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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

And passing to the consideration of human beings who, though
disagreeable, are good in the main, it may be laid down as a general
principle, that any person, however good, is disagreeable from whom
you feel it a relief to get away. We have all known people, thoroughly
estimable, and whom you could not but respect, in whose presence it
was impossible to feel at ease, and whose absence was felt as the
withdrawal of a sense of constraint of the most oppressive kind. And
this vague, uncomfortable influence, which breathes from some men, is
produced in various ways. Sometimes it is the result of mere stiffness
and awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and
awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and
silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social
rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to
comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature,
which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most
innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of
his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing and
importance are very small. It is quite wonderful what very great folk
very little folk will sometimes fancy themselves to be. The present
writer has had little opportunity of conversing with men of great rank
and power; yet he has conversed with certain men of the very greatest:
and he can say sincerely that he has found head-stewards to be much
more dignified men than dukes; and parsons of no earthly reputation,
and of very limited means, to be infinitely more stuck-up than
archbishops. And though at first the airs of stuck-up small men are
amazingly ridiculous, and so rather amusing, they speedily become so
irritating that the men who exhibit them cannot be classed otherwise
than with the disagreeable of the earth.

Few people are more disagreeable than the man who, while you are
conversing with him, is (you know) taking a mental estimate of you,
more particularly of the soundness of your doctrinal views,--with the
intention of showing you up, if you be wrong, and of inventing or
misrepresenting something to your prejudice, if you be right. Whenever
you find any man trying (in a moral sense) to trot you out, and
examine your paces, and pronounce upon your general soundness, there
are two courses you may follow. The one is, severely to shut him up,
and sternly make him understand that you don't choose to be inspected
by him. Show him that you will not exhibit for his approval your
particular views about the Papacy, or about Moral Inability, or about
Pelagianism or the Patripassian heresy. Indicate that you will not be
pumped: and you may convey, in a kindly and polite way, that you
really don't care a rush what he thinks of you. The other course is,
with deep solemnity and an unchanged countenance, to horrify your
inspector by avowing the most fearful views. Tell him, that, on long
reflection, you are prepared to advocate the revival of Cannibalism.
Say that probably something may be said for Polygamy. Defend the
Thugs, and say something for Mumbo Jumbo. End by saying that no doubt
black is white, and twice ten are fifty. Or a third way of meeting
such a man is suddenly to turn upon him, and ask him to give you a
brief and lucid account of the views he is condemning. Ask him to tell
you what are the theological peculiarities of Bunsen; and what is the
exact teaching of Mr. Maurice. He does not know, you may be tolerably
sure. In the case of the latter eminent man, I never met anybody who
did know: and I have the firmest belief that he does not know himself.
I was told, lately, of an eminent foreigner who came to Britain to
promote a certain public end. For its promotion, the eminent man
wished to conciliate the sympathies of a certain small class of
religionists. He procured an introduction to a leading man among
them,--a good, but very stupid and self-conceited man. This man
entered into talk with the eminent foreigner, and ranged over a
multitude of topics, political and religious. And at an hour's end
the foreigner was astonished by the good, but stupid man suddenly
exclaiming,--"Now, Sir, I have been reckoning you up: you won't do:
you are a"--no matter what. It was something that had nothing earthly
to do with the end to be promoted. The religious demagogue had been
trotting out the foreigner; and he had found him unsound. The
religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and
he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have
seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have
seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he
thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the
clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the
lay-preacher's doings, with a self-conceited smirk that seemed to say
to the venerable clergyman, "I have been reckoning _you_ up: you
won't do."

