American manners

HAROLD NICOLSON

An Englishman points a lean, provocative finger, without much prejudice, at our innocents abroad

The whole of London, during the last month or two, has been seething with indignation. It appears than an American diplomatist, of eminence if not of distinction, has aroused our fury by refusing to wear knee breeches at Buckingham Palace. It is recounted also that he on two occasions, in the very same locality, refused, or at least omitted, to bow to the Queen. And finally he arrives late for dinner parties and is apt, even before the coffee, to light his pipe.

Being contradictory by nature I have endeavoured to defend this diplomatist. Obviously a citizen of a Great Republic cannot be expected to dress like a flunkey. Obviously if one prefers pipes to cigarettes one is at liberty to light a pipe even at a grand dinner. And finally I feel sure that the man did not really mean to insult Queen Mary. Republicans, on such occasions, are apt to get a trifle harassed: they bow to the King all right because that is what they came for: but they forget to bow to the lady,—feeling instinctively that such action is not American, nor even English; but French.

I have not found that my defence of this diplomatist has met with any wide acceptance. People point out that if he does not wish to behave like other diplomatists he should not come to a London Embassy. They point out that he should not accept dinner invitations if he intends to light a pipe before his hostess has had her coffee. And they record with glee that when the Japanese Ambassadress told him to extinguish his pipe he did so, rapidly.

I was so distressed by my inability to defend this American gentleman that I consulted one of his compatriots who was a friend of mine. The latter failed to enlighten me. He explained that his fellow citizen behaved in this way not with the desire to insult us, but with the desire to please people in the Middle West of America. I said that I did not understand how the inhabitants of the Middle West could be pleased to hear that another inhabitant of the Middle West had lit his pipe in a Mayfair dining room. A Norfolk farmer would not be pleased in the least if lie learned that a member of our Embassy in Washington had been rude to Mrs. Hoover or to Mrs. Gann. He would think the man was either a cad or a# lunatic or a person of such excessive vanity that he was not fit to serve his country abroad.

My American friend replied that it was all very difficult for a Britisher to understand. It is indeed.

This incident, in any case, has led to a recrudescence of much foolish talk about "American manners". Now, as I have already confessed, I have never been to America. But I have met several Americans and have always found their manners even better than our own. I have only once met an American who was really rude, and he, strangely enough, was that very diplomatist who figures at the outset of this article. I bumped into him at a public dinner. I said I was sorry. I teas sorry,—I much dislike bumping into elderly gentlemen. His reply was most discourteous. I consider it noble of me to defend him now that he is attacked.

Yet when I come to think of it I should say that the best mannered men I have ever known have been Americans. I can dimly remember Mr. Choate, who was the very soul of courtesy. The names of Walter Page and Paul Cravath rise to mind at the mere mention of "exquisite politeness". Mr. Morgenthau, Mr. Harry White, Mr. Schurmann were all models of ambassadorial benignity. In fact, when I come to think of it, I have only once met an American who was deliberately disagreeable. And even now, I repeat, I rise in his defence.

I admit, however, that there is an impression in Europe (it is stronger in France and Germany than in England) that the American visitor is apt to behave in an insulting manner. Allow me to analyse this curious misconception.

Americans in the first place are not good linguists. Although it would need but a few months study for them to master at least the elements of English language they are too busy on arrival to devote themselves to such a task. They arrive, therefore, on the assumption that they will not be either understood or understand. This leads to the inevitable human reaction of treating the outside world as if it were deaf. One raises the voice. That in itself is an aggressive thing to do.

In the second place, Americans, when they land either in England or the Continent, have a feeling that the traditions of the old world are older and deeper than their own. This produces in them as it were a sense of being put upon. They know that they are richer titan we are. They know that they can purchase most of the things that they actually see. But they have an uneasy feeling that they cannot purchase the things that they feel. This feeling, being an uneasy feeling, renders them uneasy. And when one is uneasy one is all too apt to allow a certain note of aggressiveness to creep into one's style.

Then the Americans, as the English, are not perhaps a very adaptable race. They cling to their home-habits. An American for instance prefers a boiled egg in a glass. We ourselves have a somewhat feudal prejudice against the look of an egg, against the look of two eggs, when seen like that all naked. But this must be a decadent prejudice. I have no objection to a person liking to see his eggs all Danae to the stars. But I find it unreasonable of him, if he chooses to go abroad, should he grumble at our English, or our French, egg-cups. They are harmless little things, having an embracing and indeed retentive gesture. There is no need to get cross about them. But I have heard a great many Americans get cross.

