INSULARITIES.

It is more or less the habit of every country--more or less commendable

in every case--to exalt itself and its institutions above every other

country, and be vain-glorious. Out of the partialities thus engendered

and maintained, there has arisen a great deal of patriotism, and a

great deal of public spirit. On the other hand, it is of paramount

importance to every nation that its boastfulness should not generate

prejudice, conventionality, and a cherishing of unreasonable ways of

acting and thinking, which have nothing in them deserving of respect,

but are ridiculous or wrong.

We English people, owing in a great degree to our insular position,

and in a small degree to the facility with which we have permitted

electioneering lords and gentlemen to pretend to think for us, and to

represent our weaknesses to us as our strength, have been in particular

danger of contracting habits which we will call for our present

purpose, Insularities. Our object in this paper, is to string together

a few examples.

On the continent of Europe, generally, people dress according to

their personal convenience and inclinations. In that capital which is

supposed to set the fashion in affairs of dress, there is an especial

independence in this regard. If a man in Paris has an idiosyncracy on

the subject of any article of attire between his hat and his boots, he

gratifies it without the least idea that it can be anybody’s affair but

his; nor does anybody else make it his affair. If, indeed, there be

anything obviously convenient or tasteful in the peculiarity, then it

soon ceases to be a peculiarity, and is adopted by others. If not, it

is let alone. In the meantime, the commonest man in the streets does

not consider it at all essential to his character as a true Frenchman,

that he should howl, stare, jeer, or otherwise make himself offensive

to the author of the innovation. That word has ceased to be Old Boguey

to him since he ceased to be a serf, and he leaves the particular

sample of innovation to come in or go out upon its merits.

Our strong English prejudice against anything of this kind that is new

to the eye, forms one of our decided insularities. It is disappearing

before the extended knowledge of other countries consequent upon steam

and electricity, but it is not gone yet. The hermetically-sealed,

black, stiff, chimney-pot, a foot and a half high, which we call a

hat, is generally admitted to be neither convenient nor graceful; but,

there are very few middle-aged gentlemen within two hours’ reach of

the Royal Exchange, who would bestow their daughters on wide-awakes,

however estimable the wearers. Smith Payne and Smith, or Ransom and

Co., would probably consider a run upon the house not at all unlikely,

in the event of their clerks coming to business in caps, or with such

felt-fashions on their heads as didn’t give them the head-ache, and

as they could wear comfortably and cheaply. During the dirt and wet

of at least half the year in London, it would be a great comfort and

a great saving of expense to a large class of persons, to wear the

trousers gathered up about the leg, as a Zouave does, with a long

gaiter below--to shift which, is to shift the whole mud-incumbered part

of the dress, and to be dry, and clean directly. To such clerks, and

others with much outdoor work to do, as could afford it, Jack-boots,

a much more costly article, would, for similar reasons, be excellent

wear. But what would Griggs and Bodger say to Jack-boots? They would

say, “This sort of thing, sir, is not the sort of thing the house has

been accustomed to, you will bring the house into the Gazette, you must

ravel out four inches of trousers daily, sir, or you must go.”

Some years ago, we, the writer, not being in Griggs and Bodger’s, took

the liberty of buying a great-coat which we saw exposed for sale in the

Burlington Arcade, London, and which appeared to be in our eyes the

most sensible great-coat we had ever seen. Taking the further liberty

to wear this great-coat after we had bought it, we became a sort of

Spectre, eliciting the wonder and terror of our fellow creatures as we

flitted along the streets. We accompanied the coat to Switzerland for

six months; and, although it was perfectly new there, we found it was

not regarded as a portent of the least importance. We accompanied it to

Paris for another six months; and, although it was perfectly new there

too, nobody minded it. This coat so intolerable to Britain, was nothing

more nor less than the loose wide-sleeved mantle, easy to put on, easy

to put off, and crushing nothing beneath it, which everybody now wears.

During hundreds of years, it was the custom in England to wear beards.

It became, in course of time, one of our Insularities to shave close.

