hours of business, we go to him who knows, or has, or does this or that
which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way.
But this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for
those we can be at ease with; those who will go where we go, whose
manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we
reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they recommend,
prepare, and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the
members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for
the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries
manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what
high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what
divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph; we
see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience,
power, and beauty.
Their first service is very low,--when they are the minor morals; but
'tis the beginning of civility,--to make us, I mean, endurable to each
other. We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get
people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set
up on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel them to be
clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base,
and choose the generous expression, and make them know how much happier
the generous behaviors are.
Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is invested with rude,
cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and
whom a public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by
the sense of all, can reach;--the contradictors and railers at public
and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a
dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house
by barking him out of sight;--I have seen men who neigh like a horse
when you contradict them, or say something which they do not
understand;--then the overbold, who make their own invitation to your
hearth; the persevering talker, who gives you his society in large,
saturating doses; the pitiers of themselves,--a perilous class; the
frivolous Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to
twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity;--these are
social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or defend you from,
and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and
proverbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young people in
their school-days.
In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they print, or used to
print, among the rules of the house, that "No gentleman can be permitted
to come to the public table without his coat;" and in the same country,
in the pews of the churches, little placards plead with the worshipper
against the fury of expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly
undertook the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable
particulars. I think the lesson was not quite lost; that it held bad
manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the
book had its own deformities. It ought not to need to print in a reading
room a caution to strangers not to speak loud; nor to persons who look
over fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs and
butterflies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble statues, that they
shall not smite them with canes. But, even in the perfect civilization
of this city, such cautions are not quite needless in the Athenaeum and
City Library.
Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstances as well as out of
character. If you look at the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of
different periods and countries, you will see how well they match the
same classes in our towns. The modern aristocrat not only is well drawn
in Titian's Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in
the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan.
Broad lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads as can
manage them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, too, will see nice
gradations of rank, or see in the manners the degree of homage the party
is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day to be courted
and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a corresponding
expectation, and a becoming mode of receiving and replying to this
homage.
There are always exceptional people and modes. English grandees affect
to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and
levity of behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Nature and Destiny
are honest, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a sign for
each and for every quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and
perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole secret when he
has learned that disengaged manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by
a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in
Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and
in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face,
voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him; it
cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;--little cared he; he knew that
it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his
indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of
fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: but underneath all this
irritability was a puissant will, firm and advancing, and a memory in
which lay in order and method, like geologic strata, every fact of his
history, and under the control of his will.
Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be capacity for
culture in the blood. Else all culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice
in favor of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and monarchical
fabrics of the old world, has some reason in common experience. Every
man,--mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant,--looks with
confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which he would
not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. The Orientalists are
very orthodox on this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir
Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with water, it will yield
nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it
will always produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab
populace is a bush of thorns."
A main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful expressiveness of
the human body. If it were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts
were written on steel tablets within, it could not publish more truly
its meaning than now. Wise men read very sharply all your private
history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature
is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like
Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement. They
carry the liquor of life flowing up and down in these beautiful bottles,
and announcing to the curious how it is with them. The face and eyes
reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The
eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or through how many forms it
has already ascended. It almost violates the proprieties, if we say
above the breath here what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter
to every street passenger.
Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imperfect. In
Siberia, a late traveller found men who could see the satellites of
Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel us.
The birds have a longer sight, beside the advantage by their wings of a
higher observatory. A cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably
of the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The jockeys say
of certain horses, that "they look over the whole ground." The outdoor
life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. A
farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the
stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun,
or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams
of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.
The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a thought strikes us,
the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a distance; in enumerating the names
of persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes
wink at each new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by the
mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," said Michael
Angelo, "must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye;"
and there is no end to the catalogue of its performances, whether in
indolent vision (that of health and beauty) or in strained vision (that
of art and labor).
Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far
and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they
are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither
poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but
intrude, and come again, and go through and through you, in a moment of
time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul
into another through them! The glance is natural magic. The mysterious
communication established across a house between two entire strangers
moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance is in
the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the
bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into the eyes to know if
this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a
faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations are
sometimes terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is there
made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, and
bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity.
'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at the windows of the
house does at once invest himself in a new form of his own to the mind
of the beholder.
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage,
that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the
world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a
practised man relies on the language of the first. If the man is off his
center, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion,
whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it.
There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a good thing,
and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine
offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye.
How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by
the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen,
he has said nothing, and no important remark has been addressed to him,
and yet, if in sympathy with the society he shall not have a sense of
this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from
him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more
admission into the man than blue-berries. Others are liquid and
deep,--wells that a man might fall into;--others are aggressive and
devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and
require crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, to protect
individuals against them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling
under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedaemon;
'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting eyes,
prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate,--some of good, and some of
sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in
beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the
will before it can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each
man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense
scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man
should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked on
him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were
generous and universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because
they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features
have their own. A man finds room in the few square inches of the face
for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his
history, and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will
tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express
strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius
Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest "the terrors of the beak." What
refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Beware you don't
laugh," said the wise mother, "for then you show all your faults."
Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called "_Théorie de la
démarche_,"[35] in which he says: "The look, the voice, the respiration,
and the attitude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given
to man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these four different
simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch that one which speaks out
the truth, and you will know the whole man."
Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, which, in the
idle and expensive society dwelling in them, are raised to a high art.
The maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm and resolute
bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of
hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and
Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and an encyclopaedia of
_Mémoires_, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets.
Thus, it is a point of pride with kings to remember faces and names. It
is reported of one prince, that his head had the air of leaning
downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. There are people who come
in ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was said of the late
Lord Holland, that he always came down to breakfast with the air of a
man who had just met with some signal good-fortune. In _Notre Dame_, the
grandee took his place on the dais, with the look of one who is thinking
of something else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop at palace-doors.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. A scholar may
be a well-bred man, or he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to
polished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding
himself not in their element. They all have somewhat which he has not,
and, it seems, ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his
companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the scholar has no
defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out
on their private strengths. What is the talent of that character so
common,--the successful man of the world,--in all marts, senates, and
drawing-rooms? Manners: mariners of power; sense to see his advantage,
and manners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows that troops
behave as they are handled at first;--that is his cheap secret; just
what happens to every two persons who meet on any affair,--one
instantly perceives that he has the key of the situation, that his will
comprehends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has only
to use courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to cover
up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance.
The theater in which this science of manners has a formal importance is
not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the
day's business, men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment,
in ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it has every variety of
attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who
have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed,
talkative company, where each is bent to amuse the other,--yet the
high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every woman seemed to be
suffering for a chair; that all the talkers were brained and exhausted
by the deoxygenated air; it spoiled the best persons: it put all on
stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies written and read. The aspect
of that man is repulsive; I do not wish to deal with him. The other is
irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks humble and manly: I
choose him. Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant
sayings, nor distinguished power, to serve you; but all see her gladly;
her whole air and impression are healthful. Here come the
sentimentalists, and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in
coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are
creep-mouse manners, and thievish manners. "Look at Northcote," said
Fuseli; "he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow
company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard: the
Alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. Here are the
sweet following eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she demanded the
heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace
of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better
manners than she; for the movements of Blanche are the sallies of a
spirit which is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to
express every thought by instant action.
Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise
men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who
do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is
very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists
and sneers at you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the
party attacked; the second is still more effective, but is not to be
resisted, as the date of the transaction is not easily found. People
grow up and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth,
ascribing the solitude which acts on them very injuriously to any cause
but the right one.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all
who are not self-possessed. Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude,
and pain us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah caste.
They fear to offend, they bend and apologize, and walk through life with
a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed
company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he suffered from
some mortifying circumstance. The hero should find himself at home,
wherever he is; should impart comfort by his own security and
good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered to be himself. A
person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him an immunity is
secured so long as he renders to society that service which is native
and proper to him,--an immunity from all the observances, yea, and
duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of
its members. "Euripides," says Aspasia, "has not the fine manners of
Sophocles; but,"--she adds good-humoredly, "the movers and masters of
our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as
they please on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures
they have animated."[36]
Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. Friendship
should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into
corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually
command. Here comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading
and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. Tis a great
destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large
leisures, but, contrariwise, should be balked by importunate affairs.
But through this lustrous varnish the reality is ever shining. 'Tis hard
to keep the _what_ from breaking through this pretty painting of the
_how_. The core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen
perception overpower old manners and create new; and the thought of the
present moment has a greater value than all the past. In persons of
character, we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness.
We are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch the way of
it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the great style which
runs through the actions of such. People masquerade before us in their
fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as academic or civil
presidents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on
the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At least,
it is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations
tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows these
fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in Paris the chief of
the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and
make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating
look as they pass. "I had received," said a sybil, "I had received at
birth the fatal gift of penetration:"--and these Cassandras are always
born.
Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his
point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads.
And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making
him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression.
Nature for ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, is
seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be done
for love. A man inspires affection and honor, because he was not lying
in wait for these. The things of a man for which we visit him, were done
in the dark and the cold. A little integrity is better than any career.
So deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even the size of
your companion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not only is he
larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything around
him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and
chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into
the house: if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 'tis of no
importance how large his house, how beautiful his grounds,--you quickly
come to the end of all; but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at
home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely large and interesting, the
roof and dome buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest
person in plain clothes sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable,
like the Egyptian colossi.
Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Champollion has set
down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older than Sanscrit; but they
who cannot yet read English, can read this. Men take each other's
measure when they meet for the first time,--and every time they meet.
How do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each
other's power and dispositions? One would say, that the persuasion of
their speech is not in what they say,--or, that men do not convince by
their argument,--but by their personality, by who they are, and what
they said and did heretofore. A man already strong is listened to, and
everything he says is applauded. Another opposes him with sound
argument, but the argument is scouted, until by-and-by it gets into the
mind of some weighty person; then it begins to tell on the community.
Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty that the
powers are not squandered in too much demonstration. In this country,
where school education is universal, we have a superficial culture, and
a profusion of reading and writing and expression. We parade our
nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working them up into
happiness. There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand
it,--"Whatever is known to thyself alone, has always very great value."
There is some reason to believe, that, when a man does not write his
poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent
of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often
nothing poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi said that, "when
a man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less possession
of it." One would say, the rule is,--What a man is irresistibly urged to
say, helps him and us. In explaining his thought to others, he explains
it to himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts him.