RECOGNITIONS.
“Dignus vindicenod-us.”——
“Dignus vindicenod-us.”——
“Dignus vindicenod-us.”——
“Dignus vindicenod-us.”——
If you be a person that have lived for a long time in any large town, you must have ere this felt the dreadful inconvenience of knowing and being known by every body. The courtesy of society demands that, on meeting any one in the street, of whom you have the slightest acquaintance,you mustnot“affect to nod,” like Alexander, but give a realbona fidenod, or, if you please, a bow, as a mark of respect or regard—a practice which leads to a thousand disagreeable sensations in the day, till at last you almost resolve that your progress shall be like that of a British war-chariot—CUTTINGright and left, without regard to man, woman, or child. It is not that you have any abstract disinclination to pay this tribute to friendship; it is the frequency and the iteration of the thing that annoys you. You could tolerate, perhaps, a certain number of nods in the day—Iwould willingly compound for twenty—and it would be all very well if you only met a friend on the street once in the month or so. But this is not the way of it: you cannot be abroad two hours (supposing that you are of long standing in the town) without meeting fifty people and upwards, to whom you must “vail your haughty head,” and, what is worst of all, the half of these are people whom you met and nodded to yesterday, and the day before, and every day before that again, back to the creation of the world. With many of these persons, your acquaintance at first was of the very slightest nature. You met the man in a steam-boat, and had your respective names mentioned by a friend. You left a room one day as he was entering, and you were introduced, and, after exchanging only three words, made a friendly bow to each other, and parted. Perhaps he was introduced to you passingly on the street by some person to whom you had been introduced several years before, in the same transient way, by an individual whose acquaintance of you was originally of so slight a character that you had even then forgot for some years how it commenced. Your reminiscences upon the whole subject are a Generation of Shadows, traced back to Nothing. Possibly you sat next to him one night, “consule Planco,” at a mason-lodge, and to this blessed hour have never so much as learned his name. When it happens that you do not see or meet these acquaintances for six months after your first rencontre, theaffair has by that time got cool enough to justify you mutually in cutting each other. But in most cases it happens quite differently. On the very morning, perhaps, after having scraped acquaintance with a merry fellow in some promiscuous company, you meet him going abroad, like yourself, to his place of business. As nothing of the world, or its concerns, has as yet got between you and your recollections of last night’s conviviality, you pull up with him for a minute, shake hands, laugh cordially in each other’s faces, hope each other is quite well after yesternight’s business, remark what a deal of fun there was, what a deuced funny fellow that was who sung the comic songs, and so forth; and then, with another cordial shake of each other’s hands, you part off, each to the serious duties of the day. Unfortunately, it happens that this new acquaintance of yours has to go to his place of business exactly at the same time in the morning with yourself, and that your places of residence and business are co-relatively in opposite situations. It is, therefore, your doom to cross each other’s path regularly every morning at ten minutes before ten, for all the rest of your natural lives. Your eyes begin to open upon this appalling fact on the second day. You meet your manthen, exactly at the same spot as on the morning before; when, the conviviality of the penult evening being totally spent, both in respect of its effect on your mind, and as a subject of conversation, you stand in an agony of a minute’s duration, talking to each other of you know not what, till, fortunately, perhaps, a friend comes up who is going your way, and you hook yourself upon him, and take a hurried leave of your new acquaintance. Next morning you content yourself with shaking your friend by the hand cordially without stopping. Next morning, again, the affair has degenerated into a laughing nod. Next, it is an ordinary nod; at which point it continues ever after, till it is evident to both of you, as you approach each other, that you are beginning to be fairly tired of existence, and wish, mutually, that it were all well over with you, so far as thisbreathing world is concerned, and the whole affair hushed up in the silence of the grave.