Whereas, in almost all the other countries of Europe, more or less of

moustache and beard was habitually worn, it came to be established

in this speck of an island, as an Insularity from which there was no

appeal, that an Englishman, whether he liked it or not, must hew,

hack, and rasp his chin and upper lip daily. The inconvenience of

this infallible test of British respectability was so widely felt,

that fortunes were made by razors, razor-strops, hones, pastes,

shaving-soaps, emollients for the soothing of the tortured skin, all

sorts of contrivances to lessen the misery of the shaving process and

diminish the amount of time it occupied. This particular Insularity

even went some miles further on the broad highway of Nonsense than

other Insularities; for it not only tabooed unshorn civilians, but

claimed for one particular and very limited military class the sole

right to dispense with razors as to their upper lips. We ventured to

suggest in this journal that the prohibition was ridiculous, and to

show some reasons why it was ridiculous. The Insularity having no sense

in it, has since been losing ground every day.

One of our most remarkable Insularities is a tendency to be firmly

persuaded that what is not English is not natural. In the Fine Arts

department of the French Exhibition, recently closed, we repeatedly

heard, even from the more educated and reflective of our countrymen,

that certain pictures which appeared to possess great merit--of which

not the lowest item was, that they possessed the merit of a vigorous

and bold Idea--were all very well, but were “theatrical.” Conceiving

the difference between a dramatic picture and a theatrical picture,

to be, that in the former case a story is strikingly told, without

apparent consciousness of a spectator, and that in the latter case the

groups are obtrusively conscious of a spectator, and are obviously

dressed up, and doing (or not doing) certain things with an eye to the

spectator, and not for the sake of the story; we sought in vain for

this defect. Taking further pains then, to find out what was meant by

the term theatrical, we found that the actions and gestures of the

figures were not English. That is to say,--the figures expressing

themselves in the vivacious manner natural in a greater or less degree

to the whole great continent of Europe, were overcharged and out of

the truth, because they did not express themselves in the manner

of our little Island--which is so very exceptional, that it always

places an Englishman at a disadvantage, out of his own country, until

his fine sterling qualities shine through his external formality and

constraint. Surely nothing can be more unreasonable, say, than that

we should require a Frenchman of the days of Robespierre, to be taken

out of his jail to the guillotine with the calmness of Clapham or

the respectability of Richmond Hill, after a trial at the Central

Criminal Court in eighteen hundred and fifty-six. And yet this exactly

illustrates the requirement of the particular Insularity under

consideration.

When shall we get rid of the Insularity of being afraid to make the

most of small resources, and the best of scanty means of enjoyment? In

Paris (as in innumerable other places and countries) a man who has six

square feet of yard, or six square feet of housetop, adorns it in his

own poor way, and sits there in the fine weather because he likes to

do it, because he chooses to do it, because he has got nothing better

of his own, and has never been laughed out of the enjoyment of what

he has got. Equally, he will sit at his door, or in his balcony, or

out on the pavement, because it is cheerful and pleasant and he likes

to see the life of the city. For the last seventy years his family

have not been tormenting their lives with continual enquiries and

speculations whether other families, above and below, to the right

and to the left, over the way and round the corner, would consider

these recreations genteel, or would do the like, or would not do the

like. That abominable old Tyrant, Madame Grundy, has never been of his

acquaintance. The result is, that, with a very small income and in a

very dear city, he has more innocent pleasure than fifty Englishmen

of the same condition; and is distinctly, in spite of our persuasion

to the contrary (another Insularity!) a more domestic man than the

Englishman, in regard of his simple pleasures being, to a much greater

extent, divided with his wife and children. It is a natural consequence

of their being easy and cheap, and profoundly independent of Madame

Grundy.

But, this Insularity rests, not to the credit of England, on a more

palpable foundation than perhaps any other. The old school of Tory

writers did so pertinaciously labor to cover all easily available

recreations and cheap reliefs from the monotony of common life, with

ridicule and contempt, that great numbers of the English people got

scared into being dull, and are only now beginning to recover their

courage. The object of these writers, when they had any object beyond

an insolent disparagement of the life-blood of the nation, was to jeer

the weaker members of the middle class into making themselves a poor

fringe on the skirts of the class above them, instead of occupying

their own honest, honorable, independent place. Unfortunately they

succeeded only too well, and to this grievous source may be traced many

of our present political ills. In no country but England have the

only means and scenes of relaxation within the reach of some million

or two of people been systematically lampooned and derided. This

disgraceful Insularity exists no longer. Still, some weak traces of its

contemptuous spirit may occasionally be found, even in very unlikely

places. The accomplished Mr. Macaulay, in the third volume of his

brilliant History, writes loftily about “the thousands of clerks and

milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrine

and Loch Lomond.” No such responsible gentleman, in France or Germany,

writing history--writing anything--would think it fine to sneer at any

inoffensive and useful class of his fellow subjects. If the clerks and

milliners--who pair off arm in arm, by thousands, for Loch Katrine and

Loch Lomond, to celebrate the Early Closing Movement, we presume--will

only imagine their presence poisoning those waters to the majestic

historian as he roves along the banks, looking for Whig Members of

Parliament to sympathise with him in admiration of the beauties of

Nature, we think they will be amply avenged in the absurdity of the

picture.

