The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

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I take for granted that all observant human beings will admit that in
this world there are disagreeable people. Probably the distinction
which presses itself most strongly upon our attention, as we mingle in
the society of our fellow-men, is the distinction between agreeable
people and disagreeable. There are various tests, more or less
important, which put all mankind to right and left. A familiar
division is into rich and poor. Thomas Paine, with great vehemence,
denied the propriety of that classification, and declared that the
only true and essential classification of mankind is into male and
female. I have read a story whose author maintained, that, to his
mind, by far the most interesting and thorough division of our race is
into such as have been hanged and such as have not been hanged: he
himself belonging to the former class. But we all, more or less,
recognize and act upon the great classification of all human beings
into the agreeable and the disagreeable. And we begin very early to
recognize and act upon it. Very early in life, the little child
understands and feels the vast difference between people who are nice
and people who are not nice. In school-boy days, the first thing
settled as to any new acquaintance, man or boy, is on which side he
stands of the great boundary-line. It is not genius, not scholarship,
not wisdom, not strength nor speed, that fixes the man's place. None
of these things is chiefly looked to: the question is, Is he agreeable
or disagreeable? And according as that question is decided, the man is
described, in the forcible language of youth, as "a brick," or as "a
beast."

Yet it is to be remembered that the division between the agreeable and
disagreeable of mankind is one which may be transcended. It is a
scratch on the earth,--not a ten-foot wall. And you will find men who
pass from one side of it to the other, and back again,--probably
several times in a week, or even in a day. There are people whom you
never know where to have. They are constantly skipping from side to
side of that line of demarcation; or they even walk along with a foot
on each side of it. There are people who are always disagreeable, and
disagreeable to all men. There are people who are agreeable at some
times, and disagreeable at others. There are people who are agreeable
to some men, and disagreeable to other men. I do not intend by the
last-named class people who intentionally make themselves agreeable to
a certain portion of the race, to which they think it worth while to
make themselves agreeable, and who do not take that trouble in the
case of the remainder of humankind. What I mean is this: that there
are people who have such an affinity and sympathy with certain other
people, who so _suit_ certain other people, that they are
agreeable to these other people, though perhaps not particularly so to
the race at large. And exceptional tastes and likings are often the
strongest. The thing you like enthusiastically another man absolutely
loathes. The thing which all men like is for the most part liked with
a mild and subdued liking. Everybody likes good and well-made bread;
but nobody goes into raptures over it. Few persons like caviare; but
those who do like it are very fond of it. I never knew but one being
who liked mustard with apple-pie; but that solitary man ate it with
avidity, and praised the flavor with enthusiasm.

But it is impossible to legislate for every individual case. Every
rule must have exceptions from it; but it would be foolish to resolve
to lay down no more rules. There may be, somewhere, the man who likes
Mr. Snarling; and to that man Mr. Snarling would doubtless be
agreeable. But for practical purposes Mr. Snarling may justly be
described as a disagreeable man, if he be disagreeable to nine hundred
and ninety-nine mortals out of every thousand. And with precision
sufficient for the ordinary business of life we may say that there are
people who are essentially disagreeable.

