Post-Prandial Philosophy

20. About Abroad

The place known as Abroad is not nearly so nice a country to live in as

England. The people who inhabit Abroad are called Foreigners. They are

in every way and at all times inferior to Englishmen.

These Post-Prandials used once to be provided with a sting in their

tail, like the common scorpion. By way of change, I turn them out now

with a sting in their head, like the common mosquito. Mosquitoes are

much less dangerous than scorpions, but they're a deal more irritating.

Not that I am sanguine enough to expect I shall irritate Englishmen.

Your Englishman is far too c**k-sure of the natural superiority of

Britons to Foreigners, the natural superiority of England to Abroad,

ever to be irritated by even the gentlest criticism. He accepts it all

with lordly indifference. He brushes it aside as the elephant might

brush aside the ineffective gadfly. No proboscis can pierce that

pachydermatous hide of his. If you praise him to his face, he accepts

your praise as his obvious due, with perfect composure and without the

slightest elation. If you blame him in aught, he sets it down to your

ignorance and mental inferiority. You say to him, "Oh, Englishman, you

are great; you are wise; you are rich beyond comparison. You are noble;

you are generous; you are the prince among nations." He smiles a calm

smile, and thinks you a very sensible fellow. But you add, "Oh, my lord,

if I may venture to say so, there is a smudge on your nose, which I make

bold to attribute to the settlement of a black on your intelligent

countenance." He is not angry. He is not even contemptuously amused. He

responds, "My friend, you are wrong. There is never a smudge on my

immaculate face. No blacks fly in London. The sky is as clear there in

November as in August. All is pure and serene and beautiful." You

answer, "Oh, my lord, I admit the force of your profound reasoning. You

light the gas at ten in the morning only to show all the world you can

afford to burn it." At that, he gropes his way along Pall Mall to his

club, and tells the men he meets there how completely he silenced you.

And yet, My Lord Elephant, there is use in mosquitoes. Mr. Mattieu

Williams once discovered the final cause of fleas. Certain people, said

he, cannot be induced to employ the harmless necessary tub. For them,

Providence designed the lively flea. He compels them to scratch

themselves. By so doing they rouse the skin to action and get rid of

impurities. Now, this British use of the word Abroad is a smudge on the

face of the otherwise perfect Englishman. Perchance a mosquito-bite may

induce him to remove it with a little warm water and a cambric

pocket-handkerchief.

To most Englishmen, the world divides itself naturally into two unequal

and non-equivalent portions--Abroad and England. Of these two, Abroad is

much the larger country; but England, though smaller, is vastly more

important. Abroad is inhabited by Frenchmen and Germans, who speak their

own foolish and chattering languages. Part of it is likewise pervaded by

Chinamen, who wear pigtails; and the outlying districts belong to the

poor heathen, chiefly interesting as a field of missionary enterprise,

and a possible market for Manchester piece-goods. We sometimes invest

our money abroad, but then we are likely to get it swallowed up in

Mexicans or Egyptian Unified. If you ask most people what has become of

Tom, they will answer at once with the specific information, "Oh, Tom

has gone Abroad." I have one stereotyped rejoinder to an answer like

that. "What part of Abroad, please?" That usually stumps them. Abroad is

Abroad; and like the gentleman who was asked in examination to "name the

minor prophets," they decline to make invidious distinctions. It is

nothing to them whether he is tea-planting in the Himalayas, or

sheep-farming in Australia, or orange-growing in Florida, or ranching in

Colorado. If he is not in England, why then he is elsewhere; and

elsewhere is Abroad, one and indivisible.

In short, Abroad answers in space to that well-known and definite date,

the Olden Time, in chronology.

People will tell you, "Foreigners do this"; "Foreigners do that";

"Foreigners smoke so much"; "Foreigners always take coffee for

breakfast." "Indeed," I love to answer; "I've never observed it myself

in Central Asia." 'Tis Parson Adams and the Christian religion. Nine

English people out of ten, when they talk of Abroad, mean what they call

the Continent; and when they talk of the Continent, they mean France,

Germany, Switzerland, Italy; in short, the places most visited by

Englishmen when they consent now and again to go Abroad for a holiday.

"I don't like Abroad," a lady once said to me on her return from Calais.

Foreigners, in like manner, means Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss, Italians.

In the country called Abroad, the most important parts are the parts

nearest England; of the people called Foreigners, the most important are

those who dress like Englishmen. The dim black lands that lie below the

horizon are hardly worth noticing.

Would it surprise you to learn that most people live in Asia? Would it

surprise you to learn that most people are poor benighted heathen, and

that, of the remainder, most people are Mahommedans, and that of the

Christians, who come next, most people are Roman Catholics, and that, of

the other Christian sects, most people belong to the Greek Church, and

that, last of all, we get Protestants, more particularly Anglicans,

Wesleyans, Baptists? Have you ever really realised the startling fact

that England is an island off the coast of Europe? that Europe is a

peninsula at the end of Asia? that France, Germany, Italy, are the

fringe of Russia? Have you ever really realised that the

English-speaking race lives mostly in America? that the country is

vastly more populous than London? that our class is the froth and the

scum of society? Think these things out, and try to measure them on the

globe. And when you speak of Abroad, do please specify what part of it.

Abroad is not all alike. There are differences between Poland, Peru, and

Palestine. What is true of France is not true of Fiji. Distinguish

carefully between Timbuctoo, Tobolsk, and Toledo.

It is not our insularity that makes us so insular. 'Tis a gift of the

gods, peculiar to Englishmen. The other inhabitants of these Isles of

Britain are comparatively cosmopolitan. The Scotchman goes everywhere;

the world is his oyster. Ireland is an island still more remote than

Great Britain; but the Irishman has never been so insular as the

English. I put that down in part to his Catholicism: his priests have

been wheels in a world-wide system; his relations have been with Douai,

St. Omer, and Rome; his bishops have gone pilgrimages and sat on Vatican

Councils; his kinsmen are the MacMahons in France, the O'Donnels in

Spain, the Taafes in Austria. Even in the days of the Regency this was

so: look at Lever and his heroes! When England drank port, County Clare

drank claret. But ever since the famine, Ireland has expanded. Every

Irishman has cousins in Canada, in Australia, in New York, in San

Francisco. The Empire is Irish, with the exception of India; and India,

of course, is a Scotch dependency. Irishmen and Scotchmen have no such

feelings about Abroad and its Foreigners as Londoners entertain. But

Englishmen never quite get over the sense that everybody must needs

divide the world into England and Elsewhere. To the end no Englishman

really grasps the fact that to Frenchmen and Germans he himself is a

foreigner. I have met John Bulls who had passed years in Italy, but who

spoke of the countrymen of C*** and Dante and Leonardo and Garibaldi

with the contemptuous toleration one might feel towards a child or an

Andaman Islander. These Italians could build Giotto's campanile; could

paint the Transfiguration; could carve the living marble on the tombs of

the Medici; could produce the Vita Nuova; could beget Galileo, Galvani,

Beccaria; but still--they were Foreigners. Providence in its wisdom has

decreed that they must live Abroad--just as it has decreed that a

comprehension of the decimal system and its own place in the world

should be limitations eternally imposed upon the English intellect.