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eign reader bear with me to the end. Let me first remove one obstacle to belief. Old people very often tell us that manners were better when they were young, and we, observing what charming manners the old people themselves have, are apt to think they must be right. It is an illusion. Old people have good manners because they are old, not because their manners were better than ours when they were young. They are no longer obsessed as are young people with their own passions and ambitions, and they have learned tolerance and to be merely amused by extravagant opinions, or if they have not, their prejudices sit prettily on them. In every generation it is a common saying that manners have grown worse, and it is absurd to ask lus to believe that they have progressively deteriorated since the days when people called one another bad names, and fought on the spot over a difference of opinion. Old people, too, are often referring to a different standard or principle, as when they complain of a lack of reverence in children towards their elders, not observing that the spirit of comradeship may be just as good a thing as the spirit of discipline. As an ageing person myself, I think it far more agreeable, and trust that my age at least will never be reverenced. But let us now get into the thick of the main subject.

Manners are of the head and the heart. Perfect manners can be only of both, because occasions there must be in social life when the heart is not a sufficient guide. A clever person with little or no heart may be better mannered as a rule if he takes pains than a good-natured person with little or no head; but when he falls, as he is pretty sure to fall some time, his selfishness or irritation betraying him, he falls with a thud. Indeed, it is curious to observe how often very clever

people, with every reason to conciliate those about them, offend from sheer bad nature, indifference to others' feelings, or brutal aggressiveness, whereas, when your clumsy, well-meaning fellow goes wrong, nobody who is not both fool and prig really minds, and one loves him the more after his apology, which usually makes the blunder worse. Now, I am sorry to say I cannot pretend for a moment that we English have been gaining in intelligence. The evidence is too sadly strong the other way. We are not what we were in matters for which we once had a special aptitude, and do please, look, though only for the briefest moment, at the mental quality of our popular papers and novels. Consequently it is improbable, to say the least, that examples of exquisite fine breeding should be more frequent than they were. That must be, say what you will, an affair partly of intelligence, of quick perception, imagination, the gift of the right word, with something of humor added, if our enjoyment is to be complete. I may say that the examples I know are nearly all of men, and somebody says that intellect is a male specialty: I would rather say that intellect in a woman is apt to be a little too conscious and proud of itself. read in the ingenious Mr. Chesterton that all men have bad manners except those under the immediate influence of women, who are the exemplars and guardians of manners, and I think he is altogether wrong. They may take it as an amende (or they may not-I am not at all sure) that the most perfect manners known to me are possessed by a woman, but she also has very rare gifts of perception and humor. Such fineness of breeding, however, in woman or man, must be rare, just as fine painting or poetry is rare, and moreover it needs some hard trial of circumstance before it can be surely

I have

known; it is rare now, and I think it always was rare. It is not the theme of this article, which deals with a more average matter-the pleasant manners which are all the better for some intelligence, but are mainly based on friendliness and kindness. And it is quite certain that we English are a kinder people than we were. That is proved by many things. The worst blot on our history is the treatment of factory-workers, especially of women and children, in the beginning of our industrial prosperity; the treatment may be hard still, but it is no longer inhuman. Our care for the sick and old, and our attitude to prisoners and offenders against the law prove the change. Our tenderness and solicitude for children run into an unwholesome worship of them here and there, but think of the unfortunate "Fairchild family"! Every middle-aged person must have noticed the disappearance of brutality in our dealings with the other animals. Without any doubt at all we are kinder all round. There are observers who say that we are softer all round, and that this kindness is but the agreeable side of it, the other being loss of courage and endurance and manhood. "When Britain set the world ablaze, in good King George's glorious days," we were harsher and hardier.

Well, we may be softer, and if so, it is a pity, but that has nothing to do with kindness, for in civilized peoples the bravest men are nearly always the gentlest. In any case we are kinder, and it is inevitable that the fact should appear in our ordinary social intercourse. And surely and obviously it does so. Do but remember not only the rows and scrimmages of olden days, but the rude encounters of the "wits" in more recent times, the incessant effort to "score" at any cost to somebody else's feelings. The idea of social intercourse seems to have

been a hostile encounter or competition; it is now, or is becoming, as it should be, an occasion merely of mutual pleasure. If the "art of conversation," which is alleged to be dead, involved necessarily all the competitive rudeness and snubbing of which one reads, the monologues and breezes, I should rejoice at its decease, but, of course, it did not necessarily involve them. One who was considered, and rightly, as of the very best talkers of our time, was remarkable, even more than for his own wit, for the skilful sympathy with which he appealed to and drew out the previously silent: he is dead, alas! but he would be only middle-aged were he still with us. That is the true model, and I think it is followed unconsciously more often than it was. And even when there is no occasion for it, when there is no predominant wit but everyone is talking, well or not, happily together, I would rather by far be of that company than of one when the most brilliant talker you like was exercising his wit at the expense of a butt who did not enjoy it. Would not you also? The mere monologist, however clever, is universally voted a bore among us: the wit who wanted to crush people, like Samuel Rogers, we simply would not tolerate. All this is because we are kinder, and whether it means that we are less brilliant or not, it certainly means that we are better-mannered.

