Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861

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There are various ways in which self-consciousness disagreeably evinces
its existence; and there is not one, perhaps, more disagreeable than the
affected avoidance of what is generally regarded as egotism. Depend upon
it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly
uses the first person singular, and says, "I think thus and thus," "I
have seen so and so," is thinking of himself and his own personality
a mighty deal less than the man who is always employing awkward and
roundabout forms of expression to avoid the use of the obnoxious _I_.
Every such periphrasis testifies unmistakably that the man was thinking
of himself; but the simple, natural writer, warm with his subject, eager
to press his views upon his readers, uses the _I_ without a thought of
self, just because it is the shortest, most direct, and most natural way
of expressing himself. The recollection of his own personality probably
never once crossed his mind during the composition of the paragraph from
which an ill-set critic might pick out a score of _I_-s. To say, "It is
submitted" instead of "I think," "It has been observed" instead of "I
have seen," "The present writer" instead of "I," is much the more really
egotistical. Try to write an essay without using that vowel which
some men think the very shibboleth of egotism, and the remembrance of
yourself will be in the background of your mind all the time you are
writing. It will be always intruding and pushing in its face, and you
will be able to give only half your mind to your subject. But frankly
and naturally use the _I_, and the remembrance of yourself vanishes. You
are grappling with the subject; you are thinking of it, and of nothing
else. You use the readiest and most unaffected mode of speech to set out
your thoughts of it. You have written _I_ a dozen times, but you have
not thought of yourself once.

You may see the self-consciousness of some men strongly manifested
in their handwriting. The handwriting of some men is essentially
affected,--more especially their signature. It seems to be a very
searching test whether a man is a conceited person or an unaffected
person, to be required to furnish his autograph to be printed underneath
his published portrait. I have fancied I could form a theory of a man's
whole character from reading, in such a situation, merely the words,
"Very faithfully yours, Eusebius Snooks," You could see that Mr. Snooks
was acting, when he wrote that signature. He was thinking of the
impression it would produce on those who saw it. It was not the thing
which a man would produce who simply wished to write his name legibly in
as short a time and with as little needless trouble as possible. Let me
say with sorrow that I have known even venerable bishops who were not
superior to this irritating weakness. Some men aim at an aristocratic
hand; some deal in vulgar flourishes. These are the men who have reached
no farther than that stage at which they are proud of the dexterity with
which they handle their pen. Some strive after an affectedly simple and
student-like hand; some at a dashing and military style. But there may
be as much self-consciousness evinced by handwriting as by anything
else. Any clergyman who performs a good many marriages will be impressed
by the fact that very few among the humbler classes can sign their name
in an unaffected way. I am not thinking of the poor bride who shakily
traces her name, or of the simple bumpkin who slowly writes his, making
no secret of the difficulty with which he does it. These are natural
and pleasing. You would like to help and encourage them. But it is
irritating, when some forward fellow, after evincing his marked contempt
for the slow and cramped performances of his friends, jauntily takes up
the pen and dashes off his signature at a tremendous rate and with the
air of an exploit, evidently expecting the admiration of his rustic
friends, and laying a foundation for remarking to them on his way home
that the parson could not touch him at penmanship. I have observed with
a little malicious satisfaction that such persons, arising in their
pride from the place where they wrote, generally smear their signature
with their coat-sleeve, and reduce it to a state of comparative
illegibility. I like to see the smirking, impudent creature a little
taken down.

