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CLASSIC EXPAT WRITING: Letter From London — Sōseki

4 Comments Posted by on May 4, 2011

So with my last entry, on James Joyce’s Paris, I was left bemoaning the term Expat Writer. Partly, I’m annoyed with myself for choosing such a term as “Classic Expat Writing” for this series of blog posts. Ultimately, who wants to read a series of posts called “Classic Expat Writing”? It assumes too much and adopts a slightly superior attitude. And, most importantly, it’s dry and not all catchy. Instead, think of this as writing by the displaced.

The reason that I opted to do this series of posts was so I could share some writing that has moved me, and present it to an audience that is likely to in some way be attuned and empathetic to its contents, either through their own personal experience or particular interests. If people then go off and look at the authors in more detail, so much the better. It’s for these reasons why I am particularly excited with this week’s example.

I have to confess that I was not familiar with the name Sōseki until I visited Japan. My knowledge of Japanese literature is embarrassingly slight and doesn’t really extend beyond Mishima and Murakami. But a few years back, when visiting Tokyo, I sought out the Kinokuniya bookstore near Shinjuku because it had a large selection of English-language books. Having a few days before visiting the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, I was keen to buy Mishima’s novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. But when left in a bookstore I can’t help but browse and one book, in particular, caught my eye: The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London by Sōseki. At this point, I had never before heard about Sōseki Natsume (1867 – 1916), and had no idea about his place in the canon of Japanese literature. If I had been in Japan a few years earlier, it may have passed me unnoticed that the two 1,000 yen notes I would use to buy this book, in fact, featured Sōseki’s portrait.

Instead from a position of ignorance I picked up the book and was intrigued by it. It’s a collection of essays and writings that Sōseki wrote about his time in London.* In the summer of 1900, as a young, unknown professor, he traveled to London on a somewhat meagre scholarship that was provided to him by the Japanese government.  Sōseki was to spend the next two years in the city, unhappy and isolated.

Now being a miserable monoglot, I am entirely dependent upon skilled translators when it comes to foreign (well “foreign” from my perspective) literature. Obviously, I’m not in a position to comment on how accurately Damian Flanagan’s translation conveys the flavor of  Sōseki’s prose, but I did find it to be an incredible read with crisp and clean prose.

The title essay is a phenomenal piece of literature, but it is Sōseki’s Letter from London that I’m highlighting today. Sōseki conveys in a way that I’ve not seen from others that awkward, slippery sense of dislocation of being in an alien country. Even politeness takes on a faintly threatening edge.

One of the things I’ve noticed in the Expat blogging community, we seem to like it when we find writing that we can relate to, that reiterates thoughts and fears that we have had. Of course, there is a place for  that. With Expat blogging it can help develop relationships, it helps builds an audience, and there is very much a place for it. But it can also act like comfort food.

Sōseki, by contrast, has observations and thoughts about the city that I don’t think anybody other than himself could have had. And, for me, that’s what is so interesting and so worthwhile about this book.

This collection, which is published by Tuttle publishing, really should be read by more people. Go buy it and then read it, pronto.

Once outside, everyone I meet is depressingly tall. Worse, they all have unfriendly faces. If they imposed a tax on height in this country they might come up with a more economically small animal. But these are the words of one who cannot accept defeat gracefully, and, looked at impartially, one would have to say that it was they, not I, who look splendid. In any case, I feel small. An unusually small person approaches. Eureka! I think. But when we brush past one another I see he is about two inches taller than me. A strangely complexioned Tom Thumb approaches, but now I realize this is my own image reflected in a mirror. There is nothing for it but to laugh bitterly, and, naturally, when I do so, the image laughs, bitterly, too …

… Generally, people are of a pleasant disposition. Nobody would ever grab me and start insulting and abusing me. They do not take any notice of me. Being magnanimous and composed in all things is in these parts one qualification of being a gentleman. Overtly fussing over trifles like some pickpocket or staring at a person’s face with curiosity is considered vulgar … Pointing at people is the height of rudeness. Such are the customs, but of course London is also the workshop of the world, so they do not laughingly regard foreigners as curiosities. Most people are extremely busy. The ir heads seem to be so teeming with thoughts of money that they have no time to jeer at us Japanese as yellow people. (‘Yellow people’ is well chosen. We are indeed yellow. When I was in Japan I knew I was not particularly white but I regarded myself as being close to a regular human colour, but in this country I have finally realized that I am three leagues away from a human colour – a yellow person who saunters amongst the crowds going to watch plays and shows).

