England to Me: A Memoir

by Emily Hahn

  Her face ought to be fresh-colored and smooth, but these days it is more likely to look drawn and aged. There are more cosmetics around nowadays than there were fifteen years ago, which lessens the contrast between the Englishwoman and her American opposite number, but her hair never changes very much. She still wears a short bob, even an Eton crop, and still seems to think that fuzzy, uncombed locks are youthful and pretty, more so than smooth, groomed hairdos. She is as firm about that as she is about printed summer frocks.

  Because hats cost three times what they do in the States, though they are unrationed she usually goes bareheaded or wears a scarf or large kerchief on her head. When she does buy a hat she gets the same sort of hat you would; the same style and material, but much more costly.

  There is a wider gulf than ours between the Englishwoman in everyday clothes and the Englishwoman when she is smart. Also, where we are addicted to the black “foundation” dress, she is not. Englishmen like color. They like it pastel too. I don’t know how their ladies manage, but they wear pale pink, or blue, or gray woolen costumes in London, just like the Queen and the Princesses. I think it’s awful, but the Major, too, hates black. He has a firm idea which he collected about twenty-five years ago that women dressed in black always look like Parisian whores. The Major has never been to Paris, but that is his idea, and he sticks to it. You can still pick out Americans at the Ritz if in no other way, because they alone wear black.

  I am not talking about the Ritz, though, I’m discussing the British housewife at home, or in the market queue. She grouses and grumbles and raises hell about her sad lot, and with reason: she is terribly overworked and sometimes it looks as if she always will be. But she won’t ever stop working. The sweet words of the candidate M.P.’s are a compensation, and I brought down a storm of protest from housewives when I wrote an article about the selfish laziness of English husbands, so I suppose some husbands do help out a little with the washing up, or minding the baby. Just the same, the unequal division of labor here shocks me. The men don’t work any harder than they ever did, it seems to me, though they grumble such a lot; the women never stop working. I’m a spoiled American woman, I am, and I wouldn’t stand for it.

  I can usually tell how hard a woman is being worked merely by her reaction to me. If she glares and glowers when I talk about books and things with the gentlemen, I know exactly what the trouble is. “Listen to that,” she says to herself. “Books of all things. If she had the children to take care of and all the meals to cook and all the shopping to do, she wouldn’t be so glib. Books indeed.” I have been heartily disliked even for putting Carola into white shoes. White shoes? How do I keep them clean? White shoes? Wherever did I get them? White shoes? How could I afford the coupons? Oh, American, are they? Well, no wonder! The angry feeling died down and I was not lynched. I understand it, I understand every bit of it; I am getting the same way myself, God help me.

  Come to think of it, I don’t have the Major very much under my thumb at that; nothing to brag about. He began to be difficult as soon as we reached England. When he is trying to get us started on a walk, for example, he gets very efficient and rude: “Come along,” he says in abrupt tones; “get cracking.”

  “Now don’t be British,” I say warningly, but it probably happens again, just the same. Or if I don’t know the way in London, or fail to understand something he says, he speaks in a certain tone of voice one never hears in America: “Don’t snarl at me,” I snarl; “I didn’t snarl at you in New York, did I?” Actually, the Major can almost always be got at, inversely, by appealing to his patriotism. He has pretty well convinced himself that if a thing is truly British there must be something wrong with it—a very British attitude—and unless his bad British temper catches him unawares he is courteous enough. “I know I’m a curmudgeon,” he says remorsefully.

  All rules are off, though, when he is immersed in the seventeenth century at his desk, and he usually is. One day soon after the thaw I was sitting in the library while he was at work, when I noticed something odd going on outside the window. A lot of water was pouring down in one place. “What’s that?” I said. “Charles, Charruls, look at the window. What is it?”

  Grudgingly the Major cast one glance sideways at the water. “Rain,” he said, and went on writing.

  “No, it isn’t raining anywhere else. Look, Charles. Why, look, a pipe is burst somewhere upstairs. Look! Charles!”

