Biography of an Anglo-American Child

Article appeared in Vanity Fair, September, 1927

[Spelling and punctuation are Mr. Howard's]

He was born in London in April 1918. The first definite noises he heard were the explosions of German bombs and the response of British anti-aircraft guns. For the first few months of his life he heard these sounds pretty frequently. He must have become accustomed to the sounds, for he made no comment about them. He slept a good deal on these occasions, even when his concerned young mother, for greater safety, pushed his crib under the dining-room table. (She had heard stories about babies, thus placed, being found alive under masses of masonry.) In short, he was very much a British War Baby. (His father, incidentally—seasoned warrior of twenty-four—was a temporary officer in the temporary British Army.)

Then, one day, the Germans having had a good run for their money (and everybody else's) decided to stop fighting and the war ended. The baby's father, being no longer supported by a grateful country, had to go to work. For no very good reason he chose the profession of acting, and pursued it diligently for sometime. He pursued it so hard that it became more of a chase than a pursuit—a chase which ended on Broadway in the city of New York.

The baby, now a hearty Englishman of three summers, came too. And for some time the adventure made no more difference to his nationality than it did to that of his parents. He came on an English ship and, on arrival, was transferred to an English household composed of an English father and mother, an English governess, and the frequent attendance of a large number of English friends. Nothing had really changed for him. Then, one day, he went to school. And from that moment his life began to be complicated.

Now, the time has arrived when I must admit that I am the father of this child. I have withheld this news in deference to the press agent at the Empire Theatre (where I eke out a livelihood at the time of going to press). Press agents have an idea that parenthood injures an actor's sex appeal. I think they are wrong. The sex appeal of an actor ought to increase in equal ratio to the number of his offspring. (I have a daughter now, too.)

But to return to my young friend. His going to an American school made him suddenly conscious of the thing called nationality. This was a shock to him. He was rather reproachful at having been allowed to live to the age of five without being told about it. There were lots of little boys and girls who ought to have been like him, but somehow they were different. Up to then he had thought all children in the world were English, but here were some who called themselves Irish, some Italian, some Russian, some Jewish and some German. The latter surprised him intensely. He had always imagined Germans as a gang of bandits who wore large helmets, carried bayonets and made life dangerous for brave British soldiers.

A great many of the children at school, too, were what they called American—which had something to do with a flag, a flag with the same colours as the Union Jack but arranged differently in stripes and stars. American was apparently the thing to be. The foreign children closely emulated the American children in clothes, speech and manners, and did it so well that in a short time only their names indicated their nationalities.

Thus my young Englishman got into the melting pot. But his racial metal having, characteristically, a higher melting point than most of the other children, it took him longer to fuse into the alloy. For a considerable time—a year at least—he found it difficult to reconcile himself to the fact that the things he was now hearing about America were precisely the things he had always heard about England. Both countries couldn't be the best in the world. Somebody must be wrong. For some time he held the superior notion that it was the Americans who were wrong. Then, gradually, preponderance of opinion began to sway him. After all, not only the American children but the Italian, Russian, Polish, Irish and German children were all convinced that America was the finest country in the world. They must be right. The English must be wrong. He had been grossly deceived. From that moment he began to sing 'The Star Spangled Banner' as heartily as the rest of them.

Then things went to even further extremes. In addition to America being the finest country in the world it appeared that England was infinitely the worst. This horrible truth began gradually to dawn on him in a variety of ways. First there was the matter of speech. He realised very soon that what had seemed to be normal speech to him was in reality an 'accent'. A burly senior of eight years of age approached him one day.

'Say, kid,' he demanded. 'How old are you?'

'Six and a half.'

'Six and a what?'

'Six and a half.'

'Say, where do you get that stuff—six and a hawf!'

'I said six and a half.'

'Sure you did—ya sap!'

'My father says that's right.'

'Then he's a sap.'

'And my mother.'

'You're all saps.'

Describing this contretemps to me later, he added: 'Gee, I'll be glad when I'm seven.'

