Pastiche and prejudice

by Arthur Bingham Walkley

I find a typical specimen of this kind of explanation in Hazlitt’s “Notes of a Journey through France and Italy,” made about a century ago, when France was the very France (think of it!) that was being observed, and about to be described, by Balzac. One would have thought that the Londoner of 1824 (who must have been pretty well used to smells at home) would have found some other explanation than the physiological and psychological inferiority of the French. But hear him. “A Frenchman’s senses and understanding are alike insensible to pain—he recognizes (happily for himself) the existence only of that which adds to his importance or his satisfaction. He is delighted with perfumes, but passes over the most offensive smells and will not lift up his little finger to remove a general nuisance, for it is none to him.” To which he appends a note:—“One would think that a people so devoted to perfumes, who deal in essences and scents, and have fifty different sorts of snuffs, would be equally nice, and offended at the approach of every disagreeable odour. Not so. They seem to have no sense of the disagreeable in smells or tastes, as if their heads were stuffed with a cold, and hang over a dunghill, as if it were a bed of roses, or swallow the most detestable dishes with the greatest relish. The nerve of their sensibility is bound up at the point of pain.... They make the best of everything (which is a virtue)—and treat the worst with levity or complaisance (which is a vice).”

Well, well. When this was written French and English had not long ceased to be at war, and Hazlitt was never a sweet-tempered man. But you can still find the censorious Englishman who is ready decisively to mark off French characteristics into “virtues” and “vices,” according to his own English standard. There may, for all I know, be some Frenchman who gives us tit for tat. This type of critic is tiresome enough; but there is another that seems to me quite intolerable, the critic who detests all national peculiarities as such, and would level down all humanity to one monotonous level of sameness. As though uniformity were not already the plague of the modern world! We men all wear the same hat (despite the efforts of the Daily Mail), women all powder their noses in the same way, and the “cinema palaces” all show the same films, with the same “Mary” and the same “Dug.” For heaven’s sake, let us cling to our national peculiarities!

And that is why I welcome the intelligence that the Picards have taken over nothing from us but our pickles, and that the French travellers on the P.L.M. still insist on keeping the window up. Let our enthusiasts for a uniform world ponder these facts. And it is a relief to think that they can never unify national landscapes. The village green, the cottage gardens, the chalk downs, the chines, the red coombs will always be English. The long straight route nationale and the skinny fowls that are always straying across it, the poplar-bordered streams, the trim vines ranked along the hill-side, the heavily-accoutred gendarme and the fat farmer in the stiff indigo blouse hobnobbing at the estaminet, these will always be French. Oh, but I would give something to see that indigo blouse again, and have a morning chat with the farmer! “Hé! père Martin, ça va toujours bien? Pas mal, m’sieu. Et la récolte? Dame! je ne m’en plains pas ... à la votre, m’sieu!” They may take our pickles, if they will, but let them remain themselves, our old French friends.

THE BUSINESS MAN

It is not easy for the slave of “copy,” sedentary and shy, to know that triumphant figure of the active, bustling world, the business man. The business man is too busy, and can only be seen in office hours, when the scribe is correcting proofs or, perhaps, not yet up. Nevertheless, I once nearly saw the Governor of the Bank of England. I hold the Governor to be the archetype of the business man. In my green unknowing youth I used to take the gentleman in cocked hat and picturesque robe at the Threadneedle Street entrance for the Governor, but now know better. Well, I once nearly saw the Governor. It was on the stage. Mr. Gerald du Maurier was in the bank-parlour when a servant entered and said: “The Governor of the Bank of England to call on you, sir.” “Show him in,” said Mr. du Maurier with the easy nonchalance of which only actors have the secret. It was a tremendous moment. I seemed to hear harps in the air. And just then, down came the curtain! It was felt, no doubt, that the Governor of the Bank of England ought not to be made a motley to the view. But I was inconsolable. I had been robbed of my one chance of seeing the supreme business man.

Of late, however, the veil that shrouds the business man from the non-business eye has been partly lifted. The pictorial advertisement people have got hold of him and give brief, tantalizing glimpses of his daily life. Maeterlinck speaks of “l’auguste vie quotidienne” of Hamlet. That only shows that Hamlet (it is indeed his prime characteristic) was not a business man. For the business man’s daily life, if the advertisements are to be trusted, is not so much august as alert, strenuous, and, above all, devoted to the pleasures of the toilet. And his toilet seems, for the most part, to centre in or near his chin. Indeed, it is by his chin that you identify the business man. You know what Pascal said of Cleopatra’s nose: how, if it had been an inch shorter, the whole history of the world would have been different. Much the same thing may be said about the business man’s chin. Had it been receding or pointed or dimpled or double, there would have been no business man and consequently no business. But things, as Bishop Butler said, are what they are and their consequences will be what they will be. The business man’s chin is prominent, square, firm, and (unless he deals in rubber tires—the sole exception to the rule) smooth. It is as smooth as Spedding’s forehead, celebrated by Thackeray and Edward Fitzgerald. It is, indeed, like that forehead, a kind of landmark, a public monument. Even the rich, velvety lather, which does not dry on the face and leaves behind a feeling of complete comfort and well-grooming, cannot disguise it. No wonder the business man is so particular about shaving it! It is a kind of religious rite, an Early Matins, with him.

Outside the bank-parlour, the mart and the exchange the business man takes no risks, and at his toilet-table he prefers safety razors. Indeed, he collects them. Sometimes he favours the sort that can be stropped in a moment with one turn of the wrist; sometimes the sort that needs no stropping at all. But, like all collectors, he is never so happy as when handling, or rather caressing the objects of his collection. Mark how his eyes dance with delight and his smile sweetens as the razor courses over his chin. Evidently life at this moment is burning for him with a hard gem-like flame. Call it not shaving! Say, rather, he is ministering to the symbolic element in him, daintily smoothing the proud emblem of his power—to which he will add the finishing touch of pearl-powder, whose constant use produces a delicate bloom, tones up the complexion, and protects the skin against the ravages of time.

When the chin has been prepared for the business day he tries and contrasts the several effects of it over a variety of collars. For the business man collects collars, too. His chin protrudes with quiet but firm insistence over some of them, nestles coyly in others, or it may be emerges with ease from the sort designed to give ample throat room and especially favoured by men who seek considerable freedom but at the same time a collar of character and distinction. Nor has he any false shame about being seen in his shirt-sleeves. In fact, he seems to be in the habit, when half-dressed, of calling in his friends (evidently, from their chins, fellow business men) to see how perfectly his shirt fits at the neck and how its thoroughly shrunk material is none the worse for repeated visits to the laundry.