England to Me: A Memoir

by Emily Hahn

  The biggest worry was currency exchange. At that time, the summer of ’47, it was still permitted a British traveler to buy seventy-five pounds’ worth of foreign currency for purposes of travel in one year. At the beginning of the year, seventy-five pounds looks tremendous, especially when you can multiply it by two, as we could. “One hundred fifty pounds? Why, it’s plenty. It’s more than enough,” said the Major. “I certainly hope we won’t think of spending it all on one trip.” So we began frittering it away since we had so much. Twice we went to Holland, which nibbled about twenty pounds off our allowance. (One doesn’t count the tickets; you can buy those in England.) When it became evident that we would go to Portugal in the summer, so the Major could look up some documents there, he said, “It still ought to be ample. The thing is, we mustn’t shop.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s plenty.”

  Now there is nothing worrying about this, to start out with, but shortly before we were due to leave a budget was to be announced in the House. Modern life in England is one budget announcement after another, and the papers had been emphatic for some weeks in advance that the travel allowance would probably be cut, because so many drones were spending more money than they were allowed, cashing illegal checks at Monte Carlo. I began to anticipate and to fret. The Major was divided between fretting and a sort of hope that they would cut the allowance: “Then we wouldn’t spend so much,” he explained.

  “But if they cut it out altogether?”

  That shook him, and he went straight down to the bank and booked our tickets and changed our money. We then had a brief marital wrangle over the extra cash which was allowed each traveler for tips and things on the way—twenty pounds.

  “But we won’t need anything like that,” said the Major.

  “Yes, we will. We always do. And we’re allowed to bring it back if we don’t use it.”

  “If we have it, we’ll spend it.”

  “We don’t have to, silly. It’s better to take what we’re allowed. Suppose we run out of money?”

  “Well, I won’t do it. I’ll take ten pounds for both of us.”

  “Then I’ll take thirty and say ten are yours.”

  Chafing at my extravagance, the Major went down to Maggs’s to look at a sixty-pound book he was thinking of buying. He must have bought it, because when he came back he had a guilty look and was quite reasonable about the pocket money.

  So much for currency. The budget did attack travel allowances, cutting them down to thirty-five pounds a person, but the fatal date for the cut was still ahead of our departure and we were within the law with our money. Still, it had been a worry. And there was another one. British travelers were thenceforth forbidden to remove from the United Kingdom anything which could be turned into money abroad; i.e., jewels, furs, or other luxuries which do not have to be new to have value. For a while the papers reported all sorts of contretemps at the customs jetty when outgoing travelers were searched. Like many new restrictions, this one threw officials into a tizzy, and they never seemed to agree on what was to be allowed out and what was not, just as they have never agreed on what imports are dutiable and what are not. Indignant ladies were deprived of their wrist watches, their engagement rings, their fur coats, which they needed not only for adornment, as they had no other outer garments, what with the coupon situation. The papers were flooded with furious letters, and with editorials talking about oppression and iron curtains. At our house we were gravely worried about our watches, though furs were out of the question anyway in summertime Portugal.

  “They searched two nuns yesterday and found a lot of neckties and watches and things,” I said to an American girl who came to tea. “They were coming in, of course, not going out, but they search people going out too. Do you think they’ll do it to us?”

  “Of course,” said the Major. “You’ll see it in the paper tomorrow: Two Spivs Stripped to Buff at Airport.”

  “Write something on your innermost garment,” suggested the American. “On your corset. Write, ‘So What?’ ”

  “Going to Holland they never examined us at all, after all that fuss; we could have taken thousands of pounds. I can’t figure out why anybody wants to take pounds out, though,” said the Major. “They’re so much toilet paper abroad, surely?”

  “Oh no, in the black market you get half the value,” said our guest, “which is better than no money at all, I suppose.”

  We took no risks, but still there was that unpleasant feeling of guilt hanging over us. After all that, nobody took our wrist watches away, or tried to.

