THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 11 August 1909, Page 78

THE SKETCHER.

AN AMERICAN ON CNGLAND. Mr Price Collier is a candid, sometimes even a merciless^ but an astute, and always a friendly, critic of England. There are pages in his book (" England and the English from an American Point of View") which will doubtless raise either a smile or a frown on an Eiigish reader's face ; but it will be well if the Englishman, nevertheless, read tbe book to the end, and now and then pause to ask himself whether some of tbe home thrusts are justified or not. Be will be the more encouraged to do so by the fact, palpable in every page — 'even in the pages which are most severe — that the writer has the sincereet respect and a thorough appreciation of the higher qualities of the English race. Like tbe Lord, the author chasteneth those whom he loves. I know both America and England, and I am disposed to say thaf the comparison which the author makes between the manners and tbe tendencies of the two countries is on the whole just. Possibly Mr Price CblKer may find some of his criticisms of his own country mor« resented by his countrymen than his criticisms on ■England will be by Englishmen. He notes — though be does not put it down entirely to poodjeasons-^the patience agood 'humour w»h "winch Englishmen can bear criticism. He must be confirmed in this view by the. very excellent reception, which tbe press of England has given to his 'book, with all its- outspoken criticisms of England. It is characteristic, however, of the whole tone of the book that the author both begins and ends with a note of intense admiration for everything English. He is, it is true, rather staggered at the sameness and the unappetising enormity of our breakfast table: These islanders, you will find, have little regard for lightness. A light dish of eggs in some form, a light roll, fresh butter, coffee, and hot milk. Yes, of a sort, but none of them light. You scon forswear coffee for tea, and ere long the passive bulwark of resistance wearies you into eggs and bacon, and cold meat, and jams, for your first meal of the day. Littie things are typical. What you want is not refused you, but what they have and like is gradually forced upon you. Thus they govern their colonies. No raising of voices, no ueeless and prolonged discussion, no heat generated, no ridicule of youa- habits, or eulogy of their t own — none of these, but just slow-mov- ' ing, unchanging, confident bulk! —The Servant.— But freeh from the horrors and difficulties of dooneefcic service in bis own \ country, Mr Price Collier at once turns with satisfaction to that most excellent and orderly .part of our social system in England — the servant : ' ' ; The monotonous and solemn " Yes, • sir," " Thank you, sir," of the servants may lead you to suppose that, at any ; rate, this alafs of English man and woman is 6arvile, is lacking in the national tTait of confidence, is perhaps amenable to suggestions of a change. On the contrary, this class less even than others. The manner and speech are merely mechanical ; the unblushing demands, either frankly open or awkwaardly surreptitious, for tips are part of the day's work. They are servants, they know it, they have no objection to youv knowing it, and meet of them have little ambition to be anything eke. They are not in that position in the meantime, but permanently ; they are not serving while waiting foi* something else ; service is their career. The American may "sling hash' at Coney Island, or in a western frontier town, until he can escape to become something else, but as a vocation he does not recognise it. At first, therefore, these people are puzzling ; we shall see later that they are a factor in the civilisation we are about to explore. They have their pride, their rules of precedence, their code ; they are fixed, [ immovable, unconcerned about other , careen;, undisturbed by hazy ambitions, ' and insistent upon their privileges, as are all other Englishmen. They will not overstep the boiuidary line of vout ' personal position, and they jealously . guard the boundaries of their own. ; — Love of Orderliness. — Similarly he is .stiuck — as every observant visitor to England is struck — with the great order-lin-oss, the regularity, the efficiency, which lie behind all the quietude with "which fome of our great instituti<jr:r■ttork. Take, fcr instance, the railway station : — Tlie noiseiess gliding out and gliding into the station is the English way of 1 mining things. Xo shouting, no nervous snapping of watches, no shriek of whittle, no clanging of bell ; a soirt-ely audiWe whistle and the thing is done. The-^e people must know their bu.-anets.s or somebody would be left behind, somebody uoiild get int-> the wrong train : they do know their bu.*inc>^. A<;ain, still pos-ibly bleeding from some eniut'ly unlooked-for and hated peering <A «'. new-paper into his private life, our American visitor is stiuck with that intcii^e re.«p?ct fcr the privacy and the rights of the individual which is one of England's best characteristics, and which accounts for the tone ot the English press. " We are soon to find," writes Mr Collier, " that this is a country of personal freedom and also personal responsibility." ! You may do as you please unmolested, uncritiedsed, unreported^ unphotograpbed, ' unheralded, namoticed even, as in no other country in -the world ; but the mo- 1 ment you do what you ought not to please to do, from the policemen to the court, and thence to the jail, is a shorter , road here than anywhere else. So much personal liberty is only possible where justice is swift, unprejudiced, impartial, ! and sure. The lord, the millionaire, the [

