Brag

THE notorious Nell Gwynn, paying a visit one day to a friend, on returning to her coach found her footman bruised and bloody and covered with mud. Upon her asking an explanation, he told her that a certain man had attacked her moral character and he had attempted to punish the traducer, and that the punishment had not been entirely one-sided. Mistress Nell laughingly assured her champion that what the other man had said was only the truth. “I don’t care,” was the reply, “I don’t care what you are; no man shall tell me that I am footman to that land of a woman.” If this remark disclosed an element of self-love, it also strikingly illustrates a modified survival of the spirit of brag which is essential for the smooth running of civilization. The footman’s attitude typifies the one that should characterize all grades of service and subordination. To the faithful servant an attack on the master is an attack on himself.

The more complex society becomes, the greater is the need for cooperation between different parts of its organism. It is a perfectly proper regulation that members of the army and navy, in addition to obeying orders, shall refrain from public derogatory criticism of superiors. Unless this spirit of loyalty were enforced, the spirit of anarchy would speedily spread through the service. In a servant of the calibre of Mistress Nell’s, loyalty is a mere matter of bludgeon and blarney. In higher grades of subordination, while loyalty may be observed by churlish refusal to open one’s mouth, the natural tendency is for it to evolve the attitude of advocacy, the disposition to emphasize another’s good points and ignore or minimize his weaknesses. Advocacy, which suggests Touchstone’s distinction between the lie circumstantial and the lie direct, permeates all the relations of society.

Very few of us, indeed, are exempt from the charge of direct lying. Not to mention the strategic lies told to enemies in time of war, to criminals, to sick persons and lunatics, as to which pages upon pages of casuistry appear in the older works on moral science, there are what may be termed the lies lubricant, wrung from us by etiquette and good breeding. If the amenities of life were not preserved through the gentle art of lying, society could scarcely continue as a happy family; we should all have to live in separate cages. The best of us will tell direct lies on trivialities where politeness is imperative. Wherever practicable, however, the spirit of advocacy prevails. We say whatever we truthfully can, and pause tactfully wliile the hearer’s self-love and imagination fill out a generally agreeable impression. Family relationships, even more markedly than business or social relations, exemplify the universal attitude of advocacy. Mr. Roundabout says: “Go to Brown’s house and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get. In like manner, let him come to your house and tell your good lady his candid opinion of you, and see how she will receive him.” No one save an unspeakable cad would speak slightingly of a husband to his wife; no one save an unspeakable cad would tolerate slighting language in his presence concerning his wife. Such is the conventional law as to spouses, parents, children, blood relations in general, even intimate friends.

From personal loyalty through ties of blood, we may take a wide span to the present-day attitude of international diplomats, with the result of finding quite essential similarity. A few years ago, through an oversight, the ambassador of Spain to this country received an invitation, in common with the other members of the diplomatic corps, to attend a public function which to an extent celebrated American victory in the late war with Spain. He promptly declined, in terms not discourteous, but unmistakably showing resentment. The propriety of his treatment of the invitation was universally recognized by Americans themselves, and general regret was expressed at the breach of diplomatic amenity. In more serious diplomatic duty ordinary advocacy is now practiced. Perhaps the most important diplomatic work performed by an American during the latter half of the nineteenth century was that of Charles Francis Adams, as Minister to the Court of St. James, during the War of the Rebellion. Those were not days of silk-stocking, blood-is-tliicker-than-water diplomacy; his mission dealt with hostile and baffling circumstances. And he worthily discharged it by the exercise of advocacy which, while doggedly firm, never lost dignity through a display of irritation, never exaggerated claims of right, and never was boastful or weakly disingenuous as to actual facts. Mr. Adams excited the warm admiration of Englishmen, and at the expense of his chief, Mr. Seward, whose roseate dispatches so pointedly ignored obvious perils as to give the impression that he was deliberately playing a part.

The modified spirit of brag which has been considered is a concomitant of general democratization. Instead of the slavish subserviency, varying in degrees of abjectness according to grades of artificial rank, which characterized feudalism, the modern attitude prescribes a substantially uniform etiquette for all relations of common interest or career. The deference practiced is not self-annihilating, but, indeed, self-respectful. It has come to betoken lack of self-respect to show disrespect for the abstract relations which others bear to us, and which, permanently or for the time, they embody. Something akin to the democratic principle of government of laws, not of men, is involved. The form of deference is not ostentatious mendacity in respect of what one disapproves, not personal adulation, which is in bad taste even when one approves. The modern unwritten law enjoins upon the associate or colleague, the subordinate, the next of kin, merely silence from open censure, or, at most, the half-truth of advocacy. Such law may well be deliberately accepted, even by temperamental radicals in the days of their youth.

