I have observed that the distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet, which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least: they eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.
P.S. Never talk much to young men; remember that it is the women who make a reputation in society.
On entering Paris I had resolved to set up “a character”; for I was always of an ambitious nature, and desirous of being distinguished from the ordinary herd.
I thought nothing appeared more likely to be obnoxious to men, and therefore pleasing to women, than an egregious coxcomb: accordingly I arranged my hair into ringlets, dressed myself with singular plainness and simplicity ( a low person, by the by, would have done just the contrary), and, putting on an air of exceeding languor, made my maiden appearance at Lord Bennington’s.
“Watch!” said I: “do you think I could ever wear a watch! I know nothig so plebeian. What can any one, but a man of business, who has nine hours for his counting-house and one for his dinner, ever possibly want to know the time for? ‘An assignation,’ you will say: tur, but – if a man is worth having he is surely worth waiting for!”
And every one, even to old Madame de G–s, seemed to consider me impertinent enough to become the rage!
As for me, I was perfectly satisfied with the effect I had produced, and I went away the first, in order to give the men an opportunity of abusing me; for whenever the men abuse, the women, to support alike their coquetry and the conversation, think themselves called upon to defend.
Apropos, English civility, you have, I hope, by this time discovered that you have to assume a very different manner with French people from that with our own countrymen; with us, the least appearance of feeling or enthusiasm is certain to be ridiculed everywhere; but in France, you may venture to seem not quite devoid of all natural sentiments; indeed, if you affect enthusiasm, they will give you credit for genius, adn they will place or the qualities of the heart to the account of the head.
We, the English, it is true, do not expose ourselves thus: our dandies, our tradesmen, do not vent second-rate philosophy on the human mind, nor on les beaux arts.
To be admired, one must always know what other people don’t – and then one has full liberty to sneer at the value of what other people do know.
I had become rather a talked-of and noted character. It is true that I was everywhere abused – one found fault with my neckcloth, another with my mind.
Why is it…that to be pleased with oneself is the surest way of offending everybody else? If any one, male or female, an evident admirer of his or her own perfections, enter a room, how perturbed, restless, and unhappy every individual of the offender’s sex instantly becomes: for them not only enjoyment but tranquility is over, and if they could annihilate the unconscious victim of their spleen, I fully believe no Christian toleration would come in the way of that last extreme of animosity. For a coxcomb there is no mercy, for a coquette no pardon. They are, as it were, the dissenters of society; no crime is too bad to be imputed to them; they do not believe the religion of others – they set up a deity of their own vanity – all the orthodox vanities of others are offended. Then comes the bigotry, the stake, the auto-dafe of scandal. What, alas! is so implacable as the rage of vanity? What so restless as its persecution? Take from a man his fortune, his house, his reputation, but flatter his vanity in each, and he will forgive you. Heap upon him benefits, fill him with blessings: but irritate his self-love, and you have made the very best man ungrateful.
Faubourg St. Germain..I love that quartier! ..the fossilized remains of the old régime…you are inhaling the atmosphere of a past century; ..no stiff coats and unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets. ..shops, such as shops might have been in the aristocratic days of Louis Quatorze, ere British contamination made them insolent and dear ..no democratic plebeianism.
I have long laid it down as a rule, that when your fame, or your notoriety, is once established, you never gain by talking to more than one person at a time. If you don’t shine, you are a fool; if you do, you are a bore. You must become either ridiculous or unpopular – either hurt your own self-love by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering “Good!”, “True!”
Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing ever escapes me.
Danger and novelty are more to my taste than safety and sameness.
I was tolerably tired of its amusements: no business is half so fatiguing as pleasure.
A great genius should not linger too long either in the salon or the world. He must quit each with eclat.
I obtained a clear knowledge of moral principle. Before that time, the little ability I possessed only led me into acts, which, I fear, most benevolent reader, thou hast already sufficiently condemned: my good feelings – for I was not naturally bad – never availed me the least when present temptation came into my way. I had no guide but passion; no rule but the impulse of the moment. What else could have been the result of my education? If I was immoral, it was because I was never taught of morality. Nothing, perhaps, is less innate than virtue.
Living in the world, I have not separated myself from its errors and its follies: the vortex was too strong, the atmosphere too contagious; but I have at least avoided the crimes into which my temper would most likely have driven me. I ceased to look upon the world as a game one was to play fairly, if possible, but where a little cheating was readily allowed; I no longer divorced the interests of other men from my own: if I endeavored to blind them, it was neither by unlawful means, nor for a purely selfish end, if – but come, Henry Pelham, whou hast praised thyself enough for the present; and, after all, thy future adventures will best tell if thou art really amended.
