half-embrace

“But throughout these calamities.“ huskily continued Don Benito. painfully turning in the half-embrace of his servant. “I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less restlessness than even their owner could have thought possible under such circumstances."

This half-embrace of failure, as Coward suggests, is something the British like to think of as distinctly British.