But it is endless to try to reckon up the fashions in which people show
that they have not learnt the lesson of their own unimportance. Did you
ever stop in the street and talk for a few minutes to some old bachelor?
If so, I dare say you have remarked a curious phenomenon. You have found
that all of a sudden the mind of the old gentleman, usually reasonable
enough, appeared stricken into a state approaching idiocy, and that
the sentence which he had begun in a rational and intelligible way was
ending in a maze of wandering words, signifying nothing in particular.
You had been looking in another direction, but in sudden alarm you look
straight at the old gentleman to see what on earth is the matter; and
you discern that his eyes are fixed on some passer-by, possibly a young
lady, perhaps no more than a magistrate or the like, who is by this
time a good many yards off, with the eyes still following, and slowly
revolving on their axes so as to follow without the head being turned
round. It is this spectacle which has drawn off your friend's attention;
and you notice his whole figure twisted into an ungainly form, intended
to be dignified or easy, and assumed because he fancied that the
passerby was looking at him. Oh the pettiness of human nature! Then you
will find people afraid that they have given offence by saying or doing
things which the party they suppose offended had really never observed
that they had said or done. There are people who fancy that in church
everybody is looking at them, when in truth no mortal is taking the
trouble to do so. It is an amusing, though irritating sight, to behold
a weak-minded lady walking into church and taking her seat under this
delusion. You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor
intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which
there shines the real desire, "Oh, for any sake, look at me!" There are
people whose voice is utterly inaudible in church six feet off, who will
tell you that a whole congregation of a thousand or fifteen hundred
people was listening to their singing. Such folk will tell you that they
went to a church where the singing was left too much to the choir, and
began to sing as usual, on which the entire congregation looked round
to see who it was that was singing, and ultimately proceeded to sing
lustily too. I do not remember a more disgusting exhibition of vulgar
self-conceit than I saw a few months ago at Westminster Abbey. It was a
weekday afternoon service, and the congregation was small. Immediately
before me there sat an insolent boor, who evidently did not belong to
the Church of England. He had walked in when the prayers were half over,
having with difficulty been made to take off his hat, and his manifest
wish was to testify his contempt for the whole place and service.
Accordingly he persisted in sitting, in a lounging attitude, when the
people stood, and in standing up and staring about with an air of
curiosity while they knelt. He was very anxious to convey that he was
not listening to the prayers; but rather inconsistently, he now and then
uttered an audible grunt of disapproval. No one can enjoy the choral
service more than I do, and the music that afternoon was very fine; but
I could not enjoy it or join in it as I wished, for the disgust I felt
at the animal before me, and for my burning desire to see him turned out
of the sacred place he was profaning. But the thing which chiefly struck
me about the individual was not his vulgar and impudent profanity; it
was his intolerable self-conceit. He plainly thought that every eye
under the noble old roof was watching all his movements. I could see
that he would go home and boast of what he had done, and tell his
friends that all the clergy, choristers, and congregation had been
awestricken by him, and that possibly word had by this time been
conveyed to Lambeth or Fulham of the weakened influence and approaching
downfall of the Church of England. I knew that the very thing he
wished was that some one should rebuke his conduct, otherwise I should
certainly have told him either to behave with decency or to be gone.

I have sometimes witnessed a curious manifestation of this vain sense of
self-importance. Did you ever, my reader, chance upon such a spectacle
as this: a very commonplace man, and even a very great blockhead,
standing in a drawing-room where a large party of people is assembled,
with a grin of self-complacent superiority upon his unmeaning face? I
am sure you understand the thing I mean. I mean a look which conveyed,
that, in virtue of some hidden store of genius or power, he could survey
with a calm, cynical loftiness the little conversation and interests of
ordinary mortals. You know the kind of interest with which a human being
would survey the distant approaches to reason of an intelligent dog or a
colony of ants. I have seen this expression on the face of one or two
of the greatest blockheads I ever knew. I have seen such a one wear it
while clever men were carrying on a conversation in which he could not
have joined to have saved his life. Yet you could see that (who can tell
how?) the poor creature had somehow persuaded himself that he occupied a
position from which he could look down upon his fellow-men in general.
Or was it rather that the poor creature knew he was a fool, and fancied
that thus he could disguise the fact? I dare say there was a mixture of
both feelings.