Passing from vicarious brag to autobrag, it will be seen that much also, but probably not as much, has been accomplished toward frowning out what is merely adventitious, and utilizing the trait as a legitimate factor in highly civilized life. The genesis and evolution of the brag spirit appear on the surface of tradition and history. In one of the sections of In Memoriam Tennyson has felicitously sketched the dawn and growth of egoism in “the baby new to earth and sky.” No matter how high the degree of culture and how complex the grade of civilization which form the moral habitat, this consciousness of personal identity is the central fact of life, and self-appreciation and the discharge of duties owed to self constitute the supreme human obligations.

Savages, young children, young nations, and Walt Whitman are true to nature when they frankly celebrate themselves. Their boasting is naïvely direct and shameless. In the savage condition there is little division of labor, and very imperfect coöperation, even for purposes of war. The songs of such persons are necessarily songs of self. At the supreme moment of existence, dying amidst flames and torture, they brag defiantly of their deeds of prowess. The boastful disposition is kept alive through early social evolution by the constant struggle for supremacy. This universal militant attitude has evolved the universal passion of hatred toward rivals, or congenital jealousy, as well as the spirit of glorification over the author of success, that is, over self. In a state of civilization the congenital boastful disposition is curbed, as a child grows older, by a realization of how dependent each member of the community is upon others, and how impossible present achievements would have been without the opportunities prepared by the past. Yet, in the existing maturity of our civilization, if one would seek a manifestation of essentially the same form of brag as that practiced by Shack-Nasty Jim, he could find it on billboards and barn-sides, where the American merchant uses his own portrait as the trade-mark for a brand of chewing-gum. As to this phase of refinement, individual development seems to have been arrested, while the collective and national sense has made progress. One has but to contrast the puerile and blatant national pride, which came to be known as “spread-eagleism,” — not as enemies, such as Mrs. Trollope and Dickens, exaggerated it, but as friends, such as Harriet Martineau and Richard Cobden, reluctantly were compelled to rebuke it, — with the comparative reticence as to American achievements and the cosmopolitan appreciation of to-day, in order to realize how much, as a people, we have outgrown. But in personal brag, in self-advertising, self-assertiveness, — the passion for being public without any reason for publicity, — there crops out, little modified or transformed, the primitive savage vulgarity.

It is not an uncommon experience for a young professional man to be waited upon in his office, and, after an introductory remark or two, have exhibited to him a roll of manuscript, at the head of which he perceives his own name underscored for Runic “ caps.” After recovering from his astonishment, he glances through a panegyric perfunctory enough to be the work of an amateur phrenologist. If he be wise and very firm, the author of the production, after withdrawing, will change the title and alter a word here and there, and try it on some other possible aspirant for fame. If, however, the subject be induced first to endure, then pity, then embrace, he will receive, in course of time, a large roll of copies of a sheet of which he may never have heard before his interview with the biography drummer, for which he draws his check in a substantial sum. The question then arises how to dispose of these leaves of immortality. Probably a majority of those who have been tempted and have fallen have sufficient subconscious decency to confine the distribution to their most indulgent friends. Indeed, the degree of progress from the savage state is indicated by whether one does, or does not, refuse to be written up, and, if he consent, by the larger or smaller number of copies that go into the wastebasket instead of the mail. Few people realize how profitable the trade of tickling human vanity is, and how many different forms it employs. There are obscure newspapers and nominal magazines that live by it, and provide good incomes for their editors. It is quite common to find upon centre tables luxuriously bound and printed volumes whose contents consist entirely of fulsome puffs. Each profession, trade, avocation, and association has its library of memorabilia of persons of the kind who, in Lowell’s phrase, were created to fill up the world. The writer remembers seeing in the “ best room ” of a remote farmhouse a morocco-bound, gilt-edged volume upon the notabilities of the country, which contained a biography and engraved portrait of rusticus horribilis himself. The original volunteered the information that his niche in the local pantheon had cost him a sum which, on later conversation, was disclosed to be larger than a year’s interest on the mortgage encumbering the farm.

