It is not that as a people they are more vicious than any other, but they are franker in their vice; they have no fine shades. An American woman told me of the shock she received at her first English house-party, where her hostess—a friend of years, who had several times visited her in New York—knew scarcely one-half of her own guests. The rest were “friends,” without whom nothing would induce certain ladies and gentlemen to come.
“It wasn’t the fact of it,” said the Américaine, candidly; “of course such things exist everywhere, but they aren’t so baldly apparent and certainly they aren’t discussed. Those people actually quarrelled about the arrangement of rooms, and changed about with the most bare-faced openness. My hostess and I were the only ones who didn’t pair, and we were simply regarded as hypocrites without the courage of our desires.”
All of which is perfectly true, and an everyday occurrence in English social life. The higher up the scale, the broader tolerance becomes. “Depend upon it,” said a lady of the old régime, “God Almighty thinks twice before he condemns persons of quality!” And, in England, mere human beings, to be on the safe side, do not condemn them at all. The middle-class (the sentimentalists of every nation) lead a life of severe rectitude—and revel in the sins of their betters, which they invent if the latter have none. But directly a man is a gentlemen, or a woman a lady, everything is allowable. Personal freedom within the class laws holds good among morals as among manners; and the result is rather horrifying to the stranger.
French people, for example, are far more shocked at the English than the English are at them. With the former, the offense is against good taste—always a worse crime, in Latin eyes, than any mere breach of ethics. The Englishman’s unvarnished candour in airing his private affairs appears to the Latin as crass and unnecessary; while in the Englishwoman it becomes to him positively repellent. The difference, throughout, in the two races, is the difference between the masculine and the feminine points of view. England is ever and always a man’s country. Even the women look at things through the masculine vision, and to an extent share the masculine prerogatives. As long as a woman’s husband accepts what she does, everyone accepts her; which explains how in the country where women are clamouring most frantically for equal privileges, a great number of women enjoy privileges unheard of by their “free” sisters of other lands.
Underwood & Underwood
LONDON, THE EMPIRE CAPITAL
It is a question of position, not of sex; and harks back—moral privilege, I mean—to that core of all English institutions: breeding. There are no bounds to the latitude allowed the great, though it does not seem to occur to the non-great that such license in itself brings into question the rights of many who hold old names and ancient titles. Succession, that all-important factor of the whole social system, is hedged about with many an interrogation point; which society is pleased to ignore, nevertheless, on the ground of noblesse oblige! Above a certain stratum, the English calmly dispense with logic, and bestow divine rights on all men alike; obviously it is the only thing to do, and besides it confers divine obligations at the same time.
One must say for all Englishmen that rarely if ever, in their personal liberty, do they lose sight of their obligations. In the midst of after-dinner hilarity, one will see a club-room empty as if by magic, and the members hurry away in taxis or their own limousines. One knows that a division is to be called for, and that it wants perhaps ten minutes of the hour. The same thing happens at balls or almost any social function: the men never fail to attend when they can, for they are distinctly social creatures; but they keep a quiet eye on the clock, and slip out when duty calls them elsewhere. This serves two excellent purposes: of preventing brain-fag among the “big” men of the hour, and leading the zest of their interests and often great undertakings to society—which in many countries never sees them.
In England politics and society are far more closely allied than in America or on the Continent. Each takes colour from the other, and becomes more significant thereby. The fact of a person’s being born to great wealth and position, instead of turning him into an idle spendthrift, compels his taking an important part in the affairs of the country. The average English peer is about as hard-working a man as can be found, unless it be the King himself; and the average English hostess, far from being a butterfly of pleasure, has a round of duties as exacting as those of the Prime Minister. Through all the delightful superficial intercourse of a London season, there is an undercurrent of serious purpose, felt and shared by everyone, though by each one differently.