Looking for Class

by Bruce Feiler

  For the rest of my time I continued this duck and nod with each remark in a kind of seductive waltz with the audience that was not unlike an elaborate shark: nibbling at every bait, maintaining healthy respect, and, of course, talking at all times.

  “As a visitor in this country, it seems to me that the collective imagination of the British stopped about two hundred years ago. Brits, for example, talk about the Battle of Waterloo as if it were fought last weekend. Even the toilet cleaner that my bedder uses is called Waterloo. Cleans up like the Duke of Wellington. Wipes out those tough, Napoleonic stains.

  “I’ll tell you a true story. Last week I went to borrow a nut and bolt from the maintenance man of Clare College. As I was leaving, I said to the man, ‘Thank you very much.’ And in response he turned to me and said, “Hah, don’t mention it. The things we do for you Colonists.”

  The mere mention of the word brought sustained applause.

  “Colonists,” I repeated. “We haven’t been Colonists since the last time Cambridge beat Oxford in rowing.”

  The applause turned to painful whimpers, as one of my two speaking partners shouted, “We’re losing! We’re losing!” I smiled more broadly with every jeer they tossed and every boo they floated. “Time to go to Britain, we say in America, time to set our watches back five hundred years….

  “So you see, ladies and gentlemen, it seems rather obvious to me that when you consider the evidence, most of us would rather be young. Youth, after all, is the time of hope, the time of joy, the time of sexual prime. Take the simple expression ‘Put the bin out.’ To an old man it means lugging the garbage to the curb and stepping in—how do you say?—dog do along the way. To a young man, however, to a Cambridge man who puts out his litter to keep his bedder away, the words ‘Put the bin out’ are the four sexiest words in the English language, for they mean he has something—or rather someone—to hide.”

  It took them a while to deconstruct this line, but eventually they cheered.

  “Now let’s move on to the second notion, ‘This House Would Rather Be Free.’ There are several ways the opposition might attack this point. First, they can say they would prefer to be not free, but in bondage—”

  This line, to my complete surprise, brought virtually uncontrollable applause, so much so that instead of trying to finish my arcane joke about a politician who had been recently caught with a call girl in handcuffs, I decided to leave the audience to their kinky delight and skip on to my next point.

  “Seriously, Mr. President, Cambridge University goes out of its way to restrict freedom as much as possible. Our colleges tell us when to eat (only at mealtime), where to walk (not on the grass), what time to be home (before 2 A.M.), and even who to sleep with. Maybe the opposition likes this, maybe they went to a school where the matron wiped their plates and their bums every evening. I, for one, don’t call this freedom, I call it adolescence. I would rather be Young, Free, and American, ladies and gentlemen, than live in a world where I can’t go on a date without written permission from my tutor.”

  Two sections complete. One to go.

  “Having realized that we would rather be young and free, the only thing left for us to do is convince you that—by definition—you can’t be young and free without also being American.”

  As the boos returned with a vengeance, I pushed on without pause. Starting afresh, I mentioned several countries that came to mind as alternatives to America, singling out Malawi and then Japan (“I, my friends, would rather be Young, Free, and American than live in a country where all the men look like they got their business suits free with a tank of gas”) before finally settling into the main event: the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

  “Most of you, I suspect, when asked to describe an American, would say that Americans are (and feel free to agree) loud”—the cheers concurred—“ignorant”—they grew louder—“materialistic”—they boomed—“and generally, brash.”

  “We’re winning!” my partners cried in mock despair. “We’re winning!”

  “If asked to describe a Brit, on the other hand, you would probably say the British are witty, knowledgeable, understated, and polite.” They certainly agreed with that.

  “Well, I suggest to you that the first definition describes not an American, but an American tourist. While the second definition—gee, the only person it accurately describes is Alistair Cooke. I put it to you, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, that we should not be caught comparing Cambridge students to American tourists. I, for example, would rather be a Cambridge student than be an American tourist. But that is not the point. I would rather be a Cambridge student who is Young, Free, and American than anything else. And let me tell you some of the reasons why….”

  The chamber went silent as I let my voice trail off. I knew that I would wit or wilt with my final section. I had, in a way, been gathering material all year.

  “First, food. British food comes in one flavor: brown. Brown meat. Brown potatoes. Brown gravy. You Brits like gravy a lot,” I said. “You even invented Yorkshire pudding, which, as far as I can tell, purposefully has no taste at all in order to suck up the taste of the gravy. You even put gravy on pudding; you just call it custard.

  “Before I get carried away, I will admit that there are vegetables here. Carrots, for one. And canned peas, for another. But to avoid eating these said vegetables alive, you cook them in the same way as the meat and potatoes: you boil them. In Britain, as you probably know, the most popular spice is water. I, my friends, would rather be Young, Free, and American than be from a country which has perpetual fog that comes from overboiling potatoes.”

  The audience alternated between laughter and applause, but at this point my mind no longer registered their response as I overdosed on the adrenaline of performance and felt I could do no wrong.