  The Major exploded. “Well, don’t just sit there looking at it!” he snapped. “Go and fix it!”

  It has taken me many years to make the discovery that platitudes are excusable. For example, talking about the weather. Perhaps it is redundant in California or Hong Kong to say, “Nice day!” but a Briton on his native heath has an acute interest in the weather, and when he discusses it he does so with passion. In England the Weather is not a makeshift conversational device, and I want to hear no more sarcastic comments on it as such. The truth of this statement was borne in upon me in the winter of 1946-47. I am hardened now; at least, I think I am. It doesn’t send me into fits of rage any more that the housemaid always leaves my bedroom windows open, and I can rub my hands with the best of them as I come into our ice chest of a dining room, where the long windows look out on frost-sparkling grass on an April morning: “Nice day!” I say.

  The weather becomes an obsession here. Waking up in New York or Chicago, you may have an atavistic urge to look out of the window; that impulse, however, has degenerated through ages of civilization and is now mere curiosity. When I look out of the window at Conygar, or when the Major does—it is the first thing we both do when we get up—we are asking ourselves mechanically, “Will I be happy today, or is it going to rain and freeze me out?”

  Carola and I went straight into woolen underwear when we first arrived in August, and made no bones about it. “We haven’t had a proper summer,” said our neighbor. “Not since Easter. There was a very nice week at Easter, I remember. Since then it’s been wet, and bad for the crops. I put it down to that atomic bomb affair over in the Pacific.”

  “Oh, this climate,” I would say.

  “Nonsense,” replied the Major, every time. “Whatever will you do when the cold weather does arrive? This is nothing.” But he wore rather a lot of sweaters himself, I noticed, and though he would never light a fire in the library, he didn’t object too much if I did.

  Imperceptibly the so-called summer glided into autumn, and then into the Great Freeze. It wasn’t so much the biting cold; Illinois or Wisconsin can be colder any old year. They make a great fuss here about what I consider an insignificant snowfall: times have not changed very much since Mr. Woodhouse was sent into a panic of worry for his horses at sight of a few snowflakes. But there’s no way to get out of the cold here. For years and years the British have explained their inadequate houses and heating systems, saying blithely, “Well, we don’t really have severe winters, you know. The Gulf Stream, you know.” Yet quite often they do have them—oftener, perhaps, than not. They do have them, and their water pipes freeze because they are laid on top of the ground instead of underneath, and outside their houses instead of inside.

  That winter, a friend of mine who lives in London was frozen in her flat, like a lot of other people. The toilet wouldn’t flush, or when it did all the flats underneath were flooded. The water taps didn’t run at all. Material and labor were short, and she waited a month for somebody to come to fix it, and then waited some more while he got permission to use the necessary lead piping. At last he did get to work, and she stood and watched him for a bit.

  “I wonder why they don’t build these houses more sensibly,” she said, suddenly seeing a light. “Why didn’t they lay these pipes indoors, do you suppose?”

  “Well, madam,” said the plumber, “think how inconvenient it would be with your pipes bursting inside the house instead of outside!”

  Every so often somebody discovers all over again that open fireplaces are wasteful of coal and not very good anyway for he
ating. It is my private opinion that the English simply don’t care whether or not a thing is good for heating. They don’t really want to be warm. They don’t know the feeling. They like to look at a fire, that is all. Most English fireplaces in my experience are built very badly for throwing heat into a room. Our own, as many as have not been blocked up, are ridiculous; they are merely square holes with iron baskets in which the fire lies, with no back to throw the heat out, no angle anywhere, just a hungry hole at the top up which all the heat goes glimmering into the outside air. Moreover, they are all without exception placed near the door instead of on the other side of the room where the draught would not dissipate such little heat as does radiate sideways. It must be admitted that nobody was really trying to make Conygar fireplaces efficient. “There’s the central heating,” the builders told each other, and blithely enclosed the bigger fireplaces in cupboards, or covered them with iron screens which cannot now be shifted.

