I have had rather a humiliating experience to-day. A young literary
man, whom I knew slightly, came down to see me, and stayed the night.
He was a small, shapely, trim personage, with a pale, eloquent face,
large eyes, mobile lips, and of extraordinary intelligence. I was
prepared--I make the confession very frankly--to find a certain shyness
and deference about my young friend. He has not made his mark as yet,
though I think he is likely to make it; he has written nothing in
particular, whereas I am rather a veteran in these matters.
We had a long talk about all kinds of things, mostly books; and it
presently dawned upon me that, so far from being either shy or
deferential, it was rather the other way. He looked upon himself, and
quite rightly, as an advanced and modern young man, brimful of ideas
and thoroughly abreast of the thoughts and movement of the day.
Presently I made a fresh discovery, that he looked upon me as an old
fogey, from whom intelligence and sympathy could hardly be expected. He
discussed some modern books with great acuteness, and I became aware
that, so far from desiring to learn my opinion, he had not the
slightest wish even to hear me express it. He listened very courteously
to my criticisms, as a man might listen to the talk of a child.
However, when I had once got hold of the clue, I abandoned myself
joyfully to what appeared to me to be the humour of the situation. I
thought to myself that here was an opportunity of turning inside out
the mind of a very young and intelligent man. I might learn, I thought,
what the new ideas were, the direction in which the younger generation
were tending. Now, it would be invidious to mention the names of the
books that we discussed. Many of the volumes that he ranked very high,
I had not even read; and he was equally at sea in the old books that
seemed to me the most vital and profound. I discovered that the art
that he preferred was a kind of brilliant impressionism. He did not
care much about the truth of it to life; the desirable quality seemed
to him to be a sort of arresting daring of statement. He was not a
narrow-minded man at all; he had read a great many books, both old and
new, but he valued specious qualities above everything, and books which
seemed to me to be like the crackling of thorns under a pot seemed to
him to be the glowing heart of the fire. The weakness of my young
friend's case lay, I thought, in the fact that he not only undervalued
experience, but that he evidently did not believe that experience could
have anything to say to him. With the swift insight of youth, he had
discounted all that, and growing older appeared to him to be a mere
stiffening and hardening of prejudices. Where he seemed to me to fail
was in any appreciation of tender, simple, wistful things; as I grow
older, I feel the pathetic charm of life, its hints, its sorrow, its
silence, its infinite dreams, its darkening horizon, more and more
acutely. Of all this he was impatient. His idea was to rejoice in his
strength; he loved, I felt, the sparkling facets of the gem, the
dazzling broken reflections, rather than its inner heart of light. The
question which pressed on me with a painful insistence was this: "Was
he wholly in the right? was I wholly in the wrong?" I am inclined, of
course, to believe that men do their best artistic work in their youth,
while they are passionately just, charmingly indiscreet, relentlessly
severe; before they have learnt the art of compromise or the force of
limitations. I suppose that I, like all other middle-aged writers, am
tempted to think that my own youth is miraculously prolonged; that I
have not lost in fire what I have gained in patience and width of view.
But he would believe that I have lost the glow, and that what seems to
me to be gentle and beautiful experience is but the closing in of
weariness and senility. I have often thought myself that an increase of
accomplishment goes hand-in-hand with an increased tameness of spirit.
And the most pathetic of all writers are, to my mind, those whose
mastery of their art grows as the initial impulse declines. But my
young friend appeared to me to value only prodigal and fantastic
vigour, and to prefer the sword-dance to the minuet.
