“Oh they don’t care about the esprit. It’s because they think they are being improper. They like to be what they call men of the world, in possession of a fund of things they think can’t be talked about; you can see their silly thoughts by the way they glance at each other; it’s all about nothing. What _is_ obscenity? And the other half of them is _ladies_, who shout things by always carefully avoiding them; or, if they are “racey,” flatter men’s topics by laughing in a pretended hilarious embarrassment, hitting them as it were, and rushing on to something else, very animated by a becoming blush. I never realised that before. But that’s the secret. What _is_ obscenity?” “You have touched a most interesting problem of psychology.” “Besides Paris is full of Americans.” “It is the same proposition. They are the cousins of the English.” “I think the American ‘man of the world’ is much more objectionable. He is so horribly raw that he can’t help boasting openly, and the American woman flatters him, openly. It’s extraordinary. I mean the kind of heavy-featured fat middle-aged American woman who doesn’t smoke and thinks that voting would be unseemly for women. It used to make me simply ill with fury..... Dr. Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother came over for July and August two years ago. He was appalling. With a bright fair beard, and a most frightful twang; the worst I’ve ever heard. He used to talk incessantly, as if the whole table were waiting for his ideas. And knew everything, in the most awful superficial newspaper way. They have absolutely no souls at all. I never saw an American soul. The Canadians have. The Americans, at least the women, have reproachful ideals that they all agree about. So that they are all like one person; all the same effect. But wasn’t it _screaming_, Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother was called _Bacchus_. Yes. Did you ever hear anything so screaming? Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t it explain everything? He was a doctor too. He sat next to an elderly woman who was always scolding and preaching. She had an enormous American figure, and Guelph eyelids and Guelph cheeks coming down below her chin making great lengthways furrows on either side of it. But when Dr. Bacchus began to talk about Paris she would listen respectfully. He used always to be offering to show other men round Paris. There’s no-one alive, he would say, can show me anything in Parrus night-life I’ve not seen. _Ah_, she would say, anyone can see you’re a man of the _world_, doctor. It spoils the very idea of those little cabarets and whatever awful haunts there may be in Paris to think of Americans there, seeing _nothing_.” “They have certainly a most remarkable naivety.” “I’ve to-day seen your Queen. She’s just a vurry _hoamely_ little old lady.” “What? What is that?”