But sometimes there are people who surreptitiously comment on my country of origin. The other day I was standing in looking around a shop somewhere when two women approached me from behind, remarking, “least-poor Chinese”. “Least-poor” is an extraordinary adjective. In one park I heard a couple arguing whether I was a Chinaman or a Japanese. Two or three days ago I was invited out somewhere and set off in my silk hat and frock-coat only for two men who seemed like workmen to pass by saying, “A handsome Jap.” I do not know whether I should be flattered or offended.

*I’m not entirely sure what it says about me that in browsing a large selection of Japanese literature in an effort to get a better understanding of Japan, I picked up a book that is centered around impressions of London and the English.

Img: White Tower, Tower of London, from the South East, c. 1890-1910, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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Displaced India Hicks throws in beach hat for Royal Wedding hat

2 Comments Posted by on April 26, 2011

Special announcement from TDN: ML Awanohara and Kate Allison will be live-tweeting the Royal Wedding from a displaced perspective. Join us from 5:00 a.m. EST, using the hash tag: #DNRW

On Sunday night I decided to indulge in nostalgia for my misspent youth in England. I watched a couple of TLC programs showing footage from the wedding of Charles and Diana on July 29, 1981.

I was there as a displaced American. Well, I wasn’t in London but at a street party in an East Anglian town.

To be honest, I have only the haziest recollection of how I spent the day: who attended the fete, what we talked about, what we ate. Part of the reason is my exceedingly poor memory.

But I think the lapse is also due to having been displaced so many times since then — to Japan, back to England, and now back to my native United States. England’s royal wedding no longer stands out in my memory compared to other landmark events I’ve observed, such as the marriage of Masako Iwada to Japan’s Crown Prince.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride

I was therefore particularly taken with the TLC special Untold Stories of a Royal Bridesmaid, featuring model, interior design entrepreneur — and expat — India Hicks.

I kept wondering: does Hicks actually remember that hot day at the end of July 30 years ago? True, she was a bridesmaid for Princess Diana — but she was also only 13 at the time.

And, unlike many of the participants in that Royal Wedding, Hicks has moved on since, quite literally: she has put down roots on a three-mile-long fishing island in the Bahamas, where she lives with her family in a plantation-style oceanfront house.

Indeed, at 43, Hicks is living life on her own terms, a novel concept for a female who was born in the Royal Family orbit (Prince Charles is her second cousin and godfather, and she is 512th in line for the throne). As the New York Times pointed out in its profile of Hicks last month:

For many years, Ms. Hicks distanced herself from the royal circles that surrounded her childhood, focusing on developing her profession.

What’s more — and the Times didn’t point this out — she and her lifelong partner, David Flint Wood, have never bothered to marry, despite having had four children together.

Hicks may have been one of the two bridesmaids assigned to keep track of Diana’s 25-foot-long train, but she doesn’t appear to like weddings much, or else I assume she would have designed one for herself …

A most unroyal royal

I ask you, does this sound like something an heir to the British throne, however remote, would say:

I’d liked to have lived as Cleopatra. She didn’t take any crap from anyone, had lots of children out of wedlock, was intelligent and witty, known for her abilities and was a good stateswoman. I like most that she didn’t take any crap.

It’s what Hicks told the Wall Street Journal in an interview just a few days ago. You go, girl, as we say in the States…

So what’s in it for her besides money — and a higher profile for her brand, which is branching out next month to include jewelry? Not to mention her sense of duty (these are her people, after all).

British people are wont to say that the Royal Wedding provides a good excuse for a day off and a party. But for us displaced people, these affairs are a little different.

For Hicks as for many of the rest of us under equivalent circumstances, I suspect the wedding of Wills and Kate provides a good excuse to:

1) Indulge in a spot of nostalgia.

As Hicks remarks on her TLC special: “I think it will bring back memories that perhaps I’ve forgotten.”

As already mentioned, we displaced types can relate. The desire to recapture your youth intensifies if you are no longer living in your home (or adopted home) country.

2) Spend time in the home country.

As mentioned, Hicks has opted for the life of an expat, far from the madding crowds.

