30
PARTISAN REVIEW
under-studies. First of all, let me say that the company running the dance
was a big concern, operating a chain of what we would call five-and-ten–
cent stores-though they carried merchandise selling up to five shillings
(about a dollar and a quarter )-throughout the country. Last year the
chain did so much business that it was able to give thirty thousand pounds
(about
$150,000)
to charity. The management of the firm is rather proud
of this plumpish figure.
We checked our wraps, my partner and I, and came upon the scene.
The entrance through which we emerged led past the bar and out upon
a platform, from which a broad winding flight of carpeted stairs led direct·
ly to the dance floor. With a fine loud blare, the music came to us, a
first–
class jazz-band playing in the American style. The band was playing upon
a platform in the middle of the floor and its leader was dipping his knees,
smiling idiotically and pecking the air with his stick like hundreds of other
jazz-band leader3 I had seen back in the States. From the band-stand
I
looked to the floor, which was crowded with couples, and I drew back
sharply, hesitating. My partner, dressed in a long, pale green evening
gown with a tiara upon the dark mass of her hair, asked me if anything
was wrong.
It
was obvious that there was. I had come in my ordinary
suit, my "lounge" suit, as the English call it, and every man my glance
rested upon was dressed in a tuxedo or tails. And knowing something al–
ready of English "traditions" and "good manners," I had seen I had
a].
ready pulled a boner. I stood there with antagonism, frowning. "Do you
mean to say all of these gentlemen on the floor are stock-boys and clerks?"
The German girl smiled, assuring me they were. Well, she ought to know,
I told myself. She works in the office as a translator and ought to know
her own fellow workers.
"Anyway, you are an American," she said to me, still smiling, taking
my arm and leading me downstairs. "They make allowances."
"Yes, but how do they know I'm American?"
"They can tell," she smiled. "You have only to open your mouth."
Anyway, we started dancing. At this point I wish to make the
statement that this German girl and I had been having arguments for a
long time about the British working class, their temperament and their
"loyal" morale. She had already been living in England for eighteen
months and so was ahead of me on knowing conditions. Her standard
argument was that the impotency of British labor was due to the ingrained
politeness (consciously ingrained by the upper class, of course) with which
the English people were stamped and trained. And this politeness, primarily
instigated by the employers to give "effici·ent" service, is in reality meant
to be carried over from the work-shops to the privates lives of the people;
and thus you have their patience and docility.