  There was central heating. There still is, of a sort. The Army was not good for it, it is true, and nowadays our coal ration is not sufficient to keep it going very long—it uses fifteen hundredweight of coal a week. We are one of three houses in all our part of the county with any sort of central heating, and the Major stoutly insisted, during the few weeks we kept it going, that it made the house as warm as toast. True, some of the rooms didn’t seem to get any good out of it, their radiators remaining icy, and the maids couldn’t learn not to leave the windows open, but it did make a difference. I would never admit it made the house warm, but it took the edge off, as long as it lasted.

  “Just like New York,” insisted the Major, pulling on another sweater. “Sheer luxury.”

  Everything combined that winter to contradict him and to make people miserable. First, the fuel shortage made a pinch even before everything closed down. Coal ration cards weren’t always honored; in fact most of us were a ration period or two behind in our collections nearly all winter. Next, the electricity situation was buggered. At this late date, since the Minister for Fuel and Power has been changed, it is no use saying that it was his fault: the coal miners were lagging in production, which made the electricity supply low, and because of the cold and the stepped-up factory work the supply sank lower, and then, because nobody planned it properly, there came a flood of electric appliances on the market. People had not been able for years to buy heaters and toasters and electric kettles and such gadgets; they were starved for gadgets; they bought them in thousands, and so the electricity supply sank lower. Then it was announced that we mustn’t use those gadgets, and several times every day the electricity was cut off. No, said Mr. Shinwell, it was not that we didn’t have enough coal, but that we didn’t have enough equipment at the generating plants; they were overburdened. We did so have enough coal, said Mr. Shinwell, it wasn’t that at all.

  Most people are as wooly-headed as I am about such matters, and for some weeks we believed the Ministry. Of course the effect was the same, whether it was a lack of generating equipment or of coal; we had our lights turned off. People who cook with electricity were up a gum tree at breakfast and lunchtime in any case. It was awfully uncomfortable all around. But as long as we didn’t know it was a coal shortage, the Conservative press couldn’t jump on the Government. Coal nationalization went into effect January 1, 1947, so of course the Ministry of Fuel was touchy, and played for time. I could understand their feelings, even after the awful truth burst on us and everything closed down in February. Still, I thought, they shouldn’t tell such lies. It would be much better to tell the truth all along, especially when one is bound to get found out. Or am I being naïve?

  It was a bad winter for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere as well as the United Kingdom, if you remember. Germany, Austria, Holland, North America, Russia (we suspect)—everybody was cold and miserable, but our minds in England were on our own troubles. My mind was obsessed with a very personal grief—chilblains. It is no use trying to rise above chilblains. I have always thought gout must be very much the same sort of torture. Chilblains share with gout and piles the dreadful quality of provoking mirth rather than sympathy. Sometimes I play with the idea of collecting data on them through the ages, but there isn’t much material to find. They are too common a phenomenon in England; like rheumatism and lumbago the news is news that men have heard before.

  Between bouts of self-pity I read the newspapers, which were not comforting. Another day of unbroken freeze recorded at Kew Observatories. Thousands of sheep drowned in snow during the lambing season (a lot of sheep have their lambs just before Christmas, which seems awfully bad management on Nature’s part). Coal pits choked and immobile because transport has broken down on account of blocked roads. The world seemed to be in tune with my chilblains.

  The only bright spots in life were afforded, I am afraid, by reflection on how much better off we were than a lot of other people. We didn’t cook with electricity. We didn’t heat with electricity— none of our old-fashioned plugs fitted new heaters. When we ran out of coal, at least we had wood from our own trees, some of which fell down in every gale, saving us the trouble of applying for permits to cut. When the roads were blocked, we didn’t have a car to be held up in any case. If it hadn’t been for chilblains I would have been quite happy, counting my blessings like that. As it was, I made everybody miserable. Anyway, I had a damn good try. Walking Carola to school in the morning I was snappish with her and walked too fast, trying to get it over with. She trotted along behind, breathless and puzzled and frightened at seeing Mummy in such a poisonous mood. “I do wish we had Nanny again,” she wailed, and I was ashamed then and tried to behave myself, until the next twinge.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what we are to do about you,” said the Major, several times a day. “You can’t live in this climate; obviously; we’ll have to sell out and go to the West Indies.”

