How to be a Brit

otherwise you are judged an exotic and
barbarous bird without any hope of ever being able to take your place in
civilised society.
    If you are invited to an
English home, at five o’clock in the morning you get a cup of tea. It is either
brought in by a heartily smiling hostess or an almost malevolently silent maid.
When you are disturbed in your sweetest morning sleep you must not say: ‘Madame
(or Mabel), I think you are a cruel, spiteful and malignant person who deserves
to be shot.’ On the contrary, you have to declare with your best five o’clock
smile: ‘Thank you so much. I do adore a cup of early morning tea, especially
early in the morning.’ If they leave you alone with the liquid, you may pour it
down the washbasin.

    Then you have tea for
breakfast; then you have tea at eleven o’clock in the morning; then after
lunch; then you have tea for tea; then after supper; and again at eleven
o’clock at night.
    You must not refuse any
additional cups of tea under the following circumstances: if it is hot; if it
is cold; if you are tired; if anybody thinks that you might be tired; if you
are nervous; if you are gay; before you go out; if you are out; if you have
just returned home; if you feel like it; if you do not feel like it; if you
have had no tea for some time; if you have just had a cup.
    You definitely must not
follow my example. I sleep at five o’clock in the morning; I have coffee for
breakfast; I drink innumerable cups of black coffee during the day; I have the
most unorthodox and exotic teas even at tea-time.
    The other day, for instance
— I just mention this as a terrifying example to show you how low some people
can sink — I wanted a cup of coffee and a piece of cheese for tea. It was one
of those exceptionally hot days and my wife (once a good Englishwoman, now
completely and hopelessly led astray by my wicked foreign influence) made some
cold coffee and put it in the refrigerator, where it froze and became one solid
block. On the other hand, she left the cheese on the kitchen table, where it
melted. So I had a piece of coffee and a glass of cheese.

SEX
     
    Continental people have sex life; the
English have hot-water bottles.
     

A WORD ON SOME PUBLISHERS
     
    I
heard of a
distinguished, pure-minded English publisher who adapted John Steinbeck’s
novel, The Grapes of Wrath , so skilfully that it became a charming
little family book on grapes and other fruits, with many illustrations.
    On the other hand, a
continental publisher in London had a French political book, The Popular
Front , translated into English. It became an exciting, pornographic book,
called The Popular Behind .
     

THE LANGUAGE
     
    When I arrived in England I
thought I knew English. After I’d been here an hour I realized that I did not
understand one word. In the first week I picked up a tolerable working
knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually but
thoroughly that I would never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is
sad. My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.
    Remember that those five
hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole
vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and another five
thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further
fifty thousand you have never heard of before, and nobody else either.
    If you live here long
enough you will find out to your greatest amazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective the language possesses, in spite of the fact that in
the first three years you do not need to learn or use any other adjectives. You
can say that the weather is nice, a restaurant is nice, Mr Soandso is nice, Mrs
Soandso’s clothes are nice, you had a nice time, and all this will be very
nice.
    Then you have to decide on
your accent. You will have your foreign accent all right, but many people like
to mix it with something else. I knew a Polish Jew who had a strong
Yiddish-Irish accent. People found it fascinating though slightly exaggerated.
The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign
accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your
teeth and finish all your sentences with the question: ‘isn’t it?’ People will
not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most
excellent impression.

    I have known quite a number
of foreigners who tried hard to