In England rudeness has quite a different technique. If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark “You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that.” In England you just say “Oh, is that so?” Or “That's rather an unusual story, isn't it?”
When some years ago, knowing ten words of English and using them all wrong, I applied for a translator's job, my would-be employer (or would-not-be employer) softly remarked: “I am afraid your English is somewhat unorthodox.” This translated into any continental language would mean: Employer (to the commisionaire): “Jean, kick this gentleman down the steps!”
In the last century, when a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut off without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared: “We are not amused”; and the whole British nation even now, a century later, is immensely proud of how rude their Queen was.
Terribly rude expressions (if pronounced grimly) are: “I am afraid that ...,” “unless ...,” “nevertheless ...,” “How queer ...,” and “I am sorry, but ...”
It is true that quite often you can hear remarks like: “You'd better see that you get out of here!” Or “Shut your big mouth!” Or “Dirty pig!” etc. These remarks are very un-English and are the results of foreign influence. (Dating back, however, to the era of the Danish invasion.)
How to Compromise
Wise compromise is one of the basic principles and virtues of the British.
If a continental greengrocer asks 14 schillings (or crowns, or francs, or pengoes, or dinars or leis or drachmai or whatever you like) for a bunch of radishes, and his customer offers 2, and finally they strike a bargain agreeing on 6 schillings, francs, roubles, etc., this is just the low continental habit of bargaining; on the other hand, if the British dock-workers or any other workers claim a rise of 4 schillings per day, and the employers first flatly refuse even a penny, but after a six week strike they agree to a rise of 2 schillings per day — that is yet another proof of the British genius for compromise. Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues — the difference between the two being that the first is practiced on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.
The genius for compromise has another aspect, too. It has a tendency to unite together everything which is bad. English club life, for instance, unites the liabilities of social life with the boredom of solitude. An average English house combines all the curses of civilisation with the vicissitudes of life in the open. It is all right to have windows, but you must not have double windows because double windows would indeed stop the wind from blowing right into the room, and, after all, you must be fair and give the wind a chance. It is all right to have central heating in an English home, except in the bath room, because that is the only place where you are naked and wet at the same time, and you must give British germs a fair chance. The open fire is an accepted, indeed a traditional institution. You sit in front of it and your face is hot whilst your back is cold. It is a fair compromise between two extremes and settles the problem of how to burn and catch cold at the same time. The fact that you may have a drink at five to six is an extremely wise compromise between two things (I do not quite know between what, certainly not between prohibition and licentiousness), achieving the great aim that nobody can get drunk between three o'clock and six o'clock in the afternoon unless he wants to and drinks at home.
English spelling is a compromise between documentary expressions and an elaborate code-system; spending three hours in a queue in front of a cinema is a compromise between entertainment and asceticism; the English weather is a fair compromise between rain and fog; to employ an English charwoman is a compromise between having a dirty house or cleaning it yourself; Yorkshire pudding is a compromise between a pudding and the county of Yorkshire.
The Labour party is a fair compromise between Socialism and Bureaucracy; the Beveridge Plan is a fair compromise between being and not being a Socialist at the same time; the Liberal Party is a fair compromise between the Beveridge Plan and Toryism; the Independent Labour Party is a fair compromise between Independent Labour and a political party; the Tory-reformers are a fair compromise between revolutionary conservatism and retrograde progress; and the whole British political life is a huge and non-compromising fight between compromising Conservatives and compromising Socialists.
How to be a Hypocrite
If you want to be really and truly British, you must become a hypocrite.
Now: how to be a hypocrite?
As some people say that an example explains things better than the best theory, let me try this way.
I had a drink with an English friend of mine in a pub. We were sitting on the high chairs in front of the counter when a flying bomb exploded about a hundred yards away. I was truly and honestly frightened, and when a few seconds later I looked around, I could not see my friend anywhere. At last I noticed he was lying on the floor, flat as a pancake. When he realised that nothing particular had happened in the pub he go up a little embarrassed, flicked the dust off his suit, and turned to me with a superior and sarcastic smile.
“Good Heavens! Were you so frightened that you couldn't move?”
About Simple Joys
It is important that you should learn how to enjoy simple joys, because that is extremely English. All serious Englishmen play darts and cricket and many other games; a famous English statesman was reported to be catching butterflies in the interval between giving up two European states to the Germans; there was even some misunderstanding with the French because they considered the habit of English soldiers of singing and playing football and hide and seek and blind man's bluff slightly childish.
Dull and pompous foreigners are unable to understand why ex-cabinet ministers get together and sing “Daisy, Daisy” in choir; why serious business men play with toy locomotives while their children learn trigonometry in the adjoining room; why High Court judges collect rare birds when rare birds are rare and they cannot collect many in any case; why it is the ambition of grown-up persons to push a little ball into a small hole; why a great politician who saved England and made history is called a “jolly good fellow.”
They cannot grasp why people sing when alone and yet sit silent and dumb for hours on end in their clubs, not uttering a word for months in the most distinguished company, and pay twenty guineas a year for the privilege.
The National Passion
Queueing is the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race. The English are rather shy about it, and deny that they adore it.
On the Continent, if people are waiting at a bus-stop they loiter around in a seemingly vague fashion. When the bus arrives, they make a dash for it; most of them leave by the bus and a lucky minority is taken away by an elegant black ambulance car. An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
The biggest and most attractive advertisements in from of cinemas tell people: Queue here for 4/6; Queue here for 9/3; Queue here for 16/8 (inclusive of tax). Those cinemas which do not put out these queueing signs do not do good business at all.