I began to perceive at last that he was feeling as Hamlet did when the
bones of Yorick were unearthed; with a kind of luxurious pity for my
mouldering conditions; touched, perhaps, a little by the thought that I
was excluded from the bright and brave shows of earth, and sadly
conscious of the odour of corruption. I felt as he strolled with me
round my garden on the following morning that he was regarding my
paltry, unadventurous life with a sincere pity, as the life of one who
had stolen from the brisk encounters of wit and revelry to a quiet
bedroom and a basin of gruel. And yet the curious thing was that I felt
no kind of resentment about it at all. I did not envy him his youth and
his pride; indeed, I felt glad to have escaped from it, if I was like
what he was at his age. The world seemed full to me of a whole range of
fine sensations, gentle secrets, remote horizons, of which he had no
perception. Indeed, I think he despised my whole conception of patient
and faithful art. His idea rather was that one should not spend much
time over work, but that one should break at intervals into a spurting,
fizzing flame, and ascend like a rocket over the heads of the crowd,
discharging a shower of golden stars.
I may, of course, be only coming down like a burnt-out stick; and this
is where the humiliation lies; but I feel rather as if I were soaring
to worlds unknown: though perhaps, after all, that is only one of the
happy delusions, the gentle compensations, which God showers down so
plentifully upon the middle-aged.
I have had two visitors lately who have set me reflecting upon the odd
social habits of the men of my nation. They were not unusual
experiences--indeed I think they may fairly be called typical.
One of these was a man who invited himself to come and see me; the
excuse, a small matter of business; but he added that we had many
common friends, that he had read my books, and much wished to make my
acquaintance.
He came down to luncheon and to spend the afternoon. He was a tall,
handsome, well-dressed man, with a courteous, conventional manner, but
every inch a gentleman. He had a perfect social ease; he began by
paying me rather trite compliments, saying that he found my books
extremely sympathetic, and that I constantly put feelings into words
which he had always had and which he had never been able to express.
Then we turned to our business and finished it in five minutes. It now
remained to fill the remainder of the time. We strolled round the
garden; we lunched; we strolled again. We had an early tea, and I
walked down to the station with him. I had thought that perhaps he
wished to discuss some of the topics on which I had written in my
books; but he did not appear to have any such wish. He had lately taken
a house himself in the country; and he appeared to wish to tell me
about that. I was delighted to hear about it, because I am always
interested to hear how other people live; but I began to be surprised
when I discovered that this seemed to be the only thing he wished to
talk about. He described the house, the garden, the village, the
neighbours; he described his mode of life, his parties, the things he
said to other people, the visits he paid. I became a mute listener.
Occasionally I assented or asked a question; but if I attempted to
contribute to the conversation he became restive and bored; so I merely
let him have his head, and he talked on. I will confess that I derived
a good deal of entertainment from my companion, for he was a shrewd and
observant man. I do not think I ever learnt so much about an entire
stranger in so short a time. I even knew what he had for breakfast and
what he drank with his luncheon. When we said goodbye at the station,
he said that he had spent a very pleasant day, and I am sure it was the
truth; he pressed me to visit him with much cordiality, and said that
it had given him great pleasure to make my acquaintance; we bowed and
smiled and waved our hands, and the train moved out of the station.
The surprising thing is that it never seemed to occur to him that he
had not made my acquaintance at all. He had seen my house, indeed, but
every detail that he observed had suggested to him some superior detail
in his own house. He had certainly allowed me to make his acquaintance,
but that had not been the professed object of his visit. He could not
have talked more obligingly if I had been an interviewer who had
desired to write his biography. I do not believe that it had ever
crossed his mind that the occasion had been anything but a complete
success. His enjoyment was evidently to converse, and he had conversed
unintermittently for several hours. The man was an egoist, of course,
but he had not talked exclusively about himself. Much of his talk had
been devoted to other people, but they were all of them the people whom
he saw in his own private mirror. I have no doubt that for the time
being I was a figure in his dreams, and that I shall be described with
the same minuteness to the unhappy recipients of his confidences who
are now awaiting him at dinner,--at which I may mention he always
drinks whisky-and-seltzer.
I do not mean that every one is like this; but there are really a
larger number of people in the world than I like to think whose delight
it is not to perceive but to relate. The odd thing is that my friend
should think it necessary to preface his meeting with courteous
formulas, which I suppose are really merely liturgical, like the
_Dominus vobiscum_, relating to what a polite Frenchman the other day
called _votre présence et votre précieux concours_.