  All of these worries sank into proper proportion as the plane crossed the edge of the line and flew over the water. I felt years lighter and younger. We had made it, watches and all. No more rationing worries for a month (except rationed money). No more household duties (but was Carola going to be all right?). Nothing to do now but see a new country. Incidentally, I said to myself, it was time to be firm with the Major, who had been unaccountably’ vague hitherto when I asked exactly where we were going. Portugal, he said; we were going to Portugal.

  “Are we going to any particular place in Portugal?”

  “Lisbon.” He showed signs of uneasiness, like a man who is about to have a tooth pulled.

  “Are we staying in Lisbon?”

  “No.” He now looked like a man who has decided not to wait any longer that day for the dentist, and I wasn’t able to get more out of him. It was rather like coming to Conygar the first time, and probably his reasons were similar. The Major likes Portugal a lot. He hoped I would like it, too, but he was damned if he’d weight the scales.

  Now, I hate to act like that woman in the James Stephens poem —”Yesterday he gripped her tight, and cut her throat, and serve her right!”—but I did want to know where I was going. I still don’t think that unreasonable. I stopped nagging, however, and waited for an ally—Lady Sansom. She and her husband dined with us in London just before we left; while Sir George and the Major talked about books, Katharine asked me idly where we intended to go in Portugal, and I confessed I hadn’t any idea and couldn’t find out, either. Knowing the Major, she didn’t waste time exclaiming over the dilemma, as a less wise woman might. She just got to work listening.

  “Shhh,” she said to me in a whisper, finger to lip, as we were saying good night. “I know something. I heard Charles telling George. You’re going north, to the mountains.”

  “Have you any idea where? Or why?”

  “To stay with friends, he said. Shhhh.”

  Well, that was something to go on, at any rate, I thought philosophically.

  Now, in the plane, I ran into trouble on this matter, because they give you forms to fill out after you have left Bordeaux, and one of the items to answer is the address of your destination.

  “Where are we going, Charles?” I asked, glancing up and brandishing my pen.

  He looked again like a man waiting for the dentist.

  “Now listen, I’ve got to fill out this form,” I said, restraining myself. “I’ve got to fill it out; I’ve got to sign it. Where—are—we— staying—in—Lisbon? Come on—give.”

  With the sigh and moan of a man who has at last been cornered in the dentist’s chair, the Major vouchsafed the name of a Lisbon hotel. Not that it really meant anything to me.

  Oh, the heat! The lovely, shimmering, hot heat! I paused as the first parching breath of it hit me in the face, outside the plane. Over behind a barrier, under a tropically whitewashed roof, there was a crowd of people come to meet the plane. How nice the Portuguese must be, bringing so many flowers to their friends, I thought; it must be a native custom, like the leis at Hawaii. Then I saw the Major wave, and the entire crowd, flowers and all, waved back at him. They had all come to meet the Major.

  “They’ve brought you flowers,” he said in gratified tones.

  A moment later we were engulfed in the heart of Portugal.

  I was now pleased to observe that everything I have ever suspected, in a general wa
y, about Englishmen abroad is true. But it is not fair to put it as so many people do, to say that the Englishman abroad doesn’t care how he behaves because it doesn’t matter. That is certainly one way of putting it, but it is uncharitable. The fact is, the Englishman—or at any rate the Major—never enjoys himself the way he was brought up. Abroad he can let his hair down, and he loves it. Of course I have seen the Major abroad before. We met that way. At home in England, I sometimes remind myself, he would probably have avoided me like the plague: he would have been terrified.

  In Holland he seems even more stiff and shy than usual; something about the Saxon influence, perhaps, but in Portugal! We had to come direct from Austerity England to Latin Portugal for me to appreciate the full beauty of environment’s effect on the human British male.

  With cries of genuine emotion, my English husband threw himself into the arms of his friends. Only the gentlemen friends, though. They all embraced and patted one another on the back, exclaiming at intervals the while. The ladies seemed quite used to this spectacle and stood in a semicircle in the background, smiling good-naturedly. Ladies in Portugal control their frenzies of delight. They control their frenzies altogether, but there was a good deal of cordial handshaking all around.

