Anglomania by Ian Buruma Read Free Book Online

Voltaire’s view of English was similar, but with an odd Voltairean twist. Ten years after he had left England, he wrote about the language he had so studiously acquired: “The force of that idiom is wonderfully heightened by the nature of the government which allows the English to speak in public, and by the liberty of conscience, which makes them more conversant in the Scripture and hath rendered the language of the Prophets so familiar to them that their poetry savours very much of that Eastern out-of-the-way sublimity; nay, 60 or 80 years ago all the speeches in Parliament were crammed with expressions taken from the Jewish writings.” Knowing what he thought of prophets and Jewish writings, I find it hard to tell if he meant this as a compliment or a criticism. But it was a rather Anglican thing to say: he could admire the style of religion without dwelling too much on the content.
    Voltaire’s study of the English language did not involve Scripture, however. He learnt English at the theater, much as people now acquire it at the movies. He would sit in the stalls at Drury Lane, often in the company of Colley Cibber, the actor-dramatist, and follow the playwith the help of a script provided by the prompter, one W. R. Chetwood. Perhaps as a result, Voltaire picked up idioms more suited to the green rooms and coffeehouses than to polite society. There are stories to suggest that Voltaire was sometimes confused. His first dinner with Pope, for example, ended in a social disaster. This is how it was related to Thomas Gray: “As he [Voltaire] supped one night with Mr Pope at Twickenham, he fell into a fit of swearing and of blasphemy about his constitution. Old Mrs Pope asked him how his constitution came to be so bad at his age. ‘Oh! (says he) those damned Jesuits, when I was a boy, bugger’d me to such a degree that I shall never get over it as long as I live.’ ” Mrs. Pope, mortified, showed Voltaire the door.
    Voltaire’s enthusiasm for the English theater was not without reservations. For him, Shakespeare was at best a savage kind of genius, lacking in classical grace and ignorant of the Aristotelian principles that Voltaire believed to be indispensible to good theater. In this respect, Voltaire was a typical Frenchman of his time. But there is a parallel here too with modern attitudes to America, particularly Hollywood. Voltaire likened the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays in England to the plebeian taste for spectacles, such as cockfights. In a letter to Lord Lyttelton, Voltaire observed (in somewhat eccentric English) how the English theater was full of “wild scenes,” “tumultuous events,” “comical expressions,” and “bloody deeds.” Even the politest English theater audiences “in point of tragedy” had the taste of “the Mob at Bear-garden.” The French theater, he admitted, was a little wordy, but English entertainment had far too much action. Perfection would be a “due mixture of the French taste and the English energy.”
    Voltaire was in fact objecting to the result of the very liberties, commercial as well as social, that he professed to admire. Like many admirers of the United States today, Voltaire was more in love with the idea of freedom and commercial competition than with its cruder manifestations. What goes for the theater (or American movies) applies to the press as well. A Swiss traveler in England named de Saus-sure remarked in 1727 how the English were “great newsmongers.” He found “nothing more entertaining” than the sight and sound of English workmen in the morning “discussing politics and topics of interest concerning royalty.”
    The British press is still relatively free, but for sheer crassness and vulgarity there is nothing in Europe to match the British tabloids. Itis indeed the taste of the mob at Bear-garden, or whatever its modern equivalent would be—the nastier sections of video rental stores perhaps. Fastidious French or Germans or Dutch look