THE MAN WHO PLEASES.
The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies.
Merchant of Venice.
He hath a daily beauty in his life.
Othello.
Such a man would win any woman in the world if a' could get her good will.
Much Ado About Nothing.
There are few subjects of deeper interest to men and women than that of personal fascination, or what is sometimes called "personal magnetism." We commonly talk about it as though it were some mysterious quality of which no definite account could be given.
"A man is fascinating," we say, "he is born magnetic; he has an indefinable charm which cannot be analyzed or understood," and, with the term "naturally magnetic," we hand the matter over to the world of mystery.
Is this quality of so bewildering a nature that it cannot be understood, or will a study of those men and women who possess preëminently the power of pleasing show us the secret of their influence, and prove to us that the gift of fascination is not, necessarily, innate, but that it can, to a great degree, be acquired?
Will we not find that what appears to be the perfection of naturalness is often but the perfection of culture?
From all our well-known public men who have won the reputation of being "naturally magnetic," perhaps we could not select a better example than James G. Blaine. With the possible exception of Henry Clay, no other political leader in our history, under all circumstances, had so devoted and determined a following. Both Clay and Blaine possessed sympathetic and affectionate dispositions, and both understood human nature and the art of pleasing. It may be said that Mr. Blaine's popularity was due, in a great measure, to the brilliant and attractive nature of his public service, and this was, no doubt, true to a certain extent. No man knew better than he the importance of making the most of opportunities for dramatic and sensational display, and his methods of statesmanship were always calculated to please the multitude.
His greatest power, however, was manifested in his winning men by direct and individual contact. One thing which assisted him in this direction was the fact that he was, perhaps, the most courteous of all the public men of his generation. Whenever a stranger was introduced to him, a hearty handshake, a look of interest and an attentive and cordial manner assured him that Mr. Blaine was very glad to see him. If they chanced to meet again, after months or even years, the man was delighted to find that Mr. Blaine not only remembered his name, but that he had seemed to treasure even the most trivial recollections of their short acquaintance. He had a marvellous memory for faces and names, and he understood the value of this gift.
This ability to remember faces is not difficult to acquire. We could all possess it if we would make sufficient effort. No two figures or countenances are precisely alike, and it is by noting how they differ one from another that you will remember them.
In explaining his own remarkable memory for faces, Thomas B. Reed once said to a reporter that he never looked a man in the face that some striking peculiarity, a line, a wrinkle, an expression about the eye, the set of the lips, the shape of the nose, something set that man's face down in his mind indelibly, and distinguished him from the rest of mankind.
Blaine carefully trained himself to pick out some feature or peculiarity by which he could distinguish one face or person from all others and by which he could associate the name of the individual.
The ability to remember names and faces is one of the most valuable accomplishments for the man in public life, or, indeed, for any man or woman who wishes social success. Not only does it insure comfort to one's self, but it is especially pleasing to others. Next to the comfort of being able to address by name and without hesitation a person one has met but once, and without mistake, is the comfort of being recognized one's self.
Another reason why Mr. Blaine was popular with the masses was because he was not difficult to approach, and he never missed a chance to be useful to a person who might some time, in turn, be useful to him.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat said shortly after his death: "It was not the habit of Mr. Blaine to wait for men to seek favors from him. He anticipated their desires, and doubled their obligations to him by doing voluntarily what might have been delayed for solicitation. That gave him the kind of popularity which outlasts defeat and resists all ordinary influences of criticism and hostility. He could always count upon a certain measure of unflinching and unconditional support, whatever forces happened to be arrayed against him; and he changed bitter enemies into zealous friends with a facility that was a source of constant surprise and wonder."
But why should his success in attracting others to himself be a source of "surprise and wonder"?
Mr. Blaine, in common with many other magnetic men and women, understood that the secret of personal fascination lies in one single point; that is, "in the power to excite in another person happy feelings of a high degree of intensity, and to make that person identify such feelings with the charm and power of the cherished cause of them."
Any quality, good or evil, that enables a man to do this, renders him fascinating, whether he be saint or sinner. Indeed, some of the men who have been the most skilful in the art of pleasing have been scoundrels.
Said a writer in the Boston Herald: "It used to be said of Aaron Burr—so irresistible in charm of manner was the man—that he could never stop at the stand of the ugliest old crone of an apple-woman, without leaving on her mind when he went away the conviction that he regarded her as the fairest and most gracious of her sex. And so, had woman suffrage prevailed in his day, he would have had the solid vote of the apple-women for any office he might aspire to."
