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A Straight Deal-Part16_Owen Wister(1860-1938)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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not inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they like our

hotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer their own,



but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American in England

and the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions. Are the



French more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder if there is

not also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will say things



about our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders to say

those things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle, which



makes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, which leads us

by a seeming paradox to resentcriticism more when it comes from England?



I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when I pick up the paper

and read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogs again, I am merely



amused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I am sorry, to be

sure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hate it, even when I



know that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am right in my

members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English and ourselves



feeling free to be disagreeable to each other because we are relations,

and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a relation who is being



disagreeable. I merely put the point to you, I lay no dogma down

concerning members of the family; but I am perfectly sure that



discretion is a quality more common to the French than to ourselves or

our relations: I mean something a little more than discretion, I mean



esprit de conduits, for which it is hard to find a translation.

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, I



have lingered long, feeling these to be not only of prime importance and

wide application, but also to be quite beyond my power to make lucid in



short compass. I trust that they have been made lucid. I must now get on

to further anecdotes, illustrating other and less subtle causes of



misunderstanding; and I feel somewhat like the author of Don Juan when he

exclaims that he almost wishes he had ne'er begun that very remarkable



poem. I renounce all pretense to the French virtue of discretion.

Evening dress has been the source of many irritations. Englishmen did not



appear to think that they need wear it at American dinner parties. There

was a good deal of this at one time. During that period an Englishman,



who had brought letters to a gentleman in Boston and in consequence had

been asked to dinner, entered the house of his host in a tweed suit. His



host, in evening dress of course, met him in the hall.

"Oh, I see," said the Bostonian, "that you haven't your dress suit with



you. The man will take you upstairs and one of mine will fit you well

enough. We'll wait."



In England, a cricketer from Philadelphia, after the match at Lord's, had

been invited to dine at a great house with the rest of his eleven. They



were to go there on a coach. The American discovered after arrival that

he alone of the eleven had not brought a dress suit with him. He asked



his host what he was to do.

"I advise you to go home," said the host.



The moral here is not that all hosts in England would have treated a

guest so, or that all American hosts would have met the situation so well



as that Boston gentleman: but too many English used to be socially

brutal--quite as much so to each other as to us, or any one. One should



bear that in mind. I know of nothing more English in its way than what

Eton answered to Beaumont (I think) when Beaumont sent a challenge to



play cricket: "Harrow we know, and Rugby we have heard of. But who are

you?"



That sort of thing belongs rather to the Palmerston days than to these;

belongs to days that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 1815, which



a haughty England won, than to the Waterloo of 1914-18, which a humbler

England so nearly lost.



Turn we next the other way for a look at ourselves. An American lady who

had brought a letter of introduction to an Englishman in London was in



consequence asked to lunch. He naturally and hospitably gathered to meet

her various distinguished guests. Afterwards she wrote him that she



wished him to invite her to lunch again, as she had matters of importance

to tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to lunch with her? Can you



see? I think I do.

An American lady was at a house party in Scotland at which she met a



gentleman of old and famous Scotch blood. He was wearing the kilt of his

clan. While she talked with him she stared, and finally burst out



laughing. "I declare," she said, "that's positively the most ridiculous

thing I ever saw a man dressed in."



At the Savoy hotel in August, 1914, when England declared war upon




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