I should add here that P adores one particular Englishman, the "Chevalier Williams", who seems to have been his Suhm from teenage days onwards; when Williams argues for the first time with him in St. Petersburg, P is ready to jump from the balcony, Rokoko guy that he is, but Williams pulls him back, and they reconcile. This before P meets Catherine, of course. Hover, re: the rest of the nation...
The most amazing thing is their education; contrary to what I've seen everywhere else, where people try to raise their children well, a sense of honor seems to be neglected entirely in English schools. The whip and only the often used whip seems to be the deciding instrument there, and experience speaks of success to the English. (...) When they have finally completet their eighteenth year, sometimes even earlier than that, they should, so everyone there agrees on, go travelling(...). So they go forward, the brain packed with good Latin and some English classics and the conviction that government, the earth, the morals, the taste, and practically everything is better in England than anywhere else in teh world. Thus equipped and full of disregard for all the nations they visit, they are very amazed when they are stared at like one stares at savages whereever they go, because they can't even greet anyone properly, they don't know how to enter a room and how to leave it; since they always have regarded the "shallow French exercises" with contempt and usually can't talk in any language but their own, they by necessity become a burden to everyone, and consequently to themselves as well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Poniatowski - Rule Britannia
Date: 2020-03-05 03:28 pm (UTC)The most amazing thing is their education; contrary to what I've seen everywhere else, where people try to raise their children well, a sense of honor seems to be neglected entirely in English schools. The whip and only the often used whip seems to be the deciding instrument there, and experience speaks of success to the English. (...) When they have finally completet their eighteenth year, sometimes even earlier than that, they should, so everyone there agrees on, go travelling(...). So they go forward, the brain packed with good Latin and some English classics and the conviction that government, the earth, the morals, the taste, and practically everything is better in England than anywhere else in teh world. Thus equipped and full of disregard for all the nations they visit, they are very amazed when they are stared at like one stares at savages whereever they go, because they can't even greet anyone properly, they don't know how to enter a room and how to leave it; since they always have regarded the "shallow French exercises" with contempt and usually can't talk in any language but their own, they by necessity become a burden to everyone, and consequently to themselves as well.