It is really impossible to convey anything to such people; in fact, it
is almost impossible to communicate with them at all. "Never tell
people how you are," as a trenchant lady of my acquaintance said to me
the other day; "they don't want to know."
I think that the society of people who do want to know, and who ply one
with questions as to one's tastes and habits, are almost more trying
than the purely narrative people, and induce a subtle sense of moral
hypochondria. The perfect mixture, which is not a common one, is that
of the person who both desires to know and is willing to illustrate
one's experience by his own. Then there is a still more inexplicable
class--the people who go greedily to entertainments, come early and go
late, who seem to wish neither to learn nor to communicate, but sit
staring and tongue-tied. The inveterate talker is the least tiresome of
the three undesirable types, because one at least learns something of
another's point of view. But the danger of general society to a person
like myself, who has a desire to play a certain part in talk, is that
sometimes one is tied to an uncompromising person as to a post for
execution. I love a decent equality in the matter of talk. I want to
hear other people's views and to contrast my own with them. I do not
wish to lie, like a merchant vessel near a pirate ship, and to be fired
into at intervals until I surrender. Neither do I want to do all the
firing myself.
The odd thing is that people, like the saints in the psalm, are so
joyful in glory! They seem entirely content with their aims and
methods, and not even dimly to suspect that they might be enlarged or
improved. Some of them want to talk, and some of them seem not even to
wish to be talked to; a very few to listen, and a small and happy
percentage desire both to give and to take.
Well, I suppose that I ought to be glad that my visitor enjoyed
himself; but I cannot help feeling that my coachman would have done as
well as myself--indeed better, for he is a pleasantly taciturn man, and
would not even have given way to rebellious thoughts.
The impression left on my mind by my visitor is just as though a
grasshopper had leapt upon my window-sill from the garden-bed, and sate
there awhile, with his blank eyes, his long, impassive, horse-like
face, twiddling his whisks and sawing out a whizzing note with his dry
arm. It would please me to observe his dry manners, his unsympathetic
and monotonous cries; but neither visitor nor grasshopper would seem
within the reach of any human emotion, except a mild curiosity, and
even amusement. Indeed, the only difference is that if I had clapped my
hands the grasshopper would have gone off like a skipjack, and after a
sky-high leap would have landed struggling among the laurels; while the
more I clapped my hands at my visitor, the longer he would have been
delighted to stay.
My other visitor, who came a day or two later, was a very different
type of man. He was a young, vigorous, healthy creature, who had lately
gone as a master to a big public school. He came at my invitation,
being the son of an old friend of mine. He, too, spent a day with me,
and left on my mind a very different impression, namely, that I should
grow to respect and like him the more that I saw of him. There was
nothing insincere or lacking in genuineness about him. I felt his
solidity, his loyalty, his uprightness very strongly. But he exhibited
on first acquaintance--due no doubt to a sturdy British shyness--all
the qualities that make us so detested upon the Continent, and that
lead the more expansive foreigner, who only sees the superficial aspect
of the Englishman, to think of us as a brutal nation. He was an odd
mixture of awkwardness and complacency, a desire to be courteous
struggling with a desire to show his independence; he had no ease of
manner, no bonhomie, but a gruff and ugly kind of jocosity, which I am
sure was not really natural to him, but was his protest against the
possibility of my considering him to be shy. He seemed anxious to show
that he was as good a man as myself, which I was quite ready to take
for granted. He jested about the dulness of the country; said that he
thought it made people jolly mouldy. He did not see that it was a pity
to press that fact upon me; the truth was that he was thinking of
himself for the time being, though he was no egoist. And whereas the
courtly egoist pays you compliments first and then returns to a more
congenial self-contemplation, my burly young friend would, I have not
the slightest doubt, grow more companionable and considerate every day
that one knew him. But his manner was the manner of the common-room and
the cricket field, that odd British humour, that, without meaning to be
unkind, thrusts its darts clumsily in the weak points of the armour. It
is this, I think, that makes English public school life so good a
discipline, if one unlearns its methods as soon as one has done with
it, because it makes men tolerant of criticism and even ridicule; its
absence of sentiment makes them tough; its absence of courtesy makes
them strong.
