I wrote this before I came to England.

The England of my imagination is a place where murders abound, where animals talk and where women are forever searching for a husband. In this place, men have brilliant witticisms at hand for any occasion and weave learnèd quotations into mundane conversations. “Wake Duncan with thy knocking,” says Lord Peter to his man pounding on a door. “Faugh!” says Bertie Wooster, when he is a great deal overwrought. Here we find spinsters with uncanny abilities for tracking down murderers. Here charming bears of Very Little Brain become wedged in a Great Tightness. Here it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

My England is a land of words well crafted. It is a place where men manage to talk the most charming piffle imaginable. The ring of a doorbell prompts Algernon to declare that “only creditors and aunts ring in that Wagnerian manner.” Happiness elicits “o frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” and a chortling of joy. Even animals speak well in the England of my imagination. “I like your clothes awfully, old chap,” remarks Rat to Mole. “I’m going to get a black velvet smoking suit myself some day, as soon as I can afford it.” How could I not fall in love with a land where the likes of Lord Peter, Albert Campion, and Bertie Wooster abound? I know intellectually that such a land is impossible, and there is a reason these men are fictional characters. Yet there is something deep inside me that fully expects to step off the plane in London and be greeted by a “what ho!” from an unassuming well dressed man with particularly polished speech.