You may see many indications of vain self-importance in the fact that
various persons, old ladies for the most part, are so ready to give
opinions which are not wanted, on matters of which they are not
competent to judge. Clever young curates suffer much annoyance from
these people: they are always anxious to instruct the young curates how
to preach. I remember well, ten years ago, when I was a curate (which in
Scotland we call an _assistant_) myself, what advices I used to receive
(quite unsought by me) from well-meaning, but densely stupid old ladies.
I did not think the advices worth much, even then; and now, by longer
experience, I can discern that they were utterly idiotic. Yet they were
given with entire confidence. No thought ever entered the heads of
these well-meaning, but stupid individuals, that possibly they were not
competent to give advice on such subjects. And it is vexatious to think
that people so stupid may do serious harm to a young clergyman by
head-shakings and sly innuendoes as to his orthodoxy or his gravity of
deportment. In the long run they will do no harm, but at the first start
they may do a good deal of mischief. Not long since, such a person
complained to me that a talented young preacher had taught unsound
doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were
taken _verbatim_ from the "Confession of Faith," which is our Scotch
Thirty-Nine Articles. I think it not unlikely that she would go on
telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid
old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question,
that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he
had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson
said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she
did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your
opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft
would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid and
self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It was a fundamental
axiom with her that her opinion was entirely infallible. Some people
would feel as though the very world were crumbling away under their
feet, if they realized the fact that they could go wrong.

Let it here be said, that this vain belief of their own importance,
which most people cherish, is not at all a source of unmixed happiness.
It will work either way. When my friend, Mr. Snarling, got his beautiful
poem printed in the county newspaper, it no doubt pleased him to think,
as he walked along the street, that every one was pointing him out as
the eminent literary man who was the pride of the district, and that the
whole town was ringing with that magnificent effusion. Mr. Tennyson, it
is certain, felt that his crown was being reft away. But, on the other
hand, there is no commoner form of morbid misery than that of the poor
nervous man or woman who fancies that he or she is the subject of
universal unkindly remark. You will find people, still sane for
practical purposes, who think that the whole neighborhood is conspiring
against them, when in fact nobody is thinking of them.

All these pages have been spent in discussing a single thing slowly
learnt: the remaining matters to be considered in this essay must be
treated briefly.

Another thing slowly learnt is that we have no reason or right to be
angry with people because they think poorly of us. This is a truth which
most people find it very hard to accept, and at which, probably, very
few arrive without pretty long thought and experience. Most people are
angry, when they are informed that some one has said that their ability
is small, or that their proficiency in any art is limited. Mrs. Malaprop
was very indignant, when she found that some of her friends had spoken
lightly of her parts of speech. Mr. Snarling was wroth, when he learned
that Mr. Jollikin thought him no great preacher. Miss Brown was so, on
hearing that Mr. Smith did not admire her singing; and Mr. Smith, on
learning that Miss Brown did not admire his horsemanship. Some authors
feel angry, on reading an unfavorable review of their book. The present
writer has been treated very, very kindly by the critics,--far more so
than he ever deserved; yet he remembers showing a notice of him, which
was intended to extinguish him for all coming time, to a warm-hearted
friend, who read it with gathering wrath, and, vehemently starting up at
its close, exclaimed, (we knew who wrote the notice,)--"Now I shall
go straight and kick that fellow!" Now all this is very natural; but
assuredly it is quite wrong. You understand, of course, that I am
thinking of unfavorable opinions of you, honestly held, and expressed
without malice. I do not mean to say that you would choose for your
special friend or companion one who thought meanly of your ability or
your sense; it would not be pleasant to have him always by you; and the
very fact of his presence would tend to keep you from doing justice to
yourself. For it is true, that, when with people who think you very
clever and wise, you really are a good deal cleverer and wiser than
usual; while with people who think you stupid and silly, you find
yourself under a malign influence which tends to make you actually so
for the time. If you want a man to gain any good quality, the way is to
give him credit for possessing it. If he has but little, give him credit
for all he has, at least; and you will find him daily get more. You know
how Arnold made boys truthful; it was by giving them credit for truth.
Oh that we all fitly understood that the same grand principle should
be extended to all good qualities, intellectual and moral! Diligently
instil into a boy that he is a stupid, idle, bad-hearted blockhead, and
you are very likely to make him all _that_. And so you can see that it
is not judicious to choose for a special friend and associate one who
thinks poorly of one's sense or one's parts. Indeed, if such a one
honestly thinks poorly of you, and has any moral earnestness, you could
not get him for a special friend, if you wished it. Let us choose for
our companions (if such can be found) those who think well and kindly of
us, even though we may know within ourselves that they think too kindly
and too well. For that favorable estimation will bring out and foster
all that is good in us. There is between this and the unfavorable
judgment all the difference between the warm, genial sunshine, that
draws forth the flowers and encourages them to open their leaves,
and the nipping frost or the blighting east-wind, that represses and
disheartens all vegetable life. But though thus you would not choose
for your special companion one who thinks poorly of you, and though you
might not even wish to see him very often, you have no reason to have
any angry feeling towards him. He cannot help his opinion. His opinion
is determined by his lights. His opinion, possibly, founds on those
aesthetic considerations as to which people will never think alike, with
which there is no reasoning, and for which there is no accounting. God
has made him so that he dislikes your book, or at least cannot heartily
appreciate it; and that is not his fault. And, holding his opinion, he
is quite entitled to express it. It may not be polite to express it to
yourself. By common consent it is understood that you are never,
except in cases of absolute necessity, to say to any man that which is
disagreeable to him. And if you go, and, without any call to do so,
express to a man himself that you think poorly of him, he may justly
complain, not of your unfavorable opinion of him, but of the malice
which is implied in your needlessly informing him of it. But if any one
expresses such an unfavorable opinion of you in your absence, and some
one comes and repeats it to you, be angry with the person who repeats
the opinion to you, not with the person who expressed it. For what you
do not know will cause you no pain. And all sensible folk, aware how
estimates of any mortal must differ, will, in the long run, attach
nearly the just weight to any opinion, favorable or unfavorable.

