by Owen Wister
I begin with an American who was traveling in an English train. It stopped somewhere, and out of the window he saw some buildings which interested him.
“Can you tell me what those are?” he asked an Englishman, a stranger, who sat in the other corner of the compartment.
“Better ask the guard,” said the Englishman.
Since that brief dialogue, this American does not think well of the English.
Now, two interpretations of the Englishman’s answer are possible. One is, that he didn’t himself know, and said so in his English way. English talk is often very short, much shorter than ours. That is because they all understand each other, are much closer knit than we are. Behind them are generations of “doing it” in the same established way, a way that their long experience of life has hammered out for their own convenience, and which they like. We’re not nearly so closely knit together here, save in certain spots, especially the old spots. In Boston they understand each other with very few words said. So they do in Charleston. But these spots of condensed and hoarded understanding lie far apart, are never confluent, and also differ in their details; while the whole of England is confluent, and the details have been slowly worked out through centuries of getting on together, and are accepted and observed exactly like the rules of a game.
In America, if the American didn’t know, he would have answered, “I don’t know. I think you’ll have to ask the conductor,” or at any rate, his reply would have been longer than the Englishman’s. But I am not going to accept the idea that the Englishman didn’t know and said so in his brief usual way. It’s equally possible that he did know. Then, you naturally ask, why in the name of common civility did he give such an answer to the American?
I believe that I can tell you. He didn’t know that my friend was an American, he thought he was an Englishman who had broken the rules of the game. We do have some rules here in America, only we have not nearly so many, they’re much more stretchable, and it’s not all of us who have learned them. But nevertheless a good many have.
Suppose you were traveling in a train here, and the man next you, whose face you had never seen before, and with whom you had not yet exchanged a syllable, said: “What’s your pet name for your wife?”
Wouldn’t your immediate inclination be to say, “What damned business is that of yours?” or words to that general effect?
But again, you most naturally object, there was nothing personal in my friend’s question about the buildings. No; but that is not it. At the bottom, both questions are an invasion of the same deep-seated thing—the right to privacy. In America, what with the newspaper reporters and this and that and the other, the territory of a man’s privacy has been lessened and lessened until very little of it remains; but most of us still do draw the line somewhere; we may not all draw it at the same place, but we do draw a line. The difference, then, between ourselves and the English in this respect is simply, that with them the territory of a man’s privacy covers more ground, and different ground as well. An Englishman doesn’t expect strangers to ask him questions of a guidebook sort. For all such questions his English system provides perfectly definite persons to answer. If you want to know where the ticket office is, or where to take your baggage, or what time the train goes, or what platform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches or other buildings of interest are to be seen in those towns, there are porters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it’s they whom you are expected to consult, not any fellow-traveler who happens to be at hand. If you ask him, you break the rules. Had my friend said: “I am an American. Would you mind telling me what those buildings are?” all would have gone well. The Englishman would have recognized (not fifty years ago, but certainly to-day) that it wasn’t a question of rules between them, and would have at once explained—either that he didn’t know, or that the buildings were such and such.
Do not, I beg, suppose for a moment that I am holding up the English way as better than our own—or worse. I am not making comparisons; I am trying to show differences. Very likely there are many points wherein we think the English might do well to borrow from us; and it is quite as likely that the English think we might here and there take a leaf from their book to our advantage. But I am not theorizing, I am not seeking to show that we manage life better or that they manage life better; the only moral that I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we should each understand and hence make allowance for the other fellow’s way. You will admit, I am sure, be you American or English, that everybody has a right to his own way? The proverb “When in Rome you must do as Rome does”
covers it, and would save trouble if we always obeyed it. The people who forget it most are they that go to Rome for the first time; and I shall give you both English and American examples of this presently. It is good to ascertain before you go to Rome, if you can, what Rome does do.
Have you never been mistaken for a waiter, or something of that sort?
Perhaps you will have heard the anecdote about one of our ambassadors to England. All ambassadors, save ours, wear on formal occasions a distinguishing uniform, just as our army and navy officers do; it is convenient, practical, and saves trouble. But we have declared it menial, or despotic, or un-American, or something equally silly, and hence our ambassadors must wear evening dress resembling closely the attire of those who are handing the supper or answering the doorbell. An Englishman saw Mr. Choate at some diplomatic function, standing about in this evening costume, and said:
“Call me a cab.”