But, while retreating to a Caribbean island may sound like a dream come true, I imagine it has its dull moments, when one longs for a tad more intellectual and social stimulation.

Covering the Royal Wedding provides Hicks with the pretext for hanging out in her native land a little more and for introducing herself to such people as Diana’s wedding dress designer, David Emanuel. (The two haven’t met since 1981.)

3) Reconnect with family.

Living far away from one’s family is another penalty of the expat life, which tends to get steeper with time — especially for women who are close to their mothers.

By becoming a Royal Wedding pundit, Hicks has had the opportunity to reminisce about the good old days with her mother, Lady Pamela Hicks, for several of her TV specials.

A daughter of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India (hence her daughter’s first name), Lady Hicks was herself a bridesmaid to Queen Elizabeth.

I particularly enjoyed the moment on the TLC special when mere and fille pull their respective bridesmaids’ dresses out of the boxes and compare them. Hicks thinks her mother’s looks more classical, while hers is dated — a product of the frilly 1980s.

* * *

On the “bridesmaid” special, the time that Hicks seems most enthused about revealing her stories is when she picks up the Halcyon Days china pot that Diana gave to all her bridesmaids, containing a silk worm that helped to produce The Dress. Hicks holds up the little white cocoon and gives it a rattle.

For that single instant, she looks as though she’s been transported back in her island home, having taken the road less (or more?) traveled by…and to which she will be jolly glad to return on April 30.

Question: In your experience as a displaced person, do events in one’s home (or adopted home) country — whether private or public — induce an overblown sense of nostalgia? I’d love to hear your stories.

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CLASSIC EXPAT WRITING: James Joyce’s Paris

8 Comments Posted by on April 20, 2011

Statue of the Republic, Paris, c. 1890, from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

In producing this small, slightly piffling series of blog posts dedicated to expat writing, or members of the literati that we might class as expats, one thing that keeps holding me back somewhat and that is that I frankly dislike the term “expat writer”.

Expat writer: say it quietly to yourself and no doubt it conjures up thoughts about Peter Mayle and his numerous imitators, and do we really want to be conjuring up thoughts about Peter Mayle and his numerous imitators? If it’s not careful, expat writing can seem to be  mostly about a rather self-satisfied soul who is a little too pleased with himself and a little too enchanted with his surrounding. And if, like me, you’re one of those fusty souls who thinks that any writer worth their salt is more concerned with internalising thoughts and emotions, poor expat writers, who seem interested purely in the external, can drive you mad.

I was reminded a little about what this expat writer conundrum when on Twitter I stumbled across a discussion led by some of this parish about whether James Joyce should be considered an expat writer or not. Of course, it seems simple. Joyce spent most of his adult life living in continental Europe. It logically follows that we can lay claim to the title of expat writer for Joyce on account of him being both an expat and a writer. But it seems others would argue that Joyce is not an expat writer. And it is true, I grant you, that he certainly not in the Peter Mayle mould of expat writer. Paris, on the surface, does not seem to have inspired him. It never nourished, on the surface, his work in the way that Dublin did. But we could argue that Joyce needed the intellectual climate of France in the 20s and 30s to feed his own modernist work. If we were to be glib we might say that Finnegans Wake was conceived in Dublin, but Paris was its midwife.

With this in mind, for this week I’m drawing attention to an interesting essay from the New York Times first published in 1982 which takes a closer look at Joyce’s Paris and its effect on his work. An extract follows, but the full article can be found here at the New York Times Website.

N o. 7, Rue Edmond Valentin. A six-story facade, heavy ornamental moldings, a wrought-iron grille door, the Eiffel Tower in sight down the street: the heartland of upper-bourgeois Paris. Poodleland. Beneath the city’s winter overcast, these arrondissements – the 7th, the 8th, the 16th, the 17th -are an endless yellow-gray undercast: bland and impermeable. They are a chilly mask: and for the later James Joyce, who cloaked his turbulence with formality, they made an oddly appropriate residence.

Joyce spent 20 years in Paris – almost as long as in Dublin – but that is like counting the time we sleep. In 1922, two years after he arrived from Zurich, he immersed himself in the elusive dream that took him 16 years to finish: ”Finnegans Wake.”

