Our hostess enters wreathed in smiles. Is she really pleased to see us, or is she saying to herself, “Drat the man! Why must he choose the very morning I had intended to fix up the clean curtains?”
But she has to pretend to be delighted, and ask us to stay to lunch. It would save us hours of anxiety could we look beyond her smiling face to her tail peeping out saucily from a placket-hole. Is it wagging, or is it standing out rigid at right angles from her skirt?
But I fear by this time we should have taught our tails polite behaviour. We should have schooled them to wag enthusiastically the while we were growling savagely to ourselves. Man put on insincerity to hide his mind when he made himself a garment of fig-leaves to hide his body.
One sometimes wonders whether he has gained so very much. A small acquaintance of mine is being brought up on strange principles. Whether his parents are mad or not is a matter of opinion. Their ideas are certainly peculiar. They encourage him rather than otherwise to tell the truth on all occasions. I am watching the experiment with interest. If you ask him what he thinks of you, he tells you. Some people don’t ask him a second time. They say:
“What a very rude little boy you are!”
“But you insisted upon it,” he explains; “I told you I’d rather not say.”
It does not comfort them in the least. Yet the result is, he is already an influence. People who have braved the ordeal, and emerged successfully, go about with swelled head.
Politeness would seem to have been invented for the comfort of the undeserving. We let fall our rain of compliments upon the unjust and the just without distinction. Every hostess has provided us with the most charming evening of our life. Every guest has conferred a like blessing upon us by accepting our invitation. I remember a dear good lady in a small south German town organizing for one winter’s day a sleighing party to the woods. A sleighing party differs from a picnic. The people who want each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving the bores to find only each other. You are in close company from early morn till late at night. We were to drive twenty miles, six in a sledge, dine together in a lonely Wirtschaft, dance and sing songs, and afterwards drive home by moonlight. Success depends on every member of the company fitting into his place and assisting in the general harmony. Our chieftainess was fixing the final arrangements the evening before in the drawing-room of the pension. One place was still to spare.
“Tompkins!”
Two voices uttered the name simultaneously; three others immediately took up the refrain. Tompkins was our man – the cheeriest, merriest companion imaginable. Tompkins alone could be trusted to make the affair a success. Tompkins, who had only arrived that afternoon, was pointed out to our chieftainess. We could hear his good-tempered laugh from where we sat, grouped together at the other end of the room. Our chieftainess rose, and made for him direct.
Alas! she was a short-sighted lady – we had not thought of that. She returned in triumph, followed by a dismal-looking man I had met the year before in the Black Forest, and had hoped never to meet again. I drew her aside.
“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t ask – ” (I forget his name. One of these days I’ll forget him altogether, and be happier. I will call him Johnson.) “He would turn the whole thing into a funeral before we were half-way there. I climbed a mountain with him once. He makes you forget all your other troubles; that is the only thing he is good for.”
“But who is Johnson?” she demanded. “Why, that’s Johnson,” I explained – “the thing you’ve brought over. Why on earth didn’t you leave it alone? Where’s your woman’s instinct?”
“Great heavens!” she cried, “I thought it was Tompkins. I’ve invited him, and he’s accepted.”
She was a stickler for politeness, and would not hear of his being told that he had been mistaken for an agreeable man, but that the error, most fortunately, had been discovered in time. He started a row with the driver of the sledge, and devoted the journey outwards to an argument on the fiscal question. He told the proprietor of the hotel what he thought of German cooking, and insisted on having the windows open. One of our party – a German student – sang, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” – which led to a heated discussion on the proper place of sentiment in literature, and a general denunciation by Johnson of Teutonic characteristics in general. We did not dance. Johnson said that, of course, he spoke only for himself, but the sight of middle-aged ladies and gentlemen catching hold of each other round the middle and jigging about like children was to him rather a saddening spectacle, but to the young such gambolling was natural. Let the young ones indulge themselves. Only four of our party could claim to be under thirty with any hope of success. They were kind enough not to impress the fact upon us. Johnson enlivened the journey back by a searching analysis of enjoyment: Of what did it really consist?
Yet, on wishing him “Good-night,” our chieftainess thanked him for his company in precisely the same terms she would have applied to Tompkins, who, by unflagging good humour and tact, would have made the day worth remembering to us all for all time.
We pay dearly for our want of sincerity. We are denied the payment of praise: it has ceased to have any value. People shake me warmly by the hand and tell me that they like my books. It only bores me. Not that I am superior to compliment – nobody is – but because I cannot be sure that they mean it. They would say just the same had they never read a line I had written. If I visit a house and find a book of mine open face downwards on the window-seat, it sends no thrill of pride through my suspicious mind. As likely as not, I tell myself, the following is the conversation that has taken place between my host and hostess the day before my arrival:
“Don’t forget that man J- is coming down to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! I wish you would tell me of these things a little earlier.”
“I did tell you – told you last week. Your memory gets worse every day.”
“You certainly never told me, or I should have remembered it. Is he anybody important?”
“Oh, no; writes books.”
“What sort of books? – I mean, is he quite respectable?”
“Of course, or I should not have invited him. These sort of people go everywhere nowadays. By the by, have we got any of his books about the house?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll look and see. If you had let me know in time I could have ordered one from Mudie’s.”
“Well, I’ve got to go to town; I’ll make sure of it, and buy one.”
“Seems a pity to waste money. Won’t you be going anywhere near Mudie’s?”
“Looks more appreciative to have bought a copy. It will do for a birthday present for someone.”
On the other hand, the conversation may have been very different. My hostess may have said:
“Oh, I am glad he’s coming. I have been longing to meet him for years.”
She may have bought my book on the day of publication, and be reading it through for the second time. She may, by pure accident, have left it on her favourite seat beneath the window. The knowledge that insincerity is our universal garment has reduced all compliment to meaningless formula. A lady one evening at a party drew me aside. The chief guest – a famous writer – had just arrived.
“Tell me,” she said, “I have so little time for reading, what has he done?”
I was on the point of replying when an inveterate wag, who had overheard her, interposed between us.
“‘The Cloister and the Hearth,’” he told her, “and ‘Adam Bede.’”
He happened to know the lady well. She has a good heart, but was ever muddle-headed.