I was playing a game of golf the other day with a man whom I had
known in other affairs, but whom I had not met before on the golf
links. He is one of those men, of whom I wrote some time ago, who
are ridden by one idea to the exclusion of all other ideas. At the
moment the thing that filled his mind was the Capital Levy, and it
filled it so completely that I fancy he went round the links without
ever quite realising what he was about. He would pause in the midst
of addressing the ball and resume the argument from some new angle.
He would make his tee and forget to put the ball on it while he threw
another illuminating ray on the absorbing topic. I tried to divert
his attention from the Capital Levy by remarks on the game or the
beauty of the day, or anything else that was handy, as a red herring,
to draw him off the scent; but it was all in vain. He stuck to his
theme as precedents stick to law or barnacles to a ship's bottom.
But it was not the subject that was the chief offence to the day and
the occasion. What distressed me most was his unconsciousness of the
way he was blocking the course. There were a lot of people on the
links, and it was clear to me that we were checking those behind us
unduly. I gave him hints--slight at first and broad as day as my
temper rose--that we must move more quickly. They fell on ears that
did not hear. He patted his tee, and looked up to continue his
argument; then his ball would roll off the tee, and he would make
another little sand-castle; then a new thought would strike him, and
he would stop altogether until he had disclosed it. And all the time
I was sensible that curses not loud but deep were being uttered, and
quite reasonably uttered, by the people behind us.
Now my friend was not an ill-mannered boor, nor even a selfish
person. He was simply unconscious of other people; and although he
angered me a great deal at the time, I am not holding him up to
reprobation entirely. He seemed to me to have an invaluable quality
in an extravagant measure. I was conscious that I envied his
stolidity and power of divorcing himself from external influences
even while I groaned under his intolerable calm. It was a
preposterous situation. He was doing all the mischief and I was
suffering all the penalty. It reminded me of the younger Pitt who
drank the wine while the Clerk of the House got the headache. I was
miserable at holding up the people behind, but my opponent who was
holding them up was not even aware that they were there, so absorbed
was he in the activities of his own mind.
Within reason, this insensibility to the outside world is a precious
gift. Many of the Scotch people have it in an aggravating degree.
_J'y suis, j'y reste_ is their motto. They have what the Americans
love to call "poise," an imperturbable indifference to the emotions
of others that is half the secret of their success. They are masters
of themselves and are clothed in a good tough skin that makes them
proof against all the winds that blow. They are inferior, of course,
to the Jews, whose insensibility to the feelings of others sometimes
passes belief. It is the heritage no doubt of two thousand years of
buffetings by a hostile world, and it enables them to exploit their
superior qualities of brain to the maximum. But they are trying and
often offensive, even to those of us who loathe the gospel according
to Mr. Belloc.
I should be sorry to see this callosity offered as a model; but there
is a virtue in it. A too sensitive skin is a heavy handicap in a
rough world. There is no more sterilising thing than to be
excessively conscious of other people. It is the source of most of
our weaknesses and affectations, and of nearly all our insincerities
of speech and action. There are some of us who are hardly ever our
real selves in our contacts with others. Goldsmith "wrote like an
angel but talked like poor Poll," because in the presence of company
he lost the rudder of himself and was drowned by the waves of
inferior but more aggressive minds. We do and say many foolish and
many insincere things because the attractions and repulsions of other
personalities play the dickens with our emotions. It was this
consideration, I think, that led Hazlitt to rank humility as the
lowest of the virtues. He meant that the sense of inferiority
subordinated us to the dominion of other minds and defeated the
authentic expression of ourselves.
My friend on the golf links, of course, carried insensibility to
others too far. Personality should not be like a reed shaken in the
wind. It should be stable and erect, standing four-square to all the
winds that blow. But while it should not be worried or deflected by
what it thinks others may be doing or saying or feeling, it ought not
to be forgetful of the rights and conveniences of others. Nor should
it forget those small graces that sweeten our intercourse with
others. Take the familiar case of birthdays. It is easy to forget
other people's birthdays as we grow older and have many birthdays to
remember. It is easy to forget them, because we become indifferent
to our own. When the light has gone off the morning hills we have no
particular pleasure in reminding ourselves how the shadows are
lengthening on our path. Years ago we reached a new milestone with
the comfortable feeling that there were any number of milestones
ahead, and that to pass another one was rather a gay experience. If
anything, we did not pass them speedily enough. We could not make
the laggard time keep pace with the hurry of the spirit. But when
the milestones stretch far behind us and we can count those in front
on the fingers of one or two hands the zest for birthdays is
diminished. We may even come to regard them in the light of those
"third and final" notices which announce the impatience of the
tax-collector at our dilatory ways.
But though we may prefer to forget our own birthdays, we like other
people to remember them. We like them to remember the day as an
assurance that they remember us. We live by the affections, and our
happiness depends much more than we are aware of upon the conviction
that we have a place in the hearts and memories of others. If we are
unfortunate enough to have outlived that place and to have become
negligible laggards on the stage, the fact is mercifully concealed
from us on 364 days in the year. But on the 365th day it may be
blindingly revealed by a silence that stabs to the heart.
I suppose few of us have escaped the experience in some measure.
Perhaps Aunt Anne comes down to breakfast on her birthday morning a
little conscious of the day and hoping to receive a more cordial
greeting than usual on the occasion from her nephews and nieces,
whose birthdays are marked with red letters in her own calendar and
celebrated by gifts on which she has spent anxious thought. And the
breakfast passes without a word on the subject. If Aunt Anne is a
sensible woman she makes allowance for the thoughtlessness of youth
and remembers that she was once young and careless herself; but she
will be an exceptional woman if she does not feel that something of
the brightness has gone out of the day.
These little domestic tragedies mean more to us than we care to
admit. The small attentions and civilities we bestow or forget to
bestow on each other make the atmosphere in which we move. It is
many years since I read _Wuthering Heights_, but I remember how the
gloom and oppression which hang about that powerful book are created
by such trifling incidents as the meeting of father and son in the
morning without a word of greeting. They simply glower at each other
and pass to their tasks. It is the graces of conduct that give life
its flavour and make it sunny for ourselves, as well as for others.
Wordsworth uses the perfect image for them when he says:
The charities that soothe and heal and bless,
Are scattered all about our feet--like flowers.
Even remembering the birthday of a friend may help to keep the garden
of the mind in beauty and a reasonable regard for the amenities of
the links is no bad discipline of conduct. I would not have my
friend hurry his shot from a too acute sense of the people behind.
Let him take his time and keep his head. But let him give others
their place in the sun.