Anglomania

by Ian Buruma

  SOURCES

  2. VOLTAIRE’S COCONUTS

  For a general overview of Voltaire’s life I used Theodore Besterman’s Voltaire, first published in London and New York in 1969. The account of Voltaire’s arrival in England, and his subsequent adventures there, I found in Archibald Ballantyne, Voltaire’s Visit to England: 1726–1729 (London, 1893). The story of Voltaire’s encounter with Bolingbroke in France is from A. Owen Aldridge’s Voltaire and the Century of Light (New Jersey, 1975). Two excellent books on Voltaire’s early life are René Pomeau’s D’Arouet à Voltaire: 1694–1734 (Oxford, 1905) and André Michel Rousseau’s L’Angleterre et Voltaire (Paris). Montesquieu’s observations on English politics are in his Esprit des loi (Geneva, 1749). Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary was published in London in 1764. Quotations from his Letters Concerning the English Nation are from the 1994 Oxford University Press edition, introduced by Nicholas Cronk. Eighteenth-century French Anglomania, with its crazes for roast beef, elaborate ladies’ headgear, and garden parks, is described in Frederick C. Green’s Eighteenth Century France (London, 1964). Fougeret de Monbrun’s counterblast, Préservatif contre L’Anglomanie, was published in Paris in 1757. The views of French Anglophobes and Anglophiles, such as Marat and Linguet, are set out in Gabriel Bonno’s La Constitution britannique devant l’opinion française de Montesquieu à Bonaparte (Paris, 1931). On Voltaire’s life in Ferney and his influence on the French Revolution I consulted Gustave Lanson’s Voltaire (Paris, 1906) and André Maurois’s book of the same title (Paris, 1933), always bearing in mind that Maurois’s gift for telling a good story is not always matched by a keen eye for accuracy. Thomas Carlyle’s comments on Voltaire’s century and Voltaire himself are in his Heroes and Hero-Worship (London, 1841), and in his Essay on Voltaire, reprinted in A Carlyle Reader (Cambridge, 1984). His comment on “Herr Voltaire” is quoted in Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, (London, 1987). For eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century British Gallophobia I consulted Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London, 1992).

  3. GOETHE’S SHAKESPEARE

  I found examples of early variations of Shakespeare’s plays performed in Germany in Albert Cohn’s Shakespeare in Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1865). I first came across the idea of German Shakespearomania in George Steiner’s After Babel (London, 1975). Goethe’s remarks on Shakespeare’s plays being like an animated fair are in his Shakespeare und kein Ende (Frankfurt, 1771). G. E. Lessing’s and A. W. Schlegel’s ideas on Shakespeare are quoted in Roy Pascal’s Shakespeare in Germany (Cambridge, 1937). P. Hume Brown’s The Youth of Goethe (London, 1913) is the source for Goethe’s early years in his detested Frankfurt. For Goethe’s biography I also consulted George Henry Lewes’s The Life of Goethe (London, 1875). Garrick’s waterlogged tribute to Shakespeare in Stratford is described in Helen R. Smith, David Garrick, 17171779 (London, 1979). Johann Gottfried Herder’s Erkennen und erfinden, in which he describes Shakespeare as a Nordic genius, was published in 1778. The references to such figures as Justus Müser came from C. E. McClelland’s The German Historians and England (Cambridge, 1971). The famous Goethe and Shakespeare scholar I refer to twice is Friedrich Gundolf. His book on Shakespeare and the German Geist is entitled Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist (Berlin, 1927). A useful source on Shakespeare in the Third Reich is Alan E. Steinweiss’s Art, Ideology, Economics in Nazi Germany (London, 1995). Anyone interested in the politics of postwar Germany under Allied occupation should turn, as I did, to Changing Enemies (London, 1995), by Noel Annan.

  4. FINGAL’S CAVE

  The first expedition to Staffa, including his own, are described by Barthélemy Foujas de Saint-Fond in his Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides (London, 1799). Theodor Fontane’s musings on the Scottish Enlightenment, and his visit to Edinburgh in 1855, are in a collection of his journalism, published in East Berlin in 1979, entitled Wanderungen durch England und Schottland. Fontane’s work is among the best ever written by a foreign traveler to Britain. Mendelssohn’s reaction to Staffa is in his Letters (London, 1946). The story of Macpherson’s discovery of Ossian has been told often, most notably by Hugh Trevor-Roper in The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Trevor-Roper regards Macpherson’s work as a total fraud. More recent scholars, such as Nick Groom, have taken a more positive view. Queen Victoria’s marvelous descriptions of life at Balmoral are from her letters, published as Leaves from the journal of our life in the Highlands. There are several editions. One, edited by Arthur Phelps, was published in London in 1973. Another was published in Exeter in 1980, edited by David Duff. Life in Balmoral is described more objectively by Ronald William Clark in his Balmoral, Queen Victoria’s Highland Home (London, 1981) and by Ivor Brown in Balmoral, the history of a home (London, 1955).

