Manner - Art : Part 4

Character
by Samuel Smiles

(Page 12 of 18)

Johnson's companions spoke of him as "Ursa Major;" but, as Goldsmith generously said of him, "No man alive has a more tender heart; he has nothing of the bear about him but his skin." The kindliness of Johnson's nature was shown on one occasion by the manner in which he assisted a supposed lady in crossing Fleet Street. He gave her his arm, and led her across, not observing that she was in liquor at the time. But the spirit of the act was not the less kind on that account. On the other hand, the conduct of the bookseller on whom Johnson once called to solicit employment, and who, regarding his athletic but uncouth person, told him he had better "go buy a porter's knot and carry trunks," in howsoever bland tones the advice might have been communicated, was simply brutal.

While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and contradicting everything said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathising with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain-dealing, between giving merited praise and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy - good- humour, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right in the right way."

At the same time, many are unpolite - not because they mean to be so, but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better. Thus, when Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his 'Decline and Fall,' the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always AT IT in the old way - SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE!" The Duke probably intended to pay the author a compliment, but did not know how better to do it, than in this blunt and apparently rude way.

Again, many persons are thought to be stiff, reserved, and proud, when they are only shy. Shyness is characteristic of most people of Teutonic race. It has been styled "the English mania," but it pervades, to a greater or less degree, all the Northern nations. The ordinary Englishman, when he travels abroad, carries his shyness with him. He is stiff, awkward, ungraceful, undemonstrative, and apparently unsympathetic; and though he may assume a brusqueness of manner, the shyness is there, and cannot be wholly concealed. The naturally graceful and intensely social French cannot understand such a character; and the Englishman is their standing joke - the subject of their most ludicrous caricatures. George Sand attributes the rigidity of the natives of Albion to a stock of FLUIDE BRITANNIQUE which they carry about with them, that renders them impassive under all circumstances, and "as impervious to the atmosphere of the regions they traverse as a mouse in the centre of an exhausted receiver."

The average Frenchman or Irishman excels the average Englishman, German, or American in courtesy and ease of manner, simply because it is his nature. They are more social and less self-dependent than men of Teutonic origin, more demonstrative and less reticent; they are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; whilst men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy, and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gaiety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess no deeper qualities calculated to inspire respect. They may have every grace of manner, and yet be heartless, frivolous, selfish. The character may be on the surface only, and without any solid qualities for a foundation.

There can be no doubt as to which of the two sorts of people - the easy and graceful, or the stiff and awkward - it is most agreeable to meet, either in business, in society, or in the casual intercourse of life. Which make the fastest friends, the truest men of their word, the most conscientious performers of their duty, is an entirely different matter.

The dry GAUCHE Englishman - to use the French phrase, L'ANGLAIS EMPETRE - is certainly a somewhat disagreeable person to meet at first. He looks as if he had swallowed a poker. He is shy himself, and the cause of shyness in others. He is stiff, not because he is proud, but because he is shy; and he cannot shake it off, even if he would. Indeed, we should not be surprised to find that even the clever writer who describes the English Philistine in all his enormity of awkward manner and absence of grace, were himself as shy as a bat.

When two shy men meet, they seem like a couple of icicles. They sidle away and turn their backs on each other in a room, or when travelling creep into the opposite corners of a railway-carriage. When shy Englishmen are about to start on a journey by railway, they walk along the train, to discover an empty compartment in which to bestow themselves; and when once ensconced, they inwardly hate the next man who comes in. So; on entering the dining-room of their club, each shy man looks out for an unoccupied table, until sometimes - all the tables in the room are occupied by single diners. All this apparent unsociableness is merely shyness - the national characteristic of the Englishman.

"The disciples of Confucius," observes Mr. Arthur Helps, "say that when in the presence of the prince, his manner displayed RESPECTFUL UNEASINESS. There could hardly be given any two words which more fitly describe the manner of most Englishmen when in society." Perhaps it is due to this feeling that Sir Henry Taylor, in his 'Statesman,' recommends that, in the management of interviews, the minister should be as "near to the door" as possible; and, instead of bowing his visitor out, that he should take refuge, at the end of an interview, in the adjoining room. "Timid and embarrassed men," he says, "will sit as if they were rooted to the spot, when they are conscious that they have to traverse the length of a room in their retreat. In every case, an interview will find a more easy and pleasing termination WHEN THE DOOR IS AT HAND as the last words are spoken."

The late Prince Albert, one of the gentlest and most amiable, was also one of the most retiring of men. He struggled much against his sense of shyness, but was never able either to conquer or conceal it. His biographer, in explaining its causes, says: "It was the shyness of a very delicate nature, that is not sure it will please, and is without the confidence and the vanity which often go to form characters that are outwardly more genial."

About the Author

Born in Haddington, Smiles was the eldest of eleven children. He left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to a doctor, eventually enabling him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying and after graduating he campaigned for parliamentary reform, contributing articles to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and the Leeds Times.