On Living in England: Informal Suggestions to a Young Frenchman

JUNE, 1929

BY ANDRÉ MAUROIS

You are going to a far country, not in distance (actually it is not as far as from Paris to Lyons), but in ideas and in customs. You are going to live in a difficult and mysterious land. During the first days you will think: ‘This is a hopeless undertaking; I shall never learn to know them; they will never understand me; the gap is too wide to be bridged.’ Don’t be discouraged. You will find that you can bridge it. Bear in mind that when they have accepted you, they will be your most faithful friends. Head Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert, and you will see there how this Englishman made his way back alone through a dangerous desert to look for an unimportant Arab left behind by the caravan. Such is the friendship of the best of them. I put it to the test myself during the war. It is well worth the trouble needed to obtain it. Remember too that the difficulty is only apparent; you need only observe a small number of rules not to shock the English.

Clothes

Two rules only: dress as they do; dress simply. As they do, because they are conformists. If you play golf in riding breeches, if you attend a regimental dinner in knickerbockers, you will shock and grieve them. But you will shock them still more if you have the bad taste to be overdressed. In France, no clothes can be too faultless, no shoes too new. Miss Harrison, in her Reminiscences of a Student’s Life, speaks of her pleasure when she saw the Duke of Devonshire receive his honorary degree from Cambridge with his shoes so full of holes that his socks showed through. She writes, ‘That, I felt, was really ducal.’ Don’t imagine that in London you should dress like the Englishmen you have seen on their travels. In London, an Englishman is at home. Be like him: dress as you would in Paris.

Conversation

Until you find your depth, it will be wise to say little. No one will object to your silence. When you have been speechless for three years, they will begin to think: ‘He is a pleasant, quiet sort.’ Be unassuming. An Englishman will say, T have a little house in the country.’ When he invites you to visit him, you will find that his little house is a castle of three hundred rooms. If you are a world champion in tennis, say, ‘Yes, I don’t play badly.’ If you have crossed the Atlantic alone, say, ‘Yes, I do a little boating.’ If you have written books, don’t say anything. In time they will discover you for themselves. They will say, smiling, ‘I have found out something about you,’ and then you will know that you have been accepted. If they treat you unjustly (that will happen, for they are sometimes unjust), go straight to them and tell them where you think they are wrong. Ten to one they will admit it. They play the game. If any man attacks France in your presence, counterattack rudely. He will like you all the better.

Copyright 1929, by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.

Golden rule: never ask questions. I lived for six months in the same tent with an Englishman and shared his bathtub without his ever asking me if I were married, what I did in time of peace, or what books I liked to read. If you try to impart confidences, they will be heard with polite indifference. Don’t talk too freely about other people. Gossips exist in England as elsewhere, but they are at once more rare and more dangerous. There is no middle ground between silence and scandal. Silence is preferable.

Don’t imagine that your intellectual standing will give you the least prestige, except in a very small set in London and in the universities. Only one thing matters: your character. I don’t believe that you can even imagine the scorn in which a certain type of Englishman holds all literary interests. You are entering the one country in which a man will say frankly to a writer: ‘Books? I’ve never read one. Whenever I try, I find that I don’t remember anything I read. So what’s the use?' They will leave you free to read, and will make fun of you gently, as they would make fun of a collector of rhinoceros horns. But they would understand better the taste for rhinoceroses.

Yesterday evening I was trying to talk to a young Englishman, who had just spent two years at Cambridge, of the notable professors I knew there. He had never heard their names. ‘That’s natural,’ lie told me. ‘1 took up rowing at once, and when you go in for that seriously, you move in a very narrow circle.’ And then he complained of the new generation who, corrupted by dancing and by ‘twoseaters,’ ‘refuse,’ as he said, ‘to work for their college.’ On his lips the expression ‘to work’ surprised me. I questioned him. He meant ‘play Rugger.’ I was reassured.