  “But everybody has chilblains. It’s not my fault. It’s a national pastime.”

  “Nonsense; I never have them. I don’t complain about the cold.” The Major is usually truthful when he denies being ill; he is even tougher than I am, and has very few colds. When he has a cold, however, he fibs about it. He seems ashamed of it. He won’t admit to having colds. We go about pouncing on each other, accusing each other of being ill, or indignantly denying the charge. But chilblains take the manhood out of a woman.

  “You’re shivering right now,” I retorted once, stung beyond endurance. “Your teeth are chattering.”

  The Major said I needed more exercise—a feeble defense considering that we were walking four or five miles every day. I would never have got the upper hand if Beryl hadn’t come in just then from Canada, near the end of the Big Freeze. She was there during one of our exchanges, and she spoke up like the benefactor she is.

  “Chilblains? Oh yes,” she said briskly. “Charley knows all about chilblains, don’t you, Charley? You had them so terribly at Wellington.”

  “I? Nonsense. I never had chilblains.”

  “Oh yes, you did. You had to go to bed with them, don’t you remember?”

  For some weeks after that I had my chilblains in peace, with never a reference to the West Indies. During the breathing space, I bustled around among our acquaintance collecting other victims to bolster my case, and I found plenty of fellow-sufferers. Some people rub butter on them. Others make parsnip mash and massage with that. There are heel chilblains, toe chilblains, and finger chilblains, the latter usually confined to housewives who wash dishes and then throw out the water without wiping their hands enough. Mine were on the toes, which is perhaps preferable to the heel sort. When they are very bad they burst and remain gooey for a long time.

  Going to London, because of the icy train, I sacrificed all vanity and wore rubber wading boots over two or three pairs of woolen socks. I had to borrow the socks from the Major and he was bitter about it. He said I looked awful. I did too. But London was full of women wearing their gum boots, just like me. I padded about the lightless streets, silent a
s a leopard, and I was very glad to get back to the country.

  Outside my sitting-room window is a pine tree. It is not shaded by Conygar Hill, like the patch of ground where I watched snow turn to ice which stayed there, unmeltmp, for more than a month. Nevertheless on the lowest branch of this pine there sat a small ridge of snow which I watched for signs as closely as if it had been the Delphic oracle. Every morning I hurried to the window to take my bearings. Every morning for more than a month that snow ridge sat there, twinkling in the sunlight, permanent as quartz crystal. It was a rock: it was eternity. Not a snowflake melted from it. I began to hate the tree. If I could have reached that branch I would have chopped it off.

  Then one day the snow ridge looked smaller. There was no sun and it did not sparkle, but it looked definitely smaller and duller. By afternoon it was dripping away at last, shrinking and turning to water.

  “Winter’s broken,” I said blithely.

  “So is the water pipe to the Cottage,” said the Major.

  9. PARTIES

  In the early thirties English parties to me meant a deliberate, sustained, and very agreeable gaiety, none the worse for the quiet quality of the humor. Everyone was afraid of the sudden swoops into sincerity which they had learned to expect of Americans. “Why do all you Americans, as soon as you have had a drink or two, begin to talk about Life?” asked a friend despairingly. But in those days we had plenty of parties, and we were prodigal with our dislikes. Nowadays nobody can afford to be casual with invitations, because of liquor and food supplies, and no one is casual about accepting invitations either, because of the petrol shortage. People are childishly pleased with themselves and each other when they do manage to make social appearances. It is a novelty, dressing up and seeing anyone but the usual intimates. It is such a novelty and so stimulating that we often talk about Life without flinching at all. We talk about Life and war, and are quite as serious as any prewar American.