BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

history) is for the most part a commonplace and stereotyped figure.” 79 Some acknowlegement of
stereotypical distortions entered the public media when British writers explored the parameters of
their own national image through the perceptions of continental observers (figure 5). An article
published in 1890, entitled “John Bull Abroad,”
applauded a shift in French caricature from the typical
English “milord, . . . triste, prudish, and gauche” to a
more flattering, cosmopolitan image. But the author
himself portrayed the English tourist as a tweed-suited,
pipe-smoking, recklessly spending rowdy who
patronized “artistic nudities in the Rue de Rivoli” and
terrorized waiters, “whom he abuses or knocks down,
79 Arthur F. Davidson, “Some English Characters in French Fiction,” Macmillan’s
Magazine, reprinted in Living Age 197 (April-June 1893): 678.
80 “John Bull Abroad,” Temple Bar, reprinted in Living Age 187 (October-December
1890), 224, 227-28. The last quotation typifies the conception of Germany as a backward or
138
FIGURE 5. “John Bull As Others See
Him,” reprinted in Review of Reviews 15
(June 1897): XIII.
and, with a lordly air, throws them a napoleon wherewith to buy plaster.” This reflected self-
image of a swashbuckling, plucky “‘Arry of world-wide fame,” who “can seldom divest himself
of his English spectacles in looking on foreign habits and customs,” and who deserved reproach
for letting his patriotism overrun the boundary of prejudice, nevertheless received a favorable
comparison with the German:
. . . if his reputation for grand seigneur is on the wane, so also is his reputation for boorishness,
insolence and self-sufficiency. This he has handed on to the German, who has inherited the
reputation, and its consequent unpopularity, with this difference, that whereas John Bull, if he
incurred dislike and ill-feeling, had a golden ointment wherewith to salve the wounds he
inflicted, Herr von Donnerblitzen exaggerates the insolence and lacks the salve. 80