Our perceptions of other cultures are often formed not on fact but on pop cultural references, old myths, and other people's opinions that we subconsciously gather throughout our lives. Recently I took a woman from Columbia to her first basketball game and mentally prepared myself for all the questions I expected about the game. However, I was completely unprepared to answer her most pressing question which was, "Are Cheerleaders as clicky, snobbish, and cruel as they are portrayed in American movies?" While traveling in India, the Western women I talked to said one of the greatest difficulties they faced was that all Indian men had a belief from Western movies that Western women were easy and would have sex with them if they just asked. Now most of us understand that we have misconceptions of other cultures and try to correct these through experiencing foreign cultures, but in The Clumsiest People in Europe Ms. Favell Lee Mortimer finds it quite suitable to write of cultures she knows nothing about to sometimes hilarious and sometimes horrifying results.
Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer was a popular Christian children's book writer in mid 19th century England. After the wild success of her earlier children’s books she decided to write a child's world atlas despite having only ever traveled to Scotland and Paris. Her source material for the book consisted of library research, conventional wisdom, and the overarching belief that the Protestant faith was the one true religion.
What first jumps out in Mrs. Mortimer's writings and what has received much of the recent press coverage is the outright insults and wildly racist statements she makes. For example that Africans are like "naughty children in the nursery," that the "Siamese resemble the Burmese in appearance but are much worse looking," that in Portugal "It is curious to see how badly the carpenters make boxes and the smiths make keys," or her repeated insult of many a city such as Lisbon and Constantinople that they look pretty at a distance but ugly up close. She talks of not being able to walk down the streets of China because one must step over so many murdered babies or that everyone in Russia must run really fast from place to place to avoid freezing solid in the streets. However to just look at the outrageous statements and not examine some of the subtler portions of the book is to miss a more useful historical glimpse into the political and religious state of Victorian England.
Todd Pruzan, the book's editor and the man who rediscovered Mrs. Mortimer, precedes each section of the book with a brief overview of the political and economic state of the countries being described at the time of Mrs. Mortimer's writing. This serves as a helpful reminder to understanding some of the political beliefs espoused by Mrs. Mortimer that at times seem rather enlightened for Victorian England: Toasting the bravery of the French and hoping that Great Britain will never again go to war with them; insightfully pointing out that much of the poverty in Ireland was a result of the nation's wealth being exported to England; and condemning the interference in Poland by Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Considering her religious background it is not surprising that Mrs. Mortimer spends a good deal of time condemning slavery. She cast a Westward condemnation of the slave trade by pointing out, "if the heathen who captures the slaves are guilty, how much more guilty are the Christians who purchase them." Mrs. Mortimer blasts the Northern United States for feigning enlightenment towards blacks, but still mistreating freed blacks merely because of the color of their skin.
