FURTHERMORE
The climate may be getting hotter but our habits will never change
PETRONELLA WYATT
The behaviour of human beings may be divided into two classes: first, that which is determined by other people and second, that which is determined by the non-human environment. Montesquieu, for instance, believed that the latter exerted inexorable pressures on every society, giving its people a distinct character or spirit.
I once had an English teacher who believed something similar. She was called Miss Kimmins. Miss Kimmins never allowed her girls to sit in the sun. She was convinced that exposure to solar rays caused backwardness. Her marbled blue eyes would open wide as she declared, 'We lost the Empire when we took up sun- bathing.' Poor Miss Kimmins went to her Maker some time ago, which is just as well. She would have been horrified at a report recently published by the Department of the Environment. The report claimed that in 25 years London will have the climate of the Loire valley. South-east England will sprout sunflowers like a Van Gogh.
But this raised a more important question than landscape. If the English weather is to become continental, what is to become of the English character? If Montesquieu was correct, our historic pomp, our phlegm, our reticence has been largely determined by the climate; likewise the excitability of the Latin, his snorts, his choler, his uninhibited nature. One wonders how long it would take for any such alteration in our spirit to become apparent. Five years? Ten? Much less per- haps. Perhaps one could discern the signs of change already.
Lately, many columnists have been writ- ing in praise of 'London outdoors' or what they call 'piazza living'. This, essentially, is Italy without the Italians: pavement cafes, garden restaurants and the Covent Garden piazza where one can watch live screen relays from the Royal Opera House. There are many squares in Italy where it is possi- ble to experience something similar. These are family occasions, After supper, people bring out chairs and bottles of chianti and grappa. The continentals like to have their agrements, the comfortable pleasures of civilisation without its pomp. Accordingly, I decided to visit the Covent Garden piazza to see what effect the heat was having on our national behaviour. Last Monday, La Traviata, with Angela Gheorgiu and Roberto Alagna, those hot new stars, Was being relayed from the Opera House. Two friends and I decided to carry out a sort of Latin rating on the assembled crowd. The Opera House was very kind, they told us that the best vantage point was from the terrace. The man at the stage door would show us the way, It was sweltering by the time we arrived. 'Terrace?' the man sweated at us. 'What terrace?' Latin rating: 7/10. This was a good beginning. We ascended, blindly, four flights of stairs, passed dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, eventually up to scenery. I suddenly remembered A Night at the Opera in which the Marx Brothers change all the back- drops during a performance of what looked like Trovatore. I wondered what would hap- pen if we swapped the sets of Traviata for those, say, of Aida. Violetta would become an Egyptian.
Eventually, we discovered that the ter- race was not part of the Opera House at all, but the name of a restaurant overlook- ing the piazza. Thither we hurried. The Terrace indeed had one — a terrace, I mean. But, reader, that was the most that could be said for it. Just as we had found some room with a view a waiter told us to move on. But where were we to move on to? 'Over there,' he said, pointing. 'Over there' turned out to be the only part of the terrace from which one could see nothing at all. Evidently, the waiter had no appreci- ation of music. Latin rating, 1/10. After all, Alagna started in a restaurant.
Still, there was plenty of time left to uncov- er any new national spirit. Below there were some 5,000 Londoners crowded into the piazza where Opera House employees were handing out complimentary programmes. The aspect was almost Venetian, like the Piazza San Marco. Latin rating 8/10. 'Quella zente the ga in bocca canta' — the people that have a songln their mouths.
We would soon see. There was to be an audience sing-along, to 'Brindisi', at 6.30 p.m. The words of the chorus were printed on the programme. The continen- tals are very adept at these sing-alongs. Going by the Montesquieu theory, cen- Eat lamb. Do you think I'm mad? turies of hot summers must have given their vocal cords passion and gusto.
The crowd in the piazza was very bad at it. A hesitant la-la-ing was extinguished in smothered giggles of embarrassment. Any- one who attempted actually to sing the libret- to was hushed by mortified Companions. 'Where do you think you are, in the bath? How can you do this to us in public?' Latin rating: 0/10. Things were looking down.
Up on the Terrace it seemed time for a drink, This proved difficult to engineer. The waiter told us that we could not drink on the terrace, but only inside at the bar. Why? 'Because the glasses get in the way.' He glowed with the only honest impulse at the bottom of Anglo-Saxon puritanism the impulse to punish the man with the superior capacity for enjoyment.
It was five minutes to curtain up. Specta- tors were unfolding deck-chairs. On cue an official with a megaphone emerged from under the big screen. Somehow one knew what was coming next. 'I am sorry for the inconvenience,' he began, 'but chairs are not permitted for safety reasons. You will have to sit on the floor.'
The logic of this was hard to determine. There were groups of pensioners who looked as if their bones would snap were they to perch on the hard cobbles. But the audience sank quietly to the ground like the dying on a battlefield, without a murmur of protest. Latin rating: 0/10. One law reigns in continental life — the survival of the loudest. The opera began. Violetta, one has to say, was delightful, Alfredo stirring. But something else was stirring, too. Having had all afternoon to put up crowd barriers, the security men had decided instead to do it during the opera. As Violetta sang of her love, two half-naked men noisily dragged metal bars across the piazza. Violetta could not compete. Naturally, once the first act was over, the men stopped. When the sec- ond act began they resumed.
On the continent, such philistinism would be the cause of a lynching. We took it with our traditional British forbearance. As I made my way out after the performance I encountered the sole raised voices of the night — that is, apart from the singers. 'Why did you make me come here?' a man was complaining to his companion. 'I hate opera and I hate sitting in a square. It's too hot. We're not bloody Eyeties.' Chuck it, Mon- tesquieu. We have a long way to go before we live up to the weather.
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