The Last Word is the final chapter of Conseils a un Jeune Francais Partant Pour L’Angleterre by Andre Maurois, Editions Bernard Grasset, 1938.  If you want to read this short book from the

Above all, be joyful about the way England looks. 

You will love the countryside that seems to have been drawn by Constable or Gainsborough. 

You will love the hills, the valleys and the dunes. 

You will love the amiably wild gardens and the mown and ordered lawns. 

You will love London, which in its grey and gold fog, with the red stains of buses and the black stains of policemen, looks like an immense Turner. 

You will love the theatres with their comfortable seats, their indifferent audiences and their short intervals. 

You will love the bookshops, each one like an exotic fruit stall full of tempting surprises, and you will love above all the English version of what it means to be human.

Though don’t say so too loudly.  You’ll only embarrass them.

'never offer to tip the barmaid'

Since the war, at the Saint-Cyr Military College, there has been an English teacher who also prepares our young Frenchmen for their journeys to England.  He takes them to one side and explains certain infinitely detailed little mores.  These may seem minor, but to know them is to avoid distressing new English friends.  I’ll give a brief example of the kind of thing he teaches:

 ‘Never forget that it’s a delicate compliment to your host not to smoke while you’re drinking his Port; it shows that you wouldn’t want to risk masking the flavours of such a rare wine with veils of smoke…

Be polite by preparing to smoke a cigar by first smoking a cigarette …

An English private soldier will be assigned to you as an orderly.  Don’t make it too obvious to him that his English is hard to understand – he’s probably a miner or a metal-worker.  To keep him happy talk about his job and the town where he was born …

Tips.  For hotel porters, if you’re in uniform: a shilling.  If you’re in civvies, sixpence … 

If you go into a pub, never offer to tip the barmaid.  Remember she’s a lady …

If in a castle you discover that your bedroom is haunted, wait for the master of the house to broach the subject.  It’s not good form to bring a man’s attention to his own ghosts.’

You can profit from these valuable pieces of advice: they’re all spot on.

squirrel vs magpie

You’ll find that the English are more sentimental and more capricious than us French.  The films and plays liked by the general public here are swimming in sentimentality.  Clearly we’re no longer in the era when Dickens, at the end of his novels, had to satisfy his public by reassuring them that all his characters ended happily.  But among the English there are many who hang on to the need to believe that England is Paradise on earth. 

They know the weaknesses in human nature, but would be made unhappy if they had to admit to them publicly.  This is the source on one hand of their sentimentality and on the other their need for a moral mask. 

The English sincerely wish to believe that human destiny, but above all their own, is determined by moral scruple.  To make an Englishman do anything, it is only necessary to propose some action which conforms to the interests of his country and which can also, with more or less truthfulness, be described as moral.

Even with animals, or at least the animals they like, the English seek sportsmanlike behaviour.  For them, a good dog is a gentleman; a trout is a lady.  I’ve picked this letter from the Times, written by a clergyman.  He writes:

‘I think that the following story, to which I was a witness, will interest your readers.  This morning, in my garden, two magpies and a squirrel organized a race from the bottom of a tree to the top.  The squirrel climbed up the length of the trunk, while the magpies jumped from branch to branch, and I’m happy to say that neither of the birds took immoral advantage of their ability to fly.  Both of them showed themselves to be genuinely good sports.’

 How charming.  This fine fellow, who himself attaches the highest importance to conventions and rules, shows himself naively convinced that these qualities keep the same value in the world of birds.