ON BEING DELIGHTFUL
ON BEING DELIGHTFUL
Nov. 8, 19—.
My dear Alexa,—
You accuse me of perpetually charging you to be delightful, and of never giving you any detailed and specific instructions as to how to be it. I can’t help feeling that the accusation is more than a little unjust, that is to say, I did suffer under a sense of injustice for a quarter of an hour or so. It seemed to me that although I had never taught you by way of precept, by way of example I had not failed, for I have been extremely charming to you, Alexa. But reflection has caused me to realise that, perhaps, nay certainly, you are right. Many of the qualities that make a man charming are the antipodes of those which render a woman delightful. There are a few, of course, that should be common to both, but they are few. I will not trifle with the subject and do outrage to your common sense by telling you that Nature herself will teach you tobe delightful, because I remember that you and I long ago, when you were little more than a kiddie, agreed that delightfulness is the one attribute which Nature never possesses, and, therefore, can never transmit to her children. Nature is all sorts of pleasant things. She is wholesome, for instance, impressive, restorative, not infrequently magnificent—just here and now she is damp and abominably depressing—but she is never delightful. Delightfulness is an achievement of art. One may speak, accurately, of a delightful garden; none but an indiscriminating idiot would talk of a delightful wilderness. An alcove decorated with tact and lighted, or half-lighted—better—with Chinese lanterns, might be delightful: a sunset never could be. Therefore, my daughter, if you follow the promptings of Nature you may be, let us say, astonishing, but you will never be delightful or anything like it.
Personally, I think you are delightful already; but then, I am quite conscious that that view of mine may be a paternalparti priswhich other people with blunter perceptions than mine may possibly not share. If you wish to be universally delightfulthen, you must be prepared to make of yourself a work of Art. Nature, happily for you—I may say this without flattery—has given you the materials; it is for you to work them up, remembering that a naturally-gifted young woman is no more a delightful young woman than a box of colours is a picture.
In the eighties, when the Æsthetic Movement, as it was absurdly called, was on the town, we used to talk a good deal, of “Art for Art’s sake.” It was a phrase that gave grave offence to the Philistine, (that was why we used it so constantly), the Philistine who nosed in it a danger to his own peculiar variety of morals. You don’t often hear it now, for the Philistine was too strong for us, and he has conquered. And yet it was a phrase as innocent as it was apt. It summed up in four words—nay, in three, for one is repeated—a true and imperishable principle. All it meant was that Art should seek no end outside itself: that if you set about painting a picture, say, your aim should be just to paint a beautiful picture, not to inculcate moral habits in a Sunday school, or to boil your own pot byachieving the line in Burlington House, or even the gold medal of the Salon. You see the implication, Alexa? You see how “Art for Art’s sake” applies to you just now? If you are going to practise the art of being delightful you must do it for the sake of being delightful, not with anyarrière pensée, not with an eye to the best partners at dances or invitations to the mansions of the affluent. To die with the consciousness of all your life long having been a delightful person! Can anything be better than that, save living with the same consciousness? Moreover, I can’t help thinking that the best of all preparations for the next world is to be as nice as one possibly can in this.
You know a good deal; a good deal of many things, I have seen to that. But it would be well rather to conceal than to display your knowledge. There is nothing people in general like so little in woman as knowledge, and when I say people in general I mean people of both sexes. So you must never put all the goods in the shop window, or, at any rate, not all at once. Show just as many as, and those of the sort that, will attract the particular gazer in the window atthe time. Therefore, affect an ignorance if you have it not, remembering that the more you really do know the easier is it to appear not to know it. This seems an unreasonable injunction, and therefore I will give you my reason for proffering it. Broadly speaking, human nature suffers from a passion to be instructive. We all love to teach, to tell things. Particularly do men love to tell things to young women. I have often had a man come up to me and say “Miss So-and-So is a charming girl,” just after I have been noticing that the charm for him consisted wholly in the interested and receptive manner with which she had been listening, or affecting to listen, to such information as he had delighted to impart. Whenever a man talks to a young woman he tries his best to appear a littlebiggerall round than he knows himself to be. Unexpectedly to check his enterprise by showing that you know as much as he does has pretty much the same effect upon his mind as though you were suddenly to add twenty years to your age, to discover wrinkles, or to develop a squint. Of course, I do not mean that when a man is “telling you things” youshould sit mumchance and, as it were, dumfounded at his erudition. A few well-directed and intelligent questions will help you vastly. But take care that the questions are such as you feel pretty confident he will be able to answer. Here I can speak to you from the depths of my own experience. When a pretty young woman asks me something that I don’t know, I feel more inclined to box her ears than to kiss her.