drunkard and the snatch thief are freated the same — within the same six months a great" financial schemer and the son of a great nobleman were ushered behind the bars with almost as little ceremony and ac little delay as are required for the trial of a wife-beater or a burglar. Personal freedom has this serious responsibility — its misuse is promptly punished, and there is no escape ; they even behead a king on occasion. — Unfavourable Impressions. — • So far for the good impressions ; let us turn to those less favourable. Our author becomes wistful as he gazes on the vast gulf that stall separates rich, and poor in this land of such terrible and significant contrasts : — ' Look at the people who swarm the streets to see the Lord 1 Mayor's show, ' and where will you see a more pitiable sight? These beef-eating, port-drinking fellows in Piccadilly, exercised, scrubbed, groomed, they are all well enough to be sure, but this other side of the shield is distressing to look at. Poor, stunted, bad-complexioned, shabbily dressed, illfeatured are these pork-eating, gin-drink-ing denizens of the East End. Crowds I have seen in America, in Mexico, and in most of the great cities of Europe — of India and China I know noticing. Nowhere is there euch squalor, such pinching poverty, so many undersized, so I many plainly and revokmgly diseased, so much 'human' rottenness as here. This is what the climate, the food, and the drink, and man's rule of the weaker to the wall, accomplish for the weak. The good old rule, the ancient plan, That he should take who has the power, And he should keep who can. Again and again our author recurs to this picture of the misery of our poor, piling up statistics our our Poor Law to prove his case. And he piles further statistics to show the reckless and spend/thrift expenditure of the English people, especially in articles of diet and on drink, calculating that England pays one million' sterling a week in taxbs on what she eats, drinks, and smokes, and following this up with, an account of our equally gigantic expenditure on armaments, on bread, on tea, on beef, on mutton, and on brandy, gin, whisky — amounting to some 150 millions sterling a year — "and everywhere, from the highest to the lowest, the wastefulness and the bad cooking and the spoiling of good materials" — out amthor is at once astounded and edified at the perfect equanimity with which women survey and bear it all. "England," he exclaims, "is the > most hopeful of all the nations." There is less political pessimism than in France, Germany, Hussia, Italy, or even in America. There is less of that I fatigued way of looking at things here than in the rest of Europe. Compare the speeches delivered in and out of Parliament by politicians, big and little, with the speeches of politicians delivered elsewhere at this moment in the world, I and one is impressed first of all by their 1 healthier tone. Every now and again in Germany, in France, and in America i there is an undertone of discouragement, of despair, as of men whose nerves had collapsed and left them peevish. Though the problems are faced as elsewhere, there is no throwing up of hands in despair, no dyspeptic politics, to put it briefly. The men in control — I judge from the look of them — are men who «at, and drink, and sleep, and play more than the men of other nations, and their nerves are not so close to the surface. They remain youthful longer than we do. — A Country of Men. — I turn to another shrewd observation on which our American critic insists over and over again. "Americans who are staying any time in England," he says, "are impressed by the fact that it k the country of men." And then he adds, as marking one of the greatest points of difference and contrast between the two countries, "likewise the English, both men and women, who visit America, are impressed by the fact that America is the country of women." This is a theme w<hich Mr Price Collier works out with great clearness and completeness ; and he is, I believe, right; and he is also just, pointing to the good and the bad side of the difference of attitude in the two nations. It is, as he confesses, a subtle and complex subject, not to be summarised and dismiwsed by the statement that "Americans : make the better husbands and the English I the better \rives." He sums up the ques- , tion in these careful and impartial words : ' One may perhaps say tentatively, • without much fear of contradiction, that j Ivnsrlish women take it for granted that , their husbands' pleasure and comfort, pnd even .".mus-oments, should take first j place ; while the American man rather j delegates the part of pleasure, comfort, • and amusement to his wife, and she, • l^rhaps, h<).s come to look upon thifi as j her privilege, and sometime.*, alas ! as her right. Whatever the reason, the general average of home life is more comfortable in ' England than in America. . " Nothing," write? Mr Price Collier, j 'Vives more conclusive proof of the truth of thfro comparison.-* than to notice how ' the Kn«ii«h and Americans respectively economise" : In a large establishment in England . the horses far the wife's brougham and ' victoria would go before the husband's huntera. while the reverse of this would ' be true in an American establishment j compelled to make similar sao'ifices. It is the husband, rather than the wife, who is looked to to advertise the family prosperity in England. It would be a very rare case indeed in America where j the wife .would not have, more and, freat-er variety of clothes than her h.US>> I and, but this ie much legs true in j England. Even poor men in England have more clothes than well-to-do men in America. An income of £1000 a 1 year in England would mean four times the amount of clothes than the possessor of the same income in America would > think necessary Ou the other hand, >

