How to be a Brit

by George Mikes

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  II. OLD ENGLISH

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  How to Take Your Pleasure Sadly

  I do not know how the silly phrase ‘the English take their pleasures sadly’ originated. Slavs take their pleasures sadly. A Russian cannot really enjoy himself without sobbing for an hour or two on another Slavonic bosom. But Englishmen? They, in their moments of pleasure, may be unemotional, shy, phlegmatic – but sad? Oh no, not sad.

  The English, instead of taking their pleasures sadly, endure them bravely, in a spirit worthy of their Puritan ancestors. I often imagine a modern Grand Inquisitor summoning an Englishman and sending him on a normal summer holiday. He pronounces sentence:

  ‘One: tomorrow morning you will get into your car and take twelve and a half hours to cover a four-hour journey. The journey back will take you fifteen hours and the fumes will nearly choke you.

  ‘Two: when you reach your destination, you will queue up twelve times a day: three times for ice-cream, twice for deck-chairs, three times for beer, once for tea, twice for swings for the children and once just for the hell of it.

  ‘Three: whenever you feel unbearably hot, I order you to accept the additional torture of drinking hot tea.

  ‘Four: when it gets still hotter, you will drive down to the seaside and sit in the oven of your car, for two hours and a half.

  ‘May it please thee, O Lord, to grant that thy humble servant shall submit to whatsoever earthly pleasures shall afflict him with grace and forbearance worthy of thy Holy name …’

  ‘Five: wherever you go, there will never be less than two thousand people around you. They will shout and shriek into your ear and trample on your feet and your only consolation will be that you, too, trample on their feet. There is no escape from them. You may try the countryside but the countryside, too, will be transformed into an ever-lasting Bank Holiday fairground, strewn with paper bags and empty tins and bottles. Furthermore, to add to your sufferings, I order you to take a portable radio everywhere with you and listen to “Housewives’ Choice” and “Mrs Dale’s Diary” incessantly!’

  If all this were meted out as dire punishment, proud, free Englishmen everywhere would rise against it as they have always risen against foul oppression. But as, on top of it all, they have to spend a whole year’s savings on these pleasures, they are delighted if they can join the devotees anywhere.

  Britain has been the marvel-country of the world for a long time. Many people used to regard her as decadent, decaying and exhausted until they learned better. How has Britain come out of her many trials, not only victorious but rejuvenated? The secret of the British is very simple: if they can endure their summer holidays, they can endure anything.

  On Not Knowing English

  I think it is vital that I give some instructions concerning the English language. I cannot do better than to repeat – with slight alterations –what I have said on this subject before.*

  When I was sent to England in 1938 I thought I knew English fairly well. In Budapest my English proved quite sufficient. I could get along with it. On arrival in this country, I found that Budapest English was quite different from London English. I should not like to seem biased, but I found Budapest English much better in many ways.

  In England I found two difficulties. First: I did not understand people, and secondly: they did not understand me. It was easier with written texts. Whenever I read a leading article in The Times, I understood everything perfectly well, except that I could never make out whether The Times was for or against something. In those days I put this down to my lack of knowledge of English.

  The first step in my progress was when people started understanding me while I still could not understand them. This was the most talkative period of my life. Trying to hide my shortcomings, I went on talking, keeping the conversation as unilateral as possible. I reached the stage of intelligibility fairly quickly, thanks to a friend of mine who discovered an important linguistic secret, namely that the English mutter and mumble. Once we noticed a sausage-like thing in a shop window marked PORK BRAWN. We mistook it for a continental kind of sausage and decided to buy some for our supper. We entered the shop and I said: ‘A quarter of pork brawn please.’ ‘What was that?’ asked the shopkeeper looking scared. ‘A quarter of pork brawn, please,’ I repeated, still with a certain nonchalance. I repeated it again. I repeated it a dozen times with no success. I talked slowly and softly; I shouted; I talked in the way one talks to the mentally deficient; I talked as one talks to the deaf and finally I tried baby-talk. The shopkeeper still had no idea whether we wanted to buy or sell something. Then my friend had a brain-wave. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said in Hungarian and started mumbling under his nose in a hardly audible and quite unintelligible manner. The shopkeeper’s eyes lit up: ‘I see,’ he said happily, ‘you want a quarter of pork brawn. Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Can’t you understand plain English?’

  The next stage was that I began to understand foreigners but not the English or the Americans. The more atrocious a foreign accent someone had, the clearer he sounded to me.