Aaron Burr clearly understood that the woman does not exist who is wholly without sentiment, and he always appealed to that part of a woman's nature.
He understood very well the truth of these words written by Croly: "In the whole course of my life I never met a woman, from the flat-nosed and ebony-colored inhabitant of the tropics to the snow-white and sublime divinity of a Greek isle, without a touch of romance; repulsiveness could not conceal it, age could not extinguish it, viscissitude could not change it. I have found it in all times and places, like a spring of fresh water, starting up even from the flint, cheering the cheerless, softening the insensible, renovating the withered; a secret whisper in the ear of every woman alive that to the last, affection might flutter its rosy pinions around her brow."
Burr, understanding this, left in the mind of the apple-woman the firm impression that he thought she must have been at one time a duchess, reduced in fortune by some accident, and now driven to the last refuge of an apple-stand, and that those sad facts evidently accounted for the traits of high breeding and delicate refinement so visible through all her present poverty.
He understood the fact that all people live in two distinct worlds—the world of reality and the world of imagination. In the world of reality they use brooms and shovels, wash floors and dishes, or sell apples; in the other, they live in drawing rooms, feast sumptuously and are the wonder and admiration of mankind.
"Few people," continues the writer in the Herald, "would believe that an ugly, dilapidated looking apple-woman could dwell in the enchanted realm of imagination just as much as the rich and favored do. But Burr believed it, so when he spoke to the old crone, he went up, not to her withered and beggarly self, but to her ideal self, imaginatively entering into the duchess dream in her, and instinctively became deferential in his bearing.
"Forthwith the duchess in her came out to meet the courtly gentleman in him, and greetings were exchanged as between two incognito scions of noble lineage. Each enjoyed the meeting, each had vividness enough of imagination to impart to it the flavor of reality, and to keep out of sight common, material facts."
"But," you say, "not every man can make such an impression, for few are able to do and say things with the ease and grace of a Burr. There must be a naturalness of manner which never suggests suspicion. Let the average man attempt to force his nature and to manufacture smiles and looks of pleasure, and the old apple-woman will know at once that she is being fooled." Very true, and it is not desirable that the average man should possess the ability of an Aaron Burr to influence others. Few persons try as he did to acquire that power, but because the average man cannot at once exercise that potent influence over others which he did, it does not follow that we are unable to understand the secret of Burr's success, nor is it evident that other men cannot acquire something of this power by thinking it worth while to do so.
It would not be safe to say that all men can be equally successful, try as they will, in inspiring in others "happy feelings of a high degree of intensity," for nature has not been impartial in bestowing equally upon all the gifts of adaptation and expression.
There are a few persons so constituted by temperament and mental organism that they exercise a depressing influence over their associates. They have a negative, flabby spirit that seems to operate, speaking figuratively, much as a wet shoe does upon one who is compelled to wear it. They draw upon the nervous strength and exhaust the patience of those who are compelled to be much in their company. But there are not many of this type. Most of us could make far more progress in acquiring social graces and in the art of pleasing than we do.
Let us now consider some of the particular qualities which render a man pleasing to the opposite sex.
Of course different types of men please different women. Some women care little for the moral element in men. They do not admire them for their goodness or nobility of character, but rather for their manners and their ability to flatter and say pleasing things. Some women are fascinated by mere brute strength, but they are not many. Rank, wealth, and social position are very attractive to some, but these things do not make the man himself more attractive to the true woman.
While a girl is young, she may go into raptures over "a cameo profile, a Burnes-Jones head of hair, or a pre-Raphaelite languor and pallor," but these things are bound to pall, and become absolutely distasteful. Some even admire downright wickedness in men, and these are the women who send delicacies to murderers in prison, and overwhelm them with bouquets. But, fortunately, these types represent but a small fraction of the fair sex, and this chapter has to do only with the great majority; the intelligent, moral, cultured women of the land. What qualities in men are most attractive to them?
Physical beauty is always attractive in either sex, yet the handsome man has the advantage of his plainer rival only in this—he is able to draw attention to himself at once. He must, however, have something more to hold that attention. He may be physically an Apollo, but if he be ill-mannered, dull or ignorant, he will stand no chance beside the man skilled in the artful polished ways of what is called society, who is master of that grace of manner and flexibility of speech which more than wealth, reputation, or personal attractiveness, win their way with women.
