How to be a Brit

by George Mikes

  The flag-bearers, the most conspicuous and vociferous avant-garde, were the Teddy Boys but they were not alone. Everybody who mattered protested in his own way. Filth, dirty pullovers and unshaven faces became the fashion once again; others greeted the convulsions and hoarse groans of graceless teenagers as a new art; angry young men spat at the middle classes; others, again, hurriedly exchanged their antique furniture for new and uncomfortable chairs and sofas. And a few people gave two months’ holiday to their uniformed chauffeurs and went on a hitch-hiking tour in France and lived in tents.

  But there was no getting away from it. That damned Prosperity had caught up with all of us. The angry young men went on spitting at the middle classes and made a tidy little fortune on the proceeds; the convulsive young singers began to shake their manes while they groaned, and that made them even richer than the angry young men; the hitch-hikers and tent-dwellers returned and money kept pouring in to all and sundry.

  How to remain poor? – the worried practitioner asks himself. It is not easy. The New Poor of yesteryear are fighting a losing battle. To remain poor needs the utmost skill and ingenuity. (And only old-age pensioners and a few other unwilling people manage to achieve it – to our shame.) Everything, really, is conspiring against the poor and trying to deprive them of their poverty. They had bad luck too. They moved, for example, to such districts as Islington to show how needy and destitute they were. Instead of establishing their misery, however, they managed to turn Islington into a fashionable district.

  What else is left? It is no use saying that you cannot afford a car because everybody can afford a car. It is pointless to allege that you have no money because all you have to do is put your head into your bank manager’s office and before you have time to say, ‘Sorry, wrong room,’ he will throw a couple of hundred pounds at you. (I am always puzzled why people bother to rob banks. Can’t they ask for the money?)

  How to remain poor then? I can give no foolproof recipe, only a few pointers.

  1. Gambling, I believe, is almost always safe. There is no amount the horses and the dogs cannot take care of. The safest way of losing money is chasing it.

  2. Try farming. It lends weary clothes-manufacturers and harassed directors of chain-stores a fresh country air, and besides it helps to get rid of any amount of money. After the war I saw a letter written by Marcel Pagnol to Sir Alexander Korda; it ran something like this (I quote from memory): ‘I have discovered a truly magnificent way of losing money. It’s called farming. Film-making is nothing compared with it. A film may be successful after all and you may make money on it. Never on farming. Farming is safe. You needn’t worry: it will ruin you in no time.’

  3. Then there is always the path of dishonesty. I mean you can always fake poverty, just in order to keep the confidence and affection of your friends. Who can prevent you from going round trying to borrow half-a-crown while you have quite a decent little nest-egg tucked away at home? Being well-off, of course, is not your shame, only your misfortune, but some people will not understand this. Alas, having money causes a great deal of discord, faction and superfluous unhappiness. In a Soho espresso I once saw an unfortunate young man in deep despair, ostracized by his fellows because he had bought a record player and they had found out that the cheque he had given for it had not bounced.

  How to be Class Conscious

  If you want to be a modern Englishman you must become class conscious.

  1. If you belong to the so-called higher spheres of society you will, of course, never be flagrant about this. You simply look down (not with a superior, simply with a pitying smile) upon those miserable and ridiculous creatures who do not know the conventions of your world. Nothing can possibly amuse you more than hearing someone address the third son of a marquess in the style due to the second daughter of an earl.

  I must admit that I still often find these rules confusing. The other day I received an invitation to a party from a friend of mine who is a baronet. The invitation was signed by his wife – R.S.V.P. From my reference books I sought advice on how to address an envelope to a baronet’s second wife. ‘If the daughter of a commoner …’ I read, then I stopped, picked up the telephone, rang the lady in question and asked her: ‘I say, Eileen, are you the daughter of a commoner?’

  She said: ‘What the bloody hell do you mean?’

  I told her: ‘That will do. You are a commoner. And getting commoner and commoner every day.’

