“Permission to let the bottom lip wobble, Sir.” (Nick Daffern)
This is a long-standing joke between me and my old mate, Nick, whenever cruel fate inconveniently throws a spanner in the works of our plans for fun and high jinks. It is an ironic take on the hoary old cliché of public-school repression. Whatever you do, you must not cry; ‘blubbers’ were despised, shunned and regarded as womanish. They just didn’t man-up.The public schools of the 19th century, and well into the 20th,bred young men who would rule empire with fortitude and perseverance, even under the most trying circumstances of climate, disease, danger and hostility. They were schooled not to make a fuss but to grin and bear it. Tenacity was what was required.
Like all cliches, there is a grain of truth in this characterisation of the British temperament. We all know about the Victorianideals of hard work, service and duty – to God, Queen and country – which left little room for self-indulgence. Muscular Christianity it was called, most famously associated with Tom Brown’s Schooldays, set in Rugby School, under the headmastership of the famous educator and reformer, Thomas Arnold, who promoted moral and religious principles, widely copied by similar schools, both in Britain and in her colonies. There was certainly no blubbing at these institutions. The stiff upper lip was not for wobbling.
The Duke of Wellington was of the type, famously tight-lipped, taciturn, even brusque…..The Battle of Waterloo was “hard pounding”, his army was made up of “the scum of the earth” and a blackmailer was sent on his way with the uncompromising, “Publish and be damn’d!” At Waterloo, one of his aides, the Earl of Uxbridge, exclaimed, “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!” to which Wellington’s response was a model of sang-froid: “By God, sir, so you have!”, before returning to the business of repelling Napoleon’s Grande Armee. Victorian leaders - statesmen, generals, admirals,administrators, sportsmen, bishops, industrialists and philanthropists – were expected to act like that. This restraint of emotion and a buttoned-up reticence in public continued into the First World War, where private grief remained just that – private. “And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.” (Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen). ‘Keep Calm and Carry On!’ was a slogan put out by the British Government in the Second World War, aiming to boost morale when things were grim. ‘The Spirit of the Blitz’ was a term identifying the stoicism and determination of the British people, with their resolve to make the best of it, to triumph over adversity. The apogee of this suppression of sentiment was to be found in Noel Coward’s and David Lean’s wartime masterpiece, Brief Encounters (1945) about a lonely housewife who falls in love with a stranger. It celebrated the virtues of resolution and calm in the face of adversity.
All very admirable – though modern psychologists might disagree – but was it always like this? Was Britain historically a nation of repressed, emotionally stunted, empty shells? It would seem not. We were not so buttoned up; our lips were not so stiff back in the day. I have just been reading a biography of Lord Nelson. He was the polar opposite to Wellington. His letters positively drip with sentimentality and unchecked emotion. And I am not just talking about his love missives to Emma, Lady Hamilton, which ooze ‘cheese’, as my children would say, but also those to his captains, commanders and his superiors in the Admiralty. Clearly, he was an emotional man and not afraid to show it. I was about to say that he wore his heart on his sleeve but of course one empty sleeve was tucked into his Vice-Admiral’s ‘undress’ blue coat.
Before the Victorian Era, weeping in public was not considered at all de trop. Our history is littered with important figures who turned on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. Queen Mary, (‘Bloody Mary’), daughter of Henry VIII, criedunconsolably when she learned of the loss of her one remaining French possession. “When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais engraved on my heart.” Her half-sister, Elizabeth I, shed bitter tears when she was given news of the execution of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, even though she had signed the death warrant herself. Charles I was deeply upset at the assassination of his court favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. According to witnesses, he threw himself on the floor “lamenting with much passion and with an abundance of tears.” Oliver Cromwell was noted for passionate eruptions and tearful outbursts. George III fell into a paroxysm of grief at the loss of the thirteen colonies. “America is lost!” he wailed.
Literature is full of sorrowful knights, sobbing monks, weeping lovers and pining suiters. The Romantic Poets were not called romantic for nothing. The novels of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Defoe, Austen are populated with emotional fathers, squires, parsons who are not afraid to weep at the exigencies of fate, that might denote financial ruin or public dishonour or private shame… or even at the untimely loss of the faithful family dog or favourite horse. No-one saw it as feminine or shameful. In fact, male weeping was regarded as normal in almost every part of the world for most of recorded history.