  “Next, weather. Weather is one of the great dividers between America and Britain. Weathermen in Britain look at their colleagues in America and get what we might call ‘weather envy.’ America is just so big, with so much weather to cover, they say. The only thing we have to decide in Britain is whether it will be cloudy in the morning and rainy in the afternoon, or the other way around. To compensate for this lack of variety, the weathermen in Britain try to convince us that different parts of the country actually have different weather. As a result, weather reports in this country go something like this: ‘In East Anglia there will be showers in the morning, giving way to continuous rain in the afternoon. In the Midlands, there will be continuous rain in the afternoon, giving way to intermittent showers in the evening. Central England will have intermittent showers in the evening, giving way to wintry showers overnight.’

  “Is there a difference between these things?” I shouted. “Never mind that all of these places are close enough to one another that they can fit under a single cloud. Never mind that all of these places, like every other place in the country, start off most days in gray, spend much of the afternoon in showers, and then end the night in fog. The weathermen say they are different, so they are. But the weathermen miss the point: the great thing about this country, Mr. President, is that you can experience all four seasons in one day.”

  In a month that had already seen rain, sleet, and snow, but no sun, this line worked especially well.

  “But in the end, ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you that the greatest difference between America and Britain is the showers. Bathing in Britain is the ultimate example of intermittent showers. The water often doesn’t come out at all, and, when it does, it either dribbles down the wall like custard on a spoon or goes spraying all over the room like a bottle of champagne. With all the rain in Britain, the only place one is guaranteed to stay dry is underneath the shower, in the dead of winter. Basins, of course, are no better. If you were Young, Free, and American, you could wash your face in warm water.” I cupped my hands together and swung them left and right. “In Britain you have to keep running your hands back and forth between the h
ot and cold.

  “Ultimately, this is the reason to vote in favor of this proposition: America is the land of the free and the home of the choice. If you’re tired of only brown meat and brown sauce…if you’re tired of only hot or cold water…if you’re tired of only two types of weather—intermittent showers and continuous rain—then come to America where you can have a choice.

  “I recently saw a comic strip that showed an American and a Brit buying ice cream. The American says to the man behind the counter, ‘I’ll take one scoop of mocha almond ripple, and one of vanilla butter crunch, with marshmallow and hot fudge sauce, plus sliced almonds on top.’ Meanwhile, the Brit says to the man, ‘Vanilla or chocolate. Er…you choose for me.’

  “Choice, ladies and gentlemen, is the nourishment of the young and the nectar of the free. And choice, above all, is the opposite of class, a system by which everything is done exactly as its always been done. If you were Young, Free, and American, just think of the choices you could have: you could have faucets that don’t drip, and fireplaces that work…you could have rooms that are warm, and toast that is hot…you could have trains that run on time, and telephone numbers that all have the same number of digits…you could buy a drink after eleven-thirty at night, and—most important—you could buy any appliance with the plug already attached.”

  The audience laughed knowingly and the president moved to the edge of his chair.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, in the words of a famous American: Give me liberty, or give me death. Give me youth, or give me death. Give me America, or give me at least a room that has some heat. The night is young. The Colonists are free. Britannia rules no more. Mr. President, I beg to propose the motion.”

  He stood up, applauded, and looked at his watch. I sat down, smiled, and looked at mine. I had spoken for nineteen minutes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the House, I had intended to stand before you tonight and refute the arguments before us, but I’m afraid that we have not got many arguments from the proposition side of the House this evening, so I am on my own.”

  Justin Davies leaned over the dispatch box on the opposition side, tossed back an errant tributary of his well-greased hair, tightened the knot on his black bow tie, and slipped his hand in the tiny crease between his gold pocket watch and his paisley waistcoat. After my initial proposition statement, the president had introduced the first opposition speaker, a bumbling first-year historian from Trinity Hall who promptly spilled a glass of whisky all over his index cards. He was followed in turn by a short, dry speech from the proposition and, after a brief set of comments from the floor, the grand arrival of the savior in black, Mr. Justin Davies: a graduate of Eton, a third-year lawyer from Peterhouse, and a man known throughout the society as someone with prodigious talents, both loquacious and libatious.

  “At this stage of the evening I would like to make it very clear to members of the Union in this House, tonight, that we are prejudiced on our side of the House. And I happily quote to you from H. L. Mencken, an American, from his book called Prejudices. ‘The American people,’ he said, ‘taken one with the other, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, nay ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.”

  The crowd loved that quote so much it nearly burst into a spontaneous chorus of “Rule, Britannia.”

  “But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, let’s look at the motion before us. We have been told by the opposition that, for a start, we should want to be young. Well, I’m not sure young is actually the heaven we have been told it is. For myself, I say give me a seat in the House of Lords any day. We were told about Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo. In the words of W. S. Gilbert: ‘When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte / As every child can tell / The House of Peers throughout the war / Did nothing in particular, and did it very well.’ That, I think, sums up the British way of doing things. We will go on doing nothing in particular and doing it very well.”

  The audience applauded approvingly.

