Letters from England

Front matter

LETTERS FROM ENGLAND

BY KAREL ČAPEK

TRANSLATED BY PAUL SELVER

First Impressions

IN ENGLAND

First Impressions

YOU must begin from the beginning,” I was advised, but as I have now been for ten days on this Babel of an island the beginning has got lost. What am I to begin with? Fried bacon, or the Exhibition at Wembley? Mr. Shaw, or the London policemen? I see that my beginning is very muddled; but with regard to these policemen I must remark that they are recruited according to their beauty and size; they are like gods, a head taller than mortal men, and their power is unlimited. When one of these bobbies, two metres high, raises his hand in Piccadilly, Saturn comes to a standstill and Uranus stops on his celestial path waiting until Bobby lowers his hand again. I have never seen anything so super human.

The greatest surprise for a traveller is when he discovers in a foreign country what he has read about or seen in pictures hundreds of times. I was amazed when I found the Milan Cathedral at Milan or the Coliseum at Rome. The effect is a little uncanny; you have the feeling that you have already been there at some time, perhaps in a dream, or that in some way or other you are repeating an experience of long ago. You are startled to find that there really are windmills and canals in Holland, and that the London Strand actually contains so many people that it quite upsets you.

There are two impressions which are completely fantastic: to discover something unexpected, and to discover something altogether familiar. One is always taken aback to meet an old acquaintance unawares. Well, in the same way I was astonished when I discovered the Houses of Parliament by the Thames, gentlemen in grey top-hats in the streets, two-metre bobbies at the cross roads, and so on. It was astonishing to find that England is really so English.

But to begin actually from the beginning I will draw a little picture of how England looks when you approach it from the English Channel.

The white part consists simply of rocks, and grass grows on the top. It is built quite solidly on rock, so to say; but to have a continent under your feet feels somewhat safer, I must admit. Now I will draw Folkestone, where I disembarked. In the sunset it looked like a castle with battlements; later it turned out that these were only chimneys. Having landed, I discovered to my horror that I could neither speak nor understand a word of English. So I hid myself in the nearest train; fortunately it proved to be bound for London. On the journey I observed that what I had regarded as England is really only a large English park, just fields and meadows, lovely trees, adorable field paths, with sheep here and there, as in Hyde Park. There are surprisingly few people about; in Czechoslovakia one is accustomed to see somebody busying himself on every inch of the soil.

At last the train bores its way between houses of a curious sort; there are a hundred of them entirely alike; then a whole streetful alike; and again, and again. This produces the effect of a fashion craze. The train flies past a whole town which is beset by some terrible curse; inexorable Fate has decreed that each house shall have two pillars at the door. For another huge block she has decreed iron balconies. The following block she has perpetually condemned to grey bricks. On another mournful street she has relent lessly imposed blue verandahs. Then there is a whole quarter doing penance for some unknown wrong by placing five steps before every front door. I should be enormously relieved if even one house had only three; but for some reason that is not possible. And another street is entirely red.

Then I stepped out of the train and fell into the arms of a guardian angel speaking a language I could understand. I was guided to the right and to the left, up and down; I can tell you, it was fearful.

They bundled me into another train and took me out at Surbiton, comforted and fed me, and laid me in a feather bed, and there was darkness, just as at home, stillness, just as at home, and the dreams I dreamed were of all sorts, something about the steamer, something about Prague, and something strange, which I have forgotten.

I thank Heaven that I did not have fifty dreams alike, one after the other. I thank Heaven that dreams at least are not turned out wholesale.

The English Park

The English Park

THE trees are perhaps the most beautiful things in England. Of course the meadows and the policemen too, but chiefly the trees, splendidly broad shouldered, ancient, generous, free, venerable, vast trees. Trees of Hampton Court, Richmond Park, Windsor, and I know not where else besides. It is possible that these trees have a great influence on Toryism in England. I think they preserve the aristocratic instincts, the historical sense. Conservatism, tariffs, golf, the House of Lords, and other odd and antique things. I should probably be a rabid Radical if I lived in the Street of the Iron Balconies or in the Street of the Grey Bricks; but sitting under an ancient oak tree in the park at Hampton Court I was seriously tempted to acknowledge the value of old things, the high mission of old trees, the harmonious comprehensiveness of tradition, and the legitimacy of esteem for everything that is strong enough to preserve itself for ages. It seems that in England there are many such ancient trees; in nearly everything that is met with here, in the clubs, in the literature, in the homes, you can somehow feel the timber and foliage of aged, venerable, and fearfully solid trees. As a matter of fact, nothing conspicuously new can be seen here—only the Tube is new, and perhaps that is why it is so ugly. But old trees and old things contain imps, eccentric and jocular sprites: the English also contain pixies. They are enormously solemn, solid and venerable; suddenly there is a sort of rumbling within them, they make a grotesque remark, a fork of pixie-like humour flies out of them, and once more they have the solemn appearance of an old leather armchair.