  I received and tried in vain to retain a list of names, staggering in their length and handles. There were generals, commanders, and admirals of the fleet, most of whom the Major had met in the Orient, in Macao. They knew him so well that nobody was surprised or even amused when he asked immediately, “What time do the Archives open in the morning?” During the hours of incomprehensible conversation that followed on that afternoon, I was kept busy, fortunately, by Letty.

  Just as the Major had not told me in advance where we were going, so he had not told me about Letty. “Charley is secretive,” Beryl says. I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. Unless he is drunk, the Major is simply silent, that’s all. He is either reading, or thinking about something he read before or is going to read in the future. Besides, what could he have said about Letty?

  Ordinary things about people don’t impress themselves on his mind, and it doesn’t occur to him that they would impress themselves on mine. Still, Letty was naturally surprised that her old friend Charles hadn’t even said to his wife, “There’s an American woman in Lisbon; I used to know her and her husband very well in Macao, and you’ll like them tremendously.”

  “But why should I?” said the Major reasonably, when Letty reproached him. “Here you are, and I’m awfully glad to see you. It’s great luck for Mickey that you’re here. I shan’t be able to show her around, but you can.”

  Letty had lived in China for years, beginning way back before I ever thought of going to Shanghai. She met João in Shanghai, married him, and went to live in Macao where he held a military-governmental position. Later, in the natural course of events, for João is a very able man, they were transferred home and he was promoted. Thus Letty, who started out as a typical American girl from Ohio, now finds herself installed as the wife of a Portuguese officer and gentleman, living in the middle of one of the most formalized communities of old Europe, and getting away with it very well too. Nobody is more surprised at this than Letty. She finds fresh surprise and amusement in it every day. She has been married for years, but has not yet decided if she is in a romance or a predicament.

  “Living here isn’t at all the same thing as the States, honey,” she said. “The people here, oh well, you get used to them and they get used to you, but a girl who came out fresh from home, she couldn’t live the way these ladies do. You and I, we lived in China and we know the world isn’t all the same. Gee, what wouldn’t you give to be back in Shanghai right now? But João won’t take an appointment there any more. He says he’s too old. Listen, whatever happened to the Ezra boys? Did you meet my best friend Peggy?” She broke off to say something in Portuguese to a small lady in black whose husband was evidently one of the Major’s oldest friends in the world. I looked at Letty and listened in admiration. We had repaired to a hotel lounge and were all sitting in a large circle of chairs. Though the women didn’t look quite so subdued as I had expected to find them, the Major’s reluctant recollections having been a dozen years out of date, they were still more conservative in appearance than Englishwomen. Certainly Letty was different. The other ladies were small, and genteelly careful in their manners; Letty was tall and vivacious, talking to me with gaiety about China. The other ladies wore black, or something near black; Letty was dressed for the tropical afternoon in colored print, with an American hat and American gloves. It was not that I didn’t like the other ladies less for it, but I was proud of Letty for having adapted herself so well in spite of being different.

  “That’s because I’m American, honey,” said Letty. “I bet you get along all right, even in England. It must be awful, though.”

  “Not at all,” said the Major. “Mickey likes England.”

  “Go on! Really?”

  I nodded, feeling sheepish.

  “That’s funny,” said Letty thoughtfully. “I’ve never been there myself of course.… You probably feel just like me; I couldn’t live in America now, could you? I was home for a year lately, but —I guess I’m spoiled. I felt out of place. And after all these years I’d got so I was afraid to go out without my husband; my sister almost died laughing at me. And the way they behave! My goodness, everybody kisses everybody else, right on the mouth too. All these years I’ve been raving against these women here, so prissy and particular, but in the States I was acting just like them. It’s a fact. Oh, my, what a life!”

