It was at dinner, one frosty winter evening, and we were all in good
spirits. Two or three animated conversations were going on at the table.
Father Payne was telling one of his dreams to the three who were nearest to
him, and, funny as most of his dreams were, this was unusually so. There
was a burst of laughter and a silence--a sudden sharp silence, in which
Vincent, who was continuing a conversation, was heard to say to Barthrop,
in a tone of fierce vindictiveness, "I hate him like the devil!" Another
laugh followed, and Vincent blushed. "Perhaps I ought not to say that?" he
said in hurried tones.
"You are quite right," said Father Payne to Vincent, encouragingly--"at
least you may be quite right. I don't know of whom you were speaking."
"Yes, who is it, Vincent?" said someone, leaning forwards.
"No, no," said Father Payne, "that's not fair! It was meant to be a private
confession."
"But you don't hate people, Father?" said Lestrange, looking rather pained.
"I, dear man?" said Father Payne. "Yes, of course I do! I loathe them!
Where are your eyes and ears? All decent people do. How would the world get
on without it?"
Lestrange looked rather shocked. "I don't understand," he said. "I always
gathered that you thought it our business to--well, to love people."
"Our business, yes!" said Father Payne; "but our pleasure, no! One must
begin by hating people. What is there to like about many of us?"
"Why, Father," said Vincent, "you are the most charitable of men!"
Father Payne gave him a little bow. "Come," he said, "I will make a
confession. I am by nature the most suspicious of mankind. I have all the
uncivilised instincts. There are people of whom I hate the sight and the
sound, and even the scent. My natural impulse is to see the worst points of
everyone. I admit that people generally improve upon acquaintance, but I
have no weak sentiment about my fellow-men--they are often ugly, stupid,
ill-mannered, ill-tempered, unpleasant, unkind, selfish. It is a positive
delight sometimes to watch a thoroughly nasty person, and to reflect how
much one detests him. It is a sign of grace to do so. How otherwise should
one learn to hate oneself? If you hate nobody, what reason is there for
trying to improve? It is impossible to realise how nasty you yourself can
be until you have seen other people being nasty. Then you say to yourself,
'Come, that is the kind of thing that I do. Can I really be like that?'"
"But surely," said Lestrange, "if you do not try to love people, you cannot
do anything for them; you cannot wish them to be different."
"Why not?" said Father Payne, laughing. "You may hate them so much that you
may wish them to be different. That is the sound way to begin. I say to
myself, 'Here is a truly dreadful person! I would abolish and obliterate
him if I could; but as I cannot, I must try to get him out of this mess,
that we may live more at ease,' It is simple humbug to pretend to like
everyone. You may not think it is entirely people's fault that they are so
unpleasant; but if you really love fine and beautiful things, you must hate
mean and ugly things. Don't let there be any misunderstanding," he said,
smiling round the table. "I have hated most of you at different times, some
of you very much. I don't deny there are good points about you, but that
isn't enough. Sometimes you are detestable!"
"I see what you mean," said Barthrop; "but you don't hate people--you only
hate things in them and about them. It is just a selection."
"Not at all," said Father Payne. "How are you going to separate people's
qualities and attributes from themselves? It is a process of addition and
subtraction, if you like. There may be a balance in your favour. But when a
bad mood is on, when a person is bilious, fractious, ugly, cross, you hate
him. It is natural to do so, and it is right to do so. I do loathe this
talk of mild, weak, universal love. The only chance of human beings getting
on at all, or improving at all, is that they should detest what is
detestable, as they abominate a bad smell. The only reason why we are clean
is because we have gradually learnt to hate bad smells. A bad smell means
something dangerous in the background--so do ugliness, ill-health, bad
temper, vanity, greediness, stupidity, meanness. They are all danger
signals. We have no business to ignore them, or to forget them, or to make
allowances for them. They are all part of the beastliness of the world."
"But if we believe in God, and in God's goodness--if He does not hate
anything which He has made," said Lestrange rather ruefully, "ought we not
to try to do the same?"
"My dear Lestrange," said Father Payne, "one would think you were teaching
a Sunday-school class! How do you know that God made the nasty things? One
must not think so ill of Him as that! It is better to think of God as
feeble and inefficient, than to make Him responsible for all the filth and
ugliness of the world. He hates them as much as you do, you may be sure of
that--and is as anxious as you are, and a great deal more anxious, to get
rid of them. God is infinitely more concerned about it, much more
disappointed about it, than you or me. Why, you and I are often taken in.