I do not know why, but this sober England strikes me as the most fairylike and romantic of all countries which I have seen. Perhaps this is on account of the old trees. Or no, it is perhaps the result of the greensward. It is because you walk here across the fields instead of upon footpaths. We Continental people do not venture to walk except on roads and paved paths; this certainly has a huge influence upon the development of our minds. When I saw the first gentleman strolling across the greensward in the park at Hampton Court, I imagined that he was a creature from fairyland, although a top-hat; I expected that he would ride into Kingston upon a stag, or that he would begin to dance, or that the park-keeper would come up and give him a terrible wigging. Nothing happened, and at last even I ventured to make my way straight across the grass to an old oak. Nothing happened! Never have I had a feeling of such unrestricted liberty as in that moment. It is very curious; here evidently man is not regarded as an obnoxious animal. Here the dismal tradition is not current that the grass will not grow beneath his hoofs. Here he has the right to walk across the meadow as if he were a wood-nymph or a landed proprietor. I think that this has a considerable influence upon his character and view of the world. It opens up the marvellous possibility of walking elsewhere than along a road, without regarding oneself as a beast of prey, a footpad, or an anarchist.

All this I pondered about beneath an oak tree in the park at Hampton Court, but at least even old roots cause discomfort. Any- how, I am sending you a picture of what an English park looks like. I wanted to draw a stag there as well, but I must admit that I cannot manage it from memory.

London Streets

London Streets

AS regards London itself, it smells of petrol, burnt grass, and tallow, thus differing from Paris, where unto these are added the odour of powder, coffee and cheese. In Prague each street has a different smell; in this respect there is no place to beat Prague. The voices of London are a more complicated matter; the inner districts, such as the Strandor Piccadilly, sound, I assure you, like a spinning-mill with thousands of spindles; it clatters, rattles, whirs, mutters, whizzes and rumbles with thousands of packed motor lorries, buses, cars, and steam tractors; and you sit on the top of a bus which cannot move forward and clatters to no purpose, you are shaken up by its rattling and leap about on your seat like some queer stuffed puppet. Then there are side-streets, gardens, squares, roads and groves and crescents up to the wretched street in Notting Hill, where I am writing this: all of them streets of Two Pillars, streets of Similar Railings, streets of Seven Steps In Front of Each House, and so on; now here, a sort of desperate series of variations on the sound “i” proclaims the milkman, a woeful “ieiei” merely denotes firewood, “uó” is the coalman’s war-cry, and the ghastly yell of a delirious sailor announces that a youth is hawking five cabbage heads in a perambulator. And by night the cats make love as savagely as on the roofs of Palermo, in spite of all reports about English Puritanism. Only the people here are quieter than elsewhere; they talk to each other half-heartedly, and their aim is to get home with the least possible delay. And that is the strangest thing about the English streets: here you do not see respectable ladies telling each other on the kerb what happened at the Smiths or the Greens, nor courting couples strolling arm-in-arm like sleep-walkers, nor worthy citizens seated on their doorstep with their hands on their knees (by the way, here I have not yet seen a carpenter or a locksmith or a workshop or a journeyman or an apprentice; here are nothing but shops, nothing but shops, nothing but Westminster Bank and Midland Bank. Ltd.), nor men drinking in the street, nor benches in the market-square, nor idlers, nor tramps, nor servant-girls, nor pensioners—in short, nothing, nothing, nothing; the London streets are just a gulley through which life flows to get home. In the streets people do not live, stare, talk, stand or sit; they merely rush through the streets. Here the street is not the most interesting of places, where a thousandfold spectacle meets your gaze, and where a thousand adventures address themselves to you; a place where people whistle or scuffle, bawl, flirt, rest, poetize or philosophize, and enjoy life and indulge in jokes or politics and band themselves together in twos, in threes, in families, in throngs, or in revolutions. In our country, in Italy, in France, the street is a sort of large tavern or public garden, a village green, a meeting place, a playground and theatre, an extension of home and doorstep; here it is something which belongs to nobody, and which does not bring anyone closer to his fellows; here you do not meet with people, and things, but merely avoid them.