There are people who go through life, leaving an unpleasant influence
on all whom they come near. You are not at your ease in their
society. You feel awkward and constrained while with them. _That_
is probably the mildest degree in the scale of unpleasantness. There
are people who disseminate a much worse influence. As the upas-tree
was said to blight all the country round it, so do these disagreeable
folk prejudicially affect the whole surrounding moral atmosphere.
They chill all warmth of heart in those near them; they put down
anything generous or magnanimous; they suggest unpleasant thoughts and
associations; they excite a diverse and numerous array of bad
tempers. The great evil of disagreeable people lies in this: that they
tend powerfully to make other people disagreeable too. And these
people are not necessarily bad people, though they produce a bad
effect. It is not certain that they design to be disagreeable. There
are those who do entertain that design; and they always succeed in
carrying it out. Nobody ever tried diligently to be disagreeable, and
failed. Such persons may, indeed, inflict much less annoyance than
they wished; they may even fail of inflicting any pain whatever on
others; but they make themselves as disgusting as they could desire.
And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A
very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much
suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,--particularly if the
latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet
may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the
night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any
evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are
those who worry and torment you. It is through want of perception,
--want of tact,--coarseness of nature,--utter lack of power
to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a
good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one,
and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,--and did a fussy host
or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by
earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a
headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did
that person time after time return to the charge, till you would have
liked to poison him? There is nothing more disagreeable, and few
things more mischievous, than a well-meaning, meddling fool. And
where there was no special intention, good or bad, towards yourself,
you have known people make you uncomfortable through the simple
exhibition to you, and pressure upon you, of their own inherent
disagreeableness. You have known people after talking to whom for a
while you felt disgusted with everything, and above all, with those
people themselves. Talking to them, you felt your moral nature being
rubbed against the grain, being stung all over with nettles. You
showed your new house and furniture to such a man, and with eagle eye
he traced out and pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint,
and every flaw in your oak and walnut; he showed you that there were
corners of your big mirrors that distorted your face,--that there were
bits of your grand marble mantel-pieces that might be expected soon to
scale away. Or you have known a man who, with no evil intention, made
it his practice to talk of you before your face as your other friends
are accustomed to talk of you behind your back. It need not be said
that the result is anything but pleasant. "What a fool you were,
Smith, in saying _that_ at Snooks's last night!" your friend
exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by
this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something
grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I
would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as
disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit)
of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with
"What a fool you were." Let me offer the like advice as to sentences
which set out as follows:--"I say, Smith, I think your brother is the
greatest fool on the face of the earth." Stop that kind of thing, my
friend; or you may come to be classed with Mr. Snarling. You are
probably a manly fellow, and a sincere friend; and for the sake of
your substantial good qualities, one would stand a great deal. But
over-frankness is disagreeable; and if you make over-frankness your
leading characteristic, of course your entire character will come to
be disagreeable, and you will be a disagreeable person.

Besides the people who are disagreeable through malignant intention,
and through deficiency of sensitiveness, there are other people who
are disagreeable through pure ill-luck. It is quite certain that there
are people whom evil fortune dogs through all their life, who are
thoroughly and hopelessly unlucky. And in no respect have we beheld a
man's ill-luck so persecute him as in the matter of making him
(without the slightest evil purpose, and even when he is most anxious
to render himself agreeable) render himself extremely disagreeable. Of
course there must be some measure of thoughtlessness and
forgetfulness,--some lack of that social caution, so indispensable in
the complication of modern society, which teaches a man (so to speak)
to try if the ice will bear him before venturing his entire weight
upon it,--about people who are unlucky in the way of which I am
speaking. But doubtless you have known persons who were always saying
disagreeable things, or putting disagreeable questions,--either
through forgetfulness of things which they ought to have remembered,
or through unhappily chancing on forbidden ground. You will find a
man, a thoughtless, but quite good-natured man, begin at a
dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much to the
prejudice of somebody, while somebody's daughter is sitting opposite
him. And you will find the man quite obtuse to all the hints by which
the host or hostess tries to stop him, and going on to particulars
worse and worse, till, in terror of what all this might grow to, the
hostess has to exclaim, "Mr. Smith, you won't take a hint: _that_
is Mr. Somebody's daughter sitting opposite you." It is quite
essential that any man, whose conversation consists mainly of
observations not at all to the advantage of some absent acquaintance,
should carefully feel his way before giving full scope to his malice
and his invention, in the presence of any general company. And before
making any playful reference to halters, you should be clear that you
are not talking to a man whose grandfather was hanged. Nor should you
venture any depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from the
ranks, unless you are tolerably versed in the family-history of those
to whom you are talking. You may have heard a man very jocular upon
lunatic-asylums, to another who had several brothers and sisters in
one. And though in some cases human beings may render themselves
disagreeable through a combination of circumstances which really
absolves them from all blame, yet, as a general rule, the man who is
disagreeable through ill-luck is at least guilty of culpable
carelessness.