We don't always know when things are rotten. I have made friends before now
with people who seemed charming, and I have found out that I was wrong. But
I do not think that God is taken in. It is a very mixed affair, of course;
but one thing is clear, that something very filthy is discharging itself
into the world, like a sewer into a river, I am not going to credit God
with that; He is trying to get rid of it, you may be sure, and He cannot do
it as fast as He would like. We have got to sympathise with Him, and we
have got to help Him. Come, someone else must talk--I must get on with my
dinner," Father Payne addressed himself to his plate with obvious appetite.
"It is all my fault," said Vincent, "but I am not going to tell you whom I
meant, and Barthrop must not. But I will tell you how it was. I was with
this man, who is an old acquaintance of mine. I used to know him when I was
living in London. I met him the other day, and he asked me to luncheon. He
was pleasant enough, but after lunch he said to me that he was going to
take the privilege of an old friend, and give me some advice. He began by
paying me compliments; he said that he had thought a year ago that I was
really going to do something in literature. 'You had made a little place
for yourself,' he said; 'you had got your foot on the ladder. You knew the
right people. You had a real chance of success. Then, in the middle of it
all, you go and bury yourself in the country with an old'--no, I can't say
it."
"Don't mind me!" said Father Payne.
"Very well," said Vincent, "if you _will_ hear it--'with an old
humbug, and a set of asses. You sit in each others' pockets, you praise
each others' stuff, you lead what you call the simple life. Where will you
all be five years hence?' I told him that I didn't know, and I didn't care.
Then he lost his temper, and, what was worse, he thought he was keeping it.
'Very well,' he said. 'Now I will tell you what you ought to be doing. You
ought to have buckled to your work, pushed yourself quietly in all
directions, never have written anything, or made a friend, or accepted an
invitation, without saying, "Will this add to my consequence?" We must all
nurse our reputations in this world. They don't come of themselves--they
have to be made!' Well, I thought this all very sickening, and I said I
didn't care a d--n about my reputation. I said I had a chance of living
with people whom I liked, and of working at things I cared about, and I
thought his theories simply disgusting and vulgar. He showed his teeth at
that, and said that he had spoken as a true friend, and that it had been a
painful task; and then I said I was much obliged to him, and came away.
That's the story!"
"That's all right," said Father Payne, "and I am much obliged to you for
the sidelight on my character. But there is something in what he said, you
know. You are rather unpractical! I shall send you back for a bit to
London, I think!"
"Why on earth do you say that?" said Vincent, looking a little crestfallen.
"Because you mind it too much, my boy," said Father Payne. "You must not
get soft. That's the danger of this life! It's all very well for me; I'm
tough, and I'm moderately rich. But you would not have cared so much if you
had not thought there _was_ something in what he said. It was very
low, no doubt, and I give you leave to hate him; though, if you are going
to lead the detached life, you must be detached. But now I have caught you
up--and we will go back a little. The mistake you made, Vincent, if I may
say so, was to be angry. You may hate people, but you must not show that
you hate them. That is the practical side of the principle. The moment you
begin to squabble, and to say wounding things, and to try to _hurt_
the person you hate, you are simply putting yourself on his level. And you
must not be shocked or pained either. That is worse still, because it makes
you superior, without making you engaging."
"Then what _are_ you to do?" said Barthrop.
"Try persuasion if you like," said Father Payne, "but you had better fall
back on attractive virtue! You must ignore the nastiness, and give the
pleasant qualities, if there are any, room to manoeuvre. But I admit it is
a difficult job, and needs some practice."
"But I don't see any principle about it," said Vincent.
"There isn't any," said Father Payne;--"at least there is, but you must not
dig it in. You mustn't use principles as if they were bayonets. Civility is
the best medium. If you appear to be fatuously unconscious of other
people's presence, of course they want to make themselves felt. But if you
are good-humoured and polite, they will try to make you think well of them.
That is probably why your friend calls me a humbug--he thinks I can't feel
as polite as I seem."
"But if you are dealing with a real egotist," said Vincent, "what are you
to do then?"
"Keep the talk firmly on himself," said Father Payne, "and, if he ever
strays from the subject, ask him a question about himself. Egotists are
generally clever people, and no clever people like being drawn out, while
no egotists like to be perceived to be egotists. You know the old saying
that a bore is a person who wants to talk about _himself_ when you
want to talk about _yourself_. It is the pull against him that makes
the bore want to hold his own. The first duty of the evangelist is to learn
to pay compliments unobtrusively."
"That's rather a nauseous prescription!" said Lestrange, making a face.
"Well, you can begin with that," said Father Payne, "and when I see you
perfect in it, I will tell you something else. Let's have some music, and
let me get the taste of all this high talk out of my mouth!"