Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
So, even when standing on the Acropolis at Athens or in the Tribuna
at Florence, they feel themselves sadly "out of it." They think
longingly of Billy or Jimmy, and the coffee and cakes of their far
Missouri or Arkansas home, and come back cursing Europe and its
contents. No damage is ever done by foreign travel to the "true
democratic American spirit" of this class.
And now as to "Anglomania," a subject to be handled with as much
delicacy as an anarchist bomb. Anglomania in one form or other is to
be met with in all countries, especially France and Germany, and has
shown itself here and there all over the Continent ever since the
peace of 1815. The things in which it most imitates the English are
riding, driving, men's clothes, sports in general, and domestic
comfort. The reason is that the English have for two centuries given
more attention to these things than any other people. No other has
so cultivated the horse for pleasure purposes. No other has devoted
so much thought and money to suitability in dress and to field sports.
No other has brought to such perfection the art of living in country
houses. In all these things people who can afford it try to imitate
them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which
the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art
to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The
sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who
wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain
in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these
things, and follow their example, for anything worth doing ought to
be done well. It is mostly in these things that Anglomania consists.
Mrs. Stevenson, we fear, exaggerates greatly the number of
Anglomaniacs. A few dozen are as many as are to be found in any
country, and any government or polity which their presence puts in
peril ought to be overthrown, for assuredly it is rotten to the
core. There is nothing, in fact, better calculated to make Americans
hang their heads for shame than the list of small things which one
hears from "good Americans," put our institutions in danger. We
remember a good old publisher, in the days before international
copyright, who thought we could not much longer stand the
circulation of British novels. Their ideas, he said, were dangerous
to a republic. An Anglomaniac can hardly turn up his trousers on
Fifth Avenue without eliciting shrieks of alarm from the American
patriot. And yet a more harmless creature really does not exist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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