* * * * *

You have probably, my reader, known people who had the faculty of
making themselves extremely agreeable. You have known one or two men
who, whenever you met them, conveyed to you, by a remarkably frank and
genial manner, an impression that they esteemed you as one of their
best and dearest friends. A vague idea took possession of your mind
that they had been longing to see you ever since they saw you
last,--which in all probability was six or twelve months
previously. And during all that period it may be regarded as quite
certain that the thought of you had never once entered their
mind. Such a manner has a vast effect upon young and inexperienced
folk. The inexperienced man fancies that this manner, so wonderfully
frank and friendly, is reserved specially for himself, and is a
recognition of his own special excellences. But the man of greater
experience has come to suspect this manner, and to see through it. He
has discovered that it is the same to everybody,--at least, to
everybody to whom it is thought worth while to put it on. And he no
more thinks of arguing the existence of any particular liking for
himself, or of any particular merit in himself, from that friendly
manner, than he thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that the
sun has a special liking for himself, and is looking so beautiful and
bright all for himself. It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always
overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor
or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all
his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves
_him_ more than all the others?

Yet it is to be admitted that it is always well that a man should be
agreeable. Pleasantness is always a pleasing thing. And a sensible
man, seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally
succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. But although
there is an implied compliment, to your power, if not to your
personality, in the fact of a man's taking pains to make himself
agreeable to you, it is certain that he may try to make himself so by
means of which the upshot will be to make him intensely
disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneaking manner which an
occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to
right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and
let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and
humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like
a whipped dog, whenever you speak to him,--grinning and bowing, and
(in a moral sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and
begging you to wipe your feet on his head. You cannot help thinking
that the sneak would be a tyrant, if he had the opportunity. It is
pleasant to find people, in the humblest position, blending a manly
independence of demeanor with the regard justly due to those placed by
Providence farther up the social scale. Yet doubtless there are
persons to whom the sneakiest manner is agreeable,--who enjoy the
flattery and the humiliation of the wretched toady who is always ready
to tell them that they are the most beautiful, graceful, witty,
well-informed, aristocratic-looking, and generally-beloved of the
human race. You must remember that it depends very much upon the
nature of a man himself whether any particular demeanor shall be
agreeable to him or not. And you know well that a cringing, toadying
manner, which would be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may
be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-conceited idiot. Was
there not an idiotic monarch who was greatly pleased, when his
courtiers, in speaking to him, affected to veil their eyes with their
hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his
countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick
the people who thus treated him like a fool? And every one has
observed that there are silly women who are much gratified by coarse
and fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, which would be
regarded as grossly insulting by a woman of sense. You may have heard
of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered
beyond their paternal acres, (by their paternal acres I mean the acres
they had recently bought,) and who had there grown into a fixed belief
that they were among the noblest and mightiest of the earth, who
thought their parish-clergyman an agreeable man, if he voted at the
county-election for the candidate they supported, though that
candidate's politics were directly opposed to those of the
parson. These individuals, of course, would hold their clergyman as a
disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles, and quite declined
to take their wishes into account in exercising the trust of the
franchise. Now, of course, a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling
would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, who should thus deny
his convictions. Yes, there is no doubt that you may make yourself
agreeable to unworthy folk by unworthy means. A late marquis declared
on his dying bed, that a two-legged animal, of human pretensions, who
had acted as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in the
gratification of his peculiar tastes, was "an excellent man." And you
may remember how Burke said, that, as we learn that a certain
Mr. Russell made himself very agreeable to Henry VIII., we may
reasonably suppose that Mr. Russell was himself (in a humble degree)
something like his master. Probably, to most right-minded men, the
fact that a man was agreeable to Henry VIII., or to the marquis in
question, or to Belial, Beelzebub, or Apollyon, would tend to make
that man remarkably disagreeable. And let the reader remember the
guarded way in which the writer laid down his general principle as to
pleasantness of character and demeanor. I said that a sensible man,
seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally
succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. I exclude from
the class of men to be esteemed agreeable those who would disgust all
but fools or blackguards. I exclude parsons who express heretical
views in theology in the presence of a patron known to be a
freethinker. I exclude men who do great folk's dirty work. I exclude
all toad-eaters, sneaks, flatterers, and fawning impostors,--from the
school-boy who thinks to gain his master's favor by voluntarily
bearing tales of his companions, up to the bishop who declared that he
regarded it not merely as a constitutional principle, but as an
ethical fact, that the king could do no wrong, and the other bishop
who declared that the reason why George II. died was that this world
was not good enough for him, and it was necessary to transfer him to
heaven that he might be the right man in the right place. Such persons
may succeed in making themselves agreeable to the man with whom they
desire to ingratiate themselves, provided that man be a fool or a
knave; but they assuredly render themselves disagreeable, not to say
revolting, to all human beings whose good opinion is worth the
possessing. And though any one who is not a fool will generally make
himself agreeable to people of ordinary temper and nervous system, if
he wishes to do so, it is to be remembered that too intrusive attempts
to be agreeable often make a man very disagreeable; and likewise, that
a man is the reverse of agreeable, if you see that he is trying, by
managing and humoring you, to make himself agreeable to you,--I mean,
if you can see that he is smoothing you down, and agreeing with you,
and trying to get you on your blind side, as if he thought you a baby
or a lunatic. And there is all the difference in the world between the
frank, hearty wish in man or woman to be agreeable, and this
diplomatic and indirect way. No man likes to think that he is being
managed as Mr. Rarey might manage an unbroken colt. And though many
human beings must in fact be thus managed,--though a person of wrong
head, or of outrageous vanity, or of invincible prejudices, must be
managed very much as you would manage a lunatic, (being, in fact,
removed from perfect sanity upon these points,) still, they must never
be allowed to discern that they are being managed, or the charm will
fail at once. I confess, for myself, that I am no believer in the
efficacy of diplomacy and indirect ways in dealing with one's
fellow-creatures. I believe that a manly, candid, straight-forward
course is always the best. Treat people in a perfectly frank
manner,--you will be agreeable to most of those to whom you will
desire to be so.

