Over There

It must be the accent. Or, some genetic memory or pre-disposition. Or, Cary Grant. It isn’t really the old country or The Birthplace of Civilization. As an American people, we did grow up and become independent, but the ties, if hard to identify or understand, are really there. Being an Anglophile isn’t for everyone, but there are enough of you out there to have a conversation and I’d be happy to talk about it with you, anytime.

I have always thought that my forebears either appeared, out of the English mist, at a time close to the beginning of our nation or, on my father’s side, from some horse thief, who had to take ship for the New World to avoid hanging. Those stately homes and wide swaths of green (I love that word - swath) have always been of interest. There’s a lot to like about these guys. And, though I have many American heroes and even a couple from obscure countries like France, Croatia, and Tibet, many of my heroes are English. Merlin, Arthur, Robin Hood, Shakespeare, Churchill, and the Beatles. No matter where they’re from, these guys are the real thing.

I have an ideal landscape in mind that has more to do with Constable, than Van Gogh. And, oh my God, I’m drinking tea at this very moment! I like Alec Guinness movies and characters like Tom Jones, Winnie the Pooh, and Sherlock Holmes. Cricket is a complete mystery, but the greens of St. Andrews and the grass at Wimbledon are pretty compelling. And, the whole place is an island. One that not only is romantic – ships, a bit of isolation, and pirates, but, being in the water like that, it is connected to every other place on the globe. Okay, to be fair, they, the British, did make the mistake of Empire, but so has everyone else.

As far as intellectual reputation goes, Oxford and Cambridge, no matter how stuffy, still somehow float above Harvard and Yale. Everyone says that the food is nothing to write home about, but what about the invention of the sandwich? Where would we be without that? Or, English Muffins?

There’s always the suspicion that they know something we don’t or, maybe, it’s just that they seem to have bigger vocabularies than we do. Or, maybe they don’t, but, as I said at the beginning, they sound good.

There’s an attraction here. Admit it. Certainly, they have a literary tradition. Shakespeare, Dickens, Conrad (okay, he’s Polish), Gilbert and Sullivan, John le Carre, Douglas Adams. These guys can really write and they’re writing in our language. Or, we’re writing in theirs. Or, something like that. You see, the whole thing is confusing. And, really, too much has been made of it. We admire them and we think they’re crazy, just like we do everyone else.

But, maybe we’re not really that different. Maybe all this nationalism and patriotic distinction is a little overdone and anachronistic. Couldn’t we just put our arm around their shoulders and say, ‘let’s get a beer.’? We could hang out and compare the differences and, I bet, after the second beer, we’d be talking more about our similarities, than anything else. The distinction between Anglophiles and Anglos would become less important as time went on and, before the night was over, we’d be toasting each other and singing the words to songs that we all know, like Penny Lane and Mustang Sally.

Having made this connection, maybe we could begin to see the beauty in, who knows, France? Or, even Greece? It’s this separation that is beginning to be tiresome. There’s geography, but there are also airplanes. And, telephones. And, the Net. It’s a brave new world and we’re all overdue to appreciate the similarities, expand upon them, and then move on to the next frontier. This time, as friends, as admirers, as just glad to be here, as lucky inhabitants of this wonderful world.