Then there is that business about what all clean-minded Americans call "plumbing". They like their inns to be old-world, but they wish that someone had called the new world into being to redress the plumbing of the old. Here I am with them. I have heard Mr. Sinclair Lewis give an imitation of his interview with a land-lady in a Cornish hotel. As with most of Mr. Lewis' imitations the thing is vivid, recognizable and fair. Mr. Sinclair Lewis has many imitations. There is one particularly lengthy (and if he will forgive my saying so, boring) imitation of a Scandinavian speaking with a Norwegian accent. This imitation goes on squeaking for a long time. Now that I know Mr. Sinclair Lewis better I am not really afraid of this imitation as I can tell him that I have heard it before. He then looks as disconcerted as a boy caught stealing apples; and stops. But I should advise people who are afraid of offending Mr. Sinclair Lewis not to insist upon his stopping the Scandinavian imitation, but to urge him tactfully to give them the famous imitation of tin; Cornish land-lady. Here you get the American criticism of England at its wittiest, its kindest, and its best.

Mr. Sinclair Lewis, being world famous, is not troubled too much by the inferiority complex. He does not feel it necessary to emphasize that a fourteenth century hostel means nothing to him if he has to walk to his > hath. Then Mr. Lewis is a sentimentalist, nay a romantic. I do not wish to say unkind things about Mr. Lewis. I love him dearly. Will he be angry with me if I call him romantic and a senti, mentalist? No,—he will not be angry.

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But I have heard all the same cross words in corridors of provincial inns about the hath water. I welcome such words. I live in a fourteenth century house myself, and the waters run steaming from the most contiguous taps. I do not defend my countrymen for their lack of plumbing.

Such things, however, which irritate the American abroad are merely superficial. I have a feeling that what makes him and her really irritable is the fact that he and she do not care for foreign travel. They haven't time. It is all very well for us who, at slight cost, go to France or Italy two or three times a year. To us it is no effort and we are therefore effortless. The American has an expensive journey and travels to improve his mind. The Englishman travels only to improve his body. The sensuous pleasure which we derive from lounging under sunnier skies is denied to the American. For him foreign travel is of necessity a strenuous pastime. He is there to acquire knowledge. No wonder the poor man gets cross.

Americans, who for some reason, happen not to be in a hurry are, I find, an equable race of men. People like diplomatists, or foreign correspondents, or representatives of firms abroad are calm and friendly and soothing. Your tourist however is condemned to seeing too much in too short a time. No wonder, I repeat, that he feels angry. I should, in such circumstances, become wholly insufferable.

What has convinced me more than anything that Americans are not quite at their best when abroad is the uneasiness which comes over my British friends who love America when I happen to witness with them some unfortunate example of American manners. I have two intimate friends who have lived long in America and who love it. One is Mr. Edward Knoblock and the other is Mr. Hugh Walpole. I have deduced from the acute embarrassment manifested by these two gentlemen when Americans start shouting, that they are aware that such particular Americans are letting the Great Republic down. They start talking fervently in order to distract my attention. They blush. And if the worst comes 1 to the worst they say, suddenlike, "It > is unfair to judge America by the Americans one meets abroad". I myself have never had any tendency to suc1 cumb to so foolish a deduction. But , the fact of their embarrassment has convinced me that the real America is something very different from the loudvoiced, aggressive, irritable nation that one meets in foreign hotels.

I have observed also that quiet Americans are perhaps unduly sensitive to the behavior of Americans who shout. I remember a very painful incident which I witnessed in the bar of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. I used to frequent that bar because it was the resort of all that was most alive and interesting in that noisy, stimulating, but slightly artificial capital. I was there one evening preparatory to an official dinner. I was talking to a Dutch Jew of my acquaintance and to a Roumanian friend of his. There was a young American at the bar who was slightly the worse for drink. He was a nice young man with hair that shot backwards and with a rather tremulous underlip. I took to him at once. He began talking loudly about how much he disliked Europe. "I see," he said, "that you three gentlemen are Britishers." My companions were flattered, (as well they might be), by this remark. "Now what about it?" he continued—and then he suggested that we should all four dine together and thereafter enjoy the night-life of Berlin; which,I admit, is very odd indeed. He had reached this point when a smaller man, who had been sitting alone at a distant table, shot up towards us. He pushed his face quite close to his drunken compatriot with the wobbly under-lip. "It is men like you," he hissed at him, "who make us disliked in Europe." And at that he swung out of the bar.

This sudden access of patriotism had a painful effect on all of us; the young American, as was natural, exploded in righteous indignation. "What the hell . . ." he began,—but I offered him another drink. I felt indeed that he had been ill-treated. He was being, he had been, very far from offensive. He was in fact being charming. And I felt it rude of his compatriot to lunge at him in this way, and to hiss cruel things at a fellow citizen who, after all, was only amiably drunk. But it showed me how sensitive are the sober Americans in respect of the less sober Americans who talk big in public places. I shall always, as I say, defend American manners even when these are observed abroad. I might wish that they would shout a little less, and that they would keep their complexes a little more to themselves. But I know all too "well that when an American is rude, he is rude either for compelling political reasons (like the diplomatist who induced this dispiriting essay) or because he imagines that you are being rude also. For the American is nurtured on a sense of good-fellowship, on being a "good mixer", and the Englishman is nurtured on the theory of reserve. The good mixer does not mix very well with the Englishman: but if only they could rid themselves of their initial diffidence they might become good friends. And after all friendship is more durable than fellowship.