Urbanity and Sophistication

THE difference in character between the present time and certain periods in the past is strikingly exemplified by the use nowadays of ‘sophistication’ instead of ‘urbanity’ in expressing the earmark of a citizen of the world. ‘Sophistication’ and ‘urbanity’ are certainly not interchangeable words, and ‘ urbanity ’ has not yet fallen into desuetude; nevertheless, the one word has supplanted the other. I fear the explanation is not simply that styles in words shift as they do in clothes, but that people of the world are merely sophisticated and no longer urbane.

I say I fear it, because, although to become sophisticated is the desire of many adolescents, to prevent them from becoming sophisticated is the anxiety of those parents who are sensible. Now, surely no parent ever grieved to think his son might become urbane. Urbanity was the most delightful attribute of a gentleman, the least often met with, and the clearest indication of gentility. To see it manifesting itself in an offspring was a delight and a joy, for one felt that it was the dividend from a university training, the Grand Tour, and polite society. Sophistication, one is almost induced to feel, is the pitiful return from a zealous patronage of the movies and the poorer magazines. In truth, the difference between sophistication and urbanity is a difference like that between false hair and healthy cheeks, the one being of doubtful advantage and the other of unquestioned value. Sophistication runs the risk that ‘all things false fade quickly,’ as Cicero said; while urbanity, which has its roots in the soul, is a permanent characteristic, continually bringing forth fruits.

If I were to describe sophistication, I should not liken it to anything deeper than a coat of paint; I believe it is a pose. The outstanding thing about a sophisticated person is his chatter, the revelation of his mentality. He can talk about things that a plainer person is ignorant of, and he can make these trivialities — for trivialities they generally are — seem truly consequential. They appear, in fact, to be consequential not to him (which sounds most astonishing) but to the person who is so abysmally out of touch with the world as to know nothing of them. The sophisticate himself has presumably seen too much, lived too hard, and experienced too many excitements to care longer for them in any but a condescending way. He is burned out, so that one could substitute him for King George IV in that famous description which denied the king any flesh and blood, reducing him to a bundle of clothes, paint., and wig. After all, there is not much to sophistication but a kind of stock knowledge concerning horses, theatres, song hits, dances, hotels, clothes, and other tinsel things. There is, of course, and one must not leave it out, an understanding of the amount of bad manners that can get by in society without causing ostracism. This paltry knowledge is borne as if it were all knowledge, with the implication that any other learning is stodgy and ridiculous. The sophisticate, even though he is weary of life, does get occasional snobbish pleasure from scorning those who do not have this particular information.

One can seldom credit the sophisticated person with being original, for he feels that if he does n’t do what all the ‘smart set’ are doing he will be a little crude. In the matter of following the crowd, however, he is not likely to take Mr. Pickwick’s advice and ‘shout with the largest’ mob, since he credits his narrow group of fellow sophisticates with a point of view that is superior to any that common souls might arrive at. His attitude of superiority is unbearable; it shows in a hint, a smile, a shrug, a stare. There seems to be scarcely any tolerance in his superficial soul; all who are not sophisticated are consigned by him to insignificance and inferiority.

I think the best proof of the worthlessness of sophistication is the fact that anyone who chooses to learn the ropes may become sophisticated, for the only persons who do not have it in them to cover their characters with sophistication’s veneer are the ones who would never wish to anyway.

Urbanity is different. It is not just a surface icing. One cannot, for instance, bring it before one’s eyes as one can bring sophistication by picturing a cocktail shaker, a pair of pearl-gray gloves, and a theatre lobby. One does not think of anything material in considering urbanity, since urbanity is abstract and grows up in one as an enduring love might grow. An urbane person may have the same knowledge of places and things that a sophisticate has, but this knowledge is incidental to his sense of proportion, which is the sine qua non of urbanity. He could not so confuse the importance of things as to ridicule a group of people because their accent was not exactly like his, or quarrel with his landlady over the length of time he might leave his electric lights burning, or scorn a Virginia farmer because he had never heard Paderewski play — things which I think a sophisticated person might do without feeling that he had stepped out of character. I’ll wager that if one placed in a small Wisconsin village of limited horizon a sophisticate from Broadway and an urbane gentleman from wherever he could be found the sophisticate would grow irritated, scornful, and unhappy, but the urbane man would adapt himself to his environment and make himself admired by his less polished neighbors. Toleration for individual idiosyncrasies and local customs has always been characteristic of urbanity, which is essentially courteous and suave. Sophistication, however, has not enough body to it to survive any but its own rarefied atmosphere. One would expect an urbane man who had retired to the country to remain urbane, but one knows that two or three years of seclusion would take the sophistication from anyone. Sophistication, therefore, out of self-defense, is forced to be narrow. Urbanity, because it is no artificial attitude, but is completely interwoven with the character, is liberal. One might measure the relative depths of these two by reflecting that it is possible, and not infrequent, for a child to be sophisticated, but that mature persons alone can be urbane.

Urbanity affects a man’s whole outlook on life. It is a sort of philosophy of toleration and courtesy which makes a person possessing it at ease in any society. In essence, it is a delightful blend of intelligence, dignity, experience, education, and sufferance. I feel strongly that the prevalence of sophistication over it is a serious criticism of our times, and that if we were to produce a few urbane gentlemen like Sir Thomas More we should be far better off than we are with our myriads of foppish pretenders, who are no more citizens of the world than are the wax figures in Madame Tussaud’s galleries.

RICHARD BROWN BAKER
Moses Brown School, Providence, R. I.
William Paxton, Instructor