le, sitting in the old places. Surrey is full of rich
stockbrokers, company-promoters, bookies, judges, newspaper proprietors.
Sort of people who fence the paths across their parks. They do something
to the old places--I don't know what they do--but instantly the
countryside becomes a villadom. And little sub-estates and red-brick
villas and art cottages spring up. And a kind of new, hard neatness. And
pneumatic tyre and automobile spirit advertisements, great glaring
boards by the roadside. And all the poor people are inspected and rushed
about until they forget who their grandfathers were. They become villa
parasites and odd-job men, and grow basely rich and buy gramophones.
This Essex and yonder Surrey are as different as Russia and Germany. But
for one American who comes to look at Essex, twenty go to Godalming and
Guildford and Dorking and Lewes and Canterbury. Those Surrey people are
not properly English at all. They are strenuous. You have to get on or
get out. They drill their gardeners, lecture very fast on agricultural
efficiency, and have miniature rifle ranges in every village. It's a
county of new notice-boards and barbed-wire fences; there's always a
policeman round the corner. They dress for dinner. They dress for
everything. If a man gets up in the night to look for a burglar he puts
on the correct costume--or doesn't go. They've got a special scientific
system for urging on their tramps. And they lock up their churches on a
week-day. Half their soil is hard chalk or a rationalistic sand, only
suitable for bunkers and villa foundations. And they play golf in a
large, expensive, thorough way because it's the thing to do.... Now here
in Essex we're as lax as the eighteenth century. We hunt in any old
clothes. Our soil is a rich succulent clay; it becomes semi-fluid in
winter--when we go about in waders shooting duck. All our fingerposts
have been twisted round by facetious men years ago. And we pool our
breeds of hens and pigs. Our roses and oaks are wonderful; that alone
shows that this is the real England. If I wanted to play golf--which I
don't, being a decent Essex man--I should have to motor ten miles into
Hertfordshire. And for rheumatics and longevity Surrey can't touch us. I
want you to be clear on these points, because they really will affect
your impressions of this place.... This country is a part of the real
England--England outside London and outside manufactures. It's one with
Wessex and Mercia