How To Be An Alien

Soul and Understatement

Foreigners have souls; the English haven't.

On the Continent you find any amount of people who sigh deeply for no conspicuous reason, yearn, suffer and look in the air extremely sadly. This is soul.

The worst kind of soul is the great Slav soul. People who suffer from it are usually very deep thinkers. They may say things like this: “Sometimes I am so merry and sometimes I am so sad. Can you explain why?” (You cannot, do not try.) Or they may say: “I am so mysterious ... I sometimes wish I were somewhere else than where I am.” (Do not say: “I wish you were.”) Or “When I am alone in the forest at night-time and jump from one tree to another, I often think that life is so strange.”

All this is very deep: and just soul, nothing else. The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead. If a continental youth wants to declare his love to a girl, he kneels down, tells her that she is the sweetest, the most charming and ravishing person in the world, that she has something in her, something peculiar and individual which only a few hundred thousand other women have and that he would be unable to live one more minute without her. Often, to give a little more emphasis to the statement, he shoots himself on the spot. This is a normal, week-day declaration of love in the more temperamental continental countries. In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly: “I don't object to you, you know.” If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: “I rather fancy you, in fact.”

If he wants to marry a girl he says: “I say ... would you? ...”

If he wants to make an indecent proposal: “I say ... what about...”

Overstatement, too, plays a considerable part in English social life. This takes mostly the form of someone remarking: “I say ...” and then keeping silent for three days on end.

Tea

The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink.

So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together, and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it.

To the eternal glory of British science their labour bore fruit. They suggested that if you do not drink it clear, or with lemon or rum and sugar, but pour a few drops of cold milk into it, and no sugar at all, the desired object is achieved. Once this refreshing, aromatic, oriental beverage was successfully transformed into colourless and tasteless gargling-water, it suddenly became the national drink of Great Britain and Ireland — still retaining, indeed usurping, the high-sounding title of tea.

There are some occasions when you must not refuse a cup of tea, otherwise you are judged an exotic and barbarous bird without any hope of ever being able to take your place in civilised society.

If you are invited into an English home, at five o'clock in the morning you get a cup of tea. It is either brought in by a heartily smiling hostess or an almost malevolently silent maid. When you are disturbed in your sweetest morning sleep you must not say: “Madame (or Mabel), I think you are a cruel, spiteful and malignant person who deserves to be shot.” On the contrary, you have to declare with your best five o'clock smile: “Thank you so much. I do adore a cup of early morning tea, especially early in the morning.” If they leave you alone with the liquid, you may pour it down the washbasin.

Then you have tea for breakfast; then you have tea at 11 o'clock in the morning; then after lunch; then you have tea for tea; then after supper; and again at 11 o'clock at night.

You must not refuse additional cups of tea under the following circumstances: if it is hot; if it is cold; if you are tired; if anybody thinks you might be tired; if you are nervous; if you are gay; before you go out; if you are out; if you have just returned home; if you feel like it; if you do not feel like it; if you have had no tea for some time; if you have just had a cup.

You definitely must not follow my example. I sleep at five o'clock in the morning; I have coffee for breakfast; I drink innumerable cups of black coffee during the day; I have the most unorthodox and exotic teas even at tea- time.

The other day, for instance — I just mention this as a terrifying example to show you how low some people can sink — I wanted a cup of coffee and a piece of cheese for tea. It was one of those exceptionally hot days and my wife (once a good Englishwoman, now completely and hopelessly led astray by my wicked foreign influence) made some cold coffee and put it in the refrigerator, where it froze and become one solid block. On the other hand, she left the cheese on the kitchen table, where it melted. So I have a piece of coffee and a glass of cheese.

Sex

Continental people have sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.

A Word on Some Publishers

I heard of a distinguished pure-minded English publisher who adapted John Steinbeck's novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” so skillfully that it became a charming little family book on grapes and other fruits, with many illustrations.

On the other hand, a continental publisher in London had a French political book, “The Popular Front,” translated into English. It became an exciting, pornographic book called “The Popular Behind.”

The Language

When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I'd been here an hour I realised that I did not understand one word. In the first week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I would never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and yet another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard before, and nobody else either.