Gentlemen and Foreigners.
ONE OF DR. KEIF'S ADVENTURES.--MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF OLD
ENGLAND.--A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.--ENGLISH Flegeljahre.--THE ORDINANCES
OF FASHION.--OUR FRIEND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--THE GENTLEMAN'S
OCCUPATIONS AND ECCENTRICITIES.--FOREIGNERS.--JOHN BULL ON
FOREIGNERS GENERALLY.--STRIFE AND PEACE.
Among the thousand-and-one adventures which Dr. Keif had in the very
first week of the season, there was one which, as fate willed it, became
entitled to a page in the chronicles of our house.[E] One night at the
Opera, he met a gentleman whom many years ago he had seen among the
ruins of Heidelberg Castle. Dr. Keif was, of course, overjoyed to see
his old friend, and, for many days he sang that friend's praises in the
most extravagant terms. He told the ladies of the house that the
gentleman he had met was a Don Juan, whose very appearance conquered
legions of "blue devils," while the glance of his eye was enough to
attract and subdue any female heart.
[E] It is of no use concealing the fact, that our house is that of
a respectable London citizen. We will, therefore, confess that Sir
John is neither a knight nor a baronet, but that we--without the
intervention and assistance of Her Gracious Majesty--considering his
eminent services on behalf of our readers, knighted him by means of a
silver tea-spoon.
"Oh, indeed!" said I; "then he's a dandy?" "Never mind," whispered Dr.
Keif, with an air of profound mystery. "He'll be worth his weight in
gold as an ally. He isn't even an Englishman, I tell you. That is to
say, not a modern Englishman, but a youthful scion of merry old England.
Not a trace of orthodoxy is to be found in him, neither in church nor in
kitchen matters, neither in criticism nor in politics." And to Sir John
the learned doctor said:--
"Sir,--I have found the man who first gave me an idea of the greatness
of England; who persuaded me to study 'Johnson's Dictionary'; and to
whom I am indirectly indebted for your acquaintance, respect, and
friendship."
Of course we were all very desirous to see this remarkable man. And here
we ought to remark, that in an English family the introduction of a
stranger is not so usual and common-place an event as in Germany and
France. Previous to, and after your first visit, the family meet in
council. Your good and bad qualities are weighed in the scale of
domestic criticism; for every member of the family sees in you,
eventually, a bridegroom, brother-in-law, son-in-law, uncle, or master.
At all events you are considered as a suitor for the privileges of a
friend of the family, for the slight and passing acquaintances of
continental life are unknown in these circles. The very servants in such
houses are hereditary, and hold their places for life; the nurse is
hired for three generations; the coachman's grandfather trained the mare
whose great grand-daughter is now the property of the son of the house.
The question whether the doors of the sanctuary are to be opened,
concerns all the members of the family, and gives rise to lengthy
discussions and animated debates. While the parlour votes you a
gentleman, low voices of warning are heard from the depths of the
kitchen; for the cook says:--
"Sure no one knows what church you go to on a Sunday; and the other day
your coat was buttoned up to the chin; for all the world as if you had
cause to conceal your linen or the want of it."
Even Miss Lollypop, though but just in her teens, and fresh from the
nursery, takes part in the debate, and raises her shrill voice in
condemnation.
"I can't bear him, mamma," says she; "and I won't remain in the room
when he comes. How can he dare to pinch my cheek as if I were but a
child?"
And you, O unsuspecting stranger, have no idea of the sensation which
your knock produces throughout the house; and when, on going away, Sir
John shakes hands with you, and sees you to the door, asking you to call
again, you are, perhaps--continental as you are--cautious enough to
consider all this as a mark of cheap and common politeness! You are
mistaken. Sir John lays great stress on his religious observance of the
ordinances of old English family life, and he quotes, with much
emphasis, the following paragraph of that most explicit of all
unpublished law books:--
"And in case the stranger, male or female, doth, by a comely form and
demure carriage, gain thy British heart, then shalt thou, when he or she
departeth, give his or her hand a hearty shake, to signify and prove
thereby that he or she shall always be welcome at thy table, at thy
fireside, and in the spare bedroom which is on thy premises. But if thou
dost not like him or her, then his or her hand shall not be so shaken."
