10 September 1966

The following letter to the editor appeared this morning in either The Times or The Telegraph, I forget which, under the heading, "`Runaway Engine": "Sir It is reported in your columns (Sept. 6) that a locomotive, by its own volition, ran away from Carnforth, and was not overtaken for nine miles.
     `I have it on record that in October, 1859, an almost exactly similar incident took place on the London, Brighton, & South Coast Railway, when early one morning a locomotive (unattended) gently puffed its way out of the shed at Petworth, and was not arrested until a courageous railways servant swung himself on to the footplate and shut off the regulator.
     `Is it not time that British Railways learned the lesson? Yours faithfully, A.C. Johnstone. Ruislip, Middx.'"
     The English, I keep reminding myself with good reason, are not a simple people. On the one hand, they fuss and bluster in their pubs, parlors, and papers about issues that must seem quaint to strangers among them like me. Long before I came here, I followed a rather extended exchange of Guardian letters about the night jar's call and about the proper way to idle. And just about a week ago I heard the local vicar say that he was going to have to get "a bit shirty" soon about the commercialization of his Wroxton parish, in which the opening of a tiny gift shop has increased the business enterprises by 33 1-3% (A pub and a village grocery were all that was here previously.)
     Like Americans and all other people, they also rail constantly at their government and all in its purview. In the three weeks or so that I have been here, I haven't heard a good word for Wilson or Labour. Most of my academic correspondents have been instantly testy about the "imbecile" currency regulations. Bank clerks, cab drivers, shop girls, gardeners, and roof thatchers have indignantly spoken to me of the medical services program, the wage price freeze, the Rhodesian policy, the non decimal money system, the dole, the immigration rules—applying especially to Pakistanis and Jamaicans who "come to squat here for public assistance, the dirty trots"—and the English workman's laziness. ("Top doss labour is seldom seen. Most of the blokes just tickle around.")
     And yet, in many respects they have a capacity for bearing discomfort, distress, even disaster, so quietly that an unsympathetic observer might characterize them as marked by a bovine hebetude. The gentry can engage in sprightly, graceful conversation over sherry and biscuits and create an air of genuine elegance even though their tweeds may be roughly worn and stained, their cigarette pack may have only two or three careful¬ly husbanded survivors in it, and the gathering for which one of their number has paid may have forced him to effect prudent economies in some department of his household budget.
     Two stories, I've recently heard comment unflatteringly on one set of the paradoxical attributes of these complicated people. The first, obviously Gallic in origin and indecent as well as unkind, runs this way: A Frenchman, strolling along a beach came upon a friend having his way with a distinctly unresponsive woman. "Pierre! Pierre!" he cried. "Arretez vous! That woman, she is dead!" "Mon dieu!" Pierre replied, "I thought she was English." The other more fairly represents what I judge to be the proper perspective. It deals with two Englishwomen who were lamenting their sexual obligations to their mates. "But, my dear," sighed one, "it is so awful! How do you stand it?" "Oh," the second answered, "I just grit my teeth and think of England."
     Perhaps it is this teeth gritting love of homeland that explains much about them. I came upon my first instance of it twenty three years ago—almost to the the day—in Italy,when I was wounded along with more than a dozen others knocked down by one mortar shell. The casualty nearest me was Clar Wyld, of Glossop, Derbyshire. He was hit worse than I and bled profusely from several non fatal but serious wounds in the head, face, and chest. During our four mile trip to the evac hospital he groaned frequently with pain and worried two or three times about the blood that had filled his eyes. He did some suffering, I know, for several hours on his hospital cot next to mine.
     Just before dark, a crisp sister gave all of us a very strong cup of tea. Clar, whose face bandages had by that time been pushed up over his brows, raised up weakly and drank his, with tentative sip¬pings at first and then in tongue scalding gulps. Within ten minutes, he was up from his cot. "I'm off to the half track," he whispered to me as he crept out. "Like a silly ass I left the code book by the radio. It won't do to leave that lying around for Jerry. I'll be back." In about an hour and a half he was back, with his code book and a happy report that getting rides both ways was easy. I don't think he was able to get on his feet again until more than a week later.
     Every day here I witness Englishmen performing in a manner really quite similar to—if under circumstances less critical than—Clar’s. I have had a ride to town with a man whose cheer-fulness was not at all dampened by the fact that his car's second gear failed frequently or that one of the doors was secured by a stout rope. I have heard the daughter in law of Lady Pearson (who occupied the Abbey as a tenant before FDU bought it) fondly recollect that her mother in law, when she leased the Abbey, resolutely wrapped an afghan about her seventy some year old ankles and greeted with quick impatience all complaints about the drafty old mansion's frostiness.
     Yesterday on the Banbury Tysoe bus with Patty, I rose to give my seat to a heavily burdened woman in her forties. "Not a bit of it, duck," she smiled. "This is jolly good here." As a return for my gallantry she did agree that I should put one of her several large parcels between my feet. As we drove along I looked out at Banburians standing meditatively or chattily in twisting queues inside post office and cleaning shop doors or musing through the windscreens of their little cars caught in one of the traffic snarls made unending by the narrow main streets and highways.
     Patty and I got off the bus with Jessie Cook, the woman who opens her living room as the village post office and who had been marketing in Banbury. Jessie walked briskly because the time was 4:40, and her second postal time block should begin each weekday at 4:30. When the three of us reached her cottage we came upon three villagers who had arrived promptly at 4:30 to buy stamps. They were busily expressing concern about the "wretched little blue tits," chickadee like birds here which have learned to spot the milkman's rounds and to tear holes in the aluminum foil caps of delivered pintas so that they can sip off a quarter inch or so of cream. "Nasty little things," one woman was clucking. "Let the wasps into the bottles, they do." They greeted Jessie warmly. None of them showed the least impatience about her being fifteen minutes late.
     Something more than a species of spiritual regard for tooth gritting may, however, be involved in the production of their sturdy quality. The services and products available may have a large part in shaping the character of those for whom they exist. One or two of my notes earlier in this journal serve as partial examples of what I have in mind. My sampling of "TCP," one of the few English mouthwashes I have seen on Banbury's shelves, can be cited as another evidence. It's nauseating, a curious blending of creosote and formaldehyde. Its remarkable taste lingers for hours, even when one dilutes the liquid with five parts of water and has a hearty breakfast right after using it. I read the label last evening as I flapped my still beefy tongue about in my mouth and noted that Englishmen are advised to swish the substance around twice daily.
     I thought of their toilet paper, their barbers, their cooks, and their market places' open air fish stalls in which a side of plaice may lie, unrefrigerated—in the sun and under attack by flies and wasps—for eight hours or more. My reflections helped me to accept a little less incredulously the conduct of the Clar Wylds. They also, I admit with a touch of regret, diminished ever so slightly my previously boundless awe and admiration over this people's indestructible thumbs up defiance to the worst of Hitler's fire bombings.