Yes, my friend, utterly put down the natural tendency in your heart to
be angry with the man who thinks poorly of you. For you have, in sober
reason, no right to be angry with him. It is more pleasant, and indeed
more profitable, to live among those who think highly of you--It makes
you better. You actually grow into what you get credit for. Oh, how much
better a clergyman preaches to his own congregation, who listen with
kindly and sympathetic attention to all he says, and always think too
well of him, than to a set of critical strangers, eager to find faults
and to pick holes! And how heartily and pleasantly the essayist covers
his pages which are to go into a magazine whose readers have come to
know him well, and to bear with all his ways! If every one thought him a
dull and stupid person, he could not write at all: indeed, he would bow
to the general belief, and accept the truth that he is dull and stupid.
But further, my reader, let us be reasonable, when it is pleasant; and
let us sometimes be irrational, when _that_ is pleasant too. It is
natural to have a very kindly feeling to those who think well of us.
Now, though, in severe truth, we have no more reason for wishing to
shake hands with the man who thinks well of us than for wishing to shake
the man who thinks ill of us, yet let us yield heartily to the former
pleasant impulse. It is not reasonable, but it is all right. You cannot
help liking people who estimate you favorably and say a good word of
you. No doubt we might slowly learn not to like them more than anybody
else; but we need not take the trouble to learn _that_ lesson. Let us
all, my readers, be glad if we can reach that cheerful position of mind
at which my eloquent friend SHIRLEY and I have long since arrived: that
we are extremely gratified when we find ourselves favorably reviewed,
and not in the least angry when we find ourselves reviewed unfavorably;
that we have a very kindly feeling towards such as think well of us, and
no unkind feeling whatever to those who think ill of us. Thus, at the
beginning of the month, we look with equal minds at the newspaper
notices of our articles; we are soothed and exhilarated when we find
ourselves described as sages, and we are amused and interested when we
find ourselves shown up as little better than geese.