  5. THE PARKOMANE

  On eighteenth-century English gardens in general I consulted Tom Williamson’s Polite Landscapes, Gardens and Sociey in Eighteenth Century England (Stroud, 1995). For more specific information on Pückler’s own gardening ideas I read his Andeutungen über Landschaftsgartnerei (Stuttgart, 1834). For a historical assessment of his work, Ruth B. Emde and Winfried Herrmann, Fürst Pückler und die Gartenbaukunst (Dortmund, 1992) is invaluable. The park at Wörlitz has been described in many German publications. I looked at Garten um Wörlitz (Leipzig, 1994), by Reinhard Alex, and Dessau-Wörlitz (Munich, 1985), by Erhard Hirsch. Pückler’s sexual prowess is described with reverence by Hans Ostwald in Das gallante Berlin (Berlin, 1928). The third Earl of Shaftesbury’s theories are in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (London, 1718). The standard biography of Pückler, which I used extensively, is by Heinz Orff, entitled Der Grüne Fürst: Das abenteuerliche Leben des Hermann Pückler-Muskau (Munich, 1993). A selection from Pückler’s Briefe eines Verstorbenen (Munich, 1830) was translated by Flora Brennan, who published the book as Pückler’s Progress: the adventures of Prince Pückler-Muskau in England, Wales, and Ireland as told in letters to his former wife, 1826–9 (London, 1987). I used three main sources for Tocqueville’s views on England: Tocqueville’s Oeuvres (B) (Paris, 1861–66), vol. 7; Tocqueville’s Journey to England and Ireland, translated by George Lawrence and K. P. Mayer (London, 1958); and Seymour Drescher, Tocqueville and England (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). The most entertaining, though not necessarily most reliable source for Pückler’s trip to the Orient is his own Aus Mehemed Ali’s Reich: Agypten und der Sudan um 1840 (Zurich, 1984). Two biographies of Lady Hester Stanhope proved especially useful: Virginia Childs, Lady Hester Stanhope (London, 1990) and the Duchess of Cleveland, The Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope (London, 1914).

  6. GRAVEYARD OF THE REVOLUTION

  The story of the American consul’s dinner party is in Alexander Herzen’s unsurpassed memoirs, My Past and Thoughts (London, 1968). As a work of literary Anglophilia it is better even than Voltaire’s Notes, and at least as good as Fontane’s journalism. The Germans in London are well described in Rosemary Ashton’s Little Germany (Oxford, 1986). Carlyle’s letter about preferring order under the czars to democratic anarchy is in Edward Acton, Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (Cambridge, 1979). For biographical details about Herzen and his fellow exiles in London I relied on E. H. Carr’s The Romantic Exiles (London, 1933). Heinrich Heine’s sour comments are from his Memoirs (London, 1910). Chopin’s letters were collected by Henryk Oplenski, and published under that title in London, 1932. The best source I found for Mazzini’s life is Dennis Mack Smith, Mazzini (London, 1994). I also used E. A. Venturi, Joseph Mazzini: A Memoir (London, 1875); Gwilym O. Griffith, Mazzini: Prophet of Modern Europe (London, 1932); and Bolton King, The Life of Mazzini (London, 1912). Mazzini’s angry article about British isolation from Continental politics appeared in The Westminster Review, April 1852. It is regrettable, though perhaps understandable, that Karl Marx’s journalism on the English scene has been reprinted in communist r
ather than capitalist presses: Marx and Engels, On Britain (Moscow, 1953), and Karl Marx, Englischer Alltag (Berlin, 1968). His relationship with Wilhelm Liebknecht is described in a somewhat fawning manner by the latter in his Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (London, 1975). Marx’s anti-Semitic remarks are quoted by Isaiah Berlin in Against the Current (London, 1979). Berlin’s Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (New York, 1959) is also a lively and useful source. Alexandre Ledru-Rollin’s remarkable La décadence de l’Angleterre was published in Paris in 1850. And the proto-European treaty, The Manifesto of the Republican Party, came out in London in 1855. Liebknecht’s British and American enthusiasms are recorded in Utz Hattern, Liebknecht und England (Trier, 1977).