It has been proven, again and again, that even ugliness of face and form is not, by any means, a bar to popularity with women, and while we are often amazed at the choice which brilliant, beautiful women sometimes make from a crowd of admirers, at the bottom of every apparent fantastic selection, there is a solid, and, usually, a sensible reason.
Ernest Renan was certainly not handsome. He was exceedingly corpulent, his complexion was said to resemble nothing else so closely as tallow. He had claw-shaped hands, bushy gray eyebrows, and thin gray hair, yet wherever he went into society he was sure to be the center of an admiring group of women. He was not fascinating by reason of his ugliness, but in spite of it. There was enough in the subtle charm of his manner, and the melodious flow of his conversation, to make up for all outward deficiencies.
Liszt was not a handsome man—quite the contrary; yet probably no other man ever lived who exercised a more magnetic and potent influence over women. Even when he had become gaunt and old, his eyes dim, his blonde hair snow-white, his spare, lean figure wrapped in a black, priestly gown, he was followed about by a train of fair admirers.
Chauteaubriand could charm at eighty-four, the Abbé Liszt at seventy-five, and Aaron Burr—who was by no means handsome—had at seventy a charm of manner that was irresistible.
The fact is, one cannot recall half a dozen very talented men who were admired for their personal beauty. Pope was very plain; Dr. Johnson was no better; Mirabeau was "the ugliest man in France," and yet he was the greatest favorite with the fair sex.
These examples are not cited to prove that women do not care for physical beauty in men. On the contrary, that is a very strong attraction, but not the most powerful factor in holding them. Women more frequently prize men for their sterling qualities of mind than men do women. A perfection of physical beauty rarely associates itself with great mental ability in either sex, but still there have been some notable exceptions, especially among women, and every pretty woman who reads this may consider herself one of these exceptions.
As a general thing, the man who pleases is the man who understands. It does not matter much to a woman whether a man has great and brilliant thoughts of his own, if he comprehends her wishes and her feelings, as well as her thoughts. He should, if he desires to please, make a careful study of that mysterious and complex thing—a woman's nature. He must understand that it is of a finer fibre than his own; that it is sensitive and easily hurt. He should have sentiment, but not be a sentimentalist. He will be wise, indeed, if he can skilfully draw the line between the two things. "Sentiment is divine: sentimentalism absurd." He should be able to say much in little and he must not be a chatterer. A woman who talks too much becomes tiresome; a man who is an aimless talker is an intolerable bore to both sexes.
Few men understand a woman. They do not look at things from her point of view, and, therefore, do not realize to what extent civilized life has permitted her to assume that convention of manner and those civilities of speech which are in some harmless degree hypocritical. It could not be otherwise. Her ideal of a man is a very high one, but she rarely meets him, and so she accepts the one who comes nearest to her ideal and makes the most of the situation. She would that he were different, but a woman can love in spite of very many things. Usually she is obliged to if to love at all. She is much cleverer at love-making than a man. "She is an artist where he is a crude workman, and she does not go through a love scene without realizing how much better she could have done it if the title rôle had been given to her."
If she is a woman of sensibility, she is shocked by a hundred disagreeable habits which many men think justifiable. She is repelled by awkwardness of manner, coarse modes of speech, by carelessness of person and dress, and yet, for all that, she loves.
The lover who is most successful in retaining the affection of a sweetheart or a wife is the one who expresses over and over again the love and the tenderness he feels. Women, more than men, like to hear things talked about. They are far more wide-awake to the value of trifles, and more sensitive to changes of mood. They are given to saying in many ways, with delicate variations, what a man is satisfied to state once for all, even to state badly.
A man will believe in a woman's love and be satisfied with far fewer visible tokens of it than are necessary to confirm his tenderness and keep her convinced of it.
The truth is that a man's power of pleasing does not depend upon some occult quality of which no account can be given, but upon the degree in which he holds certain attractive qualities—innate or acquired. We have no difficulty in understanding any single one of these qualities, yet when a man possesses such a combination of them as to entitle him to the term "fascinating" we pronounce it incomprehensible, and fall back upon that vague term, "personal magnetism."
The personal elements which are most conducive to our influence over others are, in a broad way: good manners, a pleasing voice, the ability to converse well, personal neatness, taste in dress, tact, good morals, culture and refinement, physical beauty, and intellectual force. We are pleasing or offensive just in proportion to our possession of these very desirable characteristics, and, possibly, what we term "personal magnetism" is simply the result of a well-balanced development of some, or all, of these enviable characteristics.