Misunderstandings: Visions of England

About 20 years ago, Jeremy Paxman published a book called The English. Reviewers reached for summaries of Englishness from George Orwell and John Major, getting them somewhat garbled in the process. 

The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning... somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. (George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941)

Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’ and if we get our way – Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials. (John Major. Often misprinted as “pool fillers”. "The Pools" were a form of betting on the outcome of football matches that involved filling in forms.) 

@Grok comments: Major lifted the most picturesque fragment and used it, 52 years later, as an image of unchanging Britishness that the European Union would not touch.That is why the two versions feel different even though they share the same misty bicycle. 

Former Labour MP and V&A director Tristram Hunt detested Jeremy Paxman's book and explained why in the Guardian on 7 Jan 2002. Major and Orwell's pictures of England were a lie, he ranted. The English are rebellious and critical and rather nasty, just look at their history: Paxman's book lovingly pokes fun at every cherished aspect of our "national character" - rural nostalgia, laughing at foreigners, obsessional wordplay.

Hunt belittles the "cloying vision of Englishness which Stanley Baldwin, George Orwell and John Major revelled in. The land of anvils, cycling maids and long shadows, pigeon fanciers and red telephone boxes."

English history is brutal, concludes Hunt. "And for my money, I would rather Cromwell than ... bicycling maids."

I don't see a mention of anvils or pigeon-fanciers in Orwell or Major. And post Hunt's diatribe, Orwell's "old maids" became "maids" and "an England of cycling maids" was downgraded as nostalgia. I picture a parlour maid on a bicycle, her apron strings fluttering in the wind.

Politicians understand the power of nostalgia - remember John Major's Evensong-bound old cycling maids? (The Press 2004)  

Cycling maids and long shadows, pigeon fanciers and red telephone boxes. (salaam.co.uk, 2004)

Maids cycling through the morning mist. (oxfordjournals.org)

John Major's vision of warm beer, cricket on the village green and a redoubtable maiden aunt bicycling to morning communion through the mist was borrowed from Orwell. (Jonathan Bate, arlindo-correia.com)

Perhaps 20 years ago it wasn't so easy to check quotes.

Others have summed up Englishness:

Culture includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a Cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. (TS Eliot)

I love England... The true England of nature. The trees, hedges, grass and lie of the land... But also the transitory England with its railways, towns and lighted streets. And above all, the lit pavements shimmering with rain. (Former Prime Minister Clement Attlee)

This is the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance-halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches, wireless, hiking, factory girls looking like actresses, greyhound racing and dirt tracks, swimming pools, and everything given away for cigarette coupons*. (JB Priestley, English Journey, 1934. *A scheme invented by Dorothy Sayers, but dreamed up by Lord Peter Wimsey in Murder Must Advertise)

Eat more Oats. Take Care of your Complexion. No More War. Shine your Shoes with Shino. Ask your Grocer. Children Love Laxamalt. Prepare to meet thy God. Bung’s Beer is Better. Try Dogsbody’s Sausages. Whoosh the Dust Away. Give them Crunchlets. Snagsbury’s Soups are Best for the Troops. Morning Star, best Paper by Far. Vote for Punkin and Protect your Profits. Popp's Pills Pep you Up. Whiffle your Way to Fortune… Advertise, or go under. (Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise)

Gray suits, gray filing cabinets, gray skies, gray food, gray childhoods, gray marriages. (lareviwofbooks.org on John Le Carré)

Green Line bus stops. Factory sports fields lined with poplars. Boarding kennels, down-at-heel riding schools, damp bungalows in wizened orchards. I was so happy. Is it still unloved, that landscape? I loved it. (Alan Bennett, The Old Country)

Tina Brown vividly conjures "the fading walk-up flats in far-flung London postal codes of former courtiers and retainers": their tables crowded with "tasteful knickknacks," their stair carpets reeking of "downward mobility and pointless, genteel sacrifice." (NYT on Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers)

Orwell further commented on English people's "mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners... We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans." So that's where the pigeon-fanciers came from.

@Grok adds: Orwell’s point is the privateness of it all — the back-garden, fireside, slightly rum world that exists independently of official culture. 

@Grok is useful for finding full verbatim quotes from published books (in seconds). And I suspect him of having been programmed with a sense of humour.


More here, and links to the rest.