CRITICISM OF THE ABSENT.
OUGHT we to criticise our friends behind their backs ? This is the subject which the delightful essayist who looks upon life "from a College window" discusses this month in the Cornhill. The first part of his paper consists of a dialogne. He was staying, be tells us, not long ago "in the house of an old friend, a public man, who is a deeply interest- ing character, energetic, able, vigorous, with very definite limitations." There was only one other guest in the house, also, as it happened, an old friend, "a serious man." One night all three were together in the smoking-room, when the host "rose, excused himself, saying he had some letters to write," and left his guests alone. As soon as he was gone the writer of the article said to his " serious " companion :— " What an interesting fellow our host is ! He is almost more interesting because of the qualities that he does not possess, than because of the qualities that he does possess." An innocent remark, which elicited the following crushing reply :—" If you propose to discuss our host, you must find someone else to conduct the argument. He is my friend, whom I esteem and love, and I am not in a position to criticise him." In vain the writer pleaded that he too had a great regard for the man upon whose character he had just been commenting,—that that, indeed, was the reason why he would like to discuss him. The serious man would not listen to his arguments. All criticism of the absent was in his eyes disloyal. He regretted that his friend should make a habit of it. We ought not, he thought, "to be afraid, if necessary, of telling our friends about their faults; but that is quite a different thing from amusing oneself by discussing their faults with others." The reader is relieved to hear that soon after this they went to bed, as the discussion evidently threatened to become acrimonious.
Next day the upholder of the right of criticism returned to his "College window" and thought over the argument, telling his reader his thoughts with his usual genial frankness. Not to talk about one's friends would be, he reflects, "deplorably dull," and "dulness, whether natural or ,acquired," is "responsible for a large amount of human error and misery." For his own part, he confesses to feeling most minute and detailed interest in the smallest matters con- nected with other people's lives and idiosyncrasies. He hates biographies of the dignified order, which do not condescend to give what are called personal details. He is certain that "of all the shifting pageant of life, by far the most interesting and exquisite part is our relations with the other souls who are bound on the same pilgrimage." Finally he decides that the " serious " man was altogether wrong ; that those who" do not desire to discuss others, or who disapprove of doing it, may be pronounced to be, as a rule, either stupid, or egotistical, or pharisaical ; and sometimes they are all three." We all have, he maintains, a clear right to discuss our friends, provided we do not do so " ill-naturedly," or "malevolently," or in a spirit of cynicism,—in fact, "the only principle to bear in mind is the principle of justice."
Of course the "serious man" was "a man of straw," and one dressed up in ludicrously old-fashioned clothes. Surely there could not be found any one at the present time to assert that we should say nothing behind the back of a friend which we could not say to his face. Such advice belongs to a day of rougher manners. For all that, we cannot altogether ,accept the judgment of the essayist, and we think he might have put a few more reasonable arguments into the mouth of his opponent, and made him a little more worthy of his steel. To say that in the discussion of our friends we should be regulated and limited by the sense of justice alone is surely to allow too great a ilatitude. It places our friends upon an equal footing with our enemies. Is it possible, ought it to be possible, to be only just in talking of a friend ? "It does not help on the world if we go about everywhere slobbering with forgiveness and affection," we read, and "it is the most mawkish sentimentality to love people in such a way that we condone grave faults in them." Certainly ; but all the same, there is a sense in which a man should be always his friend's advocate and never his friend's judge; and there are cases in which, if he feels himself too stupid to play the part, or circumstances render such a part impossible, he ought in loyalty to decline the discussion. Every man knows, or imagines he knows, -which comes to the same thing, his friend's character. He knows his inner nature,—that nature which lies below the surface and cannot be permanently altered for the worse by the diverse storms of circumstance. It is precisely because he approves this inner nature that he likes him, that he decides in his favour and regards him as his friend ; and this decision he ought, in talking of him, never to forget. Justice must deal more or less exclusively with a man as he expresses himself in his words and actions, and must acquit or condemn him on the evidence of these. It is essential to justice that it should not be influenced by any predisposition in favour of the person under discussion; it is essential to friendship that such a predisposition should never be forgotten. Again, it is easy to be too hard on those who do not desire to discuss others. It does show a certain want of human interest, but at least it has nothing to do with egotism. The man with a strong desire to talk of his friends' characters has, as a rule, a strong desire to talk of his own. How much good manners may restrain him in this matter is a question of upbringing and will-power.
The wish to define in words the characters with whom we come in contact is connected with the literary sense. A man who has not got it can very seldom put his thoughts on paper. Many people do not discuss their friends because they do not know how ; but that does not mean that they are stupid, or priggish, or indifferent to them. Many a man who cannot describe, or draw, or say anything worth hearing about a natural scene, who does not care to look at a painting or listen to an analysis of natural beauty, has none the less a great feeling for Nature. The want in him is not intellectual, but artistic. He does not know how to express his impressions. The man who does not want to criticise his friend is in the same case. To hear some one else do it gives him no pleasure, and some- times it strikes him as rather profane. No doubt the most important part in the life of most men and all women belongs to their relationship to those about them ; but some people do not like to discuss that relationship any more than they like to discuss their health. They argue that as much dulness has been the result of personal conversation as can ever be created by its absence ; indeed, it is a subject which pursued exclusively, and for its own sake, leads more quickly than any other to a desert of dulness. It is only in its larger bearings that personal talk can continue entertaining,—only, indeed, when it is indulged in by those whose chief topic it is not. Small details about other people's lives are only of interest if we know the great ones. It is of no intrinsic
interest that Carlyle had indigestion, and Mrs. Carlyle was jealous. Some people like to hear about the jealousy and the
indigestion, because these little facts add life to their mental picture of a man and a woman of genius. But there are many by no means pharisaical men and women who do not think these personal items add to the truth of the picture, but merely serve to confuse the relative values. They feel that very often when we are studying a character we ehould know better if we knew less.
It is very difficult to refute the writer in the Cornhill. Logie and common-sense are both on his side; nonsense, convention- ality, and want of frankness are all on the other. Yet throughout his paper we feel that he ignores a sentiment which does, and does rightly, restrain the ordinary man when he talks about the absent whom he likes. It is the same strong sentiment which makes us hesitate to speak with complete frankness of the dead. Dryden trusted to it when at the end of his life, believing that he had exhausted his power, and lamenting that,
"Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, I live a rent-charge on his Providence," he wrote to Congreve and commended to him both his manuscripts and his reputation :— " Be kind to my remains, and oh, defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend." Again, does not our author ignore a somewhat analogous sentiment too entirely when he says that "we have a perfect right—nay, we do well—to condemn in others faults which we frankly condemn in ourselves" P Do we do well ? If our sole purpose in writing or speaking is one of edification, if we are preaching a sermon or writing a moral disquisition, we are certainly not bound to allow our defects of character to spoil the symmetry or effectiveness of our work. But if we are discussing a friend, do we still do well? Logically, perhaps we do. But surely there is something morally unsound about an action which produces in ninety-nine ordinary men out of a hundred a very disagreeable twinge of conscience.
Previous page
