| Wise compromise is one of the basic
principles and virtues of the British. If a continental greengrocer asks 14
shillings ( or crowns, or francs) for a bunch of radishes, and his customer
offers 2, and finally they strike a bargain agreeing on 6 shillings, 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 shillings per day, and the
employers first flatly refuse even a penny, but after a six weeks' strike they
agree to a rise of 2 shillings a 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 civilization with the ups and downs of life in the open. It's all right to have windows, but you must not have double windows because double 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 a right to have central heating in an English home, except in the bathroom, because that is the only place where you are naked and wet at the same time, {{U}}and you must give British germs a fair chance{{/U}}. 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 problems of how to burn and catch cold at the same time. English spelling is a compromise between documentary expressions and an elaborate code-system; spending 3 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 country of Yorkshire. |