American cartoonist Edward Gorey (if we can call him a cartoonist) was a self-confessed Anglophile. (Nowadays, when you add the suffix -phile to a word, it almost seems to give that word a negative connotation. Pedophiles have really ruined it for everyone, haven't they? Raping children is not cool either.)
All of his little books (they're not quite comics) are set in late Victorian or Edwardian England, a time and a place he loved. And therefore it might come as a surprise to learn that he never actually visited England (save for a brief stopover at Heathrow Airport once).
Why did he never bother to visit the place whose history and culture he was so fond of? We can only speculate, but one of his friends, the novelist Alison Lurie, had this explanation:
"He knew on some level that the England of his imagination, the Anglophile's England, not to be found on any map, wouldn't survive a collision with the real thing. He didn't want to see the England of supermarkets and shopping carts, the Americanised, commercialised England that developed after WW2."
I think she's right. Edward Gorey's England didn't simply exist in the past but rather, crucially, in his head alone. It wasn't just a world gone by, but a fantasy world that never actually existed. A made-up place concocted in his brain after a steady diet of English literature. If that's the case, visiting the actual, modern-day England would've meant little to him.
Quick digression. Though not quite the same thing, I had somewhat similar doubts prior to my visit to Japan a few years ago. Because I had built it up so much in my head through the years, I was almost certain it was going to be a disappointment, and so I was sort of preparing myself to be underwhelmed. It turned to be as great as I thought. Which is not to say that Japan is a perfect place, of course. There's no such thing. There's good and bad in every country, and Japan is no exception. On the bright side, I can confirm that there are lots of Japanese women there.
Canadian cartoonist Seth is similarly obsessed with the Canada of the post-war years. Not only he decorated his whole house with period furniture and artefacts, but he also always dresses as if it was the 1940s, all the time. However, Seth is not so naive as to actually think that life was better back then. In an interview he openly admitted that he would probably hate the general social attitudes of those days. His is simply an aesthetic choice.
I also have a soft spot for the North America of mid 20th century. The fashion, the cars, the design, the advertisements, everything just oozes style. But just like Gorey's England, the America of the 50s and 60s that I like is a fantasy world that exists only in my head. Had I actually lived through it, almost certainly I would've had to choose a different time and a different place to indulge in.
And on the subject of indulging in one's fantasies, let me leave you with the last stanza of William Wordsworth's celebrated poem The Daffodils. In the poem Wordsworth is referring to the daffodils, obviously, but you can substitute the daffodils with whatever it is that works for you. It doesn't have to be flowers.
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
