Manners and Locality.
Industrialism.
Manners change greatly with localities in Great Britain and France, and it is remarkable that they are often worst in the most industrious and advanced parts of the country. In the Highlands of Scotland, where industrial civilisation is almost unknown, popular manners are excellent; in some parts of the Lowlands they are rude, repellent, and unsympathetic. The best popular English manners are to be found in certain rural districts, the worst in thriving and energetic Lancashire. Too much energy seems unfavourable to the best behaviour, which grows to perfection amongst idlers, or in agricultural and pastoral communities, where folks work in a leisurely fashion and have many spare moments on their hands.
Non-national Exceptions.
G. H. Lewes.
In the course of this chapter I have avoided exceptions for the sake of clearness, which makes it necessary to add that there are people in both nations whose manners are not national. It is not an English characteristic to be a lively and brilliant causeur, yet there are Englishmen who have that quality and that art. The manners of George Henry Lewes were more French than English; he had the openness and ease of a Frenchman, his frank welcome, his gay cordiality, his abundant flow of words, his natural delight in conversation, his unhesitating self-confidence. There is also a small class of Frenchmen who have those qualities in manners which are believed to be exclusively English. They are quiet and reserved, they listen well, they never interrupt, they do not attempt to shine. When they talk, they talk deliberately, and in the purest language, never condescending to use the slang which is now rapidly corrupting the French tongue, and they employ terms accurately without French exaggeration. They are polite, but with an intelligent moderation, and they make no show of politeness.
These are exceptions on the favourable side. There are also innumerable exceptions which are nothing but a variety of individual failures to approach the national ideal. It is useless to attempt the description of these. All comic and satirical literature takes them for its own.
CHAPTER V
DECORUM
Le Décorum anglais.