Beside this type, the ‘athlete,’ you must learn to recognize the type ‘æsthete.’ The distinction has been nicely drawn by Jean Fayard.¹ In the little intellectual set I mentioned you will for a long time feel yourself inferior. Cultivated Englishmen are rare, but their culture is exquisite, their epigrams are quick and subtle, their taste correct and exacting. They are disdainful and delightful — a dangerous combination for your self-esteem. You will long to please them and will find it very hard to adopt the right tone. The proper approach lies in a mixture of nonchalance and preciosity. Write an essay on cocktails and another on the Chinese poets. Proust will form a serviceable link for you with this literary set, when you have come to know them well. He is the only great Frenchman who touches them nearly. In your reading they will be your guides. I should recommend Forster, Virginia Woolf, David Garnett, all the Sitwells. The novels of Maurice Baring will give you a true conception of the côté Racine of the English world.

When you wish to convince Englishmen, do not reason too well. Being French, you believe everything gained when you have proved your point. But it is a matter of indifference to them whether they have logic on their side or not. On the contrary, they distrust an argument that is too conclusive. At Geneva, when our delegates brought forward the disarmament protocol, they rejected it because it was clear. ‘It won’t work,’ they declared. What they like is a polity tested by time; they like old saws, ancient customs. To induce them to do something new, show them that they have always done it. Resign yourself to giving your logic a rest while you stay in England.

Occupation

Don’t work too hard. Above all, don’t be what the English call ‘fussy.’ Wait until you arc requested to do things; don’t rush into the breach. You ask me, ‘Are they lazy?’ A little, perhaps; but the truth is that they think it ostentatious to be too busy. Consider their stride — rather slow, immoderately long. It is thus that they advance in life. They don’t believe in hustling destiny. In the army they used to say to me, ‘Never refuse a job; never ask for one.’ They are ambitious, as we all are, but they know how to conceal it.

Law

Don’t commit murder in England. You will be hanged. Before a French jury, if you have some imagination, a romantic air, and a good lawyer, you can, without much effort, save your skin. These dozen Englishmen will listen with outraged surprise while you describe your sentimental agonies and will condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. It is true that they once acquitted a French murderess, but she had only killed an Egyptian. Be discreet, shun their law courts. Their judges arc terrible, and will take your guilt for granted before you have opened your mouth. Their lawyers cross-examine wuth such diabolical cleverness that you will swear you have stolen the Nelson Column to escape from their hail of questions. Remember that respect for law is more intense there than elsewhere. In England ‘Keep off the grass’ does not mean ‘Walk where you please.’

Food

Before you go, you are sure to be warned against English food. It is true that cooks and chefs are not as good there as in France. But if you know how to manage your appetite wisely, you can dine to perfection. In England there are two excellent meals, breakfast and tea; one mediocre, lunch; one bad, dinner. Save yourself for the first two. Learn to enjoy unfamiliar pleasures: porridge, haddock, marmalade. At lunch, refresh yourself from the great roast of gory beef or the admirable rosy ham. With a manly air, refuse dessert. Say firmly, ’I don’t care for sweets.’ In England, one shop out of every two is a confectioner’s, and yet the English despise sweets. Leave them to children and women.

Make their drinks your own. Whiskey, they will tell you, is the thing to drink, and they are right. It will leave your mind clear, your speech distinct, and your body warmed. Their beers are good, but beware of drinking them as you would drink our bière du Nord. During the war the Tommies used to tell me sorrowfully, ‘You can’t get drunk on French beer!’ That may be true, but don’t forget that a Frenchman can get tipsy on English beer. Accept their champagne; they are good judges. School yourself to drink a cocktail before dinner, several wines during dinner, port after dinner, and whiskey at ten in the evening. You will make little progress in their esteem if you remain a water drinker. Disraeli, when he was talking with Bismarck, forced himself to smoke, although it made him sick. ‘At such a time,’he said, ‘the man who does n’t smoke has the look of keeping his eye on the other.’ You will soon take pleasure in smoking, and their port, very dry, is excellent.

But above all, observe and enjoy the general spectacle. You will like the countryside, which seems to have been composed by Constable, by Gainsborough. You will like the gardens, a little wild; the lawns, clipped and rolled. You will like London, which, in its gray or golden fog, with a red splotch for a bus and a black one for a policeman, seems an immense Turner. You will like the theatres, with their comfortable stalls, their pretty ushers, their short intermissions. You will like the bookshops, as motley and attractive as fruit stores with their exotic wares, and you will like especially the books . . . but don’t say so.