THE PRIDE OF GOSSIP.
WE hear a good deal, at times, of the pride of intellect ; but the pride of intellect, which is no doubt a real enough state of mental passion, is a minute element in civilised life, compared with that pride of knowledge which does not depend on intellect at all, but which does depend on superior access to the sources of gossip. Men or women more particularly informed than their neighbours of the detail of the last social incident, appear to be conscious of something like a virtuous secret, which ennobles them in their own eyes ; they are in some sense justified even in the sight of their own hearts, by the accident which dis- tinguishes them from their neighbours. We suppose the explana- tion to be that they know how to gain attention ,—interested atten- tion—for at least a few moments, even in the most exacting society ; that for a minute or two, they can make themselves the centre of the situation, even amongst those who are usually centres of situations of which they themselves are the mere spectators. Why this sensation should be so delightful, why, especially, it appears to have a moral virtue in it to those who enjoy it most, is hard to say. But it is easy enough to understand why the pride of gossip should give a much more effectual sense of distinction to those who indulge in it, than the pride of intellect. Knowledge—true knowledge—is power, but in nine times out of ten is unappreciated power, is unrecog- nised power. And it takes a certain force of character,— we do not mean necessarily any nobility of character,—to enjoy power which others do not recognise. But pride of gossip is pride in something which is at once recognised, and eagerly
recognised, by the circle for whom it is effective ; and those who indulge in it, live by choice in that very circle in which it is thus effective. Superior gossip, nay, even that which is held, for the time, to be superior gossip, is, like the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, conspicuous at once, and conspicuous to the very per- sons in whose eyes it is most pleasant to be conspicuous. Hence, we suppose, the much greater commonness of the quality which we may call pride of gossip, to the quality usually called pride of intellect. The latter requires a spice of real self-confidence, of pride of character, in the common sense of the term,—of power, that is, to despise the ignorance of unappreciating numbers,—in order to make it enjoyable. The former needs nothing of the sort, those who feel it being well aware that the advantage they possess, if it be what they suppose it, will secure them a momentary triumph, wherever it is first displayed. However, it is none the less a sort of pride which is at least as often mortified as any other, perhaps oftener, because it depends on knowledge of matters so extremely difficult to know well, and so absolutely certain to be often misknown. If "jesting Pilate" had re- ferred to truth of detail, not to truth of principle, he might in- deed have reasonably been in jest when he asked what it was, and did not wait to hear the answer. The real difficulty of knowing the truth as to matters of gossip is greater a hundred times than the difficulty even of knowing the truths of science or the truths of moral experience. There are a hundred unappreci- ated and unappreciatable motives for distorting in some degree the facts of social life, that is, for representing them in different lights, all more or less compounded of truth and falsehood. Even the simplest matters of fact are sometimes mysteriously disguised, and when they are so dis- guised, the consuming passion which we have called "the pride of gossip" is quite sure to multiply error in the most astonishing way.
Take, for instance, the case of social or theatrical gossip. If a man or a journal is proud of anything in the world, it is appar- ently of knowing more than his or its contemporaries about the inner world of social life or of theatrical life. Only last Satur- day, the Saturday Review,—which, in spite of its high literary standing, has always been excessively greedy of the pleasure of setting a contemporary right on any matter a minute knowledge of which, in the Saturday Review's opinion, im- plies a more complete knowledge of the world, and a more accomplished savoir-faire in going about to get that know- ledge of the world, than its neighbours,—read us a lecture on the blunder which it insisted that we had made in relation to the acting of Tartlffe by the company of the Comedie Francaise :—
"Still, if ignorance is permissible, it is clear that the exercise of the imagination must be strictly forbidden. The most earnest de- fenders of the right of free criticism will hardly maintain that a critic may create an imaginary performance in order to subject it to elaborate analysis. Such a proceeding, if not reprehensible, is at all events a marked departure from the functions of a judge, and an inroad into those of the writer of fiction ; yet, strange to say, this singular flight of fancy has been indulged in by a contributor to that austere paper, the Spectator, which seldom condescends to notice such trivialities as stage plays. A sage, having been told to speak of the representation of Tart,,fe at the Gaiety, proceeded, it would seem, to evolve the idea of a performance of Tartufe from the depths of his moral consciousness, and was rewarded for the effort by a bril- liant but unhappily misleading vision. In this Mme. Samary appears
to have been specially prominent. Of the Dorine of Mlle. Jeanne Samary,' said this gifted enthusiast, in last week's Spectator [June 14th], it. would be difficult to speak too highly. The brilliant young actress took the audience by surprise' (here perhaps the bril- liant critic took his readers by surprise), 'and captivated them at
once. Bressant's pupil does her famous master credit Up to the present stage of the performances of the Comeclie Francaise in London, there has been nothing so good as Mlle. Jeanne Samary's Dorine.' Then follows an account in an interminable sentence of the merits of this wondrous performance. The praise is ludicrously over- charged, but might not the less have given some pleasure to Mme. Samary, if she had appeared in the part of Dorine; but, as a matter of fact, the character was performed by Mme. Dinah Felix, who acted before Mme. Samary was born. It is true that in the general programme the part of Dorine was assigned to Mme. Samary, but these announcements are sometimes as misleading as ecstatic visions. Let it be hoped that the seer will in future supple- ment second-sight and the programme by a visit to the theatre."