In ”Ulysses,” the tangible presence of Dublin is memorialized: paving-stone and brick wall, legend and grilled kidneys, gab and gossip. ”Finnegans Wake” is a sleeping packrat dragging the world in, bit by bit. There are slivers of Paris in the pack but they are transmuted, as a dream transmutes the sound of a passing car into an army in flight.

So how is the pilgrim to find Joyce in Paris? There is, of course, his biographical presence, which will be attended to in a moment. But mostly what we look for in a literary pilgrimage is the cafe the characters drank in, not the one where the author did. Not, that is, unless the author is materially incorporated in the characters. We follow the characters Stephen and Bloom in and about Dublin; and we follow Joyce too, because he gave them his meanderings. In Paris, Joyce’s work and his life diverge d. How do you follow the sleeping Hum- phrey Chimpden Earwicker, whose dream is ”Finnegans Wake”? Strictly speaking: by eating an indigestible dinner, falling asleep, and letting the toots and stirrings outside and an uneasy memory infiltrate your dreams.

By the time Joyce got to Paris he was approaching middle age and near-blindness. He was not inactive, but he did not throw himself into the life of the city in order to find himself or his subjects or his art. He had them already. He used Paris for its quiet, its elegance and the congenial atmosphere it offered a writer.

He had company and diversion. He had the material support of Harriet Weaver, who sent him astonishing sums from London, and of Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who got ”Ulysses” into print when nobody else dared to. He had a reasonable amount of lionizing; but he also had the privacy and aloofness that Paris allows to its lions, because it possesses so many of them.

Mostly, except for brief visits in 1902 and 1903, Joyce’s Paris geography is a series of respectable apartments, such as the one on Edmond Valentin, where he sat and wrote. They were havens of a sort, but invaded more and more by shadows. Literal ones: He had at least 10 eye operations, and at times could barely see to write. Correcting proofs, he would lay his head sideways on the page to achieve the only odd angle at which he still had some vision.

There were other troubles. The lion grew moth-eaten, as his Herculean labors on ”Finnegans Wake” were rewarded by puzzlement and distress on the part of many of his admirers. Even the American poet Ezra Pound, not exactly a clear-running stream, wrote him: ”I will have another go at it, but up to present I make nothing of it whatever … I don’t see what which has to do with where …”

Question: I’d be fascinated to know your own thoughts on what constitutes an expat writer. Do you need to focus your work on the expat life to be one?

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Jerry Seinfeld — the Royal Wedding’s answer to Ricky Gervais

7 Comments Posted by on April 18, 2011

“You’re from England, aren’t you?” asked the lady behind the supermarket checkout. “Will you be watching the Royal Wedding?”

I shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Well,” she said, “I will.”

Go figure.

Royal Wedding fever on this side of the pond has reached bemusing levels of hysteria. The happy couple’s faces smile from magazines at every checkout, and news channels fill their airtime with Royal Wedding stories. BBC America is running a program called “Royally Mad,” in which five Americans, chosen by the BBC for their worrying obsession with the Windsor family, are whisked to London for a few days of royal sycophancy and accumulation of Will-and-Kate souvenir teaspoons. In the interests of research for this post, I watched the first episode and, try as I might, couldn’t understand what made otherwise sane people turn on the waterworks at the sight of a ho-hum frock once worn by Princess Diana. Growing up in England, I was used to hearing the BBC speak of the Royals with hushed deference. This tearful swooning over recent Royal memorabilia was more suited for a US network channel documentary about a pilgrimage to Graceland.

In a very unscientific survey, I asked some of my English friends if they were looking forward to the wedding. The answers varied from a resounding “No!” to “Looking forward to the street party” to  “I love a good wedding.”  (So do I — when I personally know the parties involved.) Interestingly, the most enthusiastic responses came from expat friends in Singapore and Saudi Arabia. None, however, displayed the starstruck adulation of the Royal Family that I see  in America.

So why the American fixation with English Royalty? Americans had their most significant war while ridding themselves of the people whose descendants they now idolize. Legend has it they weren’t ready to give up the idea of a monarchy even then: a group of people wanted to crown George Washington as the first King of America, but he refused. Had his ego been bigger, Americans would now have their own King Paul.

