Sir: In his incomparable story, The White Company, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle has young Alleyne go to the rescue of an elderly Italian painter of glass, one Agosti- no Pisano. Pisano has been rudely handled by a group of archers and says to his deliverer:
But those English! Ach! Take a Goth,.a Hun and a Vandal; mix them together and add a Barbary rover; then take this creature and make him drunk — and you have an English- man. My God! Were ever such people on earth! What place is free of them? I hear that they swarm in Italy even as they swarm here. Everywhere you will find them, except in heaven.
Conan Doyle dedicated his novel to the reunion of the English-speaking peoples, which he described as the hope of the earth. Perhaps, like his spiritualism and his belief in fairy photography, this repre- sented the triumph of hope over experi- ence.
Christopher Hitchens
447 15th Street NE, Washington DC,
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