Anglo-American culture

“ The latent preparedness of the American mind even for the most characteristic features of English life was a matter I meanwhile failed to get to the bottom of. The roots of it are indeed so deeply buried in the soil of our early culture that, without some great upheaval of feeling, we are at a loss to say exactly when and where and how it begins. It makes an American’s enjoyment of England an emotion more searching than anything Continental. I had seen the coffee-room of the Red Lion years ago, at home—at Saragossa Illinois—in books, in visions, in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, in Boswell. ”

“ Every tie that can bind one people to another binds the American people to the English. Most of us are of the Anglo-Saxon race and have the same blood coursing through our veins. To the great majority of Americans, England has ever been the [Pg 267] mother country. We speak the same language, read the same literature, strive for the same ideals, are governed by the same principles of politics and jurisprudence, and entertain the same fundamental conceptions of right and wrong and justice as among men and among nations. ”

“ If there be one test of national genius universally accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the universe for the last millennium, that country is England.
A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of actual nations; and an American has more reasons than another to draw him to Britain. In all that is done or begun by the Americans towards right thinking or practice, we are met by a civilization already settled and overpowering. The culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are English thoughts and aims. ”

“ Untidiness, ugliness, lack of respect for history and beauty, an insane craze for speed in getting from one futile pursuit to another, blatant advertisement, sordid commercialism—these are some of the things we have borrowed from American life to vulgarise our own. But when Americans come over to England, the thing that impresses them most—far more than anything we can do in our towns—is the harmony and peace of the English village and the English countryside. ”

“ Nothing strikes an American so much on coming to England—kindred though he be, not only in blood and language, but also in customs—nothing at least strikes him more than the beautiful thorn hedges with which our fields are at once divided, sheltered and adorned. ”

“ Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have no reason to be ashamed. ”

“ Americans themselves on which he has animadverted so freely. The thing most comparable to it—most nearly as ill-mannered—is, perhaps, the frank brutality with which the travelling American expresses himself—and herself—in regard to things in Europe. In it, in fact, we see again another aspect of the same fundamentally English trait,—the insistence on the sovereignty of the individual—and Americans come by it legitimately. Every time that they display it they do but make confession of their original Anglo-Saxon descent and essentially English nature. ”

“ Increasing Friendliness between America and England.
Speaking by and large, I believe that we like and trust the British people, and that they like and trust us. A marked change has come over the feelings of both peoples within the last quarter of a century. I remember well that when I was a boy, the school histories of the United States had the effect of making all the American boys hate the English. ”

“ Widely separated as some of them were from each other by geographical distance, and diversity of interest and pursuits, there were, nevertheless, political, social, and commercial considerations which made the Anglo-Americans really one people, having common interests and common hopes. ”

“ This article relates not at all to opinion, but only to facts.
"I will conclude the Anglo-American case with a metaphor. Britain is like a Grand Old Dame, well preserved and still maintaining the vigour and activity of her youth. Her eye is not dimmed by age; her strong hand is not weakened by the lapse of centuries. She has been the mother of many children, and has sometimes had troubles in her family. But in recent times she has been on good terms with all her offspring, all over the world. She would not suffer them to be beaten in the race of nations. ”

“ During the past two months the proposed Anglo-American Understanding has occupied a great deal of attention in Great Britain and Canada, and a very fair amount of similar enthusiasm in the United States. The idea of an understanding which will enable both branches of the English race—if it may be called such—to work side by side, with one aim and one mission, is certainly most worthy. If it can be successfully carried into performance, it will be the most important political development of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Wherein do the Americans exceed the sons of Britain? In history, in policy, in poetry, in mathematics, in music, in painting, or in any of the gifts of the Muses? Are they more renowned in the dreadful art of war? or in the mild virtues of peace? Is the fame of America a wonder and a terror to the four quarters of the globe?—We may fearlessly reply in the negative. The outer barbarian knows the American but as another kind of Englishman. ”

“ Every other book by an American author implies, both in form and substance, I cannot even say the European, but the British mind. The shadow of Temple Bar and Arthur’s Seat lies dark on all our letters. Intellectually, we are still a dependency of Great Britain, and one word—colonial—comprehends and stamps our literature. In no literary form, except our newspapers, has there been any thing distinctively American. ”

“ New England in America was settled by English of picked moral and intellectual quality, and with the enormous double advantage of freedom to educate everybody and give everybody a chance, and of entire absence of the vile, pauper, and prostitute class which Old-World circumstances had created. The result has been that America, without some superlative advantages possessed by England, has on the broad level done more and done better than England in the direction of mind and quality, character and achievement—truly English in the higher sense of race ”

“ In a hundred years from now, when, as a result of the apparently inevitable growth of the United States in wealth, in power, and in influence, its speech and all other of its institutions will come to be held in the highest esteem, is it possible that Londoners may vehemently put forward their claim to speak purer American than the Americans themselves—just as many Americans assert to-day that their speech is nearer to the speech of Elizabethan England than is the speech of modern Englishmen? ”