Robert Baxter, Esq., or, simply Mr. Baxter, as we by this time are
accustomed to call him, had, thanks to his friend and eulogist, no
difficulties whatever to contend with. He marched in with flying
colours. He came, saw, and conquered. The "hearty shake of the hand" was
resolved upon before he had emptied his first cup of tea at our
fireside. By this time, he is the most intimate friend of the family; he
comes and goes away at his liking--takes the children out in his
gig--and has, in short, made such progress in the space of a very few
weeks, that, in direct violation of another paragraph of the family
ordinances, he lays hands even on the sacred poker, and actually pokes
the fire with it; a privilege which, according to law, should not be
conceded, even to a friend, before the expiration of the seventh year of
amicable intercourse.
Let no one fancy that these remarks are an introduction to a novellistic
plot. To dispel all suspicions on this head, I proceed at once to unmask
Dr. Keif's abominable perfidy--one which the ladies of the house vow
they will forgive, but which they cannot forget. Only fancy their
disappointment! Keif's "Don Juan," his "amiable hero," his "capital
fellow," for thus it pleased the doctor to call him--Mr. Baxter, in
fact, is a grey-haired old man. Dr. Keif was cunning enough to excuse
the incorrectness of his description by pleading short-sightedness. "It
never had struck him--indeed it had not--and,--
"After all," said our learned friend; "though not exactly young, Mr.
Baxter is youthful. His whiskers, for instance, are brown; and his
large, clear eyes, how free and open do they look at all and everything!
Has he not an aristocratic hand? Is not his chin round, his forehead
white, and his toilet irreproachable? In short, the more I think of it,
the more firmly am I persuaded, that Mr. Baxter is quite a Don Juan if
compared with your absurd London greenhorns, whose lengthy faces make
all the French shop-girls in Regent-street gape."
"True!" said I. "In my opinion, Mr. Baxter's grey hair is his best
recommendation, for none but children and old men are truly amiable in
England. No creature on earth more excels in charming merriness and bold
natural freshness, than your little freeborn, trouserless Briton. But
the moment the boy sports the very ghost of a stray hair on his upper
lip--the moment he lays in a stock of razors and stiff shirt
collars--that very moment does your English boy undergo a most shocking
metamorphosis, and one which even Doyle would despair to depict. The
'_Flegeljahre_'--the period of sowing wild oats--with other nations a
mere transition period, scarcely longer than a northern spring, is, in
the case of an Englishman, protracted through ten years and more. With
the very brightest character it lasts up to six-and-twenty; but it also
frequently happens that the modern Englishman, like unto Tully's Roman,
remains an '_adolescens_' up to forty. There is something altogether
indescribable in this English _Flegeljahr_ character. Fancy a cross
between an unctuous missionary and a fast under-graduate, duly coated,
cravated brushed up and dressed out for the dining-room; and you will
have a tolerably approximating idea of the _Flegel_-youth, who eager to
be very respectable and romantic at one and the same time, succeeds in
appearing either insufferably tedious or unconstitutionally comical. Is
it their hypochondriacal climate? So do the continentals ask every year,
when the English exodus arrives on their shores. Or is it Church and
State? Is it a fault of education, or a want of digestion, which causes
these wealthy, tall islanders, with their red faces and costly coats, to
stand forth so queer, and out of the common order of human creatures?
They are neat to perfection, and got up regardless of expense in all
their details; but take the fellow as a whole, and you find him mighty
unsavoury.
"You will find the reason neither in the fog, nor in constitutional
liberty. No Act of Parliament forbids a man to cultivate the graces; and
the climate enacts flannel only, but by no means the '_Zopf_.' It is not
a want of education, but a superabundance of it. It is the education of
a rigidly puritanical governess, whose name we never pronounce without a
feeling of secret awe. That governess is more fervently adored than the
Established Church; people fear her more than they did the Spanish
Inquisition. As Fate sat enthroned in mysterious majesty above the gods
of Greece, so does this cruel mistress lord it over Magna Charta, Habeas
Corpus, and all the other glories of Old England. Her name is
_Gentility_! Liberty of the Press and popular agitation avail not
against her. The Commons of England have conquered the strongholds of
Toryism; Mr. Cobden and his Cotton Lords have trampled Protection under
foot, and light is being let even into the gloomy caverns of Chancery.