Not one of our Insularities is so astonishing in the eyes of an

intelligent foreigner, as the Court Newsman. He is one of the absurd

little obstructions perpetually in the way of our being understood

abroad. The quiet greatness and independence of the national character

seems so irreconcileable with its having any satisfaction in the

dull slipslop about the slopes and the gardens, and about the Prince

Consort’s going a-hunting and coming back to lunch, and about Mr.

Gibbs and the ponies, and about the Royal Highnesses on horseback

and the Royal infants taking carriage exercise, and about the slopes

and the gardens again, and the Prince Consort again, and Mr. Gibbs

and the ponies again, and the Royal Highnesses on horseback again,

and the Royal infants taking carriage exercise again, and so on for

every day in the week and every week in the year, that in questions of

importance the English as a people, really miss their just recognition.

Similar small beer is chronicled with the greatest care about the

nobility in their country-houses. It is in vain to represent that the

English people don’t care about these insignificant details, and don’t

want them; that aggravates the misunderstanding. If they don’t want

them, why do they have them? If they feel the effect of them to be

ridiculous, why do they consent to be made ridiculous? If they can’t

help it, why, then the bewildered foreigner submits that he was right

at first, and that it is not the English people that is the power,

but Lord Aberdeen, or Lord Palmerston, or Lord Aldborough, or Lord

Knowswhom.

It is an Insularity well worth general consideration and correction,

that the English people are wanting in self-respect. It would be

difficult to bear higher testimony to the merits of the English

aristocracy than they themselves afford in not being very arrogant or

intolerant, with so large a public always ready to abase themselves

before titles. On all occasions, public and private, where the

opportunity is afforded, this readiness is to be observed. So long

as it obtains so widely, it is impossible that we should be justly

appreciated and comprehended, by those who have the greatest part in

ruling us. And thus it happens that now we are facetiously pooh-poohed

by our Premier in the English capital, and now the accredited

representatives of our arts and sciences are disdainfully slighted by

our Ambassador in the French capital, and we wonder to find ourselves

in such curious and disadvantageous comparison with the people of

other countries. Those people may, through many causes, be less

fortunate and less free; but, they have more social self-respect: and

that self-respect must, through all their changes, be deferred to,

and will assert itself. We apprehend that few persons are disposed

to contend that Rank does not receive its due share of homage on the

continent of Europe; but, between the homage it receives there, and

the homage it receives in our island, there is an immense difference.

Half-a-dozen dukes and lords, at an English county ball, or public

dinner, or any tolerably miscellaneous gathering, are painful and

disagreeable company; not because they have any disposition unduly to

exalt themselves, or are generally otherwise than cultivated and polite

gentlemen, but, because too many of us are prone to twist ourselves

out of shape before them, into contortions of servility and adulation.

Elsewhere, Self-respect usually steps in to prevent this; there is much

less toadying and tuft-hunting; and the intercourse between the two

orders is infinitely more agreeable to both, and far more edifying to

both.

It is one of our Insularities, if we have a royal or titled visitor

among us, to use expressions of slavish adulation in our public

addresses that have no response in the heart of any breathing creature,

and to encourage the diffusion of details respecting such visitor’s

devout behaviour at church, courtly behaviour in reception-rooms,

decent behaviour at dinner-tables, implying previous acquaintance with

the uses of knife, fork, spoon, and wine-glass,--which would really

seem to denote that we had expected Orson. These doubtful compliments

are paid nowhere else, and would not be paid by us if we had a little

more self-respect. Through our intercourse with other nations, we

cannot too soon import some. And when we have left off representing,

fifty times a day, to the King of Brentford and the Chief Tailor of

Tooley Street, that their smiles are necessary to our existence, those

two magnificent persons will begin to doubt whether they really are

so, and we shall have begun to get rid of another Insularity.