The Gentleman and Lady's Book of Politeness and Propriety of Deportment Part 8

When your narrations have had success, keep a modest countenance; leave others to point out the striking parts which have pleased them. The surest means of not having the approbation of others, in actions as well as other things, is to solicit it, whether it be by looks, or by words.

As every hearer is obliged to listen or understand without objecting, the consequence is, that we should _feel our ground_ before speaking, and ask if such or such a thing is known to the company. When a story has been published in the newspapers, so that it is not entirely new, or seems borrowed from a compilation of _anas_, if we attribute it to some person of our acquaintance, (of course one that is absent,) an ineffable ridicule very properly stigmatizes the narrator.

We come now to what seems to me the most difficult part of conversation, and if you are not sure of being able to cla.s.s your ideas with regularity, to express them with much clearness, and an easy elegance, do not have the temerity to wish to a.n.a.lyze a book, or a dramatic piece.

You would be laying up for yourself a rude mortification, which would have an unfavorable influence on your _entree_ into society. You would be wrong, however, in concluding, that I condemn you to perpetual silence; I only wish to inspire you with a salutary diffidence, in order to preserve you from such a rude check, and to put it in your power some future day to answer, in this particular, the wishes of a distinguished and brilliant a.s.sembly.

Begin by putting down upon paper a hasty sketch of a short piece, as for instance a _vaudeville_, or a little comedy. You will do this until, being sure of the manner in which you would embrace the _ensemble_, and dispose of the details, you can produce it without embarra.s.sment. When arrived at this point, abstain from these kinds of a.n.a.lysis, which though indeed more correct, seem labored. They have besides less freedom, appropriateness, and grace.

Know this, and remember it well, that every other preparation than thinking what you are about to say, will make you acquire two intolerable faults, affectation and stiffness.

To conclude, I give this advice only to those persons who, by a quick and penetrating perception, by a love of the fine arts, and by a peculiar readiness, find themselves able to speak properly of literary productions.

Those who are less engaged in these things, should content themselves with simply and briefly explaining a subject, and of mentioning the emotion they felt; with speaking of some brilliant pa.s.sage, and adding that they do not pretend to p.r.o.nounce judgment.

The first degree of digression is the parenthesis; provided it is short, natural, and seldom repeated; and that you take care to announce it always; and finally, in order not to abuse it, you should make a skilful use of it. The second degree of digression becomes more nice, for it includes those accessory reflections, those common but agreeable and well-settled expressions; those general or particular allusions, which are only to be used with a peculiar emphasis, which is to language what the italic character is to printing. This method of speaking in italics may be striking and artless; but it often becomes obscure and trivial; the habit is dangerous, and one should use this difficult digression only before intimate friends.

We now come to the third degree, to what is properly called digression; most frequently it is involuntary. Often in a lively and animated dialogue, the impetus of conversation carries you, as well as the person with whom you are conversing, far from the point from which you started.

If it is a question of pleasure or interest, return to your point by employing a polite turn, as, _Pray let us not lose sight of our business_. But if it is an affair of nothings succeeding nothings, let it flow on.

Voluntary digression, when it is not a mere work of loquacity, may be employed in serious discourse, as political, philosophical, or moral discussions; but it is important to treat it with infinite reserve, and care, and never to introduce a personal apology, or a domestic incident, altogether out of place, as those persons do, who, in narrating any event relative to an individual, recount his life, their connexion with him, or his whole family, and make the event of an hour remind us of ages.

Lawyers, literary people, military men, travellers, invalids and aged ladies, ought to have a prudent and continual distrust of the abuse of digressions.

SECTION IV.

_Of Suppositions and Comparisons._

The two shoals to be avoided in this form of language are directly opposed to each other; the one is triviality, the other bombast.

The object of supposition, which is already antiquated, and sometimes too simple, is to increase the force of reasoning, and to carry conviction to the mind of the person who listens to you; comparison tends to make an image, or to place before us the object described. When both these qualities are regulated by reason, use, and taste, it is very well; but how seldom is this the case!

They are not so used, if, in the course of a discussion, you suppose a respectable person to supply the place of a madman, an ill-bred person, or a robber; or, if you suppose him to be in a situation disgraceful or even ridiculous. As, for example; _If you had been this bad person_; or, _Suppose, that you had committed this base act_; or, _that you should be laughed at_, &c.