In our country a man thrusts his head out of the window, and he is right in the street. But the English home is separated from the street not merely by a curtain in the window, but also by a garden and a railing, ivy, a patch of grass, a door-knocker and age-old tradition. The English home must have its own garden, for the street does not provide it with a queer and delightful pleasaunce; in the garden it must have its own swing or playground, because the street does not provide it with a playground or the diversions of a skating-rink. The poetry of the English home exists at the expense of the English street which is devoid of poetry. And here no revolutionary throngs will ever march through the streets, because these streets are too long. And also too dull.

Thank goodness that there are buses here, vessels of the desert, camels bearing you on their backs through the infinity of bricks and mortar which is London. One of the things which puzzle me is that they do not miss the way, although, for the greater part, they do not steer by sun or stars, owing to the cloudy condition of the atmosphere here. I still do not know by what secret signs the driver distinguishes Ladbroke Grove from Great Western Road or Kensington Park Road. I do not know why he should prefer to take a trip to East Acton, instead of riding to Pimlico or Hammersmith. For all these places are so curiously alike that I cannot imagine why he should have specialized in East Acton. Perhaps he has a house there, one of those with two pillars and seven steps by the door. These houses look rather like family vaults; I tried to make a drawing of them, but do what I would, I was unable to obtain a sufficiently hopeless appearance; besides, I have no grey paint to smear over them.

Before I forget: of course, I went to look at Baker Street, but I came back terribly disappointed. There is not the slightest trace of Sherlock Holmes there: it is a business thoroughfare of unexampled respectability, which serves no higher purpose than to lead to Regent’s Park, which, after a long endeavour, it almost manages to achieve. If we also briefly touch upon its underground railway station, we have exhausted every thing, including our patience.

Traffic

Traffic

BUT as long as I live I shall never become reconciled to what is known here as “traffic,” that is, the volume of vehicles in the streets. I recall with horror the day on which they first brought me to London. At the outset they conveyed me by train, then they rushed through some huge glass halls and thrust me into a barred cage which looks like scales for weighing cattle; this is a lift, and down it went through an ugly steel-plated well, whereupon they drew me out and led me through serpentine subterranean passages; it was like a nightmare. Then there was a sort of tunnel or channel with railway lines, and a snorting train flew in; they hurled me into it, and the train flew on; the atmosphere was oppressive with a mildewy closeness, evidently owing to the proximity of hell, thereupon they again took me out and rushed me through new catacombs to a moving stair case, which clatters like a mill and hastens upwards with the people on it; I tell you, it is like a fever. Then more stairs and staircases, and in spite of my objections they led me out into the street, where my heart sank. Without end or interruption moves a fourfold girdle of vehicles; buses, panting mastodons dashing along in droves with flocks of tiny mortals on their backs; purring motor-cars, lorries, steam engines, cyclists, buses, buses, flying packs of motor-cars, people rushing along, tractors, ambulances, people scrambling like squirrels on to the tops of buses, a new flock of motor elephants, that’s it, and now it all comes to a standstill, a grunting and rattling flood, and it cannot move forward; but I cannot move forward either, recalling the horror which was then roused in me by the idea that I must get to the other side of the street. I managed it with a certain amount of success, and since then I have crossed the London streets on countless occasions, but as long as I live I shall never become reconciled to it.

Then I returned from London, crushed, despairing, overwhelmed in mind and body; for the first time in my life I experienced a blind and furious repugnance to modern civilization. It seemed to me that there was something barbarous and disastrous in this dread accumulation of people; it is said that there are seven and a half millions of them here, but I did not count them. I only know that my first impression of this huge assembly was almost a tragic one; I felt uneasy and I had a boundless yearning for Prague, as if I were a child who had lost its way in a forest. Yes, I may as well confess to you that I was afraid; I was afraid that I should get lost, that I should be run over by a motor-bus, that something would happen to me, that it was all up with me, that human life is worthless, that man is a large-sized bacillus swarming by the million on a sort of mouldy potato, that perhaps the whole thing

was only a bad dream, that mankind would perish as the result of some dreadful catastrophe, that man is powerless, that for no reason whatever I should burst out crying, and that everyone would laugh at me—the whole seven and a half millions of them. Perhaps some time later on I shall realize what at the first sight of it frightened me so much and filled me with endless uneasiness. But never mind now, to-day I have become a little used to it; I walk, run, move out of the way, ride, climb to the tops of vehicles or rush through lifts and tubes just like anyone else, but only on one condition—that I do not think about it. As soon as I want to bear in mind what is happening around me, I again have the tormenting feeling of something evil, ghastly and disastrous, for which I am no match. And then, do you know, I am unbearably distressed. And sometimes the whole lot comes to a standstill for half an hour, simply because there is too much of it. Sometimes at Charing Cross a knot is formed, and before they unravel it, there is a stoppage of conveyances from the Bank to somewhere in Brompton Road, and in the meanwhile you in your vehicle can reflect on what it will be like in twenty years. As such a congestion arises quite often, many people reflect about this. It has not yet been decided whether they are to walk on the roofs or under the earth; the only certain thing is that it cannot be done on the earth—which is a remarkable achievement of modern civilization. As regards myself, I give precedence to the earth, like the giant Antaeus. I have drawn you a picture, but the real thing is even worse, because it roars like a factory. On the other hand, the chauffeurs do not sound their hooters like mad and the people do not call each other names; they are such quiet people.