But what agitator dares to league the cunningly separated classes of
English society against only one of the one thousand three hundred
positive and negative enactments of Gentility, whereby the favoured
people of the isles are distinguished from the pagans of the
continent--from the immoral, uneducated barbarians--from those
'soap-renouncing' foreigners! Who liberates the freeborn Briton from the
fear of 'losing caste' (a genuine British phrase this!), which follows
him as his shadow, whithersoever he may direct his steps--which haunts
him even in rural retirement--and which, in a town containing near three
millions of inhabitants, admits not even of one single circle of free
and general sociability! At a political meeting, perhaps, there may
exist something like an approximation of the upper and lower classes,
and peers and draymen, cheese-mongers and guardsmen, may, on such
occasions, breathe the same air, and fill it with their cheers and
groans. But I will rather believe that St. Peter's of Rome and St.
Paul's of London can come together, than that the cousin of a Right
Honourable will knowingly, and with tolerance prepense, eat his dinner
at the same table with the keeper of a cheese-shop.
"We, the foreigners, are blind to the graces of the English
_Flegel_-youth. His manners, which we liken to those of a dancing bear,
are, in the eyes of the natives, respectable; what we contemn as a
mincing chilliness of address, is exalted as the decent reserve of the
true Briton. Of course there are exceptions, especially within these
latter days. Now and then we meet with daring innovators, who doubt the
exclusive decency of English manners. There are bold sceptics,
proclaiming in the East and in the West that a man with a coloured
neck-tie ought to be able to appear in the pit of the Italian Opera,
without thereby obliging all proper-minded females in the five rows of
boxes to faint away and be carried out forthwith. Others pretend that at
table you may take the fork with your right hand, without by so doing
affixing an indelible stigma to your name; and that there is a
possibility of pardon, even for the man who eats mustard with his
mutton. The very boldest assert that you may take a pea with your knife,
and eat the pea too, and yet be a gentleman for all that. These are
charming signs of the times; they awaken hopes which another generation
will perhaps justify. But, generally speaking, there is no denying it,
that the free social spirit of merry Old England is most frequently to
be found among the elderly men."
Grey hair, with red cheeks, is pleasing to look at; and doubly pleasing
are those colours when they ornament the head of a gentleman, for in
such a case they announce the presence of all sorts of manly
amiabilities. The word "gentleman" has been shockingly profaned in
England. According to Sir John's cynical definition, any man is a
gentleman who pays his tailor's bill. The correctness of that definition
would appear to be generally allowed, for the name is most liberally
bestowed on dandies and blockheads, wealthy tradesmen and sporting men.
But in these pages I speak of the "Gentleman" in the truest and noblest
sense of the term. He is a joint production of nature, art, and
accident; and there are many conditions to the perfection of this _beau
ideal_.
Imprimis, he must not be compelled to eat his roast-beef by the sweat of
his brow; for he who has to work for his existence in England cannot, of
course, be said to be independent. He must have made the grand tour; for
to the English the continent is in a manner a social high school and
academy. How miraculously is the innate and indestructible kernel of
English character developed in such a man! As he ripens in years, he
breaks through that icy covering which in his earlier years surrounded
him, and he shakes off the chains of etiquette or bears them with a
grace which proves that to him they are not a restraint, but an
ornament.
A few years later, he eclipses the flower of the male part of society in
Germany and France; his jovial humour is restrained by an exquisite
tact; his politeness acquires substance from a free and hearty manner.
There is in him so grave and natural a manliness, that to oblige him and
to be obliged by him is equally agreeable. It would seem that he becomes
younger as he advances in years.
Such a man was Robert Baxter, Esq. The history of his development is
short and simple enough: shortly after his introduction into our circle
he related it one evening--after dinner, of course. For what does the
code of family morals enact and prescribe?
"Thou shalt invite a gentleman to a good and solid dinner, the which
consisteth of fish and roast-meat, and pudding and wine. But thou shalt
not invite him to the eating of cakes and sugar-plums, and much less
shalt thou tempt him to a _soirée dansante_, where he would have much
labour and no sustenance. And at table thou shalt not, as the wicked do,
make the said gentleman talk of politics, business, science, and divers
other heavy matters, lest peradventure his attention should be diverted
from the enjoyment of the various dishes which thou shalt set before
him."
