With love to England
PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN
Once upon a time, not very long before the Byzantine Empire finally tottered into the dust, the Emperor John Palaeologus attended a ceremony of thanksgiving at the great church of Aghia Sophia. After the service (or so the story runs), while the royal train was remount- ing to return to the palace, an observer from Venice began to notice that something was wrong. Or rather, he just felt that something was wrong. Nothing was outwardly amiss, the usual routine and protocol were scrupulously complied with, and the bearing of the royal person was as distant and haughty as the most exigent purist could require; it was just that there was . . . something . . . which was giv- ing the whole splendid occasion the lie.
At last, having turned his astute and worldly eyes on every detail before him, the observer was able to define the precise area of falsity. It had eluded him so long because he, being a Venetian, had looked for devious subtleties in obscure corners, whereas the deception which was being practised was in truth rather crude and dead in the centre of the whole affair (the last place, as had been correctly assumed, that anyone would look for it). In any case, there it was: the priceless regalia usually sported by His Imperial Majesty for functions of state had been replaced by imitations in coloured glass. The accumulated treasures of a millen- nium had gone up the spout.
Now, I am very well- aware that the Crown Jewels of England are still safe in the Tower; but, nevertheless, whenever I see the Queen drive out from Buckingham Palace, I am re- minded of the wretched Palaeologus as he went forth in his baubles of paste. Power had long since left him; now even its trappings were _ersatz; and yet somehow the man contrived to put on a brave face. It is much the same with Elizabeth U. In her case, of course, the diamonds in her crown are still genuine; but for the rest, like the last Emperor of Byzantium, she is the powerless sovereign of a sleazy, dis- credited and near-bankrupt country. Her gov- ernment (in true Byzantine fashion) is con- ducted by con-men, eunuchs and buffoons; her noblemen lurk and giggle in decaying palaces; her gentry are cantankerous and place-hunting snobs; her armies have been run down for reasons of political intrigue and what is left of them is in full retreat; and her people, mind- less, avaricious and lethargic, are roused into some sort of life only by the weekly football match, which turns them into just the kind of brutish and frenzied mob that howled after the chariots in the Byzantine stadium (until the city was too broke to afford even that). And yet despite all this our Queen, like Palaeologus of Constantinople, manages to hold her head high and wear a gallant face. One can only wonder why.
Well, I am within a very few years of the Queen's age, and I think I know the answer. The Queen cannot imagine, as no one of her age and mine can imagine, that it is all really coming to an end. What one is told in child- hood (however irrational and however often refuted by later experience) one continues in- stinctively to believe; and we were told in our childhood that England was the best coun- try of them all and that England always won. Within a very few years we found that this
was true. For England did win; she had needed massive assistance, to be sure, but the fact re- mained that she had stood firm (and for a time alone) against very long odds and had. borne an honourable part in a necessary war which was triumphantly concluded. And there was something else to remember. When the war ended I was seventeen years old; for the last six years, a useless child while my country was fighting for its life, I had not only been protected and considered and clothed and fed, I had also received an excellent education in humane letters and been tolerably well enter- tained. England, of course, was the best country and England always won, but this of itself need not have made a man love her; what made one love her was that even when she was desperate she remained outwardly imperturb- able and kind. The day I first loved England was when I saw, in a daily paper, a list of the probable runners at Newmarket adjacent to an account of a hideous defeat..
So that nothing which came later could make much difference. I had been told as a small boy, I had seen for myself in adolescence, that England was ultimately unbeatable, and like everyone else of my age (and the Queen's) I had a thousand other reasons for gratitude. No matter what follies might now be vaunted in the name of progress, no matter what humilia- tions my country might suffer because of envy without and malice within, I was and must remain in her debt. And for a long time, despite the canting austerity of the late 'forties and the scabby deceits of the 'fifties, it seemed that the debt was, growing bigger. After all, while half the countries in Europe, even coun- tries which had been on the winning side, were turning themselves into huge-scale prisons and torture chambers, it did not, because it could not, happen here. In England people said what they thought as a matter of course; no one came into your house without your invitation, and if anyone knocked on your door at 3 a.m. he could only be a drunken friend. Although there were still certain restrictions on personal freedom, these, we told ourselves, were inevit- able after so great an upheaval; and anyhow both they and those who favoured their reten- tion would be speedily removed.
As indeed they were: for England was the best country, and England always won. Why else did so many, people want to Jive here?
From all over the world they came, particu- larly, it seemed, those who had been fiercest to quit our rule a few years before. They came (one told oneself) because for all the lies told by either political party 'England was still a moderate, sensible and tolerant country; a fair and decent country:. a country in which you were innocent until you were proven otherwise and, above all, were free to come and go as you pleased. Even the foreign currency restric- tions, last and most obstinate of wartime sur- vivals, had now (to all intent and purpoie) been revoked. How lucky one was, and how proud, to live in a land like ours.
All this, and much more, .1 should have said any time up to two years, even one year, ago. But now? Now one can only say that our coun- try is degraded and disgraced. Our military commitments are repudiated; our financial obligations are disowned; our elected leaders are figures of mockery or disrepute; our products (even when produced) are not de- livered; the so-called captains of our aircraft are threatening to go on strike like a pack of disgruntled navvies; and for all this the only remedy is apparently to have more hospitals to cosset feeble bodies and more comprehensive schools to flatter feeble minds.
Worst of all, our freedom is being destroyed; piece by small piece (always, of course, for the most urgent or moral of reasons) it is being wished away, just as the magic ass's skin in Balzac's novel was wished away to satisfy its owner's fatuous caprices—until one day it dis- appeared entirely, bringing him death. Back, for example, come currency restrictions of the meanest kind; in come busybodying rules about drink—these introduced by a Minister of Trans- port who can't keep the trains running in half an inch of snow; and we are even forbidden, if you please, to collect gold coins, which we are ordered to exchange, at the mingiest rate, for the scruffy little vouchers now called money, in order to prop up an administration whose only achievement is to have done more snivelling and whining than any other- in the histOry of the earth.
Very well, my reader may say : if you hate it all so much, then get out; you're a writer, you can do your work (or what you call work) wherever you like and avoid taxes into the bargain. A villa in Italy, overlooking a lake; or a small white house in Provence, with its bracing wines; or the sea-girt Isles of Greece. . . . Very tempting. I agree. The only trouble is, gentle reader, that I cannot go. For if I go,, I must go (under current regulations) for good; and, it happens that my heart, bound by grati- tude and love, is here. Although I am fond] of travelling, if Pam away from England for more than two or three months I become un- easy, I start to twitch, finally I feel a nagging, and acid discomfiture of the bowels, from which there is no. relief except to take the fastest way back home. So here I am and here I Stay. Nor do I think I shall be sorry; for I am of the Queen's generation, and all of us of that generation know what our mothers told us, that England, yes England, is the best country, and England always wins (in the end). Perhaps, my reader may reply, and perhaps not : for did not you yourself liken the Queen's confident aspect to that of the last Palaeologus, as he rode away to his ruin in fake jewels? The cases are too similar for comfort; if his confidence was so sorely misplaced, why not hers? Let me risk,a_simple answer: Byzantium was never free and there• fore never loved.
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