What is it that governs the Englishman? Certainly not intelligence;
seldom passion; hardly self-interest, since what we call self-interest
is nothing but some dull passion served by a brisk intelligence. The
Englishman's heart is perhaps capricious or silent; it is seldom
designing or mean. There are nations where people are always innocently
explaining how they have been lying and cheating in small matters,
to get out of some predicament, or secure some advantage; that seems
to them a part of the art of living. Such is not the Englishman's
way: it is easier for him to face or to break opposition than to
circumvent it. If we tried to say that what governs him is convention,
we should have to ask ourselves how it comes about that England is
the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies,
hobbies, and humours. Nowhere do we come oftener upon those two social
abortions--the affected and the disaffected. Where else would a man
inform you, with a sort of proud challenge, that he lived on nuts, or
was in correspondence through a medium with Sir Joshua Reynolds, or had
been disgustingly housed when last in prison? Where else would a young
woman, in dress and manners the close copy of a man, tell you that her
parents were odious, and that she desired a husband but no children, or
children without a husband? It is true that these novelties soon become
the conventions of some narrower circle, or may even have been adopted
_en bloc_ in emotional desperation, as when people are converted; and
the oddest sects demand the strictest self-surrender. Nevertheless,
when people are dissident and supercilious by temperament, they manage
to wear their uniforms with a difference, turning them by some lordly
adaptation into a part of their own person.
Let me come to the point boldly; what governs the Englishman is his
inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. It is nothing particularly
spiritual or mysterious. When he has taken his exercise and is drinking
his tea or his beer and lighting his pipe; when, in his garden or
by his fire, he sprawls in an aggressively comfortable chair; when,
well-washed and well-brushed, he resolutely turns in church to the east
and recites the Creed (with genuflexions, if he likes genuflexions)
without in the least implying that he believes one word of it;
when he hears or sings the most crudely sentimental and thinnest
of popular songs, unmoved but not disgusted; when he makes up his
mind who is his best friend or his favourite poet; when he adopts a
party or a sweetheart; when he is hunting or shooting or boating, or
striding through the fields; when he is choosing his clothes or his
profession--never is it a precise reason, or purpose, or outer fact
that determines him; it is always the atmosphere of his inner man.
To say that this atmosphere was simply a sense of physical well-being,
of coursing blood and a prosperous digestion, would be far too gross;
for while psychic weather is all that, it is also a witness to some
settled disposition, some ripening inclination for this or that, deeply
rooted in the soul. It gives a sense of direction in life which is
virtually a code of ethics, and a religion behind religion. On the
other hand, to say it was the vision of any ideal or allegiance to
any principle would be making it far too articulate and abstract.
The inner atmosphere, when compelled to condense into words, may
precipitate some curt maxim or over-simple theory as a sort of war-cry;
but its puerile language does it injustice, because it broods at a
much deeper level than language or even thought. It is a mass of dumb
instincts and allegiances, the love of a certain quality of life, to
be maintained manfully. It is pregnant with many a stubborn assertion
and rejection. It fights under its trivial fluttering opinions like
a smoking battleship under its flags and signals; you must consider,
not what they are, but why they have been hoisted and will not be
lowered. One is tempted at times to turn away in despair from the most
delightful acquaintance--the picture of manliness, grace, simplicity,
and honour, apparently rich in knowledge and humour--because of some
enormous platitude he reverts to, some hopelessly stupid little dogma
from which one knows that nothing can ever liberate him. The reformer
must give him up; but why should one wish to reform a person so much
better than oneself? He is like a thoroughbred horse, satisfying to the
trained eye, docile to the light touch, and coursing in most wonderful
unison with you through the open world. What do you care what words he
uses? Are you impatient with the lark because he sings rather than
talks? and if he could talk, would you be irritated by his curious
opinions? Of course, if any one positively asserts what is contrary to
fact, there is an error, though the error may be harmless; and most
divergencies between men should interest us rather than offend us,
because they are effects of perspective, or of legitimate diversity in
experience and interests. Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and
is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long
beards. Jupiter decided the most intricate questions with a nod, and a
very few words and no gestures suffice for the Englishman to make his
inner mind felt most unequivocably when occasion requires.
Instinctively the Englishman is no missionary, no conqueror. He prefers
the country to the town, and home to foreign parts. He is rather
glad and relieved if only natives will remain natives and strangers
strangers, and at a comfortable distance from himself. Yet outwardly
he is most hospitable and accepts almost anybody for the time being;
he travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the
instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change
him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English
weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in
the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of
mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a
sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race
when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage
to supplant him.
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