Yet he was standing stiffly up for himself, and strewing his
convictions and opinions broadcast as the English all do when pressed
by circumstance, while we, with none of their shyness, mostly think our
thoughts to ourselves. I suppose we do it because we like better than
they to seem of one effect with the rest of our kind. In England one
sees a variety of dress in men which one rarely sees at home. They dress
there not only in keeping with their work and their play, but in the
indulgence of any freak of personal fancy, so that in the street of a
provincial town, like Bath, for instance, you will encounter in a short
walk a greater range of trousers, leggings, caps, hats, coats, jackets,
collars, scarfs, boots and shoes, of tan and black, than you would meet
at home in a month of Sundays. The differences do not go to the length
of fashions, such as reduce our differences to uniformity, and clothe,
say, our legs in knickerbockers till it is found everybody is wearing
them, when immediately nobody wears them. Only ladies, of fashions
beyond men’s, gratify caprices like ours, and even these perhaps not
voluntarily. In the obedience they show to the rule that they must never
wear the same dinner or ball gown twice, it was said (but who can ever
find out the truth of such things?) that they sometimes had sent home
from the dressmaker’s a number of dresses on liking, and wore them in
succession, only to return them, all but one at least, as not liked, the
dressmaker having found her account in her work being shown in society.
[Illustration: AN ENGLISH HOUSEMAID]
I do not know just what is to be inferred from a social fact or
statement like this, but I may say that the devotion to an ideal of
social position is far deeper with the English than with us. Whether
we spend more or not, I believe that the English live much nearer their
incomes than Americans do. I think that we save more out of our
earnings than they out of theirs, and that in this we are more like the
Continental peoples, the French or the Italians. They spend vastly more
on state than we do, because, for one thing, they have more state to
spend on. A man may continue to make money in America, and not change
his manner of living till he chooses, and he may never change it. Such
a thing could not happen to an Englishwoman as happened to the elderly
American housewife who walked through the magnificent house which her
husband had bought to surprise her, and sighed out at last, “Well, now I
suppose I shall have to keep a girl!” The girl would have been kept
from the beginning of her husband’s prosperity, and multiplied, till
the house was full of servants. If you have the means of a gentleman
in England, you must live like a gentleman, apparently; you cannot live
plainly, and put by, and largely you must trust to your life-insurance
as the fortune you will leave your heirs. It cannot be denied that the
more generous expenditure of the English adds to the grace of life, and
that they are more hospitable according to their means than we are; or
than those Continental peoples who are not hospitable at all.
A thing that one feels more and more irritatingly in England is that,
while with other foreigners we stand on common ground, where we may be
as unlike them as we choose, with the English we always stand on English
ground, where we can differ only at our peril, and to our disadvantage.
A person speaking English and bearing an English name, had better be
English, for if he cannot it shows, it proves, that there is something
wrong in him. Our misfortune is that our tradition, and perhaps our
inclination, obliges us to be un-English, whereas we do not trouble
ourselves to be un-French, or un-Italian, for we are so by nature. The
effort involved in distinguishing ourselves breeds a sort of annoyance,
or call it no more than uneasiness, which is almost as bad as a bad
conscience; and in our sense of hopeless perdition we turn vindictively
upon our judge. But that is not fair and it is not wise; he does not
mean to be our judge, except when he comes to us for the purpose; in his
own house, he is civilly unaware of putting us to any test whatever. If
you ask him whether he likes this thing or that of ours, he will tell
you frankly; he never can see why he should not be frank; he has a kind
of helplessness in always speaking the truth; and he does not try to
make it palatable.