This point is as good as another at which to dispose of the objection that our conversation is rough because it is so full of chaff and slang. It really is not an absolute rule that formality and punctilio imply good manners. There are occasions, no doubt, when these are necessary, and when chaff would be offensive, but they are rare, happily, and the occasions are more numerous when formality would be even more offensive, because it would be unfriendly. You must pass this

truism, because it may serve to correct a vague but prevalent idea, that various societies we read of which had more forms and ceremonies than ours therefore had better manners. The contemporary English might be the better, perhaps, for a little more ceremony in public: a little more hat-raising, for instance, when men enter a shop served by women, or enter a restaurant, would do them no harm. But the ceremonies of our ancestors often went with a good deal of rudeness. In the old plays, where everyone was everyone else's humble servant, what rude things they said! And gentlemen who were always sweeping their hats with a profound bow not infrequently dashed them in one another's faces. Formality, like familiarity, may be well or ill timed. But assuredly chaff is, at its best, the salt of conversation. It is a mistake to suppose that it is a modern invention, because it is a natural human instinct among friends, and one finds it scattered everywhere in history. You find it in Plato's dialogues, in the letters to George Selwyn, in the jokes of the Regency-where it was very poor and coarse. It is the accusers of our manners, however, who allege that it distinguishes our time especially, and we will accept their allegation. The more chaff of the right sort the better, say I. It bridges gaps in acquaintance, it produces an atmosphere of intimacy more quickly than anything else, and even when it is barren it fills with a fair appearance the place of the wit which is lacking. Like everything else, it may be used excessively, and it is a bore when some of us would argue seriously; but that is a defect of intelligence, not of manners. So with slang. Slang is a bore when people will use the same word or phrase of it to express anything, but there again it is intelligence, not manners, that is at fault. Slang

in itself, which most often is simply a new or revived metaphor, seems to me rather preferable as an ornament of speech to the oaths of our ancestors, though I am no pronounced enemy of oaths, either. Here, again, I am set off at a tangent, like Sterne, and would there were more resemblances!-in regard to oaths. Swearing is said to be an occasionally offensive feature of modern manners, being used, that is, when it should not be used. If that be true I fancy the explanation to be this. Among themselves our males-I hope I do not offend my associates do not object to strong language when they know one another fairly well. They avoid it instinctively in the society of ladies. But some ladies, in these days, like their ancestresses, do not object to it either, and even use it themselves, and then, of course, there are no bad manners in the men who swear within limits, because nobody is annoyed. The male mind, however, may grow confused by this license and lose its instinctive restraint in the matter, and so an occasional stray word may be dropped unawares and unfortunately. The same explanation may apply to a story or joke offensive to the propriety of the last generation, and told to an unhappily chosen audience in this. One hears such a complaint now and then. But I do not think such things often happen, and they are but a small affair. Less formality on the one side, more chaff and slang on the other, what does it all mean but that as our social civilization improves strict rules are found less needful, and natural fun and emphasis can have freer play? Chaff and slang make for ease and friendliness, and these, after all, are the basis of good manners.

In this connection there may as well be a separate paragraph about the manners of the young and adolescent. I have just read again an essay of Mr.

Max Beerbohm, in which he attacks quite bitterly the manners of contemporary young women. Well, I am some years older than he, and have arrived at a time of middle life at which one is not apt to be a harsh critic of young women. I am sure, however, that he is far happier in the company of contemporary girls than he would have been with those of 1820, whose manners he eulogizes so wistfully. In one respect I agree with him. It is a pity that the teaching of a graceful deportment should have gone out of fashion-I mean in the matter of moving and sitting, and so forth. I have in mind a lady who was taught those arts by Taglioni, and whose movements certainly shame the girls of the period. But when it comes to conversation the girls of this period, being more individual and articulate, are a world more interesting than those of a hundred years ago, who would have bored Mr. Beerbohm to death, and I question if their manners are not better also. They are sometimes too brusque and downright: that is a fault of self-conceit, and theirs is more respectable than their ancestresses, because it comes from a good opinion of their own wits and perceptions, and not from infallible maxims and views laid down for them. Downrightness, too, shows interest. I would far rather that a girl who disagreed with me were to say, as nowadays she might say, "Oh, that's frightful rot!" and proceed to argue vehemently, than that she should give me a frigid "Indeed! I fear I cannot agree with you," and change the subject. The former, in my opinion, would be the better mannered of the two. As for the very young men, Mr. Beerbohm rightly condemns their slouching and inattention to appearances, which compulsory military service, as I hope, will cure in them. I do not find anything to complain of in their attitude to my

