THE ENGLISH CHARACTER
By CHARLES MORGAN
WHEN the time comes—and some believe it may—in which to be English is no more an emotional impulse than to be an elector of Marylebonc, then, at last, on a wiser and more tedious earth, some Englishman may write an unprejudiced essay on the English char- acter, if it distinguishably exists. Meanwhile, to love England is .an emotion and not to love her au emotion repressed.; - either way, we arc hot judges. Those who withdraw themselves from the rashness of loving her have detachment beyond my power ; they will be right in another world than this, when they have created it. But as yet they are too raw in the virtue of antipathy to make calm estimate of their unregenerate country, and certainly those of us who . are. ourselves unregenerate have an opposite prejudice at least as. disabling.. What cool judgement can we give of one whom, though the intellect may condemn, the heart must pardon, and who has power, by the sound of .her name, to command ? " Still, I would not assert that the young .Englishmen are more clever, more intelligent, better informed, or more excellent at heart than other people," said Ecker- mann. " The secret does not lie in these.things, my good friend," Goethe returned.
The secret of which he spoke was that of the young Englishmen's power to enthrall the 'ladies of Weimar. He explained that, as a German father of a family, con- cerned for the tranquillity of his household, he felt often a slight shudder when his daughter-in-law announced to him the expected arrival of some " fresh young islander," for he saw already in his mind's eye the tears which would one day flow when the visitor departed. It is, from Goethe, a pretty- compliment, and his explanation of the special charm of Englishmen a hundred and more years ago is worth remarking as a fixed point from which to measure change. The secret, he continued, - • - " does not lib in birth or riches ; it lies in the courage they have to be that for which nature made theme There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them ; there is nothing half-way or crooked ; but such as they are, they are thoroughly complete men. That they are also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my heart ; but that is still something, and has still always some weight in the scale of nature2' On this subject Goethe spoke with authority ; no one better knew " a complete man " when he saw One.
Now I remember well that when, during the late War, I was held prisoner in Holland, the Dutch had a habit to speak of " the mad English " and that we, incorrigible, were more flattered than reproved by the saying. We were pleased to be called " mad " because we knew that the word, though a just irritation often provoked it, was used in astonishment and not without affection. If it implied that we were fools by the Dutch standard of sedateness and moderation, it implied also that we were " complete " fools, which, as Goethe said, is still some- thing.
It would seem, then, that in the English there is at any rate one quality which is peculiar to them and has survived the flattering influences of the century. To foreigners we are still conspicuously odd, and our oddity still consists in " completeness," in our power, for better: and for worse, to go the whole hog on occasions. And yet is it not our pleasure to believe that we are all plaimmen and admirers of plain men We hope, indeed, that we are neither half-way • nor crooked, but as for our " having the courage to be as nature made us"—would not that be a virtue dangerously individualistic in a nation that dedicates itself at each speech-day to the team-spirit and whose very revolutionaries think in terms, not of liberty, but of a totalitarian State ?
The paradox is illuminating. In it is the key to many perplexities: at home and abroad. What seems to have happened to the English is not that they have altogether lost the " complettecss " or " madness " that was once • openly characterist is of them, but that they have overlaid it with a stuccoed uniformity of manner. Those qualities of fire or folly which once had outlet hi men spoken of as," characters " ; the l'ilnaticism of genius and the wild- ness of freaks, the intellectual independence that could become mere arrogance, the swift acceptance of emotional release that made tears easier, laughter more uproarious and all sentiment less embarrassed. than it is today ; even the foolish, lovable extravagance which, in Goethe's time, made the English complete men or complete fools—these things have been driven underground. If there exist today such complete and prodigal beings as Landor or Byron or Fox or Nelson or Beekford of Fonthill, they hide their light under the bushel of trade union or public school. All the English arc perilously well brought up. They no longer thrust their way forward that they may warm both hands before the lire of life ; instead, if old, they go for a brisk but melancholy walk with the dog, and, if young, sit in rows, to Left or Right, beside the totalitarian radiator.
This is the visible surface. To certain foreign observers, we seem to drift characterless,- wrapped in the final, deathlike complacency of those to whom disillusionment is an excuse for ease ; and even they who know that beneath the surface there is still something passionate and formidable are puzzled to guess what it is and what will evoke it. Three times during the last twenty years " the flannelled fool at the wicket " and the " muddied oaf at the goal " have come to life and astonished Europe. In the War, in the General Strike, in the crisis of 1931, England saved herself not, as she pretends, by her common sense, but by her fanatical energy. What was the connexion, not of polities, but of character, between these three declarations of the national will ? What is this concealed fanaticism which suddenly enables her to transcend her sloth and blindness ?
The answer is hard to give in positive form, for the English are not, and have never been, social or political theorists, nor have they, in normal times, an active national consciousness directed towards particular ends. But they have still, privately and collectively, two fanatical hatreds. They will permit incompetence unto seventy times seven as long as they can feel a little sorry for the poor fool, but arrogant incompetence they will not stomach ; hence the passion that established the National Government in power. This is their lesser hatred. The greater is their loathing of pedantic tyranny. The emphasis should lie on the adjective, not the noun. They are not, in rigid principle,. a free people any more than they arc by intuition democratic ; they have no 'objection to being ruled whether by a prefect in a school, a squire in a village, or a Minister- in Downing Street. It is his job ; let him get on with it ; authority is, after all, a convenience, and with the English practical con- venience is, up to a point, everything. • But authority must not pretend to -infallibility ; they will be ruled and they will be preached at, for they know how not to listen ; but they will not be bullied and preached at by the same man at the same time. Not to perceive this was the error of Germany and of the commanders of the General Strike : " Holy State or Holy King— Or Holy People's will—
Have no truck with the senseless thing. Order the guns and kill !"
Or run the omnibuses and trams. Mr. Kipling's remedy may be a little drastic for domestic purposes, but his general truth is being continually confirmed : " . . Holy State (we have lived to learn) Endeth in Holy War."
Hitherto the ballot-box has served us, but if it is seriously proposed for the good of our totalitarian souls that we should accept rule by decree, a muzzling of the judges and a refusal to dissolve Parliament, if, in brief, we are asked to kiss the rod of infallibility, the work of 1688 will have to be done and will be done again. The English will beat their own children, but do not like a schoolmaster with a cane, whether he be Spanish, French, German or native. To them he is a figure at once ridiculous and monstrous. If they cannot laugh him away, they will break his cane, and afterwards settle down to believe in his good intentions until he appeaN before them with another. Once more, then, they will laugh and refuse the evidence of their eyes ; but, believing at last, will act. Why they do not act sooner it is hard for Europe to understand. Haters of extremes, the English are slow to credit extremism in others. Hoping always for settlement and compromise, they hide their fanaticism deep, but it exists. " They are dangerous young people," said Goethe, " but this very quality of being dangerous is their virtue."
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