In the meanwhile I have found out, among other things, that the wild cry “o-ei-o” in the street means potatoes; “oi” is oil, and “u-u” is a bottle of something mysterious. And sometimes in the most important streets a whole band takes up its position on the edge of the kerb and plays, blowing trumpets, beating drums and collecting pennies, or an Italian tenor comes in front of the windows and sings “Rigoletto,” “Trovatore,” or a fervid song of yearning, just as in Naples. But I have met only a single person who whistled; it was in Cromwell Road, and he was a negro.

Hyde Park

Hyde Park

AND when I felt most depressed in this country of England—it was an English Sunday, blighted by unutterable boredom—I made my way along Oxford Street; I simply wanted to go eastwards, so as to be nearer my native land, but I made a mistake in the direction and journeyed due west, whereupon I found myself by Hyde Park. It is there known as Marble Arch, because of a marble gateway, which leads nowhere; I really do not know why it stands there. I felt rather sorry for it, so I went to inspect it; and while doing so, I saw something and hurried up to see what it was, because of the crowds of people that were there. And when I realized what was happening, I at once felt more cheerful.

It was a large open space, and anyone who like to, can bring along a chair or a platform or nothing at all, and can start talking. After awhile he has five or twenty or three hundred people listening to him; they answer him, raise objections, nod their heads and some times they join the orator in singing sacred or profane hymns. Sometimes an opponent gets the people on to his side and begins to hold forth on his own; sometimes the crowd divides by a mere splitting and swelling like the lowest organisms and cell colonies. Some clusters are of a firm and steadfast consistency, others perpetually crumble and overflow, increase in size, become distended, multiply or scatter. The larger churches have perambulating pulpits, but most of the orators simply stand on the ground, suck at a moist cigarette and preach about vegetarianism, about God, about education, about reparations, or about spiritualism. Never in my life have I seen anything like it.

Because, sinful man that I am, I had not been present at any preaching for several years, I went to listen. Prompted by mod- esty I joined only a small and quiet group; the speaker there was a hunch-backed youth with fine eyes, evidently a Polish Jew; after some considerable time I realized that his subject was merely schooling, and I passed over to a large crowd where an old gentleman in a top-hat was jumping about in a pulpit. I ascertained that he represented some Hyde Park Mission; he flung his hands about so much that I was afraid he would tumble over the hand-rail. At another crowd a middle aged lady was preaching; I am by no means opposed to feminine emancipation, but the female voice, you know—well, one simply cannot listen to it. As a public speaker woman has been handicapped by nature on account of her vocal organs. When a lady speechifies, I always have the feeling that I am a small boy and that my mamma is scolding me. Why this English lady with the pince-nez was scolding I did not properly comprehend; I only know that she was shouting to us that we should look into our hearts. At another crowd a Catholic was preaching beneath a high crucifix; for the first time in my life I beheld the proclaiming of the faith to heretics. It was extremely nice and concluded with song, in which I attempted to sing alto; unfortunately I did not know the tune. A few crowds were devoted exclusively to song; in their midst a little man takes his stand with a baton, gives the note and the whole crowd sings, and indeed in a very decent and polyphonic manner. I wanted to listen in silence, for I don’t belong to this parish, but my neighbour, a gentleman in a top-hat, urged me to sing too, so I sang aloud and glorified the Lord without words and without tune. A pair of lovers comes this way, the youth takes the cigarette from his mouth and sings, the girl also sings, an old lord sings, and a youth with a cane under his arm sings, and the shabby little man in the midst of the circle gracefully conducts as in Grand Opera; no thing here has pleased me so much before. I sang with two other churches besides this and listened to a sermon on Socialism and to the gospel of a Metropolitan Secular Society; I stood for a while by some tiny debating groups; one extremely tattered gentleman was vindicating the conservative principles of society, but he spoke with such a dreadful Cockney accent that I did not understand him at all. His adversary was an evolutionary socialist, who had every appearance of being a superior bank clerk. Another group comprised only five members; there was a brown Indian, a one-eyed man wearing a cap, a stout Armenian Jew and two taciturn men with pipes; the one-eyed man declared with a fearful pessimism that “something is sometimes nothing,” while the Indian advocated the more cheerful view that “something is sometimes something,” which he repeated twenty times in very tumbledown English. Then there was an old fellow standing there who held a long cross and on it a banner with the inscription, “Thy Lord calleth thee”; he was saying something in a weak and husky voice, but nobody was listening to him. So I, a lost foreigner, came to a standstill and supplied him with an audience of one. Then I wanted to go my way, for it was already night; but I was stopped by a man in a nervous state, but I do not know what he said to me; I told him that I was a stranger, that London was a terrible affair, but that I was fond of the English; that I had already been about the world a little, but that few things pleased me so much as the orators in Hyde Park. Before I had told him all this twenty people were standing round and quietly listening; I might have endeavoured to found a new church, but no sufficiently indubitable article of faith occurred to me, and besides I do not know English well enough, so I cleared off.