It is very difficult for the example of the modestly refined few to make much impression upon the aspiration for publicity while the principal didactic agency of the day, the press, constantly stimulates it as the very life of trade. The metropolitan press patronizingly sneers at the columns of trivial personalities in the newspapers published in villages and small towns. Undoubtedly this feature of country journalism, which to a large extent has supplanted the Sunday gossip on the church porch of former times, is ridiculous and contemptible to the last degree. But our great city dailies are as Satan reproving sin. Do they not draw the town with the finest of seines for inane gossip about anybody of the slightest prominence, or trivial events with sensational possibilities ? How many columns eveiy day, how many entire pages on the Lord’s day, are devoted to the downsittings and uprisings, the dinings, gownings, marryings, and unmarryings of that class of our fellow citizens who pass their lives killing time! The writer was disgusted a few months ago to notice, prominent on the first page of one of the most reputable of great metropolitan dailies, along with news of the Panama Controversy, of elections indicating the trend of sentiment in England, of proceedings in Congress, an item, with conspicuous headlines, that a young so-called “society woman” had slipped in going downstairs, and sprained her ankle. This paragraph, so treated, betokened a contempt for journalistic values and proportions, an utter disregard of the ideal of journalism as a responsible public function. No doubt there is great demand for that sort of thing, and there goes with the interest in tittle-tattle about others the craving to be tittle-tattled about one’s self. The disease breeds the appetite, and the appetite aggravates the disease.

It is difficult to refine away the exuberance of auto-brag, also because, as with vicarious brag, a certain deliberate fostering of the spirit is proper and necessary. The poor man cannot afford to look seedy; the parvenu tends to become a virulent snob, cutting old friends and even his family lest association with them compromise the appearance of his present state. The world is in a large measure compelled to take a man at his own estimate of himself. Avoiding the appearance of evil, even a certain parade of the appearance of good, is a necessity, especially to those living in large cities. In the great city a man who beats his wife may rank as an ornament of society, while a person of kind heart and philanthropic instincts may pass as a churlish boor because, absent-mindedly, he neglects to nod to acquaintances.

Except as to the most public men, the general estimate and their standing are founded upon very incomplete knowledge, and it is crucially important to be favorably known so far as one is known at all. This truth is so absolutely realized in the business world that an attack upon credit is the unpardonable sin, and the law courts award heavy damages against the traducer. Indeed, respectability is such a potent factor of capital that there are shrewd, cold-blooded persons who systematically contrive to make minor drafts upon it without impairing it seriously. They continually cultivate good appearances, and, when occasion offers, gain small advantages through methods they would not dare employ were it not for a generally good repute. The policy which the French have crystallized in their proverb, noblesse oblige, offers one of the loftiest incentives for human conduct; its converse, that high standing may excuse conscious lapses from virtue, is among the meanest subterfuges of the evil-minded.

Conceding the utility, nay, the necessity, of taking thought that the truth about one be known; admitting the legitimacy, within limitations, of advertising one’s goodness as well as one’s goods; recognizing the difficulty of drawing the line in close cases between propriety and impropriety; it is nevertheless true that in average human nature there is a tendency toward what indisputably is wanton selfdisplay and blatant self-assertion. Men of entirely ordinary calibre place showwindows in their homes as well as their shops, and, sitting in the full glare of the electric light,fancy that their adventitious publicity is fame.

It must not be forgotten, however, that at worst we are dealing with a question not of ethics, but of æsthetics, with a natural impulse, which is not essentially evil, but merely has not been brought under such artificial control as ought to have been achieved, considering social refinement in other directions. An age that is inspired and moulded by newspapers displays the characteristic trait of “ yellow journalism ” in the everyday life of individuals. Brag is egotism spoken or acted out to impress others, and it may be said of egotism, perhaps more than of any other vice, that its viciousness consists in being found out.. One who cannot keep his good opinion of himself to himself may be vulgar, but the men of deficient egotism — the Hamlets and Dimitri Roudines of real life — are condemned to something worse than vulgarity. It is only a half explanation to say that such men’s careers are fruitless because they are mere dreamers. When they dream, they dream of action; and the step from imagination to achievement is stayed by misgiving as to their ability to take it. With the greatest human spirits — Napoleon, Gladstone, Richard Wagner — the world has grown accustomed to taking profound egotism as a proper concomitant of genius. On lower planes of genius, and even in ranks of talent and mere cleverness, it is common experience that success is won by the selfconfident egotist. Vanity that cannot be concealed, of course, renders one personally disagreeable, and there is the further, more serious, drawback that extravagant self-appreciation tends to blunt the faculty of self-criticism, which must be the arbiter of the criticism of others and the ultimate source of self-improvement. Nevertheless, the ordinary type of the successful person is one who manages to profit by lessons of adversity so far as to avoid former mistakes, without serious inroads on self-idealization. Incidental failures lead to modifications of effort or deviations of path without undermining faith in his puissant star. The indefatigable egotist will assert and thrust himself until he half blunders, half breaks, into the sphere for which the resultant of such faculties as he has best adapts him. He would be short-sighted indeed who counseled a general policy of rigid selfanalysis and the extirpation of egotism. What is needed is the frowning down of parade of the raw instinct of ambition, — of the propensity to public self-assertion, though it stands for nothing of worthy accomplishment, and ends with mere publicity.