But Washington’s decision prevailed, so another idol had to be found. The Kennedy dynasty is sometimes referred to as America’s Royalty, as are the President and First Lady. Presidents, though, must be elected — even when they are part of a political dynasty. True idols must have a birthright, be it a 1,000-year genealogy, a trust fund from the Hilton empire, or innate acting ability (especially when coupled with a last name of Redgrave, Barrymore, etc.)  In terms of public fawning and adoration, I feel it’s fair to compare English Royalty with Hollywood stars.

As I watch the hoopla surrounding this wedding, however, it seems the distinction between Beverly Hills and Buckingham Palace has blurred. Disney princesses are being confused with the real deal.  A few days ago on a BBC blog, an American commenter noted that she liked the way the Royal Family did their weddings openly. Hollywood stars, she said, held their weddings in secret now, and that was no fun.

Perhaps the Windsors could learn something from Hollywood.

One of the attractions of the Royal Family used to be its mystique.  Unfortunately, with the modern, out-of-control paparazzi and a gossip-hungry public denied the insight into Hollywood weddings, mystique is a thing of the past, and its disappearance was greatly aided by Prince Charles and Princess Diana separately airing their dirty laundry on TV in the mid-1990s.  It might be prudent for Royals either to stay out of the limelight or behave with a little decorum and sensitivity, as the Royal Matriarch has always done. Because when newspapers run stories about Prince Andrew spending taxpayers’ money on numerous helicopter rides to play golf, or Prince Harry turning up to fancy dress parties in Nazi uniforms, it’s hard for English Joe Public to go along with the notion that these people are privileged by divine right any more than Paris Hilton is.

I honestly am not being mean-spirited — I genuinely wish Prince William and Kate Middleton all the best for their life together, just as I would wish it for any couple about to get married. She seems a nice enough girl, and he understands the definition of ‘Love,’ unlike his father.  But the whole thing has been blown out of proportion, as Jerry Seinfeld controversially – or refreshingly, depending on your viewpoint – pointed out on Friday, when on a British TV show he called the wedding “a circus.”  “These are not special people,” he said.

The reaction from the show’s hosts (“How dare he!”) was not unlike that of the Washington Post  in response to Ricky Gervais’s comments at this year’s Golden Globes.

“Are we at war with England? If not, then why have we been subjected to two years of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globe Awards?”

And yet despite the furor, Gervais is rumored to be returning to host the awards for a third time, proving that he did provide the shot of popularity that the Globes needed.

Windsors and BBC take note.  Judging by the number of positive comments from the British public about Jerry’s outburst, I am not the only Brit to feel nonplussed about the Wedding Of The Century.

For Harry’s wedding, book Jerry Seinfeld to do the commentary.

Adrian Chiles, host of the British TV show that featured Jerry Seinfeld, suggested that Seinfeld could end up doing his stand-up show on June 3 from the Tower of London.  Do you agree? If not, whom would you rather see in the Tower?

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Jamie Oliver, culinary expert — and now expat?

4 Comments Posted by on April 13, 2011

Try as I might, I can’t make out why Jamie Oliver has taken it upon himself to save my countrymen from themselves.

I understand he’s trying to start a food revolution. Not only that but I’m a supporter, having signed the online petition. After all, I lived in Japan for long enough to see that if a national diet is in essence health food, there are many fewer incidences of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and people live longer.

But why is Jamie Oliver, of all people, leading this campaign? That’s the part I haven’t been able to fathom. Before going to Japan, I lived in Britain, where Oliver was known as the “naked chef.” Call it a lack of imagination but somehow I never anticipated that the face of the Sainsbury’s grocery-store chain would someday transform himself into a food activist and arrive on my shores. What happened?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Oliver has decided to export his food revolution. For me, his confrontation with the stony-faced lunch ladies at the school in Huntington, West Virginia — which has been called the unhealthiest city in America — goes down in the annals as reality TV at its finest.

(I’m still not convinced those ladies aren’t actors.)

And now that he’s back for a second season of his “food revolution” show, which premiered last night, I’m enjoying seeing him take on the members of the Los Angeles school board, next to whom the West Virginian women seem warm and welcoming. LA is the second-largest school district in the nation, serving over half a million processed meals every day.

I note that this time, Oliver brought his wife, Jools, and their four young children, to live with him in LA. Is he planning to become an expat? Stranger things have happened…

I can’t really explain why Oliver would choose to displace himself and his loved ones in the service of America’s overfed youth, but I can offer some half-baked ideas:

1) He doesn’t like being less well known than Gordon Ramsay.