Behind the railings in Hyde Park the sheep were grazing; and when I looked at them, one, evidently the oldest, stood up and began to bleat; so I listened to its sheepish preaching, and not until it had had its say did I go home, contented and purified as if after divine service. I might make this a starting point for admirable reflections on democracy, the English character, the need for faith and other things; but I would rather leave the whole occurrence in its natural beauty.

In the Natural History Museum

In the Natural History Museum

HAVE you been to the British Museum?”

“Have you seen the Wallace Collection?”

“Have you been to the Tate Gallery yet?”

“Have you seen Madame Tussaud’s?”

“Have you had a look at South Kensington Museum?”

“Have you been to the National Gallery?”

Yes, yes, yes, I have been everywhere; but now permit me to sit down and talk about something else. What was I going to say? Yes, nature is strange and mighty: and I, an unwearied pilgrim to pictures and statues, must confess that I derived the greatest delight from the sea-shells and crystals in the Natural History Museum. Of course, the mammoths and iguanoda are also very fine; likewise the fish, the butterflies, the antelopes and the other beasts of the field; but the sea-shells and conches are the prettiest, for they look as if they had been created for its amusement by a divinely playful spirit, fascinated by countless possibilities. They are pink, tempting like a girl’s mouth, purple, amber-coloured, mother-of-pearl and black, white, streaked, heavy as an anvil and as filigree as Queen Mab’s powder-puff, twisted, fluted, spiky, oval, bearing a likeness to kidneys, eyes, lips, arrows, helmets and nothing on earth; translucent, opalescent, dainty, terrifying and indescribable. What was I going to say? Yes, when I was passing through the hordes and treasures of art, the collections of furniture, weapons, garments, carpets, carvings, porcelain, things chased, engraved, woven, kneaded, hammered, inlaid, and painted, enamelled and embroidered and woven, I again saw: nature is strange and mighty. All these are other sea-shells, produced by the urge of another divine and vehement playfulness; all this was put forth by a soft and naked snail, trembling with creative frenzy. O magnificent tiny thing, Natsuke of Japan or eastern fabric, if I could have you with me at home, how I should prize you! As a human secret, the manifestation of a mortal, a speech strange and graceful. But in this terrible and un bounded accumulation there are no individual objects, nor personal hands nor history; here is only frenzied nature, animal creativeness, a fantastic abundance of strange and beauti- ful sea-shells collected from a timeless ocean. Be ye also like nature; create, create, things strange, beautiful, fluted or twisted, pied and translucent; the more lavishly, strangely and purely you create, the nearer will you be to nature or perhaps to God. Mighty is nature.

But I must not forget the crystals, their shapes, laws and colours. There are crystals as big as cathedral pillars, delicate as mildew and sharp as needles; plain, blue, green like nothing in the world, of fiery colours or black; mathematical, perfect, like the contrivances of queer and bewildered sages; or recalling livers, hearts, gigantic human organs and animal fluids. There are crystalline caves or spectral bubbles or mineral dough; there is mineral fermenting, grilling, growth, architecture and engineering; I vow that a Gothic church is not the most complicated of crystals. Even within us there persists a crystalline power; even Egypt crystallized in pyramids and obelisks, Greece in pillars, Gothic in pinaches and London in cubes of black mud; countless laws of structure and composition pass through matter like secret mathematical lightning flashes. We must be exact, mathematical and geometrical, in order to be equal to nature. Number and fantasy, law and abundance are the feverish forces of nature; not sitting down beneath a green tree, but creating crystals and ideas denotes becoming as nature; creating laws and forms: penetrating matter with glowing flashes of divine computation.

Ah, how scantily eccentric, how scantily daring and precise is poetry!