Outside of utilitarian ends, and in the interest of one’s purely subjective life, self-optimism is a great desideratum. After an hour of self-forgetfulness in congenial society, after an evening of surrender to the illusion of a Wagner musicdrama, with what a depressing feeling of ennui am I “narrowed to myself once more!” How vainly do we beat against the bars of consciousness in order to escape from the dreary monotony of selfcommunion! The fiction of selves and other selves is made much of in the activities of life. Bacon’s words are very familiar: “Be not too sensible or too remembering of thy place in conversation and private answers to suitors; but let it rather be said, ‘when he sits in place, he is another man.’ ” An amusing but convincing illustration of the separation of the professional and personal selves is furnished by the anecdote of a model, who, nude and unconscious as Eve, was posing before a class of male art students. The studio was on the top floor of a large building, and suddenly a workman, who had been engaged in repairs on the roof, walking along the gutter, peered through the window. The model, with a shriek of affrighted modesty, fled to the dressingroom.

Thackeray somewhere speaks of the wretched company certain persons are obliged to keep when alone. In view of the impossibility of escape from self, and of the inevitable introspection during many hours of our lives, it is essential to our happiness that our auto-attitude be somewhat indulgent and extenuating, — indeed, that we extend to ourselves something of the same charity of judgment which is recognized as a duty toward others. No doubt there are some who require just the contrary admonition. As there is a class of persons whose practical career is abortive because excessive egotism renders them incapable of self-criticism, so also there are those with whom subjective contemplation is ever unctuously complacent. But it is believed, both from observation and because of antecedent probability, that self - pessimism much more abounds. To the ancient hermit monk and the modern Puritan the doctrine of the Fall of Man and the essential vileness of human nature were not mere figments of speculative theology, but stood for something hideously real. For generation after generation the Christian world was deliberately bred to the duty of self-pessimism. As to the bearing of the pessimistic introspective attitude on persona! felicity, there may be cited a habit of Dr. Samuel Johnson, which, as explained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, exemplifies a common phase of human experience. Boswell quotes from a paper by Sir Joshua Reynolds: Those motions or tricks of Dr. Johnson are improperly called convulsions. He could sit motionless when he was told to do so, as well as any other man; my opinion is that it proceeded from a habit he had indulged of accompanying his thoughts with certain untoward actions, and those actions always appeared to me as if they were meant to reprobate some part of his past conduct. Whenever he was not engaged in conversation such thoughts were sure to rush into his mind; and, for this reason, any company, any employment whatsoever, he preferred to being alone.” Many passages in Boswell show that Dr. Johnson had the grotesque conviction of personal vileness which Puritanism inflicted on the English middle class, and whose morbid influence lingers in the consciousness of average Englishmen and Americans to-day.

For proper self-complacency in ordinary individuals, for self-endurance by persons of imaginative temperament, it is necessary directly to reverse the Puritanic trend of imagination. The day-dreams of a child are normal and healthy. He fancies himself the central figure in impossible deeds of heroic achievement. The same faculty, in a sobered form, constitutes an important factor in mature intellectual life. All of us have friends and acquaintances to whom what we know to be a self-illusion is one of their most valuable possessions, both as rendering life bearable or measurably happy, and as imparting an energy in action, which would be utterly sapped if they were forced to realize the brutal truth. This common observation may well give us pause before the spiritual suicide of a relentless self-disillusionment. One who cherishes a debased conception rather than an idealized vision of self, elects to pass his life chained wrist and ankle with the Devil.