  That solved that problem. Many other problems, however, still remain. One of the most exasperating cases you may come across is a Dame of the Order of the British Empire married to a baronet or a peer. Skill, ingenuity and determination may solve even that. But if you hear of the third daughter of a marchioness married to an archbishop you should carefully avoid the combination.

  Vox Populi

  2. Another excellent device of the British aristocracy to drive poor foreigners – primarily Americans – crazy is the changing of names. The fact that Lord Upperstone’s elder son is called Lord Ipswich while his younger son is Mr Hinch does not mean that they are both bastards. The elder daughter of the noble lord may be the Hon. Mrs Cynthia Cunliffe-Green and his younger daughter the Hon. Mary Cumberland – just for good measure. And if even that does not drive the poor onlooker raving mad, then the ‘as he then was’ business comes in. You find such passages in field marshals’ memoirs:

  ‘I then went to the Viceroy’s Lodge and asked to see Lord Irwin (as he then was) without delay. I shook Lord Halifax (as he then was not yet) by the hand in the friendliest manner but spoke to him sternly: “Mr Wood,” I began, “(as he no longer was) I’ve just had a message from Mr Churchill (as he then was) about 2nd Lieutenant Birch (as he still is) etc., etc.” ’

  3. Should you belong to any other class (except the lower-middle – see below) you may boast of your origins constantly. If you come from Bermondsey (or Stockton-on-Tees or Hartley Witney) then you keep repeating that ‘the people of Bermondsey (or Stockton-on-Tees or Hartley Witney) are the finest people in the world.’ This is just another way of saying that you, too, are one of the finest people in the world and that you love, respect and admire yourself.

  4. The one class you do not belong to and are not proud of at all is the lower-middle class. No one ever describes himself as belonging to the lower-middle class. Working class, yes; upper-middle class: most certainly; lower-middle class: never! Lower-middle class is, indeed, per definitionem, the class to which the majority of the population belongs with the exception of the few thousand people you know.

  5. In the old days people used to aspire to higher classes. Since the angry young man literature has made its impact, quite a few people assert that they are of lower origin than they, in fact, are. (I am using here the word ‘lower’ in the worst snobbish sense.) The place of the upstart is being taken by the downstart. I know people who secretly visit evening elocution classes in order to pick up a cockney accent. Others are practising the Wigan brogue. And I know others again who would be deeply ashamed if the general public learnt that their fathers were, in fact, book-keepers and not dustmen, village grocers and not swine-herds, solicitors and not pickpockets.

  The New Ruling Class

  The English talk – and talk a great deal – of upper, middle and working classes. They also talk of upper-middle and lower-middle classes, and more recently they have started mentioning a top-working class – just to fit in between the middle-working class and the lower-middle class. This, of course, makes them fully conscious of how pitifully inadequate their language is to describe the other 120 clearly defined castes and 413 sub-castes of English society. What about the lower-middle-upper layer of the lower-upper-middle class? What about the middle-middle of the middle-middle class? And how can you really clearly distinguish between the upper-upper-middle people who by no means qualify yet for the bottom-upper?

  While all this goes on, the English remain staunch believers in equality. Equality is a notion the English have given to humanity. Equality
means that you are just as good as the next man but the next man is not half as good as you are.

  Slowly but inescapably, however, the whole structure is being turned upside down. Oh yes, we still have an aristocracy consisting of two main branches: the old families of the peerage who look down upon the business barons and stock-exchange viscounts who look down upon the ancient peers. But while people still insist on sending their children to a good school (and a good school must not be confused with a school where they teach well); while for a few it is still a serious problem how to address the eldest daughter of a viscount married to an archdeacon; while some people, having obtained firsts in Phoenician history at Cambridge, still expect to become directors of breweries as their birthright; while doctors and barristers are still angry that chartered accountants and actuaries should call themselves ‘professional people’ and while the lot of them still believe that professionals do have some prestige left – while all this still goes on the Big Businessman takes over the leading role in society with a firm hand and a quiet smile.