They are also misplaced, whenever, being satisfied with avoiding disagreeable comparisons, we endeavor to mark out some one as contemptible, by comparing his exterior with that of some other person in the company. When we say; _This unfortunate man is of your size, sir; he has your traits, your physiognomy_, &c.

They are also misplaced, if used in the presence of people of a profession upon which the injurious comparisons fall, as when we say; _As quackish as a doctor_; _greedy as an attorney_; _loquacious as a lawyer_, &c.

Finally, politeness and taste cannot at all exist in comparisons, if they are common or trivial, as when we say, _black as the chimney-back_, _high as one's hand_, &c.; or, if they are in a turgid and pretending style, such as, _learned as the Muses_, _fresh as the meadows_, &c.

SECTION V.

_Of Discussions and Quotations._

Whatever be the subject of conversation, propose your opinion with modesty; defend it with sangfroid and a mild tone if you are opposed; yield with a good grace if you are wrong; yield also, although you are in the right, if the subject of discussion is of little importance, and especially if the one who opposes you is a lady, or an old person.

Moreover, if love of truth or the desire of affording instruction force you to enter into a discussion, do it with address and politeness. If you do not bring over your opponent to your own opinion, you will at least gain his esteem.

But if you have to do with one of those people who, possessed with a mania of discussion, commence by contradicting before they hear, and who are always ready to sustain the contrary opinion, yield to him; you will have nothing to gain with him. Be a.s.sured that the spirit of contradiction can be conquered only by silence.

The insupportable pedantry of a cloud of quoters, without tact or talent, has justly, for a long time, thrown quotations into disrepute; but if they are well chosen, few, and short; if they are a-propos,

Qui fuit comme le temps, qui plait comme les graces;

if they are altogether new, and wielded by a person possessed of modesty, elegance, and taste, having a perfect knowledge of the world, quotations have much success and charm; but without these conditions, there is little safety; and in this matter there can be no mediocrity; you will either be a good model, or an insupportable pedant. Consider if you will rashly run this chance, especially on making your debut in society, when young persons ought so carefully to avoid making a parade of a vain college erudition, and not seek the reputation of a savant by employing words borrowed from foreign languages, or scientific terms unknown in good society.

SECTION VI.

_Of Pleasantry, Proverbs, Puns, and Bon Mots._

If society is not a school for exercising pedantry, neither is it an arena for the use of those perversely clever people, who think themselves furnished with a patent to insult with grace. Whatever may be the keenness of their sarcasms, the piquancy of their observations, or the smile which they excite in me, I do not the less refuse to allow to those caustic spirits the name of polite persons, or of good _ton_; for, in politeness there must be good feeling. But those who incessantly study to trouble and wound people, without taking any precaution except to deprive them of the right or means of complaining; who are ready to catch at the least error, to exaggerate it, to clothe it in the most bitter language, to present it in the most ridiculous light; who meanly attack those who cannot answer them, or expose themselves every day for a sarcasm to sport with their own life and that of another in a duel--such people, what are they?--in truth, I dare not say.

One such picture, which, certainly is not highly colored, would render pleasantries always odious; but to indulge in pleasantry is not to resemble such mischievous persons, thank heaven, it is far otherwise; for mild, kind, and harmless pleasantry should be taken in good part even by those who are the subjects of it; it is a friendly, and sportive contest, in which severity, jealousy, and resentment should never appear; whenever you perceive the least trace of them, the pleasantry is at an end; desist, then, the moment they appear.

As to hoaxing, that caustic of fools; as to that silly gaiety, excited by the candor or politeness of people whom you falsely cause to believe the most foolish things, because they do not make known to you that they see through this pleasure of stupid fellows, I have nothing to say of them, except that I have too good an opinion of my reader to suppose that he does not despise them as I do.

Popular quotations and proverbs, as well as other quotations, require some care; and, except in familiar conversation, are altogether misplaced. If they are frequent, conversation becomes a tedious gossipping; if introduced without a short previous remark, one of two things will take place, they will either prevent the speaker from being understood, or they will give him the air of Sancho Panza. But the previous remark, however, need be but short; _as the proverb says_, _as the wisdom of nations has it_. A proverb well applied, and placed at the end of a phrase, frequently makes a very happy conclusion.