“ Its literature, laws, and language are our literature, laws, and language. Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, were a glorious inheritance, which we share in common. Our very life-blood is English life-blood. It is Anglo-Saxon vigor that is spreading our country from Atlantic to Pacific, and leading on a new era in the world's development. America is a tall, sightly young shoot, that has grown from the old royal oak of England ”

“ Yes, the man we seek is already found, his features rapidly becoming distinct. He is the offspring of Northern Europe; he occupies Central North-Ameriea. Other fresh forms are doubtless to appear, but, though dimly shaping themselves, are as yet inchoate. But the Anglo-American is an existing fact, to be spoken of without prognostication, save as this is implied in the recognition of tendencies established and unfolding into results. The Anglo-American may be considered the latest new-comer into this planet. ”

“ They read, it is true, and often greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England. Let us make no mistake—in the broad mass of the American people no such affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I have said, a latent bias towards hostility. ”

“ The first thing that strikes an American travelling through England is the age of everything he sees, the roots by which every existing institution, custom, or pleasure is intimately connected with its real, tangible prototype in the past. ”

“ There is no country more worthy of our study than England. The spirit of her constitution is most analogous to ours. The manners of her people—their intellectual activity—their freedom of opinion—their habits of thinking on those subjects which concern the dearest interests and most sacred charities of private life, are all congenial to the American character; and, in fact, are all intrinsically excellent: for it is in the moral feeling of the people that the deep foundations of British prosperity are laid ”

“ In conclusion, I may say a few words on the pleasant intercourse we English are having with our American relations, in the interchange of novels, which seems to be going on pretty constantly between the two countries. Our cousinly connection with the Americans dates from common ancestors, of whom we are both proud. To a certain period, every great name which England boasts is a direct subject of pride to the American; since the time when the race diverged into two different channels, we catch a reflex lustre from each other’s great men. ”

“ If you were an impulsive, excitable, sentimental American and thought you were mildly rebuking your British friends when you ventured to wonder at the extraordinary naturalness of life in the West End, or at Walton Heath golf links, or at Chelsea football grounds, or at the Newmarket race-course, you found yourself unconsciously paying a tribute to "British character." ”

“ America is becoming not English merely, but world-embracing in the variety of its type; and, as the English element has given language and history to that land, America offers the English race the moral directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through America, England is speaking to the world. ”

“ Well, a thought like that must trouble the American when his fancy passes before his mind’s eye the image of Old England Americanised. And a faculty more serious and trusty than fancy will present this transformation to him, day by day, as he visits the great centres of the nation’s life and industry. In London, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the most busy and prosperous commercial and manufacturing towns, he will see that England is becoming Americanised shockingly fast. ”

“ Throughout the eighteenth century she was wasting her opportunities of expansion in West and East alike in order to dominate Spain, Italy and the German confusion. The religious and political dissensions of Britain in the seventeenth century had driven many of the English to seek a permanent home in America. They struck root and increased and multiplied, giving the British a great advantage in the American struggle. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the educated American's knowledge of England every day puts to shame the Englishman's ignorance of America. Reciprocity in this matter would be greatly to the advantage of both countries. I am much mistaken if there is a single club in London where American periodicals are so well represented on the reading-room table as are English periodicals in every club in New York. ”

“ Don't forget that you have produced a relation between England and the U.S. which is really a gain to civilization and that you must come back to look after your work. You can't look after it there: that is the function of an Englishman—and if you do it there they will call you one. The only way you can be a good American is to return to our dear old stupid, satisfactory London, and to yours ever affectionately and faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To William James. ”

“ But there are innumerable families in America who, even if they be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of the fact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) have no friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their American homes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost every other nationality than with Englishmen. "But surely English literature," it may be said, "brings England home even to people of this class, and differentiates her from France or Germany." ”

“ To-day there is no nation on earth to which America turns with friendlier eyes than England, which gave to it its language, its laws, and its religion, and whose brave sons crossed the seas, and through much trouble and peril laid the foundations of this great new country ”

“ That is the only good government, which satisfies at once the demands for order, regularity, stability and physical prosperity on the part of those of riper years, and fills the longings of the young, and of that portion of society which always continues youthful, for lively sensations, brilliant schemes, and lofty aspirations. By the side of their parliament, the English have their vast colonies, by which this spirit finds vent, over the remotest seas. [Pg 325] The Anglo-Americans have the West, and also, like Great Britain, the ocean. ”

“ In many things—in almost everything—the United States moves the more rapidly. It seems at first a contradiction in terms to say that the Americans are an English people and then to show that [88] in many individual matters the English people is approximating to American models. It is in truth no contradiction; and the explanation is obvious. Both are impelled by the same spirit, the same motives, the same ambitions; but in England that spirit, those motives and ambitions work against greater resistance. ”