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Piqued by the way French and German literati mocked the English, Charles Dickens urged his compatriots to be the better men.
A production of The Benefit Night at the Carl Theatre in Vienna in March 1850 introduced the character of Lord Pudding, ‘a travelling Englishman.’ His clownish antics stung Charles Dickens into protesting at the stereotypes perpetuated by Continental writers, yet he did not demand punishment. He urged the English to hop on a train, and spread a little entente cordiale.
A foreign tourist writes home with an account of a day in the life of a typical London gentleman.
John Macky published Travels Through England in 1714. It takes the form of letters supposedly written by a foreign tourist while in England, and sent home to his friend abroad. The preface declares frankly that Macky’s purpose is to help his reader appreciate an Englishman’s liberties under the benign King George I, in contrast to the wretched oppression on the Continent. Here, he describes a leisurely day in London.
On a visit to England in 1599, Swiss doctor Thomas Platter found time to pop across the Thames and take in a show.
In 1599, Swiss physician Thomas Platter and his older half-brother, Felix, paid a visit to England, then ruled by Elizabeth I. Two o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday September 21st found Thomas at a theatre ‘across the water’ in Southwark. He may have attended the fading Rose; but most scholars assume he crowded into the brand new Globe to watch one of Mr Shakespeare’s much-admired plays.
Karl Philipp Moritz described three kinds of criminal in Georgian England, from the gentlemanly cutpurse to the deadly footpad.
On June 20th, 1782, German tourist Karl Philipp Moritz was excited to find himself taking his first ride in an English stagecoach. During the trip, he and his fellow-passengers were regaled with stories of daring crimes in the neighbourhoods through which they passed, prompting Moritz to reflect on the perils of walking abroad in Georgian England.
When he left Calcutta in February 1799 for a tour of Europe, Abu Taleb Khan scarcely expected to spend so much of his time in England trying to keep out of the courts.
On January 21st, 1800, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan arrived in London, full of eager anticipation. What he never foresaw was the trouble he would get from litigious shopkeepers and tradesmen, who repeatedly defrauded him with the help of a corrupt judicial system. If the Indian ever felt he was being targeted he was quickly disabused: the natives of Jane Austen’s London were being skinned daily too.
A witness appeared before a Calcutta court, only to find that judge and learned counsel were determined to discredit her.
While visiting London in the early 1800s, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan was brazenly but quite legally defrauded of ten shillings by a litigious tailor, and he had heard hair-curling tales of similar judicial malpractice in Calcutta. He had also heard, however, of one occasion when the attorneys were given a taste of their own medicine.
During his tour of England in 1782, Karl Philipp Moritz dropped in on the House of Commons, and thought the histrionics in the Chamber better than any play.
In 1782, German tourist Karl Philipp Moritz visited the Commons chamber, and heard Viscount Feilding rebuke Charles Fox, the Foreign Secretary, for wanting to make war hero Admiral Rodney a Lord: had the Rt Hon. Gentleman not recently declared Rodney’s second-in-command, Admiral Hood, unworthy even of a seat in the Commons? Fox’s despatch-box-thumping reply whetted Moritz’s appetite for more.