Tartuffe himself, surely, hardly ever assumed the position of superior virtue with more magnificence, than the critic in the Saturday Review assumed- on this occasion the position of superior knowledge. Knowing as we do the extreme liability of human nature to error in matters of detail, we fairly sup- posed it possible that our critic, though one who has known as much of the Thecitre Feancais for the greater part of twenty years back, as any critic in London, might have been
misled by the programme, and in criticising an actress whose achievements were more familiar than her person, might have fitted a just and true criticism to a wrong name. We knew, of course, that in imputing to our critic that the article was made up without seeing the play, the Saturday Review was in- dulging in one of those pieces of imaginative writing which in us it professed to condemn, and was infusing into that imaginative writing a spice of not very worthy malice; but we admit that we felt some misgiving whether, after stripping off all the ornamental portion of the paragraph,—i.e., all the airs in which the pride of gossip loves so much to indulge,—there might not be some basis of fact, in its flourish of trumpets. We naturally invited our critic's attention to the statement, and asked that the matter of fact might be cleared up. And this was the reply received from the manager of the French plays at the Gaiety :— "Gaiety Theatre, Strand, June 23rd. "In reply to your letter of the 21st inst., I beg to inform you that Mlle. Samary played Dorine, June 'AIL—Yours truly, (Signed)) M. L. MAYER."
Of course the manager of the French plays at the Gaiety may have been himself deceived. Who shall dare to follow all the ins and outs of theatrical possibility, in such a case as this P But for our parts, we are content if our critic were only deceived by a combination of circumstances sufficient to deceive the manager of these plays ; and without pretending to omniscience, we sub- mit that for a working hypothesis as to the identity of an actress, it is not competent, for such creatures as we are, to get nearer it, than the manager who has himself engaged her.
But, of course, the triumphant pride of gossip did not stop here. What a weekly paper had pretended to discover at first-hand, a daily paper was sure to make capital of at second-hand, and in the Evening Standard of Monday there was a feeblish dilution of the glorification of the Saturday _Review in the imaginary error of its contemporary,—in an article wherein the said error was described as the funniest of the "funny " criticisms to which the Spectator is habitually given up. We hope it was not so, or there would be extremely little fun in these columns. However, one of the worst perils to which pride of gossip is liable, is the peril of retailing at second-hand one of the innumerable errors which gossip spreads. It is a little ignominious to take pride in dis- seminating through the world a " correction " that tarns out to be a corruption of fact. But it is even more so to thirst so much for superiority in matters of gossip, that one disseminates, with almost the zeal of a missionary, the triumphant blunders of detail originated by some one else.
There is no more curious instance of the working of the competitive principle than its effect in producing not only members of society, but writers, and not only writers, but journalists, who consider it one of their greatest successes to substitute a correct for an incorrect account of some little matter of social detail, and one of their greatest misfortunes to be subject to such correction from others. And though, no doubt, the competition sometimes results in the "sur- vival of the fittest," though gossips often detected in flagrant blunders, lose their credit, and gossips who manage to anchor themselves more or less successfully to fact, become social heroes of a kind,—yet the whole world is one of such a profoundly uncertain character, that no one who professes to know mach, ever succeeds in getting the reputation of know- ing even a little. The pride of gossip is a strong passion, but for the most part, those who have least to suffer in the way of its mortification, have also least to enjoy in the way of suc- cessful boasting. The gossip who has a good repute for accuracy is always snore or less of a cynic in the freedom of his confes- sion of knowing nothing himself, and in his tendency even to maintain that, in the general way, there is very little that can be known with certainty by any one. Nothing is so difficult as to assure yourself of the truth about personal matters in a complex society. There are so many reasons for concealment, so many for mystification, so many for suggesting, without stating, what is false, that the only persons who can avoid even conspicuous blunders, are those who have a deep belief that evidence is worth very little, and truth on most questions of detail quite unattainable. So the result is that those who have least to mortify their pride of gossip, obtain also the fewest substantial successes with which to gratify it, and are obliged to subsist in a great measure on a repute for successful allusion or significant innuendo. Those who go in for implicitly believing all that they hear "on the best authority as to what really happened," are quite sure soon to come to grief,—just as, so far as we can judge, the very confident gossip in the Saturday Review has come to grief on the present occasion. We trust it may be a warning to him to employ his talents for the future on safer and nobler efforts.
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