GREAT BRITAIN: Egoists

Ever fascinating to Englishmen is the question of what they are really like. Last week the King’s subjects were glad to hear from Edward of Wales another buzz on the old saw. Said H.R.H. in welcoming to St. James’s Palace the Council for Relations with Other Countries: “Better traveling facilities abroad since the War and an improvement in the manners and attitude of our tourists have done much to kill the baseless legends about us. All Britons do not have prominent teeth, nor do they all wear knickerbockers.”

This bit from H.R.H. was all to the good, but His Majesty’s Government recently permitted their British Broadcasting Corp. to do full justice to the great issue What Is An Englishman? Employed to answer was brilliant Harold Nicolson, son of Edward VII’s late great Ambassador to St. Petersburg, Sir Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. Son Nicolson today is perhaps the Empire’s most entertaining biographer of statesmen recently deceased, from his own father to Lord Curzon. Broadcast he:

“When I myself hear the word ‘Englishman,’ the instinctive portrait evoked is that, I regret to say, of Strube’s Little Man [see cut].* I see a small, kindly, bewildered, modest, obstinate, and very lovable little person. . . . Upon this first impression a more noble presentation imposes itself, and the contours of Strube’s Little Man expand and strengthen into the firm, fine features of Mr. Stanley Baldwin. In some such outward semblance do I visualize the solidity, the good humor, the honesty, the inconsequence, and the indolence of our race.

“Now when the average German thinks of the average Englishman he does not think of Mr. Baldwin in the very least. Still less does he think of Strube’s Little Man. . . . He visualizes a tall, spare man, immaculately dressed in top hat and frock coat, wearing spats and an eyeglass, and gripping a short but aggressive pipe in an enormous jaw. . . . To the German mind this immaculate figure is inspired by bitter jealousy of all foreign countries, by diabolical cunning, by ruthless materialism disguised under a revolting wrapper of unctuous self-righteousness. To him, the average Englishman is a clever and unscrupulous hypocrite; a man who, with superhuman ingenuity and foresight, is able in some miraculous manner to be always on the winning side; a person whose incompetence in business and salesmanship is balanced by an uncanny and unfair mastery of diplomatic wiles; a coldblooded, prescient, ruthless opportunist; a calculating and conceited egoist; a cad with occasional instincts for that strange indulgence for which they have no word in their own language, and which they designate by our own expression, ‘fair play.’ . . .

“To the average Frenchman the mental picture of the Englishman is generally subordinate to his mental picture of the Englishwoman. The latter is not a flattering portrait. It is the picture of a thin, rather weather-beaten, extremely ill-dressed old maid, clad in sensible check garments, and threatening taxi-drivers with a green umbrella. The French portrait of the Englishman is superimposed upon this unwelcome image. It is the picture of an inelegant, stupid, arrogant, and inarticulate person with an extremely red face. The French seem to mind our national complexion more than other nations. It gets on their nerves. They attribute it to the overconsumption of ill-cooked meat. They are apt, for this reason, to regard us as barbarian and gross. Only at one point does the French picture coincide with the German picture. The French share with the Germans a conviction of our hypocrisy. The sole difference is that, whereas the Germans regard us as brilliant hypocrites, the French regard us as very stupid hypocrites. . . .

“To the average American, the average Englishman seems affected, patronizing, humorless, impolite, and funny. To him also the Englishman wears spats and carries an eyeglass; to him also he is slim and neatly dressed; yet the American, unlike the German, is not impressed by these elegancies; he considers them ridiculous; and thus, although he is frequently assured by his own politicians that the Englishman is, in fact, a cold-blooded imperialist who spends his time in jumping on the underdog, he does not take these accusations very seriously. . . . To him we appear as slightly comic figures. I am aware that, psychologically speaking, the laughter that we arouse in the American breast is mainly due to their own pathetic self-consciousness and to a wholly misplaced sense of cultural inferiority; but I am not discussing complexes. . . .

“Since 1930 the average American has somewhat revised the contemptuous merriment with which he was wont formerly to regard us. … The Americans are beginning to wonder whether we are all of us quite so stupid as we look. The French remain convinced that we are all of us far more stupid even than we appear. The Germans, in their pathetic inability to understand others, continue to believe that we are a race of brilliant and unscrupulous egoists.”

In 1927 when his U. S. publishers urged then unknown Englishman Nicolson to account for himself he replied: “This is very awkward. We English are a shy race. I am all for giving you information about myself, were it not that it sounds egotistic and rather snobbish. . . . My father is Lord Carnock, one of the founders of our entente with France, a friend of King Edward. … In 1913, I married Victoria Sackville-West, only child of Lord and Lady Sackville of Knole, Kent who has written things of greater merit than anything I have done myself.”

* Similar to U. S. cartoonists’ stock figures of “Mr. Taxpayer” or “Mr. Common Citizen,” the Little Man was created by one Sidney Strube, whom Lord Beaverbrook employs today as the highest paid cartoonist of his Daily Express (circulation 1,775,000). Stout, moon-faced Strube successfully overcame a native English shyness by his procedure of calling everyone “George,” including his wife and himself. After their marriage some five years ago, she made him give up his hobby of acting as bartender at a pub he purchased for the fun of serving beer.