The bad news about England continued to be confirmed in many ways. For instance elementary geography.

'Is it true,' I was asked one day, 'that the whole of England is not as big as New York State?'

'I'm not quite sure,' I replied. 'Something like that.'

'There are 48 States in America,' he said quietly, with a most despondent look—a look that accused me of having puffed up a petty little European state, of making a mountain out of a molehill. I parried this, suggesting that England hadn't done so badly for a mere speck of a country. But I hadn't a chance. I was overwhelmed with statistics—48 States, more than a hundred million people, five days on a fast train from coast to coast, hundreds of millionaires, highest buildings in the world, best movies, world's tennis, golf and boxing champions—and so on.

Then history began to add its quota to the evidence. It was Washington's Birthday. My son was going through his collection of marbles, of which he possessed about three hundred. He let the shining orbs slip through his fingers one by one.

'Washington,' he observed suddenly, 'was a great man.' Taking silence for assent he added: 'He was the father of his country.' Still I said nothing, feeling no comment was needed on these two generally accepted facts. But he was not satisfied. He pressed the point.

'Washington was a great man, wasn't he?'

'Yes—a wonderful man,' I confirmed.

'Sure—he licked the British!'

Feeling that I had been tricked, I hastened to add warmly, 'Washington was English himself.' My son looked at me appalled, as if I'd made a stupid mistake.

'He was American!'

'My dear boy, they were nearly all English. They were a colony of English people settled in America. Why, you've only got to look at the names of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence...'

'What?'

I realised I was allowing myself to go too deep for the historical knowledge of seven years. I tried to let the subject drop.

'Well,' he summed up, 'Washington was a great man.'

'Certainly,' I said—adding somewhat irrelevantly, 'so was Nelson.'

'Who's Nelson?'

Caught again. I had to explain Nelson.

But, do what I could to justify my nation and his, he seemed to feel that he came of a tyrant race long gone to the dogs, and felt embarrassed accordingly. At the same time, however, he felt that a certain loyalty was due to his home. To reconcile this loyalty with the other loyalty at school, he worked out a scheme. It was a scheme as old as the world, a scheme that men have always used to cover a variety of complications. Simply the idea of a dual personality. He decided to live a double life. He would be 100% American at school and 100% British at home. What he really felt didn't matter. Nobody seemed to care. But it was expedient in Rome to do as the Romans.

I stumbled on this secret one Saturday morning while he was out in the garden with some local friend. His voice—every 'A' flattened—wafted through the windows.

'Leapin' lizards!' he was bellowing, 'Ya big boob, waddaya mean—copperhead! It's only a grass snake, ya sap. Sock him on the bean.' Five minutes later he walked into the house and, in the best Oxford, demanded, 'I say, could I have a glahss of wawter.'

Last summer—he was eight then—we spent several months in our native land. It was all new to him—he was three when he was last there. He was interested—like an American tourist. As the ship passed the Lizard we came close to an enormous battle-cruiser which flew the White Ensign at her stern. He observed her quite respectfully: his first tangible proof that there really was a British Navy. But there was no sentiment about him. Facts were what he wanted. Plymouth Harbour at dawn, just before landing, was a picture that brought lumps to the throats of his parents—but it reminded him of Staten Island and he thought New York Bay bigger. While his parents were drinking in the Devon scenery, the red cliffs, the little squared fields, he was grumbling about the train, the service, the lack of ice-water.

He is back in America now, continuing to lead his double existence. Later, when he goes to an English school, he will probably continue to be an Anglo-American. Then, as now, he will adapt himself (as children do so much better than their elders) to any difficulties he may meet. And the Anglo-American child has many difficulties.

Someone once said that if a Spaniard, an Irishman, an Italian and a Frenchman were to get up and announce that each thought his country was the greatest in the world, no one would mind in the least. It would be smiled upon and treated indulgently. But let an Englishman say it in America or an American say it in Europe and the fur begins to fly. May not the reason be that both are right?

Trivial Fond Records, pgs. 84-88


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