ABSTRACT
Reading these essays, I could not but visualize a scene in a London pub. A tall lean man with scraggy neck, Adam’s apple, bright eyes, and the sort of face I associate with a clay pipe, is holding forth. He is surrounded by a group of working-class people, but he has a wary eye on a bearded figure leaning over the bar some yards away, and even while he himself is talking, he is listening to the Intellectual’s conversation. Suddenly he interrupts himself in the middle of a monologue about the British middle-class in order that the whole company may hear the Intellectual say a few words in French. At this, he cannot altogether repress a smile which indicates that among the workers the Intellectual has committed a social gaff; he has spoken in a foreign language correctly.
