England has been rich in poets, in novelists, in inventors, in
philosophers making new beginnings, in intrepid travellers, in learned
men whose researches are a hobby and almost a secret. The land was once
rich in saints, and is still rich in enthusiasts. But the official
leaders of the English people, the kings, prelates, professors, and
politicians, have usually been secondary men; and even they have been
far more distinguished in their private capacity than in their official
action and mind. English genius is anti-professional; its affinities
are with amateurs, and there is something of the amateur in the best
English artists, actors, and generals. Delicacy of conscience, mental
haze, care not to outrun the impulse of the soul, hold the Englishman
back midway in his achievements; there is in him a vague respect for
the unknown, a tacit diffidence in his own powers, which dissuade him
from venturing on the greatest things or from carrying them out in a
comprehensive manner. The truth is the British do not wish to be well
led. They are all individualistic and aristocratic at heart, and want
no leaders in ultimate things; the inner man must be his own guide. If
they had to live under the shadow of a splendid monarch, or a masterful
statesman, or an authoritative religion, or a deified state they would
not feel free. They wish to peck at their institutions, and tolerate
only such institutions as they can peck at. A certain ineptitude thus
comes to be amongst them an aptitude for office: it keeps the official
from acquiring too great an ascendancy. There is a sort of ostracism
by anticipation, to prevent men who are too good from coming forward
and upsetting the balance of British liberties; very like the vacuum
which is created in America around distinction, and which keeps the
national character there so true to type, so much on one lively level.
But in England distinction exists, because it escapes into privacy.
It is reserved for his Grace in his library and her Ladyship at her
tea-table; it fills the nursery with lisping sweetness and intrepid
singleness of will; it dwells with the poets in their solitary rambles
and midnight questionings; it bends with the scholar over immortal
texts; it is shut off from the profane by the high barriers of school
and college and hunting-field, by the sanctity and silence of dubs, by
the unspoken secrets of church and home.
The greatest distinction of English people, however, is one which,
whilst quite personal and private in its scope, is widely diffused
and strikingly characteristic of the better part of the nation;
I mean, distinction in the way of living. The Englishman does in
a distinguished way the simple things that other men might slur
over as unimportant or essentially gross or irremediable; he is
distinguished--he is disciplined, skilful, and calm--in eating, in
sport, in public gatherings, in hardship, in danger, in extremities.
It is in physical and rudimentary behaviour that the Englishman is
an artist; he is the ideal sailor, the ideal explorer, the ideal
comrade in a tight place; he knows how to be clean without fussiness,
well-dressed without show, and pleasure-loving without loudness.
This is why, although he is the most disliked of men the world over
(except where people need some one they can trust) he is also the
most imitated. What ferocious Anglophobe, whether a white man or a
black man, is not immensely flattered if you pretend to have mistaken
him for an Englishman? After all, this imitation of the physical
distinction of Englishmen is not absurd; here is something that _can_
be imitated: it is really the easiest way of doing easy things, which
only bad education and bad habits have made difficult for most people.
There is nothing impossible in adopting afternoon tea, football, and
boy scouts; what is impossible, and if possible very foolish, is to
adopt English religion, philosophy, or political institutions. But
why should any one wish to adopt them? They have their merits, of
course, and their propriety at home; but they are blind compromises,
and it is not in their principles that the English are distinguished,
but only in their practice. Their accents are more choice than their
words, and their words more choice than their ideas. This, which might
sound like a gibe, is to my mind a ground for great hope and for some
envy. Refinement, like charity, should begin at home. First the body
ought to be made fit and decent, then speech and manners, and habits
justly combining personal initiative with the power of co-operating
with others; and then, as this healthy life extends, the world will
begin to open out to the mind in the right perspectives: not at first,
perhaps never, in its total truth and its real proportions, but with
an ever-enlarging appreciation of what, for us, it can contain. The
mind of the Englishman, starting in this proud and--humble and profound
way from the inner man, pierces very often, in single directions, to
the limit of human faculty; and it seems to me to add to his humanity,
without injury to his speculation, that he instinctively withdraws
again into himself, as he might return home to marry and settle after
tempting fortune at the antipodes. His curious knowledge and his
personal opinions then become, as it were, mementos of his distant
adventures; but his sterling worth lies in himself. He is at his best
when free impulse or familiar habit takes an unquestioned lead, and
when the mind, not being expected to intervene, beats in easy unison
with the scene and the occasion, like a rider at home in the saddle and
one with his galloping horse. Then grace returns to him, so angular
often in his forced acts and his express tenets; the smile comes
unaffectedly, and the blithe quick words flow as they should; arm is
linked spontaneously in arm, laughter points the bull's-eye of truth,
the whole world and its mysteries, not being pressed, become amiable,
and the soul shines happy, and beautiful, and absolute mistress in her
comely house. Nothing in him then is gross; all is harmonized, all is
touched with natural life. His simplicity becomes wholeness, and he no
longer seems dull in any direction, but in all things sound, sensitive,
tender, watchful, and brave.
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