AN AMERICAN'S VIEW OF ENGLAND.*
IT is always interesting to read the impressions of intelligent Americans who have spent some time in this country. The opinions of an ordinary summer tourist are worthless ; but no Englishman can afford to despise the judgment passed on the Old Country by men like Emerson, Hawthorne, and Wendell Holmes. And we know of few things pleasanter than to visit under their guidance England's " things of fame," and to listen to their opinions as to the good qualities of Englishmen. That their fault-finding is not agreeable, is a matter of course. It sometimes makes us wince, for we feel the truth of it ; some- times, owing to exaggeration or one-sidedness, it makes us angry, and not unreasonably. This feeling, however, does not last, for we recollect that in criticising either a nation or an individual, it is always easier to detect faults than to appreciate virtues. Moreover, the qualities that build up a great nation are not such as are likely to win much admiration from a rival State, even though it may be linked by the close bonds that unite America to England. Books of the class we have mentioned, even when, as in Hawthorne's Our Old Home, severe criticism is not spared, are eminently attractive, and Hawthorne is a remarkable
illustration of the way in which, almost against wishes, the heart of an American is captivated by the associations of which his own country is destitute. To an American, he says, there is a kind of sanctity even in an English turnip-field, and an English hedge might well suffice to occupy his eyes and heart.
Of the scenery and associations of England, Mr. Collier has not much to say in the little volume before us. His aim is to take his countrymen into the English home, and to show them our mode of living in town and country. After a residence of seven years in the island, the writer's admiration of our home- life is " almost unbounded." " My intention," he writes, " has been to portray the family life of England just as I have known it, and just as one must write of it who has been so often the recipient of its abounding hospitalities and its un- failing courtesies." There are no indications that the author is familiar with the life led in the country by the wealthier classes, and the description of what he has observed is ex- tremely limited in range. The appearance of the ordinary English house without and within, the connection of mistress and servant, love-making and marriage, some manners and customs, the relation of parents and children, and a singularly crude chapter on the religious life in England,—these are the subjects which fill the seven brief chapters into which English Home Life is divided. Mr. Collier writes in a lively style, and no reader is likely to find the book dull, or to put it down until he has reached its final page. The author is struck by our insularity or provincialism, and makes the curious assertion that " the Englishman knows comparatively little of the world outside of Great Britain, and for the good and sufficient reason that he is never quite sure that there is any world beyond these • English Home Life. By Robert Laird Collier. Boston, U.S.A.: Ticknor and Co. bounds, or, at least, any world that is worth knowing." We are poor travellers, he says, and he would appear to regard us
as an eminently stay-at-home people. Home-lovers we are, doubtless ; but the spirit of enterprise which urges men cheer- fully to encounter the utmost difficulties of travel has made us prominent as discoverers for three centuries, and if America is now rivalling England in the ardour for exploration, she owes this virtue to her parent. That Englishmen are prone to think too well of themselves, may be admitted ; it is a characteristic they have transmitted unimpaired to their offspring; but if we are too fond of praising what belongs to us, it is generally with one exception. Rarely indeed has an Englishman been heard to praise the English climate. That is left to Americans. Emerson has a word to say in its favour. Hawthorne declares that an English summer, short though it be, is incomparable, and exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospherical delinquencies ; and Mr. Collier asserts without reservation that " the climate of England is the most delicious in the civilised world." So, indeed, we read on one page; but on the next he expresses his opinion that the inside of most English houses is like the climate, dull and uncheery. He complains that we choose gloomy colours, and that the papers on the walls " are very dark, and of very large patterns." There is some truth in his remarks as to the heaviness of dining-room furniture, while that in the drawing-room " has just a tendency of decoration and art."
Mr. Collier cannot understand why oil-paintings are not seen in an English drawing-room, but gives the reason when he suggests that water-colours are more in keeping with the lighter tone of the room. Altogether, he considers that if the colour of the house were less sombre, the furniture less cumbrous, and the rooms less separated each from the other the English house would be a model of comfort.
The chapter on " Servants " touches on some points worth noting. An English family, Mr. Collier observes, of the same means and style of living, will keep twice as many servants as an American family, and three times as many as a German family ; and he accounts for this by saying that Englishmen live more in their homes, and entertain more in them. He might have added, perhaps, that thrift where personal comfort is concerned is not an English virtue. Some of his calcula- tions of expenditure are extraordinary. He says that an upper-middle-class family in London, with an income of from £500 to £1,000, will keep one or more horses, and one or more male servants. " Such a family will live in a house—usually owned by the family—situated some distance from the centre of the city, and standing in its own grounds of an acre or less. There will be trees and plantations,' well-kept lawns and flower-beds." We can only say that if a comparatively small income will yield advantages like these, England must be an easier country to live in than most of us find it. The position of the English servant is, on the whole, accurately defined. We do keep our servants too much at arm's-length. They live in a different world from ours, and one we have no desire to enter. In too many instances, the relation between master and servant " is purely a commercial one, so much work for so much pay." And yet there are, happily, a vast number of exceptions to what may be regarded perhaps as a national failing, and when Mr. Collier states that there is a want of that sympathy with servants in illness which is seen in America and France, we hope and believe that the statement, if true of many employers of labour, is not true generally.
The writer is not indisposed to magnify his countrymen, and we have no fault to find with him for doing so ; but most readers will think his language somewhat unguarded when he states as his fixed conviction, that Americans " are the cleanest, sweetest, and holiest people socially on the face of the earth." This, Mr. Collier is aware, is not the opinion in England, and he attributes our erroneous judgment to the American news- papers :—
"All the nastiness," he writes, "there is going, and much that never had any existence whatever, is greedily gathered and boldly paraded by large sections of the daily press, and social sewers of vilest scandal flow through our drawing-rooms. All the animalism and all the bestiality of the country are bulletined in a few of the journals day by day."
We submit that the purity of America is not vindicated by
this explanation. If " social sewers of scandal " are allowed to flow through drawing-rooms, it must surely be because the men and women who occupy those rooms are not offended by such impurities. One is glad to learn in Mr. Collier's next sentence that "the young people of America are the freest and happiest of the world's youth," by which he means, we suppose, marriageable young people, since, as we read on another page, "the absence of boys and girls is altogether the most striking feature of American society." English ladies will not like to hear that they are the worst-dressed women in the world, neither will it be a compensation to be told that their lords and masters are the best-dressed men. And though few Englishmen, it is to be feared, spend as much upon books as Mr. Mark Pattison said it was their bounden duty to do, Mr. Collier's memory or knowledge must be strangely defec- tive, or he would not have written,—" I do not remember to have seen more than half-a-dozen large or well-chosen libraries in private houses in all Great Britain." Then it is surely in- correct and unjust to say, though the saying might have been a true one years ago, that, as a rule, the English clergy know more about society, about horses and dogs, about rowing and tennis, than they care to know about theology and philosophy. It is too true, indeed, that the clergy " have little or no training for the function of preaching ;" but it is certainly not true that " they pretty nearly all talk rubbish and platitudes." This, however, is a serious subject, and Mr. Collier is happiest in dealing with the surface of society. His little book is neces- sarily superficial, but the reader may spend a leisure hour with it pleasantly enough.
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