But I did not like it at the time. He surveyed my belongings with
good-humoured contempt. He said he did not care for fiddling about a
garden himself, and at my fowl-house he jested of fleas. In my library
he said he had no time for poking about with books. I asked him about
his life at P---- and he assured me it was not half bad; that the boys
were all right if you knew how to take them; and he told me some
pleasant stories of some of his inefficient colleagues. He said that a
good deal of the work was rot, but that they had a first-rate cricket
pitch, and a splendid Pro.
Yet this young man took a high classical degree, and is, I know for a
fact, an admirable schoolmaster, sensible, effective, and even wise; he
makes his boys work, and work contentedly, and he is not only popular
but really trusted by the boys. He would never do a mean thing or an
unkind thing; he is absolutely manly, straightforward, and honourable,
and I gladly admit that a man's behaviour on a social occasion is a
very trivial thing beside these greater qualities. But what is it,
then, which causes this curious gruffness and rudeness, this apparent
assumption that every one is slightly grotesque, low-minded, and
dishonest? For the style of humour which this type develops is the
humour that consists in calling attention in public to any deficiencies
that you may observe in a man's appearance, manner, and surroundings,
and also taking for granted that his motives for action are bad. I do
not mean to say that my young friend considers me grotesque or
dishonest, but his idea of humour is to make a pretence of thinking so.
He would be distressed if he thought that he had given me pain; his
intention is to diffuse a genial good-humour into the scene; and if he
were bantered in the same way, he would take it as an evidence of
friendly feeling.
The truth is that it is really schoolboy humour belatedly prolonged.
Vituperation is the schoolboy's idea of friendly banter. The schoolboy
does not so much consider the feelings of his victim as his companions'
need for amusement. But I am sure that the tendency nowadays is,
somehow or other, to prolong the hobbledehoy days. There is so much
more organisation of everything at schools that young men remain boys
longer than they used to do. Partly, too, in the case of this young
man, it arises from his never having had a change of atmosphere. He
remained a jolly schoolboy till the end of his University days, and
then he went back to the society of schoolboys. He is simply
undeveloped; and the mistake he makes is to consider himself a man of
the world.
But partly, too, it arises from national characteristics, the
preference for bluntness and frankness and outspokenness; the tendency
to believe that a display of courtesy and emotion and consideration is
essentially insincere. One does not at all want to get rid of frankness
and outspokenness. Combined with a certain degree of deference and
sympathy, they are the most delightful graces in the world. But though
the attitude which I have been describing prides itself upon being
above all things unaffected, it is in reality a highly affected mood,
because it is all based on a kind of false shame. Such a man as my
young friend does not really say what he thinks, and very rarely thinks
what he says. He is, as I have said, a high-minded, intelligent, and
sensible man; but he thinks it priggish to let his real opinions be
known, and thus is priggish without perceiving it. The essence of
priggishness is the disapproving attitude, and it is priggish to wish
to appear superior; but my young friend, in the back of his mind, does
think himself the superior of courteous, sympathetic, and emotional
persons.
And thus I did not particularly enjoy his visit, because I could not
feel at ease with my visitor. I could not say frankly what I thought,
but had to select topics which I thought he would consider unaffected.
I think, in fact, that we pay too high a price for our British
reticence: perhaps we keep a few foolish and gushing people in order,
stifle effusiveness, and dry up unctuousness; but we do so at the price
of silencing a much larger number of simple and direct people, and lose
much variety of characteristics and interchange of sincere opinions
thereby!