  But time passed and my knowledge and understanding of English grew slowly. Until the time came when I began to be very proud of my knowledge of English. Luckily, every now and then one goes through a sobering experience which teaches one to be more humble. Some years ago my mother came here from Hungary on a visit. She expressed her wish to take English lessons at an L.C.C. class, which some of her friends attended. I accompanied her to the school and we were received by a commissionaire. I enquired about the various classes and said that we were interested in the class for beginners. I received all the necessary information and conducted a lengthy conversation with the man, in the belief that my English sounded vigorous and idiomatic. Finally, I paid the fees for my mother. He looked at me with astonishment and asked: ‘Only for one? And what about you?’

  On Not Knowing Foreign Languages

  A true-born Englishman does not know any language. He does not speak English too well either but, at least, he is not proud of this. He is, however, immensely proud of not knowing any foreign languages. Indeed, inability to speak foreign languages seems to be the major, if not the only, intellectual achievement of the average Englishman.

  1. If you, gentle reader, happen to be an alien and are in the process of turning yourself into a proper Briton, you must get rid of your knowledge of all foreign languages. As this includes your own mother tongue, the task does not seem an easy one. But do not lose heart. Quite a few ex-aliens may proudly boast of having succeeded in forgetting their mother tongue without learning English.

  2. If you are an Englishman, you must not forget that the way foreigners speak English is an endless source of hilarity and mirth. It is not funny that you yourself may have been living in Stockholm, Winterthur or Lahore for forty-three years without picking up even broken Swedish or Schwitzerdütsch or even pidgin Punjabi; it is on the other hand always excruciatingly funny if an English-speaking taxi-driver in Lima splits his infinitives or a news-vendor in Oberammergau uses an unattached participle.

  English as she is spoke

  3. If you – in spite of all precautions – cannot help picking up a foreign language or two (sometimes it is in the air and you catch it as you catch flu) – then you always refer to the language you know as Italian, Spanish, Japanese, etc. A language you do not know at all should always be referred to as ‘that lingo’.

  On Not Knowing Anything

  One thing you must learn in England is that you must never really learn anything. You may hold opinions – as long as you are not too dogmatic about them – but it is just bad form to know something. You may think that two and two make four; you may ‘rather suspect it’; but you must not go further than that. Yes and no are about the two rudest words in the language.

  One evening recently I was dining with several people. Someone – a man called Trevor – suddenly paused in his remarks and
asked in a reflective voice:

  ‘Oh, I mean that large island off Africa … You know, near Tanganyika … What is it called?’

  Our hostess replied chattily:

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea. No good asking me, my dear.’ She looked at one of her guests: ‘I think Evelyn might …’

  Evelyn was born and brought up in Tanganyika but she shook her head firmly:

  ‘I can’t remember at the moment. Perhaps Sir Robert …’

  Sir Robert was British Resident in Zanzibar – the place in question – for twenty-seven years but he, too, shook his head with grim determination:

  ‘It escapes me too. These peculiar African names … I know it is called something or other. It may come back to me presently.’

  Mr Trevor, the original enquirer, was growing irritated.

  ‘The wretched place is quite near Dar es Salaam. It’s called … Wait a minute …’

  I saw the name was on the tip of his tongue. I tried to be helpful.

  ‘Isn’t it called Zan …’

  One or two murderous glances made me shut up. I meant to put it in question form only but as that would have involved uttering the name sought for, it would not do. The word stuck in my throat. I went on in the same pensive tone:

  ‘I mean … What I meant was, isn’t it Czechoslovakia?’

  The Vice-President of one of our geographical societies shook his head sadly.

  ‘I don’t think so … I can’t be sure, of course … But I shouldn’t think so.’

  Mr Trevor was almost desperate.

  ‘Just south of the equator. It sounds something like …’

  But he could not produce the word. Then a benevolent looking elderly gentleman, with a white goatee beard smiled pleasantly at Trevor and told him in a confident, guttural voice:

  ‘Ziss islant iss kolt Zsantsibar, yes?’

  There was deadly, hostile silence in the room. Then a retired colonel on my left leaned forward and whispered into my ear:

  ‘Once a German always a German.’ The bishop on my right nodded grimly:

  ‘And they’re surprised if we’re prejudiced against them.’

  On The Decline of Muddle

  I have always been immensely proud of English muddle and thought that in this respect we were absolute and unbeatable masters with no serious rivals. I never look at any of my books once they are published, but until recently I used to read and re-read with swelling pride a chapter on ‘How to Build a Muddle’ in one of my earlier works. The English idea of giving neighbouring streets almost identical names – such as Belsize Gardens, Belsize Road, Belsize Villas, Belsize Crescent, Belsize Park Road, etc., was most ingenious, likely to confuse the most cunning foreigner; and if a few of them were not confused by this, then the numbering of the houses came in: numbers running consecutively along one side of the road and back along the other; giving names to houses instead of numbers. A subtle variation is to name your house ‘Twenty-Seven’ when its number is really 359. I was also delighted to spend two years of my life as an inhabitant of Walm Lane, North-West London. I was proud of Walm Lane. Walm Lane performs the unique trick – unique even in this country – of, suddenly and unexpectedly, becoming its own side street.

