“On my second continental tour, I went through Belgium to Germany, and when, after a few years’ residence in that country, I came back to England, I was not alone. I was accompanied by a foreigner—a lady who bore my name. She was not strong, and could not bear the climate. She yearned for her country, but concealed her wish to return. When at length I brought her back to the sunnier clime of Southern Germany, it was too late. That sad event happened many years ago, but though she left me, I was not solitary. Heaven be thanked, I have a son, a dear boy, who is now at college at Heidelberg.”
“Of course, your son is half a foreigner!” said Miss Lollypop, with a slight toss of her head.
“Nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Baxter, with a smile. “He is a Cockney by birth, for he was born within the sound of Bow-bells. But,” added our friend, “I wish him to become so much of a foreigner as to enjoy the brighter sides of English life without a superstitious admiration of the darker ones.”
A pause of general embarrassment followed the conclusion of this short and fragmentary autobiography. The children looked at Mr. Baxter curiously, enquiringly, for a couple of stories and anecdotes seemed still hovering on his lips. But he sat silent and lost in thought. Probably his thoughts were with his son, the Heidelberg student; perhaps he fancied he accompanied that son in his wanderings through some valley in the Alps or to the ruins of some ancient abbey, rich with curious carvings and relics of the olden time. For Mr. Baxter rides the antiquarian hobby as he does his other hobbies, of which many are as laborious as useless. For it ought to be remarked, that a real gentleman hates absolute idleness; some purpose or object, fantastic though it be, he must have: he defies dangers and courts fatigues. The odd freaks which English gentlemen have, and which they are guilty of, to the signal astonishment and amusement of continental feuilleton-writers and Gothamites, are mere excrescences of that restless desire of activity which is one of the most splendid qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race. Many thousands of Englishmen, each of whom can afford to make his life one long spell of rest, devote their time and energies to an honourable servitude in the nation’s service, and slave for a single word of thanks from posterity, quite as much as the continental bureaucrats do for orders and pensions. If they want the talents or the ambition necessary for such a career, they will devote themselves to farming or support some one of the numerous charitable institutions of the metropolis or their own county—not only with money, for that were no sacrifice—but also by giving it their time, personal attention, and influence. The active charity of the women is quite as great as that of the men; and this explains the reason why, although in England the gulf between wealth and poverty is wider than in every other country, nevertheless up to the present day there are no symptoms of that patient bitterness of hatred among the lower classes—that harbinger of an approaching doom—which has come to other nations with the gloomy evangel of the future on its pale lips.
As a third class, we have the amateurs and patronisers of arts and sciences; the passionate and most persevering observers of nature, who for many months will watch a swallow’s nest, or fill their diaries with observations on the signs and marks of instinct in cockroaches and snails; the travellers in every clime, who take their coffee with the Shah of Persia, converse with the Sultan on the superior excellence of English railroads; rhyme on, and in presence of, the cypress trees of Scutari; smoke the pipe of peace with the Camanchees and the Last of the Mohicans; and who now and then watch and register the hangman’s tricks of an accomplished despot, in order to recount them to their countrymen, who never believe such shocking stories, unless published under the authority of a gentleman of known respectability, and conservative principles. Those who are altogether unable to employ their leisure hours—that is to say, their lives—usefully, devote themselves to some “sport” with a touching fanaticism, and ride their hobbies with the heroism of world-betterers. Such a man sails in a nut-shell of a yacht to the polar regions, or travels about in Spain to effect the conversion of Jews and gipsies; or he ascends Mont Blanc, and writes a letter to the Times to commemorate his fatigue and folly.
Mr. Baxter, however, had never been up Mont Blanc, and what is more, it is not likely he will ever make the ascent. He is too old, and too clever. On the evening in question, he gave convincing proof of his shrewd good nature and tact for while we were all silent and embarrassed, he leant back, with the most comfortable air in the world, and with a look of innocent slyness at our long-drawn faces. Our embarrassment and silence were caused by a word of which Mr. Baxter had made a liberal use in his autobiography, and which he pronounced with a provoking emphasis. It is a word on which whole chapters and books might be written—the word “Foreigner.”
The ancient Greeks spoke of all other nations on the face of the earth as “barbarians”; and for a period, I believe, they were quite right. It is said, whether truly or falsely I will not here investigate; but it is said, that every Englishman thanks God in his morning’s prayers, that he has not been created a foreigner. “He is a foreigner, but a very nice man!” “A very gentlemanly foreigner, indeed!” “What a pity he is a foreigner!” Offensive compliments of this sort fall very frequently from British lips. The tone of pity, contempt, and condescension, with which those disagreeable words are pronounced, is applied, not only with respect to the foreigner, but also to the produce of his country. Bad cherries or plums, are at once declared to be foreign; there is no doubt they come from France, Belgium, or Holland. When our cook opens an egg which offends her olfactory nerves, and when she flings it indignantly into the dust-hole, she accompanies it with the sneering hiss of “foreign”! That wretched egg was laid by a Dutch hen. Of course it was; and probably the passage from Holland was very long and stormy. But alas! all Dutch hens come into evil repute; it is at once understood that, “Them nasty furrin hanimals halways lays bad heggs, Sir.”
A bold attempt to vindicate the rights and the honor of foreigners was, on one Sunday evening, made in Guildford Street, at dinner time, when the glorious roast beef of Old England graced Sir John’s hospitable board.
“This glorious bulwark of your nation,” said Dr. Keif, “is of foreign extraction.”
Sir John dropped his knife with the shock these words gave him.