Ramsay surpassed Oliver some time ago in terms of earnings and visibility. Indeed, last night’s show offered evidence of this in a scene involving Dino Perris, the owner of a fast-food drive through in Glassell Park, a working-class neighborhood in LA. Perris said he’d never heard of Jamie Oliver and thought he might be that “rude guy.”

The only thing wrong with this theory? Ramsay is best known for swearing a blue streak and Oliver for interacting with kids like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Apples and oranges.

2) He is descended from missionary stock (hahaha).

In other words, it’s in his DNA to make converts beyond his own shores.

This theory, however, doesn’t hold water when you study Oliver’s family tree. Most of his people hailed from Cornwall and his great-great grandfather John Oliver was a Royal Navy seaman who did time in prison — not exactly the ingredients from which a food evangelist emerges.

3) He is escaping from Britain because his popularity is on the wane.

His fellow Brits have grown tired of seeing him running around in his green pea costume, so he is seeking a fresh audience.

At first this theory seems quite palatable. Most Americans probably don’t know this, but there was a backlash against Oliver’s “school dinners” program in the UK. It reached its peak when two mothers at a school in South Yorkshire started delivering junk food from local shops through the school fence, claiming that their youngsters didn’t want to eat the celebrity chef’s “overpriced lowfat rubbish.”

Still, I can’t believe that Oliver was ever put off by people who cooked up stunts that are, in effect, straight out of his manual. He loves nothing better than stirring the pot, and besides, he achieved what he wanted: the UK government established the School Food Trust, dedicated to improving the quality of food in the nation’s schools.

Okay, so I have no idea why he’s here. I might as well chime in with Jon Stewart, who, when Oliver appeared on his show last week, summed it up as follows:

You have come to this land you and you would like to help us become healthier, better people. Good luck with that.

And if Angelenos start throwing rotten tomatoes at him, I hope he has the good sense to move across the Pacific. Rumor has it that obesity rates among children in Asia are rising with the invasion of McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and so on.

If that doesn’t make him fed up, I don’t know what will.

Question: What do you think has made Jamie Oliver cross borders, and would you like to see him become an expat in the United States?

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CLASSIC EXPAT WRITING: London and the English — Casanova

Leave a comment Posted by on April 6, 2011

While inextricably linked in the imagination with his home city of Venice, Giacomo Casanova spent much of his life travelling and living in other parts of Europe. That ugly term “expat” which many of us, myself included, seem to cling onto as an identifier, was not in use in Casanova’s day, and to apply it to him retrospectively would seem to do him a great disservice. Casanova was a traveller and an observer, a man who seemed to treat Eighteenth Century Europe as a playground, a man whose life for the most part seemed permanently picaresque. Paris, St Petersburg, Dresden, Vienna, Warsaw, Prague, London: at some point all these cities played host to Casanova, and in his extensive memoir, Story of my Life he details his thoughts and observations about them all. While almost certainly someone we’ll return to at a later date, here are some choice extracts on his thoughts about London and the English. This is taken from the Arthur Machen translation of 1894.

On arriving in England:

The stranger who sets his foot on English soil has need of a good deal of patience. The custom-house officials made a minute, vexatious and even an impertinent perquisition; but as the duke and ambassador had to submit, I thought it best to follow his example; besides, resistance would be useless. The Englishman, who prides himself on his strict adherence to the law of the land, is curt and rude in his manner, and the English officials cannot be compared to the French, who know how to combine politeness with the exercise of their rights.

English is different in every respect from the rest of Europe; even the country has a different aspect, and the water of the Thames has a taste peculiar to itself. Everything has its own characteristics, and the fish, cattle, horses, men, and women are of a type not found in any other land. Their manner of living is wholly different from that of other countries, especially their cookery. The most striking feature in their character is their national pride; they exalt themselves above all other nations.

My attention was attracted by the universal cleanliness, the beauty of the country, the goodness of the roads, the reasonable charges for posting, the quickness of the horses, although they never go beyond a trot; and lastly, the construction of the towns on the Dover road; Canterbury and Rochester for instance, though large and populous, are like long passages; they are all length and no breadth…..

