Country life
Flying the flag
Leanda de Lisle
The English country woman abroad has long been a source of astonishment to for- eigners. My husband's Peruvian cousins have been known to mistake reserve for mental retardation. An error made more understandable by our propensity for wear- ing scuffed shoes or bits of clothing gath- ered on travels in the East. I have done some pretty strange things myself in the past.
I turned up at a friend's house in Cairo one September wearing a thermal vest. It was about 120 degrees and two German tourists had died of heat exhaustion earlier in the week, but I insisted on turning off the air conditioning. People imagine those Victorian women who wore corsets and long dresses in the African summer were being tough, but I know better. The cold in damp country houses had got into their bones and it takes a while for a hotel cli- mate to thaw the chill. I imagine that in the days before central heating it could take a life time.
Not that I doubt that these Victorian ladies were tough. In fact, my mother, who has taken stout country ladies to some of the remotest parts of the world, tells me that they are still very uncomplaining. Thir- ty years ago she took a group of Britons and Germans to eastern Turkey where they stayed in grim and smelly rest houses. As soon as the Germans were in their rooms they started looking for dust under the beds. Then they looked in their beds, where, on one occasion, they found rather worse things than dust. Perhaps understandably they demanded clean sheets. It was May and the manager explained that, if they wanted clean sheets, they should have come in February. So there were tears before bedtime, at least among the Germans. The couples from the shires had got into bed with their dressing- gowns on and gone to sleep. You don't catch people like that dying of heat exhaus- tion.
Strangely, I myself have a rather floppy upper lip. It must be something to do with being born in London. So I was a bit con- cerned when I slipped a disc three days before I was due to go on a fact-fmding mission abroad for the Daily Express. I would love to tell you how I was sent to Chechenya, like a latter-day William Boot, that I was incredibly brave and did a terrif- ic job. But, in fact, I had the rather less stressful task of reporting on some very expensive Caribbean water holes, and I didn't even have the backbone to lift the tiny carrier bag I used as hand luggage.
As we flew from island to island, the highly professional contingency of hack- ettes who travelled alongside me became my bearers. These are not ladies you can push around, so I must put it down to kind- ness. Unless, of course, like Spectator read- ers, they saw me as a Penelope Keith character, and judged that it would be a revolting crime against nature to allow me to carry my own luggage.
In January, the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean are full of retired hunting folk sipping gin and tonics. But this isn't true in the summer, which most prefer to spend in Scotland or Cornwall. There was, however, a couple from Yorkshire on the French Island of St Barthelemy. They bought a romantic hotel called Eden Rock last September. Within days of their arrival it was smashed by Hurricane Luis. But, instead of blubbing about it, the couple simply treated the disaster as an excuse for furnishing the hotel with antiques from their Georgian house in England.
Wherever you are in the world, you can find little reminders of English country life. Sometimes it is the appalling food, almost universally found in our former colonies. Sometimes it is in the attitude and attire of our travellers. Often it is our singular ex- pats from Peru to St Buts — where, I may say, they subscribe to The Spectator.
'Wishing wel4 please help me to overcome this chronic laziness.'
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