BACK to Home page to Writing index Posted: 24 August 01 Last edited: 21 June 2003 Submitted 1949.
On
Leaving England.
How
easy it is for the visitor to England to record general impressions. And how
false those impressions are liable to be. For perhaps the one thing that is true
of England is that Gorer-like generalisations cannot be applied with truth to
England as a whole. Yet despite this the temptation to make notes cannot be resisted.
I come from a
new culture that maintains a strong English tradition. Though not as much as in
generations, most of us still call England “Home”. Our newspapers devote
half a page or more to English news. Our interest in politics is almost as much
in English politics as it is in the outcome of the local election. The history
taught in our schools is primarily that of England, secondarily that of Europe
and the Commonwealth, and hardly at all that of our own land. Our literature is
almost exclusively that of England, the United States and France ---- our own
writers, those self—conscious few, are almost completely neglected. This
however does not mean that we are English.
Indeed, the
first impression of England is entirely that of a strange, bewildering, foreign
mass. The houses, buses, taxis, trains, the mists and deciduous trees, the
uniform 0f the City and the speech of the Cockney ——
all these have been known to us in picture or through description since
we were children. But intellectual knowledge is no substitute for
direct experience, and all these different things impinging at once is
exciting, refreshing, and almost always unexpected. It takes us at least six weeks to adopt the outward demeanour
of habitués.
It takes us much
longer to feel that we are English. By this I mean to feel that we could pass in
most circumstances as English, without challenge; that we know what the English
are talking about, even if we do not always understand the nuances of idiom;
that we can judge correctly the response of English people in given
circumstances; that we can take part in the same amusements and pursuits as
English people without deliberate affectation; and yet that we retain those of
our own values and habits that do not seem incongruous. I would say that the
period is roughly three years. If I had left this country six months ago I would
not have claimed to know even those few sectors of English life that I think I
do know.
It is often said
that this difficulty of “getting to know” the English is somehow a fault of
the English themselves. How falsely trite is that is. There are few friendlier
and no more helpful people in the world. My wife and I have lived in a working
class and a middle class district in London: in both cases we have depended
totally and successfully upon our immediate neighbours for security in times of
trouble -— those neighbours
so often characterised as being frigidly reserved.
I doubt if any other country in the world possesses a junior civil
service —— those clerks
behind the desk in the Food Office ——
of such integrity and genuine friendliness. The much maligned bus
conductor is in reality almost as indispensable for his assistance as the
policeman. True, there are frigid elements in English society -—
some of the gentlemen from the public schools seem to have been coached
in coldness of attitude which becomes reprehensible in the higher civil service
and funny in the City. But if we
don’t know the English, it is entirely our own fault. For we tend to forget
that there are fifty million people in the United Kingdom, that the variety of
life is such that the individual Englishman is already living in the midst of an
intellectual plenty, and that therefore he has no need to turn to us for
amusement. The stranger who wishes to know the English must be prepared to
contribute to English life in an interesting way. He will not succeed if he is
only a nosey-parker.
It
is a common—place that English culture consists of a number of sub—cultures.
It is indeed amazing that there is such a thing as a British nation at all, so
diverse is it even within the confines of England, let alone the Commonwealth.
What is it that holds the Lancashire man to a common destiny with the Cockney,
and the Battersea trader to that of the Chelsea type?
Is it that each of these sub—cultures is now so definitely established
that it is of a conservative character? Is it that the members have common
ground in regarding the State as the instrument for maintaining the position of
the subculture in relation to the others —
a vested interest as it were in the aspects of civilisation?
How else can
one explain the interesting anomalies that confront the observer of the English
scene? The myth of flexibility, adaptation, and compromise as essentials of the
island character contrasts with the fixed habits, immobility, and sometimes lack
of enterprise of most sections of the community. The approved eccentric, that
justification of English freedom, lives in harmony and understanding with the
prosaic shop-keeper. Shortage of manpower cannot remove the artist from the
pavement, the commissionaire from the entrance to the emporium,
the flunkey from the front right—hand seat of the Rolls—Royce
—— and few if any demand
that this should be so. From all middle class lips come loud complaints of loss
of privilege, and difficulties of maintaining a standard of living. In some
fields, such as education, this seems to be obvious, though even here the
approaching tragedy seems to be nation—wide, not that of a class. For in its
national aspect it has remained hidden for generations, and is now gaining
publicity, one would think, because for the first time it is affecting the vocal
section of the community. In other fields the proposition is only relatively
true —— compared with the situation before the war. The observer who cannot
make this comparison is left a little
bewildered by such complaints —— for it is still apparently the case that
money can buy the best of anything, and it is certainly the case that
differences in net income are fantastically greater than anything known in my
own home town across the sea.
New Zealanders
who come to England may be divided into three groups, on the basis of the impact
of English society upon them. In the first place, let it be admitted, there are
many of us who are affected practically not at all. Our just pride in “God’s
Own Country”, in our social development, in our perhaps mythical toughness
without crudity, is not unique in these days of
nationalism-within-the-Commonwealth. But when the conservative effects of the
British tradition, the small population, and the antipodean position are added
to this pride, it can be understood that many of us are bred into a smug and
unreceptive pattern. English emigrants are not the only ones who return to their
native shore disillusioned, unadapted, hurt because society refuses to flatter
their ego or to accept them as welcome reformers. How often the New Zealander
goes home in the belief that England is nothing more than a gigantic slum, the
people reaping the reward for the sins of the past, the country inhabited by a
peculiar race of unreceptive hypocrites, wedded to a backward social
organisation and inefficient technology.
The second group
is respectful of English ways of life and proud of English achievements. Yet
withal they will have none of it for themselves. Their task is to return home,
to give to New Zealand the fruits of their experience, to remember their visit
with affection. These perhaps are the true New Zealanders, the citizens who may
protect our land from the stagnation that seems to be its lot, who are good
ambassadors and the salt of the earth.
The last group
is small in numbers but complicated to describe. It consists of those who love
England and who have left New Zealand for the main part of their lives. In part
it consists of those who were driven by ambition or by economic depression to
seek their fortune abroad: paralleled in a sense by the English who migrated
from the countryside to the town. In part it consists of those who, with an
exaggerated sense of social prestige, come to ape the dialect and mannerisms of
the dons, the dress of Chelsea, or the night life of Mayfair.
And in the final
part it consists of those who just love England. Very little more can be said
than that. They admire the countryside, the variety of life, the ability to
satisfy desires with the utmost taste and quality, the stimulation of the
cosmopolitan element, the concentration of intellectual and technical power, the
serene tempo of living -— yes, even in the face of atomic power and middle
class disillusion -— and the excitement of social change in a fundamentally
conservative society. Only the most compelling need makes people who share this
view leave England, more than ever now.
Cyril Belshaw