People whom you cannot get to attend to you when you talk to them are
disagreeable. There are men whom you feel it is vain to speak
to,--whether you are mentioning facts or stating arguments. All the
while you are speaking, they are thinking of what they are themselves
to say next. There is a strong current, as it were, setting outward
from their minds; and it prevents what you say from getting in. You
know, if a pipe be full of water, running strongly one way, it is vain
to think to push in a stream running the other way. You cannot get at
their attention. You cannot get at the quick of their mental
sensorium. It is not the dull of hearing whom it is hardest to get to
hear; it is rather the man who is roaring out himself, and so who
cannot attend to anything else. Now this is provoking. It is a
mortifying indication of the little importance that is attached to
what we are saying; and there is something of the irritation that is
produced in the living being by contending with the passive resistance
of inert matter. And there is something provoking even in the outward
signs that the mind is in a non-receptive state. You remember the eye
that is looking beyond you,--the grin that is not at anything funny in
what you say,--the occasional inarticulate sounds that are put in at
the close of your sentences, as if to delude you with a show of
attention. The non-receptive mind is occasionally found in clever
men; but the men who exhibit it are invariably very conceited: they
can think of nothing but themselves. And you may find the last-named
characteristic strongly developed even in men with gray hair, who
ought to have learned better through the experience of a pretty long
life. There are other minds which are very receptive. They seem to
have a strong power of suction. They take in, very decidedly, all
that is said to them. The best mind, of course, is that which combines
both characteristics,--which is strongly receptive when it ought to be
receiving, and which gives out strongly when it ought to be giving
out. The power of receptivity is greatly increased by habit. I
remember feeling awe-stricken by the intense attention with which a
very great judge was wont, in ordinary conversation, to listen to all
that was said to him. It was the habit of the judgment-seat, acquired
through many years of listening, with every faculty awake, to the
arguments addressed to him. But when you began to make some statement
to him, it was positively alarming to see him look you full in the
face, and listen with inconceivable fixedness of attention to all you
said. You could not help feeling that really the small remark you had
to make was not worth that great mind's grasping it so intently, as he
might have grasped an argument by Follett. The mind was intensely
receptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remember, too, that,
when the great judge began to speak, then his mind was (so to speak)
streaming out; and he was particularly impatient of inattention or
interruption, and particularly non-receptive of anything that might be
suggested to him.

It is extremely disagreeable, when a vulgar fellow, whom you hardly
know, addresses you by your surname with great familiarity of
manner. And such a person will take no hint that he is disagreeable,
--however stiff, and however formally polite, you may take
pains to be to him. It is disagreeable, when persons, with whom
you have no desire to be on terms of intimacy, persist in putting many
questions to you as to your private concerns,--such as your annual
income and expenditure, and the like. No doubt, it is both pleasant
and profitable for people who are not rich to compare notes on these
matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings
are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,--but of
the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who,
very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take
special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too,
while making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, will
often tell a very small portion of them, and make various statements
which you at the time are quite aware are not true. There are not many
things more disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman,
who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire
confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and
as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied
and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions,
and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times
wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating
phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have in view
invariably combine extreme ugliness with spitefulness and
self-conceit. Such a person will make particular inquiries of you as
to some near relative of your own,--and will add, with a malicious and
horribly ugly expression of face, that she is glad to hear how _very
much improved_ your relative now is. She will repeat the sentence
several times, laying great emphasis and significance upon the _very
much improved_. Of course, the notion conveyed to any stranger who
may be present is that your relative must in former days have been an
extremely bad fellow. The fact probably is, that he has always, man
and boy, been particularly well-behaved, and that really you were not
aware that he needed any special improvement,--save, indeed, in the
sense that every human being might be and ought to be a great deal
better than he is.