  After the Major had saturated himself for about a week in the Archives and I had got used to a lot of good food and wine again, we made the mysterious trip to the north. We visited Oporto, we motored around and saw Coimbra, the university town, and we spent some days in the Serra da Estrella, where people come for the skiing in the winter and where I decided we must someday live. Not that I am particularly fond of skiing, but I like mountains. Then we went to Evora, where the Major wants to live; there are no old documents and manuscripts at the Serra da Estrella, but Evora used to be the university town hundreds of years ago, and there are plenty of untranslated documents there.

  Everywhere the people talked about England. Lots of Portuguese have always entertained a special feeling of kinship for the English, because they see a resemblance between the histories of the two sea empires. On the whole I should think that the Portuguese are the most historically minded people I know, though I realize I was restricted more or less to the Major’s circle and they are exceptionally that way. Most Portuguese do seem to live in the past a good deal, though.

  It was as if they were saying, “Welcome to the Museum. You may find it a little remote at first, a little quiet, rather special, not what you are accustomed to. But you’ll learn to like it. We’ve moved over and there’s plenty of room. Come on in, sit down and help us watch the mad world chase its tail outside the doors over there.”

  Under the genial sun and warmed by vinho verde it seemed the best solution for everything. “Let’s!” I wanted to say to England. “Being a back number is best, after all’s said and done. Let’s stop trying and worrying.”

  On second thought I did nothing so rash or unnecessary. It is one thing to act like a fine finished old empire when you are well-heeled, as Portugal is, and when you have a country and a climate like Portugal’s. It is quite another thing to stop playing just when you’re down at the bottom. And another thing again, I discovered, is that question of work.

  “The English don’t know what is is to work really hard,” I said with the sudden glad discovery which always accompanies my realization of platitudes. “They never did within my memory. We used to laugh at them when we came over as tourists, the way they always took a long time to repair watches or publish books.”

  “And dig coal?” asked the Major gently. “When did you last inspect a coal mine, may I ask?”

  “Oh, digging for coal is different. But
middle people in shops and offices in England— You know it, Charles.”

  A Portuguese nodded. “We work,” he said. “We had to learn how four hundred years ago. I can remember four hundred years ago”—his voice took on a reminiscent note, and we all stared at him—”four hundred years ago,” he said dreamily, “I was sitting in the sun in the Praça del Comercio, waiting for my ship to come in from India. They said, ‘Wake up, you have no more food,’ and I said, ‘That’s all right; my ship will be along tomorrow.’ They said, ‘No, there are no more ships coming. We’ve lost the Indies.’ I wouldn’t believe it.” He smiled gently and shook his head. “It was true, though. When I got hungry enough I got up and went to work, and I’ve been working ever since. Oh, I understand the English.”

  “Everywhere I go,” I said one evening, “they ask me when we’re going to get that nice man Churchill back and stop all this Labour nonsense. They have got Labour all mixed up with the Communists.”

  “Churchill has a tremendous appeal abroad.… I never talk politics here,” said the Major vaguely. One day out in the country, where some friends were giving us an al-fresco lunch, we had a slight variation in the political conversation. Portugal is in a state as nearly feudal as the conservative parts of China. There are the uneducated peasants and the educated white-collar workers, with nothing in between, and way up above are the millionaires. The white-collar workers are under constant pressure to make more money, to keep up appearances and to eat, because the cost of living has gone up tremendously and food is not so plentiful as it used to be. The peasant’s anxieties are ancient ones, heightened to some extent by the same inflation which worries the white-collar people, but then the peasants don’t feel they have to keep up appearances. They have to keep an adequate amount of food in their bellies, which in the end leads to a higher anxiety than the other, especially nowadays. Most of the money in Portugal still belongs to the few who had it before. It was such a family of landowners who entertained us, and the party was completely charming. Peasant girls in holiday costume waited on us, and a man with a concertina played, and the servants danced and sang, and we drank wine from the family’s vineyards and ate oil from their olives, and then all of a sudden the man on my right, who couldn’t usually speak English, discovered that he had the gift of tongues.