I only speak to censure; I entreat my readers not to suffer themselves to be the manufacturers of puns, and to despise this talent of fools and childish means to excite a pa.s.sing laugh. Not that we cannot repeat in good company one of those rare political bon mots which are happy in every respect; nor that we ought to deprecate this kind of pleasantry before people who are fond of them, still less to tell them what they hear every day, _That is poor_; to have taste, does not authorize us to be impolite.

We must be much more severe upon another kind of equivoques; namely, those which offend modesty. Propriety allows you, and it even requires you not to listen to, but even to interrupt an ill-bred person who importunes you with those indecent witticisms which a man of good society ought always to avoid; they are those by aid of which we cover certain pleasantries with a veil so transparent, that they are the more observed. What pleasure can we find in causing ladies to blush, and in meriting the name of a man of bad society?

There are those who think that they may allow themselves every kind of pleasantry before certain persons; but a man of good _ton_ ought to observe it wherever he is. We might quote more than one example of persons, who have lost politeness of manners and of language by a.s.suming the habits and conversation of all kinds of society into which chance may have carried them. It requires but a moment to lose those delicate shades of character which const.i.tute a man of the world, and which cost us so much labor to acquire.

It is a great error to suppose that we must always s.h.i.+ne in conversation, and that it is better to make ourselves admired by a lively and ready repartee, than to content ourselves sometimes with silence, or with an answer less brilliant than judicious.[15] We must not imagine that all traits of wit are in the cla.s.s of politeness; a vain and triumphant air spoils a bon mot; moreover, when you repeat a thing of this kind of which you are the author, beware of saying so to your auditors.

[15] That a reply may be truly pleasing, it is necessary that he who makes it has a right so to do, and that we may quote it without doing him any wrong; otherwise, we should laugh at the reply, and despise the author of it. There are replies which are pleasing in the mouth of a military man, but which would be ridiculous in the mouth of a civil magistrate. A young lady may make lively and brilliant repartees, which would be insupportable in a woman in the decline of life; as the latter might make such as would be unsuitable in a young lady.

SECTION VII.

_Of Eulogiums, Complainings, Improprieties in general, and Prejudices._

One of the most improper things, is to praise to excess and unseasonably. Extravagant and misplaced eulogiums neither honor the one who bestows them, nor the persons who receive them.

An infallible method of giving a meritorious person the air of a fool, is to address him to his face and without disguise, to load him with exaggerated eulogiums; it is indeed not a little embarra.s.sing to reply in such a case. If we remain silent, we appear to be inhaling the incense with complacency; if we repel it, we only seem to excite it the more. Thus we see, in such a case, and even among very clever persons too, those who reply by silly exclamations and by rude a.s.sertions. _You were laughing at me_, they say; this cannot be tolerated; it is to be supposed that the person who praises you is incapable of such an act. I think it would be better to say, _I did not know you were so kind_ (or so good) _I should indeed think you were joking me_. Or else, we should say, _your partiality blinds you_.

Persons who are unacquainted with the world, commonly think that they cannot address a lady without first a.s.sailing her with compliments. This is a mistake, gentlemen, and I can with relation to this point, reveal to you what my s.e.x prefers to these vulgar eulogiums.

It is in bad _ton_ to overwhelm with insipid flattery all women that we meet, without distinction of age, rank or merit. These insipidities may indeed please some of light and frivolous minds, but will disgust a woman of good sense. Carry on with them a lively, piquant and varied conversation; and remember that they have a too active imagination, a too great versatility of disposition, to support conversation for a long time upon the same subject.

But is it then necessary to proscribe eulogiums entirely? Not at all--society has not yet arrived at that degree of philosophy; eulogiums are and will for a long time be a means of success; but they should be in the first place, true, or at least probable, in order not to have the appearance of outrageous insults; they should be indirect and delicate, that we may listen to them without being obliged to interrupt; and they should be tempered with a sort of judgment, the skilful use of which, is itself even a eulogium.

I repeat, as I have often said, let there be moderation in everything.

Should we not regard as gross and ridiculous language, that exaggeration which we frequently hear used in praise as well as in censure? It seems that true politeness in language consists princ.i.p.ally in a certain moderation of expressions. It is much better to cause people to think more than we say, and not outrage language, and run the risk of going beyond what we ought to say.