English ‘High Toners’ abroad displayed comical personal arrogance

Evidence

Isabella Bird was well aware of these irritating generalizing ways of her countrymen and was determined not to share them. “A celebrated hunter, Bob Craik,” she wrote from Hall’s Gulch, Colorado, “came in to supper with a young man in tow, whom, in spite of his rough hunter’s or miner’s dress, I at once recognized as an English gentleman… . This gentleman was lording it in true caricature fashion, with a Lord Dundreary drawl and a general execration of everything; while I sat in the chimney corner, speculating on the reason why many of the upper class of my countrymen’High Toners,’ as they are called out heremake themselves so ludicrously absurd. They neither know how to hold their tongues or to carry their personal pretensions. An American is nationally assumptive, an Englishman personally so. He took no notice of me till something passed which showed him I was English, when his manner at once changed into courtesy, and his drawl was shortened by a half. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 45

Categorization

• SHARE: The Lord Dundreary drawl and the switch to courtesy upon hearing she is English is a vivid snapshot of class behavior worth sending to a historian of Victorian travel.