AN EXPLORER IN ENGLAND

LONDON, of course, is no further from Prague than Naples ; but none the less when Mr. Capek—the author of that successful play R. U.R.—set his foot on English soil .he felt like an explorer. He found no cannibals, but what he saw puzzled him still more. He would have felt himself more at home in the wildest lands than in this complex and perfected

civilization.

What happened to him first was that he lost the use of his tongue. " Having landed," he writes, describing the common fate of all who innocently enter England for the first time, " I discovered to my horror that I could neither speak nor under- stand a word of English." • No native of this proud country will ever understand the full meaning of speechlessness : here more than anywhere in the world you are an outcast if you have no words. For the primitive Kaffir will understand if in the last suffering of your soul you resort to signs and gestures ; but kind and cordial as he may be, your neighbour in London will stare at you pityingly and without comprehension.

Mr. Capek's loss of language coloured all his adventures in England and decided the nature of his observations. He was confined to recording what he saw. Probably his visual im- pressions arc anyhow the strongest : we might conclude so in- directly from the contrast between the exactness of his visual observations and such monstrous diagnostic failures as the following

As regards London itself, it smells of petrol, burnt grass and tallow."

In fact, nothing should be more obvious than that the typical smell of London—West and East—is compounded of fried potatoes, mutton-fat and bacon.

Yet his eye is infallible. Perhaps, confused by the abund- ance of his first impressions, he cannot always discriminate between the typical and the accidental, the customary and the unique. But even where he fails, he is provocative and the chapters that give his first impressions of English parks, London traffic, museums and clubs, Sunday afternoons and the crowds at Wembley are documents of unusual penetration and clear-sightedness. If he is amazed, he loses nothing of his critical power : the common sense of the peasant has kept him detached.

It is that rustic mind which makes him suspicious : it con- tinually renews his resistance to the whole mechanism of civilization—a resistance which the Anglo-Saxon, unlike the Slav, seems to have lost. His nay joy in life and his rustic distrust combine to form the mixture of irony and admiration which characterizes the whole book. Even when he dis- approves, he still marvels. Of London he writes satirically ; Ire keeps himself steadily apart from the seven and a half million men long exiled from contact with the soil : but when he

finds he may step on the grass in London parks, or when lie is set in the countryor in Scotland, he feels the more exalted and writes with an almost mystical fervour. Hills, sheep, waves, old houses, old sea-captains are all included in his orphic hymns. While Capek's description of London is the work of a creative

writer who happens also to be agood journalist, his description of Scottish landscapes is not journalism but prose-poetry. In the country the fact that he is a foreigner becomes of secondary importance. Few English writers have excelled him in praise of their countryside, and I can imagine his descriptions inciting even an English reader to spend his holidays in the remoter parts of his own country instead of taking the first train for

Paris or the Riviera. Let me quote examples of the two Capeks :-

" Then I was at Madame Tussaud's. Madame Tussaud's is a museum of famous people, or rather of their wax-effigies. The Royal Family is there (also King Alfonso, somewhat moth-eaten). Mr. MacDonald's Ministry, French Presidents, Dickens and Kipling, marshals, Mademoiselle Lenglen, famous murderers of last century and souvenirs of Napoleon, such as his socks, belt and hat ; then in a place of dishonour Kaiser Wilhelm, and Franz Josef still looldng spruce for his age. Beforo one particularly effective effigy of a gentleman in a top-hat I stopped and looked into the catalogue to see who it was ; suddenly the gentleman with the top-hat moved and walked away ; it was awful. After a while two young ladies looked into the catalogue to see whom I represented. At Madame Tussaud's I made a somewhat unpleasant discovery : either I run quite incapable of reading human faces, or else physiognomies are deceptive. So for example I was at first sight attracted by a seated gentleman with a goatee beard, No. 12. In the catalogue I found : 12. Thomas Neill Cream, hanged in 1892. Poisonerk Matilda Glover with strychnine. He was also found guilty ot murdering three other women.' Really, his facia is very suspicious. No. 13, Franz Midler, murdered Mr. Briggs in the train. H'm. No. 20, a clean-shaven gentleman, of almost worthy appearance : Arthur Devereux, hanged 1905, known as the trunk murderer,' because he hid the corpses of his victims in trunks. Horrid. No. 21 —no, this worthy priest cannot be Mrs. Dyer, the Reading baby murderess.' I now perceive that I have confused the pages of the catalogue, and I am compelled to correct my impressions : the seated gentleman, No. 12, is merely Bernard Shaw ; No. 13 is Louis BlArioE, and No. 20 is simply Guglielmo Marconi. Never again will I judge people by their faces."

There we have the satiric Mr. Capek : it was the ecstatic Mr. Capek who wrote the following :—

" Beer me, 0 'Lake Queen,' along the keen grey and blue surface of Loch Tay, between the unfrequented domes of the hills, beneath skies which regale me with rain and sun bear me, trim vessel, along the glistening silk of Lake Tay. Bear me, red post-chaise, through the greenest of green valleys, through a valley of gnarled trees, through a valley with a foaming river, through a valley of shaggy sheep, through a glen of Nordic abundance. Wait, silvery aspen, move not, wavy oak-tree standing astraddle, black pine- thicket and lush alder ; wait, wild-eyed maiden. But no ; bear me, hissing train, northward, northward, among those dark moun- tains.. . . Heavens above ! never have I seen such a forlorn and sinister region ; still the bare hills, but higher and direr ; nothing but stunted birch-trees, and then not even those, but yellow gorse and heather, and then not even that, but oozing black peat, and on it only wisps of bog-cotton, which we call St. Ivan's beard, and then not even that, but stones, stones, sheer stones, with tough reedstems. Clouds drag their way across the grey baldness of the hills, there is a spatter of cold rain, mists rise above tho black rocks, and a dark glen is revealed, mournful as the howling of a dog. For miles and miles neither dwelling nor man ; and when a cottage does fly past it is as grey and stony as the rocks, and all by itself, nothing else for miles around. A lake without a fisherman, streams without a miller, pastures without a shepherd, road without a wayfarer."

It is a triumph for the translator that he has carried through into his translation the point of view of an observer whose mind is so unlike the average Englishman's.

It cannot be concealed that in comparison with Mr. Capek's delightful observations and vivid descriptions of scenery, the rest of the book is weak. his sociological deductions are superficial ; the whole culture of England is scarcely touched upon except in its visual appeal. He shows himself sensitive to it when he describes English cathedrals or the "almost supernatural personality " of G.B.S. ; but the realms of politics and sport might not exist. The fact that he fails to give a complete picture is to be explained partly by his malaise while he was here and his anxiety to get away as soon as he could, and partly by the lack of means for communication.

Englishmen will enjoy the book, for they are delighted if - they are provoked to protest or if they are allowed to laugh at their own foibles. Perhaps the English writers of the last generation who are well known on the Continent are famous - in their own country not so much for the value of their work , as for their capacity to provoke their own countrymen ; and it seems that the easiest way to success in England is by a gentle attack upon the Englishman's peculiarities.

' In order that these sketches of English life should bring to his compatriots a real picture of English life Capek has added a number of drawings. We cannot call them works of art, but they have certainly an engaging quality of their own. They show us English life and landscape through an interesting, exciting and individual temperament.

Euori WERTHEIMER.