UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Englishman in Exile
By J. B. BROADBENT (University of Edinburgh) THE exiled Scot is a bit of a bore, but we hear less of the exiled Englishman. Nowhere can be home to the Scot but Scotland ; - while the Englishman, comfortably straddling the hearthrugs of kraal and igloo alike, is at home all over the world—except in Scotland. .
He crosses the Border with no sense of exile, and arrives in Princes Street expecting it to be much the same as Piccadilly, but very much more impressive. Impressive it certainly is, a straight mile of shops facing south to a broad road, a valley of gardens and what Punch calls "the most theatrical skyline in Europe "—the domed Bank, the twin towers of New College. red-roofed Rhenish houses staggering up the High Street's ridge. and, on the right, the Castle itself, brooding on a great basalt pedestal. Later the exile finds the Princes Street shops. by Picca- dilly standards, small and poorly stocked, and their windows dressed with a Gothic disregard for proper emphasis. But just now he wants breakfast, and is gratified to find that porridge and haggis are not obligatory.
But it is in the matter of refreshment that the Englishman first begins to feel not quite at home. The exiled Scot can devote Burns Night and other pagan festivals to mourning his banish- ment with that lugubrious deliberation which, even at home, runs over from his cups. But the Englishman in Scotland is denied even that recompense. Not only are there no suitable occasions (St. George's Day usually turns out to be one of the Caledonian calendar's unpredictable bank holidays), but it is some years before he apprehends the licensing laws. His Sunday-morning pint is prohibited altogether—unless he will perjure himself at one of the station hotels by signing a ledger to say that he is "a bona fide traveller." And on weekdays, when he eventually grasps that opening-hours are from noon till three, and from 5.30 to 9.30, he must make up for his lost elevenses by taking afternoon tea from a tankard. But the exile is likely to shun strong drink on the whole, as there is nowhere to take it. There are bars in Scotland, and " buffets " ; but no pubs and no inns. Alcohol is taken not for the awakening of the soul, but to the mortification of the body.
Souls and bodies are not talked about much in Edinburgh, where the attitude, to religion is strictly professional. In the same way jokes about the law under the shadow of the Court of Session are not in good taste (nqt that the Englishman could make any, the law being different from his own). Even the police are taken seriously, and ride about on horses a good deal. The third estate of Scotland is medicine. Burke and Hare, Simpson and Lister, are still the pillars of the profession, and theft is little co-operation with the London school. Here we meet the famous Scottish independence, a quality most in evidence when the natives are defending some quite indefensible institution against Sassenach attack. This attitude the English- man can appreciate, even in exasperation. for he shares it. Indeed, the most disturbing thing about the Scots is their exhibition, in grossly exaggerated form, of all the traits which the French attribute to the English. The English are supposed to be reserved ; the Scois are almost dead with dourness. The Englishman is afraid of draughts ; the Scot, as Dr. Johnson noticed, is allergic to ventilation of any kind. The English dress absurdly; the Scottish national costume is not kilt and plaid, but stiff brown suit and woolly muffler. The Englishman's home may be his castle, but the Scotchman's is his coffin—camas blinds drawn down, lace curtains pinned across, front door brass-plated, and enough furniture and bric-a-brac to decorate a pharaoh's tomb.
Most of this startling caricature is due to our common con- servatism. Continentals accuse England of living in the Edwardian age ; but Scotland is only just coming up to the Naughty Nineties. Her naughtiness consists in the kirk's tittempts to slip in a little bit of liturgy here and there: and the art-for-art's-sake school lives again in the leaders of the Scottish Renaissance. This phenomenon is probably more political than artistic, but most noise is naturally made by the writers. The quietest of these, like Eric Linklatcr and Edwin Muir, unashamedly write in English: there is a Grub Street that concocts Plastic Scots (a sort of dialect jabberwocky) ; the loudest patriotic group versifies in Lallans (two-way dictionaries are now available) ; and on the wing stand the undaunted who have the Gaelic.
Scottish politics the exile leaves severely alone, and rarely suffers physical injury. When the Stone of Scone was stolen, he braced himself for trouble, but sank into a slough of confounded tolerance and loyalty while all his Scottish friends stood firmly on the bank of commonsense, denouncing the whole affair as a disgrace to King and country. King and country are very dear to the Scot—not so much his present Majesty, perhaps, as Robert the Bruce, and rather Scotland than the United Kingdom. For the historical sense is very strong. Mary Stuart and Scott are featured twice weekly on the B.B.C.'s Scottish Home Service ; the museums are crammed with the unfortunate Queen's under- garments, and the junk-shops with Sir Walter's Works in many • volumes.
Books the Scots do not boast about, but have every reason to be proud of. Edinburgh's bookshops are homelier, better- stocked and cheaper than any in England. And the threepenny stalls are always being inspected by the very poor, who seem to be with us more often than in England. The presence of the poor raises the exile's most ticklish problem. Used to a fairly rigid social system, he stumbles into a society which is not exactly classless, but divided more on the American lines of wealth and trade than on the English of birth and education. One can only say that "gentlemen," as a class, do not exist in Scotland. Gentlemen, of course, there are ; but they reveal themselves only after long acquaintance, for such superficies as accent, dress, name, school are not reliable. To the Englishman all Scots have an accent ; most are dressed either in a slovenly way or over-neatly ; they are all James or Alexander MacSomc- thing ; and their schools the exile cannot judge. It is all very confusing, and one assumes that the " democracy " of their education is at the bottom of it.
Their education they still claim to be the best in the world, and those who car, afford it still send their children south to be taught, and to swell the ranks of exiled Scots who have found truth in Johnson's unkind dictum about the Great North Road. For Scotland is a poor country: but not in pride. Nemo me impune lacessit ; so we had better point out that most English- men are not exiled in Scotland itself, but marooned on the more cosmopolitan islands of her universities. And there the ship- wrecked will draw comparisons with home. He will not see Oxford's dreaming spires, or the sleepy lawns of Cambridge ; he will miss the ecclesiastical pomp of Durham and the open cleanli- ness of Yale: he will not feel the power of London or the enthusiasm of Paris ; and he will never cease to mourn the absence of these things and the collegiate atmosphere in which they thrive. He will despise the impertinence of undergraduates who demand a say in academic administration: he will soon stop attending the interminable lectures, and long for a tutor to talk to ; he will curse the multitudinous examinations, and beg to write an essay ; he will revile the hordes of embryonic school-teachers and the swarming young ladies ; he will cry aloud for a little mediaeval discipline.
But after a few years he will remember, too, the pomposity of eighteen-year-olds in King's Parade, and shudder ; wince at the threat of proctorial paraphernalia, smile at the nunnery of Girton and shrug at high table's so fatiguing wit. He will begin to delight in the blessed freedom from habit and relief front affectation that only a desert island can afford—a recompense for exile that the Scot perhaps can never know.
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