Of course, it makes a difference in the feeling with which you ought to
regard any unfavorable opinion of you, whether spoken or written, if the
unfavorable opinion which is expressed be plainly not honestly held, and
be maliciously expressed. You may occasionally hear a judgment expressed
of a young girl's music or dancing, of a gentleman's horses, of a
preacher's sermons, of an author's books, which is manifestly dictated
by personal spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the
intention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom
the judgment is expressed. You will occasionally find such judgments
supported by wilful misrepresentation, and even by pure invention. In
such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion;
it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expression. And
the conduct of the offending party should be regarded with that feeling
which, on calm thought, you discern to be the right feeling with which
to regard malice accompanied by falsehood. Then, is it well to be
angry here? I think not. You may see that it is not safe to have any
communication with a person who will abuse and misrepresent you; it is
not safe, and it is not pleasant. But don't be angry. It is not worth
while. That old lady, indeed, told all her friends that you said, in
your book, something she knew quite well you did not say. Mr. Snarling
did the like. But the offences of such people are not worth powder and
shot; and besides this, my friend, if you saw the case from their point
of view, you might see that they have something to say for themselves.
You failed to call for the old lady so often as she wished you should.
You did not ask Mr. Snarling to dinner. These are bad reasons for
pitching into you; but still they are reasons; and Mr. Snarling and the
old lady, by long brooding over them, may have come to think that they
are very just and weighty reasons. And did you never, my friend, speak
rather unkindly of these two persons? Did you never give a ludicrous
account of their goings-on, or even an ill-set account, which some kind
friend was sure to repeat to them?

Ah, my reader, don't be too hard on Snarling; possibly you have yourself
done something very like what he is doing now. Forgive, as you need to
be forgiven! And try to attain that quite attainable temper in which you
will read or listen to the most malignant attack upon you with curiosity
and amusement, and with no angry feeling at all. I suppose great people
attain to this: I mean cabinet-ministers and the like, who are daily
flayed in print somewhere or other. They come to take it all quite
easily. And if they were pure angels, somebody would attack them. Most
people, even those who differ from him, know, that, if this world has
a humble, conscientious, pious man in it, that man is the present
Archbishop of Canterbury: yet last night I read in a certain powerful
journal, that the great characteristics of that good man are cowardice,
trickery, and simple rascality! Honest Mr. Bumpkin, kind-hearted Miss
Goodbody, do you fancy that _you_ can escape?

Then we ought to try to fix it in our mind, that, in all matters into
which taste enters at all, the most honest and the most able men may
hopelessly, diametrically, differ: original idiosyncrasy has so much to
say here; and training has also so much. One cultivated and honest
man has an enthusiastic and most real love and enjoyment of Gothic
architecture, and an absolute hatred for that of the classic revival;
another man, equally cultivated and honest, has tastes which are the
logical contradictory of these. No one can doubt the ability of Byron,
or of Sheridan; yet each of them thought very little of Shakspeare. The
question is, _What suits you_? You may have the strongest conviction
that you ought to like an author; you may be ashamed to confess that you
don't like him; and yet you may feel that you detest him. For myself, I
confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I cannot for my
life see anything to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle. His style,
both of thought and language, is to me insufferably irritating. I tried
to read the "Sartor Resartus," and could not do it. So if all people who
have learned to read English were like me, Mr. Carlyle would have no
readers. Happily, the majority, in most cases, possesses the normal
taste. At least there is no further appeal than to the deliberate
judgment of the majority of educated men. I confess, further, that I
would rather read Mr. Helps than Milton: I do not say that I think Mr.
Helps the greater man, but that I feel he suits me better. I value the
"Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" more highly than all the writings of
Shelley put together. It is a curious thing to read various reviews of
the same book,--particularly if it be one of those books which, if you
like at all, you will like very much, and which, if you don't like,
you will absolutely hate. It is curious to find opinions flatly
contradictory of one another set forth in those reviews by very able,
cultivated, and unprejudiced men. There is no newspaper published in
Britain which contains abler writing than the "Edinburgh Scotsman." And
of course no one need say anything as to the literary merits of the
"Times." Well, one day within the last few months, the "Times" and the
"Scotsman" each published a somewhat elaborate review of a certain book.
The reviews were flatly opposed to one another; they had no common
ground at all; one said the book was extremely good, and the other that
it was extremely bad. You must just make up your mind that in matters of
taste there can be no unvarying standard of truth. In aesthetic matters,
truth is quite relative. What is bad to you is good to me, perhaps. And
indeed, if one might adduce the saddest of all possible proofs how even
the loftiest and most splendid genius fails to commend itself to every
cultivated mind, it may suffice to say, that that brilliant "Scotsman"
has on several occasions found fault with the works of A.K.H.B.!

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