because by the 19th century, if a stereotyped English person shows up they're bound to be incredibly formal and stiff lipped as well.
Yeah, I also came across the following passage in my research on English manners. It's circa 1717, right after Hanoverian G1 lands on the throne and brings some Germans with him, and xenophobia is in full swing:
If the German presence furthered the process of English self-definition, the Hanoverians had their own views on the identity and character of their hosts. Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg, who served the King as Kammerherr for the first five years of his reign, was a particularly close and wry observer of the English scene. What stands out in his accounts is the perceived impulsiveness and emotionalism of his hosts. The John-Bull-like stolidity and reserve of later myth were not much in evidence. Schulenburg repeatedly refers to ‘la chaleur angloise’; he found James Stanhope, the chief minister, particularly hot-headed. He also considered the English congenitally fickle. He believed that the ‘humour of the English’ was such that ‘one cannot count on them from one day to another’. On another occasion, when discussing the Earl of Sunderland, he refers once again to ‘the inconstancy of the English, on whom one cannot count from one day to the next’. Later he attributed the English taste for masques to their ‘changeante’ disposition. This picture of a garrulous and fickle English elite casts an interesting light on widespread contemporary English perceptions of English taciturnity and stolidity.
Perfidious Albion is consistent throughout the ages, though!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: English manners
Date: 2025-01-02 02:36 pm (UTC)Yeah, I also came across the following passage in my research on English manners. It's circa 1717, right after Hanoverian G1 lands on the throne and brings some Germans with him, and xenophobia is in full swing:
If the German presence furthered the process of English self-definition, the Hanoverians had their own views on the identity and character of their hosts. Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg, who served the King as Kammerherr for the first five years of his reign, was a particularly close and wry observer of the English scene. What stands out in his accounts is the perceived impulsiveness and emotionalism of his hosts. The John-Bull-like stolidity and reserve of later myth were not much in evidence. Schulenburg repeatedly refers to ‘la chaleur angloise’; he found James Stanhope, the chief minister, particularly hot-headed. He also considered the English congenitally fickle. He believed that the ‘humour of the English’ was such that ‘one cannot count on them from one day to another’. On another occasion, when discussing the Earl of Sunderland, he refers once again to ‘the inconstancy of the English, on whom one cannot count from one day to the next’. Later he attributed the English taste for masques to their ‘changeante’ disposition. This picture of a garrulous and fickle English elite casts an interesting light on widespread contemporary English perceptions of English taciturnity and stolidity.
Perfidious Albion is consistent throughout the ages, though!