I ADMIRED THE WAY Queen Mary occasionally appeared, covered with jewels, in the New York Sunday rotogravure, but I found that my admiration was not shared by my Irish nurse, Maggie. When I asked her once if the queen had to go to the bathroom like ordinary people she retorted: "She does, and makes a big stink."
Yet Britain played little role in my young life though my ancestry was totally English or Scottish and, with the exception of the Auchinclosses who did not leave their native Paisley until 1803, went back to colonial days. Little contact remained between the American and Scottish branches except for one important one, that between my grandfather and his sister Sarah's husband, James Coats, the severance of which led to a grave reversal in my grandfather's hitherto successful business career.
I remember my mother's story of her first emotional contact with British history. It was at a school assembly on a January morning of 1901 when the headmistress, Miss Chapin, announced to the girls that the sixty-four-year reign of Queen Victoria of England had come to an end. And she added: "I am going to ask Priscilla Stanton to recite for us Lord Tennyson's dedication of the Idylls of the King to the memory of the Prince Consort, which I know she has by heart."
Mother, aged thirteen, suddenly inspired with a courage hitherto unknown to her, sprang to her feet and rang out the lines, ending with the invocation to the widowed queen: "Till God has placed thee at his side again."
Miss Chapin murmured reverently: "And now God has placed her at his side again." Mother used to say, not entirely in jest, that, like Pheidippides, she should have died then and there, at the peak of her glory, and that her whole afterlife had been an anticlimax.
We didn't go to England as a family until I was fifteen, and then I was thrilled as never before. To me it was like my history book illustrated. I saw King George leaving Westminster Abbey with the little princesses; I counted the double line of Rolls-Royce limousines, each with a coat of arms painted on its door, parked by the Ritz; I reveled in the grandeur of Windsor, and Blenheim. But there was one unfortunate occurrence. There was a drought on, and the newspapers urged their readers to emulate His Majesty and use only an inch of water in their tub. My room in Flemings Hotel on Half-Moon Street was directly over the reception desk, so that the scandal of the tub that I allowed to overflow while I was distracted with a movie magazine was apparent to all.
Standing with my father in the crowded elevator the next day I had to listen to the speculations of the outraged hotel guests. "Who caused that shocking flood?" "They say it was a Yankee boy." "Oh, of course. You might have known."
Father gave my ear a painful pinch. "Listen to them! And they're right, too."
The English are too polite to tell us what they often think of us. I had several experiences during the war while my ship, an LST (landing ship, tank), was operating out of ports in the English Channel. On liberty I would take myself sightseeing. Amphibious officers tended to dress carelessly, particularly when not on duty, and it was sometimes difficult to tell just what we were. As I have a bit of an English accent I was often taken for that by drivers who picked me up when I hitchhiked.
"Are they as bad where you are as where we are?" they would sometimes ask. "I suppose I should tell you I'm an American naval officer." "Oh, I beg your pardon."
I understood that it was a hardship for many to have two million GIs parked on them in the south of England. Our boys on the whole were fine, but American arrogance, particularly about their superior equipment, can be hard to take.
Certainly over the years of my adult life the old legend of the arrogant British has dwindled to almost nothing. But it was very real once. The possession of a world empire of "half of creation," as Kipling put it, and the assumed duty of policing "lesser breeds without the law" hardly engendered humility, and even a slight perusal of English nineteenth-century fiction gives one startling examples of just how superior the superior people used to feel. Jane Austen's Lady Catherine de Bourgh strikes us today as a caricature, but was she? A peer's daughter in Jane Eyre commands a footman to "Cease your chatter, blockhead, and do my bidding," and the Duke of Omnium, Trollope's model for the perfect British nobleman, finds it difficult to accept for the wife of his heir a beautiful and cultivated American girl whose father has been considered a potential presidential candidate. In my own day I knew an imperial relic in India who paid his help by tossing coins at their feet as they stood before him.
Trollope, whose important position in the post office carried him to all parts of the empire, was certainly one of the great reporters of his day. In his numberless novels he invariably defines the exact social class of every character, supplies his income and the origin of his family, and even lets us know whether he is content with his position in life or hankers to improve it. Class is never neglected. To what is called a gentleman, however, and this is never quite clear, except that it is more a matter of character than of wealth or title, more doors are open. He, as in The Duke's Children, may even aspire to Omnium's daughter, though it's going to be a struggle. And Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice tells Lady Catherine that the fact alone that she is a gentleman's daughter qualifies her to marry the millionaire grandson of an earl.
I would have, some years later, the chance to witness an instance of the disappearing arrogance of aristocratic Britain. I had been taken by a socially well-connected friend to a very swell house party in a great castle in Wales. It was my only such experience and I was much awed. Of course I knew nobody but the friend who had been allowed to bring me, and my hostess, who had a great title and even greater wealth, thinking that anything might be expected of an unknown and probably impecunious Yankee, took upon herself, perhaps as a kindness, for she was as charming as she was blunt, to warn me that her daughters would have only a pittance, that everything went to the heir.
She also referred to an American lady, also staying at the castle as a friend of one of her sons, as "common," which she certainly was, though it would have surprised me to hear an American hostess so refer to a houseguest. But English aristocrats of her day said what they pleased, when they pleased, and to whom they pleased. In a way it was rather attractive.