  But a terrible shock awaited me. I was informed by letter from Germany – of all places – that in a small town (I am afraid I have forgotten its name and lost the letter) they have done much, much better than we do in England. House numbers there run in chronological order: in other words, the house built first is 1, the house built next at the other end of the road is 2, then one in the middle is 3 and so on, and so on. Needless to say, the confusion achieved is consummate and the apparently daring English idea of running the numbers up one side and back down the other seems childish and amateurish in comparison.

  I did not mind the loss of India. I was prepared to accept British nationality even after the Empire was gone. I even survived the loss of the Ashes. But that the Germans – the most orderly, the most tidy-minded of all peoples – should beat us at our own game and should be able to produce more senseless and more glorious muddle in their towns than we can, that, I am afraid, is the mark of our real decadence.

  What next? Are we going to be thrashed at cricket by the Bulgarians? Are the Albanians going to teach us how to make Scotch whisky? Or are we – no, we cannot sink quite as low as that – are we going to introduce some sense into our weights and measures next? I am inclined to exclaim: Après moi le déluge! (That is a cry of despair and it means: After me the decimal system of coinage!)

  How to Die

  The English are the only race in the world who enjoy dying. Most other peoples contemplate death with abject and rather contemptible fear; the English look forward to it with gusto.

  They speak of death as if it were something natural. It is, of course, more natural than birth. Hundreds of millions of people are not born; but all who are born, die. During the bombing raids of the last war people on the Continent prayed: ‘God, even if I have to be hit and maimed, please spare my life.’ The English said: ‘If I have to die, well, I couldn’t care less. But I don’t want to be made an invalid and I don’t want to suffer.’ Foreign insurance agents speak of ‘certain possibilities’ and the ‘eventuality’ that ‘something might happen to you’; the English make careful calculations and the thought that the insurance company will have to pay up always sweetens their last hours. Nowhere in the world do people make so many cruel jokes about the aged and the weak as here. In continental families you simply do not refer to the fact that a parent or a grandparent is not immortal. But not long ago my two children burst into my room and asked me:

  ‘Daddy, which of us will get your camera when you die?’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ I replied. ‘By the way, I am sorry to be still alive. It’s not my fault. I can’t help it.’

  They were a little hurt.

  ‘Don’t be silly. We don’t really mind at all. We only wanted to know who’ll get the camera.’

  And when the moment comes, the English make no fuss. Dead or alive, they hate being conspicuous or saying anything unconventional. They are not a great people for famous last words.

  I shall never forget the poor gentleman who once travelled with me on the Channel boat. Only the two of us were on deck as a violent storm was raging. A tremendous gale was lashing mountainous seas. We huddled there for a while, without saying anything. Suddenly a fearful gust blew him overboard. His head emerged just once from the water below me. He looked at me calmly and remarked somewhat casually:

  ‘Rather windy, isn’t it?’

  On Being Unfair

  Britain – to its true glory – is the only country in the world where the phrase, ‘it isn’t fair’, still counts as an argument. The word fair exists in no other language and if something vaguely similar does exist, it conjures up utterly different notions. The English themselves are not quite clear as to what fair really means. I have two famous dictionaries in front of me – both renowned for their brief and lucid definitions – but they are rather unsatisfactory on this particular word. They say between them that fair (adj.) is: of moderate quality, not bad, pretty good, favourable, promising, gentle, unobstructed, frank, honest, just, not effected by insidious or unlawful methods, not foul, civil, pleasing, honourable, etc., etc. Well fair enough. But fair is really something more and also much less. If something strikes the Englishman as not quite in order for one reason or another, not quite equitable, then the thing just ‘isn’t fair’.

  Use the argument, ‘this isn’t fair’, to any continental and he will gape at you without any sign of understanding. Who the hell wants to be fair?

  On the other hand, tell an Englishman that he is stupid – and he will smile benevolently; tell him that he is obstinate, insular, selfish, cruel, uneducated, ignorant and his neck is dirty to begin with – he will shrug his shoulders. But tell him that he isn’t fair and he will be pained and angered. Tell a legislator that his bill or programme will create a bl
oody revolution and he will be undeterred; but prove to him that it is genuinely unfair to one group or another and he will abandon it. Or face an English assassin with a chopper in his hand and warn him that should he dare to kill you he will be hanged – he will kill you without any further ado and argument. It is only fair that a criminal should take a chance; that is in the nature of his chosen profession. But convince him that it is unfair to rob you and he will take his cap and leave. He does not greatly mind being hanged; but no English robber and murderer worthy of the name would tolerate the stigma of being unfair.