So, what changed? When did this shift in popular perception of appropriate public behaviour occur? Social historians are inclined to put it down to the French Revolution (1789-99) and that seems to me to be a perfectly sound premise; it’s always handy to blame the French for anything that we see as unfit. But it is a fact that British royalty and the ruling classes were terrified that the political turmoil and civil violence that marked the Jacobin rebellion would spill over the Channel into England. It is a bit of a myth (peddled by me) that revolution did not take hold in England because the squires and landowners played in the same village cricket teams as their blacksmiths, labourers, farmhands and tenants. Yet it is arguable that the aristocracy in England were a lot closer to their workers than their French counterparts, who were seen as aloof, entitled, rapacious, heartless and frequently just absent. In any case, we had had our own revolution 150 years previously and there was little appetite in the country for round two. The French shed tears copiously. So did the English. But things were changing. There was a general tendency to distance ourselves, both politically and emotionally, from our Gallic cousins and one of these distinctions was in the attitude to weeping. The archetypal strong, silent, restrained, reticent English gentleman was born.
Thus, the social and sexual norms of the Victorian Age were characterised by rigid rules of behaviour, taboo topics and the repression of emotion. Tears in public simply would not do. This stiff upper lippery was inculcated in the public schools, where you must not shed a tear when your parents abandon you for the term or blub at the widespread beatings you suffer. ‘Take it like a man’ was the lesson. In such a way was a boy schooled in the disciplines of life that were seen as necessary for servants of Empire, in the Army, Navy or Civil Service, often in conditions that made life in a cold, damp dormitory seem comparatively easy. I once asked a friend, who had a cousin who been imprisoned for a long time – for murder, would you believe – how he had coped with life behind bars. “Well, he went to boarding school,” he laughed.
Those of a certain age (i.e. me) will remember the 1965 hit single, Turn, Turn, Turn. by The Byrds:
“To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to be born and a time to die…..”
The lyrics are taken directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the King James Bible (not a lot of you knew that, did you?) in which the eternal verities of the circle of life are laid down, that everything is subject to change and nothing is immutable. Not even the stereotype of the buttoned-up Englishman.
So, when did our bottom lip begin to wobble once more? The Swinging Sixties, that era of social upheaval and sexual excess, when we were encouraged to ‘let it all hang out’ and to ‘tune in, turn on and drop out’, might have had something to do with it. Following the grim, post-War years, the social revolution brought about the promise of freedom, hope and optimism for the future but at its heart was the cult of the individual; no longer were we expected to conform to type. We could behave as we liked, free from social constraint. We could, if we wanted, let our emotions run amok (fuelled by drugs, no doubt).
Paul Gascoigne
Two very public outpourings of sentiment we remember very clearly. In the semi-final of the World Cup in 1990, when England were playing Germany, Paul Gascoigne, was controversially booked for a careless tackle. The repercussion of that yellow card was immediately obvious to everyone; Gascoigne would miss the final. Gascoigne was aware of it as much as anyone. In the words of Bobby Robson, the England manager, “His bottom lip looked like a helicopter pad as tears streamed down his face.” The moment was unforgettably caught by the television cameras. Gascoigne was inconsolable. So upset was he that he withdrew from the penalty shoot-out at the end of the game. Stuart Pearce took his place….and missed. England were not going to the final after all. Far from being vilified for his tearful reaction, Gascoigne received nothing but sympathy from the British public. By now, it had become very much alright to cry openly on the world stage.
The second occasion when it became overtly evident that British stoicism and dispassion had been routed was at the news of the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Many accused the British public of emotional incontinence, but the majority of the millions of mourners didn’t care; they wept buckets.
A sea of commemorative flowers for ‘The People’s Princess’
Having been brought up in the drab Fifties, with parents very much steeped in the ‘grin and bear it’ tradition, I find it difficult to reconcile myself with current saccharine manners. “But that’s your problem’” I am constantly chided, “You keep everything bottled up. It’s good to talk. Open up. Let it all hang out. Talk it through. It’s OK not to feel OK,”….and all other cliches.
Ah well. Autres temps, autre mœurs.
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