Obedient to this law, Sir John gave a grand dinner to all his family to
celebrate Mr. Baxter's acquaintance. It was after that dinner that our
friend, reclining in an easy chair, gave us the following sketch of his
former life:--
"'Story--God bless you, I have none to tell, sir.' My life has been that
of a gentleman--comfortable and monotonous throughout. I was brought up
by an uncle--of course, he was rich; most uncles are. He spoilt me and
left me his property. I went to Harrow and Oxford, where I learnt that
no one ever learns anything in those seats of learning, except fighting,
hunting, and the art and mystery of writing Latin verses. And after all,
to think of the lots of very clever men we have in spite of those
places--truly it is miraculous! Old England,--thank goodness!--can't be
ruined; but it wants ventilation. Ventilation in foreign climes is a
necessity for the free-born Englishman. That was my idea when I crossed
the Channel to Calais. On that occasion I had a curious adventure. Not a
duel--no nothing of the kind. I pitched into a Frenchman and knocked him
down. The wretch had called me '_un étranger_.' I did not understand his
mode of speech, but a friend who was with me said the words meant 'a
foreigner.' 'A foreigner, you scoundrel!' cried I. 'How dare you say a
free-born Briton is a foreigner!' and I knocked him down. He got up and
challenged me to fight a duel with him, but the police interfered, and I
was arrested. The lieutenant of the police who had to examine me, told
me, with a kindness which was altogether undeserved on my part, that the
word 'foreigner' was quite harmless, that it had a relative meaning, and
that it might even be complimentary. I could not stand that. I had a dim
perception of my being wrong, and of having made an egregious fool of
myself, but still I could not get over the contemptuous meaning which we
connect with the term; and pig-headed as I was, I replied in English:--
"'Sir, I'd thank you for not addressing such compliments to me. You may
call me a non-Frenchman--of course you may; for I am an Englishman and
glory in the fact, but I would not be a foreigner--no! not for the
world! Rather than submit to such an indignity I'd leave your country at
once.'
"He laughed and bowed me out, and that very day I returned to Dover.
"On my second continental tour, I went through Belgium to Germany, and
when, after a few years' residence in that country, I came back to
England, I was not alone. I was accompanied by a foreigner--a lady who
bore my name. She was not strong, and could not bear the climate. She
yearned for her country, but concealed her wish to return. When at
length I brought her back to the sunnier clime of Southern Germany, it
was too late. That sad event happened many years ago, but though she
left me, I was not solitary. Heaven be thanked, I have a son, a dear
boy, who is now at college at Heidelberg."
"Of course, your son is half a foreigner!" said Miss Lollypop, with a
slight toss of her head.
"Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Baxter, with a smile. "He is a Cockney
by birth, for he was born within the sound of Bow-bells. But," added our
friend, "I wish him to become so much of a foreigner as to enjoy the
brighter sides of English life without a superstitious admiration of the
darker ones."
A pause of general embarrassment followed the conclusion of this short
and fragmentary autobiography. The children looked at Mr. Baxter
curiously, enquiringly, for a couple of stories and anecdotes seemed
still hovering on his lips. But he sat silent and lost in thought.
Probably his thoughts were with his son, the Heidelberg student; perhaps
he fancied he accompanied that son in his wanderings through some valley
in the Alps or to the ruins of some ancient abbey, rich with curious
carvings and relics of the olden time. For Mr. Baxter rides the
antiquarian hobby as he does his other hobbies, of which many are as
laborious as useless. For it ought to be remarked, that a real gentleman
hates absolute idleness; some purpose or object, fantastic though it be,
he must have: he defies dangers and courts fatigues. The odd freaks
which English gentlemen have, and which they are guilty of, to the
signal astonishment and amusement of continental _feuilleton_-writers
and Gothamites, are mere excrescences of that restless desire of
activity which is one of the most splendid qualities of the Anglo-Saxon
race. Many thousands of Englishmen, each of whom can afford to make his
life one long spell of rest, devote their time and energies to an
honourable servitude in the nation's service, and slave for a single
word of thanks from posterity, quite as much as the continental
_bureaucrats_ do for orders and pensions. If they want the talents or
the ambition necessary for such a career, they will devote themselves to
farming or support some one of the numerous charitable institutions of
the metropolis or their own county--not only with money, for that were
no sacrifice--but also by giving it their time, personal attention, and
influence. The active charity of the women is quite as great as that of
the men; and this explains the reason why, although in England the gulf
between wealth and poverty is wider than in every other country,
nevertheless up to the present day there are no symptoms of that patient
bitterness of hatred among the lower classes--that harbinger of an
approaching doom--which has come to other nations with the gloomy
evangel of the future on its pale lips.
