The Nook-Shotten Isle
The English Smile. By Christen Hansen. (Gollancz. 6s.) MR. HANSEN, a Dane, and Miss Keun, a live wire, are two more of those bright discoverers of F. gland who actually discover next to nothing at all ; for we too have noticed that our slums are dreadful, our lawns green, and our policemen wonderful. Now and then these discoverers may amuse and impress us—for instance, Karel Capek is Letters from England and Dr. G. J. Renier in The English Are They Human ? Perhaps we shall find a place for Miss Keun and Mr. Hansen on the same shelf, because it is nice to be reminded of our virtues, although we are very well—possibly too well—aware of them ; because these writers lay a significant emphasis upon certain of our shortcomings ; and also because Mr. Hansen tells us a number of interesting things about Denmark, and Miss Keun a number about Miss Keun. Do they con- tradict each other ? Yes, at times they do—and flatly. But England, like other countries, " contains multitudes," and nearly every sweeping statement about us can be swept away by its opposite. We are kind but hard, stupid but sensible, shy but arrogant, honest but hypocritical, cold but tempera- mental, and we sometimes advertise ourselves, as Mr. Hansen observes, by " self-depreciation on a gigantic scale." Oddly enough, our beggars, though " cringing " and " abjectly crushed " (Keun), are nevertheless " cheerful," and have " a mentality that the world needs in 1934 " (Hansen). Our shopkeepers, though deferent and considerate (Keun) arc smug and disobliging (Hansen). We are realists who won't face facts, and although " England alone has succeeded in producing a fully adult race " (Hansen) " by the time we are adults we are dead " (Keun). Generalizations one expects to be fallible : one might question some of these authors' facts. Is it true in any general sense that " at a good summer hotel at a smart seaside resort, fifteen guineas a week for the room alone is not considered beyond reason " ? Is it true that " even the pacifists . . . forget to find fault " with the Aldershot Tattoo, which Mr. Hansen calls the world's greatest advertisement for militarism " And what does Miss Keun mean. by, telling us on p. 46 that electricity is dear and on p. 56 that it is cheap ?
Mr. Hansen is interested in the theatre. " Dignity," he says, " a charining and radiant sense of comedy, and avoidance of the more sincere feelings are the characteristics of the English theatre all the way through." He is not the first to observe that " the whole race lacks interest in passion as an end in itself," but " what the Englishman lacks as a lover he
makes up for as a husband and father," and Mr. Hansen even considers that " the Englishwoman's lack of talent for erotic intrigue is precisely what has made England what it is " I Miss Keun has a good deal to say on the theme that " voluptu- ousness and amorous dalliance do not seem to be in the least national traits," and what she says is a mixture of good sense and sprightly frankness. She reminds us that the art of living is not synonymous with the art of government.
Both writers are at their best when they specially notice things that we are in the habit of taking for granted. Miss Keun believes " the ordinary, average Englishman " to be " the most naturally good-tempered and good-mannered person on this planet," but she has been made physically sick by a certain regular public exhibition of sadism. Mr. Hansen, who flatters us not a little, is astounded that we treat suicide as a crime. " There's not much wrong with the British working man " is a sentiment still to be overheard in bar- parlours and places where they lay down the law, but Mr. Hansen finds him " utterly without initiative," and Miss Keun detects in him, for all his virtues, a kind of passive fatalism, and considers him a member of " the most bam- boozled " class in the world. She does not even take for granted the rents we meekly pay—one-third of our income, she says, instead of one-seventh as in other countries. English justice itself she does not find unassailable. In short, she and Mr. Hansen, while ministering kindly to our self- esteem, do not shrink from casting certain doubts upon this
" nook-shotten isle of Albion." WILLIAM PLOMER.
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