  7. SCHOOLDAYS

  Bruce Chatwin’s encounter with Malraux is described in Chatwin’s What Am I Doing Here (London, 1989). Coubertin’s effusions in the chapel at Rugby school are in his L’Education en Angleterre (Paris, 1888).

  8. A SPORTING MAN

  I am indebted for most facts on Coubertin’s life to John J. MacAloon, whose biography is detailed and well written: This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games (Chicago, 1981). Coubertin himself wrote about his lifelong dedication to the Arnoldian ideal in Les Batailles de l’éducation physique. His autobiography is entitled Une Campagne de 21-ans (Paris, 1909). And his account of the Much Wenlock games are in his article “A Typical Gentleman” in American Monthly Review of Reviews-15 (1897). Other biographical details I found in Marie-Therèse Eyquem, Pierre de Coubertin: L’Epoque Olympique (Paris, 1966). Charles Maurras expressed his hatred of everything “Anglo-Saxon” and enthusiasm for the classical world in Athinéa (Paris, 1901). His description of the Olympic Games is from Le Voyage d’Athens (Paris, 1929). Dr. Arnold’s jingoism abroad is recorded in Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (London, 1918). Taine’s account of his time at Balliol is in his Lettres (Paris, 1874). His Notes on England, translated by Edward Hyams, was published in London in 1957. For a general history on Coubertin’s France I found much instruction in Theodor Zeldin, France 1848–1945 (Oxford, 1977) and also in Daniel Halévy’s The End of the Notables (Middletown, 1974). Baudelaire’s views on dandyism are in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated by Jonathan Maine (London, 1964). The Berlin games and what led up to them are covered in Duff Hart-Davis, Hitler’s Games (London, 1986).

  10. JEWISH CRICKET

  Most of Herzl’s views quoted in the chapter are from his letters and diaries (Briefe und Tagebücher), edited by Alex Bein, published in Berlin in 1983. His collected newspaper articles are published as Feuilletons (Berlin, 1911). The German version of his novelistic blueprint for the Jewish homeland, Altneuland, was published in Leipzig in 1902. The most recent translation is by Paula Arnold, Old-New Land (Haifa, 1960). Of all the books in English on Herzl’s Vienna, Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: politics and culture (New York, 1961) is still one of the best. I made extensive use of two biographies of Herzl: Amos Elon, Herzl (New York, 1976), and Stephen Beller, Herzl (London, 1991). Stephen Beller’s as yet unpublished article “Herzl’s Anglophilia” was also a valuable source. Other sources were Julius Schoeps, Theodor Herzl and the Zionist Dream (London, 1997), and Virginia Hein, The British Followers of Theodor Herzl (New York, 1987). Of the many biographies of Disraeli, one of lightest is by André Maurois, Disraeli (London, 1937). I also found useful Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: a biography (London, 1993), and for Disraeli’s Jewishness I took note of Isaiah Berlin’s essay on Disraeli and Karl Marx, published in Against the Current (London, 1979). I quote from Disraeli’s own writings: Tancred (London, 1870), book 3, chapter 7, and Lord George Bentinck (London, 1852). The last decade of the nineteenth century is remarkably rich in anti-Semitic literature, particularly in France around the time of the Dreyfus affair. Of all books inspired by that case, Louis Martin’s L’Anglais est-il un Juif? (Paris, 1895) is surely one of the zaniest. And yet it is by no means untypical of the genre.