My reader, I am now about to tell you of certain sorts of human beings
who appear to me as worthy of being ranked among disagreeable
people. I do not pretend to give you an exhaustive catalogue of
such. Doubtless you have your own black beasts, your own special
aversions, which have for you a disagreeableness beyond the
understanding or sympathy of others. Nor do I make quite sure that you
will agree with me in all the views which I am going to set forth. It
is not impossible that you may regard as very nice people or even as
quite fascinating and inthralling people, certain people whom I regard
as intensely disagreeable. Let me begin with an order of human beings,
as to which I do not expect every one who reads this page to go along
with me, though I do not know any opinion which I hold more resolutely
than that which I am about to express.

We all understand the kind of thing which is meant by people who talk
of _Muscular Christianity_. It is certainly a noble and excellent
thing to make people discern that a good Christian need not be a muff
(pardon the slang term: there is no other that would bring out my
meaning). It is a fine thing to make it plain that manliness and dash
may co-exist with pure morality and sincere piety. It is a fine thing
to make young fellows comprehend that there is nothing fine and manly
in being bad and nothing unmanly in being good. And in this view it is
impossible to value too highly such characters and such biographies as
those of Hodson of Hodson's Horse and Captain Hedley Vicars. It is a
splendid combination, pluck and daring in their highest degree, with
an unaffected and earnest regard to religion and religious duties,--in
short, muscularity with Christianity. A man consists of body and soul;
and both would be in their ideal perfection, if the soul were
decidedly Christian, and the body decidedly muscular.