On whores and kings:

I visited the theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but I could not extract much enjoyment out of the performances as I did not know a word of English. I dined at all the taverns, high and low, to get some insight into the peculiar manners of the English. In the morning I went on ‘Change, where I made some friends. It was there that a merchant to whom I spoke got me a Negro servant who spoke English, French, and Italian with equal facility; and the same individual procured me a cook who spoke French. I also visited the bagnios where a rich man can sup, bathe, and sleep with a fashionable courtezan, of which species there are many in London. It makes a magnificent debauch and only costs six guineas. The expense may be reduced to a hundred francs, but economy in pleasure is not to my taste.

On Sunday I made an elegant toilette and went to Court about eleven, and met the Comte de Guerchi as we had arranged. He introduced me to George III., who spoke to me, but in such a low voice that I could not understand him and had to reply by a bow. The queen made up for the king, however, and I was delighted to observe that the proud ambassador from my beloved Venice was also present. When M. de Guerchi introduced me under the name of the Chevalier de Seingalt, Zuccato looked astonished, for Mr. Morosini had called me Casanova in his letter. The queen asked me from what part of France I came, and understanding from my answer that I was from Venice, she looked at the Venetian ambassador, who bowed as if to say that he had no objection to make. Her Majesty then asked me if I knew the ambassadors extraordinary, who had been sent to congratulate the king, and I replied that I had the pleasure of knowing them intimately, and that I had spent three days in their society at Lyons, where M. Morosini gave me letters for my Lord d’Egremont and M. Zuccato.

“M. Querini amused me extremely,” said the queen; “he called me a little devil.”

“He meant to say that your highness is as witty as an angel.”

I longed for the queen to ask me why I had not been presented by M. Zuccatto, for I had a reply on the tip of my tongue that would have deprived the ambassador of his sleep for a week, while I should have slept soundly, for vengeance is a divine pleasure, especially when it is taken on the proud and foolish; but the whole conversation was a compound of nothings, as is usual in courts.

After my interview was over I got into my sedan-chair and went to Soho Square. A man in court dress cannot walk the streets of London without being pelted with mud by the mob, while the gentleman look on and laugh. All customs must be respected; they are all at once worthy and absurd.

On matters of the stomach:

The Englishman is entirely carnivorous. He eats very little bread, and calls himself economical because he spares himself the expense of soup and dessert, which circumstance made me remark that an English dinner is like eternity: it has no beginning and no end. Soup is considered very extravagant, as the very servants refuse to eat the meat from which it has been made. They say it is only fit to give to dogs. The salt beef which they use is certainly excellent. I cannot say the same for their beer, which was so bitter that I could not drink it. However, I could not be expected to like beer after the excellent French wines with which the wine merchant supplied me, certainly at a very heavy cost.

On unruliness at the theatre:

After a long discussion on politics, national manners, literature, in which subjects Martinelli shone, we went to Drury Lane Theatre, where I had a specimen of the rough insular manners. By some accident or other the company could not give the piece that had been announced, and the audience were in a tumult. Garrick, the celebrated actor who was buried twenty years later in Westminster Abbey, came forward and tried in vain to restore order. He was obliged to retire behind the curtain. Then the king, the queen, and all the fashionables left the theatre, and in less than an hour the theatre was gutted, till nothing but the bare walls were left.

After this destruction, which went on without any authority interposing, the mad populace rushed to the taverns to consume gin and beer. In a fortnight the theatre was refitted and the piece announced again, and when Garrick appeared before the curtain to implore the indulgence of the house, a voice from the pit shouted, “On your knees.” A thousand voices took up the cry “On your knees,” and the English Roscius was obliged to kneel down and beg forgiveness. Then came a thunder of applause, and everything was over. Such are the English, and above all, the Londoners. They hoot the king and the royal family when they appear in public, and the consequence is, that they are never seen, save on great occasions, when order is kept by hundreds of constables.

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CONTEMPORARY DISPLACED WRITING: Fury — Salman Rushdie

Leave a comment Posted by on March 30, 2011

Continuing with our look at writing concerned with expat experiences, when I first moved to the US, spending my time in New York and Philadelphia, I found myself often thinking about the following extract from Salman Rushdie‘s novel, Fury.

There’s just something about this piece that sits absolutely right with me. It conveys so well the Gulliver-esque excitement and fear that I felt when first having to navigate New York; and how, when listening to the locals talking, their inflections and pronunciations sounded to my ears so utterly confusing, and thrilling, and also…oddly bovine.