“You are a cab,” said Mr. Choate, obediently.
Thus did he make known to the Englishman that he was not a waiter.
Similarly in crowded hotel dining-rooms or crowded railroad stations have agitated ladies clutched my arm and said: “I want a table for three,” or “When does the train go to Poughkeepsie? “
Just as we in America have regular people to attend to these things, so do they in England; and as the English respect each other’s right to privacy very much more than we do, they resent invasions of it very much more than we do. But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it only in somebody they think knows the rules. With those who don’t know them it is different. I say this with all the more certainty because of a fairly recent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. The question of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see that with them and their compactness, their great public schools, their two great Universities, and their great London, the one eternal focus of them all, both the chance of diversity in social customs and the tolerance of it must be far less than in our huge unfocused country. With us, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, is each a centre. Here you can pronounce the word calm, for example, in one way or another, and it merely indicates where you come from. Departure in England from certain established pronunciations has another effect.
“Of course,” said one of my friends, “one knows where to place anybody who says ‘girl’” (pronouncing it as it is spelled).
“That’s frightful,” said I, “because I say ‘girl’.”
“Oh, but you are an American. It doesn’t apply.”
But had I been English, it would have been something like coming to dinner without your collar.
That is why I think that, had my friend in the train begun his question about the buildings by saying that he was an American, the answer would have been different. Not all the English yet, but many more than there were fifty or even twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their rules to us.
About 1874 a friend of mine from New York was taken to a London Club.
Into the room where he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out a cigar, felt for and found no matches, looked about, and there was a silence. My friend thereupon produced matches, struck one, and offered it to the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted his cigar, and presently went away.
Then an Englishman observed to my friend: “It’s not the thing for a common
er to offer a light to the Prince.”
“I’m not a commoner, I’m an American,” said my friend with perfect good nature.
Whatever their rule may be to-day about the Prince and matches, as to us they have come to accept my friend’s pertinent distinction: they don’t expect us to keep or even to know their own set of rules.
Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more allowances for us than we for them. They don’t criticize Americans for not being English. Americans still constantly do criticize the English for not being Americans. Now, the measure in which you don’t allow for the customs of another country is the measure of your own provincialism. I have heard some of our own soldiers express dislike of the English because of their coldness. The English are not cold; they are silent upon certain matters. But it is all there. Do you remember that sailor at Zeebrugge carrying the unconscious body of a comrade to safety, not sure yet if he were alive or dead, and stroking that comrade’s head as he went, saying over and over, “Did you think I would leave yer?” We are more demonstrative, we spell things out which it is the way of the English to leave between the lines. But it is all there! Behind that unconciliating wall of shyness and reserve, beats and hides the warm, loyal British heart, the most constant heart in the world.
“It isn’t done.”
That phrase applies to many things in England besides offering a light to the Prince, or asking a fellow traveler what those buildings are; and I think that the Englishman’s notion of his right to privacy lies at the bottom of quite a number of these things. You may lay some of them to snobbishness, to caste, to shyness, they may have various secondary origins; but I prefer to cover them all with the broader term, the right to privacy, because it seems philosophically to account for them and explain them.
In May, 1915, an Oxford professor was in New York. A few years before this I had read a book of his which had delighted me. I met him at lunch, I had not known him before. Even as we shook hands, I blurted out to him my admiration for his book.
“Oh.”
That was the whole of his reply. It made me laugh at myself, for I should have known better. I had often been in England and could have told anybody that you mustn’t too abruptly or obviously refer to what the other fellow does, still less to what you do yourself. “It isn’t done.”
It’s a sort of indecent exposure. It’s one of the invasions of the right to privacy.
In America, not everywhere but in many places, a man upon entering a club and seeing a friend across the room, will not hesitate to call out to him, “Hullo, Jack!” or “Hullo, George!” or whatever. In England “it isn’t done.” The greeting would be conveyed by a short nod or a glance.
To call out a man’s name across a room full of people, some of whom may be total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticed how, in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally young women, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores like a gimlet through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England “it isn’t done.” We shouldn’t stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do stand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman’s right to privacy is larger than ours, and thus that his liberty is larger than ours.
