The National Type
The extract is taken from a book on Les Anglais, Londres et L'Angleterre, with an introduction by no less eminent an authority than M. Emile de Girardin, who vouched for its accuracy. According to the writer the English cared for nothing but roast beef, porter, and spirits. They were "averse to contemplation," had not the remotest conception of grace or feeling, their "climate, coarse food, and black drink being utterly opposed to any mental refinement. To possess taste it is necessary to possess soul, and a large soul; and the English possess nothing but appetite." It was a gross libel, but the misconception was mutual, and Punch had done a great deal to foster it by his persistent representation of the "Mossoo" as a mere figure of fun. And let it never be forgotten that the notion of the English as a gross and crapulous race was in great measure due to our caricaturists, Gillray and Rowlandson, and even Hogarth. We chose the beefy, burly, sixteen-stone top-booted farmer as the national type, and we have retained it long after "John Bull" ceased to be typical of the breed physically. It became a caricature, but we have only ourselves to blame if foreign artists caricatured our own caricature. The process of the mutual discovery of France and England has moved far since the 'sixties, and has reached its climax (on the French side) in Les Silences du Colonel Bramble, by our good friend M. André Maurois—a work recently described by Mr. H. A. L. Fisher as "the best psychological study of the English character ever written by a foreigner."
Brougham Drives Up—Two Ladies in Toxophilite Costume on the Box, One Driving—Pair of Top-booted Legs Sticking Out of Window.
Driving Lady (loq.): "Oh, Frank, dear, only fancy, George has got so tipsy at the Archery Meeting, that we've been obliged to put him inside, and drive home ourselves—and poor Clara has pinched her fingers dreadfully putting on the drag, coming down Blunsden Hill!"
The social history of any period may be studied in its lions, and, if the truth be told, in 1861 Du Chaillu and the Gorilla loom larger than Darwin in the pages of Punch, though the Origin of Species is described as "a book of much worth." Punch was not much interested in the theological controversy involved, though he naturally made play later on with Disraeli's famous "Apes and Angels" speech at Oxford. Disraeli was dubbed the new "Angelical Doctor," and in a famous cartoon is exhibited as dressing for an Oxford bal masqué, with a contemptuous set of verses on his bewildering versatility, his impartial hostility to Tractarians and Broad Churchmen, winding up with the warning:—
Yet scarce the best mimes can from Nature escape,
And what's simious to saintly brooks change ill;
Have a care lest thou then should be most of the ape,
When most bent on enacting the Angel.