COMPLIMENTS
“O flatter me, for love delights in praises,”
exclaims one of Shakspere’s characters; and again—
“Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces;
Tho’ ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces.”
There is one advantage in writing about the romantic passion. Love is such a tissue of paradoxes, and exists in such an endless variety of forms and shades that you may say almost anything about it you please, and it is likely to be correct. So again here. It is true, no doubt, that skill in the art of flattery helps a man to win a woman’s goodwill, but how does this rhyme with the doctrine that Feigned Indifference is the lover’s sharpest weapon?
Answer: A compliment is not so much an expression of Love as of simple æsthetic admiration; or else it may spring from the flatterer’s desire to show off his wit. A man may compliment a woman for whom he does not feel the slightest Love; and women know it. Therefore even a coquette does not despise and ignore a man who flatters her, as she invariably does one whose actions brand him as her captive and slave.
At the same time, since the desire to be considered beautiful is the strongest passion in a woman’s heart, the avenue to that heart may often be found by a man who can convince her honestly that she is considered beautiful by himself and others. For, as every man of ability has moments when he doubts his genius, so every woman has moments when she doubts her beauty and longs to see it in the mirror of a masculine eye.
The most common mistake of lovers is to compliment a woman on her most conspicuous points of beauty. This has very much the same effect on her as telling Rubinstein he is a wonderful pianist. He knows that better than you do, and has been told so so many million times that he is sick and tired of hearing it again. But show him that you have discovered some special subtle detail of excellence in his performance or compositions that had escaped general notice, and his heart is yours at once and for ever. A lover can have no difficulty in discovering such subtle charms in his sweetheart, for Cupid, while blinding him to her defects, places her beauties under a microscope.
A man who attends a social gathering comes home pleased, not at having heard a number of bright things, but in proportion to his own success in amusing the company. On the same principle, if you give a girl—especially one who mistrusts her conversational ability—a chance to say a single bright thing, she will love you more than if you said a hundred clever things to her.
Sincerity in compliments is essential; else all is lost. It is useless to try to convince a woman with an ugly mouth or nose that those features are not ugly. She knows they are ugly, as well as Rubinstein knows when he strikes a wrong note. “Very ugly or very beautiful women,” says Chesterfield, “should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.”
A clever joke is never out of place. You may intimate to a comparatively plain woman that she is good-looking, and if she retorts with a sceptical answer, you may snub her and score ten points in Love by telling her you pity her poor taste.
Indeed, the art of successful flattery, especially with modern self-conscious girls, consists in the ability of giving “a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery,” as Coleridge puts it. Conundrums are very useful. For instance, Angelina is patting a dog. “Do you know why all dogs are so fond of you?” asks Adolphus. Angelina gives it up. “Because dogs are the most intelligent of all animals.” Angelina goes to Paris, and Adolphus enjoys his last walk with her. They pass a weeping willow. “Why are we two like this tree?” She gives it up again. “A weeping willow is graceful and melancholy; you are graceful, I melancholy.”
“How old am I?” asks Angelina. “I don’t know. Judging by your conversation thirty-five, by your looks nineteen.”
Tell a woman—casually, as it were—of the effect of her charms on a third party, and it will please her more than a bushel of your neatest compliments. As Lessing remarks, Homer gives us a more vivid sense of Helen’s beauty by noting its effect even on the Trojan elders, than he could have done by the most minute enumeration of her charms. Put your flatteries into actions rather than words—“mettre la flatterie dans les actions et non en paroles”—is Balzac’s advice. But “flattery in actions” is simply another name for Gallantry.
There is no danger that the subtlest compliment will ever escape notice. In the discovery of praise the commonest mind has the quickness of genius.