Our country has in every province, what France only has in Paris – a capital, consecrated to gayety, idleness, and enjoyment. London is both too busy in one class of society, and too pompous in another, to please a foreigner who has not excellent recommendations, Bath, he may, as at Paris, find all the gayeties of society without knowing a single individual.
A whole row of stiff necks, in cravats of the most unexceptionable length and breadth, were just before me. A tall, thin young man, with dark, wiry hair brushed on one side, was drawing on a pair of white Woodstock gloves, and affecting to look around the room with the supreme indifference of bon ton.
His remarks were those of a strong, ill-regulated mind, which had made experience supply the place of the reasoning faculties; there was a looseness in his sentiments, and a licentiousness in his opinions, which startled even me (used as I had been to rakes of all schools); his philosophy was of that species which thinks that the best maxim of wisdom is – to despise. Of men he spoke with the bitterness of hatred; of women, with the levity of contempt. France had taught him its debaucheries, but not the elegance which refines them: if his sentiments were low, the language in which they were clothed was meaner still: and that which makes the morality of the upper classes, and which no criminal is supposed to be hardy enough to reject; that religion which has no scoffers, that code which has no impugners, that honor among gentlemen which constitutes the moving principle of the society in which they live, he seemed to imagine, even in its most fundamental laws, was an authority to which nothing but the inexperience of the young and the credulity of the romantic could accede.
“Ah,” said I, “I am perhaps less ignorant than I affect to be; it is now my object to be a dandy; hereafter I must aspire to be an orator, a wit, a scholar, or a Vincent. You will see then that there have been many odd quarters of an hour in my life less unprofitably wasted than you imagine.”
I became more thoughtfully and solidly ambitious. Instead of wasting my time in idle regrets at the station I had lost, I rather resolved to carve out for myself one still lofty and more universally acknowledged. I determined to exercise, to their utmost, the little ability and knowledge I possessed; and while the increase of income, derived from my uncle’s generosity, furnished me with what was necessary for my luxury, I was resolved that it should not encourage me in the indulgence of my indolence.
A year had made a vast alteration in my mind; I had ceased to regard pleasure for its own sake: I rather coveted its enjoyments, as the great sources of worldly distinction. I was not the less a coxcomb than heretofore, nor the less fastidious in my horses and my dress; but I viewed these matters in a light wholly different from that in which I had hitherto regarded them. Beneath all the carelessness of my exterior, my mind was close, keen, and inquiring; and under all the affectations of foppery, and the levity of manner, I veiled an ambition the most extensive in its objects, and a resolution the most daring in the accomplishment of its means.
I had already established a certain reputation for eccentricity, fashion, and, to my great astonishment, also for talent; and my pride was satisfied with finding myself universally run after, whilst I indulged my inclinations by rendering myself universally scarce.
I spared no means of extending my knowledge of even the minutest point which could add to the reputation I enjoyed .. In short, while, by the dignity of my birth, and the independent hauteur of my bearing, I preserved the rank of an equal amongst the highest of the set.
Meanwhile, it was my pleasure to wear in society the eccentric costume of character I had first adopted, and to cultivate the arts which won from women the smile that cheered and encouraged me in my graver contest with men.
So true is it that there is no situation which a little tact cannot turn to our own account; manage yourself well, and you may manage all the world.
Hyde Park is a stupid place. The English of the fashionable world make business an enjoyment, and enjoyment a business: they are born without a smile; they rove about public place like so many easterly winds – cold, sharp, and cutting.
They are sometimes polite, but unvariably uncivil; their warmth is always artificial – their cold never; they are stiff without dignity, and cringing without manners. They offer you an affront, and call it “plain truth”; they wound your feelings, and tell you it is manly to “speak their minds”; at the same time, while they have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage; while they tell you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven and earth for an invitation from the minister’s wife. Then their amusements! the heat – the dust – the sameness – the slowness, of that odious park in the morning; and the same exquisite scene repeated in the evening, on the condensed stage of a rout-room, where one has more heat, with less air, and a narrower dungeon, with diminished possiblity of escape! We wander about like the damned in the story of Vathek, and we pass our lives, like the royal philosopher of Prussia, in conjugating the verb, Je m’ennuis.
However, in the real world, it matters little what may be our real mood, the masks hides the bent brow and the writhing lip.
“There is something”, resumed Guleston, “in your countenance and manner, at once so frank, lively and ingenuous, that one is not only prepossessed in your favor, but desirous of your friendship.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Pelham, or, Adventures of a Gentleman. (1828)