ESSAY XVII.

ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY.

IN De Tocqueville's admirable book on Democracy in America there is an interesting chapter on the behaviour of Englishmen to each other when they meet in a foreign country.

"Two Englishmen meet by chance at the antipodes ; they are surrounded by foreigners whose language and mode of life are hardly known to them.

"These two men begin by studying each other very curiously, and with a kind of secret uneasiness; they then turn away, or, if they meet, they are careful to speak only with a constrained and absent air, and to say things of little importance.

"And yet they know nothing of each other; they have never met, and suppose each other to be perfectly honourable. Why, then, do they take such pains to avoid intercourse ?"

De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I hardly know a single instance in which his faculty of observation shows itself in greater perfection. In his terse style of writing every word tells, and even in my translation, unavoidably inferior to the original, you actually see the two Englishmen and the minute details of their behaviour.

Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at a foreign table d'hôte, as described with great skill and truth by a well-known English novelist, Miss BethamEdwards.

"The time, September; the scene, a table d'hôte dinner in a much-frequented French town. For the most part nothing can be more prosaic than these daily assemblies of English tourists bound for Switzerland and the south, and a slight sprinkling of foreigners, the two elements seldom or never blending; a visitant from another planet might, indeed, suppose that between English- and French-speaking people lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from the swarth African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the reserve. Nor is there anything like cordiality between the English themselves. Our imaginary visitant from Jupiter would here find matter for wonder also, and would ask himself the reason of this freezing reticence among the English fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gallic travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall into friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes and all ages speak only in subdued voices, and to the members of their own family."

Next, let me give an account of a personal experience in a Parisian hotel. It was a little unpretending establishment that I liked for its quiet and for the honest cookery. There was a table d'hôte, frequented by a few French people, generally from the provinces, and once there came some English visitors who had found out the merits of the little place. It happened that I had been on the continent a long time without revisiting England,

so when my fellow-countrymen arrived I had foolish feelings of pleasure on finding myself amongst them, and spoke to them in our common English tongue. The effect of this bold experiment was extremely curious, and to me, at the time, almost inexplicable, as I had forgotten that chapter by De Tocqueville. The new-comers were two or three young men and one in middle life. The young men seemed to be reserved more from timidity than pride. They were quite startled and frightened when spoken to, and made answer with grave brevity, as if apprehensive of committing themselves to some compromising statement. With an audacity acquired by habits of intercourse with foreigners I spoke to the older Englishman. His way of putting me down would have been a charming study for a novelist. His manner

resembled nothing so much as that of a dignified English Minister Mr. Gladstone, for example-when he is questioned in the House by some young and presumptuous member of the Opposition. A few brief words were vouchsafed to me, accompanied by an expression of countenance which, if not positively stern, was intentionally divested of everything like interest or sympathy. It then began to dawn upon me that perhaps this Englishman was conscious of some august social superiority, that he might even know a lord, and I thought, “If he does really know a lord, we are very likely to hear his lordship's name." My expectation was not fulfilled to the letter, but it was quite fulfilled in spirit, for in talking to a Frenchman (for me to hear) our Englishman shortly boasted that he knew an English duchess, giving her name and place of abode. "One day when I was at House, I said to the Duchess of -," and he

repeated what he had said to Her Grace, but it would have no interest for the reader, as it probably had none for the great lady herself. Shade of Thackeray, why wast thou not there to add a paragraph to the Book of Snobs?

The next day came another Englishman of about fifty, who distinguished himself in another way. He did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were not informed of his good fortune, but he assumed a wonderful air of superiority to his temporary surroundings that filled me, I must say, with the deepest respect and awe. The impression he desired to produce was that he had never before been in so poor a little place, and that our society was far beneath what he was accustomed to. He criticised things disdainfully, and when I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is true, to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed to say, "Who and what are you, that you dare to speak to a gentleman like me, who am, as you must perceive, a person of wealth and consideration ?”

This account of our English visitors is certainly not exaggerated by any excessive sensitiveness on my part. Paris is not the Desert, and one who has known it for thirty years is not dependent for society on a chance. arrival from beyond the sea. For me, these Englishmen were but actors in a play, and perhaps they afforded me more amusement with their own peculiar manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. One result, however, was inevitable. I had been full of kindly feeling towards my fellow-countrymen when they came, but this soon gave place to indifference, and their departure was rather a relief. When they had left

Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the south with her son and a priest, who seemed to be tutor and chaplain. The three lived at our table d'hôte, and we found them most agreeable, always ready to take their share in conversation, and although far too well-bred to commit the slightest infraction of the best French social usages, either through ignorance or carelessness, they were at the same time perfectly open and easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, they gave themselves no airs, and when they returned to their own southern sunshine we felt their departure as a loss.

The foreign idea of social intercourse under such conditions (that is, of intercourse between strangers who are thrown together accidentally) is simply that it is better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary isolation. People may not have much to say that is of any profound interest, but they enjoy the free play of the mind, and it sometimes happens, in touching on all sorts of subjects, that unexpected lights are thrown upon them. Some of the most interesting conversations I have ever heard have taken place at foreign tables d'hôte, between people who had probably never met before and who would separate for ever in a week. If by accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognise each other by a bow, but there is none of that intrusiveness which the Englishman so greatly dreads.

Besides these transient acquaintanceships which, however brief, are by no means without their value to one's experience and culture, the foreign way of understanding a table d'hôte includes the daily and habitual meeting of regular subscribers, a meeting looked forward to with pleasure as a break in the labours of the day, or