People who are always vaporing about their own importance, and the
value of their own possessions, are disagreeable. We all know such
people: and they are made more irritating by the fact, that their
boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do not mean
ethically false, but logically false. For doubtless, in many cases,
human beings honestly think themselves and their possessions as much
better than other men and their possessions as they say they do. If
thirty families compose the best society of a little country-town, you
may be sure that each of the thirty families in its secret soul looks
down upon the other twenty-nine, and fancies that it stands on a
totally different level. And it is a kind arrangement of Providence,
that a man's own children, horses, house, and other possessions, are
so much more interesting to himself than are the children, horses, and
houses of other men, that he can readily persuade himself that they
are as much better in fact as they are more interesting to his
personal feeling. But it is provoking, when a man is always obtruding
on you how highly he estimates his own belongings, and how much better
than yours he thinks them, even when this is done in all honesty and
simplicity; and it is infuriating, when a man keeps constantly telling
you things which he knows are not true, as to the preciousness and
excellence of the gifts with which fortune has endowed him. You feel
angry, when a man who has lately bought a house, one in a square
containing fifty, all as nearly as possible alike, tells you with an
air of confidence that he has got the finest house in Scotland, or in
England, as the case may be. You are irritated by the man who on all
occasions tells you that he drives in his mail-phaeton "five hundred
pounds' worth of horse-flesh." You are well aware that he did not pay
a quarter of that sum for the animals in question: and you assume as
certain that the dealer did not give him that pair of horses for less
than they were worth. It is somewhat irritating, when a man, not
remarkable in any way, begins to tell you that he can hardly go to any
part of the world without being recognized by some one who remembers
his striking aspect or is familiar with his famous name. "It costs me
three hundred a year, having that picture to look at," said
Mr. Windbag, pointing to a picture hanging on a wall in his
library. He goes on to explain that he refused six thousand pounds for
that picture; which at five per cent. would yield the annual income
named. You repeat Windbag's statement to an eminent artist. The
artist knows the picture. He looks at you fixedly, and for all
comment on Windbag's story says, (he is a Scotchman,) "HOOT TOOT!" But
the disposition to vapor is deep-set in human nature. There are not
very many men or women whom I would trust to give an accurate account
of their family, dwelling, influence, and general position, to people
a thousand miles from home, who were not likely ever to be able to
verify the picture drawn.

It is hardly necessary to mention among disagreeable people those
individuals who take pleasure in telling you that you are looking
ill,--that you are falling off physically or mentally. "Surely you
have lost some of your teeth since I saw you last," said a good man to
a man of seventy-five years: "I cannot make out a word you say, you
speak so indistinctly." And so obtuse, and so thoroughly devoid of
gentlemanly feeling, was that good man, that, when admonished that he
ought not to speak in that fashion to a man in advanced years, he
could not for his life see that he had done anything unkind or
unmannerly. "I dare say you are wearied wi' preachin' to-day: you see
you're gettin' frail noo," said a Scotch elder, in my hearing, to a
worthy clergyman. Seldom has it cost me a greater effort than it did
to refrain from turning to the elder, and saying with candor, "What a
boor and what a fool you _must_ be, to say _that!_" It was
as well I did not: the boor would not have known what I meant. He
would not have known the provocation which led me to give him my true
opinion of him. "How very bald you are getting!" said a really
good-natured man to a friend he was meeting for the first time in
several years. Such remarks are for the most part made by men who, in
good faith, have not the least idea that they are making themselves
disagreeable. There is no malicious intention. It is a matter of pure
obtuseness, stupidity, selfishness, and vulgarity. But an obtuse,
stupid, selfish, and vulgar person is disagreeable. And your right
course will be to carefully avoid all intercourse with such a person.