self; rather the contrary, indeed, since it seems to me less aloof and retiring than ours was twenty years ago, to men of my age. Mr. Beerbohm arraigns their casual carriage towards girls of their own age, but I will explain how that happens, and why he should be easy about it, a little later; there is a more creditable reason than the numerical preponderance of women in England to which he is driven. We must now go back to the causes.

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The increasing kindness and humanity of the English, then, I take to be the chief cause, perhaps, of their greater ease and amiability in society. That is a good cause, and operates altogether in a good manner. There is another cause which may be good or bad, but which operates sometimes through the less fine qualities of poor humanity. I refer to the ever greater fluidity of our classes, which is a commonplace of social observation. are mixed up socially every day with greater and greater freedom. It is true that certain gloomy observers see emerging from our economic circumstances a plutocracy which will form a real caste. I hope that will not happen, and as I am not dealing with the future, I may disregard the possibility. What the manners of such an avowed plutocracy would be like I do not know, and with all my optimism would rather not guess. M. Anatole France's prophecies in his Iles des Pingouins were not encouraging. For the present, if we are governed by a plutocracy it is good enough to mask its authority in social intercourse, and does not prevent the fluidity of classes I spoke of. Now, in a rigid caste system the manners of each caste may be good within itself, and are less likely to be good as between caste and caste. The family party-I had written "happy family," but what with its duels and divorces it was hardly that—

the family party which formed the English aristocracy in Horace Walpole's or Charles Fox's time was certainly easy, and was very tolerably amiable, I should think, in its internal manners; the country gentry were rather rough; the middle classes were stiff and dull, as until lately they remained; the lower orders were distressingly brutal. The manners of superior caste to inferior caste I am sure were of an extreme arrogance and patronage on the whole. Well, these distinctions have been continuously losing their significance, though convenience still enforces the invidious use of them in writing. The aristocracy has still much power, but it is also partly an element of the plutocracy and partly an illusion; nobody could perform the tiresome task of defining the middle classes; the lower orders, bad as their economic condition is often, have often, also, scant cause to envy those who aforetime were their immediate superiors, and so far as social life goes, do gain something from the lip homage paid to equality. And the whole thing is being mixed up, though social distinctions remain more rigid in the lower than in the higher strata. Now, when these classes first began to mingle there must have been a great deal of patronizing manner and conceit, and giving of airs on one side, and a great deal of unsocial watchfulness and degrading servility on the other. Snobbishness in any ordinary sense is impossible in a rigid caste system: it gets its head when the barriers are broken down. As time has gone on, however, I see, comparing one thing with another, a great improvement. Partly kindness and humanity, as I said, but partly a reason less noble-decreasing power and stability on one side, increasing possibility of power on the other. Let me illustrate. When, fifty years ago or so, an average duke

made the acquaintance of an unknown Mr. Smith, I am sure his manner, however affable, was patronizing to an extent which would be extremely unpopular now, while Mr. Smith was generally diffident and obsequious in a degree which made pleasant intercourse impossible. But the average duke to-day is aware, I feel pretty sure, that dukes are not quite what they were, that he is in a way on his trial, and had best be conciliatory on the whole; while this unknown Mr. Smith may turn out to be a remarkably important fellow. The wide and constantly changing mixture involves much ignorance about chance acquaintances. Smith, on his side, is not awed as his predecessor was, to begin with, and then if, unlike you and me, he has not humanity enough to take his duke simply, without worrying about the dukedom, he is prob ably anxious above all things-thanks to the anti-snob satirists-to dissimulate his snobbishness, and if he makes a mistake it is probably in the direction of an inverted snobbishness, of a too easy familiarity. So here and in a thousand like cases qualities not the noblest in us work on the whole for a comfortable sociality. Of course I know that the worst manners on the face of the earth belong to those successfully aspiring snobs who are shortsighted enough to slight their old acquaintances, or to snobs who are afraid that too great intimacy, or even association, with people (infinitely their betters, very likely) not in favor with the common world may prejudice their own miserable ambitions. But these, I sincerely hope and believe, are rare exceptions whom a more enlightened community will merely push into a lethal chamber on the first offence. On the whole, when snobbishness is at all illuminated by intelligent self-interest it works for conciliation and bonhomie in the sphere

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