  “Let’s look at the next word, free. I’m in favor of freedom, of course. But Americans carry this to extremes. We don’t have a constitution over here because basically we don’t need one to get along with one another. The reason they have one over there is so they can have silly amendments, like the Twenty-eighth Amendment, which says that Americans have a constitutional right to describe anything over twenty years old as historic. They also have the freedom to carry submachine guns, the freedom to watch sixty-two television channels, and, of course, the freedom to wear bad clothes. Why do Americans talk so loudly? you may have wondered. So they can be heard over their trousers. Just look at the cummerbund and tie of the gentleman opposite, Mr. Feiler, and imagine that every morning in America children have to salute that.”

  The crowd laughed uproariously at my expense, and, as they did, I began to appreciate a fundamental difference between Justin Davies and myself. Justin, unlike me, had not written his speech. He had not practiced in front of a mirror. In fact, he was making it up on the spot. To be sure, he had pulled a few devastating slurs from a book of familiar quotations and jotted down a few notes, but for the most part he was relying on my speech—the proposition—to provide the structure for his, and he was depending on his own quick tongue—loosened by the pint of lager he took with him to the box—to provide the gist for his riposte. I, on the other hand, had researched my speech for days with Simon and his friends, had written it out verbatim on my laptop computer, and later had tested it separately on Ian and Cyprian. Justin’s technique, according to Simon, is what the British proudly cling to as “the Cult of the Amateur.” Never work too hard. Never put yourself out. Never let them see you sweat. Above all, always pretend you’re not doing your best: if you somehow fail, you always have an excuse; and if by chance you succeed, you seem all the more brilliant for your lack of effort and your gentlemanly indifference.

  “Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, what is America? We have been hearing what is wrong with Britain. But let us compare the two sides of the House. We have the Royal Family—we’re proud of them; you have the Kennedys. We have the great Bank of England; you have insider trading. We go to pubs; you go to therapists. You’re not Young, Free, and American, gentlemen; you’re young, free, and Colonial. We gave you the language, we gave you the government, we gave you the Rolling Stones. What did you give us?” His voice rose to a level of bemused derision. “Kentucky Fried Chicken. Thanks a lot, boys, we’re very grateful.

  “And you mention tourists. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I had the unfortunate experience that I don’t think many of you will have had of being a tour manager for Thomas Cook in Egypt when a hundred and fifty Americans went on a cruise ship down the Nile. Now, to start with, two of them died on me—”

  “Two of them died under you,” I said, interrupting in upstanding Union tradition.

  He looked down at me for several seconds, nodded and said, “Are you quite finished…?

  “Anyway,” he continued. “We sailed from Luxor on the most fantastic and perfect evening. The sun was setting and we went out on deck, where someone said, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened to Mrs. Schwartz?’ We had to turn the boat round and go back to Luxor. As tourists, you are the worst. Once, I got woken up at half past three in the morning. The telephone rang in my cabin, and it was the only young American on the boat. ‘Help, help,’ she said, and I thought, ‘My God, heart attack again.’ I rushed down to her cabin in my dressing gown, thinking I had another disaster on my hands, and what had she done—Young, Free, and American? She had Super Glued her hand to the office door. It took me three hours with a pot of nail polish remover to get her hand off the door.”

  The story worked like a charm. The audience nearly fell off its benches.

  “No, my friend, if given the choice, we would not wish to be Young, Free, and American. We would wish to be sent to Nirvana. We’d go to heaven, where the food was French, the government w
as run by the Germans, our sex lives were à la Italian, and the police were British. You look at America, which has about every nationality, and what have you got? The food of the Germans, the government of the French, the police of Italy, and the sex lives of the English….

  “I have to say to you, in conclusion, ladies and gentleman, that I am a Londoner, first and foremost. Secondly, I am an Englishman. And finally, I am British. And I think that litany is one of which to be particularly proud. It’s the First World, and surely still the highest world. I’m glad America exists. I like to see Americans, being Young, Free, and American. It can be very entertaining. But to be it, no thank you. How, indeed, can we support a country that thinks it’s the greatest country on earth because it has more than one flavor of ice cream? Instead of being over the hill, up the river, and under the weather, as they described us, I would say that Americans are—to change the phrase a little—overweight, overdressed, and, thankfully, over there.”

  As the audience roared with patriotic delight, Justin took a valedictory drink, walked over to shake my hand, and returned to the head of his bench. The president stood up, rang the bell, and let loose the rush of students to march through the voting doors. Seventy-five students followed their dreams and walked through the gateway to America; three hundred eighty-seven followed their birthright and opted to stay home.

  XIX

  CLIMBING

  An Anatomy of Hip

  In short, whoever you may be

  To this conclusion, you’ll agree,

  When everyone is somebodee,

  Then no one’s anybody.

  —Gilbert and Sullivan

  The Gondoliers, 1889

  “Excuse me, sir, are you a somebody?”

  I tapped a bearded third-year on the shoulder as he passed me carrying a pint of Guinness toward the back of the JCR. It was late Thursday night, the common room was almost empty, and the fluorescent light above me had been shattered in a fight.