A case in which a personal wrong rather than a personal right was
offensively asserted, was that of a lady, young and too fair to be so
unfair, in a crowded train coming from the Doncaster Races to York. She
had kept a whole first-class compartment to herself, putting her maid
into the second-class adjoining, and heaping the vacant seats with her
hand-baggage, which had also overflowed into the corridor. At the time
the train started she was comforting herself in her luxurious solitude
with a cup of tea, and she stood up, as if to keep other people out.
But, after waiting, seven of us, in the corridor, until she should offer
to admit us, we all swarmed in upon her, and made ourselves indignantly
at home. When it came to that she offered no protest, but gathered up
her belongings, and barricaded herself with them. Among the rest there
was a typewriting-machine, but what manner of young lady she was, or
whether of the journalistic or the theatrical tribe, has never revealed
itself to this day. We could not believe that she was very high-born,
not nearly so high, for instance, as the old lady who helped dispossess
her, and who, when we ventured the hope that it would not rain on the
morrow, which was to be St. Leger Day, almost lost the kindness for us
inspired by some small service, because we had the bad taste to suggest
such a possibility for so sacred a day.
I never saw people standing in a train, except that once which I have
already noted, when in a very crowded car in Wales, two women, decent
elderly persons, got in and were suffered to remain on foot by the young
men who had comfortable places; no one dreamed, apparently, of offering
to give up his seat. But, on the other hand, a superior civilization
is shown in what I may call the manual forbearance of the trolley and
railway folk, who are so apt to nudge and punch you at home here, when
they wish your attention. The like happened to me only once in England,
and that was at Liverpool, where the tram conductor, who laid hands
on me instead of speaking, had perhaps been corrupted by the unseen
American influences of a port at which we arrive so abundantly and
indiscriminately. I did not resent the touch, though it is what every
one is expected to do, if aggrieved, and every one else does it in
England. Within his rights, every one is safe; though there may be some
who have no rights. If there were, I did not see them, and I suppose
that, as an alien, I might have refused to stand up and uncover when the
band began playing _God Save the King_, as it did at the end of every
musical occasion; I might have urged that, being no subject of the King,
I did not feel bound to join in the general prayer. But that would have
been churlish, and, where every one had been so civil to me, I did not
see why I should not be civil to the King, in a small matter. In the
aggregate indeed, it is not a small matter, and I suppose that the
stranger always finds the patriotism of a country molestive. Patriotism
is, at any rate, very disagreeable, with the sole exception of our own,
which we are constantly wishing to share with other people, especially
with English people. We spare them none of it, even in their own
country, and yet many of us object to theirs; I feel that I am myself
being rather offensive about it, now, at this distance from them. Upon
the whole, not caring very actively for us, one way or the other, they
take it amiably; they try to get our point of view, and, as if it were a
thorn, self-sacrificially press their bosoms against it, in the present
or recent _entente cordiale_. None of their idiosyncrasies is more
notable than their patience, their kindness with our divergence from
them; but I am not sure that, having borne with us when we are by, they
do not take it out of us when we are away.
We are the poetry of a few, who, we like to think, have studied the
most deeply into the causes of our being, or its excuses. But you cannot
always be enjoying poetry, and I could well imagine that our lovers must
sometimes prefer to shut the page. The common gentleness comes from the
common indifference, and from something else that I will not directly
touch upon. What is certain is that, with all manner of strangers,
the English seem very gentle, when they meet in chance encounter. The
average level of good manners is high. My experience was not the widest,
and I am always owning it was not deep; but, such as it was, it brought
me to the distasteful conviction that in England I did not see the
mannerless uncouthness which I often see in America, not so often from
high to low, or from old to young, but the reverse. There may be much
more than we infer, at the moment, from the modulated voices, which
sweetens casual intercourse, but there are certain terms of respect,
almost unknown to us, which more obviously do that effect. It is a pity
that democracy, being the fine thing it essentially is, should behave
so rudely. Must we come to family government, in order to be filial or
fraternal in our bearing with one another? Why should we be so blunt, so
sharp, so ironical, so brutal in our kindness?