Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

Excerpt

Is Polite Society Polite?

WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make evident.

The life in great cities awakens a multitude of ambitions. Some people are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning manœuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers itself entitled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct. Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these people what they should be? Is polite society polite?

For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does assume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's eyes—"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast institution in the development of human civilization.

I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.

What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall we consider it a mere surface polish—an attitude expressive of deference—corresponding to no inward grace of good feeling? Will you like to live with the person who, in the great world, can put on fine manners, but who, in the retirement of home, manifests the vulgarity of a selfish heart and an undisciplined temper?

No, you will say; give me for my daily companions those who always wear the best manners they have. For manners are not like clothes: you can mend them best when you have them on.

We may say at the outset that sincerity is the best foundation upon which to build the structure of a polite life. The affectation of deference does not impose upon people of mature experience. It carries its own contradiction with it. When I hear the soft voice, a little too soft, I look into the face to see whether the two agree. But I need scarcely do that. The voice itself tells the story, is sincere or insincere. Flattery is, in itself, an offence against politeness. It is oftenest administered to people who are already suffering the intoxication of vanity. When I see this, I wish that I could enforce a prohibitory ordinance against it, and prosecute those who use it mostly to serve their own selfish purposes. But people can be trained never to offer nor to receive this dangerous drug of flattery, and I think that, in all society which can be called good, it becomes less and less the mode to flavor one's dishes with it.

Having spoken of flattery, I am naturally led to say a word about its opposite, detraction.

The French have a witty proverb which says that "the absent are always in the wrong," and which means that the blame for what is amiss is usually thrown upon those who are not present to defend themselves. It seems to me that the rules of politeness are to be as carefully observed toward the absent as toward those in whose company we find ourselves. The fact that they cannot speak in their own defence is one which should appeal to our nicest sense of honor. Good breeding, or its reverse, is as much to be recognized in the way in which people speak of others as in the way in which they speak to them.

Have we not all felt the tone of society to be lowered by a low view of the conduct and motives of those who are made the subjects of discussion?

Those unfortunate men and women who delight in talk of this sort always appear to me degraded by it. No matter how clever they may be, I avoid their society, which has in it a moral malaria most unwholesome in character.

I am glad to say that, although frivolous society constantly shows its low estimate of human nature, I yet think that the gay immolation of character which was once considered a legitimate source of amusement has gone somewhat out of fashion. Sheridan's "School for Scandal" gives us some notion of what this may once have been. I do think that the world has grown more merciful in later years, and that even people who meet only for their own amusement are learning to seek it without murdering the reputation of their absent friends....