Memories and Portraits | Page 4

things at home.
In spite of these promptings to reflection, ignorance of his neighbours
is the character of the typical John Bull. His is a domineering nature,
steady in fight, imperious to command, but neither curious nor quick
about the life of others. In French colonies, and still more in the Dutch,
I have read that there is an immediate and lively contact between the
dominant and the dominated race, that a certain sympathy is begotten,
or at the least a transfusion of prejudices, making life easier for both.
But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride and ignorance. He
figures among his vassal in the hour of peace with the same disdainful
air that led him on to victory. A passing enthusiasm for some foreign
art or fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon his
intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a monkey, but he
will never condescend to study him with any patience. Miss Bird, an
authoress with whom I profess myself in love, declares all the viands of
Japan to be uneatable - a staggering pretension. So, when the Prince of
Wales's marriage was celebrated at Mentone by a dinner to the
Mentonese, it was proposed to give them solid English fare - roast beef
and plum pudding, and no tomfoolery. Here we have either pole of the
Britannic folly. We will not eat the food of any foreigner; nor, when we
have the chance, will we eager him to eat of it himself. The same spirit
inspired Miss Bird's American missionaries, who had come thousands
of miles to change the faith of Japan, and openly professed their
ignorance of the religions they were trying to supplant.
I quote an American in this connection without scruple. Uncle Sam is
better than John Bull, but he is tarred with the English stick. For Mr.

Grant White the States are the New England States and nothing more.
He wonders at the amount of drinking in London; let him try San
Francisco. He wittily reproves English ignorance as to the status of
women in America; but has he not himself forgotten Wyoming? The
name Yankee, of which he is so tenacious, is used over the most of the
great Union as a term of reproach. The Yankee States, of which he is so
staunch a subject, are but a drop in the bucket. And we find in his book
a vast virgin ignorance of the life and prospects of America; every view
partial, parochial, not raised to the horizon; the moral feeling proper, at
the largest, to a clique of states; and the whole scope and atmosphere
not American, but merely Yankee. I will go far beyond him in
reprobating the assumption and the incivility of my countryfolk to their
cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my blood over the silly rudeness
of our newspaper articles; and I do not know where to look when I find
myself in company with an American and see my countrymen
unbending to him as to a performing dog. But in the case of Mr. Grant
White example were better than precept. Wyoming is, after all, more
readily accessible to Mr. White than Boston to the English, and the
New England self-sufficiency no better justified than the Britannic.
It is so, perhaps, in all countries; perhaps in all, men are most ignorant
of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is
probably ignorant of India; but considering his opportunities, he is far
more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country,
for instance - its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin,
its language the same in all essentials with the English - of which I will
go bail he knows nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot
be described; it can only be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled
with a man of plausible manners and good intelligence - a University
man, as the phrase goes - a man, besides, who had taken his degree in
life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. We were deep in
talk, whirling between Peterborough and London; among other things,
he began to describe some piece of legal injustice he had recently
encountered, and I observed in my innocence that things were not so in
Scotland. "I beg your pardon," said he, "this is a matter of law." He had
never heard of the Scots law; nor did he choose to be informed. The
law was the same for the whole country, he told me roundly; every
child knew that. At last, to settle matters, I explained to him that I was a

member of a Scottish legal body, and had stood the