Theodore Dalrymple
The Quivering Upper Lip
The British character: from self-restraint to self-indulgence
When my mother arrived in England as a refugee from Nazi Germany, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she found the people admirable, though not without the defects that corresponded to their virtues. By the time she died, two-thirds of a century later, she found them rude, dishonest, and charmless. They did not seem to her, moreover, to have any virtues to compensate for their unpleasant qualities. I occasionally asked her to think of some, but she couldnтАЩt; and neither, frankly, could I. (...)
What, exactly, were the qualities that my mother had so admired? Above all, there was the peopleтАЩs manner. The British seemed to her self-contained, self-controlled, law-abiding yet tolerant of others no matter how eccentric, and with a deeply ironic view of life that encouraged them to laugh at themselves and to appreciate their own unimportance in the scheme of things. If Horace Walpole was rightтАФthat the world is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feelтАФthe English were the most thoughtful people in the world. They were polite and considerate, not pushy or boastful; the self-confident took care not to humiliate the shy or timid; and even the most accomplished was aware that his achievements were a drop in the ocean of possibility, and might have been much greater if he had tried harder or been more talented.
Those characteristics had undoubted drawbacks. They could lead to complacency and philistinism, for if the world was a comedy, nothing was serious. They could easily slide into arrogance: the rest of the world can teach us nothing. The literary archetype of such arrogance was Mr. Podsnap in DickensтАЩs Our Mutual Friend, a man convinced that all that was British was best, and who тАЬhad even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him.тАЭ Still, taken all in all, my mother found the British culture of the day possessed of a deep and seductive, if subtle and by no means transparent or obvious, charm. (...)
Many remarked upon the gentleness of British behavior in public. Homicidal violence and street robberies were vanishingly rare. But it wasnтАЩt only in the absence of crime that the gentleness made itself felt. British pastimes were peaceful and reflective: gardening and the keeping of pigeons, for example. Vast sporting crowds would gather in such good order that sporting events resembled church meetings, as both George Orwell and anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (writing in 1955) noted.
Newsreels of the time reinforce the point. The faces of people in sports crowds did not contort in hatred, snarling and screaming, but were peaceful and good-humored, if a little pinched and obviously impoverished. The crowds were almost self-regulating; as late as the early sixties, the British read with incredulity reports that, on the Continent, wire barriers, police baton charges, and tear gas were often necessary to control crowds. Incidents of crowd misbehavior in Britain were so unusual that when one did happen, it caused a sensation.
The English must have been the only people in the world for whom a typical response to someone who accidentally stepped on oneтАЩs toes was to apologize oneself. British behavior when ill or injured was stoic. (...)
Gradually, but overwhelmingly, the culture and character of British restraint have changed into the exact opposite. Extravagance of gesture, vehemence of expression, vainglorious boastfulness, self-exposure, and absence of inhibition are what we tend to admire nowтАФand the old modesty is scorned. It is as if the population became convinced of BlakeтАЩs fatuous dictum that it is better to strangle a baby in the cradle than to let a desire remain unacted upon. (...)
Read the entire text here: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_...character.html
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Originally Posted by Elephantspike
