Nigel Cawthorne is the author of more than two hundred books and is thought to be the most published living author in the UK. His writing has appeared in over 150 newspapers, magazines and partworks – from the Sun to the Financial Times, and from Flatbush Life to The New York Trib. He lives in London.

ROBINSON

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Portrait, an imprint of Piatkus
as The Amorous Antics of Old England

This edition published in 2018 by Robinson

Copyright © Nigel Cawthorne 2006

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-349-42135-3

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Introduction

IT MAY BE HARD to believe, but in times gone by the English were considered a particularly attractive lot – particularly when compared with the French. After visiting England, the anonymous author of London and Paris, published in Weimar in 1798, said, ‘Here beauty in both sexes is so general that only beauty of a high order attracts attention … such natural grace, such health, such poise.’

In his book Romantic Love and Personal Beauty, published in 1887, the American journalist Henry Theophilus Finck said, ‘The Englishman is far and away the most beautiful animal in the world.’ The English, he insisted were, both spiritually and physically, the most finely developed race in the world. This was due to Darwinian natural selection and Englishmen’s romantic nature. In England, he said, a man of noble birth, ‘scorning medieval puerilities, marries the girl who has won his heart, were she but a plump, rosy-cheeked peasant girl’. In contrast, on the Continent, the aristocracy had stuck to their own class and become inbred.

On top of all that the English had an addiction to outdoor sports – tennis, rowing, riding, swimming – that was responsible for their ‘superior physique’. ‘They are today the handsomest and most energetic race in the world,’ he said.

Then there were the buses: ‘English girls owe their fine physiques to long walks and travelling upstairs on the open-topped buses … They know well, these clever girls, that their cheeks will be all the rosier, their smiles more bewitching, their eyes more sparkling after such a ride.’

The French could not compete. Nineteenth-century Parisian intellectual Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine conceded that ‘generally the Englishwoman is more thoroughly beautiful and healthy than a Frenchwoman … Out of every ten young girls one is admirable, and upon five or six a naturalist painter would look with pleasure.’

Englishwomen were also thought to be better educated, which made them more attractive, especially at an older age – even though their studies gave them lines. But it was their complexion that set English women apart: ‘Many ladies have their hair decked with diamonds, and their shoulders, much exposed, have an incomparable whiteness …’

Then there was the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen, who attended a glittering ball given by the Duke of Devonshire in June 1835, and wrote,

As though to complete the impression of a fairy world, and to add to its charm, the slender sylph-like forms of English women of rank passed in and out, for this most fashionable ball had gathered them in rare numbers. Here I encountered women like living van Dyck portraits; with the fine regular features, the transparent, warm complexion and fair hair which he knew how to reproduce so incomparably.

The historian Johann von Archenholtz visited England the previous century and noted in 1789,

Of all the beauties to be found in this island, none is so wonderful as the charm of the fair sex. This is so convincing that every foreigner, whatever his country, would not hesitate for an instant in awarding the prize for beauty to English women. In lovely build, in neat figure, in shape of breast, in the tender skin of the face, where the gentlest features glimmer – in all this does the English girl excel.

And it was not just the women: ‘The beauty of English women may be proverbial in Europe, but the men are even better looking,’ Archenholtz said.

While there is a certain amount of justification in women being called the ‘fair sex’ on the Continent, in England, where the phrase is in use, it introduces a paradox that only male gallantry tolerates. For instance, if you were to walk down a line of English soldiers on parade, you would be amazed at their regular features, their beautiful eyes, their fresh complexions, the predominating oval faces, and finally at the slender disciplined build of their bodies.

He maintained that ‘with the possible exception of Turkey, nowhere in Europe can so many good-looking men be found as in England’.

This masculine beauty had an astonishing effect on English womenfolk. ‘Accordingly, the beauty of women, which reduces men to slaves on the Continent, does not produce anything like the same effect in England,’ Archenholtz said, continuing,

The witchery of women is rendered practically ineffective by the same magic at work in the good looks of men: and more than that – as the truth is that the effect of male beauty on women is more powerful, swifter and more lasting than that of women’s beauty upon men. So it is no surprise that English girls, at least many of them, pay rather open homage to men; that they not only cast invisible nets for the hearts of men like our own lovely countrywomen, but also themselves take all the steps which have been the privilege of men in love since the beginning of the world: such as sending declarations, letters, messages by go-betweens, and all the honourable arts of courtship.

The English were not only beautiful, but were also thought to be a particularly lusty lot because of the amount of meat they ate and alcohol they drank. The average Englishman, it was reckoned, ate twice as much meat as his Continental counterpart and his consumption of liquor was titanic. When the Normans arrived at Hastings in 1066, they noted that their Anglo-Saxon opponents were drunk, even first thing in the morning. In the court of James I it was not uncommon to see ladies and gentlemen so drunk they were rolling on the floor. And it was observed that the English preferred heavy Burgundy to lighter wines – and heavy ale to light beer – beginning at breakfast. This was thought to inflame the blood.

Throughout history, the sexual shenanigans of English kings and queens have been the envy of Europe. English social life was rife with sex scandals and visitors to London were shocked by the number of prostitutes who plied their trade on the street, in the taverns, in the theatres and even in the churches. Young women who wanted to work in the sex industry flocked to London from all over Europe and prostitutes exported from England to Continental brothels were much sought after. It was only in the twentieth century that the English gained the reputation of being uptight about sex. Until then, the English were considered the Brazilians of Europe – good-looking, sexy and always at it.