the percentage of any given income, f<rom £600 to £4000, expended by the ■wives and daughters for clothes, would! [ b9 half to two-thirds less in England I than with us. A manservant of some j kind in the establishment is far r:iore common in England than with us, and he, among other things, takes care of the master of the house, who is thus more easily capable of dealing with a 'arge wardrobe, and has more leisure to employ as he prefers. But for the reason that such service is much oheaoer here, and also for th© reason already given that the man is the important person, the men are more cared for than the -women, and a, rnanserv<ant is a common appanage of men in this country whose incomes would be deemed, and would be, as a matter of fact, quite inadequate for such an expense in America. And the result is thus set forth: — Domestic economy in England is devised for and directed to the aim of making the men as capable as possible of doing their work. The home is not a playhouse for women and their friends, not a grown-up nursery for the mother and the children, but a place of rest and comfort in which the men may renew their strength. It is possibly fair to deduce from this that housekeeping as' a rule in England has a more definite aim, aad consequently more system and less "waste of energy and money, than is the case in the majority of American houses. Our critic's final judgment on the position of women and men in England is favourable. Tbo apparent subordination of woman has, as one of its chief Tesults, that the Englishman can devote himself more uninterruptedly than the man of any other race to his work. Thus- even the apparent selfishness of the arrangement makes for good. One need hardly go- to such lengths as this, and yet it were unfair to Englishwomen, whose reputation for formless taste in dress and for hobbledehoy shyness of manner is already a sufficient handicap, nob to say that the efficient ordering of their households has much to do with the working power of tho men at home, and the influence and valour of their men abroad. It may be said, too, in this connection, that Englishwomen do not make such demands upon the time and the engagement? of their men folk as do women in America. Englishmen have far more occupations, and> many more pastimes and uses for tneir leisure, apart from their wives and sisters, than American men. This is not suggesting a less happy or a lower standard of home life, for that would not be true. It means merely that Englishmen spend more of their time with men, either for business or pleasure, or the occupation of their leisure in other ways, than do the Americans. Tbe American woman expects more, demands more, receives more attention from tbe American man than does the Englishwoman from the Englishman. It begins ip the nursery, and continues" through the school age ; the male animal is the favoured one. More is done for him, more is expended upon him, and tbe household focuses its energies unon his development rather than that of the female. The result is the pssumption of rights and privileges by the male, as over against the female, f- irn childhood to and through maturity. This is a delicate thing to define, but all th* more valuable as a contribution to the study of the English, because it is subtle and not easy of definition. There is an atmosphere in every household which predisposes tbe girls to look up to the boys, and most Englishwomen never recover from it, even where tho one to whom they are expected to do reverence is openly unworthy of it. And here ie the last word : In so far as these Englishmen take better care of themselves, they aTe younger for their years- than our men. I am controverting the -eoeived opinion about the English, both on the Continent and in America, when I say that Englishmen laugh and smila and "lark" more than any other men of mature age. I have noted how men of different ages play together ; so. too, they get on com- - fortably and happily- together in all sorts of -ways. This may be due to the fact that priggishnefs is so abhorred here, and. consequently, serious matters are not much discussed, intellectual differences between men of different ages are not so marked, and men in their conversation, ais well as in their games, are more on the same level. Any assumption of superiority is frowned upon. «nd both young and old make a mild form of " chaff" the conversational medium of intercourse. At the club, in the country henss, billiard room, over their cigars and coffee after dinner, the conversation seldom drifts beyond the understanding or the easy uarticipation therein of those most mildly endowed intellectually. I have let my author speak for himself. wine of his counts Invite comment, even :riticism. even contradiction ; but they are ;uch a wholesome, friendly, and skilful apjreciation of our methods of life by a fresh. >ye that I thought it better worth while o present them as they stand — for con;ideration, for partial acceptance at least, or some national stocktaking in any case. -T. P.'s Weekly.