I took a bundle of old letters out of a jacket pocket this morning to look for a document which I wanted, and which I thought might be there. It was not there. I was not in the least surprised. I am never surprised when I do not find things in my pockets. Long experience has taught me not to expect to find what I want in my pockets and what ought to be there. But, on the other hand, I rarely fail to find things I do not want, things that simply refuse to be lost, negligible things, tiresome things, old bills, old envelopes of vanished letters, notes I have made about matters long since dead, sometimes startling things that make me leap up with ejaculations only wrung from me in moments of sudden dismay.
It was so this morning. For though I did not find the document I wanted, I found a couple of letters, written a fortnight ago, put in envelopes, addressed and stamped—but not posted. One of them was of little consequence: the other was of much consequence. It was to a person who, I knew, expected to hear from me on an important matter, and from whom I had expected to hear in reply. I had wondered why he had not replied, and why when he saw me at a club a few days ago he rather obviously avoided me. I felt puzzled, for there had been nothing in my letter at which he could take offence—yet obviously he had taken offence. Now I knew why he had taken offence. He was annoyed at not receiving a letter from me which he had expected to receive, and I was annoyed at not receiving a reply to a letter I had not sent.
And in this little incident I saw an illustration of most of the personal differences which afflict us in our journey through this troublesome life. Take a common example. A is talking to B as they walk along the street on a subject of absorbing interest to him when C passes them. A knows C quite well, and in ordinary circumstances would give him a cordial greeting, but he is so full of his argument with B that he is only dimly conscious of C's propinquity and he passes with a vague air of having seen him in another world. A has no intention of being rude or even distant, and goes on without the least idea that he has given C offence. Indeed, he is not aware that he has seen C, so deep was he in thought about other things. But C is a proud fellow, ready to feel an affront, and resolute in paying it back. The next time they meet C is stiff and remote and A goes away wondering why the fellow cut him and determined to be something of an iceberg himself when the occasion arises. And so from this trivial incident A and C drift into an attitude of hostility and aloofness which a moment's candour on either side would show to have no shadow of foundation.
Most of the actions of other people which give us annoyance spring from causes that have nothing to do with the motives we assign to them. Othello smothers Desdemona through a misunderstanding about a handkerchief that five minutes' quiet talk would have cleared up, with disastrous results to the villain, Iago. It is an excellent rule to distrust our reading of facts, still more our reading of other people's motives in relation to them. It is wrong in nine cases out of ten. I can hardly recall a case in which my first conclusion as to why So-and-So did this or that has not, on fuller knowledge, turned out to be absurdly wide of the mark. How can it be otherwise? How, for example, can that excellent person who avoided me at the club know that I have not been guilty of an act of wilful discourtesy towards him? He does not know that the nice letter I wrote to him has been lying in one of my pockets for a fortnight. I did not even know it myself. Yet the knowledge of that fact is essential to a true understanding of my conduct towards him. He has doubtless smothered me under the pillow, Othello-fashion, as a rude fellow. It is a mistake. I am only a careless fellow who ought not to be trusted with such treacherous things as pockets.
I think the moral of it all is summed up in the remark which an intrepid lady, whose name has of late become a household word, once made to me. "I never allow misunderstandings to go unexplained," she said. "If a friend 'cuts' me I ask her why she cut me, and I usually find it is for a reason that does not exist. If I don't understand the action of a friend I ask for an explanation, and I generally find it clears the air." It is a good rule. If we were not too proud to explain ourselves or to ask explanations of others most of the misunderstandings of life would disappear, and many of our worries with them.
In the meantime, I have posted that letter, with a covering note of explanation. That will remove one misunderstanding from my own encumbered path.
A NOTE ON DRESS
I read a sensational article in a newspaper the other evening. It was an article which set forth Fourteen Commandments to men on how to be dressy. I call it sensational because of its novelty. Every day in almost any paper you turn to, you will find a page or half-page about women's dress, usually adorned by amazing drawings of impossible women dressed in impossible clothes, and standing in impossible attitudes, who all seem alike in their vacuity and futility. But never before do I remember to have seen in a daily newspaper an article addressed to men, telling them what clothes they should wear and how to wear them. I daresay there have been such articles, but I have not seen them, and certainly they are so infrequent that they may be said to be unknown.
I shall be curious to see whether the innovation has come to stay, for it has been a subject of mild speculation with me why all the literature of dress should be confined to women. On the face of it we might suppose that it was only women who wore clothes at all, and certainly only women who cared what clothes they wore or made a science of wearing them. No doubt this is largely true. Every woman has a serious interest in dress. "There was never fair woman but she made mouths in a glass," says the poet, and there was never woman of any sort, fair or plain, that could refuse at least the tribute of a glance at a well-dressed milliner's window. You will hear women discuss dress on the bus as earnestly and continuously as their boys discuss cricket, or their husbands discuss stocks and shares, or motor-cars, or golf, or the iniquities of politicians. I have never yet heard two men discuss dress in the abstract for two minutes. You might sit in any smoking-room in any men's club in London for a year without hearing a remark on the fashion in ties or trousers, or a single comment on the fact that this or that person was well- or ill-dressed. If dress is mentioned at all, it is mentioned in an ironical vein, as a matter fitting, perhaps, for a light jest among friends, but nothing more.