| Chapter 1: | Setting out on an English Journey |
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noted, and “had blackened fields, poisoned rivers, ravaged the earth, and sown filth and ugliness with a lavish hand.”14 One would think, then, that the passing of this England would be no cause for regret, but as Priestley wrote he reminded readers that this second land had not been totally absorbed into history by 1933: rather, it “makes up the larger part of the Midlands and the North and exists everywhere; but it is not being added to and has no new life poured into it.”15 The question arises, then: if the life has long since been drawn out of the distant past and is no longer in the industrial nation, where has it gone? Such life as Priestley saw in 1933 resided in the third England, a country that belonged “far more to the age itself than to this particular island.” It was easier for him to argue that “America … was its real birthplace” and in doing so raise the awkward idea that the England of his present was not inherently English at all.16
This is the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance-halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches, wireless, hiking, factory girls looking like actresses, greyhound racing and dirt tracks, swimming pools and everything given away for cigarette coupons.17
Rather than representing vitality and enjoyment, this third England for Priestley presents “a rather depressing monotony.… You feel that too many of the people in this new England are doing not what they like but what they have been told they would like.”18 Where, then, does the blame for this lie? Given his earlier comments on the cinema in Lincolnshire, Priestley’s suggestion that American tastes were being foisted upon the English is not wholly without foundation, but it is only half the equation. Such conditioning is possible, he argued, because the English had, as a people, lost their spontaneity. “I cannot help feeling,” he concluded, “that this new England is lacking in character, in zest, gusto, flavour, bite, drive, originality, and that this is a serious weakness. Monotonous but easy work and a liberal supply of cheap luxuries might between them create a set of people entirely without ambition of any real desire to think and act for themselves, the perfect subjects for an iron autocracy.”19 In