Winter in England

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 3, 20 January 1909, Page 46

Winter in England

WRITTEN BY

“PIERROT”

IN LONDON.

ft is with the coming of winter that one realises once and for all that one has changed one’s hemisphere. The summer has been wonderful—nearly five months of mild weather, such as would not have disgraced a country with a far better meteorological repute. In fact, the born grumbler, whether among visitors or natives, has been conspicuously unhappy for want of that at which to grumble. And now comets King Frost to tell his tale, and to form his men—and the grumbler who prefers comfort to Spartan vigour, and hot baths to cold, may growl with fair excuse. It is the winter, perhaps, that expresses England. as*l am inclined to believe, it is the summer that boot expresses New Zealand. The Englishman shines best as Host, as Friend, even as the publican who professes to be the friend of all. And it is with his back to a cheery lire that he shows best of all. There’s the rub. You must judge each country on its own lines. A New Zealander appears nowhere better than on a half-decker in a summer gale; an Englishman is himself on a hard, frosty road, or toasting a hospitable skull before a blazlhg hearth. To those born in a genial clime, home is an added luxury, nowise necessary to existence: to an Englishman it is as essential as his food or his clothes. And that is, 1 believe, why an Englishman is such a splendid friend, while often such a sadly unapproachable acqua in lance. You feel a fitness in the English winter that does much to reconcile you to its rigour. And often all humanity is divisible into people with potential “chests*'* (in the medical'sense), and potential “liv’ers.”. The man with a ‘’cheot*’ should perhaps keep away from the English winter; the man with a “liver” should perhaps avoid the colonial summer. 1 said before I left New Zealand’ that there was no “best country”; now I know it better than ever. To blamQ' England even climatically because it is not New Zealand, is not one whit more reasonable than to blame New Zealand, because'it is not England. I still love both countries, and I cannot quite understand the heart that is not large enough for the double devotion. For the first time for seven years my hands are encased in warm gloves; but half an hour has reconciled me to a proceeding that seven months back would have seemed quite- preposterous. Equally have J come to take for granted the puffs of steam that punctuate the remarks of a chance acquaintance as Jie talks to me upon a frosty morning; the reddened features; the accelerated walk. After all. our race has been partly moulded by frost: why should we make a sole god of a blazing sun? These people are so admirable —not a bit better or worse to my way of thinking than the New Zealander born, only trivially different. My grievance .is loss against the rigours of winter than against the weapons adopted to give it battle. These blazing fires are the very essence of accumulated comfort —in fact, it is doubtful whether there is any single material thing in the world that gives such a luxurious feeling as a fire. That is the trouble. A fire is a hideous if insidious temptation. It’s fell heat draws you as a light draws a moth; and presently you are enervated, and bereft of all the vigour that a winter’s morning should have best owed upon you. and of something more in addition. Thus an English wink ter. at least to those not of tlie strongest of purpose, may have some of tlie worst evils of a subtropical summer. 1 would abolish fires if I had the autocratic power. Central heating or nothing! Rooms at sixty-two degrees, or el<e let ’mn freeze, me included! As it is. we freeze or wo roast —and mostly vo prefer roasting. The happy medium is despised by a luxurious race that scents to fly by nature from deprivation to plethora, from famine to a glut of swetdnesscs, from Arctic shivering, enjoyed through grumbling, to tropical broiling, enjoyed by contrast. Fortunately, the mass of the population is unable to toast its legs , before the gloving coals—apart from that other populous minority that suffers from the opposite extreme of having no coals

before which to toast them. And there is certainly for a healthy man a joy in these rigorous, frosty mornings, which make life conscious of its strength, and its purpose. The man who can loaf through an English winter is either & lire-worshipper, or a born loafer, or both. If these clear, fresh mornings cannot fill him with the zest for action, there is nothing that will. And yet tlie loafer is a daily feast to the philosophic eye. But he is a forced plant of these same household furnaces, or at least bred of the general atmosphere, by them engendered. It is now the season of talk, of soeiability, of the un-Englishness' (with apologies for the word) that is the first characteristic of the Englishman at his intellectual best. Unless you are a person who cultivates society with a big S, where you only meet unreal people, you will now be at the heart of England as you never could lie in summer. There is no country in the world, perhaps, where the nature of the people is so ill-, represented by their manner as England. Stiff politeness is so merely a veneer, so easily dropped, that it is only those who have not lived the life of an English home who can realise that the true Englishman is neither innately stiff’ nor innately polite. The well-bred Englishman is a. 1 miracle of candour, of outspoken, friendly rudeness — a hater of whisperings and innuendos, a great likeable hear, who only freezes you until he is ready, either to hug you. or honestly to knock you clown. English ignorance of outsiders? Yes, and French ignorance, and German ignorance, and Russian, and Italian, and Australian ignorance, and even New Zealand ignorance, and universal ignorance of outsiders! I sometimes wonder, as I sit by a great blazing, hospitable English fire, with frank, honest jovial people about me, and hearing not one artificial intonation. not one cold criticism of either the present or the absent, and, as I remember the kindly, gentle people T met equally in those Blessed Isles of the Pacific—whether some people don’t make it their business to cause bad blood between national relations, just as there are mischief-makers, whose chief joy in life is to set individual relations by the ears in unwholesome earping, and bickering, ami snarling! I believe it is so, or else there would be natural play for a dual attraction that is so strong for me, and I believe for everyone who knows both his England and his colonies.