I was riding in a bus yesterday afternoon when I overheard a
conversation between a couple of smartly dressed young people--a youth
and a maiden--at the other end of the vehicle. It was not an amusing
conversation, and I am not going to tell what it was about. Indeed,
I could not tell what it was about, for it was too vapid to be about
anything in particular. It was one of those conversations which consist
chiefly of “Awfullys” and “Reallys!” and “Don't-you-knows” and tattle
about dances and visits to the theatres, and motor-cars and similar
common-place topics. I refer to it, not because of the matter but
because of the manner. It was conducted on both sides as if the speakers
were alone on a hillside talking to each other in a gale of wind.
The bus was quite full of people, some of whom affected not to hear,
while others paid the young people the tribute of attention, if not of
approval. They were not distressed by the attention. They preserved an
air of being unconscious of it, of having the bus to themselves, of not
being aware that anyone was within earshot. As a matter of fact, their
manner indicated a very acute consciousness of their surroundings. They
were really talking, not to each other, but to the public in the bus.
If they had been alone, you felt, they would have talked in quite
reasonable tones. They would not have dreamed of talking loudly and
defiantly to an empty bus. They would have made no impression on an
empty bus. But they were happily sensible of making quite a marked
impression on a full bus.
But it was not the impression they imagined. It was another impression
altogether. There are few more unpleasing and vulgar habits than that of
loud, aggressive conversation in public places. It is an impertinence to
inflict one's own affairs upon strangers who do not want to know about
them, and who may want to read or doze or think or look out of the
window at the shops and the people, without disturbance. The assumption
behind the habit is that no one is present who matters. It is an
announcement to the world that we are someone in particular and can
talk as loudly as we please whenever we please. It is a sort of social
Prussianism that presumes to trample on the sensibilities of others by a
superior egotism. The idea that it conveys an impression of ease in the
world is mistaken. On the contrary, it is often a symptom of an inverted
self-consciousness. These young people were talking loudly, not because
they were unconscious of themselves in relation to their fellows, but
because they were much too conscious and were not content to be just
quiet, ordinary people like the rest of us.
I hesitate to say that it is a peculiarly English habit; I have not
lived abroad sufficiently to judge. But it is a common experience
of those who travel to find, as I have often found, their country
humiliated by this habit of aggressive bearing in public places. It is
unlovely at home, but it is much more offensive abroad, for then it is
not only the person who is brought into disrepute, but the country he
(and not less frequently she) is supposed to represent. We in the bus
could afford to bear the affliction of that young couple with tolerance
and even amusement, for they only hurt themselves. We could discount
them. But the same bearing in a foreign capital gives the impression
that we are all like this, just as the rather crude boasting of certain
types of American grossly misrepresent a people whose general
conduct, as anyone who sees them at home will agree, is unaffected,
unpretentious, and good-natured.
The truth, I suspect, is that every country sends abroad a
disproportionate number of its “bounders.” It is inevitable that it
should be so, for the people who can afford to travel are the people who
have made money, and while many admirable qualities may be involved
in the capacity to make money it is undeniable that a certain coarse
assertiveness is the most constant factor. Mr Leatherlung has got so
hoarse shouting that his hats, or his umbrellas, or his boots are better
than anybody else's hats, or umbrellas, or boots that he cannot attune
his voice to social intercourse. And when, in the second generation,
this congenital vulgarity is smeared with the accent of the high school
it is apt to produce the sort of young people we listened to in the bus
yesterday.
So far from being representative of the English, they are violently
unEnglish. Our general defect is in quite the opposite direction. Take
an average railway compartment. It is filled with people who distrust
the sound of their own voices so much, and are so little afflicted
with egoism, that they do not talk at all, or talk in whispers and
monosyllables, nudging each other's knees perhaps to attract attention
without the fearful necessity of speaking aloud. There is a happy
mean between this painful timidity which evacutes the field and the
overbearing note that monopolises the field. We ought to be able to talk
of our affairs in the hearing of others, naturally and simply, without
desiring to be heard, yet not caring too much if we are heard, without
wishing to be observed, but indifferent if we are observed. Then we
have achieved that social ease which consists in the adjustment of
a reasonable confidence in ourselves to a consideration for the
sensibilities of others.
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