But besides people who blunder into saying unpleasant things, there
are a few who do so of set intention. And such people ought to be
cracked. They can do a great deal of harm,--inflict a great deal of
suffering. I believe that human beings in general are more miserable
than you think. They are very anxious,--very careworn,--stung by a
host of worries,--a good deal disappointed, in many ways. And in the
case of many people, worthy and able, there is a very low estimate of
themselves and their abilities, and a sad tendency to depressed
spirits and gloomy views. And while a kind word said to such is a real
benefit, and a great lightener of the heart, an ingenious malignant
may suggest to such things which are as a stunning blow, and as an
added load on the weary frame and mind. I have seen, with burning
indignation, a malignant beast (I mean man) playing upon that tendency
to a terrible apprehensiveness which is born with many men. I have
seen the beast vaguely suggest evil to the nervous and apprehensive
man. "This cannot end here": "I shall take my own measures now": "A
higher authority shall decide between us": I have heard the beast say,
and then go away. Of course I knew well that the beast could and
would do nothing, and I hastened to say so to the apprehensive
man. But I knew that the poor fellow would go away home, and brood
over the beast's ominous threats, and imagine a hundred terrible
contingencies, and work himself into a fever of anxiety and alarm. And
it is because I know that the vague threatener counted on all that,
and wished it, and enjoyed the thought of the slow torment he was
causing, that I choose to call him a beast rather than a man. Indeed,
there is an order of beings, worse than beasts, to which that being
should rather be referred. You have said or done something which has
given offence to certain of your neighbors. Mr. Snarling comes and
gives you a full and particular account of the indignation they feel,
and of their plans for vengeance. Mr. Snarling is happy to see you
look somewhat annoyed, and he kindly says, "Oh, never mind: this will
blow over, as _other things you have said and done have blown
over."_ Thus he vaguely suggests that you have given great offence
on many occasions, and made many bitter enemies. He adds, in a musing
voice, "Yes, as MANY other things have blown over." Turn the
individual out, and cut his acquaintance. It would be better to have
a upas-tree in your neighborhood. Of all disagreeable men, a man with
his tendencies is the most disagreeable. The bitterest and
longest-lasting east-wind acts less perniciously on body and soul than
does the society of Mr. Snarling.

Suspicious people are disagreeable; also people who are always taking
the pet. Indeed, suspiciousness and pettedness generally go
together. There are many men and women who are always imagining that
some insult is designed by the most innocent words and doings of those
around them, and always suspecting that some evil intention against
their peace is cherished by some one or other. It is most irritating
to have anything to do with such impracticable and silly mortals. But
it is a delightful thing to work along with a man who never takes
offence,--a frank, manly man, who gives credit to others for the same
generosity of nature which he feels within himself, and who, if he
thinks he has reason to complain, speaks out his mind and has things
cleared up at once. A disagreeable person is he who frequently sends
letters to you without paying the postage,--leaving you to pay
twopence for each penny which he has thus saved. The loss of twopence
is no great matter; but there is something irritating in the feeling
that your correspondent has deliberately resolved that he would save
his penny at the cost of your twopence. There is a man, describing
himself as a clergyman of the Church of England, (I cannot think he is
one,) who occasionally sends me an abusive anonymous letter, and who
invariably sends his letters unpaid. I do not mind about the man's
abuse; but I confess I grudge my twopence. I have observed, too, that
the people who send letters unpaid do so habitually. I have known the
same individual send six successive letters unpaid. And it is
probably within the experience of most of my readers, that, out of
(say) a hundred correspondents, ninety-nine invariably pay their
letters properly, while time after time the hundredth sends his with
the abominable big 2 stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and
worries you by the old statement that the postman is waiting. Let me
advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit,
to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by
so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of
people, very closely analogous to that of the people who do not pay
their letters, is that of such as are constantly borrowing small sums
from their friends, which they never restore. If you should ever be
thrown into the society of such, your right course will be to take
care to have no money in your pocket. People are disagreeable who are
given to talking of the badness of their servants, the undutifulness
of their children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the deficiency
of their digestive organs. And though, with a true and close friend,
it is a great relief, and a special tie, to have spoken out your heart
about your burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation with
ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself.