As a third class, we have the amateurs and patronisers of arts and
sciences; the passionate and most persevering observers of nature, who
for many months will watch a swallow's nest, or fill their diaries with
observations on the signs and marks of instinct in cockroaches and
snails; the travellers in every clime, who take their coffee with the
Shah of Persia, converse with the Sultan on the superior excellence of
English railroads; rhyme on, and in presence of, the cypress trees of
Scutari; smoke the pipe of peace with the Camanchees and the Last of the
Mohicans; and who now and then watch and register the hangman's tricks
of an accomplished despot, in order to recount them to their countrymen,
who never believe such shocking stories, unless published under the
authority of a gentleman of known respectability, and conservative
principles. Those who are altogether unable to employ their leisure
hours--that is to say, their lives--usefully, devote themselves to some
"sport" with a touching fanaticism, and ride their hobbies with the
heroism of world-betterers. Such a man sails in a nut-shell of a yacht
to the polar regions, or travels about in Spain to effect the conversion
of Jews and gipsies; or he ascends Mont Blanc, and writes a letter to
the _Times_ to commemorate his fatigue and folly.
Mr. Baxter, however, had never been up Mont Blanc, and what is more, it
is not likely he will ever make the ascent. He is too old, and too
clever. On the evening in question, he gave convincing proof of his
shrewd good nature and tact for while we were all silent and
embarrassed, he leant back, with the most comfortable air in the world,
and with a look of innocent slyness at our long-drawn faces. Our
embarrassment and silence were caused by a word of which Mr. Baxter had
made a liberal use in his autobiography, and which he pronounced with a
provoking emphasis. It is a word on which whole chapters and books might
be written--the word "_Foreigner_."
The ancient Greeks spoke of all other nations on the face of the earth
as "barbarians"; and for a period, I believe, they were quite right. It
is said, whether truly or falsely I will not here investigate; but it is
said, that every Englishman thanks God in his morning's prayers, that he
has not been created a foreigner. "He is a foreigner, but a very nice
man!" "A very gentlemanly foreigner, indeed!" "What a pity he is a
foreigner!" Offensive compliments of this sort fall very frequently from
British lips. The tone of pity, contempt, and condescension, with which
those disagreeable words are pronounced, is applied, not only with
respect to the foreigner, but also to the produce of his country. Bad
cherries or plums, are at once declared to be foreign; there is no doubt
they come from France, Belgium, or Holland. When our cook opens an egg
which offends her olfactory nerves, and when she flings it indignantly
into the dust-hole, she accompanies it with the sneering hiss of
"foreign"! That wretched egg was laid by a Dutch hen. Of course it was;
and probably the passage from Holland was very long and stormy. But
alas! all Dutch hens come into evil repute; it is at once understood
that, "Them nasty furrin hanimals halways lays bad heggs, Sir."
A bold attempt to vindicate the rights and the honor of foreigners was,
on one Sunday evening, made in Guildford Street, at dinner time, when
the glorious roast beef of Old England graced Sir John's hospitable
board.
"This glorious bulwark of your nation," said Dr. Keif, "is of foreign
extraction."
Sir John dropped his knife with the shock these words gave him.
"I dont understand you, sir," said he, rather sternly.
"Is not your loin of beef cut from Jütish ox, that was fattened on the
Holstein marshes? Go to Smithfield, and ask the sellers where they got
that Homeric beef, to which the British owe their strength, humour, and
political superiority?"
Sir John was mute with astonishment and vexation. He could not deny the
truth of the learned Doctor's sally; yet if he admitted it, what--ay,
what was to become of the roast beef of Old England?
"Come!" said Dr. Keif, following up his advantage, and raising his
glass, "'Here's a health to Father Rhine!' What do you say, Sir," added
he, turning to Mr. Baxter; "Is there anything equal to the delight of a
walking expedition down the Rhine, or up the Ahr or Mosel?"