  11. THE ANGLOMANE WHO HATED ENGLAND

  For descriptions of the Kaiser’s exile in Doorn I turned to various sources. The most fruitful was the exhibition catalogue of the German History Museum in Berlin, entitled Der Letzte Kaiser (Berlin, 1991). Other sources on Doorn are Angelique Bakker, Huis Doorn (Zwolle, 1993), and Lady Bentinck, The ex-Kaiser in Exile (New York, 1921). On the Kaiser’s life I relied on John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge, 1994). Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans (Oxford, 1991) is particularly interesting on the Kaiser’s psychology. Hans Wilderotter wrote about the Kaiser’s naval obsession in his essay in Der Letzte Kaiser. The British angle of the Kaiser’s story is covered extensively in E. F. Benson, The Kaiser and English Relations (London, 1936), and in the exhibition catalogue Victoria and Albert, Vickey und the Kaiser (Berlin, 1997). The Kaiser’s friendship with Philip Eulenburg, and the latter’s political influence, are analyzed in depth by John C. G. Röhl in his Zwei deutsche Fürsten zur Kriegsschuldfrage: Lichnowsky und Eulenburg u.d. Ausbruch d. I. Weltkriegs (Düsseldorf, 1971). More salacious details on the Eulenburg affair can be culled from Maurice Baumont, L’Affaire Eulenburg (Geneva, 1973), and Johannes Haller, Philip Eulenburg: the Kaiser’s Friend (Freeport, NY, 1971). For splendid insights amidst much dubious material I derived great benefit from Nicolaus Sombart, Die deutschen Männer und ihre Feinde (Munich, 1991). Sombart is especially astute on the sexual psychology of his subjects. Carl Schmitt’s Land und Meer was published in English, as Land and Sea, in Washington, D.C., in 1997. H. S. Chamberlain wrote a great deal, most of it poisonous. His letters to the Kaiser are in his Briefe, 1882–1924 (Munich, 1928). His book on Richard Wagner has been reprinted many times. I read Wagner (London, 1900). His pamphlet England und Deutschland was published in Munich in 1915. So far as I know, it is yet to appear in English.

  12. LESLIE HOWARD

  Alexander Korda’s statements are in Karol Kulik, Alexander Korda (London, 1975).

  13. DR. PEVSNER

  The church in Lupton St., London NW5 is described in N. Pevsner, London, Except the Cities of London and Westminster (Harmondsworth, 1952). The information on Pevsner’s teacher Wilhelm Pinder is from a paper by Marlite Halbertsma, published in Apollo, September 1992. Pevsner’s ideas on English modernism are in his An Outline of European Architecture (London, 1943). Another important work by Pevsner on the same topic is Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (London, 1936). He later reissued the same book with minor variations as Pioneers of Modern Design, From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Harmondsworth, 1964). The result of Pevsner’s investigation into English design was An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (Cambridge, 1937). His ideas on the picturesque in English art and gardens are developed in Studies in Art, Architecture and Design (London, 1968). The work in England of other refugees is discussed in Charlotte Benton, A Different World:Émigré Architects in Britain, 1928–1958 (London, 1995). Arthur Koestler’s famous phrase about England being the Davos for European exiles is from his The Invisible Writing (London, 1959). Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s London, the Unique City was published in London in 1937. Hayek’s ideas on Englishness are in Hayek on Hayek (London, 1994); and The Road to Serfdom was published in London in 1943. Auden’s remark about English temptations is quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden, a Biography (Boston, 1981). Pevsner’s Englishness is analyzed by Colin MacInnes in The Twentieth Century (vol. 160, 1960). Pevsner’s own The Englishness of English Art was first published in London in 1956. David Watkin’s criticisms of Pevsner formed a major part of his Morality and Architecture (Oxford, 1977). John Harris’s attack on Pevsner’s “Prussian” attitudes was published in Apollo, December 1991.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  For those who wish to delve further into the rich literature of Anglomania, I have compiled a list of books about Britain written by Europeans, mostly in French, English, or German, during the last three centuries until World War II. It
is by no means exhaustive, but it narrows the Anglophilic field down considerably, since it does not include anything written by non-Europeans. American or Indian Anglophilia would provide enough material for at least one more book. I have not included books already mentioned in my source notes. Nor, for obvious reasons of space, have I included books on British history, politics, or literature. These are all firsthand accounts, mostly of travels. As some of the titles show, not all the books are wholly admiring of Britain or its inhabitants.

  M. J. Amédée Pichot, Voyage historique et littéraire en Angleterre et en Ecosse, Paris, 1825.

  F. W. von Archenholz, A Picture of England (2 volumes), London, 1789.

  H. Bérard, Faut-il Réduire l’Angleterre en Esclavage?, Paris, 1935.

  J. J. L. Blanc, Lettres sur l’Angleterre, Paris, 1866.

  K. F. du Bocage, Letters Concerning England, Holland and Italy, London.

  E. Cammaerts, Discoveries in England, London, 1930.

  K. Capek, Seltsames England, Berlin, 1947.

  F. R. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Paris, 1902.

  P. Cohen-Portheim, England, the Unknown Isle, London, 1930.