  Our puzzling peerage

  The great conquest by money is on. A title will not bring in money; money will bring in the title. The great fight is warming up every day. Battalions of company directors riding on the white chargers of prosperity, waving their expense accounts, their faces painted red with Burgundy, and howling their famous battle-cry: ‘Long live Capital Gains!’ are battering at the ancient walls of privilege. The pillars of the established order – never even cracked by the Socialists – are crumbling under their assault. Brilliant sons no longer aspire to become Lord Chancellors: they dream of controlling large advertising agencies. Soon people do not boast of being descended from a long line of generals or judges but from a long line of stockbrokers. Talent will soon mean talent to make money. A genius is one who makes a lot of money.

  Soon it will come – that final take-over bid, in which Big Business will make its deadly offer to the Establishment. And if the deal goes through – as go through it will – the former people in charge will not be asked to remain at their posts.

  How to Avoid Travelling

  ‘Travel’ is the name of a modern disease which became rampant in the mid-fifties and is still spreading. The disease – its scientific name is travelitis furiosus – is carried by a germ called prosperity. Its symptoms are easily recognizable. The patient grows restless in the early spring and starts rushing about from one travel agent to another collecting useless information about places he does not intend to visit, studying handouts, etc.; then he, or usually she, will do a round of tailors, milliners, summer sales, sports shops, and spend three and a half times as much as he or she can afford; finally, in August, the patient will board a plane, train, coach or car and proceed to foreign parts along with thousands of fellow-sufferers not because he is interested in or attracted by the place he is bound for, nor because he can afford to go, but simply because he cannot afford not to. The disease is highly infectious. Nowadays you catch foreign travel rather as you caught influenza in the twenties, only more so.

  The result is that in the summer months (and in the last few years also during the winter season) everybody is on the move. In Positano you hear no Italian but only German (for England is not the only victim of the disease); in some French parts you cannot get along unless you speak American; and the official language of the Costa Brava is English. I should not be surprised to see a notice in Blanes or Tossa de Mar stating: Aqui Se Habla Español – Spanish spoken here.

  What is the aim of all this travelling? Each nationality has its own different one. The Americans want to take photographs of themselves in: (a) Trafalgar Square with the pigeons, (b) in St Mark’s Square, Venice, with the pigeons and (c) in front of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, without pigeons. The idea is simply to collect documentary proof that they have been there. The German travels to check up on his guide books: when he sees that the Ponte di Rialto is really at its proper venue, that the Leaning Tower is in its appointed place in Pisa and is leaning at the promised angle – he ticks these things off in his guide book and returns home with the gratifying feeling that he has not been swindled. But why do the English travel?

  First, because their neighbour does and they have caught the bug from him. Secondly, they used to be taught that travel broadens the mind and although they have by now discovered the sad truth that whatever travel may do to the mind, Swiss or German food certainly broadens other parts of the body, the old notion still lingers on. But lastly – and perhaps mainly – they travel to avoid foreigners. Here, in our cosmopolitan England, one is always exposed to the danger of meeting all sorts of peculiar aliens. Not so on one’s journeys in Europe, if one manages things intelligently. I know many English people who travel in groups, stay in hotels where even the staff is English, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays and Welsh rarebit and steak and kidney pudding on weekdays, all over Europe. The main aim of the Englishman abroad is to meet people; I mean, of course, nice English people from next door or from the next street. Normally one avoids one’s neighbour (‘It is best to keep yourself to yourself’ – ‘We leave others alone and want to be left alone’, etc., etc.). If you meet your next door neighbour in the High Street or at your front door you pretend not to see him or, at best, nod coolly; but if you meet him in Capri or Granada, you embrace him fondly and stand him a drink or two; and you may even discover that he is quite a nice chap after all and both of you might just as well have stayed at home in Chipping Norton.