Learn early, dear student of life, to suffer bores gladly. Remember that in so doing you are making yourself delightful, not only to the poor bore, but also doubly delightful to the other persons present from whom you have drawn him off.
Get as quickly as possible out of the way of speaking of yourself, even of regarding yourself as “a girl.” You are, I know, only nineteen now, or is it twenty?—and there is not much harm in it so far—but one day you will be five-and-twenty, and then it will sound, and will be, ridiculous. Girlishness of speech, of thought and of manner is a habit easily acquired and with difficulty dropped. Let others think of you and speak of you as a girl if they will, but don’t doit yourself as you hope for delightfulness. There are few things in a small way that give the wise and fastidious man a nastier jar than to hear a woman well away towards the end of her third decade refer to herself as a “girl.” It is the fashion of folks nowadays to try to defer their children’s womanhood as long as possible—one constantly hears it remarked, “how much younger women are than they used to be!” Don’t believe it, Alexa, they are just the same age as ever they were. We cannot, do what we will, keep our daughters young. We can keep them silly, but we can’t keep them young. Great is Art, but Nature beats her there. Besides, this in your ear! Just as it is hateful to hear a mature young woman call herself a girl, so it is delightful to hear one who really is a girl speak of herself as a woman. I cannot tell you why—I think I know, but it would take too long just now, and the psychology of it is subtle extremely—but trust me in this, it is so.
Never if you can help it let a man do for you anything you have reason to believe he will not like doing—anything which youthink you would not like to do were you he and were he you. As a practical instance: If you happen to be bicycle-riding with a man, don’t let him drag you up the hills, or against the wind. Even at some inconvenience to yourself refuse the proffered aid of his shoulder, of a bit of rope, or the waistband of his Norfolk jacket. The aid will be proffered as a matter of conventional courtesy, but the fellow’s heart will not be in it. He will like you ever so much the better if you assert your independence; unless, of course, he be intensely young, and then he doesn’t count. When I was a young man I once went skating with a very charming young woman who told me she could skate, and that she enjoyed the fun of it. I found she couldn’t skate—she could only sprawl about and tumble down when unsupported. I had to spend the whole of that glorious afternoon—I can smell the perfume of the pines which stood around the lake even now across nearly half a century of time—in upholding her until my arms and ankles ached. It was the only day of hard ice that winter. That girl was not your mother, my child. After that day she never could by anypossibility have become your mother. When I set out on that skating expedition I was half in love with her; when I came home I wasn’t! Selfish? Yes—well!
Now for a really unworldly piece of counsel. Don’t be at too much trouble to acquire or to cultivate the acquaintance or the friendship of the rich. In the mix-up that goes on to-day you will meet them, of course—but they are seldom worth the bother. There is little or nothing worth having to be got from them. And the fact that you have made yourself even a trifle more agreeable to a rich man or woman than you would have done to a poor person, is sure, sooner or later, to inflict upon you a feeling of self-despite, of self-humiliation. It is as well to have as few of those sorts of feelings as possible. A visit to a house much bigger than one’s own, overflowing with butlers, so to speak, is but poor recompense for the very smallest scratch to one’s self-respect. A woman with scars on her self-respect is never quite delightful. You will find it easier to be delightful to men than to women. With men, over and above the cultivated charm of your art, you have alwaysyour sex—that potent mystery—to trust to. With women it tells rather against than for you. Therefore double your efforts to be delightful to women. In this matter I can give you none of the specific details you ask for. To them apply the golden rule—do unto women as you would have women do unto you. You will meet many fool-women—whom in your heart and brain you will contemn—but remember that the veriest fool-woman of them all will probably be clever enough to know exactly when and where to stick her claws into the other woman. Avoid those claws, my child.
Your devoted
Father.