It was obviously an English face. The little boy, aged 9 or 10, in 17th-century clothes, had been captured in oils; his portrait was displayed in the Pierpont Morgan library in New York: a wonderful institution - once a rich collecter's private study, now a gallery.
Outside it was snowing. Within was a glowing treasure chest - of porcelain, photography and portraiture of every kind, but above all books and manuscripts. The faces of the tourists brushing past us were cosmopolitan-metropolitan; the faces on the walls were from every epoch, continent and walk of life.
But something about this boy said “English”. His clothes, his hair, his complexion could have been from any Northern European nation. But his glance, I thought, could only have been English. I walked over to the painting. It was John Milton, as a child.
Do you ever, as I do, walk through a crowd and see a face, and think: “She (or he) must be English. I can't say why but I'd put a hundred pounds on it”? Or see the face of (say) the young man sitting opposite you on the London Underground, and think: “He's not English. Neither his clothes, his hair colour, his eye colour, his skin nor any of the particular components of that face mark him out as a stranger - and yet I know he's foreign”? I even wait, sometimes, hopeful of overhearing the person speak, so I can see if I am right; and I almost always am. This is not true of every face - perhaps not true of most. Many could be from anywhere; but some just couldn't be English. And some could only be.
How did I know he was English? | Matthew Parris - Times Online
Well?
