Essays — Second Series
a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation which
his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams,
and will be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you could see Vich
Ian Vohr with his tail on!--" But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his
belongings in some fashion, if not added as honor, then severed as
disgrace.
There will always be in society certain persons who are mercuries of its
approbation, and whose glance will at any time determine for the curious
their standing in the world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser
gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier
deities, and allow them all their privilege. They are clear in their
office, nor could they be thus formidable without their own merits.
But do not measure the importance of this class by their pretension, or
imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. They pass
also at their just rate; for how can they otherwise, in circles which
exist as a sort of herald's office for the sifting of character?
As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so that appears
in all the forms of society. We pointedly, and by name, introduce the
parties to each other. Know you before all heaven and earth, that this
is Andrew, and this is Gregory,--they look each other in the eye; they
grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is
a great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight
forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has been
met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitalities?
Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or do we not insatiably
ask, Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a great household
where there is much substance, excellent provision for comfort,
luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any Amphitryon who shall
subordinate these appendages. I may go into a cottage, and find a
farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, and fronts
me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural point of old feudal
etiquette that a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of his
sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival at
the door of his house. No house, though it were the Tuileries or the
Escurial, is good for anything without a master. And yet we are not
often gratified by this hospitality. Every body we know surrounds
himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage
and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his
guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature,
and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his
fellow? It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these
screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether the guest is too
great or too little. We call together many friends who keep each other
in play, or by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the young people, and
guard our retirement. Or if perchance a searching realist comes to our
gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to
our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God
in the garden. Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, defended
himself from the glances of Napoleon by an immense pair of green
spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them
off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough with eight
hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes,
but fenced himself with etiquette and within triple barriers of reserve;
and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was wont, when he
found himself observed, to discharge his face of all expression. But
emperors and rich men are by no means the most skilful masters of
good manners. No rentroll nor army-list can dignify skulking and
dissimulation; and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as
really all the forms of good-breeding point that way.
I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, Montaigne's
account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with nothing more
agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in
each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some
consequence. Wherever he goes he pays a visit to whatever prince or
gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to
civilization. When he leaves any house in which he has lodged for a few
weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a perpetual sign
to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.
The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the points
of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is deference. I
like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer
a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fellowship. Let the
incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man
teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have
a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred
sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and
self-poise. We should meet each morning as from foreign countries,
and, spending the day together, should depart at night, as into foreign
countries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let
us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus.
No degree of affection need invade this religion. This is myrrh and
rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers Should guard their strangeness.
If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It
is easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but coolness and
absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no
noise; a lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders
who fill a studious house with blast and running, to secure some
paltry convenience. Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his
neighbor's needs. Must we have a good understanding with one another's
palates? as foolish people who have lived long together know when each
wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask
me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for
them, and not to hold out his plate as if I knew already. Every natural
function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave
hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should
signify, however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur of our
destiny.
The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we dare
to open another leaf and explore what parts go to its conformation,
we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the
brain as well as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion.
Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too
coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It
is not quite sufficient to good-breeding, a union of kindness and
independence. We imperatively require a perception of, and a homage to
beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and
workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we
sit with. I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or
the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities
rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. The same
discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all
parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class is good sense,
acting under certain limitations and to certain ends. It entertains
every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects everything which
tends to unite men. It delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly
the love of measure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to
flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or
a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure. This
perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social
instrument. Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but,
being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, or
what belongs to coming together. That makes the good and bad of manners,
namely what helps or hinders fellowship. For fashion is not good
sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense
entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character,
hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates
whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values
all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can
consist with good fellowship. And besides the general infusion of wit
to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever
welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and its
credit.
The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be
tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is essential
to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick
perceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave the
omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into the palace of
beauty. Society loves creole natures, and sleepy languishing manners, so
that they cover sense, grace and good-will: the air of drowsy strength,
which disarms criticism; perhaps because such a person seems to reserve
himself for the best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces;
an ignoring eye, which does not see the annoyances, shifts, and
inconveniences that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the
sensitive.
Therefore besides personal force and so much perception as constitutes
unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class another element
already intimated, which it significantly terms good-nature,--expressing
all degrees of generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to
oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity and love. Insight we must have,
or we shall run against one another and miss the way to our food; but
intellect is selfish and barren. The secret of success in society is a
certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company
cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his
information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds
in every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for the
introduction of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and
what it calls whole souls, are able men and of more spirit than wit,
who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the
company; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball
or a jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich in
gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good
model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to
his great abilities the most social disposition and real love of men.
Parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate in which
Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged on his
old friend the claims of old friendship with such tenderness that the
house was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my matter,
that I must hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned him for
a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting gold, and
demanded payment:--"No," said Fox, "I owe this money to Sheridan; it is
a debt of honor; if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing
to show." "Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt into a debt