It must be admitted, with great regret, that people who make a
considerable profession of religion have succeeded in making
themselves more thoroughly disagreeable than almost any other human
beings have ever made themselves. You will find people, who claim not
merely to be pious and Christian people, but to be very much more
pious and Christian than others, who are extremely uncharitable,
unamiable, repulsive, stupid, and narrow-minded, and intensely
opinionated and self-satisfied. We know, from a very high authority,
that a Christian ought to be an epistle in commendation of the blessed
faith he holds. But it is beyond question that many people who profess
to be Christians are like grim Gorgons' heads, warning people off from
having anything to do with Christianity. Why should a middle-aged
clergyman walk about the streets with a sullen and malignant scowl
always on his face, which at the best would be a very ugly one? Why
should another walk with his nose in the air, and his eyes rolled up
till they seem likely to roll out? And why should a third be always
dabbled over with a clammy perspiration, and prolong all his vowels to
twice the usual length? It is, indeed, a most woful thing, that people
who evince a spirit in every respect the direct contrary of that of
our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular
attainments; and it is more woful still, that many young people should
be scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretched delusion,
that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing Christianity, are fairly
representing it. I have beheld more deliberate malice, more lying and
cheating, more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and
greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong-headed
religionists, than among any other order of human beings. I have known
more malignity and slander conveyed in the form of a prayer than
should have consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have
known a person who made evening prayer a means of infuriating and
stabbing the servants, under the pretext of confessing their
sins. "Thou knowest, Lord, how my servants have been occupied this
day": with these words did the blasphemous mockery of prayer begin one
Sunday evening in a house I could easily indicate: and then the man,
under the pretext of addressing the Almighty, raked up all the
misdoings of the servants (they being present, of course) in a
fashion, which, if he had ventured on it at any other time, would
probably have led some of them to assault him. "I went to Edinburgh,"
said a Highland elder, "and was there a Sabbath. It was an awfu'
sight! There, on the Sabbath-day, you would see people walking along
the street, smiling AS IF THEY WERE PERFECTLY HAPPY!" There was the
_gravamen_ of the poor Highlander's charge. To think of people
being or looking happy on the Lord's day! And, indeed, to think of a
Christian man ever venturing to be happy at all! "Yes, this parish was
highly favored in the days of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown," said a
spiteful and venomous old woman,--with a glance of deadly malice at a
young lad who was present. That young lad was the son of the clergyman
of the parish,--one of the most diligent and exemplary clergymen in
Britain. Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were the clergymen who preceded
him. And the spiteful old woman adopted this means of sticking a pin
into the young lad,--conveying the idea that there was a sad falling
off now. I saw and heard her, my reader. Now, when an ordinary
spiteful person says a malicious thing, being quite aware that she is
saying a malicious thing, and that her motive is pure malice, you are
disgusted. But when a spiteful person says a malicious thing, all the
while fancying herself a very pious person, and fancying that in
gratifying her spite she is acting from Christian principle,--I say
the sight is to me one of the most disgusting, perplexing, and
miserable, that ever human eye beheld. I have no fear of the attacks
of enemies on the blessed faith in which I live, and hope to die; but
it is dismal to see how our holy religion is misrepresented before the
world by the vile impostors who pretend to be its friends.

Among the disagreeable people who make a profession of religion,
probably many are purely hypocrites. But we willingly believe that
there are people, in whom Christianity appears in a wretchedly stunted
and distorted form, who yet are right at the root. It does not follow
that a man is a Christian, because he turns up his eyes and drawls out
his words, and, when asked to say grace, offers a prayer of twenty
minutes' duration. But, again, it does not follow that he is
_not_ a Christian, though he may do all these things. The bitter
sectary, who distinctly says that a humble, pious man, just dead, has
"gone to hell," because he died in the bosom of the National Church,
however abhorrent that sectary may be in some respects, may be, in the
main, within the Good Shepherd's fold, wherein he fancies there are
very few but himself. The dissenting teacher, who declared from his
pulpit that the parish clergyman (newly come, and an entire stranger
to him) was "a servant of Satan," may possibly have been a good man,
after all. Grievous defects and errors may exist in a Christian
character, which is a Christian character still. And the Christian,
horribly disagreeable and repulsive now, will some day, we trust, have
all _that_ purged away. But I do not hesitate to say, that any
Christian, by so far as he is disagreeable and repulsive, deviates
from the right thing. Oh, my reader, when my heart is sometimes sore
through what I see of disagreeable traits in Christian character, what
a blessed relief there is in turning to the simple pages, and seeing
for the thousandth time The True Christian Character,--so different!
Yes, thank God, we know where to look, to find what every pious man
should be humbly aiming to be: and when we see That Face, and hear
That Voice, there is something that soothes and cheers among the
wretched imperfections (in one's self as in others) of the
present,--something that warms the heart, and that brings a man to his
knees!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18