fools of ourselves, but it also keeps us from generous and ardent enterprise. I do believe that we Englishmen shut out from our perception a great part of life, and perhaps the best part of life. We limit our experience, we dissemble our emotions. Yet when we get a great poet, like Shakspere or Browning or Shelley, who said flowingly what they felt, who were inspired by the vividness, the variety, the emotion of life, and who cared very little about its standards and conventions, we are immensely vain of the product, and pigeon-hole it faithfully among our national assets.Of course these generalizations are wide and necessarily insecure; but I do feel that a great treasure of fine feeling, of a noble curiosity about life and its issues, of great and generous emotion, is somehow put away under lock and key in the English warehouse. One desires more frankness, more independence, more freshness to prevail. It would even have its material consequences.There is an interesting story of Wordsworth, who went to call on Miss Harriet Martineau at Ambleside, in the house which she had built and laid out. There was a gathering of neighbors present, and Wordsworth stood for a long time at the window contemplating the beautiful landscape outside. Then he turned to the party and said, “Miss Martineau, I congratulate you on your beautiful little domain. The views are wonderful, and it will turn out to be the wisest thing you ever did in your life.” He paused for a moment, and the guests expected some comment on the uplifting effect of communion with nature; but Wordsworth, with a fine gesture, continued, “Your property will certainly be trebled in value within the next ten years!”Tailpiece Page 569
BRITISH UNCOMMUNICATIVENESSBY A. C. BENSONAuthor of “From a College Window,” “The Upton Letters,” etc.
BY A. C. BENSON
Author of “From a College Window,” “The Upton Letters,” etc.
IATTENDED a public dinner the other day in London, and sat between two really quite eminent men. One of them, indeed, would be regarded as being in quite the front rank of eminent Englishmen. I took my place with a mixture of interest and decorous trepidation, and naturally waited for one of the two to open conversation. But neither of them showed any signs of wishing to address either myself or the adjacent guests on each side; they sipped their soup, they toyed with their sherry, they looked about them with an air of mingled curiosity and benevolence. I thereupon selected the least formidable of the two and began to talk. He listened to me indulgently, as one might listen to the prattle of a child; he answered direct questions with a half-amused air; when I had said all I could think of on the subject, the matter dropped. My neighbor made no further observations on that or any other head. He was perfectly courteous and amiable, but it did not occur to him that it was his business to talk. I thereupon conducted a boarding expedition upon the still more eminent man’s vessel, which bristled, so to speak, with guns. I met with exactly the same fate. He heard me with courtesy, and he replied without any show of animation. But I was more fortunate here; it emerged in the course of the talk that he was a collector of books, and he gave me an account of a recent purchase which he had made of a famous and rare book under rather curious circumstances. I tried to advance a little further upon this line; but he was not to be drawn, and so that conversation also dropped. I believe that both my neighbors would have sat quite contentedly in silence during the whole of dinner; but it happened that the guest who was sitting on the farther side of the great man opened fire on a political question in which our hero had taken a prominent part, accompanying his question with deferential compliments which I should have thought would have been distasteful, and which certainly seemed to me to partake of the nature of palpable flattery. To my surprise, the great man beamed all over, and rose to the fly with a swirl. Not to be outdone, I went back to the lesser notability on my right with an effusive compliment, which I can only say I myself would have found highly embarrassing. The ruse succeeded, and my neighbor began to expatiate on the point with every appearance of genuine interest.
I thought the experience rather a painful one. No doubt both my neighbors were men full to the brim of important concerns, they were possibly tired by their work; but it seemed to me to be a violation of all the elementary laws of social intercourse that they should come to a public dinner without any intention of making themselves agreeable to their humbler neighbors, and casting upon their fellow-guests the onus of entertaining and amusing them if they could. What was still worse to my mind was to find that they were accessible to patent adulation, and that their geniality could be elicited by flattery which was not even adroit.
I think there is a strong tendency among Englishmen not to realize their social duties in this respect. An Englishman is inclined to mistrust and dislike ornamental accomplishments such as conversation, and to believe that if he has nothing particular to say, he need not trouble himself to say anything. I was struck the other day by a remark made to me by an American friend of mine, who was commenting upon the social usages of England. He said to me:“What is so disconcerting to many of us Americans in England is the appalling capacity for silence on social occasions which characterizes so many of your solid men. We in America think that if we are invited to a festivity of any kind, we are bound to contribute all we can in the way of geniality, to pay, so to speak, for the hospitality extended to us; but many Englishmen seem to think that they are invited to a festivity to be looked at, and that they have no sort of duty to talk unless they feel disposed.”
