What On Earth Was England?
Thoughts on the preface and first chapter of England An Elegy by Roger Scruton
What on Earth was England? English philosopher, writer, and academic Roger Scruton 1944-2020 asks this question at the outset of England: An Elegy, published in 2000. In the preface, Scruton identifies the work as a memorial address. ‘A personal tribute to the civilisation that made me and which is now passing from the world.’
In his discourse on England, Scruton assigns more significance to land than he does to stock, and he asserts that ‘Ideas of race, tribe and religion, which have played a dangerous part in continental politics, have also shaped English identity. But they were qualified and moderated by the concept of home. England was first and foremost a place-though a place consecrated by custom.’ Although Scruton is not convincing in his claim of the importance of place over stock, his invocation of the land throughout the book shows how the relation of the English to their soil has been key in developing English identity.
‘For seven centuries there was no other official test of Englishness other than the fact of being born here. The Nationality Acts of the twentieth century were emergency measures.’ The reason for this lies in the fact that up until the middle of the last century, the country was very homogeneous, and any demographic change was slow and gradual when compared to what we have seen in more recent times. Of those who entered the country following the Nationality Acts, Scruton says they were ‘not really Englishmen at all, but people who had become British, by a strange process which overcame the unnaturalness that distinguishes foreigners’. How anyone can become British he does not explain, nor is he able to demonstrate how said ‘unnaturalness’ was overcome. One might assert that the impossibility of overcoming this ‘unnaturalness’ is a salient factor in the manifold problems of contemporary British society. Still, he understands that the ‘disquiet over immigration’ should not be ascribed to native malice but to ‘the disruption of an old experience of home, and a loss of the enchantment which made home a place of safety and consolation’.
Perhaps one should not be too hard on Scruton for not addressing mass immigration in any great detail; when this work was released in the year 2000, Britain was of course very diverse, but the Blairite project, subsequently built on by other governments, was in its relative infancy. In 2000, an illusion of permanency allowed a typical British person to assume that their children would inherit a similar country to the one experienced by their parents and grandparents. Today, the pace of change is such that one cannot say with any certainty how our streets will appear even five to ten years down the line. The absence of this consideration and related subjects from Scruton’s work render England: An Elegy a work principally about those of English ancestry and the country built by our ancestors.
The living, breathing, discovered tradition of the common law is assigned great importance by Scruton, who states, ‘It was the root cause of the law-abidingness of the English and of their ability to live side by side as strangers in conditions of trust.’ The work has an entire chapter dedicated to this subject and others to English character, religion, governance, society, culture, and the countryside. The book concludes with a chapter on the 'Forbidding of England'.
Chapter one contains an interesting passage on the making of home that segues into Scruton’s thoughts on enchantment:
‘When human beings cease their wanderings and mark out a place of their own, their first instinct is to furnish it with things which have no function-ornaments pictures, knick-knacks-or with things which, while possessing a function, are valued for other reasons: for their associations, their beauty, their way of fitting in. This instinct for the purposeless has a purpose-namely to make these objects into an expression of ourselves and our common dwelling place, to endow them with the marks of order, legitimacy, and peaceful possession. In other words objects, when they form part of the home, are endowed with a soul.’
The words above may as readily evoke the pub, that great English institution, as they do the home. Anyone who has ever sat in a cosy pub with a pleasant ambience and a stream of familiar faces or relatable types might see in Scruton's words a portal to many fond remembrances and experiences of belonging. Imagine your favourite pub had alien or unfamiliar ornaments rather than what now adorns it. Imagine if its knick-knacks that include naval insignia or a model of a boat its bygone patrons sailed on were replaced by abstract and contemporary post-modern concoctions or things reflective of another culture. It would hardly feel as serene. This is why a good pub sometimes takes the form of a cosy living room and why the gastro pub or the ‘‘craft brewery’’ type places are often vacuous and drab.
‘The enchantment of things in the home is part of a larger spiritual project.’ It ‘endows objects, customs, and institutions with a moral character’. The public school is one such English institution to have undergone this enchantment as are corporate bodies through the creation of the corporate person. The corporate person manifests in various ways, through bodies relating to occupation and cricket clubs to note two examples. The idea of enchantment is a persistent feature of the work. The English made their home magical through ritual, ceremony, and art.
Scruton gets to the heart of what the home is: ‘Home is a place where you can be yourself and do your own thing. Respect the rituals and the household gods, and for the rest you can please yourself. Therefore, when people feel at home, they allow themselves freedoms, hobbies, and eccentricities. They become amateurs, experts and cranks. They collect stamps, butterflies or biscuit tins, they grow vegetables so large that nobody can eat them, and breed dogs so ugly that only an Englishmen could look them in what might charitably be called the face. The eccentricity of the English follows as a matter of course, once it is recognised that they were at home in their world and safe there.’
Alas, the England described by Scruton is fast vanishing. Being yourself and doing your own thing might now be “hate” and those who value the country Scruton describes may be dismissed as cranks. Scruton expands on this latter point later in the work. The last sentence in the above segment points to a unique individuality following from having a place of one’s own to serve as the canvas on which life is painted. Scruton finds individuality, self-reliance, and initiative are key components of the English character.
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Reference
Roger Scruton, What on Earth was England in England: An Elegy, 2000
This was a short introduction to England: An Elegy by Roger Scruton. Over the coming months, I will write about each chapter of the book in articles of varying length and discuss some aspects of this work. I aim to introduce you to the book while leaving out enough detail so as not to dissuade you from giving it a read yourself.