How to be a Brit

into
metal or metal nails into wood, they call a strike for two or three months. In
other words (and this is the Basic Law of English Labour) if two Englishmen are
equally eager to do a job, the job is sure to be left undone.
    Normally, in the factory,
workshop or office, they use their working day to build up energy for those
fatiguing hours of leisure when they weed, dig and hoe the garden, play golf,
redecorate the spare bedroom, build a shed in the backyard, etc., etc. It is
little wonder that when at last they go to bed they are inclined to believe
that the time for rest has arrived. They are in zag again all right.
     

     

EVERYBODY IS HUNGARIAN
     
    But the time has
come to stop prevaricating. For the last eighty odd pages of this book — I am
sorry to admit this, but it’s true — I have been doing nothing but raise false
hopes. You cannot become an Englishman, try as you may. Because the simple
truth is this: everybody is Hungarian. This is a basic and irrefutable theorum
like that of Pythagoras.
    Pythagoras was no relation
of mine; but I am proud to report that the second theorem was discovered by my
wife. One evening, while reading a certain biography, I exclaimed: ‘Oh!...’ She
looked at me enquiringly from the other armchair. I explained that I had just
discovered that the parents of Alfred Adler were Hungarian. She replied briefly
and concisely:
    ‘So what?’
    I do not like the expression,
particularly when my important and sensational statements are greeted with it.
Before I could protest, however, my wife added: ‘Why shouldn’t they be
Hungarian? Everybody is Hungarian.’
    And she returned to her
book.
    I do not know how
Pythagoras’s spouse received the news when her husband first said to her: ‘I
say, darling, did it ever strike you that the square on the hypotenuse, etc.,
etc.’ But it certainly stands to my everlasting credit that as soon as my wife
uttered her theorem I saw the light. I knew it was true and irrefutable.
Of course, everybody is Hungarian. It seemed incredible that no one had thought
of this theorem before.
    It is true on various
planes.

    1. London is a great
English city, but it is also a small Hungarian village. Most Hungarians living
in London will tell you that while they do not avoid other Hungarians, it so
happens that they do not know any of them. Well, of course, their immediate
circle consists of Hungarians — a few former school-mates, relations, etc. —
but apart from these thirty or forty people, they simply do not know any
Hungarians in London. A few minutes afterwards you happen to ask them to
recommend a doctor, a solicitor, a dentist, or a dressmaker and they will
recommend a Hungarian doctor, solicitor, dentist, or dressmaker who is reputed
to be the best in England. They happen to know a Hungarian cobbler round the
corner who is a genius of his craft and a Hungarian tailor who puts Savile Row
to shame. We all know where to buy Hungarian salami, sausages and apricot
brandy. We all go to various Hungarian restaurants where they cook exactly as
our mothers did. We go to see Hungarian dancers in Shaftesbury Avenue, to
listen to Hungarian violinists in Wigmore Hall, to applaud Hungarian runners at
the White City, to watch Hungarian football players at Wembley — and so on,
there is always something. I do not quite know how it is with others; but I,
personally, have not seen an Englishman in London for over two years.
    2. Yes, of course,
everybody is Hungarian. And if he isn’t then his father or his grandmother was.
Alexander Korda, the father of the British film industry, is one of the very
obvious examples. When Leo Amery — one of the flag-bearers of the British
Imperial idea — died, I learned from his obituaries that his mother had been Hungarian.
Leslie Howard, the incarnation, indeed the prototype — both in manners and in
appearance — of the modem Briton, was... Well, need I go on? I am Hungarian;
Andr£ Deutsch is Hungarian. Nicolas Bentley, by now, is at least half
Hungarian. Queen Mary was not a Hungarian. But whenever she received a
Hungarian she was fond of telling him that two of her grandparents were.
    3. You may ask: ‘But what
about those few — infinitesimal as their number may be — who are, in spite of
everything, not Hungarians?’
    Well, they are being
Magyarized at breath-taking speed. I know quite a few Hungarians who have not
learnt one single word of English in all the years they have been living here.
In fact,