But there are folk whose admiration of the muscularity is very great,
but whose regard for the Christianity is very small. They are
captivated by the dash and glitter of physical pluck; they are quite
content to accept it without any Christianity, and even without the
most ordinary morality and decency. They appear, indeed, to think that
the grandeur of the character is increased by the combination of
thorough blackguardism with high physical qualifications: their
gospel, in short, may be said to be that of _Unchristian
Muscularity_. And you will find various books in which the hero is
such a man: and while the writer of the book frankly admits that he is
in strict morality an extremely bad man, the writer still recalls his
doings with such manifest gusto and sympathy, and takes such pains to
make him agreeable on the whole, and relates with such approval the
admiration which empty-headed idiots express for him when he has
jumped his horse over some very perilous fence or thrashed some
insolent farmer, that it is painfully apparent what is the writer's
ideal of a grand and imposing character. You know the kind of man who
is the hero of some novels,--the muscular blackguard,--and you
remember what are his unfailing characteristics. He has a deep
chest. He has huge arms and limbs,--the muscles being knotted. He has
an immense moustache. He has (God knows why) a serene contempt for
ordinary mortals. He is always growing black with fury, and bullying
weak men. On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be twisted
into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and liar: he has ruined various
women, and had special facilities for becoming acquainted with the
rottenness of society: and occasionally he expresses, in language of
the most profane, not to say blasphemous character, a momentary regret
for having done so much harm,--such as the Devil might sentimentally
have expressed, when he had succeeded in misleading our first
parents. Of course, he never pays tradesmen for the things with which
they supply him. He can drink an enormous quantity of wine without his
head becoming affected. He looks down with entire disregard on the
laws of God and man, as made for inferior beings. As for any worthy
moral quality,--as for anything beyond a certain picturesque brutality
and bull-dog disregard of danger, not a trace of such a thing can be
found about him.

We all know, of course, that such a person, though not uncommon in
novels, very rarely occurs in real life; and if he occur at all, it is
with his ideal perfections very much toned down. In actual life, such
a hero would become known in the Insolvent Court, and would frequently
appear before the police magistrates. He would eventually become a
billiard-marker; and might ultimately be hanged, with general
approval. If the man, in his unclipped proportions, did actually
exist, it would be right that a combination should be formed to wipe
him out of creation. He should be put down,--as you would put down a
tiger or a rattlesnake, if found at liberty somewhere in the Midland
Counties. A more hateful character, to all who possess a grain of
moral discernment, could not even be imagined. And it need not be
shown that the conception of such a character is worthy only of a
baby. However many years the man who deliberately and admiringly
delineates such a person may have lived in this world, intellectually
he cannot be more than about seven years old. And none but calves the
most immature can possibly sympathize with him. Yet, if there were
not many silly persons to whom such a character is agreeable, such a
character would not be portrayed. And it seems certain that a single
exhibition of strength or daring will to some minds be the compendium
of all good qualities, or (more accurately speaking) the equivalent
for them. A muscular blackguard clears a high fence: he does precisely
that,--neither more nor less. And upon the strength of that single
achievement, the servants at the house where he is visiting declare
that they would follow him over the world. And you may find various
young women, and various women who wish to pass for young, who would
profess, and perhaps actually feel, a like enthusiasm for the muscular
blackguard. I confess that I cannot find words strong enough to
express my contempt and abhorrence for the theory of life and
character which is assumed by the writers who describe such
blackguards, and by the fools who admire them. And though very far
from saying or thinking that the kind of human being who has been
described is no worse than disagreeable, I assert with entire
confidence that to all right-thinking men he is more disagreeable than
almost any other kind of human being. And I do not know any single
lesson you could instil into a youthful mind which would be so
mischievous as the lesson that the muscular blackguard should be
regarded with any other feeling than that of pure loathing and
disgust. But let us have done with him. I cannot think of the books
which delineate him and ask you to admire him without indignation more
bitter than I wish to feel in writing such a page.

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