Before leaving this point, which to my thinking is the cause of many frictions and misunderstandings between ourselves and the English, I mustn’t omit to give instances of divergence, where an Englishman will speak of matters upon which we are silent, and is silent upon subjects of which we will speak.
You may present a letter of introduction to an Englishman, and he wishes to be civil, to help you to have a good time. It is quite possible he may say something like this:
“I think you had better know my sister Sophy. You mayn’t like her. But her dinners are rather amusing. Of course the food’s ghastly because she’s the stingiest woman in London.”
On the other hand, many Americans (though less willing than the French) are willing to discuss creed, immortality, faith. There is nothing from which the Englishman more peremptorily recoils, although he hates well nigh as deeply all abstract discussion, or to be clever, or to have you be clever. An American friend of mine had grown tired of an Englishman who had been finding fault with one American thing after another. So he suddenly said:
“Will you tell me why you English when you enter your pews on Sunday always immediately smell your hats? “
The Englishman stiffened. “I refuse to discuss religious subjects with you,” he said.
To be ponderous over this anecdote grieves me—but you may not know that orthodox Englishmen usually don’t kneel, as we do, after reaching their pews; they stand for a moment, covering their faces with their well-brushed hats: with each nation the observance is the same, it is in the manner of the observing that we differ.
Much is said about our “common language,” and its being a reason for our understanding each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much a cause for our misunderstanding each other. It is both a help and a trap. If we Americans spoke something so wholly different from English as French is, comparisons couldn’t be made; and somebody has remarked that comparisons are odious.
“Why do you call your luggage baggage?” says the Englishman—or used to say.
“Why do you call your baggage luggage?” says the American—or used to say.
“Why don’t you say treacle?” inquires the Englishman.
“Because we call it molasses,” answers the American.
“How absurd to speak of a car when you mean a carriage!” exclaims the Englishman.
“We don’t mean a carriage, we mean a car,” retorts the American.
You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolish conversations like that; and you will readily perceive that if we didn’t say “car” when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board a train, but called it a voiture, or something else quite “foreign,” the Englishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with his mother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world is divided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; and for most of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, and English. Now a “foreigner” can call molasses whatever he pleases; we do not feel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue; his tongue has a different mother; he can’t help that; he’s not to be criticized for that. But we and the English speak a tongue that has the same mother.
This identity in pedigree has led and still leads to countless family discords. I’ve not a doubt that divergences in vocabulary and in accent were the fount and origin of some swollen noses, some battered eyes, when our Yankees mixed with the Tommies. Each would be certain to think that the other couldn’t “talk straight”—and each would be certain to say so.
I shall not here spin out a list of different names for the same things now current in English and American usage: molasses and treacle will suffice for an example; you will be able easily to think of others, and there are many such that occur in everyday speech. Almost more tricky are those words which both peoples use alike, but with different meanings. I shall spin no list of these either; one example there is which I cannot name, of two words constantly used in both countries, each word quite proper in one country, while in the other it is more than improper.
Thirty years ago I explained this one evening to a young Englishman who was here for a while. Two or three days later, he thanked me fervently for the warning: it had saved him, during a game of tennis, from a frightful shock, when his partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell him to cheer up, had used the word that is so harmless with us and in England so far beyond the pale of polite society.
Quite as much as words, accent also leads to dissension. I have heard many an American speak of the English accent as “affected”; and our accent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American, ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?
His tongue has a different mother!
I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences should have come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter of fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literate and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of the other’s way of speaking—we’re known by our shrill nasal twang, they by their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not all Americans and not all English do in their enunciation conform to these types.
One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautiful cathedral and its serene and gracious close. “Star-scattered on the grass,” and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitary or in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the inn I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman in evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and he returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was stopping expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find a scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, he looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that I explained to him my nationality.
“I shouldn’t have known it,” he remarked, after an instant’s pause.
I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, I think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same old mother-tongue!
“You mean,” I said, “that I haven’t happened to say ‘I guess,’ and that I don’t, perhaps, talk through my nose? But we don’t all do that. We do all sorts of things.”
He stuck to it. “You talk like us.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t mean to talk like anybody!” I sighed.
This diverted him, and brought us closer.
“And see here,” I continued, “I knew you were English, although you’ve not dropped a single h.”