I think there is a good deal of truth in this. We in England do not think of talk as a kind of art which ought to be exercised; we look upon it as an optional thing. We have a feeling of caution and even of suspicion toward other people. We have a dislike of giving ourselves away; we think it safer to be supposed not to have views or ideas, and it is that which makes our official classes on the whole so dull. We rather tend to promote to honor and emolument safe men who can hold their tongues; and if a man, in the gaiety of his heart, flourishes about airy considerations and conversationalfriandises, we think of him as rather a light-minded person, who is likely not to be a good man of business. “A man of business”—hateful phrase! I do not mean that one undervalues the sound qualities which underlie it; but if business is a thing which is to overflow into all our waking hours, to preoccupy and comprise all our rational thoughts and aims, what is to become of us? It is this intense concentration on material interests, the dreadful supremacy of property, which hampers not only our intellectual and social life, but actually our material prospects as well. I have no sort of doubt that the rapid rise of Germany even as a commercial rival corresponds to the alertness which comes from having a strong intellectual and artistic life behind it; or, rather, that the nation which has fewer interests is simply no match for the nation with wider and more eager interests, because its national vitality is inferior.
I do not take a pessimistic view of the future of England, nor do I think that because we cannot talk lightly and brightly at dinner we are ill-equipped for national greatness; but I do think that our caution, our stolidity, our stodginess are not things to glory in, but faults to be amended. It seems to me—and I say this not fancifully, but from careful observation—that the younger generation of Englishmen have in childhood a good deal of aptitude for intellectual and artistic things. They are easily stirred and actively inquisitive. Then comes school life; and there the dreariness of much of our education, the weary athletic conventions, the so-called “sticking to business,” begin to exercise a coercive effect. Little or no attempt is made in our schools to cultivate the imagination or the emotions, or even to teach boys how to fill their leisure rationally. Then there is often an awakening at the university. Ideas are to a certain extent in the air; if life does not exactly become all fire and music, as Browning found it, at all events, there are lights on the horizon—there are:
“Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.”
“Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.”
Even here I have noted with discontent the fact that the school conventions exercise a certain leveling power, and make themselves felt more markedly than they did in my own undergraduate days. The papers are full of sport; and a young man is considered just a little abnormal who has not a due respect for athletic renown.
Then the young men go out into the world; and there it does seem to me that the curtain of darkness does too often drop again. A man of strong individual tastes does no doubt contrive to keep up some touch with intellectual or artistic interests; but even so, that is often regarded as a hobby, a private indulgence, not a matter of perfectly healthy and natural concern. And then too often the dreary specter of business comes menacingly on the scene; after all, a good income, a definite occupation, time for golf—those are the “solid joys, and lasting pleasure” which life can yield; there is nothing vague or fantastic aboutthem. The abusive word “esthetic” cannot be applied to life lived on these sturdy lines.
Now, I do not wish to discredit the sturdy bourgeois virtues of common sense and honesty, but I do not really believe that a nation can advance on those lines. It cannot advance because it ends by being unsympathetic. It puts personal success and personal comfort above all ideas and causes. It respects men not for their power of subordinating their own welfare to that of others, but for their capacity to secure their own position. A witty Frenchman once said that the two great vices of Englishmen were cant and bashfulness; by which he meant that the Englishman professes a standard of virtue which he does not practise, and that he cannot at the same time be both frank and amiable. When he is frank, he is censorious; when he is amiable, he is insincere.And there is no doubt that though we are respected for our force, we are not a popular nation. It is easier to us to censure than to praise, however genuinely we admire. Our bashfulness does not arise from modesty, but from vanity. We are so much concerned with what other people think of us, so anxious to make an impression of dignity, that we are hypocritical about our standards, and glum when we might be frank. We are deeply conventional, and most of us arrange our lives not on our own lines, but on the lines which we believe are expected of us. Thus I find it impossible to believe that our common sense is based upon simplicity. It is really an elaborate ideal, painfully adapted from what we believe to be the ideals of other people. Our fault is really an inverted sensitiveness. We are sensitive to what is thought of us and said of us, and our repression of emotion and extravagance is dictated not by our sentiment, which is a strong characteristic of Englishmen, but by our terror of public opinion. This keeps us perhaps from making fools of ourselves, but it also keeps us from generous and ardent enterprise. I do believe that we Englishmen shut out from our perception a great part of life, and perhaps the best part of life. We limit our experience, we dissemble our emotions. Yet when we get a great poet, like Shakspere or Browning or Shelley, who said flowingly what they felt, who were inspired by the vividness, the variety, the emotion of life, and who cared very little about its standards and conventions, we are immensely vain of the product, and pigeon-hole it faithfully among our national assets.
Of course these generalizations are wide and necessarily insecure; but I do feel that a great treasure of fine feeling, of a noble curiosity about life and its issues, of great and generous emotion, is somehow put away under lock and key in the English warehouse. One desires more frankness, more independence, more freshness to prevail. It would even have its material consequences.
There is an interesting story of Wordsworth, who went to call on Miss Harriet Martineau at Ambleside, in the house which she had built and laid out. There was a gathering of neighbors present, and Wordsworth stood for a long time at the window contemplating the beautiful landscape outside. Then he turned to the party and said, “Miss Martineau, I congratulate you on your beautiful little domain. The views are wonderful, and it will turn out to be the wisest thing you ever did in your life.” He paused for a moment, and the guests expected some comment on the uplifting effect of communion with nature; but Wordsworth, with a fine gesture, continued, “Your property will certainly be trebled in value within the next ten years!”
Tailpiece Page 569