Mr. Baxter took the hint.
"Charming!" said he. "Even Sir John must confess that we have some
reason for our love of continental life; and that travelling Englishmen,
after all, know what is good when they stick to the banks of the Rhine,
the Danube, or the Neckar."
"Certainly," said Sir John; "to see those countries, and the queer sort
of people that live in them, is certainly worth while; but to the
English heart there's no place like home. They have not anything extra
in those countries, have they?"
"Yes, they have," said Mr. Baxter peremptorily. To whom Sir John
replied--
"It's an old proverb, that there's nothing choice or precious in the
world, but money will procure it for you in England."
"I beg your pardon," replied Mr. Baxter, with great determination;
"there are things rich and rare which could not be had in England--no,
not for all the money in the Bank!"
Sir John was extremely shocked. "Sir," said he; "you astonish me: oblige
me by proving your assertion. What is it you allude to?"
"Why, of a _Volksfest_, a people's festival, really and truly a festival
in the open air, when all ranks and classes join and mix without any
thought or possibility of a mob; where the wine calls forth songs and
laughter, but where not a single fist is raised to threaten or strike."
And Mr. Baxter continued, in rather too flattering colours, giving a
sketch of the merry German life, and contrasting it with life in
England. He expatiated on the general cultivation of the lower classes,
on the toleration of German social life--in short, he lost his way in
producing so brilliant an apotheosis of German affairs, that he did not,
or would not, pay attention to Sir John, who shook his head in an
ominous manner.
At first, Dr. Keif rubbed his hands triumphantly, for on Mr. Baxter's
free-born British lips each word had the charm of authority. But as our
friend went on, the Doctor could not but confess to himself, that Mr.
Baxter's victory might possibly lead to that gentleman's utter ruin in
the worthy baronet's good opinion.
There was a long and awful pause. At length Sir John rose, and with a
smile, by no means a natural one, he walked up to Mr. Baxter, held out
his hand, dropped it, and said--
"Sir! It's my opinion you are a respectable man, and I believe you mean
what you say; but moderation is good in all matters. You may be just to
foreign countries: so am I. But you idolize the Continent, and despise
your own country. That--I beg your pardon--but that is not the conduct
of an English gentleman!"
Dr. Keif looked very pale and uncomfortable.
"Nonsense, Sir John," said Mr. Baxter good-humouredly. "Let me say a
word to you, and then you may judge whether I love my country less than
you do. I have never meddled with politics, but I am something of a
Tory; for I take the world as it is, and hold that everything which is,
is, if not _pour le mieux_, according to Voltaire's _Candide_, at least
not without good reason. But no one ought to claim all honour and glory
for him and his. The people of this beautiful island have the
inestimable treasures of liberty, power and honour. England is an
impregnable fortress; a charming garden fenced in by the ocean and by
rocks; her tranquil safety is cheap at any price! No venomous reptiles
creep on her soil; the wolves have been exterminated for centuries past.
But in return, the sweets of existence are open only to hard labour and
high birth. A consequence of this is, a spirit of _caste_, a tendency to
seclusion, a stubborn and rugged independence. Look at the Continent.
What would those poor nations come to, plagued and hunted down as they
are, if deprived of the comforting amenities of a kindly sociability?
What, they have no unity in their states, no protection abroad, no
sacredness of law, no safety at home, and yet you would dispute with
them the paltry consolation of having better actors than you have! If
their towns, with their eternal state of siege, had our fogs and clouds
of smoke, our penitential Sundays and breathless week-days, whoever
could resist the temptation of committing suicide? Why, such a state of
things were a hell upon earth! And can you believe that Providence could
allow such a state of things to exist? But to return to England. This
country has the greatest Parliament, the most powerful orators, the most
humane police, the freest newspapers, the most untouchable liberty; and
with all this you lay claim to a monopoly of good potatoes and manners!
You would have all the gifts and perfections of earth! But if this our
England could, in addition to her solid political heritage, have the
charms of continental leisure hours, why then this same England were a
Paradise on earth--literally a Paradise, where no one could ever think
of dying."
Sir John was pacified and happy, and said he was. He went about the room
singing "God save the Queen," and would not leave off shaking hands with
Mr. Baxter.