  All this, however, refers to travelling for the general public. If you want to avoid giving the unfortunate impression that you belong to the lower-middle class, you must learn the elementary snobbery of travelling:

  1. Avoid any place frequented by others. Declare: all the hotels are full, one cannot get in anywhere. (No one will ever remark: hotels are full of people who actually managed to get in.)

  2. Carry this a stage further and try to avoid all places interesting enough to attract other people – or, as others prefer to put it – you must get off the beaten track. In practice this means that in Italy you avoid Venice and Florence but visit a few filthy and poverty-stricken fishing villages no one has ever heard of; and if your misfortune does take you to Florence, you avoid the Uffizi Gallery and refuse to look at Michelangelo’s David. You visit, instead, a dirty little pub on the outskirts where Tuscan food is supposed to be divine and where you can listen to a drunken and deaf accordion player.

  3. The main problem is, of course, where to go? This is not an easy question. The hoi polloi may go to Paris or Spain, or the Riviera or Interlaken but such an obvious choice will certainly not do for anyone with a little self-respect. There is a small international set that leads the fashion and you must watch them. Some years ago they discovered Capri, but now Capri is teeming with rich German and English businessmen, so you can’t go near the place. Ischia became fashionable for a season or two but it too was invaded by businessmen, so Ischia is out. Majorca was next on the list, but Majorca has become quite ridiculous in the last few years: it is now an odd mixture of Munich and Oxford Street, and has nothing to offer (because needless to say, beauty and sunshine do not count). The neighbouring island of Ibiza reigned till last year but the businessmen have caught up with Ibiza too so it will stink by next summer. At the moment I may recommend Tangier; Rhodes is fairly safe too. The year after that, who knows, Capri may be tried again.

  Remember: travel is supposed to make you sophisticated. When buying your souvenirs and later when most casually – you really must practise how to be casual – you refer to any foreign food, you should speak of these things in the vernacular. Even fried chicken sounds rather romantic when you speak of Backhendl; and you will score more points by remarking casually – very casually, I repeat – that you went to a little Madkurve kan medbrings near Copenhagen, than by admitting that you went to a place where you ate your own sandwiches and only ordered beer.

  It is possible, however, that the mania for travelling
is declining. I wonder if a Roman friend of mine was simply an eccentric or the forerunner of a new era in snobbery.

  ‘I no longer travel at all,’ he told me. ‘I stay here because I want to meet my friends from all over the world.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It is simple,’ he explained. ‘Whenever I go to London, my friend Smith is sure to be in Tokyo and Brown in Sicily. If I go to Paris, Dupont is sure to be in London and Lebrun in Madagascar or Lyons. And so on. But if I stay in Rome, all my friends are absolutely sure to turn up at one time or another. The world means people for me. I stay here because I want to see the world.’

  And he added after a short pause:

  ‘Besides, staying at home broadens the mind.’

  On Wine Snobbery

  A significant development of the last decade is that wine snobbery has definitely arrived in England. Before the war only a few retired scientists of University level were aware of the fact that other wines existed besides sherry and port. If you had asked (of course you never did) for wine in a pub, the publican would have taken you for a dangerous lunatic and dialled 999; today most of the pubs in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands are proud to serve you ‘wine per glass’.

  The trouble, however, is with the wine served in restaurants. Should you, when taking a lady out to lunch, show yourself ignorant in the matter of wine, she will regard you as an unsophisticated rustic boor. It is indeed fortunate that you can get away with the most abysmally ignorant observation as long as it sounds right, because your lady-friend will know nothing about wine either. Any man who is aware that Graves is white Bordeaux, Chablis is white Burgundy, and Claret is red Bordeaux can qualify for the first Chair of Wine Snobbery to be established at a British University. Most people know no more than that a Hock is a white Rhine wine, and are constantly astonished at the ignorance of the Germans themselves who have never heard of Hock.