It is not alone in the monotony of this system of recognition that the misery lies. You are also put to a great deal of pain and difficulty, in many cases, by the rank of the individuals to be recognised. Every man of the world has occasion to be brought into contact now and then with persons superior to himself, but who do not scruple to make themselves familiar with him in his own house or place of business. Now, the plague is, how to treat these people on the street. If their rank be very far above your own, the case is comparatively easy; for a bow, with an elevation of the hat, is readily awarded on your part, and graciously received on his. But should his place in society be just a little above your own, or such as you expect to attain very speedily—or should he be just a little longer started in the general race of prosperity than yourself—then it is perplexing indeed. Man has no antipathy to the brother worms who are so far beneath his own level as never to be brought into contrast with him. A nobleman is quite at his ease with his tailor. But it is very different with the individuals who are just a little lower than ourselves, and liable to be confounded with us. We could tolerate theprofanum et ignobile vulgusitself, rather than the people whose manners and circumstances in life are but one step beneath our own. Hence, one is liable to perpetual grievances on the street, through, what he thinks, the forwardness of some people, and the haughtiness of others. Alternately cutting and cut, on he goes, in a state of unhappiness beyond all description. Sometimes he avoids recognizing, through fear of its being offensive, a person who was fondly anxious to have his nod, and takes it very ill that he does not get it. Sometimes he is in the reverse predicament, and proffers a condescending bow, or intends to do so, to one who, putting quite a different construction on their respective degrees of consequence, coolly overlooks him.
In short, what with one thing and another, walking onthe street is an exceedingly disagreeable exercise. For my part, having been long connected with the city I inhabit, I am obliged to take a thousand ingenious expedients in order to get along with any degree of comfort. For one thing, I would sooner walk some miles barefooted over broken glass, than parade on the principal streets of the city at high twelve. If I were to attempt a passage that way, I might go as I have been told Oechlenschlager the Danish poet does through the streets of Copenhagen, my hat in my hand, and my body in a perpetual inclination. I have to seek all possible kinds of by-ways, through alleys profound and obscure; and when I cross a thoroughfare, it is with the same dogged straight-forward look with which a man swims across a dangerous river. When I do happen, in a moment of facility or confidence, to venture upon an open street, I have all kinds of expedients for avoiding and diminishing the pains of recognition. When you see an acquaintance approaching, you must consider the relative circumstances. Much depends on the place of meeting—much on the time—much on the crowded or empty state of the streets, and much, of course, on the degree of your intimacy with him, and the distance of time since you last met. If it be a vacant street, and not a business time of the day, and six months since you last met him, you are in for a quarter of an hour’s palaver as sure as you live, and hardly even a partingthen, unless you can either of you manage to get up a good witticism, under cover of which you may escape. If the street be crowded, and the time a busy one, you are tolerably safe, even although it should have been a twelvemonth since you met before. In this case, you fly past with a hurried nod, which seems to say, “We are busy just now, but will have another opportunity of stopping to speak.” This is a nod of adjournment, as it were, and it is one of great satisfaction to both parties, for both argue, of course—though they don’t put that into the nod—that, as it is a twelvemonth since they last met, it may be another beforethey meet again. Should you meet a man in a vacant street, even in the busiest part of the day, then the former circumstance annuls the latter, and you must stand and deliver, even although you be too late for an appointment of the most interesting character. On the other hand, if you meet your man in the leisurely part of the day, in a crowded street, you get off with a nod, pretending to yourself that you are carried away by the current. Sometimes you may not take advantage of your good fortune in this last case, but so bring it about that you get into collision with your friend, and begin a conversation. In this case, even although you have only asked him how he does—not caring in the least what he has to answer—and though you positively have not another idea to interchange with him, he finds it necessary to disengage himself from the throng in order to reply. You now get upon the curb-stone, or upon the causeway, where, of course, you have no more advantage from the crowded state of the street than a fish has of a river after it has been thrown upon the bank. You are now in the same predicament as if you had met your friend in the same cool part of the dayin a perfectly empty street, and therefore, when he has answered your precious question as to his health, you are as fairly in for a quarter of an hour of wretched, bald, wishy-washy conversation about all kinds of nothings that you don’t care one farthing about, as ever you were in your life. The only thing that can now save you is either a joke to laugh yourselves asunder upon, a crowd raised at a distant part of the street by some such matter as a child ridden over by a coach, or else, what is not a bad means of separation, though sometimes dangerous, you cut off one grievous encumbrance by taking on another; that is, you see another friend coming up your way, and, pretending you have something to say to him, shake off the old love and take on with the new: in which case it is not improbable that you spend longer time at the end of the street with this last individual than you might have had to spend with the former one if you had continued with him,and only given the other man a passing nod; but, of course, that is all the fortune of war, and, having done what seemed best under the circumstances, you must rather blame fate than your own imprudence. Consider well, however, in such a case, whether you are likely to get soonest off with the new or the old love; for if you take on with a bore of ten minutes’ power, in order to get off with one of only five, merely because he is going your way, and promises no interruption in the first instance, you may only fall into Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis.