When he left the apartment nowadays he felt like an ancient sleeper, rising. Outside, in America, everything was too bright, too loud, too strange. The city had come out in a rash of painfully punning cows. At Lincoln Center Solanka ran into Moozart and Moodama Butterfly. Outside the Beacon Theatre a trio of horned and uddered divas had taken up residence: Whitney Mooston, Mooriah Carey and Bette Midler (the Bovine Miss M). Bewildered by this infestation of paronomasticating livestock, Professor Solanka suddenly felt like a visitor from Lilliput-Blefuscu or the moon, or to be straightforward, London. He was alienated, too, by the postage stamps, by the monthly, rather than quarterly, payment of gas, electricity and telephone bills, by the unknown brands of candy in the stores (Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ring Pops), by the words “candy” and “stores”, by the armed policemen on the streets, by the anonymous faces in magazines, faces that all Americans somehow recognized at once, by the indecipherable words of popular songs which American ears could make out without strain, by the end-loaded pronunciation of names like Farrar, Harrell, Candell, by the broadly spoken e’s that turned expression into axpression, I’ll get to the check into I’ll gat that chack; by, in short, the sheer immensity of his ignorance of the engulfing melee of ordinary American life….

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CLASSIC EXPAT WRITING: The French as Dostoevsky Saw Them — Saul Bellow

Leave a comment Posted by on March 22, 2011

Renting an apartment in Paris was not a simple matter in 1947, but a good friend of mine, Nicolaus, had found one for us on the right bank, in a fussy building. I had brought a new Remington portable typewriter, which the landlady had absolutely demanded as a gift. She had to have the rent in dollars, too. Francs would not do. It was a steep rental. Nicolaus, however, said the apartment was worth the money. He knew Paris, and I took his word for it. Nicolaus spoke French perfectly. People from Indianapolis take to French quite naturally; I have observed this time and again. He was a perfect Frenchman, carried a pair of gloves and drove a French car. He was annoyed with me when I asked my landlady how one disposed of the garbage in this apartment. “In France,” he said to me severely, detaining me in the chilly dining-room, “no man would ask such a question. Garbage is not your concern. You are not supposed to know that garbage exists. Besides, ordures is not a nice word.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have asked.”

The landlady now brought forth her inventaire. An amazing document! A catalogue of every object in the house, from the Chippendale chair to the meanest cup, fully and marvelously described in stiff, upright, copious letters. We started to go through the list, and moved from Madame’s room, a flapper’s boudoir of the ‘twenties, backwards to the kitchen. Madame read the description and displayed each article. “Dining room table. Style Empire. Condition excellent. Triangular scratch on left side. No other defect.” We finished in the kitchen with three lousy tin spoons.

“Ah,” said Nicolaus, “What a sense of detail the French have!”

I was less impressed, but one must respect respect itself and I did not openly disagree.

As soon as Madame left, I turned a somersault over the Chippendale chair and landed thunderously on the floor. This lightened my heart for a time, but in subsequent dealings with Madame and others in France I could not always recover my lightness of heart by such means.

Depressed and sunk in spirit, I dwelt among Madame’s works of art that cold winter of 1948. The city lay under perpetual fog and the smoke could not rise and flowed in the streets in brown and gray currents. An unnatural medicinal smell emanated from the Seine. Many people suffered from the grippe Espagnole — all diseases are apt to be of foreign origin — and many more from melancholy and bad temper. Paris is the seat of a highly developed humanity, and one thus witnesses highly developed forms of suffering there. Witnesses and sometimes, experiences. Sadness is a daily levy that civilization imposes in Paris. Gay Paris.? Gay, my foot! Mere advertising. Paris is one of the grimmest cities in the world. I do not ask you to take my word for it. Go to Balzac and Stendhal, to Zola, to Strindberg — to Paris itself. Nicolaus said the Parisians were celebrated for their tartness of character. He declared that it would be better for me to feel my way into it than to criticize it. Himself, he was a connoisseur of the Parisian temperament. I was lacking in detachment, he said. To this accusation I confessed and pleaded guilty. I was a poor visitor and, by any standard, an inferior tourist…

Click here to read the full article at The New Republic.

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