After all, as in every matter arising from the affairs of this world, a great deal of our happiness, so far as it is concerned by the system of recognition, lies with ourselves. If we are prudent, and take counsel from experience, we may avoid much of this nodding and bowing misery which would otherwise fall to our share. A man, for instance, should not be always goggling and staring about him; otherwise he will be sure to fall in with flying nods, which he could as well dispense with, if he does not even hit some person, perhaps, on the other side of the way, who, not having seen him for a long time, thinks it is duty—Lord confound him!—to come across the Hellespont of mud, and shake the spirits out of him with half an hour of tediousness and common-place. When you debouch from your door, never look along the street in the direction you are not to travel, or ten to one but you see some one who, having the infelicity, poor devil, to catch your eye, must put himself on to a canter to come up to you; and so you get mutually entangled, perhaps for half the day. I give this caution with a particular emphasis; for I have observed that nine out of every ten men look back in the way described, as if it were one of the involuntary motions or inclinations of human nature. As you are walking along, never cast your regards upon any one coming obliquely across the street, or in all probability you are shot dead by an eye of your acquaintance, which, if it had not hit you, would have passed on innocuous. Theeye is the principal mischief in all these cases. A man is often snared by that part of him, and dragged a hundred yards along a dirty street, for all the world like a silly salmon hooked by the nose, and laid, after half a mile of tugging and hauling, exhausted on the shore. Keep your eye well to yourself, and you are tolerably safe; for of this you may be assured, no man will come up to attract your attention, unless he be a country cousin, who was just looking about for you. Every mother’s son of them is actuated by the same principles with yourself, and is glad to escape all the nodding he can. So reciprocal is this feeling, that many persons whom you are taking means to avoid, will, if you observe them narrowly, be found to be doing all they can to assist in the process. If you pretend, for instance, that you cannot see that gentleman there coming aslant the way, on account of the intense brightness of the sun, you will see out at the tail of your eye that he is pretending to be as much put about by the sunshine as yourself, and is doing all he can to shade his eyes from Phœbus and you, exactly in the same fashion with yourself. If you walk, as you ought to do, with your eyes fixed below what painters call the point of sight, but suddenly raise them for a moment, in order to look about you, it is ten to one but you see your very bosom friend—your confessor—the man whom you wear in your heart of hearts—in the act of sneakingly withdrawing his eye from your countenance, for the purpose of getting past you unnoticed. Take no scorn on account of these things, but put it all down rather to the strength of friendship; for can there be any stronger test of that sentiment, than the desire of saving those whom we love from any thing that is disagreeable to them?
It has been already remarked, that if you be in the regular habit of meeting and nodding to a person every now and then, the system is kept up till death do you part. On the other hand, if you can avoid seeing a person for some considerable time, the nod becomesefféte, and youever after see, as if you saw not, each other. Sometimes, however, one gets a great relief in the midst of a fixed and hopeless nodding acquaintance, by happening to meet once more at the social board in some friend’s house, when you re-invigorate the principle, gather fresh intimacy, and perhaps, after all, take refuge from the unnecessary monotony of nodding terms in a serious friendship.
If you can help yourself by this means, it may be all very well, though certainly it is rather hard that one should be forced into an intimacy with a man merely because he crosses your path rather oftener than the most of your other slight acquaintances. The best way, however, to lessen this part of the evils of life, is to walk withas little circumspection as possible. So ends my preachment aboutRecognitions.